Unclear and Present Danger - 12 Monkeys

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

For this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched “12 Monkeys,” the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Gilliam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer. “12 Monkeys” is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 French short film “La Jetée,” in which scientists in a post-nuclear apocalypse future send a man back and forward through time in an effort to save their present. The man eventually succeeds in his mission, only to be killed — his death being an image he had seen again and again in his dreams.And in the film “12 Monkeys,” Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner living in an underground compound beneath Philadelphia, in a future where the human race has been nearly wiped out by viral plague. He is selected to go back in time to find the original virus to help scientists in his present develop a cure. During multiple trips back in time, he encounters people — a patient at a mental health institution played by Pitt, a psychologist played by Stowe — who all seem to have a role in the events that will end the human race. Cole struggles to resolve whether his life and experiences are real or not, but comes to understand that the virus is real, and that the man responsible is in his orbit. He attempts to stop him but is shot and killed, fulfilling the vision he had seen, in his dreams, of his own death. The tagline for “12 Monkeys” is “The Future is history.”“12 Monkeys” is available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode of the Patreon is on “A Face in the Crowd.”

What year is this? What year do you think it is? 1996. That's the future, James. Do you think you're living in the future? I'm simply trying to gather information to help the people in the present trace the path of the virus. We're not in the present now. This is a place for crazy people.

I'm not saying you're not mentally ill. I know you're crazy as a loon. The Army of 12 monkeys, they're the ones that spread the virus. Monkeys. He's been living in a meticulously constructed fantasy world, That world is starting disintegrate. You haven't become addicted to that dying world? No, sir.

He needs help. I think I'm crazy when people start dying next month. I don't belong here. You're here because of the system. I know some things that you don't know. Yes, my son. He sent me to the wrong year. You're certain of that?

Science ain't an exact science. You had a bullet from World War I in your leg, James. How did it get there? I don't know. You're a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what's real and what's not. real or what's not? You said that I had delusions. You said you could explain it. I'm trying to. I want the future to be a dog. I can help you. Get you out.

You can't hide from them. Don't even try. We're all monkeys. The thing mutates. We live on your ground. They're watching you. I just want to do my part to get us back on top in charge of the planet. We're going to be. We're in. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers at the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a substack newsletter on Popular Front, and I wrote a book.

about American politics in the early 90s, which is now available to pre-order, which is kind of cool. But, I mean, it is, it's going to be out in June. So that's a pretty early pre-order. But if you feel like it, go for it. So real quick, what's the title of the book? Oh, yes, of course. The title of the book is when the clock broke. And I actually don't know the subtitle off the top of my head because I didn't write it.

But I will get it to you in one second. I know roughly what it is, but I want to get this. wording perfectly. The subtitle is Conman Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. So that's my book. And I will advise, I would advise if you want to pre-order the book, go to your local bookshop and pre-order. I mean, you must do Amazon, Barnes Noble, please go ahead.

But if you can, if you have one, go buy your local bookshop, ask them to pre-order your copy. Right. There's a McMillan has a page up for the book already and they have an ISBN number. So if they have an ISPN number, then your bookstore can order it. We'll be doing more of this as the book, the book publication date comes closer, encouraging you guys to pre-order. Because that kind of really does make the difference, right? Like obviously, you know, selling when the book is on the shelf is nice, but pre-orders are actually critical for the success of a book. Yes. And I will, oh, Jamel, you know, probably not too long from now, you'll be getting a proof. Because that's what's next. Yes. Yes. For this week's episode, we watched 12 monkeys, the 1995 science fiction film from Terry Galeam starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer with a great southern accent. When I say great, I mean, it's fine. It's funny to hear Christopher Plummer with a southern accent. there are also a bunch of very recognizable character actors in this movie which i don't think i realize this is the first time i'd seen it uh and so uh check out look for look for christopher

maloney hanging around 12 monkeys playing a cop i think that's very fun uh and some other people that you will recognize anyway 12 monkeys is an adaptation of sorts of a 1962 french short film really more of a photo montage like it's mostly in montes there isn't really very much any film material in it. But adaptation of a 1962 French short film, Legitate, I don't, I can't

pronounce French. Lagettee. Close enough. Close enough. Okay. In the short film, scientists in a pox post-nuclear apocalypse send a man back and forward through time in an effort to save their present. This man eventually succeeds in this mission, falling in love with

a woman in the past in the midst of it. Only to be killed, his death being an image he had seen again and again in his dreams. So in the film Twelve Monkeys, Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner living in an underground compound beneath Philadelphia in a future where the human race has been nearly wiped out by a viral plague. He has selected to go back in time, you know, kind of a force, selected sort of a euphemism, to go back in time to find the original virus to help scientist in his present develop a cure. He makes multiple trips back in time, some force, some voluntary, and during which he encounters people, specifically a patient on a mental health institution played by Brad Pitt and a psychologist played by Madeline Stowe,

who have a role in all these events that will end the human race. Pitt, in particular, becomes the founder of a group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, which people in the future believed to be the group responsible for the plague. Cole is sort of struggling all the while to resolve whether or not any of this is real, whether he is actually experiencing this, whether he's a crazy person, but does come to understand that it is real. The virus is real, and the man responsible is in his orbit. And as he attempts to stop that man, he is shot and killed, fulfilling the vision he had seen in his dreams of his own death.

I kind of just spoiled the ending, which is to say that if you haven't seen 12 monkeys, you should just go watch the movie now because we're going to talk about the ending, of course. It's a 27-year-old movie, 28-year-old movie. I don't believe spoilers exist for movies that are older than a year. But if you didn't want this spoiled, you know, you should watch the film. The tagline for 12 monkeys is the future is history. The movie is available for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes, and 12 Monkeys was released on December 29th, 1995. So, John, tell us about what happened that day, according to the New York Times.

