Rev Left Radio - The Film Vanguard: Easy Rider (1969)

Episode Date: October 7, 2018

 The Film Vanguard comes together once again to discuss the 1969 film directed by Dennis Hopper "Easy Rider". Topics include: differing definitions of freedom, hippies, communes, reactionary violence, Boomers, why a death wish is required to ride motorcycles, and more. Get in on the ground floor of our brand new Film Vanguard spin off show, Hammer and Camera at patreon.com/hammercamera Follow Hammer and Camera on twitter @hammercamera Intro music by Captain Planet. You can find and support his wonderful music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com Please Rate and Review our show on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use. This dramatically helps increase our reach. Support the Show and get access to bonus content on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, the Omaha GDC, Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Amen. Oh, we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs haircut. Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom. What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what it's all about, all right. But talking about it and being it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.

Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free because then they're going to get real busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're going to talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. What they see, a free individual, it's going to scare them.

No, well, don't make them running scared. No, it makes them dangerous. I'm going to be. Oh, I'm going to I'm oh, uh,

uh, uh, Oh, I'm going to be able to be. Oh, my. Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. Today we have the film Vanguard back in the studio to do an episode on 1969's Easy Writer. We have today, Seth, Phil, Taylor. We are missing Abby today.

Abby made her debut appearance as a member of the film Vanguard on our Robocop episode. But today she's studying for the GRE and she just had way too much on her plate she couldn't come in and do the show she will be back in the future so fear not let's go around and introduce i mean everybody knows the film vanguard but you have new listeners all the time so starting with taylor you want to introduce yourself say hi oh bow bow bow bow down down dano dana down hey guys how you doing it's me taylor from the film vanguard so unnecessary so unnecessary. That's how I feel about a lot of this movie. So I'm glad that you brought it up. Beautiful intro. I'm glad that I'm thankful that I always didn't have to be the first person to bring it up

because a lot of this film is unnecessary. A lot of it I love. A lot of it I love because a lot of America is unnecessary. In this movie, if it's about anything, it's about America, it's about America, and about what America represents. I don't have a bunch of facts. I know that this movie was made for a few thousand dollars and it made millions and the production team behind the monkeys, the band actually got this movie off the ground. And so there are a lot of really interesting things, a lot of not so interesting things about it. But the one thing I can tell you, maybe the most interesting thing is Peter Fonda's fucking leather. Holy shit. I wanted to be Peter Fonda so bad when I watched this movie. For the first time, 16, 17 years old. And movies like this,

art like this, culture like this, got me to be where I am today. Although I kind of regret that it is what it is and what it did to me um where it got me i'm thankful for but you know the countercultural uh artifacts from the uh 1960s and 70s i think is where it all kind of began for me um and like every good childhood memory i am ready to go back and tear this one apart and that's what we were talking about before we started recording is um kind of through lines in the movies we've picked they're all like 60 70s films lots of leather lots of motorcycles represent It's interesting. I don't know what's going on with the film Vanguard subconscious, but something's coming out. Seth, would you like to say something?

Yeah, it's just me. Your local malist. I don't really got a lot, because I kind of just play off of these, too, because I'm not as knowledgeable about film. But, yeah, I hate hippies. I hate cops. And that summarizes a lot of my thoughts on this movie. Phil. And what's up? It's Phil. As always, a communist, lover of film, I guess I would say, and a critic. As far as this movie goes, I think there's upsides and downsides to making a film that defines a generation. And the upside is that everybody in that generation will, you know, pay money to go see it and they'll make, you know, dozens and dozens of derivative works. And it'll become, you know, you know, sort of a classic or part of that canon for that generation. But a downside is people outside that generation might not get it as much. And, you know, although their parents and then grandparents and then great-great-grandparents will go back and watch it and love it, you know, it has diminishing returns, I guess I would say,

you know, as it ages. Something that's so, something that's so in tune or like something that's so of its time, I think it's possible to be two of its time and to be too wrapped up in the vision of one generation. Definitely. Well, not to get us sidetracked before we even get started, but do you think that was the intention, or do you think it just happened to come out that this is, you know, that did sum up an era? I mean, do you think you sat down to, like, make a movie like, this is the movie of... I don't think they sat down to make a movie of the...

make a movie that defined the generation. I think they definitely intended on sort of representing the subculture of, like, of, like, the hippies or, like, you know, the bike culture. Like, they set down, set out to represent it well. I don't think they intended on making, like, that sort of stuff just happens. They kind of set out to take a look at America. And because it was at America in the late 60s, it kind of, the offshoot of that is, you know, a film of, you know, a film of, the generation. Let me interject if I, if I may. Please do, Taylor. Oh, I may. Yeah, you may. Oh, I may. And I well. Thank you. So the Easy Writer came at in 1969. And when Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda made

this movie, the Martin Luther King had just been assassinated four years before the movie came out. Malcolm X was assassinated. And then in the middle of all that, JFK was assassinated. So This was the violence in Easy Rider is indicative of the time. It's indicative of how the dream of the last, I mean, really, more than the dream of the last 10 years, this is a dream that got started in the 1910s and sprouted in the 1920s was strangled by the Depression in the 1930s and was put on hold during the World War II during the 1940s. this vision this bohemian vision of no gods no kings no masters um i started a long long long time ago and we can still feel the waves rippling out to us today uh and so there's a lot of that there's a lot of that really genuine uh from from from the hips spirit in this movie and in fact the original

cut was four hours long and it was four hours of absolute fucking mayhem what happened was that the studio that produced this movie is the studio as I mentioned before that produced the monkeys the monkeys began as a parody band literally a movie studio wanted to capitalize off of the success of a hard day's night

found four people that were kind of musicians put them in a band together put them on a television and then they accidentally released four albums that went off the charts and so this production got their hands on Easy Rider

and they got their hands on the production, uh, the production rights. And so when Dennis Hopper presents this four hour movie that's full of, uh, it's full of, uh, violence, monotony, um, beautiful, beautiful, expansive scenes of the American landscape, very minimalist scenes of, you know, dark like campfires, this film that tries to encapsulate, um, all of space and time, you know, from 1910 to 1969, um, they said, no dice. We want to sell this to somebody. No one literally no one is going to buy this. What can we do? How can we salvage this?

