The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - S2 Ep22: JDFM on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (mostly)

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

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bellair direct.com. The first thing I'll say is the Odyssey is great. Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is fantastic and it's so nice having a big cultural event that you get, you know, draws people out about something that you can know about. Any one of us can go and see the Odyssey. There's only one thing that we all have to go and know about in the culture at the moment, it's Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. It's what all the hubbub is about. That's the big picture. Some people went to go and see the backrooms.

Some people, maybe they go to see the busboys. It's a fragmented cultural landscape. Not that many people went to go and see busboys. But it's like, that's what everybody's talking about. Hey, I'm jumping on, I bought it too. Everybody's talking about the Odyssey. And you get to see who is an idiot. I mean, there are just people who have really mind-bogglingly dumb things to say.

By all means, say dumb things about it before it comes out. That's a bit exciting. Who doesn't like being snarky about a trailer? Why is there a transmen? Why is there a Chinese? Why is there an engine? These people are meant to be Greek. Matt Damon?

Black Helen of Troy. Why? You know, this sort of thing. Hey, by all means, have you fun. But then the movie comes out, and then people double down. I've seen people doubling down going, it is woke, Tosh. Oh, you are an idiot.

You're an idiot. It's great. I will now be talking about it. It's just so nice to see it, to have the commentary. I mean, this must have been happening on a weekly basis in the 1960s, 1970s. Hey, Star Wars just came out. Hey, Jaws just came out.

Hey, the shining just came out. Hey, deep throat, baby. Mark, dinner with Andre. I don't even know if these were all in the 1970s. I suspect not. Excuse me, I'm fighting off a cough. I'll be coughing throughout. Could edit it out, won't.

It's just one movie that's out this year that people have to have an opinion about. It's an opinion-worthy level, and it's the Odyssey. And you, I mean, go and see it. By all means, okay? By all means, kill a man if you have to do it. But go and see the Odyssey. But it's just, it's nice that it's sort of a standard. It's a norm. It's a litmus test.

You know, I've seen that now. A lot of the time I see people commenting on things, I mean, in the commentariat, and you think, oh, that's an interesting take on something that I don't know very much about. There's a talking head over there who's had something to say about, I don't know the Department of Transportation, and why shouldn't I believe what they say? It buys into all of my prejudices. I am on their side. Because I don't know about the Department of Transportation, right?

But I know about the Odyssey, because I watched it with my eyes in a cinema. And so when that same person who said something about the Department of Transportation, I go, oh, that's interesting. Then they go and say something about the Odyssey that is crazy. I can go, hey, you know what? This guy is an idiot. All of these people are insane. who does, I can tell, I can, I know what I'm talking about, and we're talking about the same thing.

And you can know what you're talking about for the price of admission. I love that. I'm just going to talk about it. I, everybody else is talking about it. Why should not? Matt Damon is great. Anne Hathaway has had just the right level of plastic surgery, just the right level to still be hot and also look old without looking all that weird. Anne Hathaway was magnificent.

Zendaya? Might have had enough Zendaya. I watched the previews for this thing. We got a Spider-Man, new Spider-Man coming out. Zendaya's in it. And you go, wow, Zendaya. She looks like she's going to be good in that movie. We got a new Dune coming out.

Who isn't that with Zendaya? Oh, yeah, Zendaya. Zendaya? You know what I was that? Oh, wasn't she in that Robert Pattinson, Rumcom Indy? Yeah, there's another Zendaya. Oh, she's in this one, too. Zendaya Zendaya.

I've written a poem about it. I'll do it later. It's not important. My point is, you know, if we weren't in a culture of mass, Zendaya, she'd be fine. I mean, where to start? The multiracial casting. I'll address all the prejudices and the issues that things talk about.

Things talk about, people talk, you know. Hey, well, a sophisticated man, using words like this, who wouldn't want to know what he has to say about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey? the um the woke de i whatever multiracial casting uh works really well because it allows you to know more or less who is who in odysseus's crew this is what is not being said that must be said is that we go with the same crew in his boat over and over again for you know well over an hour in the picture as he's same guys and that you know they have a little line here and there but there's not a lot of time for them to have a personality,

because everyone sort of runs away from a giant the same way. Everybody sort of turns into a pig when they eat the witch slop the same way. Everybody is scared of a cyclops and being eaten in the same way. And what is nice about having an Indian one and a Chinese one and a bald one is just an immediate visual indicator of who has been who. and you know, rather than just having a massive people who look the same, you get, you're, I'm watching it, you go, oh, the Asian ones go into the side. The Asian ones over the side of the boat.