Online service blocks access to topics called pornographic. Complaint by Germany has worldwide impact. In the most far-reaching yet, a far-reaching example yet of Internet, censorship, CompuServe, Inc. has blocked access by its subscribers in the United States and around the world to more than 200 sexually explicit computer discussion groups and picture databases. After a prosecutor in Munich said the material violated German pornography laws, the action which CompuServe described as a temporary move while it studies as legal options underscores the extent to which diverse national culture and political values are coming

into conflict with the essentially borderless technology of the global internet computer network. Well, isn't that funny? I think now it's pretty much anything goes with pornography. Well, they've tried to institute some bands in some states that you have to confirm your age to look at pornography. I think what people are mostly worried about now is disinformation and misinformation and misinformation and all that sort of thing. It's very difficult to control what goes on the Internet except for authoritarian states who basically have got. the cooperation of most of the big companies, even among certain people who claim to be very much in favor.

Free speech like to cooperate with the governments of Turkey and China and so forth. So this is just the beginning of the kind of conflict between the anarchy of the Internet and the prerogatives of nation states, which is still going on. And I think in certain ways the nation states have won. because they can force these companies to basically do, I mean, I'm in the EU right now. And they have very stringent privacy rules that basically all of the Internet companies have had to just cooperate with. So it's possible to put, and obviously authoritarian states can block websites that they don't want their people to read and also force American companies and European companies to cooperate with their regimes.

So states and bigger than state entities, I guess the U.N. is, I mean the EU is, still have an enormous amount of power over what goes on online. So let's see what, well, our friend Newt Gingrich is back in the news. Gingrich returns to firmer stand on budget accord, rules out interim deal, end of government shutdowns unlikely before January 3rd, the speaker suggests. On the eve of scheduled negotiations with President Clinton, Speaker Newt Gingrich said today that without an agreement on a balanced budget, House Republicans would not agree to any temporary deal reopening parts of the federal government that have been shut down for two weeks because of the budget in pass. I think that the House Republicans feel very, very deeply the president had from the time

we signed the continuing resolution in November up through most of December, you have this solved, Mr. Gingrich said at a news conference, we didn't. get it solved and having meetings doesn't count as progress we've got to actually get an agreement we've talked a little bit about this shutdown and nuke ingrich and the changing republican politics the republican takeover of the house the more confrontation you know i mean it's a little bit of a myth uh but there's truth to it about you know tip o'neill and ronald regan working things out together and it's very amicable way um and that's kind of nostalgically looked back on is when, you know, Washington worked and the different party chiefs were trusted each other

and could have functional relationships. And Gingrich kind of exploded all that. And in a way, I mean, I think it's more complicated, obviously, I think it's much more complicated than that. But there are some people who take the view that Newt Gingrich is the architect of the more crazy GOP. I think there are forces beyond him. But this is the beginning of this sort of confrontational parliamentary hardball that now is

just everyday kind of politics for the GOP. There's another article about this here. Showdown and shut down the basics over the budget. It seems irrational. Some government offices are closed, but many more are open. Some government workers have been furloughed, but they have been promised that they will be paid for not working. Others are working at full pay.

Still others are at work, but will draw only half a paycheck this week. Congress, meanwhile, is in recess. Many top of administration officials are on vacation. President Clinton is planning his annual New Year's weekend in South Carolina. Speaker, Newt Gingrich, says no break in the deadlock over the federal budget is possible until the middle of next week at the earliest. Yeah, you know, the thing about government shutdowns is it sounds extremely dire and in a way it is, but it's really complicated what actually happens. It's not like the, you know, like the army puts its guns down and stuff like that.

People stop being paid. there's a complicated system of who gets paid and what gets funded. It's not good. It's not a regular practice. But government shutdown kind of suggests the beginning of anarchy, which is not really what happens. Right. There is a great piece in the American prospect by Ryan Cooper looking at the origins of government shutdowns. I didn't know a lot of this.

Apparently, you know, shutdowns basically did not exist before 1970s. 78, 79 or so. And they only come into being because the Carter DOJ in an effort to basically beat or win a dispute with Congress, interprets, you know, budgetary laws as such as to say, hey, you know, if you guys don't fund what we want to do, then the government's going to shut down. And that's like the origin of the government shutdown. But like if there's, you know, you could just as easy. interpret the relevant statutes to say that you can't do government shutdowns. So basically, Carter is responsible for this, like Carter administration is responsible for this, like a lot of other bad things. Yeah, Jimmy Carter, very good man, but suboptimal president.

Well, he kind of unfortunately presided over a kind of sea change in thinking that was like the beginning of, I guess, what people now call neoliberalism, which is. unfortunately was a lot of, you know, changing ideas about the nature of government, which has not served us well. I think that's right. Anyway,

Army hero enters Russian race, posing a big threat to reformers in what could prove to be a stark political nightmare for Russian reformers, an immensely popular nationalist figure, Alexander I. Lebed announced to any of seek the presidency next June and said he tended to do it in agreement with the communists has long been assumed that the hard-bitten former general would run for president this year. But if you were to join

forces with the Communist Party, we're to receive more than twice the votes of any other group in this month's parliamentary election, he would become the frontrunner, the instant front-runner. The communist leader said today that they were considering General Leibitz for offer of an alliance, but we're not sure of their response. Possibility of confronting a single opposition candidate has filled the supporters of Boris Yeltsin with fear, his government, which was humiliated at the polls this month, is clinging desperately to the hope that reformers can unite and that opposition parties will not. So, yes, this is an interesting part of post-Soviet. Russia is that nationalists and the former communists kind of make common cause because, you know,

the glory, the Soviet Union was something that both nationalists and communists became attached to. Yeltsin went on to win this race for better or worse. The nationalist sentiment in Russia did not abate. It's still something that's sort of an opposition force. Although we think of Putin as a kind of horrible nationalistic dictator, there are people to his right. And some of his political moves can be understood by needing to placate and manage the voices to his right. So this is a constant part of post-Soviet politics, which is appearing here. But, yeah, anything else on the front page look interesting to you, Jamel? I do not see anything.