They cut it to an hour and a half and made it a hippie exploitation movie. So a movie that at its heart is very, very genuine, but then got subverted by a production company to market to a specific brand of people. And that combination produced this really chimerical, you know, visual sonic phenomenon that is easy writer, something that is like cartoon. cooomishly of its time, but also somehow, uh, admittedly, uh, almost embarrassingly so strikingly original. And I don't even like easy ride to that much. I'm just telling you, telling it like it is. Seth, um, I guess I just, uh, so like, how you mentioned fully, you know, I kind of tried to like ascapulate and scapulate America and kind of like,

how you're talking about how it was supposed to be this broad sort of thing. I like realized sort of looking back on the movie is basically cut up into like these different chapters that we're all a different focus on like a particular aspect of like american culture like you know at the very beginning we of course get like sexy cocaine deals um and then we move planes constantly planes he was 11th and absurd rate planes don't take off and land that quickly next to each other but yeah um and then you know and then the next their next stop is like this rural family a very um i don't know how salt of the earth yeah but it's also biracial interesting yeah which it was interesting yeah and then the next one they move on is to like the hippie commune

bullshit and then like the super reactionary like rural community which is like you know very juxtaposed to the first sort of rural like more than rural I guess like the initial farming community is like kind of a different beast on its own than just like a southern small town community and then you know then finally like new Orleans where like they're trying to get away from the city for so long and they wind back into a backup in another city that's like different but you know so like captures the same so i thought it was interesting how like each stopped represented like a very like distinct um i don't want to use the word subculture because they're not subcultures but you know a very distinct aspect of yeah a version of america yeah because when they went

to new orleans it was martigrae it was brothels it was dropping acid there's that element of the 60s that I think was encapsulated in Mardi Gras as sort of that front the difference I think between the rural area which assuming was more up north because they're coming from California down in Louisiana and that was one of their first stops it was like really rural and he talks

in the film on Wyatt the main character says you know you live off the land and you should be proud of yourself and it was sort of a really beautiful thing but like the southern town wasn't really rural right there was these small little encapsulated concentrations of reactionary politics and you have have, like, you know, people like George's dad who is, like, a vague figure of authority in the

town. You have cops. You have laws. So, yeah, there's a distinction there to be made as well. But, yeah, it's definitely, like, going through different major types of America at that time in the 60s. And one of the biggest, I think, one of the, where I want to start critiquing the movie is about this compresence of contradictions in the film itself. The depiction that this, the existence of contradictions is not a problem for the, for the protagonists. It's, it's affirmation for them. I mean, ultimately, what happens is that it kills them. You know, the, these contradictions are, in fact, modes of violence that come to roost, so to speak, um, in them, you know, in the, in the writers, uh, by taking, taking their lives on the open

road, um, sort of a live by the sword, die by the sword kind of thing. And this is, I think, um, a natural, it's, it's poetic and it's interesting. Um, it's sort of a, uh, but it's a romanticization. of that violence and that death. It's sort of a Nietzschean affirmation of, you know, to be tried by violence is to be alive, you know, where I think someone more inclined to the left would see these contradictions as something that, you know, may affirm that you're alive, but only by virtue of informing you that you might soon be dead because in whatever way you might be different, you are not wanted. It's not an affirmation. It's a threat. It's a weapon. It's a weaponized culture. And

the way that, I mean, to their credit, the way that the easy writers, so to speak, validate this violence is very American, very cowboy, very western, very bang, bang, haughty. You know, so I would, I would, I'd start my critique of easy writer there. And it's, you know, in that, you know, in nest a broader critique about American culture, post-war American culture and mass media. Sure, yeah. I mean, 69, they're in the war itself. And you mentioned, which we'll get back to in a little bit, Vietnam War, but you mentioned the three major assassinations. You could have four, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, JFK, MLK. Is Bobby Kennedy in the 60s? Was it? I thought Bobby was later. I think you. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe. Malcolm X is 65 and MLK was 68. Either way, they're all

more or less taken down by just outburst of American violence. And the three main characters in this film, spoiler alert, were all taken down an outburst of almost unforeseen violence. When they had left the reactionary town for the first time when they're all camping out, I didn't see that coming. And it was just a quick edit and all of a sudden bats are flying. And then you're like, Jesus Christ. And even with the shotgun killings at the end, even after they killed Billy, which I almost thought the shotgun went off on accident, because he pulled it off the back and he said let's just scare him and then the gun went off he's like what happened he turned back if you look at the film

he looked at the other guy and said what happened like the thing accidentally went off then you know why it speeds to get help the truck turns around is coming back and even at that point I'm thinking well they're not going to kill the third guy because they fucked up by accidentally killing the first guy what's going to happen here and they just you know blow him the fuck away so it's this unexpected violence even when it's already been a violent film and all the deaths are like very unceremonious to like I mean, when Jack Nicholson's character died,

I think we spent a whole, like, 10 seconds being like, oh, shit. And then we'll just drop acid, y'all. Yeah, like... Right after that, like, fuck. But so I guess this is a nice segue into... We already touched on some initial thoughts, but I want to talk about, like, your favorite moments and characters and then, like, the worst parts of the film in a more concrete way.

for me certainly Jack Nicholson's character George Hansen was sort of a highlight every time he was on screen I was kind of captivated when he took him when he got out of jail and he took that shot of Jim Beam and did this little weird like meh-k-k-k-k-khing

I lost it here's the first of the day fellas to old D.H. Lawrence And then when they said, you can come with us if you have a helmet. And he's like, oh, I have a helmet. And it's just like, it cuts him flying down the interstate in a football helmet with no face mask. I mean, it just added moments of like extreme humor for me that I really loved. For the worst parts, or at least the things that stuck out to me as weird.

maybe Taylor will have some disagreements with me here. I thought the editing was weird. They had these really queer back and forth jump cuts. And then they had these freeze frames where they would just like kind of sloppily move on to the next edit. I don't know if that was, as we were talking about before, a more avant-garde purposeful thing. Or if it was just kind of sloppy because it was a low budget, almost experimental film, I'm not sure. And then the last thing is like the way that they depicted the acid trip at the end. It's like, God damn, I love acid.

And that is not at all. What acid is like, it would be horrible. were. I don't know, just the way they did it with like the menacing shots. And then obviously they were trying to have some sort of broader critique of religion as they were talking about the Holy Spirit and these people praying in the cemetery, blah, blah, blah. I thought it was interestingly done, but I don't know if I really liked it. I don't know. Those are kind of my initial favorites and worst parts for me. You people are terrible. First things first, that acid scene in New Orleans. Also, all the drugs were real, right? That they were doing the entire time,

is what I read. I think the cocaine definitely was. I'm not sure about the acid. The The cocaine and the marijuana was definitely real. But that LSD scene in New Orleans during Mardi Gras was shot on a 16 millimeter film, I think it was 16 millimeter camera, and it was used for proof of concept for the rest of the movie. So part of the reason that that film, that part of the movie is so distinct from the other parts is that it was shot on a smaller camera and was for as little control as the filmmaker, actually applied to this movie, there was even less of it there because it was like literally right there. And to the, what followed after the characters dropped, the acid, I think that

a lot of context is necessary to recognize just how interesting that film, that part of the film is. That being said, having to explain context to explain a part of the movie is like having to explain a joke to somebody. It doesn't mean it's good. or smart. It just means that there's a way of a, I think of appreciating it from a certain perspective. And it's that the way that the sound went off in that part of the film, the way that the kind of the music and the dialogue intermingled and was sort of ethereal and the way that the characters would appear and appear to disappear was really unique for that time. In fact, the sound editing like that hadn't existed yet. This was one of the first from the

films of its time to compile a sonic collage like that and not have it locked in an art museum is sort of a pleasure specifically for a bourgeois audience. It was for mass consumption. It was something that these writers and directors wanted to play with. But you see what I mean, though. Having to explain the context about a movie doesn't make the movie good. If anything, it makes it less interesting. you know it's it's interesting as an historical artifact but not an aesthetic object in that sense

so um i think bear in mind this is coming from somebody who has watched all the 11 and a half hours of andy warhol's empire state building so i used to be such a strange i wanted to be you used to be such a strange i wanted to be peter fondo when i was 17 i mean i lived for this so i uh that being said i'm critical of of that part of my that period of time and not only my life, that period of time in my praxis, that period of time in my idealization of certain virtues. But, yeah, I did watch all 11 and so hours later. I knew Warholz, New York. But more on that later, I really, I hope not. 11 and a half hours later. No, feel free to edit that.

