Shaun Newman Podcast - #502 - Tom Luongo

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Amateur dairy goat farmer, libertarian, former research chemist and publisher of the Gold, Goats n' Guns podcast and newsletter. On today's episode we are talking all things Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dark Knight Trilogy and what sets good stories a part from the rest.  Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Patreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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He also is the owner and publisher of the Gold, Goats, and Guns newsletter. But today, we're talking all things Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, the Batman trilogy. It's movies, movies, movies, and he's pretty smart when it comes to that, too. I'm talking about Tom Luongo. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Tom Luongo.

So Tom, man, thanks for coming on to do this. I don't know. Maybe you should be thanking me for wanting to do this. I don't know. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, the last time I was on with you and Alex, Craneer, right? You said on the way out the door, you were like, dude, Star Wars podcast. I'm like, like, you know, Al, twist my arm to talk about fucking Star Wars, right?

I mean, seriously. I it's you know like I have to my wife has to stop me after a while and even though she's a big even though she's a big fan and we and we geek out about this stuff in our own way all the time like um yeah I I I this is just I'm an em better at Star Wars fan I really do feel that there's a there's something deep and abiding within it it's not particular it's not you know it's not a replacement religion for a for real religions and that's part of the problem but people certainly take it treat it that way and that's part of the reason and And because of that, it's, you know, Star Wars is more important than, you know, a lot of Naysayers want to say that it is.

Because it's modern myth that is very, very interesting. Well, I tell you what, so since we had that last podcast, I've been, I've been slowly waiting to tee this up so we can do it again. And so now I've had about 10 conversations on Star Wars before I've come through this building in the last, like, week. And I was sitting on the deck, okay? I was sitting on the deck. There was two questions I asked, well, you know. half the group. You know, my brother Dustin was there and my brother Harley was there and a couple others. And I was saying, okay, one, what's the greatest trilogy out there? Because Tom's going to say

it's Star Wars, right? Like if you take the old three movies, that's what we assumed. That's what we assumed he's saying maybe. Okay, fair enough. But we assumed you would say Star Wars. And we're like, okay, well, you know, the other one that got thrown out was Lord of the Rings. And everyone who knows of a Batman fan, I would say the Christopher Nolan three. And certainly after that, it was just like, there was just like, oh, nothing. That really isn't, right? No, there really isn't. And then within Star Wars, then you have to ask yourself which ones are the three, which of the three trilogies are the best ones? And clearly the original trilogy is, um, the most is, is the most important. I'm not, I am one of these guys as a Star Wars fan. I do not, I'm not a Kevin Smith acolyte who believes that the Empire

Strikes Back is better than Star Wars. I think the Empire Strikes Back may be a better film, right, as a piece of film, right? As of editing, acting, blocking, lighting, all of the things that go into making a movie. And then there's, but, but, you know, Star Wars, and I refuse to call it a new hope. Sorry, George. Sorry, George. Is more important. It just is.

And, I mean, when I saw Star Wars for the first time, it didn't have a, episode four, New Hope in front of it. Interesting. It was just Star Wars at that point. Okay. It was just, no. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, do you get, do you get, do you get pissed off then because I just watched, uh, the, um, the return of the Jedi, right?

Right. Jedi. I got to sit here and think about that for a second. And at the end now, because you can tell they've gone through these movies and they've cleaned up a few things and everything else. And at the end, I remember, I was saying, yeah, the first time I ever watched these was in high school. So folks is about 2003.

2004, somewhere in there. And we went to like, D&E video on Lloyd for folks around here. And we went and rent it. We had to go to the, not the, not the blockbuster, because they didn't carry the VHS. We couldn't find it. And so we went to this old movie store that had this, this long list of, they still carried VHS tapes, to be honest. Because at that time, everything was going DVD or Blu-ray. And they were sitting there and we rented all three. And so one of the things that, in watching them, for the first time, I was saying, I was saying all in a unison was at the end when they're sitting there at the I don't know the fire and they're celebrating and he looks over and he sees obi one canobi he sees Yoda and he sees his dad

they changed out his dad for uh aniken from the first trilogy or the one two three I have the I have the laser discs not the Blu-ray is not the not the I have the laser disc of the the original um cut the original theatrical releases I haven't watched years that have been a laser display. They're up on top of my bookshelf, and I keep meaning to, you know, get them encoded or, you know, hand them off to somebody who would or whatever.

But you can, I just checked on eBay the other day. They're not worth much. And people have, you know, grab them. And I'm sure that there are plenty of, you know, caps of these that are out there. I'm not, look,

I don't think George should have done what he did, right? I don't think that, I mean, the changes he made to Empire and Jedi are so minimal other than the sliced news. Frikes, Frigin, um, uh,

job of the hut band sequence in Return of the Jedi, which made a already corny and campy first act in the return of the Jedi just ridiculous. And the changes he made the Star Wars, he did in order to prep everybody for the Phantom Menace. I mean, George will say he did it for artistic reasons,

but at the end of the day, George Lucas is extremely good at making money and extremely good at running a business. and, you know, the business side of George Lucas and the artistic side of George Lucas are very, that's a conversation in and of itself, right? And so I get that. And so I don't, like, I'm not a purist in that respect. Like, the original films are what they are. I own a copy of, you know, the original cut because they eventually, George eventually relented and put it out on DVD. Of course, he put it out in four by three.

He didn't even put it out in a full 16 by 9 letter box edition. you know, it's in like 480P and 4 by 3 on the Blu-ray, on the DVD. It's ridiculous. But it's there. I haven't watched it in the years. When I want to watch a New Hope or when I want to watch Star Wars, I fire up Disney Plus and I watch that version. Like, and I sit there and I, you know, do the thing, right?

When I watch it with, and I watched it with a friend of mine recently who hadn't watched them in a long time, hadn't seen Empire and Jedi like you in, I don't know, 20 years or whatever. And we went through and we watched all the original films. And then we watched the prequel. together. And then he went off and watched like all of the Clone Wars and then rebels and then all of the Disney Plus series. And then he came back and he's and when he gets back, we'll sit down from, he's on a, he's on walkabout. When he gets back, we'll sit down and we'll watch 7, 8, 9. We'll catch up, we'll watch the, the, the, Asoko and then we'll watch 7, 8, 9 because he's watched everything else to this

point. And it'll be interesting to see what his reaction to those are. So, but I hadn't watched Star Wars probably in 10 years. Now, I've watched Star Wars 250 or 260 times. I have the dialogue memorized. I'm not allowed to watch it with other people because I sit there and I just say all the dialogue. I can literally sit there and like, cut, cut, cut, cut.

I can literally do the edits as we go on, you know, with the film. It was my coping mechanism for getting through a really bad high school now that I think back on it. Like, my teenage years suck. And Star Wars was my coping mechanism. home in the afternoon and I would just watch Star Wars you know and uh and it's what got me through and um and I watched Blade Runner 30 times and I watched Brazil 20 times I watched all those great 80s dystopian science fiction films of that era I know them all backwards and forwards

escape New York all of them right aliens all all that right that's what I did and and my we had two we had two BCRs so Whenever we rented something, we would tape it. So I had an unbelievable film collection. I had my dad's film collection, because we watched all the films my dad loved, and we taped all those. So I got to see all those. So I got to see all the Gary Cooper movies and the guns of Nehron and, you know, Sergeant

York. I saw Starlink 17. I saw all that stuff, right? And when you ask me what my number two film, favorite film of all time is, Star Wars and Empire kind of a thing. And then underneath that, it's Patton. But to go back to the original question about what's the greatest trilogy, it is hard to argue with the Lord of the Rings as a story.

Okay. Star Wars has probably, I mean, Darth Vader is probably the greatest villain in film history. Possibly, you know, right up there with, you know,

Milton's Satan as one of the great villains of all time. Why do you think, why do you think, I'm going to play all over the place now, Why do you think Darth Vader? I've watched Darth, you know, why do you think Darth Vader? I feel like I was saying to Doth before I came in. Like, I feel like Tom just looks at movies different than maybe I do.

But maybe I'm wrong on this. Why do you think Darth Vader is maybe the greatest villain of all time? Because he is a villain that is perfectly redeemed. And I'm not even talking about adding in the layers of the prequel films. I'm just talking about the original trilogy. You go from the implacable kind of almost insectoid, inhuman force of nature, right? the true kind of, you know, shadow projection style villain, which, you know, the monster you can't see. To then realizing that he's a, that he serves somebody else in empire.

And he has his own plans. And he has a desire to corrupt that which is good in order to justify his own. failing to then the person who is redeemed through the love of his son. And he's just, he becomes this completely different person every time we interact with him. And it's really well written. And it's why it's so important that that story, because it tells, it tells you uniquely Christian story. that everybody is capable of being redeemed,

that everybody still has the spark of the divine inside of them, if they're honest about it. At a time, and it's also uniquely an American story, maybe Canadian too, but a uniquely North American story. Because it was designed for America in the 1970s. Lucas understood that

we were being beset by, well, the empire to be to divorce an entire generation from their traditions. Right. Mine was the first generation in the United States. I grew up questioning, really questioning the religious faith, the connection to their community, the connection to their family and everything else. We were the first generation to become deracinated. We were the last key kids. Right. Now, I was lucky.

I didn't have Boomer parents. I'm the youngest of four of the youngest of 11. My dad was born in 28. Pat would have been 95 this year. By the way, my dad loved Star Wars. He loved Empire. He liked the third act of Return of the Jedi because he understood that the third act was the only time.

So whenever I would sit down to watch them, he would go outside, smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee. And then, you know, when the third act showed, Then he, like, wander back in and then sit down for the third act, right? Because really, that's the third act is the only act of Return of Jedi that is really of consequence. And it's one third a great movie. And which is why I can't honestly say that the original trilogy is the greatest film trilogy of all time. Because Return of the Jedi is such a flawed film.

Whereas, one could argue that the Lord of the Rings gets better with each movie. I don't think that. I don't think that. I think return to the king is nearly as good, though, as as fellowship of the ring is. But I think the two towers- Fellowship of the ring is by far the best of the three. Fellowship of the ring sets everything in motion. And it's just so superbly done from top to bottom.

And it's, I think the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings are all better than their theatrical cuts. But I think the two towers is the weakest extended cut. I think it's too long. I think there's a three-hour and 20-minute cut. of the two towers that would be brilliant. I think the four-hour cut of Return of the King is actually the needed cut.

And Fellowship of the Ring, extended edition is in the top five. For me, it's top five film. It's number five on the list. And the other ones don't even make the top 20, but it's because of how good they set up Boromir and Aragorn. They had to set that relationship up perfectly. in order for them to take Aragorn and make him an unready, you know, make him a not ready for prime time, not ready to become king. They had to give him a Boremir.

They had to give more weight or more meat on the bones of Bormir story as being the trapped, you know, would be king that, you know, with daddy issues, right? We had to have that dichotomy in order to make Aragorn transformation work, right? It's funny. It's funny to me, Tom. I'm like, you know, if you didn't like a Lord of the Rings, you're going, oh, how long a movie? And yet if you loved Lord of the Rings, you probably own the extended version copy where you, when the first time you did it, you had to have the seven DVDs because it literally wouldn't fit on one.

So they had it all over on different ones. And you were like, this is, this is amazing. Because the extended version, I didn't, you know, when I first went to wash it, think about this for anyone listening. Because I don't know, like, I don't even think they do this anymore. they do. They used to release. The new movie could come out at midnight on Thursday. So we went and watched Lord of the Rings one, two, three at midnight until three in the morning on a school night. And I remember being like absolutely giddy for that movie to come out. Going there, didn't dress up. Wasn't that wasn't that hardcore. But in Lloyd, you couldn't pre-purchase tickets. So you had to show up, sit in line. Oh, wow. Go in. And, you Get your seat, then sit there for probably half an hour. I took buddies.

I'm sure they were like, you're insane, but I was so excited about it. I'm sure they got a little excitement off of how excited that I was. And there'd be like 10 of us go, and the next morning for school, you look like a, you know, I mean, and then if a teacher asked, you know, what were you guys doing? Well, we went and watched a movie last night. I mean, like, there's worse things in the world. But then to see that they'd done an extended edition, because, I mean, at that time, I guess now every movie you just assume, and maybe back then you should, I should have,

assume too but now it's like of course they have an extended version like everything has an extended version they show everything but that was something back then i didn't you know after the movie when it was a big deal it was a big deal and the thing was the cuts they made in in the fellowship of the ring actually made that movie better and it was already great yeah now what they added back i think the i i it's it's amazing it really is an amazing feat and it's not even the Lord of the Rings that I would the reason I would I would hem and hawn about this is that it's not the Lord of the Rings, the version

of the Lord of the Rings that I would tell. Peter Jackson wanted to make a war movie. I wouldn't make a, I'm an anarcho-libertarian. I'd want to tell the Christian anarchist version of Lord of the Rings. I wouldn't have changed the story of Ceremony. I would have had the scouring. I would have had

the climax of the story be the scouring of the Shire like it is in the books. Yeah. Where they go home to save the Shire and it's all, And it's already been, and it's been corrupted. And then the Battle of Bywater is actually the big battle. And the Battle of Bywater, like, you know, 10 people, 10 people die. A few were injured.

You know, the way he tells it in, in, in, in, in the book is just, it's just so lovely. And that it's, but it's, but it may be the most important battle in the entire story. Because without, without preserving the Shire, there's nothing worth. the whole story doesn't matter. All the kings and all this, none of that shit matters if the shire isn't preserved. Because that's what ultimately, because the shire being the shire is what allowed for Frodo, Mary and Pippin and Sam to remain uncorrupted and long enough to be able to deal with Sala. Without that firm basis, without that unbelievably firm foundation, of what effectively is a purely voluntary society

and the unbelievable strength of the hobbits, there ain't no opportunity for, you know, Ghalm to save Frodo by chomping off the, chopping off his finger and, you know. It's funny if you didn't read the books, you may not realize that at the end, you know, because they drop the ring in, and then there's, I can't remember how many chapters it is,

but there's still a solid 100 pages. at least where you're like, what the heck is going? It might be one of the very few books I've ever read, where they finally do the deed. They've just spent, I don't know, how many thousands of pages getting to the point where they're in the volcano, and boom, it goes in. You're like, wow, done, okay.