I want to comment on. Yeah. Okay. I guess there's there's this Lamar Alexander running for president back in 95 at the bottom here. Lamar Alexander became senator from Tennessee and what ended up being one of the Trump skeptical Republicans and left the Senate, I think after 2018. Kind of that era, I mean, we've talked a bunch about the era of kind of the moderate conservative Democrat, which like the 90s is really the last. gasp of that in a serious way. Obviously, you know, there are modern conservative Democrats today, but the typical Democratic legislator is actually, like, much more liberal than they

were in the 90s. It may not seem like it, but by any measurable, by any way you can measure it, it is 100% the case. And this is either a Republican Party is like thoroughly conservative in the 90s, but also there's still some room for what you might call Republican, like actual Republican moderates and not simply people who have... Moderates. Yeah, they weren't quite as fucking crazy. Right. Or like what we call moderate now among Republicans is more effective, right?

Like Susan Collins, he speaks softly, right? And so we call her a moderate. But she has pretty, she's actually like pretty right wing in her politics. But the 90s is like the last moment really. So is Mitt Romney. Right, right. The 90s is when you actually do have Republicans

who are like actually a little idea. ideologically moderate and not not they're not all uniformly right wingers and so it's it's sort of you know the the coalitions of american politics that had basically existed from the end of the second world war to the 80s were like finally falling apart for good in the 90s and you see that and how you have these various figures who are shuffling through um shuffling through politics so That's all. That's all. So 12 monkeys.

12 monkeys. I already talked about what it is, what the movie is based off of this 1962 French short film. So basically the story here is that Universal Studios acquired the rights to remake Legite as a full, full length film. They hired script writers and the screenplay for 12 monkeys by David Peoples and Janet Peoples. They were the ones that Universal Studios hired them to write the movie. And they hired Terry Gilliam to direct it. Very straightforward, this seems to be very much like, we want to do this and we're going to do it. Gilliam had actually just abandoned a film adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities.

So he was kind of in between projects. But jumped right into it. And I think the producer, Charles Rovin, who thought Gilliam, style would work quite well for the script. I think that he was right. This is sort of like almost, it feels the script feels tailor made for Gilliam in a lot of ways, for Gilliam's visual style. One of the hallmarks of which are sort of liberal use of Dutch angles and close-ups with wide angle close-ups, which you'll, you know, there's, there's a close-up with a telephoto lens, which you notice because if you see all the compression of the background,

everything kind of becomes flattened. But then you can do these, you can do close-ups with wide-angle lenses and even ultra-wide-angle lenses, which you see some of this, which can create this very distorted and used, depending on how you use it,

hallucinatory effect, which is what Gilliam uses a lot in Brazil. Kind of, I think, is, you know, I think, I feel like you'd call Brazil Gilliams, like, you know, that's his movie, like if there's one movie he's going to be known for,

it's Brazil. It's a signature stuff. style developed there, yeah. Yeah. But very much a part of 12 monkeys. So cost about $30 million to make, which is pretty cheap for a Hollywood science fiction film. And grossed like $160 million. So it did extremely well.

This was a hit. This was a hit with the public, which I find actually really interesting. It might just be the Bruce Willis effect. Willis brought in very early. But Bruce Willis, this is 95 for Bruce Willis. He is like one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, you know? Die Hard with the Vengeance was this year. He is doing the thing where he's in like an action movie one year and then kind of like

in something, a comedy or a drama or something like this. Willis is on the top of the world in Hollywood. And so that might, it might just be that. Brad Pitt is pretty big at this point, but he's not, like, huge yet. He's actually, this is like he's becoming huge around this time. Interview with a Vampire had been in 94. Yeah. Seven was earlier in the year in 95.

And, yeah, film was shot on location in Philly and Baltimore, which is fun. Lots of, if you, if you spend any time in. those cities, you will recognize, you'll recognize some scenes, scenes shot at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, scenes shot at BWI and Baltimore. So, yeah, the film, so I'll say real quick before we talk about theme and such and whatever the politics might be. There are a couple things I really like about this movie, and I mentioned up top this first him, I'd seen it.

One is I'm a really a big fan of the kind of junk future aesthetic that Gilliam likes when you're making the future. I think it's a lot of fun. Future contraptions being made out of, you know, whatever's lying around. It makes things look unique, looks unique, lived in, you might say. And I think he uses the great effect in this movie. And I like, one thing I really liked as the film progressed was the fact that the film begins to, at a certain point, begins to ask you the viewer, is any of this actually real? Like, for me, at least as a viewer, I was like, I'm not quite sure if Willis's character is from the future.

and I think the film does a good job of making it plausible at the very least that he might actually just be an insane person and all of this might just be in his mind. Of course, in the narrative of the film, that's not the case. In the narrative, film, it's not all in its mind. He may be a little disturbed because of his experiences, but there really will be a virus that wipes out most of humanity. And it really is, the epicenter really is Philadelphia.