We're keeping it. Go on. Good grief. You people are mad lads. I cannot take. So, moving off of the way that the film's composed that I actually, I liked some of, and what I liked does not excuse what I didn't like. I think that there are valid critiques to be made about it. This was an amateur film. It was, I think, Dennis Hopper's first film. And just real quick, Dennis Hopper was the director and also played the role of Billy in the film itself. Exactly.

I also played real-life Madman Dennis Hopper, surprising. so it's surprising that he made it to like 1970 right honestly so one thing that I like the most I don't even really like it because it was good I just liked it because I thought it was cool it was the scene when Jack Nicholson talks about the Venusians sitting around a campfire smoking weed talking about aliens aliens that blew my fucking mind it still blows my mind I love aliens so much so, so, so, so much because I think that there's a lot

of interesting stuff that happens when people talk about aliens. I think that stories about aliens are their modern campfire stories. And in that, you know, literally in the film it's being discussed around a campfire. But carrying that tradition, that campfire

tradition, that boogeyman kind of story carries on the same kinds of stories that people shared that religions came out of, that the first city organizations came out of it, the first, the first human emotions came out of everything that it led us to this day started around a campfire and has some, some mythological power. And I love that. And I think that in the 1960s, the 1950s in particular, the UFO subject was this mythological thing. And specifically through the 50s and the 60s, people would argue, that they were able to channel these Venetians and they were space brothers and that they wanted

the United States to lay down its nuclear arsenal and shake hands with the Soviet Union and make peace with Central and Southern America. And people forget that this was a total obsession. This was an American obsession at the time. 20 years after Roswell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, truly. And, you know, in 1947 alone, like someone, like once, it was once calculated that, like, one day people reported 88 flying saucers in a day. Like people were, they loved this and they loved seeing this in the media. But what they loved was this sort of this, this objectification of their own, their own will for unity, this sort of, they wanted to objectify.

They wanted the aliens to touch down so that they could have a reason for peace. And I don't have that thought articulated enough in my mind to say that, you know, the event, the quote unquote happening, this externalization. of desire into something catastrophic or traumatic or or deeply profound to actually meaningfully change things this abdication of of one's well to to the event i don't know if i have the the you know if i'm prepared to speak at length about that but that's what that embodied at this time and it was so so just charming to see that nested in this movie in such a way this campfire talk about

Venetians. It was interesting, yeah. More on that after nine. I'm your host, George Norie. Thank you for tuning in to coast to coast. West of the Rockies, you're off. Gotcha. Phil, do you want to jump off with this?

Any favorite or worst parts of the film? Yeah, I think going back to sort of in defense of the acid trip scene, I also felt like that was really remarkable like for its time. And even just in general, a lot of the way of this movie

is shot and a lot of the way this movie was cut, I think we're extremely out of the guard and really hold up well. A lot of the, the way this film is made seems very modern. It seems like this would be the type of way someone would make a movie now. Even the shots of the, like the motorcycles, even the landscape shots, it's shot in such, in a modern way. And like, particularly the acid chip scene and the New Orleans scene after they leave the lady's house and, general like there's a shift in tone and they start using handheld which was that was what really took my attention is because I I feel like before this point like you didn't really use handheld in movies like it was everything was on a tripod but here they were they had a movie

they had a handheld and they were you know walking down the streets I really I thought that was really cool and I think you know that's that's one way in which the film is genuinely like ahead of its time and then the way that they structured and like taylor was saying sound edited and you know just the variety of techniques they brought to bear on that scene i think is really remarkable and i enjoyed it to a certain extent while watching it but i did feel like it was too long i felt like it was way too long like i feel like i could have gotten all the benefit of those things and just in a shorter scene but that's my only quibble with the trip scene i yeah I actually enjoyed that as well because I think it was like really I mean clearly it was like the breaking point of the movie in a lot of ways but like you know up until that point the whole like depiction of the drug usage was like very sexy right like you know we're buying cocaine from some random Hispanic dude and then we're gonna like ship it off on a fucking runway and then you know and we're just like casually smoking weed the entire time yeah.

And, like, the acid scene, and the hippie dude was, like, very explicitly, you know, do it, like, when you're in a good spot. And you do it, and it obviously does not, like, go. That's, like, kind of the beginning of the end. And, like, I think it was, like, a very, like, sobering moment. I did, like, that, like, kind of, like, bringing the drug usage, like, back down to Earth that, like, leading up until that point, it was very, I don't want to say what, it was glorified. And, you know, and that's when, like, everything came, like, crashing home. And, I mean... Yeah, the Coke scenes made me want to do Coke in the acid scenes.

Yeah, and I think we've... Most of us have done acid here. So I think, like, you run through, like, the whole, like, gamut of emotions that you do on a trip. And even though it doesn't, like, that scene didn't make sense in a lot of ways, but, like, it's still at the same time, like, perfectly, like, encompass what it feels. feels like to go through a lot of those things and just how like a trip as like messed up as you can be on a trip is still like sometimes the most sobering thing in the world. Like discordic chaos. Yeah, it was so I actually like really enjoyed that.

I thought it was like a good like unique scene and take on like a trip that you don't usually see him. I'll give it back to Phil but yeah like with all the historical context and with like the history of film being brought into it now, I can. I can kind of definitely have an appreciation for a scene that I would otherwise have dismissed, but going back to Phil, you had more to say. Yeah, I think I was taken back first and foremost by the tone of the film, you know, and when you think about hippies, I think you really predominantly think about, well, I know I do,

you know, as, you know, people who are in a circle with their hands, holding each other's hands and, like, singing free love and, like, just sort of a general sense of, like, naive optimism and, like, naive political, uh, thinking, but like in a positive way. So I was really taken aback by the, the bleak tone of this movie and how it's absolutely not a tone of positivity. It's a tone of cynicism. I think like that was that was what was that took me aback the most. And I think that's what drives a lot of the elements that we've talked about is that fundamentally it's a film that has a very bleak, a very cynical outlook. And I think that is very, you know, it's very very interesting that that outlook was really really resonated with people like this this sort of

this very cynical very bleak picture like people resonated with it so much i think that's the end of that era yeah i was going to ask you really quick um talking about um oh the bleakness of the film and earlier set was talking about the different types like almost chapters and areas that they went the only almost really truly like optimistic scene or the only the visit that they had where there was a little bit of optimism and maybe that bleakness was missing was, I think, the rural farm environment. It was one of the shorter visits they had, but they walked away from that scene. Like, you felt kind of like something is interesting here.