Wrap it up with a nice bow and everybody lived happily ever after. Instead, that is not the case. And actually, when that was probably the hardest thing to watch in the movies is they didn't go do that because you're like expecting it. Although you're right, when you talk about the overarching of it wouldn't fit what was being portrayed. What Jackson had, and Jackson was very clear on this. He said, I wanted to make a warm movie. And so he did.

He made a version of the Lord of the Rings that accentuated the, you know, the World War I influences on Tolkien. And that was the version he wanted to tell. It's fine. Politically, that's who he is. Like if you listen to him talking, you listen to them, you'll listen to them, you'll realize that, you know, they're that's who they are and that was the story that they were capable of telling i'm not i'm not i'm not judging them on this okay don't don't you know i just you know who they are you know what they're going to focus on you know they're going to be what aspect of the story they're going to be

jazz to tell and by god they should tell that story because if they had told the story that i wanted them tell they had done it badly why they didn't believe in that story that part of the story whereas if you know again i'm not If I were to make the Lord of the Rings, I would do it differently. That's not to say that what they did was wrong, right? It's a story deep enough and rich enough that you can tell it from a multitude of angles. And it would be interesting. So, and then, you know, Nolan's Dark Night trilogy, just to, again, go back to the original question,

is flawed because Heath Ledger died. Because the Joker was supposed to be around in the original draft of the Dark Night Rises and he had to be subbed out for Bain. Now, whether that was in the end, one of those moments of, well, you make lemon, sometimes you make lemonade out of lemons. Because Tom Hardy's Bain,

every time I rewatched the Dark Night Rises, that film grows in my estimation. And, you know, it has its flaws. But the thing is is, the story that Nolan is telling

is or told is telling as you watch them if you've watched them for the first time and have already told is a story about us today. It's exactly what we're going through. And for that reason,

it's really vital. And I think that the Joker being lost for the third act is a mistake. I mean, it's nothing. he can do with it. Keith Ledger died. The Joker killed him. That's my theory, that he got so lost in the character that eventually he just killed him. But, you know, you needed that, you needed that

some men just want to watch the world burn. You needed him to carry into the third act, okay, thematically. And that was not Bain. Bain had a very specific different set of of priorities which you know tells a different then winds up telling you a different story so and then in the interim obviously we had the great financial crisis and occupy wall street and all that stuff that you know wound up taking the story in a different direction you know it's always like um uh watch movies with my wife and and her brain the way she works at movies is different than mine and i and i I sit in the little city, and one of the things, you know,

if I draw back into Star Wars, because, man, I'm talking about Batman. I just, A, grew up watching the old 90s cartoon. I've been trying to get my kids into it. But I'm watching it. I'm like, man, this is dark cartoon. I'm like, I'm like, this is dark. I mean, then again, some of the, honestly, the shit, if I can just call it that, that they got on for kids these days.

I'm like, I might take the dark over this stupid stuff. Like, I mean, it's just like meaningless dribble that they put out, There's some good stuff, but there's also some absolute crap. Bruce Tim's conception of the Batman animated series is groundwaking. It changed animation. It changed television animation forever. I remember seeing the rushes for it early on at DragonCon. I went to DragonCon that year, and they were, and Warner Brothers had a thing, had a booth.

And we were, they were showing, you know, the opening, they were showing the opening sequence and some of the, we were just like, what in the actual fuck and it was you know and i i got to be honest with you we want and that's another show that again do you want to talk about villains right they understood batman's villains at a level that almost like almost no other writer have i mean i i've read i i have 15 years with the batman comics batman and then you know through the death of bruce wayne and all the other stuff And Morrison is one of my favorite writers of all time. And Batman in the hands of Grant Morrison is something special. Now I can tell you in the, you know, anywhere from other than the Dark Night Returns and Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison.

And, you know, the odd story arc here or there, like, no one captures the essence of who Batman's villains are better than the Batman animated series. It makes Batman like the penguin, the Joker, the Two-Face, all of them, they're so well-drawn. Poison Ivy. They're so well-drawn in that series. I have never been able to get my daughter into it either. And it's a weird thing. There's a lot of body morphing and doppelganger stuff that's inherent in a lot of, especially in the Batman mythology, that, you know, my daughter just.

like tunes out like right out. So that was, as a kid, she was completely like, no. Now, that being said, we have watched the Batman, Nolan Batman trilogy. And she liked those a lot. She was like, we got done with the Dark Night and she just went, yep, people still know how to make movies. Like, you know what she got done with the Dark Night? She was like, that was her statement.

And she was like, someone still knows how to make a freaking great movie. I'm like, yep. Been saying that since the day I walked out of the theater. on opening day when the Dark Nighter came out. Well, it's one thing you can say about Christopher Nolan. I wasn't, what's his latest one? Why can I, oh, Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, I thought it was okay.

Out of all the Christopher Nolan movies that I've seen, like, man, I tell you, one guy, that would be a phenomenal conversation on this podcast, wrote out into the world now, would be Christopher Nolan. He's in my top five to get if I ever could, you know? I mean, that's shooting for the stars, Tom. but he like I guess I didn't realize how lucky of a kid I was

to you know born in 86 and then 92 when I'm six years old we had we had two and four that's it just two channels and we only had Saturday morning cartoons from like 7 a.m. until noon and they were 10 10 for an hour

followed by Batman with back to back episodes followed by Superman followed by I think it's like Looney Tunes Like that that was our and I couldn't wait for the new Batman's come out and I didn't realize you know when you think about it One of the things I admire about some people who can watch a movie and can see the story arcs You know like this is what Jordan Peterson does with stories He takes something that that's So you've heard about it pinocchio

Pinocchio is the one that everybody stares at because he did like a 14 part series right And I'm like a 14 part series on pinocchio isn't that the story of the The puppet boy who becomes a real boy? It's like what the heck is the purpose of that and then you listen to him You're like, I missed all of that. And I'm one of those. So anytime I listen, you know, after the show when Tom was here, folks, we're sitting downstairs at the hotel before Tom and Alex leave. And we get talking Star Wars.

And I'm like, I'm like, the heck are you talking about? I got to go back and watch this thing. I don't know if I'm living second to second in movies or what, but my brain just doesn't see the story arcs unfolding the way you talk. Well, the thing is, Sean, is that you're getting the lessons. you're you're the right brain the hind brain the is getting all of it there it's taking everything in the the conscious one is you know doesn't see a lot of this stuff and you have to and it's a it's you know training this is just training like you see it like i didn't see anything for years and then somebody

would point stuff out and then eventually we're like eventually like and then you get into this stuff like like don't don't you know i did an intensive six months of screenwriting like i my wife and i sat were commissioned to write a screenplay we wound up not selling it and we didn't wind up getting made but we had to learn how to write screenplay so that meant reading bob mckee's story that meant this that meant you know we read sit fields read all that stuff and then we sat down and had to put a thing together and once you've done that process and i I do actually absolutely recommend that, right? I recommend everybody read Bob McKee's story.

Robert McKee, the book is called Story. It may be a little dated. He may have put up, I mean, my copy is from the early 90s, so I don't know if he's ever updated or not. It'll, you'll understand that when you get down to the brass hacks, that a film, screenplay is like a madlet. It's just a form that you fill in. there are certain things that you have to do.

This is a trite, there's a tried and tested way of getting from point A to point end and the way a good screenplay has to hang together. And I've, so armed with that and then my own, you know, and then you just, you know, armed with that and then just after a while, you're just like, okay, and then you start adding in other things that you've learned over the years and you add in some psychology and you add in this. and that and all of a sudden like everything is just kind of laying out in front of you and um and then moreover it's not like you'll watch the movie and you see this as it's happening you know you take it in

you watch pinocchio 20 or 30 times you think about what pinocchio is telling you and something goes oh and that is something that you don't talk about and then all of a sudden and then you know you imagine Jordan Peterson sitting down talking with Tammy over coffee and, you know, in the morning. And you can just imagine them sitting there having a three hour conversation about what's, you know, Jungian archetypes in in, in Pinocchio. And then him just jotting all the frigging notes down, right? Camille, my wife and I, Camille and I do this stuff all the time as well. We do the same kind of thing.

So this is what we do for fun. This is the kinds of conversations that we have on a regular basis. And a show to that reason. Because right there, right there. Anyways, I normally use. the sucker, but I got it in my, I was like, I'm going to have coffee this morning. It's become my scotch glass. So, showt out to her, because it's, it's in here.

Sorry. But, and no, no worries. And so this is what we do. And, you know, like we flounder around and we talk about stuff and why we miss that, you know, like, so, for example, you know, you know, we're both big Star Wars fans. We, you know, Star Wars is, you know, and then we're old enough. So you were born 86. In 1986, Star Wars was dead. There was no Star Wars.

You know what was, you know what existed in 1986? Top Gun. The role playing game from West End Games. That's it. We were making our own Star Wars stories. And a lot of the war that we take for granted today from the prequel films and from the, the cartoons and everything, it all comes from West End Games. West End Games was actually allowed into, and it's, and I read a great article. about a year or two, maybe it may have been even older than that now,

it was like how the Star Wars role-playing game saves Star Wars. Because at that point, Lucas had moved on, Star Wars was done, he had all the archives, and he had all the stuff over the Lucasfilm archives. And when they decided, when they, you know, at that point, you know, like Lucas books, if you wanted to be a, if you wanted to write all the original Star Wars novels and all that's of real fan fiction.

Like they published everything. You know, they didn't have an editorial, team. If you submitted it in a manuscript, they published it. Okay. Had I known that, I would have actually probably tried to, like, write Star Wars novels and, you know, make a living at it. But so at that point, so when West End Games wanted the, and they were young, very small, you know, independent RPG company. By, you know, today's standards, they would be a, they would have been a boutique company. It was their first game. And they, like, walked, they got the license. And they were then given access to the entirety of the Lucasfilm archives.

And they got to see the models and the ships and all the stuff and all the concept art that never made it onto the big screen and all the failed. And they wrote like all of the lore for all the races, for the ships, for this, everything. Like we see a shot, a single or two, like two shots of the B wing in Return of the Jedi. It doesn't do anything. And yet they wrote an entire story behind the B-way, right? It's a bomber with a big freaking spinal laser designed to take out capital ships and blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's got all this power. And then they write a month, they write an adventure module cell, which I ran, right, called Strike War Shantipal, to talking about how the rebellion got the Bway.

And it was, you know, the, and then that story, Dave Falun. He cribs from that and puts it into fucking rebels. A version of that into rebels. And how Hara has to go to, you know, this, you know, and meet with this crazy Moncalamari ship designer and get the B-wing prototype that he's built. Because the rebellion needs a bomber. Like, that was all written by West End Games. And like the amount of story that exists because of the work that Bill Slavisak and Greg Gordon and all those guys did to build out. stuff for us to

run adventures in the role-playing game, which I did all through college. Without that, there is no Star Wars. So that when Lucas comes back in 1999, we're what kept the thing alive. And mostly it was kept alive through people role-playing. And I actually don't know if that,

like, when you first say it, I'm like, oh, that kind of surprises it. And then I'm like, no, I don't think that. I'm like the original story, why it's so great is because of, well, it's their origin story, right? Even though it becomes four, five, six, and it's not one, two, three, right? It's right in the middle of the story now, but the, but the original story. The fact that people loved it so much that they grew their own universe and then it brings it all back actually doesn't surprise me that much. I think of, and I just, I just try and pull it into what I do here.

I have the phone line set up. So people may hate this conversation, Tom. They may have been like, Tom's back on. All right. And then they're like, listen to this. Like, what the hell is this? Like, well, me, Tom. Why aren't we talking about the Fed?

I've known Tom now for less than a year, getting close to a year, I think now. But anyways, I've known Tom for close to a year. And every conversation we have, there's always this hint of wanting to talk about Star Wars or film. I'm like, screw it. Let's talk about it. Like, I mean, people don't like it. That's fine. But the thing that happens is with the podcast and the text line is people interact with

things they really, really enjoy and things they really, really enjoy, they push on you hard to bring them back. They push on, they push on you to bring them and do different things and talk about different conversations. They want to hear their thoughts on this and this. And so actually, you know, like obviously it's different because I'm not building a film, but I am interacting with an audience. And you can imagine you build this trilogy that just becomes this global sensation and that people start literally creating out their own stories and they want to know back and forth. Like, we've all had this, this, a movie, like, I think, I actually think Christopher Nolan, if I could pick one right now, I'm like, do you ever think he's going to come back and do the story of Robin or of Nightwing,

if that's what he turns into? And the answer is probably no. No. But everybody who watches that movie more than once is like, man, wouldn't it be cool to see what happens on the next one? Because Batman's actually gone and what would be there. No, I know. And so, When you think about that. Because Robin would have to be the rebuilder. Yes. You seem, because the society fell.

But Batman saved it from falling. Like, I'm watching the Apple Plus TV series Foundation. Now, I've read the Foundation books by Asimov back in college. I haven't read them in 35 years. I don't remember any of them, any of it. I'm now rereading them, like, quickly. And by the way, they're an unbelievably easy read. If you've not read Foundation by Asimov, you absolutely should.

should even you know you can be nine and you can read the foundations that they're really easy read asimov is an amazingly um clear and concise writer let's just put it that way um and amazingly polished for 21 years old right when he started writing foundation um so many of these stories wind up especially post foundation wind up being well you read foundation you're like oh that's where they all came from because what's foundation about Foundation is about the fall of an empire. And then the attempt by people who see the fall coming. Yeah, we have the whole psychohistory, you know, mathematics, Harry Selden, all that crazy stuff.