The Army of the Twelve Monkeys is more of a gag, kind of a red herring. And the movie doesn't try to give you a detail theory of time travel, but the way it seems to work is that messages can be sent from the past to the future present. But events, you can't change events in the past and have them change events in the future. Events are kind of set in stone. And so the idea that the Army of the 12 monkeys is like the epicenter of all of this is a result of kind of a prank played by Madeline Stowe's character when she believes that it's all fake and it's all of their minds. But yeah, it's, I don't know. What do you think, John? No, but they are the ones.

who are setting off, but they are the, they're doing bioterrorism. Well, no, no, it's so the, have I just totally misunderstood the movie? So what you realize is that the Army of the Twelve Monkey, so Brad Pitt, who was, it was who, to Bruce Ellis's character meets in a mental institution, the first time he sent back and passed, he sent back too far. He sent back into 1990. In the next movie, he's institutionalized. He meets Brad Pitt's character.

Brad Pitt's character says, you know, his father is a prominent, famous doctor, and he's going to get out, and he's going to, they're going to, they're going to, you know, destroy, he's going to save the animals. Dr. Peters is not involved with them. Right. And you get the impression, and Bruce Rillis is saying, I have to stop the virus, have to do with this. And so what the movie, what the impression you get is, is Bruce Willis actually responsible for the, what happens, right? in a sense it's sort of like going back in time to stop it is actually the thing that plants the idea in the mind of the guy.

And so the film is centered in terms of its plot on trying to stop the army of the 12 monkeys. But what you discover, what is dropped throughout is that they didn't really do it. They are just a bunch of like dorks. But who did it was an assistant working for Brad Pitt's dad, played by Christopher Plummer,

who actually is, And he has no ideological. He's just crazy. Yeah, he's just like an apocalyptic guy who wants to end humanity. And he's the one who actually spreads the virus. And he's just in the movie. They don't stop it. Like he he has the security guards smell the vials that the virus is in.

So at that point, someone's been infected. It's like it's right. it's out of the right shooting him in the airport's not going to stop him right um but yeah so it's it's all a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a red herring which i think it's actually super smart because it it focuses the film less on the resolution of this plot who did it and more on is any of this real and i think it's interesting that the movie uh uh is much more of a kind of like meditation on like perception and reality than it is on, you know, this science fiction plot. I think it's a smart way to go about it. But I was going to ask, you've seen this much more than I have.

Like, what are your, what are your thoughts? I've seen it several times and I, apparently I'm an idiot because I watched it four times and I thought that this guy was somehow part of ideologically related, at least to the group. I knew that Brad Pitt wasn't responsible, but I I thought this guy was actually just like a more hardcore following out their ideology. I didn't realize that he was unrelated, just the nut. I don't know why I created this own narrative for the movie, which I even did this time I watched it. But, well, oh, here's why I think that. Because the guy goes up to her in, goes up to the psychiatrist at one of her talks when she's giving a talk about Cassandra complex being, you know, like a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a guy.

hysterical delusion and kind of gives her a spiel about consumerism and society that is not unlike what Brad Pitt's group is sort of also saying. So I just thought he was just an extreme an extremist member of that tendency. But I guess really he has no connection to them. Yeah, I like this movie a lot. I liked it a lot when I was younger. I watched it several times. I really responded, as you said, to the aesthetics of the movie and to Dary Gilliam's kind of art direction and the kind of world that he builds, which I think, you know, he does in several movies with these kind of shitty dystopias, which have become very, you know, this vision has become very influential and he has certain things in common with other surrealist kind of autos like David Lynch and, Cronenberg, but kind of has his own sort of humorous, you know, he was a member of Monty Python, his own kind of humorous and madcap and oddball absurdist sort of take on these things, which is cool.

I think this time around, it didn't capture my imagination the way it did when I was younger. What I think is interesting now that we talk about it is the theory that the psychologist proposes, played by Madeline Stowe, that Matt, Cassandra syndrome is kind of like a trauma response to in a way of like creating a narrative of meaning around some kind of in a way you know like that could be the entire movie is that he witnesses this shooting as a child and then he kind of creates this entire narrative about the future identifies with this person being killed and creates this entire narrative of you know a meaningful world that's like psychotic but but but it kind of makes this all makes sense. That's one possible interpretation of the movie, although it strongly implies that this was actually true. I would say if Gilliam has an agenda, which is not really political, but it is kind of pre-political or it's a certain artistic politics, is that, and he deals with reality and unreality, is I think that Gilliam is a partisan of the imagination. And basically

what he's concerned about is modern society's destruction of imagination. And his heroes and his movies are people who kind of are pushing back against that, you know, in what's it called? The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is about, you know, like this guy's stories are not real, but in a way, or we don't think they're real, they seem fake, but in a way, you know, they're better than reality. And in a way that the idea that sort of put forward is, well, is this guy crazy or does he have a vision? And I think that's a question that that that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that can be a little tiresome. Because you're like, oh, who's crazy and who's not.

But, but I think, you know, generally he does it well and he asks it well. And also his futures, his dystopian futures are kind of repressive of individual, individuality, individual, you know, initiative, thought. imagination um so i think that that's kind of always going on in the background of his films and i think his movies always want to ask like oh is the um is the you know the crazy person the mad person the highly imaginative person or are they in fact do they just in fact have deeper insight and i think he usually comes down on yes um and there's a certain celebration of wildness i thinking the Fisher King is the same thing. It's about a crazy person who, you know, is ostensibly crazy, but it's actually quite

wise or has something to contribute. So that's sort of the politics of the movie in a way, if you could say it as one, is that he's on the side of the slightly cracked. And Tara Gilliam is very much, that's sort of where he comes down. Now, you could say, well, that's all well and good. but celebrating the mentally ill and delusions is a problematic thing in Western culture, whatever. I still think that he's he's very, a lot of his movies are compelling, you know, whether or not you think some of those things are cliched or problematic is another story.

but yeah that's basically my thoughts about it i think this time i don't know that my patience for my patience for his bullshit i don't know sometimes you're in the mood to watch a movie with a lot of whimsy and imagination and sometimes you're just like man give me a break and i think i've just seen this movie too many times where the things that are charming about it sort of wore off on me but there was a time where i was very taken with this movie in all of terry gilliams movies and just thought he was a brilliant genius and could do no wrong and I still actually he did time bandits too which I love again a movie about a child the imagination a child whose imagination is being repressed or or not appreciated and nurtured and in fact like it's also there's technology is a big concern of

Gilliams technology and its effect on the imagination he tried to make a Don Quixote movie which I think is very telling about his own conception of it he he it happened or it failed i it happened i because i was going to mention it because the way you're describing his sort of concerns i think i think that's yeah exactly the don quixote movies is sort of and it's basically like of course he would make a don quixote movie it's the man who killed don quixote it came out in 2018 it starred adam driver and jonathan price right right right yeah he tried to make that movie for years struggled with it you know Ironically or not.