It is kind of beautiful how they live that life. And it is progressive in its own way with the biracial marriage, et cetera. It was like literally the only one that they walked away from not being like despaired. Would you say that's the only time that bleakness dropped away for a second? Well, I think it wasn't even, I think, I mean, that was just at the beginning. the film like that I don't think there was like the bleakness there but I also don't think like you know they didn't really get it much out of that scene like they just stopped and went on like I feel like it's almost the optimism of starting a long trip basically yeah well I want to

I want to comment on that if I may for a minute and not even a minute but you know you in that film you do have the really really pleasant imagery of an older farmer fixing a horseshoe as the guys were fixing the bike and it's this really it's an example of a peaceful a sort of a peaceful handoff between generations you know it's a visual

metaphor for the you know he welcomes him into his barn walks him into his home you know lets him let's him fix his way before he sets off and departs and I mean you don't see

his motor transportation the motorcycle versus his the horse and you don't you don't see what becomes of the farmer after that. When I was a young man, I was headed for California, but, well, you know how it is. Well, you sure got a nice bread here. I sure got a lot of them. My wife's a Catholic, you know. I think we have some more coffee?

No, I mean it. You've got a nice place. It's not every man that can live off the land, you know. Do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud. That's part of what they wanted to, what Dennis Hopper and, and Fondo wanted to express in this, in this film, And insofar as it captured the spirit of a generation, it, that, that represented where

things started, this, what, or at least what they wanted it to start out as a peaceful handoff from one generation to the next, you know, sort of a, even sitting down at the figurative dinner table, this, you know, this, you know, my father, you know, the legacy of my father nourishes my soul and, uh, and is the soil from which my, my future springs. Um, I, I think, think is is is there is there in the movie and of course what it you know what what what what seeds did my father so um well you know the seeds i am the the harvest that i'm reaping is my is my death you know so there's not necessarily a totally forgiving um depiction of what uh the the previous generations of americans left behind for uh the people coming of age the late 60s early 70s but that scene in particular

I think is very symbolic of the ideal in the ways in which the people's ideals at the time fell short. And when juxtaposed, when you're talking about living off the land and being able to provide for yourself with farming, it's juxtapose interestingly with when they later went to the hippie commune and these sort of detached out of it weirdos were like throwing seeds into sand and they were trying to cultivate a crop and talking about harvesting. And then I think Billy said,

Nothing's going to grow there, man. And why it's like, no, they'll make it. But juxtapose between like this need to get back to nature when you've already been so alienated from it as opposed to the farmer who has, you know, generation after generation been in it. I thought, I think they're trying to say something there. At least we should think of that as an important juxtaposition

that the hippies could never fully do what they wanted to do in this Russoian, noble, savage sort of idea of nature, you know. Sure, there's something Hegelian and Heidegarian in it. Did we just say Heidegarian, Hegelian? and Rousseauian in the second two seconds. Seth, did you have anything to say before we move on? Were they're fave and worse? Because you haven't had a chance to talk about it?

No, I'm straight. Okay, wow. I did want to just say my last one was Jack Nicholson's character. I also, I think he was, you know, the real shining light of the film. And I think just a really genuinely enjoyable and interesting character. And I think it's also telling and kind of going back to my other point about how this is such a cynical film that he had to die like so in such a

just an abrupt and violent way like that he and that he was the first to die yeah I think that's telling as well definitely yeah that was that was brutal so let's go ahead and move on now we have two more main topics freedom and boomers I want to tackle but before we even get into that let's let Seth have a little

dunking on hippie time let's talk about the hippie commune because for me the hippie commune scene stuck out a lot because there is this like Phil was talking about this almost naive utopianism this idealism juxtaposed to like the actual farmer living off the land and their want to live off the land

and as I was watching that scene I was like I fucking would hate to live on a commune but then I thought no maybe I just hate to live on a commune with those sorts of people I mean but yeah but even like the localism the parochialism the limitations of what a commune represents

it kind of stuck out to me and then the astrology and should I just I just could not take it but I wondered if anybody had any commentary on communes or hippies broadly I mean beyond the first like initial socialist but you know communist movement in the United States in the early 1900s you know after that like the hippie movement was like the like big like quote unquote progressive thing right I mean was there another like I mean it's not the next but I mean the big defining chapter yeah well i'm making a face for the folks at home this is a great podcasting so that talks to me and i make faces and set reacts to your set reacts to my faces so no what i what i'm

making a face is faces because um the um hippies were the children of wealthy white people like they were not i'm not i know i know it's not the same they were not cut from the same cloth as the as the socialist movement well yeah but i'm saying like the fate when you go back through like progressive move like quote-unquote progressive movements in the United States that whole like woodstock bullshit's gonna like come to mind whether it was like actually actually progressive or not right if you wanted to do a Google search like yeah yeah yeah we're splicing hairs here we're talking about like in the general like American political consciousness that we're splitting hair is you trying to cut my hair friend

with the rusty razor light yeah so yeah the like the whole like what they spent probably like 20 minutes of the film at the hippie thing. Sure. Yeah, I mean, that was like the epitome of like everything wrong with that movement. You know, you have the hedonism that's just like unbelievably petty bourgeois, you know, the escapism trying to like, you know, how you sort of talked about juxtaposing the like actual rural providing for himself thing versus the like rich kids that like move off and just try to do it for the shit of it. And they do a horrible job, of course.

And it's just like that the escapeism is like most like frustrating thing for me. Like I understand how people get like drawn to like the hedonism and, you know, the drug usage and whatnot. But thinking it's like progressive to go and like move out into the middle of nowhere and try to try to like create a society with you and your 20 friends. And the only reason like I like to dunk on that so hard is because, because, like, it's still, like, a very prevalent thing today amongst the, like, quote-unquote left, you know, like, I see in here all the time, like, people are talking about, like, we start, like, this, come on me, or, you know, we'll just go buy, like, it's still buy a patch of farmer where it's still, like, a prevailing, like, mindset. Like, if we can just, like, get out of it and, like, show the world how to actually do it, we'll make a difference.

And it's like, no, you're just, like, the only way you can possibly have the luxury of, like, doing anything like that. is if you're already coming from like a place of deep capital privilege and and it's and it's just cowardly because you're you're running away like it's almost escapeism of the self minus the drugs you're just running away from the challenge of a global system of domination and death organizing the people that are worse off than you for God's sake now if you use those communes as like red bases and jumping off points to launch protracted peoples or what I mean whatever like if you start if you start a self-sufficient community and then use that as a long launching point to, you know, move on to the global proletarian struggle. That's one thing.

But this owner is like, naval gasey, petty bourgeois, let's completely isolate ourselves from the broader culture. It does nothing to help anybody. In the same way that they had a false self-sufficiency with their pathetic attempts to sow seeds in the land, they also had a false sense of community. They wanted, the idea of a commune is like, let's go back to communal living where all of us, we have a community that backs each other up. But the lady was complaining when they got there. Like, who are all these strangers? Like, people just keep bringing random fucking people and we hate it. Not your friends, but like Susan Brat, 12 people last week, and we don't know any of them,

blah, blah, blah. So even the basic core value of a calming, which is let's build community in this sea of individualism, that in and of itself is false. And you can't ever really replicate it, or at least they were unable to, as broadly hippies were unable to in the 60s, I think. Yeah, because it's inherently liberal, and, like, it's not about liberating society. it's about getting to do whatever the hell you want with your friends and other people that are like you.