Fine. But what really is is we see this thing coming and we're desperately trying to stop it from falling so completely that we're in a dark age that spans multiple cycles of human history. We don't want to go through a 300 year. Like after the Roman Empire fell, we know, you know, did we really want to go through 350 years worth of dark ages in Europe or whatever the number is? And I'm just, you know, please don't quibble with me about the number. I'm just picking a number out of my ass in order to, to.

I haven't read Foundation. Right. Okay. Just so you know. So, but what is Foundation's story, right? It's that everybody who sees the fall coming tries to minimize the effects of it. Well, that's what we're doing, Sean. That's what your podcast is.

It's what I do. We're all trying to see it coming and trying to minimize the effect of it. Well, that's what ultimately Nolan says about Batman. Like the society fell. It fell before he even came on the screen. Gotham City was already fallen. Razagool wanted to just, Razagul being Davos.

Yeah, he wanted to just burn it to the ground. He's just Davos. We're going to burn it to the ground and we're going to rebuild in our image. Right. Well, what does Davos want? it must burn the old system the situation down and rebuild it in 15 minutes and make it into minority report with more germans as i like to say all the time so in that story what does batman do he averts that he doesn't avert the fall because the fall happens what what he does is he retains enough of a core and lights and and lights enough of the fire to inspire enough

people to say okay this is as far as we go and then what would robin's job be well robin's job would be the who would be to be the rebuilder. So he would be the, he would be the, you know, the guardian who would oversee the rebuild. Batman can't be there because he's the gargoyle that, you know, in classical symbolism, he's the gargoyle that stands guard outside of the temple, but is barred from entering it. Now, you know, it's, that's, that's who he is. You know, and Batman in many ways is, you know, similar to St. Christopher, you know, carrying the, the infant Moses. And it's Moses, right?

In order, you know, but can't enter the Promise Land himself. He can't, he doesn't make it there. It's like Batman doesn't make it there. There's a lot of overtones to all this. And these are all built directly into the Nolan's trilogy. you know, when you understand, when you see it from that, you know, and so, you know, that's the case. That's what Batman is. He's a bad man.

But sometimes you need a bad man to do the right thing. Because he is. He's a bad man. He uses violence to punish criminals. He doesn't, at the end of the day, he's a fallen person. But he's a fallen person trying to do the right. thing and through that find a little bit of peace himself, but knowing full well that he cannot ever be happy. But he can sacrifice himself for everybody else. That's why he's not the white

night. He's the dark night. He's not the hero we want. He's the hero we need. Right? To end the me, when he gets like, no one's not subtle about this shit. Like it's all subtle and all this until he gets like and then oh by the way you know here's the punchline right and then he's not subtle about it at all and that's fine and for mass market for for a mass market um you know for a guy who straddles the line between hyper intellectual you know insular filmmaking right and making blockbusters he straddles that line like unlike probably any other filmmaker in history that's what he has to do. Like, you leave it all subtle. You don't really understand. Tenet is a perfect example of this. It's still a movie I don't fucking understand. But I, but I don't understand. I can't unravel

tenant from a, um, as a text. But I understand what he's trying to say. But I got the message loud and freaking clear. You know what I mean? And that's, that's, that's impressive. That's talent. That's, that's real storytelling talent. And, and then it doesn't hurt that I agree with When I finally, you know, stopped, I learned to stop worrying to trust Christopher Nolan, like the paraphrase the, the subtitle of Dr. Strangelove, I became aware that the stories that he's telling, I agree with. And I, and I, and are fundamentally correct. So, fine.

So, you know, Batman owes a lot of, you know, So like, but none of these stories, right, that we're talking about. They're all about crises. They're all about the ends of eras. They're all about the ends of, of, of, of, and those are the only stories that matter, because those are the stories that we need to have to be able to pass for generation to generation in order to craft new solutions for the problems that are in front of us. And Nolan gave us a very, very clear blueprint about what we were fighting.

Okay. I don't, people like to call Star Wars. fairy tale bringing it back to star wars i don't consider star wars a fairy tale i consider star wars i went to see jordan peterson in jacksonville a few years ago right after the last jeddye came out so right after episode eight came up and everybody was like screaming bloody murder that ryan johnson hates star wars and you know it was that was jake skywalker on the screen and not luke and all this rotten nonsense and you know the movie's misanderous and hates men and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah i've heard all of this shit and i don't agree with a freaking word of it right

I can do two hours on defending The Last Jedi, by the way. And it would really piss everybody off because they'd have to gradually admit that I'm right. But that's a different story. But I went to see Jordan Peterson. And that night, he decided to talk about the Egyptian creation myth. And he went over the basic story of Osiris and said and the blind and all this stuff. And we got to the end. he got the

not halfway through his talk and I leaned over to Camille and I said just like the Jedi Knights and the Last Jedi it's like I get the Last Jedi now even better I'm even more convinced than I'm right about the Last Jedi but

what was impressed upon me at that moment in time was that one of the points that Peterson made that night and at least probably made it in other venues but that's when I remember, which was that creation myths don't make any sense textually. When you explain the story of Osiris and Set and none of it makes any goddamn sense, it makes metaphoric sense, but it doesn't make any logical sense. Now let's look at Star Wars.

Oh, and by the way, the contradictions within the story as it's told from place from generation to generation, only serve to make the story stick harder because it's the things that are inconsistent and weird that we remember because we're difference engines we you know the stuff we expect becomes white noise in our environment right like our brains could not process the entire world at one time all the time we would be paralyzed we have to just go yep you know i'm looking at this is my back porch and i know that my back porch isn't falling apart and that there's nothing weird. You know, in back, as I'm like staring at myself doing this thing, right? I'm staring at the thing.

And I don't see like a squirrel running up the thing behind me. That would be the thing I noticed because everything else behind me is exactly where it's supposed to be. So my brain doesn't even map it. Doesn't, you know, I know that that's your, your studio and, you know, there's nothing bad is going to happen. And, you know, if it was on fire, though, oh, my God, that would be the end. So in storytelling, that's kind of the rule as well. is what you're trying to do is so creation myths are purposefully illogical because the illogic and the contradictions are what sticks yeah okay that makes sense and get through that and and this is

why the spurred boys on youtube who hate the star wars sequels because they quote unquote contradict certain things or they're inconsistent or there was they didn't write you know They have all their arguments. I'm like, that's your left brain talking. That's your logic center of your brain talking. But this brain saw everything that they put up on the screen. And you're reacting and your anger at that. What they put up on the screen is that it's telling you that you're inadequate.

Because the story of the sequel films. And I want you to watch the prequels and you're going to have to like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm watching Attack of the Clones because the movie's so fucking bad. Like, it just is. I mean, I have to like, I like the Phantom Menace, but I have to like bring out my inner nine-year-old and go, I love Jar Jar Jar Jar,

which I do, by the way. I actually love George, Gar-R-Bink, I think he's hilarious. But, and the Phantom Menace is a flawed movie for a variety of reasons, and most of which have to do with Bob McKee and story and structure and just basic, just basic filmmaking shit. And Revenge of Sitt, there's a fine movie

with about three scenes that could be ex-ized, and then it would just flow better and everything would be great. But the sequel films are the ones that get everybody angry because the sequel films are commentary on gender roles during a time of crisis and how four, five, and six, Star Wars Empire Jedi, left us with a, with people in charge who would ultimately fail. Because otherwise, there's no story. If they don't, if they succeed, then it's a fairy tale, it's over, overdone with. But since Star Wars is creation myth, the Star Wars don't make any goddamn more sense than the Egyptian creation myths do or the Iroquois myths or, you know, the North mythology

or any of the rest of it. None of them make any sense, you know, textually, but they make perfect sense metaphorically. And they speak through the generations because of this. Same thing with people who like hold, who, you know, the shiplibs who, you know, hate the Bible because the Bible is not true. Like, no, the Bible, no one really believes that the Bible is word for word true. It's metaphorically true, and there's unbelievable lessons to be gleaned from it if you're willing to actually engage as a full human and not as an asshole.

But it's 7, 8, 9 are about gender roles. And the fact that we have a whole bunch of women running around, in the roles traditionally that men should be involved in, and they're not up to the task. And the boys, the fins and the Podamerans and all the rest of them, aren't up to the task either. That's exactly what Ryan Johnson was saying in The Last Jedi. And the women were like, dudes, you need to step up.

You need to be better. The three men in the sequel films all represent three fundamentally flawed, dare I say, millennial and Zoom. boys who aren't ready to lead. And they all have to get their asses kicked, including Kyle around. And the spoiled brat with no, with no, who never had any limits put on him. Finn, the boy who believes that the universe is black and white. And all he has to do is go sacrifice himself for, you know, the girl.

And then Po, who's just like, wants to blow shit up because that's how, you know, that's how you. you fight your enemy by fighting it as opposed to by outthinking it right they all have they're none of them are ready for leadership and yet by the end of the movie well two of them are ready for leadership in some way matter of shape or form the heroes rise to the occasion and kaila runs sinks into and even further into despair right and so i find those films fascinating even if they are flawed again even if star war even if each these these stories is flawed from a technical writing perspective or if there's plot holes or there's this or there's that guess what guys the potholes are what makes it stick the potholes are what we argue about meanwhile chunking away in the background you're

constantly like reassessing what these things are actually saying what these films are actually saying and what's also interesting is that of course they were a they were a trilogy of films written for this generation's girls. And they were a warning to this generation's boys. And I am firmly of the opinion that once we get a little farther away from them, people will see them for what they are. But right now, the, you know, and still even today, they're, it's too fresh for people.

And it's just, you know, no one likes to be told that they're not up to the task of like saving the world. Let me ask you a question. They're there to build up an entire generation of boys. But we needed that then. But that was the mid cycle high. We're at the end of the, that was the second turning in Strauss and Housepeak, right? The fourth turning, guys. Yep.

That was the second turning. This is the fourth turning. It's a different story. And it's a different, it has to be a different focus. Well, I have two thoughts. One I want to ask you about, but the first thought I have is I get it. Tom watches something and then talks about it a lot, no different than what I do here on a lot of different subjects. Something's bugging you.

You just talk about it. And different people see different things. You start to piece them together. And then you start to see, oh, this is what he's trying to do. And et cetera, et cetera. I mean, just go back to, for a lot of us, college, when we talk about a book written in its era. And you'd be like, well, what are they trying to say here? And the teacher's trying to get you to think.

about like the writing about X at that time, what did it actually mean? So here's a question for you. This is something that I didn't fully understand. I went to Ottawa, right? Right. Participated in Ottawa, was there, was like, holy crap, and then you left.

And it was like a bubble. I mean, honestly, there was like four city blocks. And I might be, you know, you get the point of the size of it. It wasn't the entire city. It was this little tiny spot in the city. That's what it was. And then the further you got away from it,

you realize life was just going along normal and everything else, right? And when I read J.R. O. Tolkien, and the other one that comes to mind right now is the alchemist. The story doesn't end with putting the ring in the volcano or in the case of the alchemist. He doesn't find the gold off in a foreign land. What do they both do? They both come home. And one of the things, you know, when you think about that, Jerry or Tolkien... Bayew... Bayowulf does the same thing, by the time.

That's right. And I'm like, huh, so they just went through World War II because Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is 54, I think. I should check that. Well, he wrote it between, it was published in 54. He wrote it starting in 1939. Right. So World War II, all I'm getting is World War II. World War II was ticking away in the background, yes.

So at the end of it, though, when you think it should be over, he comes home or they come home. And of course, we already talked about Lord of the Rings, what happens at the end. And if you haven't read the books, you've got to read the books. because they're just phenomenal. But at the end, you know, there's this fight in the shire. That's the thing. And one of the things that I found very interesting about coming back from Ottawa and I had to, you know, kind of like not wrestle with, if you would,

was the fight didn't just end because a group of truckers went to Ottawa and hurrah, it's all over. You came back to your communities and you looked around and you realized none of them had experienced what you had seen. and now a new fight was going to start. Like it was just going to start. And they were going to look to certain people and they were going to do everything else.

And this is across the board in every community right now. And I'm just speaking Canada, but you go across the board no matter where your adventure takes you, eventually you come home and you have to use what you've learned to help benefit your community.

Essentially is the arc, is it not? And if you look at Tolkien and being where he was, in his mind, World War II, I'm just throwing this at you. I don't know if this is fact. I'm throwing this at you and your thoughts. World War II was not the end of it.

He looked at it like, nope, there's things going on that we need to fix or need to continue to, and it's back in our own communities, I guess, is where I'm, and it was one of like the, huh, that's a brilliant thought. And that's like, not a hundred years ago, but that's a long time ago. And as a kid, I read that and I didn't get it. And I was actually really surprised. You talk about things that don't make sense, them going back to, to the Shire as a kid. I was reading that in like grade nine. I'm like, why are they going back

to the Shire? This is super cool. Most books would end right now. This book, we're going back and we're having a fight and the hobbits are going to fight it out now. Instead of the kings and the big military guys, this is the regular folk. Or we're having it out right now. Well, this is interesting. And when you talk about irregularities, that's what sticks out to me. And going to Ottawa, coming back, I started to think about that. I'm like, that's really interesting. That that would be the lesson I take from Lower Rings over anything else. That's great. No, you're right.

And, you know, nothing ever ends. Like, I'm not, I mean, you know, I quote Watchman all the time. Alan Moore's Watchman all the time. And I have, and I have hours and hours of discussion on Watchmen. I've written multiple articles on it. from a variety of different perspectives. And I respect Watchman, even though I don't particularly like it. I guess the reason why Alan Moore wrote a brilliant story,

even though I know full well what his intention was, because Alan Moore is a communist. Okay. So his view of humanity is fundamentally, I think, flawed. flawed yeah and it's not and i don't mean doctrinaire communist in terms of it he wants to he's an authoritarian wanting to take over the world kind of no he's a communist in thought he's a left wing anarchist okay and the left wing anarchist have this flaw i think in that they are nihilists um and um but you know at the end of the day remember what he's what happened

is at the end of Watchmen and Adrian well you know Adrian's defeat says to ask God John Osterman Dr. Manhattan I did good didn't I John in the end yeah you know he just beat God

and then prove that God isn't important but then he still wants God's approval and John just leaves him with nothing ever ends Adrian the fight's eternal It's not a thing that you fixed everything.