And there was a documentary made about his struggles with it. And yeah, exactly. I think that that's very much his conception of himself. And his conception of the world is really as a Don Quixote figure where the imagination is the most important thing. And its repression is extremely, is the worst. you know, crime against humanity in a certain way. Right, right. To move a bit from Gilew, I do think even if, even if this movie doesn't have like a

politics per se, even if it very much is about his own concerns as a director, I do think that, like if you're trying to, you know, say to yourself, what were audiences terrified of in 1995. I think that this film making its apocalypse, a viral apocalypse, is like kind of

on the money for kind of hitting the zeitgeist of the mid-90s in terms of kind of fears about the end of the world. First, just concern about the end of the world. We're approaching 2000

and you are seeing in kind of the broader culture lots of sort of like apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic media and, you know, such being produced. We're a couple years away from production starting on The Matrix, for example. This is kind of a different world than Hollywood filmmaking, but a certain best-selling set of novels that Left Behind series begins, I think the first novels published in 95, and those are kind of Christian apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic novels, very bad ones.

I read all of them in college for a class I was taking, and they're all, they're all quite bad. Wow. They have characters like Rayford Steel and Buck Williams. I mean, it's pretty bad stuff. Anyway, that was in the air. And, you know, we did earlier this year, we didn't have shown on Outbreak, which is, a kind of Ebola inspired movie. I believe is the hot zone come out this year. I'm going to check

that out real quick. Now, the hot zone, the book comes out the year prior in 1994. And that book is about viral fevers. But there's a lot of concern about kind of... Was there a Michael Creighton? Well, there's the endromeda strain. Biological warfare. was like the new nuclear, like the nuclear threat was removed and viruses of biological warfare became very fixated focus. I mean, that was in Golden I was that they're blowing up a biological weapons plant at the beginning of the movie. That was a big concern.

But the thing is, and also, you know, the AIDS virus had happened and that put it in people's minds. The thing is, it's like it actually kind of came true. You know, like we went through COVID and it sort of, it sort of bore out a lot of those anxieties, which I think a lot of people kind of assumed because the society had created all of these nightmare scenarios that they wouldn't come true. I think that that's sort of like, oh, well, you know, a lot of the skepticism at the beginning of it, you know, the political positions, a lot of liberals were like, ah, it's not

going to happen. And conservatives were freaking out at the beginning of the pandemic. And then it flipped. And, you know, the Vox, sorry, guys, the Vox liberal consensus. sort of Madaglaces. I don't know if Matt Iglesis actually fucking said anything one way or the other. So I'm sorry, Matt, if I'm mischaracterizing you. But just you as a climate of opinion were like, oh, the pandemic's not going to be that bad. We've seen, you know, like the SARS virus didn't go anywhere.

And conservatives were freaking out. And then that flipped. As soon as the politicians involved in concern flipped, their constituencies kind of flipped with it. But what's interesting about this movie is that it contains kind of both dystopias. It contains the fear of the virus killing everybody, which became the liberal fear, and then it has this totalitarian quarantine regime that exists. And that's what conservatives were worried about going on, this biopolitical, as they called it, quarantine regime where everyone would be controlled and kept in a box because of the virus. So those are the two fears, and I think those fears were very conditioned by the art that was made about this kind of stuff.

They're also just naturally. Yeah, I mean, those are two outcomes, easily imaginable outcomes. I think that, you know, like this movie, it's interesting to watch after the pandemic for that reason. I think it shows the fears of both. It has also a strange relationship to the idea of fate. Like there is no real stopping this. There is no, you know, in the past, and knowing something, I mean, Cassandra, who's essential, the Cassandra myth is brought up is knowing something, but being able, unable to change it.

Which, you know, I think probably at some point we knew, or at least intelligent people knew, that, you know, a pandemic of the sort we experienced was probably right around the corner, but it was just extremely difficult to do anything about. I mean, I don't, this always gets me in trouble is that I do think obviously there were really bad decisions made and callous and decisions made about the pandemic management. I do think at some point there becomes actually, and this is not to justify, not making public health interventions at all. At some point with these things, there is very little you can do.

and, you know, even with the best interventions, there's going to be, you know, there's forces of nature that are just out of our control. And, you know, that doesn't mean putting your hands up, but I think that has to be recognized as a problem when we face these things. There are just things that are beyond human management. And we do a pretty amazing job. I mean, it's amazing we came up with a vaccine when we did how quickly we did. So, but yeah, I think their movie kind of is fatalistic about humanity's capacity to respond to things. And then you have to wonder, what is the movie saying at all? You know, is it a very bleak picture of the possibility of human intervention and the meaning of life?

Because it kind of suggests, well, there's not much you can do about it and you can't even be sure it's real. It's both skeptical, if we want to look at it in a philosophical point, it's both skeptical in regard to action and epistemology, right? And then you're starting to get into nihilistic territory because then you're like, well, basically the only thing that you know, well, you don't know what's real and there's nothing you can do to change it anyway. There's a point in which dystopia and solipsism kind of dovetail. And I don't exactly know how and where and how to explain that.