Yeah, I don't know. I really hate hippies. Well, this critique of hippie culture mirrors almost exactly, you know, my critique of the vision of freedom and easy writer. This is critical. I mean, this is absolutely insane because the vision of freedom and easy writer is the freedom of, the way that a generation thought about freedom.

It's this freedom from, this freedom from, this freedom from, this freedom, this extreme cultural liberalism to just be free from a domineering institution. Negative freedom, almost libertarian. It's this negative freedom. There's no sense of positive freedom. And positive freedom is what Marxists are all about. And being a good Marxist, I did a little homework. And I wanted to find out what Marx had to say. about freedom. So Marx, Marx didn't actually

write about freedom at length. He was too busy writing about organizing people, right? He was too busy writing about making freedom real to write about freedom, which I think in and of itself is really funny because the, you know, people in easy writer are too busy thinking about wondering, searching

for freedom. They're too busy out there looking for it to make it real. And it's so silly that, you know, it's one of those things that's right under their nose is the whole time. But, you know, this liberal notion of freedom, this freedom from, freedom from is freedom to search but never find and where marks never wrote extensively about freedom hegel did hegel wrote a lot about freedom and philosophy of right and according to hagel freedom is sort of acting and identifying oneself with one's actions so that one's actions

satisfy their unique moment in history you know you you act and you fulfill your particularity in the moment in which you are asked to act you identify with your actions as well. So he started that freedom is this universal characteristic of humankind as well, if not it's definitive one. You know, we are beings that are capable of acting and identifying with their actions. And by actualizing one's freedom, Hegel believed that individuals serviced the pure potential of the human being, the ability to abstract and to add things in theory and devise a plan or plans to materialize the possibilities of their imaginations. And so on a superficial level, I mean, this is

compatible with the freedom at work in Easy Rider. Wyatt and Billy wonder from the American West through the American Southwest to the South on a mission to be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. And Billy enthusiastically decides, hey, this is going to fulfill me in my particularity. And Wyatt says, yeah, sure, why not? I think I'm going to be fulfilled too going along for the ride. And in fact, you know, Jack Nicholson's speech about freedom in the middle of the film, he talks about freedom being free and these other people not being free. And I hate that. I'll tell you why I hate the speech in a minute. But before I get to that point, I'd like to comment on the form of the film itself. It meanders and it wonders. And the film itself, the way that it comes together suggests

freedom. The film has a will of its own. It wants to fulfill itself and it wants to be free. So like the speech about, Jack Nicholson's speech about freedom in the middle of Easy Writer, the freedom that Easy Writer embodies is wildly incoherent and actually bound and free. This is my contention. My theory is that Easy Writer is not so much about being free as it is about celebrating bondage. So let me explain. Hegel's conception of freedom is more than wanton, desire, and satisfaction. Hegel believed that freedom must be just.

He believed that freedom must be just because injustice is a question. is equivalent to unjust abuses of freedom that directly inhibit the freedom of others. So freedom is a thing that sustains itself, Hegel says. And you let other people be more free than other people. These other people inhibit the freedom of others. And so everyone overall is less free. Why would you want that? So to be free, freedom must be just.

It must enable justice. Hegel posited that individuals must be involved specifically in a state. it could translate that to institutions or other functions that promote and secure the freedom of everyone to magnify the freedom overall. Structures like these and the participation of the masses in them make justice and just freedom possible. We're talking about mass organizations. If you want to translate that to the 21st century, we're talking about organizations of people that collaborate to resist oppression,

not just to be free, but to resist and to make freedom. to make freedom real. The freedom that Wyatt and Billy exhibit an easy writer is unjust freedom. It is the sense of freedom inherent in liberalism that does not recognize the injustice of capitalism and only nominally recognizes the injustice of institutions like patriarchy,

racism, homophobia, et cetera, et cetera, because it is just incapable of naming the sin. It's incapable of calling out capitalism. Billy and Wyatt make their choices because they are convinced of a truer, deeper dimension of themselves. And this is the tyranny of liberalism. This is the, this, this is the, it's not, what is it? It's the totalitarianism of the self, the cult of the self, if you will, in liberalism. The way that the culture pervades you and convinces you that you are not unfulfilled,

there is a deeper dimension of yourself to be found by consuming. And this is the, this they take to be their first condition of freedom, this stepping out and stepping away to fulfill this deeper, this deeper sense of self that they have been convinced of. Billy and Wyatt totally disregard the existing power structures in their society that ultimately limit the choices that they can even conceive of as possible. They disregard race. they disregard sex they disregard class

they abstract themselves out of society so that they don't go to work on institutions don't go to work on a state or other social facets Why the hell would they Like in the context of this movie like Yeah I mean

Like why the fuck would they Well in the context of the movie I think that ties back into what I was saying about How the you know In the movie obviously they act according to the logic of the movie And the logic of the movie is of cynicism Of this cynical view of freedom Well this is

what? This is the freedom that liberalism allows. This, it's the freedom of retreat. It's the freedom, it's the freedom of opening up a space to be nominally rebellious in. You, if you want to be free, if you are, why, why would you do this? You would do this if you want to be free. You would do this if your mission truly was freedom. It would be liberation. It'd be mass organizations. I don't know. I feel like we're trying to apply a logic to a film that's like completely you know incompatel

like there's no options for that well and that's why that's why that's my critique of easy writer that's my critique of the culture

because the culture that produced it didn't conceive of mass organizing as an option so that's my critique and the hippie communes were an extreme example

of taking that to a further you know degree I think the I think the hippie communes is interesting because we've been talking very critically

about them and I think the film is just as critical I think the film wants you I think the film wants you to find these negative aspects of the commune. I think in a lot of ways that identify those negative things with

communal life in general and with a sort of more social mode of life in general. And I think the film, you know, the hippie movement is very broad and it's sort of, and I think it's alive more today as an aesthetic app, like an aesthetic application

of liberalism essentially more than anything. But I think, you know, this film is much more in tune with the hippie element of, you know, freedom of the mind, you know, freedom of the self, you know, through your individual mind, you know, not necessarily, like, well, I agree you're saying, like a very negative view of freedom. And, you know, not, they're not aligned with, you know, the hippie sort of commune movement, which is obviously misguided, but certainly had elements of it

of like, you know, communal life being a good thing or some sort of social life, you know, again sort of a distortion of it being a good thing or a grasping in that direction but it never could you actually get it yeah and the film you know is very critical of it and you see these two heroes you know billy and wyatt you know they're totally out of place with this commune and they you know they're kind of they're kind of dismisses of it dismissive of it they don't fit in you know so it's a hippie movie but you know it's it's definitely it definitely wants you to be critical to hippie commune it definitely it definitely wants you to dismiss it I think it's in the wrong ways.