I remember the Asian one. Oh, no, the Indian ones dying. That was his buddy, the Indian one. If they were all just guys who looked, you know, Greek, you go like, I guess another, I guess that's another Greek. I guess another greasy Greek has lost his way as Matt Damon heads home. you know, it's nice to be able to differentiate them by all their different races because they're not given what to do and it gives them a little personality.

Aha. Aha, the Asian one. Aha, the Greek. Aha, the Indian. Aha, Matt Damon. Really enjoyed that part of it. Didn't have a problem with that at all. Here's another thing I'll say, which I think might be important on a bigger, meta level.

the Trojans are all just the same race they're all white I think I'll watch it again and I'll come to an understanding about that but I believe that the Trojans are all flat and their faces are all blocked but there is a level of homogeneity to the Trojans

that's not true of the Greeks Greeks are very diverse but the Trojans aren't so some point is being made there right? Like if you just wanted a fully diverse film Although Trojans would be diverse, but it's actually just the Greeks. It's just the Greeks. Also, I think there's not as much diversity on Ithaca.

Could be wrong. Could be wrong. Look forward to watching that back and thinking about it. But it's specifically, it's the crew and it's on the beach, is those Greeks. And it's a good point being made there about how disparate, separate, the Achaeans, the Greeks are. this is a multi-culti project the Ithicans are not Spartans

the Spartans are not Athenians they're all very different although they would all actually now that I think about it all the people on Odysseus' boat would be Ethicans they would all be multiculty so that they're multi-racee so that it doesn't work at all

excuse me I take it back you see what I've done I've had an opinion I've thought about it I've taken it back if only some other people would do the same about this picture. The trans... No, well, I'll get to the trans. I'll get to the trans. I'll get to page person.

I'll get to that. There's something about... There's some sense... One doesn't know how much baseness to attribute to Christopher Nolan. Because there are so many things in the film that you could go, oh, like the Trojans are the good guys. the Trojans they have

you know they accept the gift they welcome them in they don't play a nasty trick they're just trying to defend themselves they don't break they don't you know they don't rupture Zeus's law and destroy the world

underlying thing and they're racially homogenias so like is Nolan making at some point there probably not over and over again

you go like with the trans thing people go first people go how dare Elliot page be cast

this is gross and wrong and then people on the right go oh this Nolan man he's playing a 4D 5D 60 chess because it's it's Elliot Page

knee Juneau person is like tricky and being tricked and is like sort of pitiful and it's like, ah, that's what the trans movement does to people. That's the wheel, that's the wheel, it's like,

someone who's been ruined and tricked and hurt by the trans ideology and it's a heartbreaking. This is, that's the way, that's right, I don't know that Christopher, I don't know Christopher Nolan personally, But there are quite a lot of things along the way where you go, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. You know, if you want to have a hey moment, Christopher Nolan's going to give them to you. I think of, there's a David Foster Wallace essay where he writes about a late life, Richard Pryor, being used in a movie.

I'm going to forget the name of the movie, but it's a David Lynch movie. And it's David Foster Wallace going, he's being used. as a spectacle and something that's spooky, not for Richard Pryor as he was, but he's been cast for Richard Pryor as he is now to communicate what Richard Pryor. And it's difficult to look at. And is that right to use Richard Pryor in this way? And does he know he's using? I mean, that's a little bit the way it feels about the actor who goes by Elliot Page.

That's how I feel. You go, oh, that's a choice. That's not just, that's not a blandishment. Something might be happening there. Same with Tom Holland. husband, I understand of Sondaya and also the Spider-Man, where he's kind of weak source. He's weak source, but then he is weak-source in the picture. He's meant to be a weak-sorse.

He's been well-cast in that way. Like Paul Daino might have been going a bit too far because we still have to like the guy, but at no point there's telemachus, telemachus, telemachus, telemachus, telemachus, ever, ever really, like you go, oh, he's got this, it's fine. Because he's not meant to. Ah, let me get to what I, I mean, it's, it's, the movie, it's, it's basically, it's Oppenheimer, it's about the nuclear bomb again. Christopher Nolan is, and I feel like I do know this, I don't know about the basestism,

I couldn't really care. What he is interested in is, um, is the decline of a civilization that's, that's done something unforgivable and unforgivable in the sense that it's, it's destroyed, it's with its mistake. So in this case, you know, Odysseus comes home and there are all these shooters there. And spoiler alert, he's got to butcher them.

Which, by the way, I think would be a better ending to the television program, The Bachelorette, than the current version. You know, at the moment, they just, they dwindle off one by one, and then one of them marries the Bachelorette. But I'd like it if rather than being picked off one by one, if they all just stayed into the end and then a man came in the house and killed these men.

