The Daily Zeitgeist - I'm Mr. Zeitside 1/15: Rocky Johnson, Snowpiercer, Aaron Hernandez, Dolittle

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

On this edition of Mr. Zeitside Jack and Miles discuss the passing of wrestling legend Rocky Johnson, the new Snowpiercer TV show, the Aaron Hernandez Docuseries on Netflix, and Dolittle is bad. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest, because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the podcast from Hello Sunshine that's guaranteed to light up your day.

Check out our recent episode with Grammy Award winning rapper, Eve, on motherhood and the music industry. No, it's a great, amazing, beautiful thing. There's moms in all industries, very high stress industries that have kids all across this world. Why can't it be music as well? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country

into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere starting September 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this very special edition of I'm Mr. Sight Side. You almost said Bright Side. I did. I really can't do this. It's too much for my brain. We got it, though.

We're just right at the buzzer. My name's Jack O'Brien. That is my own. Ray. Also, shout out to Mike Nichols. He told me about the last decade he did for the last show. Just noticing that. Sorry about that.

A lot going on in our brains. It's tough putting the whole zeitgeist through our minds. Yeah. But we do it. We do it. Is that the director of The Graduate? Mike Nichols? Yeah. I don't know is it i'm not good with directors that aren't michael bay passed a number of years ago so it's probably not probably not but if you are uh tweet at us let us know if that's you from

beyond the grave all right we're looking at what's trending right now uh and first of all, RIP to Rocky Johnson. Yes. The Rock's father. I, man, I, I, this one stings.

Yeah. Because I was obsessed with the Rock as a child. Right. Obsessed because he was, after Tiger Woods, I tried doing golf because he was Blasian and then knowing the Rock's Asian Pacific Islander and black background.

Okay, this is my next guy. This is my new, that's me. That's me being represented. And I read his book, If You Smell It, The Rock Is Cookin', his biography, first book. Yes. And he talks a lot about his dad.

And at the time, I didn't realize that he came from a tradition of wrestlers. And his dad, Rocky, another thing I did not realize, born in Nova Scotia. Oh. Shout out to Nova Scotia. Yeah. But yeah, he passed away. Did you read that, by the way, in high school literature class or just like no i read that shit in eighth grade

okay i think is when it came out and then i had my eighth grade diploma changed so my middle name would be rocky no i swear to god my eighth grade diploma says miles rocky gray on hell yeah because i was like i'm rocky maivia i'm rocky johnson i'm the rock i'm the everything it'd be amazing if that like caused problems for you like with documents yeah in a way i mean my mom like when i told my mom i was she was like really and i'm like yeah i think it's cool that's what i want and she's like okay it's weird i i don't know why but that's it touched me uh and he's a you know hall of fame wrestler and one of the first uh you know part of one of the first black tag team uh team black tag teams uh in wwf at the time so you know uh death of a

great yeah legend snow piercer is trending uh and i was wondering if that's because uh the director of parasite directed that and people are just figuring that out. As producer Anna Hosnier did this afternoon. Moments ago. Moments. Mere moments ago. That's why she's not here. She had to go recover in the dark room.

Mere moments ago. But it's actually Snowpiercer is getting a TNT premiere date after a wild fiveyear journey to becoming a TV show, which I find very intriguing. What is the show? Is it basically going to be this? Obviously, it has to be this film as a TV show. It's one of those movies that feels like it created a world that could so easily, that felt like we just got a little pinprick into like what right all the different

things that that movie like do you start it like do they get on the snowpiercer train like at the end of season one right like you know do we see the road to that train yeah and even the train and like having a world that is all contained inside a train is like such an interesting idea where each car is a new episode could be one way to do it. But yeah, Snowpiercer is getting a TV show adaptation. I am intrigued. Have they made a Snowpiercer video game? No.

Because when it came out, people were like, oh, this is dope, and it's also basically very inspired by video games. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the last time there was a video game based on a movie that was like not an absolute disaster. Video game based on a movie. Was Ghostbusters good?

No. Wasn't? You mean on Nintendo? The Nintendo one? No, no. I mean like the one, I remember one came out like not that long ago and it wasn't good. I'm trying to think. There was that one Matrix game that I used GameShark for so I could have unlimited bullet

time. But then I was like, what am I doing? I'm just playing a game in slow motion. Right. I don't know. There was Super Mario World based on, for 64, that was based on that John Leguizamo movie. That was one of my faves.

Who was, he was Luigi? And then Bob Hoskins was Mario? Bob Hoskins was Mario. Isn't Bob Hoskins Mario, right? That is amazing. And then, what's her face? Samantha Mathis? Is that who was Princess Peach? Yeah yeah and then what's his face Dennis

Hopper is Koopa that is wild I guess Bob Hoskins was getting like the big checks in the 80s right in that movie have like the weird 9-11 thing happening in it too yeah I forget what was the 9-11 there's like some Twin Towers oh 9-11 just happened in the movie? No, there is like a weird 9-11 thing. Mario Brothers 9-11. Yeah, I mean. Oh, it foretold the 9-11. How so? Towards the end of the film, the two dimensions collide.

The filmmakers show these worlds colliding by having the actors and various structures dissolve into the opposite dimension from where they are. Show these worlds colliding by having the actors and various structures dissolve into the opposite dimension from where they are. And then in this one, you see like the Twin Towers just vanish. Oh. I mean, I don't know. They didn't foretell, obviously. Right. Yeah. But whatever.