Yeah, and I think it's in service to what Taylor was saying about its very individualist vision of freedom. Yeah, I completely, yeah, I completely agree the whole film, like, portrays this individualist conception of freedom. Like, I mean, I think the only time, you know, Captain America, where the hell his name is, like, actually articulates in some big sense, sort of like what he wants is when he's at the initial, like,

rural place with the farmer, you know, when he's like reflecting on you know this is actually really cool you make your own like in every way possible you know you're feeding yourself blah blah blah blah blah blah that's like his horizon of freedom is this like inherently like petty bourgeois like individualist like since like you're doing it all your fucking self yeah yeah living out the land yeah yeah and that's like his like you know which has merits but like I mean if that's your like stopping block on like what freedom is and it's like, you know, you're, it's like

clearly bound by the confines of like, quote unquote American freedom. This is my, this is why I do not believe in the easy rider. This is why I cannot abide by this movie is because it is an ideological

trap. It is a siphon. It is a siphon for heterosexual white men to funnel their sense of discontent with their ideological apparatuses. into a contained, recessed, branded version of rebellion, a sort of safe space. It didn't change their general condition, their economic condition. It absolutely did not apply to, well, didn't apply to black and brown communities

that were beaten up in jailed for the same drug use. And it absolutely didn't apply to the liberation of anyone, really. You know, and it didn't even, the notion of class didn't even enter into this movie. of history, this notion of historical necessity, and an historical task to achieve, namely, just freedom, never wondered into the movie, even accidentally. It didn't even accidentally trip in. This movie got edited and assembled. I don't even know what was left behind on the cutting room floor, but I can only imagine, it might not even have been included, this idea of true freedom. At the end of the day, you have the trap.

this ideological trap. And do you think the film initially saw itself as trying to critique American culture but it couldn't see its own blind spots and so it replicated the underlying trap that would disenable them from ever actually analyzing it

in a real meaningful way? Well, definitely thought it was. I mean, that's why they like ostensibly get killed because, oh, whoa, we're so different than everybody else. Now these dumb fucking hicks just like blast us in the head. So it's like, you know, they're supposed to be the victims

when it's like, I mean, they are the victims, but it's in no way, like... Because I thought it was like an indictment of just American inherent reactionaryism. Well, I mean, it is, but it's like they're reacting against something that's like entirely benevolent, right? Like, again, like hyper individualized concepts of freedom and progressiveness. So that's, that's the catch is that, you know, there is a rebellion in Easy Rider. It's the rebellion of liberalism against reactionaries, you know. It's this, I'm going to recess into my individuality.

I am going to believe in it as a cult member believes in their cult leader. And I am going to, I don't even know what I'm going to do to the reactionaries with the guns. They don't have guns. They didn't do shit. You're going to stay out of the South is the message. That's the thing about this movie and the thing about it's cynicism and the bleakness of it is that it's not saying, it's not giving you like an ideological or an ideal solution. it's not saying it's not taking those sort of individual freedom and it's not saying oh you have like individual freedom is great so get on a motorcycle and go out it's saying

if you do that you're going to get a shot in the head you know by a hillbilly like and it's not saying you know you can go and do a commune because then you'll die in the winter you know it's not it's it's it's a very cynical view uh that doesn't allow for any like positive movement the only movement it allows is is for you to know in your head like you know that you're right and you know that you know those squares out there you know you know they're they're wrong and they won't they just can't tolerate my individuality you know which is incredibly at which at the end of the day i need to tell i need i just you know this all of the all of the rampant examples of just to be a sheer liberal individualism this

toxic tyrannical individualism um inherent in liberalism is a fucking boring too i hate movies about drugs I hate drugs are not exciting to watch it's not exciting to watch you know they're barely exciting to do so I hear motorcycles aren't that cool either you know apparently

as if I I fucking hate motorcycles by the way dude you guys don't like I can get a hog no no no no no motorcycles like cool but they are like you do have to be like insane to drive a motorcycle no I feel like

I wouldn't fucking touch when I ride one and drive one ever. I have to have a death wish, you know. Yeah, like literally, literally. That's why that's my critique of motorics like I fucking hate it. But the only thing about it is this sort of beautiful romantic vision of riding out in the open. You know, like it's the only thing that's sort of appealing unless you start looking at it and critically examining it. But yeah, it's like those shots of them driving in these beautiful, you know, scenery with no other traffic on the road.

There is something appealing about that on some shallow level. and this film I think it also lends itself really well to be watched on a big screen for that reason like I saw it at film streams once and I really enjoyed it more than I watched it at my little home shitty TV the expansiveness of it really wasn't caught today we had 90 degree day

that is in the process of dropping to a 45 degree and the wind came out of nowhere and this fierce wind came out of nowhere blowing everything down blew a tree branch down really close to my car I was driving down our main street to Sess House and the wind is just fucking blowing everywhere debris is fucking, you know, going in and out of the road

and there's this fucking guy on a motorcycle who's just, just roaring, roaring down the street with like no protective ear on just a fucking t-shirt and he's just like acting a damn fool in that street just going as fast as hell and then like and I sort of follow him down for while and like he starts doing like tricks yeah in the middle of like this windy fucking day with debris going ever he starts like doing tricks to like show off to the people in the

traffic or something and he's like he's like swinging his leg around and like sitting sideways on the bike no hands all this fucking shit I was like today I'm gonna see him and die for the rest of time and I didn't see him die but he's going to die soon that guy that guy's gonna die soon and like good for him like that's what he wants like deep down Do you have a death wish? No, I don't. Because you seem to be behaving in a reckless fashion to me. And one of the things I know about people that are reckless is they're not just daredevils.

There's a segment of that group that just doesn't really care. Yeah, it's just this freedom of, this idea of freedom, you know, went on. this is why this is this is why people shrug their shoulders at richard nixon and say oh but what can we do we are all all of us unto each other individuals and you know uh and then of course ron you know the saints the holy saint of individualism you know not he he baptized the cynicism that was born in the late 60s and early 70s this this individualist freedom that gave us nixon that gave us Reagan, gave us really shitty Democrats, although they'd always been kind of shitty and here we are today, eh? How about that? Aren't you happy? All right, well, let's go ahead

and kind of approach the ending here. Two things I want to touch on and see if we can kind of pack them in together is boomers and sort of what this movie represents about that generation because 1969, these are people born in the late 40s after World War II. This is the boomer generation my grandfather would have been exactly 25 in in 1969 about the age of the of the main characters here so what do we have to say about boomers and then how can we kind of tie that in with some sort of last thoughts about the film generally boomers suck all right yeah yeah boomers suck except for my grandparents I mean they're also reactionary of shit every boomer sucks yeah I mean every boomer sucks no but I think

broadly, and you can jump off this too, I think I was saying this before we started recording that the boomers in this sort of depravity and directionlessness that the post-60s left the society with, boomers took two weird directions. Most of them

were just kind of enfolded into the economic capitalist system. They took the flowers out of their hair and got a fucking job. I mean, they lived through a very privileged economic period and they've carried that entitlement into their late age and they're still affecting our political system

and the service industry workers with that sense of just unrepentant entitlement. Yeah, I think the teenagers going to this movie and like going out being like, oh, it's so cool. I'm such a, you know, and like thinking about their parents and being like, oh, they don't understand like individuals. Like they just hate the individual. They hate like the free individual.

They have the same mentality going into the Goldman Sachs board meeting where they're like a low level, They're like, you know, they're like, oh, I've been doing my job all day, you know, you know, squeezing poor people for every last drop of money. But at heart, you know, I'm an individual, and I wear a specific pin on my tie. And like, these guys, they don't respect me for it. Well, you know who those people were?