I think that would be a better show. Sad for the men, of course, and not at all helpful for the lady, but a much, much better program. I believe. Odysseus, he doesn't want to go to war, okay? He's a brilliant man. He's the ripest fruit of a great civilization of the attributes that the Greeks prized himself upon. you know know yourself shrewd

he's cunning a small against the mighty overcoming he's the man he's archetypal Greek fantastic you know Ithaca being the Greece of Greece this small little outcrop of

exaggerated importance from its size and in desperation to get home to his family he comes up with this Trojan horse ploy, this trick, this contravention of the rules of war, and in doing so, destroys the world. And again, a lot of it's a historical, a lot of it's not in the Odyssey, the book, the book, the song, it's not in there.

But clearly the Trojan horse is the nuclear bomb. it's this thing that really shouldn't how do you live with yourself after you you do that and the effects that reverberate from that and how Matt Damon as it is he learns to

more or less live with himself having won the war but having become the monster that's fundamentally what the picture is about people I'm saying it's about him being scarred by the horrors of war, I don't know about that, kind of. The horrors of his personal existential war.

Yes, he's at to save the men that he's going home with. He doesn't seem to really, he, less than everybody else in it, Odysseus doesn't care about the fallen men. He, you know, always, he goes, now is not the time to bury them. We'll bury them later. All right, we'll move it on. Everyone else is more sentimental about it. than he is. And when the men try and rest control from him and question his decisions,

it's often because he's imprudent early on when he levels a shot. So he has passion. He's not inhuman. There's enough there for us to like him. But over and over again, he's going, we'll bury him later. We've got things to do. That seems to be what he says. Well, we'll focus on that when the time is right. As in opposition to other people who, who were urging him to give them a proper beer on whatever. The point here, just being, he doesn't seem especially hung up on the wanting to preserve the lives of his men.

What is like the difficult thing that he realizes on the beach? The men have become pigs. The men have become monsters. He's done this thing to win the war. He doesn't like it. Everyone else is going through the city of Troy, all of his own man, you know, butchering the women and the children,

and the fellas and cutting the heads off his tattoos and whatever. And he's watching it sort of passively. He's figured out how to hack the war, how to preach, you know, the rules of hospitality to triumph in a conflict. And it's been civilizationally ruinous. And he's, I mean, it's civilizational ruinous in that it's ruinous for the souls of the people he's serving with. And you sense that he's alienate.

I think we've all had that. Man, watching him walk through Troy, it's this scene where it's like, if you've ever been sober, walking through a music festival and going, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Like, that's when you're walking through it down, people, and you go, you are so separate to what everybody else is it feeling. Excuse me. Or at a political rally where you don't buy into it. It's the individual. He cannot give. He's too shrewd.

He's too knowing. On some level, he's aware that what he's done. to the Greeks will destroy them and it takes him years after that to figure that out and there's a lot of displacement in figuring out

you know he's sickened by Agamemnon he doesn't want anything to do with him that's the way he doesn't take the root home with him it's a really good movie it's a complicated it's a movie you could dig into it I'm going to watch it again there's so much going on there I'm well acted the battle scenes are very very gripping

Robert Pattinson is a delight just the right side of actually there are a lot of blacks yes okay there's a lot of Ithaca's a real racial hodgepodge yeah all right there we go maybe just Ithaca maybe the other Greeks aren't a racial hodgepodgepodgepodge

I don't know I'm looking forward to going back and finding it out but I think it's just the people of Ithaca that seem to be racially all over the place and trans and Achilles is not in it all the it doesn't it doesn't extol glory. There's no room for that. Christopher Nolan doesn't consciously do that. Of course

subconsciously, is that even the word we want? Is subconsciously even the word we want? It's like the movie Kingdom of Heaven, which is like an anti-violence movie, people say it's anti-Christian movie, whatever. The images are too strong. Like the thing people remember is it's silver mask and the hand going up and it's like, yes, bring back another crusade.

The aesthetic overpowers the message, and I think in many ways that's the case here as well because the action is just so beautifully done and we love the violence. We like, we can't get enough of that. We wouldn't show up

if there was no violence. If the movie ended with that third act, you'd say we actually did have some pacing problems And for a movie about, I can't stop coughing. All right. This is my first. I'll watch it again. I'll have some more thoughts.

But it's, I can't, I mean, I think Chris Van probably he was in London before and now he's in Los Angeles. And you would, in either of those places, you'd have to, you'd have to look around. You'd think, oh, this was a once great place. And it is just not even up for discussion. it's in decline, that rules and decency and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's out the window. And so I think that possesses him, and he's tying sort of, what do you want to say, decadence. He could do more with decadence if he wanted, and he doesn't.