You didn't fix anything. You fixed things your way to your vision of the future for your benefit and for your ego for a little while. And Watchman as an antipode to the Lord of the Rings, then as I'm sitting here discussing this with you, never really having thought about it from this perspective, becomes very interesting now. Because Tolkien goal was to go home and to use the scouring of the shire as a metaphor for what happened to him when he came home from World War I. And they're all broken. And they all have these flaws. And they can't speak about what they saw.

And eventually, you know, Frodo's old wound takes him away. and you know you do the best you can with what you've seen so you know it's a it's like knowing full well that this is going to happen again and so what what this Tolkien do Tolkien meditates for 20 years it takes them almost 20 years to write the Lord of the Rings. I mean, he's got most of it written, but he's stuck on the ending for 10 years. How do you resolve this properly? Of course, he comes up with the perfect ending, but it took him forever, which is, I guess, Frodo fails, and then it's redeemed by the irredeemable.

So, and even then, Ghalm is redeemed because Collin does the right thing. Does it? Yes, yes, yes. Right? You know what I mean? Like, what we would think is the irredeemable, Gollum still why? winds up doing, you know, it winds up saving Frodo in the end. The saving Frodo soul, even though Frodo fails.

And that's what Frodo can't live with. It's not the, it's not the stab wound from the, from the, the, the, the morgue boy. It's the knowledge that he failed. So, you know, it's a, man, you make me, uh, it, uh, with my, my, my kids, you know, Shaby and seven, he's just getting into the age where he, he's beginning to read, right? And so he's starting to read the little books. He's starting to understand little books. And I'm like, I wonder how old he has to be.

Certainly now you got Harry Potter that, you know, you can read at a younger age. Yeah. But Lord of the Rings, I think I was, like, I think I finished it when I was great. Harley was grade 12. So I think it was grade nine when I finished it. And I'd read Dune in there and some of these great books that, you know, now I'm like, when I'm listening to talk, I'm like, ah, guy needs to dust him off and pull him back out again because I mean, I only ever read them once. And I can just imagine that the mind bend

reading them again right now would be. Of course. Because I'm, you know, look at all the years and experience and different things of life that have happened. And just to understand what Tolkien was trying to portray would be probably a little bit insane to me. I read, reread the first four and a half books of Dune over vacation. Um, and after, Biden stole the election between the election and in the inauguration. And I'd say, so I've always, I've always had a soft spot for all three of the first three Doom books.

So what I think is the, that is really the story. The story doesn't end with Paul becoming emperor. The story ends when it's, the rest of Paul's story is important as well, what Paul sets in motion, yada, yada. And so Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are incredibly important. You need to read them. And Denny Villeneuve understands

this and of course wants to do that Dune Part 2 will take us through the end of the first book, but I almost completely convinced that he of course also wants to do. Wants to do the rest. And and children of Dune. And you know, writer strike, actor strike, you know, notwithstanding, as long as

as Dune 2 doesn't like fail because of all this shit that we'll get that third film as well. Right. Because I can't see. I can't see, I can't see Dune 2 failing. Like the first one was so well, well done. It's unbelievable. Like when you, when you, you know what you, you need a good story, right? Like, I mean, a crappy story, you know, it leaves you wanting.

You walk out and you're like, what the heck was that even about, right? Good acting can make a bad story decent. Yes. Right? Like, you get a phenomenal actor and you're like, I don't know why I like, but I mean, geez, you know, I remember thinking Will Smith in some crappy Western movie. I can't spit it out right now. It was a terrible movie, but I'm like, Will Smith was still pretty good in that, you know?

And I mean, now Will's been on to different things and everything else. But at the time, I was like, oh, but you get a great story with great acting. And I assume great acting kind of goes right hand in hand with a good story because it'd be easy to play. Not saying there's better actors than anything. Which is that it's actually more important about the director. and I'll be I'll give you a perfect example of if you have a great story

it can be let down by by poor decisions by the director yeah well I mean that's and I'll give it and the first thing that pops into my mind is the Obi-Wan series that Disney Plus put out like there was a good story in there and it was completely let down by the fact that Debra Chow was outside but was in a way in over her head

and no amount of of work from Ewan McGregor was going to make this, was going to make up for this. And, you know, because they miscast Reva, they miscast, they, they did a lot of things wrong. And it's nothing. And it's not that it's the actress's fault. It's the director's fault because they didn't do what they needed to do to bring her to bring that character to life properly. But that's leadership, 100%. At the, at the very top, if you have poor leadership, you can have, as I pointed out many times, Sean, I'm a huge fan of cheap Canadian sci-fi that was ran on the science fiction,

the sci-fi channel for years. Like, there's no end of great actors. Great second, I mean, these are not, these people are still all working for scale, and I know all their names, and I've seen every frigging show they've been in. I look at some of those shows that they produced, and I'm like, God damn, these are good. Because the showrunner

understood the story he was telling, and it struck with the writer's room properly, and got the right directors, and then you cast the right people, even if they're not great actors for that moment to do the thing. And I'm watching Foundation. And Foundation is an excellent show, even if I have, you know, some quibbles about what they've, you know, the fact that I can't find, you know, like for a right, like some of the casting choices, I, I, the recasting choices that they've done, I didn't agree with. That said,

that said, for example, the two leads, which, who should have been white men were turned into black women. This is not to say that either of the actors or any, are, the actresses are doing a bad job. They're fine. They're great, actually. That's me having to get over my own bias. whatever but there ain't one a lister in the entire group the closest thing to an a list or that entire thing is jared harris and like that's it but you don't need great actors well you proven that you didn't need great actors we had literally stunt women and stockbrokers jerry doyle was never an actor but he got the job in baby on five and grew into the and then became michael garibaldi like like baby on five if you've not watched babylon five you want a perfect example of

how great story inspires people to work the punch above their weight with no money and that it's all about the story and not about everything else. Dude, sit down, take the 88 hours or the 90 hours and watch Babylon 5. You know, it's funny. I'm wondering how many people are sitting here listen to us and driving in it. And let's just assume they got past the Star Wars and they're like, okay, well, I have never watched Star Wars because I've ran into two of them now in the last. week that have never seen Star Wars.

I'm like, how have you never seen Star Wars? I mean, I'm not, I don't have the, the, it wasn't a movie when, you know, as Tom's pointed out, high school that was it for it, right? So we all have our, Harry Potter, I read the books as I, as I grew along, as Harry got older, I got older. Like I literally led the first one in grade four, I think. Like it was perfect time for when they got written

to when I, you know, by the time he's an adult fighting the big evil dude, right? So you're gonna have your certain ones where, where it really speaks, to the kid in you, you know? But in saying that, it's like, I mean, at some point, you just got to sit down to watch Star Wars

because you hear about it everywhere. Everywhere has got like a Star Wars, and you're like, what's this thing on the Star Wars? What's this thing where I am your father? You know, it's like, what the heck is that? Let's just go watch it. And get over the fact that, like, it was made like 50 years ago and the filmography or whatever,

the special effects, I guess, the word I'm looking for, is 50 years ago, right? I mean, like, get over that. and go enjoy like uh and realize that star wars you know still works 47 years later right but my my dog agrees with her by the way so the duck right if they got through all this tom they're like okay so i got to watch star wars yeah all right all right all right there's how many of those nine there's nine okay watch the original three but actually at this point i i mean going through it might be an interesting i don't know if i've ever watched

at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.9. I wouldn't recommend doing it that one. I'd still recommend watching him in the order. Watching it 456, 1, 2, 3, and then the newest ones. But then you've got me now with Robert McKee's story, and I'm like, that actually sounds really interesting. Oh, yeah, you'd love it. You've got the easy books of foundation.

I'm like, I'm sure they're easy, but okay. Then you got Babylon 590 hours. I'm like, and I'm like, and somehow you're convincing me to pull up my dust them off, the Lord of the Rings trilogy I have. and go back and read those suckers. And I'm actually like, man, that'd be fun. Like that, that actually sounds like fun. And then, I mean, if you've, if you've never read Dune, man alive,

that book is, that's a fun book. It's an amazing book. I have the bigger task on my list to go back and read, you know, for me, foundational, not, you know, with a lowercase F, not an Isaac Asimov, capital F. The books that are foundational for me are all of the Philip K. Dick that I read as a teenager.

Where you were reading, I didn't read The Lord of the Rings of a teenager. I read The Hobbit when I was a kid. I read Philip K. Dick. So I read DeAndreux's Room Electric Sheep, eventually Blade Runner, The Man in High Castle, Doc Blood Money, Martian Timeslet, Ubek,

says, Scanner Darkly. I've read all these books. I read all those short stories that they've turned into things like Minority Report. And, you know, time out of joint was originally, it was eventually turned into the Truman Show. And I can go through all of this. And there's been nobody who has been adapted into film more than Philip K. Dick in Hollywood. Even Stephen King doesn't hold a candle to the number of, right? Ubek has been told five freaking times and it was never actually made textually. They just made versions of Ubek. And, you know, they just ripped off of it.

And they've never actually told the story. And no one's actually been able to, to, it's now unfilomable. Like the Terminator comes out of all the film, like all of, you know, all of, you know, Android's from the, as weapons from the 1950s and 60s that he wrote about. But those books are far deeper. And I knew they were then. Then I've been the 15, 16 year old me understood. And I even went back and I've read some of them over time.

I read the Man on High Castle a few years ago. I read when the series came out on Amazon. I used to reread Ubek every year on June 5th, which is the day the book is set. It only takes about four hours. None of these books are long. But I have so much to go back through and look at with those books. That's my task that's ahead of me. I haven't even gotten into the other stuff that I, you know,

Like, I need to reread Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson. Like, you want to talk about the anti-Lord of the Rings. And it's not that it's the anti-Lord of the Ring with the ultimate anti-hero, with the opposite of Frodo, with the Ring. The fallen man, the truly, the man who starts at rock bottom, fulfilling the idea again Jordan Peterson's talk about this or you know has popularized these ideas in recent times that that God speaks through the lowest of us right nobody is lower than Thomas Covenant he's a leper and then has to face his own despair and then has given a second chance of life and his first act is an unbelievable act of

violence, which then scars generations. This is an amazing story that if you've never read, but that will also test your patience to the extreme. So I'm not saying read all the covenant books, just those first three. He's got 10. They're not all good. But, and Donaldson is also one of my favorite writers because. he takes that position, which is to take terminally flawed people and force them through circumstance

to confront their own inadequacies, overcome them, and become, and still save the world. Even if it's a world they don't believe in in the case of Thomas Covenant. He doesn't even believe in the world that he's trying to save, believe in the world he tries to say. He's been tasked to say it. You know, I can't remember. There's a story. I mean, honestly, there's a story that, you know, will speak to that, to the quiet parts of you that you don't want to, that you don't want to admit exist.

Thomas Covenant is speaking directly to the shadow, the looks inside of everything. That, you know, we all don't want to, you know, that's the, that's the fate. We don't want, that's the, and to quote T.S. Eliot and Proof Rock, and the Leproch, we prepare, we prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. every day. So this is a form of a persona that we all put on for the world.

And that is, you know, Donaldson, as a writer, says, you have to strip that down. And that, and even that guy that you're afraid of looking at in the mirror is capable of doing astounding things.

As long as you're willing to confront those things about yourself as honestly as you can. That's a thought. That's his contribution to 20th century literature. And as he's gotten older, he's gotten less popular because he started with Thomas Covenant. It was enormous.

Thomas Covenant was the Harry Potter of its age in 1970s. 1970s, 1980s, everybody who was a fantasy guy read Thomas Covenant. As Donaldson's career went along, and he kept. mining that same territory, yeah, the popularity dropped off. But he didn't care. And he refused to sell the film rights to any of his books because he didn't want them, you know, didn't want them critified. That's it. And that, so, I mean, I've gone, I've just given everybody like, you know, this is Tom's like, this is like Tom's pantheon of, of filmmakers and art and, and writers that I, that have shaped.

and I understand that this is what shapes all of my market analysis and the geopolitics and everything else. These are the foundation. These are my foundational story. Well, it's something I admire. So, you know, one, I admire a lot of my guests because I just admire the way your brain works, how you look at things and everything else. And when I think of movies or books, you know, I've never been like, you know, Lord of the Rings. dictates the way I look at the world or Harry Potter dictates the way I look at the world.

I would say that I've been taught that you should, the Bible is the only thing that is the way you should look at the world, right? From here comes all knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, as a hockey player, you know, instead of just practicing hockey, we played ball as kids, we played badminton, we played volleyball, we played chess, we played all these different games because they all teach just something little. I mean, like, what a lovely game. that I'm, my son wants to play chess right now. I'm not saying I'm great at chess, Tom. But I understand the rules of it, and he doesn't.

And I'm trying to get him to see that, you know, like you got to think of a move or two ahead so you can, you know, and it's a lovely game that way. And that's, that's hockey. That can be put into baseball. That can be put into all these different sports. And so I don't know why it took meeting you to realize, you know, Peterson had started my journey along like, you know,

there's more to this story than just what they're saying. or what they've written. And you're like, oh, why did I miss that for so long? I guess nobody was having that conversation, probably. Or maybe nobody could put it out as eloquently as what Peterson has done, right? And when I bumped into you, you know, you started talking about all the different board games you played and strategy. And you see that play out whether or not a politician or the W.E.F. or anyone will admit that that's where they're doing.

That's the strategy. And it's just like, well, I don't, why does it have to come from the Bible or some book like that to understand some of the things playing out in front of us? And I've said this lots through COVID, the most important book I read that just, I don't know why it just snapped a few things in for me. I was like, huh.

And I even talked about it at one of these, these, um, uh, we was in Brownfield, Alberta. They had a group of us speakers in. I was invited to speak. And, you know, I'm like, and I joked at the time. I'm like, you know, I'm probably supposed to quote some scripture from the Bible at this point. But I'm going to make you all scratch your head when I'm saying, I'm going to quote a little Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park.