They're the people that come home and told us when we were babies, I didn't sell out. I bought in, you know? This is, right? That fucking phrase makes it want to vomit. They're the parents, they're the parents from SLC punk, you know. another movie that'd be a fun movie yeah I'd be a fun movie

yeah actually really fun if they didn't you know I tell you what and you know you might want to bring this up if you might not if they didn't join a cult they went home and said I didn't sell out I bought it

because I am an individual in charge of my choices and this deeper recess of my personality that someone else convinced me of told me that I wouldn't survive if I didn't just hang up my hat

get a haircut get a job and shake poor people down for money. Right, yeah. And you said cults, you know, like this rise of the cults in the 70s and American culture was extremely interesting. And then the rise in the 80s of this hyper-religious fervor was interesting. And I think both of those things, to some degree, can sort of be understood through the prism of the failures of the counterculture of the 60s and this desperate search after this hippie idea of like, we can create a whole new world one coming

at a time. And that was an utter failure. And it would just Vietnam War and just bloody assassinations of top people that were fighting for progress. That pushed people either just buy into the system or you know these cults were like the last thing left like i can still there's still an attempt to offer a sense of community or release from this system and that was an utter failure and then the 80s had this resurgence of just hyper religiosity and Reaganism and then we're kind of still living in the wake of of all of that and American culture still hasn't found a way i think there's a burgeoning left in this country who sort of re you know, re-attempting to put forward a vision of collective liberation,

taking into account the failures of hippieism and that sort of shallow individualist approach. I mean, certainly the millennial generation has more collectivist and socialist impulses broadly than the generation that preceded us, et cetera, unless you disagree with that. I don't, I mean, I don't think we've escaped that. We haven't escaped it, but I think there's like new visions being offered, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we're growing, but I mean, It seems like most people haven't even learned, like, you know, Occupy, which was, like, the one, like, time for the left in America still fell into all those exact same fucking traps. And, like, the majority of the, like, quote, unquote left, which still holds on to that bullshit.

But do you think Occupy, Occupy represented any advance on the communal hippie bullshit? I mean, it started, it got us talking about, like, class. Right. But it was still all the same thing. thing like you literally have people you literally have white people sitting around and fucking tepees whining about like consensus and all types of other like liberal horse shit like the same thing carries carries over to like right now i may be in the minority but i you had literally zero impact on my you know develop my political development you know into being

you know having class-centered politics and being a marketist like it really had no influence whatsoever how old are you out of curiosity uh 24. So I think it's easy, like, for people who are involved or connected to it, I think, yeah, it will have an impact, but I think for people who, I think it's easy to overstate, like, so society-wide, how much of an impact it had. All right. Any last thoughts? Anything that we didn't cover yet that anybody wants to cover? Um, I just want to speak, I began, I feel like we haven't talked about this character, but, you know, I really like Jack Nichols and character. I think he's kind of, he might be, like, kind of the key even to understanding a lot of this stuff,

because he's the one who has a speech about freedom and like sort of phrasing in terms of individual like, you know, the freedom of the mind essentially and how that's not tolerated by the other people. He was also an ACLU lawyer in the South. Yeah, he had one foot in the old boys club, but one foot in this progressive posture. But he was a, yeah, his strange and contradictory,

somewhat contradictory character in that regard, being the sort of, he's like an ACLU lawyer, but he's also just like a drunk who's like in jail all the time. But he understood, he mentioned racism he's like unless you're black in the sally he meant he had a little gesture towards that um so he was a he was a contradictory character for sure yeah so you get this the sense of this character who is actually rooted in something sure who has like like these the main characters who are driving in their motorcycles and stuff you don't get a sense of their

history or their background or their family or anything but jack middleson's character is on there for like a very short time but you get a sense of everything like he's a fully rooted character in his community he talks about his mother he talks about his father he talks about you know there's i think was that m stanford michigan did he go to michigan it looked like a michigan jersey but it's kind of weird because they're in the south so i don't really know he talked about his football he had a calling i guess an acl u lawyer you know he liked to drink you know all these like great at nine fucking a m and like yeah yeah and so he's like this is like one of the few characters who's actually rooted to a specific community and doing work within that community and of course the

he steps out of that side of that he's like fucking you know bludgeon to death and he even mentioned he's never been able to get out of the state line he's like i've tried six or seven times to to leave but i never quite make it outside the parish line or something yeah and he's the only person ever tries to explicitly like state the like quote unquote point of the movie yeah like he's the only one that really like explicitly vocalizes any of the like underlying social political commentary yeah and he puts it like very like blonely he says a line you're not sold on the marketplace yeah yeah yeah I rolled my eyes so hard at that though you read the transcript of the speech it's incredibly incoherent it's about

it is about freedom is bullshit but I kind of I don't know I kind of like that yeah you're telling me the guy who believes in UFOs like is incoherent oh shots fired no I've never said that I was talking about Jagnew oh that's that's utter bullshit views of UFOs like this This is not the time or place. You don't believe in, you don't believe in them, do you? No, actually, I have something. Oh, actually. Oh, wow.

It's great to hear, it's great to hear the word actually in response to the question of whether someone believes. Listen, have you ever heard of a man named Jay Pissadas? Anyway, I digress. I digress. I digress. You want to, you know what? You want to believe in UFOs? The last thing you need to do is read a book about them.

I tell you what, you will never, one day for the rest of, for the rest of your life, believe UFOs if you read a book written by someone who does. For the record, Billy's read several. For the record, Billy's explanation of seeing a UFO the way it zigzagged and turned away, I swear to God, I had that same exact experience as a nine-year-old kid. I was playing basketball. I saw it. They got them.

They got them. They got them. Shit, fuck. Well, I think UFOs, I think UFOs are interesting because they're, and I think you were alluring this earlier. But I think there are ways like... You kind of look like an alien right now. Go on.

Oh, thank you. They sort of, they're reaching out. they're grasping at some way of explaining our cruel world. Basically, a way of explaining the fact that, like, of the military, like, specifically so many military operations going on this time, a lot of the UFO sightings were, you know, test machines, and then a lot of them were manufactured by the Army to cover up their weapons development activity. And so the whole UFO thing is, like, a really fascinating, you know,

a thing of people like projecting and like grasping at this like you know solution this one you know discourse that way that kind of made everything make sense and that it's the same with all conspiracy theories like every conspiracy theory out there is rooted in truth is rooted in the material reality and it tells and it tells a truth that's too uh terrible to you know admit to oneself or it reaches and that's that's what i wanted to make that was the point i wanted to make about the externalization of desire in the UFO phenomenon, the subjectification of what one wants and what one's afraid to admit to it, it needs to be revealed to them. Something needs to come down and plant a flag for them to admit it.

I was going to say something like in the wake of the death of God, there's still this idea that something from another world needs to come down and save us. And Jack Nicholson's talk about what the aliens were doing is almost like socialistic. He's talking like they're almost Star Trekian. There's no money. There's no class hierarchy, whatever. He didn't say those exact terms. but the idea is like something from another world can come and save us.