Yeah. I think there's something to artists like feeling the vibrations of. I don't know. of, I don't know, I think the Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, foretold 9-11 in a way that people, they just had a sense of something that was coming and things dissolving and falling down. Okay. Yeah. Wow, I didn't think about that.

I mean, it came out after 9-11, but it was recorded in 2000, so it was right up against it. And what are those buildings in the cover? Those are in- are dual structures. Yeah. There's two dual structures in Chicago. Uh, but there's just a lot of like imagery in the lyrics that are about that.

And they just song poor places. That is, uh, I don't know where it really brings it home. Uh, let's talk about Aaron Hernandez is trending, uh, because the Netflix documentary, uh,andez is trending uh because the netflix documentary

uh that is i think the docu-series docu-series right and it seems like it's like a it's becoming a big netflix uh phenomenon is it just people saying is it i mean it's just trending all day i feel like twitter at the very top has been aaron hernandez all day right it's got it's like one of those things where it's a huge news story that everybody was vaguely familiar with as a headline and then i'm not gonna i guess spoil it uh because people might want to watch the documentary for themselves but then there's just a number of like twists that are like oh you didn't actually know the substance of this story and then there's also just wild details uh of like the thing that i that i don't think this is a spoiler but uh you know he goes to jail uh he at one point asked you know he goes to jail asked his lawyer uh if he could get smith and wesson to uh to sponsor him while he was in prison and like seriously asked that um so it was just like

one of those details where that people on social media are was it because he like shot the guy with yeah i think that's oh just to show you in his mind he was like yeah that should be an endorsement yeah like i won a super bowl and just nikes completely lost touch he won a super bowl right yeah um so anyways uh you know that seems like one of those stories that's going to be trending around the water cooler uh so it's probably our duty it's such an intersection though of all kinds of things like if you like true crime you're gonna watch it if you know anything about the nfl you're gonna watch it yeah if you don't like the patriots you're gonna watch it yeah yeah that's another

tweet i saw was people being like tom brady never even visited him in jail shows how much he cares about his teammates or maybe that's your takeaway yeah right. I think that's when you get like, hold on, this isn't just a, whatever. Right. It's the internet. And finally, we want to talk about Doolittle. Oh, yeah. The world is talking about Doolittle. And no, the reviews are starting to roll in.

And it seems like it's not even an interesting failure necessarily it's just funny the headlines robert downey jr's do little is a confusingly weird kids movie review do little with robert downey jr is a disaster do a little review robert downey jr talks to the animals without ever i don't know it just trails off uh review do little and robert downey jr seem cursed that's very weird review even robert downey jr can't salvage a train wreck so i was like wow this is some scathing shit so i started reading one of the articles in the daily beast review first of all i didn't realize uh first they start off by saying a cgi like just to let you know about how inscrutable and unscrutinizable this film is a cgi creature lets out an enormous fart a child in the audience laughs uncontrollably uncontrollably

we have no recourse but to accept it and hand robert downey jr his paycheck right the other thing is that uh this movie is written and co-written and directed by the same dude who directed siriana uh you know the the petroleum politics, geopolitical thriller. And then it was also the dude who wrote Traffic, the Steven Soderbergh film. Right. He is now writing Doolittle. And they say,

here he's scripting a gorilla voiced by Rami Malek to kick a tiger voiced by Ralph Fiennes in his tiger balls. A duck voiced by Octavia Spencer sasses, do you understand the words that are coming out of my bill? Uh-huh. That alone, I'm like, I don't need to read anymore. No, I think that does it. That made my skin fall off. That is amazing.

So it's just, I mean, I think it's rightfully being panned. Wait, is that a scene that ended up in the movie or they were just talking about the scripting process that was like during development no i'm this is that's a review and then robert danny jr gives cgi squirrel mouth to mouth uh-huh okay i mean that's cute okay but the other um the other thing is like i don't know if you've seen the billboards around town he looks like he's got brown face on or some shit he looks way like he's he caught a real tan it also

uh there are pictures in there where it's unclear what he's doing like i think there's one where he appears to be doing something with the stethoscope to a polar bear but it just suggests to me like it's not clear what it is and it suggests to me that they got him for, like, 12 pictures. And we're just like, well, those are going to have to be good enough, because that was all we had him for. Right, right, right. And they wallpapered the city of Los Angeles with these billboards. I just like this last paragraph of this review. of view there's no describing how disorienting it is on screen uh how disorienting it is to screen this movie in the same news cycle as the one in which the 2020 oscar nominations are being debated

cinema greatness worth representation here's robert downey jr wincing at a tooting dragon what does anything mean anymore at the same time i cannot respect that reviewer for saying tooting yeah come on yeah that's true i guess now it's a must-see film yes i mean if look someone's uh someone's getting kicked in their tiger balls as they say wow you understand the words that are coming out of my bill out of my bill what uh jamie loftus tweeted uh willoolittle 2020 unite the left? Question mark by Jamie Loftus, which I think is her senior thesis. One of the greats.

All right. We're going to end with that. That's what the world is talking about. That and nothing more. We hope you have a great evening. And we'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode of Dirt Daily Zeitgeist. And we'll talk to you guys then. Bye.

In 1982, Atari players had one game on their minds, Sword Quest. Because the company had promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists. But the prizes disappeared, leading to one of the biggest controversies in 80s pop culture. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades.

Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. revealing the healing journey behind her new novel, Everything We Never Knew. I am showing up for my younger self, and it is becoming a ripple effect energetically in my life, and that's why I feel so safe now. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist

who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere starting September 25th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare.

Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.