But it's interesting that there's a lot of interest in inter and dystopian visions among, how shall I put this, fucking dorks? I mean, like, among like tech, among like tech obsessed right wingers or people who tend to have these extremely paranoid and conspiratorial views, which are quite solipsistic and libertarian and individualistic. there's a kind of feeling that existing in a society at all isn't in position and that you're constantly alienated from everything around you. Now, I don't know if Terry Gilliam is a right winger or a left winger, but I do definitely believe that there is a, if you were a smart right winger, you could look at Terry Gilliam's movies and come, I think like Ross Douthick could read the hell out of Terry Gillian movies and say they're

conservative movies because they're about defending the imagination from bureaucracies and so on and so forth. But the dark side of that is they're kind of solipsistic. They're kind of, well, the only thing that exists is these imaginary worlds and there's no in or

out, there's no in or outward communication in or out and you can't be sure what's real and what's not and actions are absurd and meaning. I'll say, I'm not sure if this movie takes the position that actions are, that, let me be precise, it takes the view that actions with the aim of achieving some ultimate goal might be absurd and useless. You can't stop the virus. You can't actually stop the end of the world. It is coming. regardless, all you can do is collect information to maybe make the present a little better, the future present a little better. But also, it's meaningful for James Cole that he falls in

love, right? It's meaningful for James Cole that he can breathe fresh air and that he can listen to music. That the ordinary and the everyday, the actions taken to enjoy the immediate at present. Those are have intrinsic value. Yeah, maybe you're right. But there's no projects are not possible. Well,

I guess love is a, but I think you're right. And I think if you wanted to give a conservative reading to the movie, this is where you'd find it, right? That like ideological projects aren't possible in this world. But moments of connection, community.

those things are possible and still worth pursuing for their own sake and are real. No, it's Nietzschean in the sense that, well, you know, life is only justifiable as an aesthetic phenomenon, right? So the experience of, and this connects it with his kind of entire agenda of celebrating the imagination is that art, music, love, which, you know, probably those are all great things. are what makes life worth living and this adventure they kind of go on. I guess there's an eternal, to bring it back to Nietzsche, there's a kind of eternal return thing because he's stuck, you know, this event kind of seems to be repeating, right? Because there's a certain circularity of the whole thing and fadedness of the whole thing. And I guess the question is, does he affirm the attempt to, to, to, to,

act or to be even in the face of its futility. And I guess that's, you know, a certain value in its own right. And I guess that is true. I don't think he knows it's futile, but he probably, there's always a chance your projects will fail. What's interesting is it shows, it shows the scientists who want to try to, like, find the cure to the virus. It's kind of idiotic and stupid and kind of denigrates their entire.

attempt, right? Right. Right. Like, it's just sort of as like, that's not even worth trying. It's ridiculous. They're ridiculous. He's not ridiculous. But he's caught up in something that's beyond his control. Your reference of Nietzsche reminds me of, I guess, his sort of American contemporary, American anti-foundationalist contemporaries, the pragmatist, and specifically I'm thinking of a passage in one of William James's essays. where he writes and the book is like right behind me but my headphones don't go far enough so here we are

but he writes something to the effect of you know if it were just two lonely souls on a single rock there would still be like an ethical world worth preserving because there's there's necessarily must be a relationship between

those two people and that to me is kind of like the vibe of this right that there's that the world might be absurd and they might be crazy, right? One thing that one performance I love in this movie is just Madeline Stowe's performance, like her slowly becoming unhinged as the film goes on as she begins to question her own sanity. And the film is saying these two people, maybe they're crazy.

But either way, what matters is their relationship to each other and their attempt to sort of like find human connection with each other. And that it's sort of when, it's when Bruce Willis gives up the mission, essentially. It's sort of like I'm not going to, you know, I've done as much as I can do. I'm just going to be here is when they even come close to finding anything like a resolution or happiness. That isn't interrupted, right, by the events that are out of their control. well the movie's attitude sorts politics if you want to broadly put are sort of negative because the army of the 12 months the political group of these environmentalist terrorists or whatever or demonstrators to present them as ridiculous at best and sinister at worst and the regime that's attempting to recruit Bruce Wilson has sort of put him as repressed him and locked him in a cell and so

and so forth, is presented as ridiculous. No institution in the movie is presented as being worthwhile or intelligent and that's just, you know, very much Gilliam's anarchism, if you will, showing itself. Yeah, so

basically that's where I think it is. It's an antipolitical also in a kind of 1990s sort of way. It's an anti-political. movie in the sense that, you know, individuals are what matter and, and bureaucracies and institutions and political projects and utopias are attempts to change the world are sort of doomed to failure or are intrinsically absurd.

So it's really, I thought that it was like, this is a super 90s movie when I was watching it. In a way, it kind of like is a proto-furt. Fight Club? Did you get that vibe while you're watching it? I did. Yes. I did get that vibe while watching it. Sort of it, it, it, it, very, I think it very much anticipates sort of like the, or, the orientation towards politics that Fight Club is going to, like, exemplify, right? That, like, none of it fucking matters. And that movie is like the exhaustion with the 90s consumerist. This movie has some nasty things to say, well, some critical things to say about consumerism, although, you know, it's unclear how much it can be really done about again.