Because I read the book and, I mean, that was what, 91 somewhere in there. And I read that book thinking, why the heck am I reading this book? And as I got into it, I couldn't put the dang thing down. And it had some parts in it that were just like, oh my goodness, is this like, so prophetic, you know, like an inherited, inherited wealth, like, you know, or inherited power. And you think of where we're at in the world today with all the technologies and everything. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's why I need to read Jurassic Park. And when I look at you and hear your different stories and you're just some thoughts,

it's just really cool to hear that you can walk into a Star Wars flick that you think is mindless entertainment. But actually, it's a commentary on where we're at. And it really has some deep thought put into the story arc if it's done well enough. Like I said, like I said earlier, Star Wars to me is creation myth. That's why it's got such power. Right. It's, you know, I mean, Lucas, you know, everybody knows the story of Lucas, you know, going to, to study with John Campbell and, you know, learn about the monomith and then build it in. Everybody's heard that, that, but he was a man.

When I look at George Lucas and I think about, you know, I know his upbringing, you know, know who he was in film school you know is really um he was a radical and he hated the old system and he hated the old studio system and he hated um you know the artistic side of george lucas said i wanted to do x y and z and he made t h x1138 and that guy that guy is just as t hs 1138 will inform star wars folks like you can watch t h x and you can see and you'll see choices, you'll see they're made by the same filmmaker. It's not even hard, right? Even though for most people, THX 1138 is incomprehensible gobbled ego. And it many ways it is. I think it's a brilliant movie, but, but it's also very much an art school project. Right. And there's that side of George Lucas. And then there's the guy who, but he, and then there's the guy who, you know, built Lucas film in order to, create a playground for artists to do their very best work.

And he understood that he had to get himself free of the old system and build something outside of, you know, at Skywalker Ranch, build this thing. And he was willing, in many ways, he was willing to sacrifice Star Wars. This is why I love the original trilogy, but I do not revere them. Because I know that many things were done after the Empire Strikes Back and into Return of the Jedi. They were made, decisions were not made for the story. They were made for Lucasfilm in order to, Lucas had a choice.

And his choice was, he knew the movie was going to be successful. He also knew that he, and he was self-financing these films. Remember, the Star Wars, Empire and Jedi are independent movies. Lucas self-financed these films. The studios didn't finance them. Okay. They distributed those, 20s,

Fox distributed the movies, but Lucas paid for them. Now, you never put your own money into a movie. And Lucas put $30 million into the Empire Strikes Back and $40 million into of his own money into Return of the Jedi or some number, whatever the numbers are. But he, but I, you know, when I hear, when I go through the, the, the, um, some of the backstory about the decisions that were made on Return of the Jedi, it was very clear that Lucas made some very cynical decisions. I'm making business decisions now to use Star Wars as a springboard to build a multi-billion dollar company that would fulfill our original goal of American Zodrop when they, when he and Francis Coppola started that company back in 68 in order to free creatives to do great work.

Okay. And that's, and so that's what Lucasfilm was. That's to him. And he used Star Wars to make sure that that had the capital necessary to build all the tools and the studios and the sound design and the this and the special effects houses and all of that stuff that are housed under Lucasville. He did that on purpose. And he sacrificed aspects of the story to sell more toys, to do this and all that stuff. But still, it was in service of that guy that wanted to give an unbelievable gift to an entire generation of young men. which was, I'm going to give you a blueprint for becoming your own heroes to take into the world

and give you some faith that the world isn't terrible, even though the world is telling you that not to have faith in anything. Okay? And so I'm okay with that. So I understand those decisions. The film geek in me says, oh, my God, you know, the Ewox, really? Okay. The whole job as Palace sequence?

Really? like we couldn't have written a better screenplay than this, right? This is why Harrison Ford famously wanted Han Solo to die because he wanted him to have his story to have more significance. He wanted Solo as a character because Harrison Ford, as a storyteller, wanted something better for his character. So I get it. And I'm okay with that.

So Star Wars as a trilogy is a little, is flawed. The original trilogy is flawed, not to be reviewed. That doesn't mean that it's not brilliant. right in the same way that peter jackson made a version of lord of the rings that i think ultimately doesn't quite do tolkien justice but it's the story he wanted to tell and it's the story that maybe you know we were ready to hear that's an interesting uh you just said ready to hear the story we're ready to hear sometimes that's an interesting thought like you could have a story story told that nobody understands or not ready to hear.

Right. Well, that's my argument about The Last Jedi that Ryan Johnson, a fiercely independent filmmaker with a lot to say, and I don't agree with everything he wants to say. And that's textually, you can see that in all of his other films, but I respect the fuck out of his ability to tell story. Right. His craft is, is impeccable. like at the level of Christopher Nolan level of craft you go through and to watch all of Ryan Johnson's films and you will see what I'm talking about and for for me and the listener Tom what are some of his other films just so we're talking about his original the first film he made brick it's which is oh yeah yeah brick uh which is

which is a which is a just knowing that I'm like oh yeah that's a that was the first movie that they made independently that they raised that they did on their credit cards basically yeah that's Joseph Gordon Levitt isn't that a young Joseph Gordon Leavitt? Yes, it is. Looper with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis and the amazing Emily Blunt, amazing film. The Brothers Bloom.

So he like goes after different genres. So first it's the hard-boiled Sam Spade detective film noir set in high school. Then it's time travel. And then he takes on the Grifter movie, right? The Brothers Bloom.

And then we have The Last Jedi. takes on the monomith and all of that. And then knives out and glass onion. The Benoit Blanc movies with Daniel Craig. So he takes on the murder mystery and deconstructs and reconstructs and, you know, and and and remakes the murder mystery into something brilliant and and phenomenal. You said something there that, that I've picked up twice now and I'm just going to ask what you said.

everybody knows about Lucas and his conversation, I believe, with Campbell. Did you say Campbell? Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell. You mentioned, and the monometh. What the heck is that? I've never heard this story. So Joseph Campbell wrote the Man of a Thousand Faces and the, and the, and the, the monomith about, you know, the hero's cycle and the hero's journey, which if you've heard, you've read, like you've watched the hero's journey of a thousand times.

A thousand times. Yeah. Right. But that's what we're talking. up, right? And it, you know, Campbell popularized that and codified it. And that's now been used by, and now it's just used by Hollywood in every, but, you know, it's, but it's really, you know, but this is the, you know, the archetype of the, the, the hero cycle. So the monomith is the idea that, you know, the hero's journey is timeless. It's, we've been telling stories like this,

going back to the, from the time that we started telling stories. And, you know, this is the time-tested version. you know, the basic, and it has, and the time-tested version of that story has all of these elements in it. So you can read a book by Christopher Vogler called The Writer's Journey, which will go through all the elements of, you know, from a screenplay perspective, we'll go through all the elements of that, by the way. So story by Bob McKee, the writer's journey by Christopher Vogler, both of these are kind of essential. If you want to know, if you want to understand how you're being quote unquote manipulated, we'll give you a structure, right? He'll tell you how a screenplay is constructed and how a story is constructed. And you can use, by the way, aspiring writers, you can use story, not just to tell screenplays,

but to write novels and to write source stories and to write any kind of fiction you want. Television uses a slightly different format because television had to work around commercials all those years. So there's a different way that a television episode is, is organized, especially television that was originally meant for broadcast. If you go and you do take my recommendation to watch Babylon 5 and you watch them on, you know, on streaming, then you'll realize that, you know, every seven minutes, there's a dun, dun, done, done, and then we move on, right? And that's because it's the way it was written.

But when you watch them today without commercials, it feels a little off, especially for a modern. Actually, and when you say that, then does that why television has become so great again, in my opinion, is because they don't have to do this weird story format. They can actually play out a 45 minute or some people, you know, you think Game of Thrones,

hour long episodes, and they get to actually have their episode go and not have to be broke up so many times. Yeah, no, no, the HBO, one,

again, I have to give HBO a lot of credit for advancing the, for advancing the, um, the, um, of episodic television by, you know, and it freed them up, you know, from the seven-minute act structure and the AB story structure of old television. A-B story structure being there's a main story,

and then there's a secondary story, maybe involving secondary characters that are happening behind, you know, contemporaneously throughout the episode, one supporting the main story on. Babylon 5 is a perfect example of this. Now, Strzinski's command of that, of that format is off the charts. And it's not a modern procedural like the Dick Wolf Law & Order thing, which most episodic network television still use it, right? House and Law & Order and all of them. They all use the quote-unquote procedural. You can look this up.

This is not, I'm not using weird inside baseball terminology. If you look up, you know, the law and order, the Dick Wolf procedural, you don't know exactly. And they'll explain it to you, right? And how, and it's, and it's literally a form, right? We all know in the second act of any episode of house that it's not sarcoidosis and that whatever we thought it was going to be. And then every episode of house had worked out the same way. You introduce the, the problem, the dead, the dying person. And then you go through all of the red herrings, but you actually introduce the real prop, you know, but the real, um, but the, but the real, The clue to solving the mystery was actually given in Act 2 or Act 3, depending. And we get to Act 6, and then House has his eureka moment.

And then done. And then we solve the thing. The patient lives, and he gets to be the genius. And then the underlying story, the B story is how all of that affects what's happening between all the main characters. That was what House did so very well, which was that they were advancing the story of all the relationships of the characters and how this thing was affecting them. And that's what House did really, really well, when it was well written.

So maybe the first three seasons or so, three or four seasons. You, you, you, I just went, I just had, not that you know who this is, but a Canadian music guy, a singer, Brett Kissela on. And he, he really impressed me on his ability to take what, what I perceived is like showmanship and business from not only just country music. He's been on stage with Garth Brooks and stuff. But like from that to like hockey, he's big hockey guy and take what they do well

and integrate it into a show. Like his show was just like, this is cool. Like I haven't seen many people do a show this well. And one of the things when I'm sitting and listening to you talk is I'm like, you know, you can take things that people do well anywhere. Music, books, board games, etc. and integrate it into what you do.

Because people are like hardwired for the hero myth, the story arc. There's something that just pulls at us. Like, oh, that's really, like, I really like that. I really, and I can't explain it. But I go back to your two sides of the brain, Tom. And I'm like, that to me just, it just makes perfect sense. And I probably heard it enough times or I just wasn't engaging with it,

where you're like, hmm. and here I sit this morning and I'm listening to talk and I'm like huh there's a lot of things I'm going to now I almost want to walk back through half my movies half my books just to see you know like do I see anything more you know because there's probably a lot I just scared it over and didn't think anything up and you'll learn this is you know one of the this is one of the

the things that's so fun about this Sean I'm a writer like so the mechanics of writing are important to me you know what I mean so like why do I care about this stuff so much well because there there's always these are techniques that I can use to talk about the things that I can do because my goal of course like everything else is to simplify the communications bring a complex topic monetary policy geopolitics whatever and give you a hook that you understand So that you can go, oh, that's it works like that. Yeah, like, don't get lost in all the details.

It's just this, right? And then you're, oh, okay. So me and, me and the same time, there's also a lot of really interesting depth to some of these things. And you ask us always ask yourself the basic question. Why do people like in Star Wars so much? Well, now it's built on these foundations. It's built on this. It's built on that.

And then there's this structure. And there's this. And there's all these things. And when it works, it works brilliantly. And the people who are inheriting the, and this is what I find really fascinating is that when it comes to Star Wars. And Star Wars has gotten a bad rap in recent years because there's a lot of people out there who don't want to engage with what they're doing

because they really want, they just want their, they want their fairy tale back. They don't want the complex, you know, the complexity of the world we live in today. and for that Star Wars to reflect that. I'm like, no, no, no, no, we want to go into these other areas. We want to do, we want to explore these things. Star Wars is a, as a tapestry, as a world is rich with storytelling possibilities. So we have the Mandalorian, which is kind of a Western. And we have, you know, we have animated stuff.

And I'll be honest with you. I think Star Wars works almost best as anime content at this point, not even live action. Because, well, once they're, once they're freed from. the limitations of blocking and actors and prosthetics and all this other stuff. Now you're just like, it's just animation. And animation just whew. And you look at some of the later, you look at how Lucas, how the Clone Wars built animation. And the quality of the animation from when they started the Clone Wars in 2008 to where they are today.

And you watch like using the same art style that goes all the way through to the season seven, which they only just did a couple of years ago, and then even Tales of the Jedi, which they did last year or earlier this year. You realize it's all the same art style, but you understand how much more processing power and fluidity and assets that they have to bring to the disposal as storytellers.

Maron, like this is fucking amazing. Like a level of power of the imagery that they can bring to the screen and their ability to, because they're, it's 3D animation. They can move the camera and they can, and from the moment they started this, Lucas said to Dave Filoni, it's like, we're going to make these cartoons. We're going to, we're going to make them as if they're movies. We're going to treat them like their films. We're going to block them like their films. We're going to do the voice acting as a roundtable and get all the actors in the room together riffing off of each other, like it's a live performance.

we're going to do all of these things in order to try and bring the RA game and inspire everybody. And that then that feeds back on the writers, who feeds back on the animators, it feeds back on the on the guy doing the music and all feeds back on each other. And as they're successful, they get more money, which was they can just plow back into the company in order to do more stuff. That is, was Lucas's great strength, not just as an artist, because he had a vision of what he'd like to do artistically, but also understood pragmatically how you create, build the organization to support that.

And that's why I'm like, yeah, we had to have Ewoks in order to build Lucasville so that eventually Industrial Lights and Magic gave us Jurassic Park. Because without that sacrifice, there is no Jurassic Park. Not that I think Jurassic Park is a great movie, but I certainly do think that, you know, that first time we saw the first time, we saw the freaking T-Rex, that was a moment. Or, you know, and the, and we saw the big wide shot. You, you, sir, are a writer, okay?

Right. And so I admire, like, a lot of things about the way your brain works, where you look at problems, way you enter, bring things from not only just your childhood, but popular culture and integrate them into how you do things. And you've now experienced what I do on the, on away from this, which is just an offshoot of it, which is when I bring people together to speak. And the little details about those nights, I used to say didn't matter. Not that I'd ever taken that mentality into any of my nights.