He opts not to do that. But decline, weakness, the next generation not living up to the previous one. ties this, obviously, Trojan horse nuclear bomb. I mean, it's just so... I'm looking forward to sing it again. All right, here's a song. Here's a song that goes for a minute.

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sun shining, the pool calls, and time to get the thighs out. And there's no better shorts, apparently, for summer than the chubbies. You know, I bet they feel dangerously good. And to stretch comfort, I mean, these are all the words that I would associate with shorts that I personally can't say enough positive things about during the course of this. And, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, fit, feel chubbies, chubbies, chubbies. They're called chubbies. Whether you're getting dressed for your workday, a workout, or a summer vacation,

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And here is a poem. Now that that's over, here's a poem I've written about Zendaya. We suspect that we have probably had quite enough Zendaya now. It's not that she's done something wrong, but all Zendaya's run their course out in the dunes and Spider-Man, and then the Christopher's Noland. We think that she has also been in other things as well, and overflow now having supped so very much of our Zendaya.

No one's fault. At least of all, that sweet girl woman who has been, Oh, such a decent, such a charming sort of actress type of person who has never overborne without one blemish race nor scandal, age, sex, power, thought, opinion, welcomed cleansing of the palate betwixt the Jennifer Lawrence teen and Jennifer Lawrence Milf emergent. I'll have to delay this podcast coming out today because I am going to go and see The Odyssey. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I am going to go and see it tomorrow with the cast of the movie that I'm making

and some of the crew and so I don't want them to know we're all going to go and do it together so I've kind of ruined that by well I'm just not going to tell them I'm not going to have this come out until we've all watched it together and then it can come out and then I can say listen that was the second time I've seen it and I really wanted to see it again

and perhaps I'll scramble to peg this down or upload another thing of my thoughts about about it but it's just it's so nice having something you can dig into this so much to think about and so much to say and it looks so beautiful and you know, everyone needs a take on it, but thank you, Christopher Nolan, for making something great. I'll move on. We're making this movie.

Hey, James, how's your movie going? Not about someone else's movie. How's your movie going? It is wow. A treat, a pleasure, a joy. A frustration? A question. An answer.

Resolve. I'm having a great time. It is just, you're putting out little fires everywhere all the time. and keeping a thousand things in the mind. And in that sense, it's actually not a world apart from stand-up comedy. Well, there's just a lot. There's a lot to think about. Except that you've also got people to help you so you can do more,

but then you have to think about them also. There is something to be said in stand-up or I guess in writing or even in doing this podcast in my bedroom now. There's an element where you stand alone And it's a whole different skill I'm really enjoying working with other people I'm trying to get better at it Not so much better than I would put up going to see the Odyssey

On my own in the cinema I think I'm watching it on a bigger screen We better get the tickets, boy the hell I mean I was just alone I was alone on the road I haven't been alone on the road in a long time With a whole lot of new new things to unpack and try I mean, I love it.

If I'm being honest with myself, I love turning up in a city without what I want to say on stage, really figure it out. I mean, it's worse for the audience. It's for me not to know. But it's better for me. I feel so alive figuring out,

adding tags and making things click together, and you just have to do it over and over again. The first, I mean, I did some shows in Adelaide the other week. And again, I'm sure I will be burned. burning the Adelaide. Eventually there will be no one in Adelaide who wants to come and see me because it would have been bad over and over and over and over again. But hopefully there's enough people to burn.

But eventually it gets going. But I love that early stage of work and progress figuring it out. It makes me really happy. You never get more ideas. It makes me happy, but then also my body does this weird thing. I have to lie down. It doesn't happen if I know the act, but if I'm working on new stuff,

by the end of the second hour I've got like sharp pains all over I think my abdominal muscle my ribs are tensing or something something weird happens to the body anyway I it's a joy

that's just a little bit of Jimmy sharing Jimmy's stuff what else is going I mean so much is going on I'm pulling behind on all this paperwork and that's why there's no visual component I haven't forgotten you haven't forgotten the podcast I'm thinking of what the next tranche of the podcast is

and I think it's getting ready for my movie to come out so it's building up that but you know I'm saying how many hours of this podcast can be devoted to me saying what's going to be happening in the podcast in the future and then they're not happening I don't know but it seems like an awful lot but in a moment I will have to conclude this podcast and then I'm going out to meet with Margot who's doing art direction on the film and my father

who's doing a scene and we've got to get a costume for him because we're shooting the first there's a bit of footage that we're doing quite soon and I think we're down to just two parts two one or two important parts that we haven't got the person locked in yet um oh I must call John Cruckshank today

telephone call coming for John Coochank right now he'll be good I don't yet know we have but he'll be good all right I love you I miss you I want you

I need you I don't do a discussion about that anyway I love you I miss you I need you camera and ho

goodbye