That movie, like, the Fight Club is so funny now because the world that they're really upset about. Like Fight Club fans, you know, who are kind of politicize it are like, they're now nostalgic for the very world that they presented in Fight Club as being soulless and not worth living in and so, so dulling to the human experience that even terrorism and joining some kind of strange cult and madness were preferable. This movie kind of doesn't present terrorism necessarily as preferable, but it definitely presents in some ways madness perhaps as preferable. I think that that was a sense of the end of history where people thought the dullness of it all, that madness was preferable. I think that was an artistic position, an aesthetic position that was really powerful at the time. And it's from the standpoint of ethics and irresponsible one, but an understandable one, perhaps. But I do think both movies events and exhaustion with the possibilities of the present, a desire to imagine a different world, even if it's dystopian,

because there's something so boring about the present. And I think that that, the legacy of movies, like this for better and I think many times for worse and the legacy of dystopias in general is these dystopian fantasies are as negative and bleak as they are I think people are attracted to them because they provide a framework of meaning or excitement or drama and people's lives are really quite dull like look at Elon Musk who I think is an extremely boring fellow and but he is constantly trying to enact these weird fantasies where he's wearing strange costumes and role playing and he has a gun and he brought it you know like it's like there's all of these

desires to live in these science fiction scenarios which are more dramatic and more interesting than the world of the everyday world of the consumer 90s and they've unfortunately kind of brought it about. You know, in the desire to live out dystopian fantasies, they've sort of creating a dystopia. I don't know. Maybe I'm going too far. But that's sort of my feeling. And so when I look back on movies like this and I think about my own childhood interest in them, I'm a little bit of ambivalent about it because now I'm like, I don't know about this work of art in terms of creating the horizons of people's imaginations. You know, like I think it deadens them like I see what you were saying about the interest that the appreciation of the

every day but I also think it kind of it creates expectations of drama that are kind of deadening to appreciating what other things other values in life I don't know I think that I think that makes sense I think you're right to identify the Consequence's legacy of the dystopian Transfiction, which is very real, because it's not just movies like 12 monkeys or whatever. I mean, one of the best-selling book series and

you know, top grossing movie series to the last 15 years, which is the Hunger Games, which is like a very dystopian kind of like, you know, a series. Dystopia is sell. I think you're right to identify that they sell because of a sense of,

exhaustion, a sense of boredom. I think you're right to identify that the Silicon Valley reaction areas. They don't just worry about dystopia. I think they actively see it as almost something desirable precisely because it would give their lives and their work meaning. Yes, and power. Right.

It would affirm their self-conception as the sort of like random. Indians for the world to collapse in some way, shape, or they believe it would. I don't think it would, but they believe it would. But the thing as well is I don't think you can, you know, I'm on TikTok and recently was part of like a conversation about kind of the appeal of Trump. And there are like lots of reasons why Trump appeals to various people. But I think a non-trivial one, it's just the sense that, hey, this guy might end the world.

I really, I really think that the sense of this guy is a little unstable, maybe he shouldn't be there. Yeah. Fuck it. L.O.L. But maybe in his instability, he might disrupt things in a way that at least makes life interesting again. I think it's like a non-trivial part of his appeal to people, a kind of like an attitude of fuck it. Let's just do it. And I think that's, I think that is very much. you know, whether it's downstream of a dystopian fixation, whether it all comes from another separate place. I think it's, I think it's, I think it's in there. It is interesting to think about what is like the source, because I think it's too easy to say that the source is like, you know, it's, it's market capitalism or it's like an atomized society or individualism. Because like, you know, the signal dystopias that people keep going back to emerge and they're they're written, they're written in 30s, written in the 40s, there's dystopian fiction being

written in the 50s and the 60s, right? Like during the heyday of at least in the United States, something like a serious social insurance state. And people felt secure, but they also felt profoundly bored. No, yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it was a response to that, I mean, a lot of it, especially Britain, a lot of the, of the dystopian visions of people like Gilliam, who has. I think is American or Canadian, but worked for a long time in Britain,

were explicitly not reactionary, whatever. They're reacting against the welfare state and postwar social democracy with its bureaucracies and so and so forth, which is felt to be repressive and deadening. And the neoliberal reaction or the neoliberal change really fed off the cultural sense of dissatisfaction with the boredom of, the welfare state, and it's the boredom and the lack of human meaning, right?

You heard Mr. Tim Scott with the black nationalist kind of weird Clarence Thomas version of this the other day where he said, black people survived slavery, we survived Jim Crow, we did not survive the great society. It destroyed our families, right? there's the idea that the bureaucratic institutionalism of post-war social democracy or the attempts to create post-social democracy were dystopian in their own way and that is you know some of these things seem dated to us because their concerns are about a world that now looks not so bad but in the 60s in the 50s and the new left was really responding to this kind of stuff to that in the 50s and 60s

And the 70s and the 80s still, the response to the massive states that were billed after the war and the welfare states was by people who considered themselves individualists and were artistically sensitive was often quite negative. And they felt into, look at, I'm in Paris right now in 1968, was, you know, the feeling was that this society that was created was not that much better than fascism. which obviously seems like a ridiculous exaggeration in hindsight, but that's the way young people felt. And that's the way young people felt in the 60s about their society that they're living in. So that's, and Gilliam is very much a product of the counterculture of the 60s. Yes.

I mean, you can look no further than maybe what is the most famous commercial in American advertising history, which is the McIntosh commercial in 84. Right? Perfect. Which is deliberately taking its imagery from 1984, but what represents Big Brother in this, IBM, right? Like a IBM, a company that in a lot of ways like is the, IBM is along with General Motors, like the company of post-war America, right? Like the defining bureaucratic. Right, it's the post-war capital.

Right. Yeah, that's just for a firm of your point. Exactly. Exactly. That is that is like kind of the cultural stew that someone like Gilliam is coming out of. And that is still very much, you know, it very much is part of the culture in the 90s precisely because, you know, right? We're at the end of history. Now even politics seems not really useful anymore. And that doesn't really do anything for us anymore. And so what else is? left, but for the individual to finally break free of whatever constraints society put on them. I mean, it's so funny, it really is so funny that this, this is the orientation of a lot of, you know, the 90s left. and it, it, like, completely is, you know, simpactico with the transformations in the economy that, you know, the neoliberal transformations in the economy that supercharged during the 1990s.