And even Reagan in the 80s in the heart of the Cold War to use that exact trope of aliens coming down as a unifying, a possibly unifying factor that could end all the internationalist beefs among nation states and unify humanity as a whole. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bound. I occasionally think how quickly our differences, worldwide would vanish

if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. Right, but you'll notice something interesting. Reagan flipped it. The aliens didn't come down to unite humankind that came down to threat. Attack and kill, yeah. So there's a whole, there's a whole history.

The war mentality is still there. One of the, one thing that I am incredibly proud of that not many people know about is that I am incredibly well-versed in UFO lore and I love to talk about it. We're doing a, we have to do a spin-off podcast of Jess Taylor ranting for hours on end about UFOs.

Like 9-11, for example, and 9-11 was an inside job conspiracy theory. Like, that is, that is in effect true because the people who hold that theory, the people who are compelled to that theory, recognize at some level the reality that 9-11 was a media spectacle that served to expand the United States empire

and justify further interference in the Middle East. They understand that truth at some level, but they cannot admit it. That's a truth too terrible for them to admit to themselves. And so they talk about how it was an inside job and how, you know, in a very vulgar way, like the people in charge, like, created it to happen or whatever. Like, they can't, you know,

they recognize the artificiality of it. They recognize that it was taken, advantage of you know but they can't it's you know that is too awful and you know it would you know bring up too many questions for them to be able to articulate it that way and the same with all like basically all conspiracy theories oh we could have such a great episode about conspiracy theories hey that'd be fun because they're always getting it like a grain of truth and then they're just like bullshit yeah absolutely all right so before we end though i do want to give a chance uh for taylor and Phil to talk about their new spinoff podcast, Hammer and Camera, as we mentioned in one of our

previous episodes on the big announcement episode. This, we were doing two spinoffs as of yet, possibly more to come, BlackBanner Magic, and then Hammer and Camera. So Phil or Taylor, do either of you have anything to say about this new project, any more details you can say, when is it going to launch? What's your social media, blah, blah, blah. We're new dads. Yay!

This is our baby. Come say hi. Come greet our baby. Come kiss it on the head and tell it that it's handsome. go on because we have a handsome baby and it is buff and it's about movies this is not what i envision when i ask you to please explain your podcast our baby has hair already this is what you want this is what you wanted i'm sure a visual explanation of a sonic medium uh well uh we want to release the first episode in mid-october uh phil's got all the deeds on social media i don't know how

it works. This is actually the first Twitter account I have ever had, and I'm excited to get to know how it works. But I can tell you that we're going to review two, three, maybe four movies per episode, what's in theaters. If you want to... For episode per month? Well, so there's... Oh, I see. I'm glad you asked. We're going to do, we're going to start for the sake of our sanity by doing one episode open to the public per month. We're going to kind of review what's in cinemas at the middle to end of the month, and then if you want to be a patron and help us feed our little handsome hairy baby, we will, we have a Patreon, and what we want is to let our patrons have access to some analysis of historical films, i.e. movie night. So we're going to

screen some stuff that came out 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, who knows, that's going to be more devoted like these episodes to strictly this one movie and its role in the history of cinema. And we want to make that available for our patrons. Will there be visual elements to any of this? I'm glad you asked, Brett, because we want to do... I'm a good interviewer, you know. Thank you for that question. That is our handsome baby's twin brother, the equally just as handsome video essay series that we have coming out. We still want to work on that before we release that. But just follow us on our social media pages. I know that we have a Twitter. I don't know what else we have. Subscribe to our Patreon. Why don't you? It's awesome. You're going to

get some great episodes that way that you wouldn't get otherwise. And you'll be the first to know about when we eventually start dropping our video essays on the history and topics in cinema. Take it away, Phil. So yeah, the flagship, the monthly flagship, up to the public, everything will be focused on, like Taylor said, movies in cinema. So, you know, and we'll always be open to suggestion for that. But basically, we'll be trying to do like a mix of genres, of markets. We have a couple of great indie cinemas in town that we'll be trying to see movies at. And then also, obviously, the multiplexes, the bigger budget blockbuster movies.

So we'll try to have a mix in there. And then, like Taylor said, we'll have a, you know, hammering camera, home video, movie night type episode that would be open to Patreon patrons only and one thing I'd like to do with that is really open it up to our patrons to provide questions or comments about the movies so it would be like a movie now where we're all watching the movie together you know patrons would get a advance notice of what movie we would plan to cover and they could send in email in comment any questions or comments and then we discussed them on air Sort of live, like a live interaction between you and the supporters?

It could be live, but basically there would be some interaction. Like, we would all watch the movie to dance. They could maybe send in their questions or comments, and then we would read them when we record. Or we could watch it live. You know, there's a few different ways we could execute that. But, you know, that second show would be kind of meant to be like a sort of community thing, like a movie night with everybody in one group.

And if you do come to town, I will go shopping for footy pajamas with you. That's awesome. I'd love to see you both in footy pajamas. Pick out some jim jams and snacks and watch a movie. Hell yeah. You ding, dang fools. All right. So if you like the film Vanguard, if you like Phil and Taylor's analysis, they're philosophical

and xenophilic approach to this stuff, check out their new podcast coming in mid-October, which is a week, two weeks, three weeks from now. On social media, on Twitter, it's at Hammer Camera. and on Patreon is patreon.com forward slash hammer camera. Go check out both those things. Get on the ground floor right now before we launch. I'm really excited about this. And like all things, you have an initial idea,

but things evolve over time. Like the first episode we ever did of Rev Left was very different than where Rev Left is now. So if you're in on the ground floor, you can kind of help push and develop these new projects. And that's kind of the idea and the goal is to sort of build up a community of people that are interested in coming to left politics from a bunch of different directions.

So, with that said, thank you, Phil, thank you Taylor, thank you Seth, another wonderful episode of the film Vanguard. So long, partners. I pulled into Nazareth, what's feeling about half-fasted? I just need some place where I can lay my head. and mister can you tell where a man might find a bed he just grinned and shook my hand

know what's all he said take a load off Fannie take a load for free take a load off plenty and you put the load right on I picked up my bag. I went looking for a place to hide. Then I saw Carmen and the devil walk inside by side.

I said, hey, Carmen, come on, let's go down town. She said, I gotta go, but my friend can stick around. Take a load off, Fannie. Take a load for free. Take a load off plenty. And you put the load right on me. Miss Moses There's nothing you can say

It's just old Luke And Luke's waiting on to judge My day Well Luke, my friend What about young Annalie? He said to me a favorite son Won't you stay and keep Annalie company

Take a load off, Annie Take a load for free Take a load off plenty And you put the load right on me Crazy Chester followed me And he cut me in the fall He said I will fix your rap If you take Jack my dog

I said wait a minute Chester You know I'm a peaceful man I said that's okay boy Won't you feed you when you can Yeah Take a load off Fannie Take a load for free Take a load off Fannie

And you put the load right on me. Catch a cannonball now to take me down the line. My flag is sinking low and I do believe it's time. To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one Who sent me here with her regards to one at the one Take a load off Fanny Take a load of Fannie, take a load of plenty, take a load off Fannie And you put the load right on me

Thank you.