I used to think that. I remember being back playing college hockey and being like, it doesn't matter. We were talking about we had a thousand bucks as a team to vote on where it went. And I said something very practical, like practice jerseys. We need practice jerseys, guys. We don't got them. And it'll make our game better. We'll become a better team.

And a guy went, we need a goal horn. It's a big horn. And I was like, goalhorn. What a stupid thing. And I got overridden. Maybe I didn't sell it good enough. Who knows? Maybe they just won the cool feel.

And I didn't realize game one, that goal horn goes off. How much of a change that elicited not just in the team, but the fans, everything. The psychology of just having that loud sound. It gave this feel. And so you fast forward. And right now in October, do the Tuesday mashup with the guy. And we mock, we talk about the news headlines in Canada, right? Because there's a lot of stupid stuff going on right now.

It's easy to just talk about it. And we're going to do our first three live shows, three separate nights, three different locations across Saskatchewan, Alberta. And I've been trying to figure out, and I'm going to leave this conversation with this thought as well, is how much do you care what you show up, like in general, how much emphasis should I put on the actual visual of what we're doing versus the content? Because if you walk in and it looks visually pleasing, oh, this is pretty cool. But it sucks, no matter how good the visual pleasing is. I'd rather show up to, you know, you probably have a band you've seen way back when before they ever became big. And I just think I'll go back to Jordan Peterson. I once saw Jordan Peterson in a hotel.

Certainly he was becoming big, but he wasn't huge. He was unpolished. He wasn't in a $5,000 suit. He was in, like, one you could tell he wore it college like every third day, you know. He was unpolished, but he was amazing. amazing. And I'm like, if I could do this show at three nights in a row, that's what I want to be. More so than I need Roger's place with all the glitz and glam and the show is okay. I want the amazing content. So as I sit here and I talk it out, it's almost like I listen to all these

different things. And I'm like, I like, I like putting on a good show where people come and have a great time and it's a ton of fun. But I usually am the facilitator and don't have to worry about being up on stage, which I am up on stage. But I'm feeding the questions and getting you or Alex or whoever. And it's like I find that fascinating to try and pull what you're talking about into what I'm about to try and do because I want that to be successful. No different than when you when you take all these different things and try and pull it into your writing.

Yep. Yeah. Exactly right. You you you and then know when you can push too far when you can't push too far. Like the there's a like there's a. I, from the, I've always, you know, for me it's about craft, right? And sometimes, you know, and I don't always get the craft right, because you write as much as I do, it's like some of it's going to just not be cracked.

But what you're hoping for every time you threw and you write something, that you nail all the beats, you nail all the jokes, you're, nail the timing. Like, to me, like George Carlin used to talk about his stand-up. It was his art, right? And if you think about, you know, the words were his art, the way he, way he manipulated the microphone, the way he to use certain, you know, inflection, pregnant pauses, this, that all of us, it's all important. And so it's the same thing, you know, as a writer, you bring stuff together where you can and then, you know, but you're always constantly looking for another way of making it, you know, taking it that one step further. And it's not just the quality of the

content, but the quality of the thought. It's how you present it. Because the one thing you don't want to be accused of, I think, is you don't want to be accused of being a gatekeeper. You don't want to be incomprehensible to people you don't want to talk over it you know i mean i i do this like i said when the craft fails is when i usually just i'm brain dumping and i'm not actually caring about what the final you know product feels like because the sentences are too long there's too much passive voice it's like it's too convoluted the you know gotty yada yada when you strip it down to it's bare essentials, you get everything right, and you know you're, you're, um, you're hitting all the high points and you're making sure that you explain everything as you go along and you do

it well. Now you're communicating or, you know, it's like Charles Durning from, oh, brother we're art now. We're not one time, we're not one at a time in it here. We're mass communicating, right? Um, he was talking about the radio station. Uh, and, uh, that's, you know, That's the thing you always got to keep that in mind. And you know, you also want to just be entertaining. Like, you know, there's always, no matter how serious the subject matter, somebody can have the piss taken out of it. And even if that person is yourself, which, you know, is something that you have to do on a regular basis. Otherwise, you just become an, you know, unbelievable fucking bore.

Like, you just become a self-important prick. Who the hell wants to listen to that guy? Right. So and by God, I have, you know, I can do, I can do that with the best of them. Let's just put it that way. So, you know, I don't know, Sean. I mean, what was fun, what was, what was weird, I mean, it was weird for me when we were up in Lloyd together and we did the show. And I haven't spoken in front of an audience that big since I ran for public office 20 years ago.

And, you know, it was, it wasn't easy. But I'll tell you what was easy. It was speaking to all the people after the show. Little groups are three to five or seven or whatever. And you feel a little bit like you're holding court because everybody's hanging on your every word. But you're like, no, we're not. I'm just you at a different at a different stage of development or a different stage in my life, not even development. I'm just, that's as, that's as pretentious as a come.

I'm just you at a different stage of my own, my own journey as to the, into the inquisition of what, what the fuck? is going on out there. And I ain't no profit and I ain't no anybody's hero. All I'm trying to do is, you know, figure out the best way to get this stuff across that I've got inside of me towards to you so that you can then figure out a way to do it, you know, where you can tell two friends and you can maybe take some comfort from this and try and figure out what's, what your path is, what, you know, what the path for you is going to be based on now the new information that you have. And that's what we do, right? And that's the essence of communication. I had, remember, we haven't talked about this. I don't think. I don't think we've ever talked about this,

but you did realize that in college, in order to like fulfill, to finish my chemistry degree, I had to take all these elective courses, right? Because I was demanded to do so because, you know, elective courses for a STEM field, like chemistry, are nothing more than welfare for you know, liberal arts professors who need a job. Okay, that's what they are. And, you know, oh, you need to be a, have a well-rounded education. No, really, I need to be studying freaking chemistry and physics and math and do the thing that I need to do. I don't have a problem taking some electives here and there,

but I certainly don't have to freaking 80 credit hours out of 140 in the shit either, right? So I took them all, I took almost all of them in the English department because I wanted to be a writer on the side. and I took no less than six poetry workshops. Okay. At three credits apiece, they were an easy A or B or whatever, but there were a way just to make sure that I got my electives fulfilled. So I studied poetry very seriously at the same time that I was getting my chemistry degree. And there you learn crap.

But I ran into a professor. And I ran into not just a professor, but I ran into an entire source. school of thought that I found abhorrent. And oh, by the way, it maps to their political proclivities, as it were, which is that I fundamentally believe that art exists as a form of communication, right? No matter how insular the art, and even if you take something like Emily Dickinson, who sat up in her attic and wrote poems to herself and with no intention of publishing them. That would be always the counter argument to like, well, art is either communication or

art can also be art for art's sake. It's just art, man. It doesn't communicate anything. I just wrote it. Bullshit. Because why did you write it down? Why did you paint it? Why did you do this?

You did it to get something out of you onto a thing made permanent. And you may refer to it and you're and it for nothing else you will refer to that thing. The later version of you will refer to that thing in the future. You even if you even if your intention was that the art exists only for itself, you're still speaking to it's still communicating to a future version of yourself because that future version of yourself wouldn't have existed without you creating this thing in the present and taking the time and doing the thing, right? So, and I would argue, and I argued, strenuously, as an obstreperous, obnoxious, undergraduate, that art is fundamentally in every way, manner, shape, and form, there is no argument.

There is no argument. Art is there to communicate. There is no art created for its own sake. That's bullshit. That's a dodge. that is frankly that is a plea by bad artists to say i don't want to dare to speak to anybody else who isn't like exactly like me honestly that oh boy did i not get oh boy did that get me into a lot of trouble isn't that um kind of where we sit these days tom honestly when you put it that way

right like you don't dare speak to the to anyone not like you that is that is where we sit today but i mean there's the two camps or maybe there's more than two camps but certainly uh whatever camp you're in you don't really want to talk to the other side like if you you go back to looking in the mirror at yourself but i do i understand oh no i mean that's and the dare to like bridge the gap right but yeah no that is the problem with What they're trying to do is hive us off into echo chambers and say the people who don't talk like you, they're the bad people. Correct. And I'm like, really?

That's fine. The people who say that, they have a particular political set of proclivities that map to, well, ready? Commies. Really, it's just purity spiraling. It's just, it doesn't matter where it comes from. It's just, it's what, you know, it's that, it's, you know, it's what Peterson called ideological possession. It doesn't matter if comes from the left or the right or the center or wherever.

Doesn't matter. Ian McGilchrist calls it calls ideological possession and left brain possession, where the left brain, the logic center, the press secretary for the brain is the one suppressing the right side of the brain, which is doing all the threat assessment and all the synthesis analysis. and it's saying, no, no, wrong, wrong. I'm in charge. I'm in charge. And we have a left brain-dominated society,

and the powers that be were the proto versions of the people were dealing with today. They were the wanted to be gatekeepers as to what was and what wasn't good poetry, as opposed to poetry works for that which speaks to someone else. Okay. And I fundamentally always looked at gatekeepers and went, because who the hell are you? You're just some dude. And, you know, why is your definition of what is and isn't good the only definition? I'm not saying that, you know, we all produced great work when we were undergraduates. And I certainly have plenty of stuff on the cutting room floor that I would never show to the world. Right. But that's not the point. Like, you know, but there isn't an objective standard of goodness in art. Okay? There is a subjective standard always.

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder or however you want to put it. And there is no objective standard for this. There is only, you know, the way I like to look at it. And I've always looked at it this way, is to say, look, what is the, what is the, thing trying to accomplish. What's the musician trying to accomplish? What's the filmmaker trying to accomplish? What's the writer trying to accomplish? What's the podcaster trying to accomplish? You judge the work based on its own set of aspirations. And if their aspirations are, I want to entertain people for an hour and a half and I get a fast and

furious movie, I don't, or in their case now two and a half freaking hours, which is insane. Okay, fine. I don't judge them harsh. Actually, I judge them on the merits of whether or not they succeeded at what their goal was. I don't stand there from on high and go, yeah, they're just shit. I love those movies. Well, when they're good, when they achieve the thing that they were trying to achieve. Yeah, if you go into a Fast and the Furious movie expecting Inception, you're in. If I go into a Christopher Nolan movie and I'm expecting the Dark Night and I get Inception.

Oh, by the way. Oh, you did? You were not a fan of Inception. And an inception is an inception is an inception a couple of reasons and part of it I want I think it's a first draft Like from a screenplay perspective. I think I think it's still first draft two it's Christopher Nolan trying to do Philip K. Dick It's literally ubeck one of those movies that I talked about earlier that it's it's one of those films trying to do ubeck and and I applaud Nolan's ambition with Insection. I do I applaud him when he fails.

I think Inception fails. Interesting. And again, I don't hate him for it. But, you know, I love the, I love the, I love the, I love the main idea of it. I think, at least for me,

that you can take one idea, stick it in Tom's brain, and it could drive you mad because you can't get rid of the thought. It's like it's, it's inception. The idea is brilliant. Because once you see something across whatever it is that you've never seen before and it gets lodged in your brain, you're like, why won't this little thing leave me alone? Like, that's brilliant.

During my life, Sean, I'm not arguing with you. I think that Nolan's intention was incredibly noble. I like what he was trying to do with Inception. I just don't think he succeeded on. their own terms. I think the movie is too cold. I think it needed. I think the screenplay needed another draft.

That's all. Like, it's so close to being great. But when you dare that high, in my mind, when you dare that high at that level, understanding, again, understanding what his ambition is. I applaud this about Nolan.

He goes, he goes places he shouldn't, you know, he dares big. Most people would never dare to go. Right. Most people wouldn't dare to go half as far as he goes. I,

Fair. Doesn't mean he always succeeds. That's all. So what? And I just think Inception is one of those. And maybe it's my bias because he's trying to, he's taking on Philip Kinnick. Look, dude, I was so, I was so angry at him over Inception that I refused to watch intercellar for like seven years.

No shit. I downloaded up the pirate bay and it sat on my hard drive. for four years without watching it. And then I finally went ahead. Camille and I went through and we did a weekend and we did like four Nolan movies in a weekend. And I finally sat down and watched it. And you know why?

I'm like, after he fucked up Philip K. Dick so bad, I am not going to sit here and have himself importantly tell me he's the next Stanley Cooper. And I'm like, you're not as good. In my mind, it was at that moment it was you're not as good as you think you are. I applaud your, I applaud your dare. Bring it back. Bring it back a notch and make a great movie. So, but Interstellar, I do think is a great movie.

And I had every bias imaginable against it. But actually back then, too, I had real worries. This is what I said earlier. How I learned to stop worrying and trust Christopher Nolan. Was back then, I really did think he was a bit of a shitlet. Like, I thought all, every time he kept like, like, these movies, kept coming up over and over again, clean, cheap energy. It's all through the Batman movies.

And I kept, that kept worrying me. And I don't like Memento either. I despise Memento. I hate that movie. I really do. Yeah. I love the prestige for example. Out of all of his movies, I'd agree with you on Memento.

It's like one of those movies when I was done it, I'm like, I will never watch this again. And it wasn't that I hated it. It's just like out of that movie. Because I think of all the movies we're rattling off right now. I'm like, man, I've watched a lot of Christopher Nolan. Sure. His ability to pull together multiple things because just being a good director doesn't make you a great filmmaker, right?

No. It's the same thing I was telling Brett Kistel. Being a good, having a good voice in country music doesn't make you a superstar. Heck, looking apart, those two things don't make you a superstar. What makes you a superstar is there's a whole bunch of things you have to pull together and get right. And if you get that secret sauce, man, you're off to the moon. look again i i i'm happy to go through like i don't think all of kubrick's films are great either but i happen to think almost all of them are now i'm that i'm mostly talking about his earlier films

like everything from everything from alida forward is is is singular and what they do but um and uh but with nolan you know like i get it like my biggest problem with memento is i just felt i was being emotionally manipulated for no reason when the best when he it was an art school project I'm going to take a simple film and I'm going to cut it up and I'm going to tell it backwards when the story actually I think would have been better served to just tell it in real time in forward and so that I don't want to be like he's a mass murderer and I think actually just telling us and watching the horror show would have been better and you would have understood what the hell was going on well I know I knew when he got there and I'm like oh god

This is just, this just felt like such manipulative art school stuff. This is, and maybe it's just like, I look at it. I go, yeah, this is something I would have thought when I was cool when I was 22. And I, like, no, this story really probably, I, again, my personal opinion on this. You can, and I know there are film school geeks or will tell me that I'm wrong. Fine. I don't care. Yeah, but that's, that's a lovely thing about films for the most part, you know, I think of,

I always put hockey back into this, this realm as well. music, right? We can argue about who the best is. It's like it's so inconsequential. It's momento. Like, I mean, half the people listen to this, maybe they've watched it, maybe they haven't, and I'm not directing them to go like, hey, drop what you're doing and go watch a momento. If you've seen it, then you get to enter the conversation and have your thoughts. And if you haven't, you just whatever. And you can yell and argue about things in this world with honestly very little consequence to anything. But these stories do depict what is going on in society. And one of the things

that, you know, you wish, you wish you could have more of is what we're doing here talking about something that I deem inconsequential. We're not talking about. None of this is inconsequential. I think stories are the, I think stories are the key to understanding how society is, um, all I mean, all I mean, I agree with you, Tom. All I mean is that, you know, watching Momento or Inception or any of these books, reading Lord of the Rings, whatever. on general, us arguing about it, isn't us pushing the nuclear bomb button down. Oh, absolutely. Isn't this fight going on with gender and everything else in the school systems?

This is as far from that. And yet, the stories can help impact your way of thinking, how you deal with people, how you can see how the world's acting. You're like, oh, this is kind of, oh, this is kind of what Tom was talking about, right? Like, this is what's playing out. So it can help your understanding. And by helping your understanding, maybe you can find a way to talk to you. to people that I'm not sitting here saying, wanna throw you off a bridge,

but at the same time, have some dialogue with something. Because I mean like once upon a time, I used to be able to have dialogue about politics all the time. It was easy. And somewhere along the lines, I've either put too much importance on it, or maybe we all do, or maybe they want us to, I don't know.

I'm actually trying to figure that out because like, if you vote liberal at this point, I don't know why I have to think you're an idiot. I'm just like, what are you seeing that I I'm not because I would I would like to know can we talk about that or we're not allowed to talk about that because I really want to talk about it and one of the things bringing it back with sports and music and movies and games people somehow just put value on that like it is inconsequential is a guess what I was trying to say and one of the things by bringing you on to talk about it is like I didn't realize the hidden importance and a bunch of it well stories are the means by which One generation explains to the next generation what they went through in the hope that the next generation will figure out a new solution to the problem because they're the version. We solved this problem this way. These are your circumstances.

How are you going to solve it? Oh, by the way, this is what we did. And all and in this respect, the stories are the things that we tell ourselves. and there are a written history of humanity. Again, I wasn't trying to denigrate the Bible earlier when I said that the Bible isn't textually true. It is both textually and metaphorically true. Like, there's plenty of evidence that there was a flood.

There's plenty of evidence of, you know, of various things. The stories as they were presented in the modern version of the Bible are not what actually happened. They aren't a literal history of these people's lives. They are a version of that that we have translated and taken with us

through time to help us today, you know, with what's going to happen in the future. All stories are true. And no story is true at the same time. This is the important thing to understand. Okay?

Not one story is true. Not one. You can tell a story about what happened at dinner last night. Not true. It's your version of what happened. It's part of what happened. It's not totality. And yet, from the events of what happened at dinner last night,

either there was an argument or whatever happened, if there was any significance to that, That is true. And that's what we'll go forward. We tell stories as examples of how we dealt with problems in the past. So when Jesus says, I am the truth. I am the way. I am the life.

You go, hmm, maybe not. No, it's not even about maybe not, maybe not. That's not important. It's what is his sacrifice? What is his storytelling? his story is what's important. Like the text of the version of the story that we got and what that means. And what society does when confronted with the perfect man.

What did we do? We killed him. We killed him. We killed him. Right. Moreover, we also learned a lot of other things about this as well. Again, there's layers and layers and layers to that story. There's the idea of, I mean, I think we're two hours and ten minutes.

I don't know how much longer you want to go into this. But I mean, you know, and I'm not really the person to talk to about this stuff. I just know enough about this to like put the seed out there. Then there's like, I think it's Gerard talked about, wrote the book called The Scapegoat, where the where the story of Christ broke the old model of how we dealt with bad things that cropped up in society. Previously, we would take a, we would take a victim and we would, we were, and the bad things that were happening, and we didn't know how to deal with it, as opposed to taking the violence out on each other, we created a scapegoat and we poured

all of our violence into that, and we slaughtered it, and we sacrificed it. And then we were able to get it out of our system and move on, right? This is at least what my understanding is, understanding what Doreau was talking about in the book. The story of Christ was to tell the story not from our perspective, but from the scapegoats perspective. Now all of a sudden, we're looking at things completely differently. Now we're looking at it from the perspective of that's what we're doing. And that changes the model. That changes the way we perceive reality and our own behavior. That's just one. other lesson. That's just one version of the lesson, written by, you know, a pretentious French guy, right?

So, like, again, it's, it, we can argue, like, we can sit here and argue about inception, you know, you're coming out of specifically from the perspective of what it, like, it sparked an idea in your head, literally, which is what the movie's talking about. That was like revolutionary to you. But I could go read any one of the things you. of law, anyone, right? Right. And not have the same experience that Tom's having folks. Of course.

Because different stages of life, different experiences, different country, different, just different. And for me, Harry Potter, obviously, obviously for a huge part of the world, that book elicited the right, you know, it was well done because of how many copies and everything. It was the right story at the right moment at the right time. Boom, boom, boom. But, you know, how many kids were grade four and started reading it? And Harry Potter was not great for it. But you know, you kind of get the thing. And when I go back and read the first one, I'm like, man, this is real kiddish book.

Just is. Yeah, I actually love, I read them. I read them late. I read them in my 30s. I was reading actually, I was reading Harry, I was reading the first Harry Potter book on a Sunday afternoon. I actually wrote about this on Sunday afternoon in the bedroom, depressed because Camille and I couldn't get pregnant. And I'm reading that first book. And I'm reading it.

I'm enjoying it and I'm reading it as a writer. I'm really liked her craft. Because it's, it's, her craft is excellent. Especially in the first three books, I just find her craft is amazing. They're clear, well written. They're really well written. I'm amazed at the craft. And that was the day, I was about two thirds of the way through the first book.

And Camille comes in with a huge smile on her face. in a glass of whiskey in one hand, a glass in one hand and a bottle of whiskey and the other because we were having fertility issues and it was my fertility. That was the problem. So I had been sworn off of alcohol and everything else in order to try and, you know, and she comes in with the big smile and the glass of whiskey, the glass and the whiskey bottle, the 12-year McAllen I had up in the cabinet that I was been sworn off. And not three or four days earlier had she not, had she not, you know, had Aunt Flood? out of showed up. So we're like, oh, well, there's another month gone. And I just looked at it and I went, but, but, but how?

That classic sense of, but how it's just like, you know how. I'm like, no, but the thing just happened. And that's not so, and that happens everyone. So well, I'm like, well, good. Excellent. And then my day was made. But for me, Harry Potter is like with, you know, right there with my daughter. Right. So I mean, And right there, this is, A, that's a wonderful story. Two, you're cementing home my point, is I'm going to pick up, you know, because, oh, a book for me that when I read it, I was like, man, that was something. Uncle Bob is a relative of ours who's traveled, I forget what it is. It's like a hundred and, I don't know, 150 countries.

It doesn't matter. It's a lot. all through the late 60s, early 70s, if memory serves me right. And so I was sitting there and this sticks out to me. Little things just stick out, right? We've been talking about this on and off. This is why Inception does stick out to me because it isn't this big idea. It's the little ones.

The little ones get lodged in your brain and you're like, what the fuck is that about? And I asked him what was wrong. So I was a younger man at this point in time. I don't know if I had had a kid yet. I can't remember if I assume it's when Trudeau first got elected. so about eight years ago, so I'm late 20s, Shea would have been just born, that sounds about right. And I go, what's wrong with politicians these days?

And his answer was, lack of vision. I went, interesting answer. I didn't quite understand it, but I was like, interesting answer. It's obviously here I sit years later, and I still think about it all the bloody time. You know, it's like, huh. And so I got to interview him and his brother, in the middle of COVID and I asked him what his favorite book was and he said it was

Zorba the Greek and I read Zorba and set in a different time different place over in Greece and you know but Zorba says and does things in that book that are just generationally makes sense to me and so little ideas different people looking at different things can pull and then you have the conversation like we're having today and all of a sudden you can start to piece these things together and actually as we've been sitting here Tom I'm like this is why I like the way your brain works is because my brain doesn't work the same and if we sit across and talk about something that is not con like we're not getting in hot water

here I just I don't see how me and Tom get into hot water somebody's gonna be upset about something but over all day to day it hasn't really blown up anything. I'm not saying we're both Bolton Donald Trump or Biden's a day and certainly there's been some things that I'm sure people will say or here in Canada I'm not voting Pierre or Justin but by having these conversations I think you said it when Alex and you were in studio you get to work on things and we all have a little piece of the puzzle at least that's the way my brain's thinking about it right now with these little tiny ideas where we've read different

things or seen different things and we've all pulled our parts out if we put them back together all sudden we can start piecing this thing. together. I'm not saying that's a solution for the world. I'm just saying there is no solution for the world. It's ongoing and it's going to go. It's a solution for you and a solution for you and a solution for you and a solution for me and a solution for your community and solution for my community and a solution for Alex's and everybody else is listening. That's that's ultimate the best we can do. There's no grandiosity here. Like, you know, the bigger your audience, all you're doing is trying to, you're trying to reach more people with the idea with those ideas, with those

little ideas, right? Again. Well, it's the little things. It's the little ideas. They carried the weight. Yeah, exactly. Which is, you know, why I was, when I, we sat down to do this this morning, I'm like, if we start, if I start getting into the weeds on what I think is going on within the Star Wars creation myth and I start getting into gender roles and all this other stuff, like, you know, this is going to get really geeky really quick. And I'm glad we didn't there but um not because not for any other reason but because i could have easily gotten into talking about you know stuff vis-a-vis what's you know exists within the whole of star wars

can and if you haven't watched any of it i'm going to start referencing you know episodes of clone wars or rebels or whatever and you're like i don't like i don't like this shit but i've watched it all right and i've analyzed it all like and i can because i just find this stuff fascinating and i and I like it enough, especially the good stuff, I like it enough that I rewatch it. Like, you know, who watches the Clone Wars all of all seven seasons four times? It's a lot of goddamn animation, right? But I've done it.

And every time I watch it, I learn more about just how big the story really is and what the story really about, what they were really trying to do. And like, oh, and how much that, how that makes the prequel films better. and it also highlights you know the bad story choices that Lucas made in terms of how he laid out those prequel films because he wound up

not actually telling the story he wound up telling snippets that weren't the story they weren't the most important parts sadly because they got left on the cutting room floor and and that was

and that's the part for me that is actually quite you know that's actually a real stain on on on on the on the on the on the legacy of the whole thing but when you again when you go back through it all you know you know I was this way you were talking earlier like you've got kids that are in the eight or nine range like there's a series of books that I've read recently and I kind of came to this conclusion a long time ago by the way when I read the hunger games which by the way I rave about like they're um it's not just the story with the story is important as again, always a critic, right? A producer and a critic at the same time. When I, as a, as another writer, when a writer does accomplish is something that I'm like, that I, you know, that accomplished something brilliant.

This is I go, wow. There is not a, there's not a bit of envy in my voice when I say this. This is nothing but respect and holy shit you pulled this off, which is that the Hunger Games are written in first person. present tense, which is impossible to write it. Well, you're, what you're saying is I don't, I don't look at books that way because I don't write or I'm not a right. I look, but I look at, but in fairness, Tom, when I went to Brett Kistle and watched

the show, I put on shows and I see how he pulls people, you know, you got a city of Lloyd. That doesn't like getting up and dancing. I'm not, I'm being very general here. Overall, it's a sit and kind of watch and spectate. And then, you know, there's some. dancing but it isn't like a mosh pick type crowd right and what Brett Kissel did that night is it's just I've been talking I sound like a fan boy because I'm just like I put on a crap where I want 200 people a thousand people

to show up and listen to two to three people talk and be engaged for two hours roughly and to me that was foreign before I started doing it and then I realized oh changed like a couple things here And all of a sudden it pulls them in further, not farther away. It pulls them in. And watching somebody be able to pull people in over and over again, especially in country music. There's nothing against country music.

It's awesome. But like ups and downs and peaks and valleys and people are leaving the dance floor and going back in. Like I was just at another show. And I was watching how many people flocked out for one song and then how many left. And then how many flocked out? And one of the things Brett Kistel did is he kept them all out for like an hour and a half straight. Like having a party of their life from like 19 year old to, like 50 year old and they were all into it.

I was like, this is, this is fascinating. Impressive. Right? Like I, and that comes from me putting on shows where I want to do something very similar without the entertainment value of music. It's more of what we're doing right here. I want people to be in the discussion and sit in the room and feel it. Because when you feel it, it's like, man, that is something else.

You can't put words to it and then you sit and talk like a little fanboy for, 10 days after because you're like, I just, there's something there that I got to get to the bottom of so that I can implement it next. Yep. Well, the ultimate thing is authenticity. As long as you're authentic about this stuff, you'll get there. I said this from when we were in when we were in studio and I said, you know, what you, you know, you wanted to, you wanted to make Alex and I the talent and I just turned it around on you. I said, no, actually. Um, talents on both sides. to the microphone. And, but my point about

the Hunger Games was, was that while I was reading them and after I was like completely flabbergasted the fact that Suzanne Collins held first person present tense for three freaking books, I realize that young adult fiction is the most powerful form of fiction. It's the most important

fiction because it's the, it's, it speaks to an audience, Harry Potter, Star Wars, like it speaks to an audience ripe for, the transformative change that's going to define who they are as people. The books we read as teenagers, the music we listen to, the stories we ingest, the people we meet, they are form, you know, they're formative.

That's why they're formative years. They are your formative years. And therefore, as a writer or as an artist working in that and whatever medium you're working in, if you dare into that space, okay, you're not writing for, you're not writing for an adult audience. You're not writing for, you're not writing children's books. And you walk into the, into that space. You have an overwhelming responsibility. Because if you do it wrong, you can do a lot of damage. But at the same time, if you do it wrong, it just winds up on the cutting room floor. No one reads it and it doesn't

create any. It winds up on the societal cutting room floor. So you know why Star Wars is important? It's because it inspired an entire generation, not just to be captains of industry or to be writers or whatever. Billemakers, artists, animators, editors, sound designers, the whole industry that we, you know, everything. That we know all came and was transformed off. And that entire, my generation owes a debt to George Lucas.

That is that is unrepayable. And I think right now and I go, Jordan Peterson is doing that for a whole bunch of people. I think he is as well. Yeah. You can love or hate him. You can love or hate how he does everything or some things. But at the end of the day, you know, this podcast, in the simple sense that- And Peterson may have already, and here's another point.

Lucas walked off the stage, really, with Return of the Jedi. He came back 20 years later to make the fan of menace, the attack of the clones and revenge of the Sith. And we found out that really in the end of the day, he wasn't really a very good filmmaker because he's not. but at his best and at his height when he was inspired to do unbelievable work because he had a purpose and a vision that transcended him really he did his best work and Peterson today is not the Jordan Peterson of 2016 I'm not saying I'm not taking what I'm saying is we don't even have to appreciate what he is a could do next or what he he's currently doing because it doesn't matter. Peter Jackson created The Lord of the Rings films. He hasn't made a good movie since. Bob,

it doesn't are any good. What you're talking about is the ripple effect of what they became and how it just, like, what I was going to say is this. I mean, what I'm saying is that artists have their moments. And sometimes they only have one good, like they might only have one hit wonders. They only have one good song. They may only have one good album. They only only have one good movie in them.

They may only have one great, great book in them or whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make them failures. it makes them successes in that moment in time, and then they move on to the next thing. It's been said about Frank Herbert many times. Herbert wrote one great book. Then he kept trying to rewrite it over and over and over again.

Not much else on Frank Herbert's canon is worth reading. I've read a lot of it. It's not that good. But Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, brilliant. God awful of Dune? I mean, God Emperor of Dune. I call it God. It is literally God awful.

It's 800 pages. It could have been 150. It's terrible. It doesn't matter. The ideas and, yeah, fine, but you actually make me slog through the 800 pages of the fucking thing, though. Absolutely. I did that. And God awful is so bad that it actually saps all your enthusiasm for reading the later books were actually heritage and chapter house, which aren't actually as bad.

But by then I just thought I can't do any more concurrent. Like, I mean, like, so I don't care. You don't have to create more than one great thing in your life. if that great thing is so great that inspires a generation or multiple generations. Well, I just go back to Jordan Peterson. Without Jordan Peterson, there's no podcast, right? It's a series of events from Jordan Peterson that lead exactly the podcast. To where we are today.

And to where we're sitting today. Literally, if there's no Jordan Peterson, I'm not saying it never happens, but because of him, a book club forms, because of the book club forming, podcast happens like simultaneously, almost like three months after. And then, and then, and then. And it just goes on and on and on. And it's one of those moments where you're like, I got to see part of Jordan Peterson's origin story,

which his origin story was not one thing. It was a series of years where he went around and spoke out against everything. He's still doing it. And he's still doing a lot of great things. But you go back and watch his early work. This is what Tom is talking about, I think, with a bunch of these different directors.

Some of their stuff when they were in it, knew exactly who they're supposed to be, where it's supposed to be going, everything. Boom. This amazing thing happens and you're like, what is this? And I got to see it. Yeah. No, I agree.

I mean, dude, I was there at the start of, without Lou Rockwell, there is no time a long ago. That's simple. Because without Lou Rockwell.com, I don't get out of the funk that I'm in my early 30s. I don't get an intellectual and I don't get a training and a focus for the things I think I know about how the world operates, that allows me to become the guy inspired enough

to want you start writing in such a way that I could write something that Lou, I would think that Lou would consider publishing. That to me was the birth of who I am. It took me 10 years to then become right. How young, how young were you when you, when you found Lou? I was 30 was it'll be 2001 so 33 interesting I just uh you know I was obviously 36 when I 35 when I quit my full-time job but I would have been 32 when I started podcasting it's it'll be five years here. And it's the year 30s are an interesting whole other probably four hours of conversation there. But I do find that fascinating how many of us in our 30s start to wake up in your life. This ain't working. Ain't working dude. Like I I for me it wasn't working.

Like and I don't know what was working. But again, I spent a lot of time in training. And then I spent a lot of time and I still spend a lot. And then I spend another 10 years in training. Like, you know, I'm like, yeah, I get to talk about all this stuff. I get to recycle all this stuff that I've been talking about for the last 40 years. Like, it's all I'm doing. Well, not all of it, but, you know, it gets, it updates and gets better and, and morphs and changes. But, you know, don't, don't for a moment take this conversation to believe that I'm that much better read than I already at. that I've already presented to you.

Because I'm not. Okay. I have gone through most of the litany of what I, you know, I know. Am I, well, not all of it. Because I also study, you know, high energy physics and quantum mechanics and all this other stuff as well. Like, I know that stuff and I know metallurgy. And, you know, there's like, and you just pull from all these different sources and from these things. But as I've gotten older, I'm like, I'm not, you know.

Am I reading a lot of new stuff? Am I listening to a lot of new music? Not really. You looked at my drumming playlists that I did this morning before I sat down to do this podcast. There's nothing really anything new in there, folks. Like, you know, I'm still trying to figure out how to play Sledgehammer because the man who cacci was fucking amazing, right? So, yeah, we can have that conversation. But, you know, what's important ultimately is, you know, you, you, you,

you just keep presenting the best material, you know, if you're going to, I always said, if you're going to, I spend the time to ingest a book or a movie or whatever, you should learn, you should understand it, you should want to care about it. Like, I'm very, I'm really very picky about what it is that I read and what it is that I, that I watch. Why? Because I don't have a lot of time. So when I was a kid and when I was a young man, I didn't just follow, oh, that new movie's coming out that looks cool i'm like no i like that guy's work who was that guy who made that movie i like that guy's work and i like again he worked with this producer and he worked with that screenwriter but i didn't like this movie that they made and who was a screenwriter that was oh that's

why or you know whatever and like and then you start to like map the people who's work you're like you really are impressed by and then you go oh that's why and then you find three And all you're doing is looking for, hey, what's the next great thing I haven't found yet? Well, that's a fun. That's a fun journey to take because like, you know, I think of when I first read The Hobbit. Brothers gave me the home. Oh, you want a book to read? Okay, read The Hobbit.

I got to the end of that. And I was like, that was phenomenal. Yeah. Please tell me there's more. And they're like, well, actually, there's this thing called Lord of the Rings and it falls. And I'm like, oh, my God, yes. And then I lost however much of my life to read. that book. I remember going on vacation and people are trying to talk to you and I'm just like,

I want to be the guy in the bedroom and never come out just so I can finish reading this book. And when you get over, you know, I was just playing, my son plays the switch, not very, like once a week, but we play it together. We got this game called Zelda, which I'm sure lots of people know, and Zelda's phenomenal. And I grew up playing in as a kid. And at the end of it, when we defeat the big guy. He had tears in his eyes. And I'm like, it's matter, buddy. We just wrapped it. He's like, I know, and it's over.

He's like, I'm so happy. We could beat it, but it's over. And I'm like, wow, isn't that like, uh, well, for me, an amazing moment to share with my son because I know that feeling off of finishing the Lord of the Rings where it's just, it's just over. And you want the story to keep going. And you just got to find new ones. There's great books out there all over the place. And of course, in the world of Zelda, they just, brought out a new Zelda. So there's another Zelda, right? Right. But being a young kid and having, you know, something so phenomenal for such a long period of time, because I think it took us

like two years or something to finally wrap that game. Right. And it's come to an end and to see him like teary-eyed and everything else. I'm like, this is, my wife's like, you guys are ridiculous. I'm like, this is awesome. This is like, this is the greatest thing ever. So for me, I had a moment with Star Wars with my daughter. We had watched the Phantom Menace once because, you know, when she was like eight or nine and she liked it as well enough, but she didn't have no desire to watch it again. Maybe she

watched it the second time. But this was, she was at that age where she was watching the Pixar movies. I've seen Wally 40 freaking times. I've seen, you know, I've seen Finding Nemo, I can't tell you how many times. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this was during a time when

we were a really struggling. And, or no, actually, no, I was still working. I was still working for Newsmax at that point, but my wife was gone for the morning. I think she was at the farmer's market, but Sopee was sick. And I stayed home and Camille went to the farmer's market to sell goat cheese and goat milk and all that stuff. And she was home sick. And she was nine or ten.

I think she was ten. And so that'd be what? 2016, 2015, 2016, somewhere right there. And I'm like, okay, what are we going to do? I sat her down and said, I know what we're going to do this morning, Sophie. I'm not going to just, you know, like, I'm not going to just take care of you, you know, make sure you're fed. And did you, you know, here, drink your, drink your emergency, do this, do that, you know, do that. So, come here.

Sat down, lay down on the couch, put Star Wars in. Lay her down on my chest while she, and then we watched Star Wars together. Wrap the tension for two hours. I said, how do you feel? She's like, we got, the movie got finished. And I got up. And she like, put her down. And she just looked at it and he said, can I watch that again?

I'm like, well, yeah, of course. Like, why would you not be able to watch it again? I was just the weirdest moment. Like, of course. Proud pop. I like, oh, really? You want to watch Star Wars again? Click five times that day.

She spent the entire day watching Star Wars recuperating from a cold. I'm like, up. Runs of the family. Parenting win. That was it. And fast forward, I guess it was earlier that year. It must have been 2015 because then I took her to see episode 7. And we watched all the movies.

Then we watched them all. She watched Empire and Jedi. But she's watched Star Wars a lot. She likes Empire. She's watched Jedi once. She's watched all the other movies other than 7, 8, and 9 once. And I took her to see episode 7. now little did dad know that the reason that her daughter that his daughter liked

Star Wars so much is because he was absolutely in love with Hans Sala the man's man so we go to episode seven and I'm sitting in the seat Camille's to my right and so he's to my left we get to the scene and towards the end of episode seven when you know the bad stuff happens when you know when Kyle Renn kills his you know commits frogricide And I'm like, I'm just, I already knew, I already knew, I had already been spoils. I knew it was watching it. I was both watching myself, watching the movie. When I watched a Star Wars movie, I can't, I don't even trust my first instinct anymore.

I just watch myself watching the movie, right? And then I have to sit down second or third time through. That's when I really kind of ingest it and allow it to, to get out. So I'm watching, you know, I'm criticizing it with my left brain while I watch the movie. And then at some point, Camille just check on your daughter. And she's like, horrified. And I had to stop, get out of my mode and comfort my daughter because her hero had just been slaughtered. Do you know that for the next two or three years and we sat down to watch the Force Awakens that she would run out of the room when that scene came on?

There's only like recently that we watched it again recently. It was on in the house. I was watching it. And she would sit down and come downstairs and sit and watch it. she didn't like cover her eyes or leave the room or whatever like really like huh okay this is a big deal it's kind of cool um it had a huge effect on her and uh but i'll be honest with you i i took her to all three of the films we've talked about them those films speak to her generation much more of those doesn't they speak to mine or they speak to the millennials who grew up with the prequel films.

Star Wars transcends generations now. And the generations of filmmakers that are making them now, you know, they're being made for each individual. You know, again, it gets down to young adult fiction is the most powerful form of fiction. And because of that, it's where you get the opportunity to tell and you have the burden of telling great stories. So on that final note, for you, I discovered a book series that I think is unbelievably outstanding. I don't know that it's Lord of the Rings quality or anything, but it's worth it for your kids that are the bright age. The Green Ember books by S.D. Smith, if you have not read them, without a doubt, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, they are phenomenal. And I picked them up on a lark on Amazon.

on, you know, I had, I, Kendall Unlimited at the time and I was reading them. Holy shit are these books good. And there. I tell you what, I've got it on the list with six other things, but since it's for kids and everything, I'm like, okay. Yeah, no, the green number books start there with for your kids, because they're age appropriate at the age that your kids are reading it. I have the audio books and, you know, I even got the audio books and, you know, when he did the, because he kickstaters, he does a Kickstarter whenever you, without another book. in the series or another whatever. And so I got the whole thing.

And we've listened to them in the car. And my daughter's read, my daughter's read them and she adores them. They're really, really good. Well, I appreciate Tom, you coming on and doing this.

You know, when we were joking around back and forth. I mean, at this point, we could probably do five hours on pop culture and everything else. You can tell we're both, I'm like supremely interested in it.

I enjoy how your brain works and how you look at different things. Because like I just said, it's a little different to me. and I enjoy putting those pieces together and seeing way different minds work. Either way, I'll let you out of here. I appreciate you coming on and doing this.

And certainly, Miu and Alex are going to have another sit down here in the near future. But this was a cool one to do. And, you know, I was getting harassed about some of the things I've been having on the podcast lately. I'm like, oh, I'm literally going to sit down and talk Star Wars coming up. Are you going to get mad about that too? Anyways, I don't know.

Maybe they will. Who knows? Who cares? Doesn't matter. Thanks, Tom. Thank you, Sean. You have a great one. We'll talk soon.

You bet. He won't.