It's so interesting, I mean, we're running up on time a bit here, but I'll just, I'll throw out a thing. thought, it is interesting how much of the, the development of the American left since the 90s has really been to kind of like walk back from this sort of cultural orientation towards, towards something that isn't so afraid of the state, that isn't so afraid of collectivity. Like, it's interesting, right, that it's not just that young lefties think unions are useful or important, but they think they're cool.

They think unions have countercultural energy. And I think that's a really interesting development. Absolutely. And was not a thing as much in the 90s. Not at all. And I think that's why Gen X are struck, Gen X are struck with a struggle with this time period because of its pro-social tendencies, which are conformist in its in their lower manifestations and probably have to have certain degrees of conformity built into them, unfortunately, right?

You know, like, obviously, like, with these strikes, is like, they're coercive. Like, you know, if you're a scab or you don't want to cooperate with a strike, you're going to hear about it. Like, they are, like, and people are like, well, I don't want to conform. well, you know, this is the way that works. This is the way solidarity works. There are, you know, we have to be honest. There are coercive parts of it. And I understand, especially among intellectuals

or members of the intelligentsia who grew up in the 90s, when everything seemed like anything goes, that that would seem horrifying that those things, that, you know, these pro-social things have returned. Some of them, I feel that. way too from time to time. I get fed up with being told what to do by people all the time, especially when I think they're stupider than me. But, you know, there is a, there is a sense that I think the pro-social orientation of, you know, some of the, of the millennial generation,

if we're just going to engage in vulgar generation talk, really upsets the gen Xers. a lot and they don't really know what to do with it and they they just didn't expect to have to live in a world where those were things were issues anymore so in this movie I think probably something I look about look back on with a certain degree of nostalgia the um I mean it is it is so two two related points the first is that I think it is underestimated or understated the extent of which Gen Xers did grow up during one of the most conservative periods in recent American history. I mean, the 80s, the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s are like a profoundly conservative time in the United States. And you can actually see this in voting behavior, interestingly enough, like Gen Xers are among the Trumpiest groups of Americans, which to me makes absolute total sense about when they grew up.

like what was the cultural, what did the culture look like at that time? This is the thing, right, that any meaningful pushback against the political right in the United States is going to involve unions and other solidaristic organizations that, as you note, rely on some degree of conformity, rely on some degree of coercion in order to build a kind of unified front. Now, the goal of those sorts of movements is to build a more free and humane world. But this is sort of like that this is like the internal contradiction of it all, right? Like how do you manage a more free, humane, expressive world built using tools that will rely to some degree on coercion and conformity? what do you do about that well so you got to cooperate with other well you stop being a child i mean you know like you stop being a child yeah yeah certain there are certain things that require cooperation with others uh you can't just go sit and sulk you know like certain things

and unfortunately that also involves negotiating with people having relations with people whom you don't necessarily want to consider your you know like unfortunately in democratic society occasionally we're governed by people who we don't respect

or believe should govern us but then we have another crack at it but that's and accepting a legitimacy of popular sentiments Well, I don't think you should do it blindly, but it's just part of, you know, like, well, it's just part of the way things work. And I don't think that I think you just have to be like, well, the way to interpret those things is where does it come from? You know, like why has this cropped up? Why are people associating like this now and try to understand those patterns as a reaction to previous ways of doing things?

and not just have this reactionary view that's just like, well, I don't understand the world anymore. And these kids, these are just keep on saying stupid. Like, just like not fucking lose it. Like, there are going to be things that are stupid and annoying, but then you kind of just put them in a, try to put them in a context, you know, and try to put them in a, understand where they're coming from. I think understanding where they're coming from and then relating to them in whatever way you think is most productive is a lot.

you're going to have a lot better time and better thoughts about it than just being like I hate everything in the world today, you know? And it's all horrible. It's, you know, there are parts of it that are bad and there are parts of it that are understandable and their badness is understandable. But there are also good things about it.

So I think that that, I think it's just like, people don't want to put, people have a hard time historicizing things and being like, well, how do we get? here and why are people behaving in this way? And I don't think that this movie contributes that much to that, but whatever, I don't know, maybe there's no relation to what we're talking about anymore. But, yeah, I mean, hey, that's my mind of thoughts.

This is the point of the podcast. My final thought is just to go off and wherever. Yeah, just go off. My final thought related to this conversation, which I do think ties directly into the movie, I will say that, is that. I was recently reading someone on Twitter commenting, or rather the website formerly known as Twitter, commenting about the strange convergence of like reactionaries

and like free speech absolutist types and some people in the left towards like a kind of like, you know, really aggressive anti-wokeness. This makes this, our conversation makes you think that part of this might just be, right? like reacting against the pro-social orientation of contemporary left liberalism. And that, if you're going to react against that, that is going to, that may push you towards certain reactionary orientations, just because there's nowhere else really to go. Okay, that is our episode on 12 Monkeys, a movie that you should watch, if only to see why we went where we went with this conversation.

Yeah. That is the show, as I say every time. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Citro Radio, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review for people to find the show and bring us up the iTunes rankings where we are. I think we're, I don't know where we're ranked, but we're in the kind of like movie review section, which makes some people very angry because you're like, this is not a movie review podcast. Well, you know what? I'm sorry.

We didn't fucking pick where we're put. It's not our fault. They labeled us. People get angry with the stupidest fucking things. We are, we are not a movie review podcast. We are a movie discussion podcast. So if you want detailed plot-by-plot reviews of the movies we talk about, you should pick up a plot synopsis online.

But that's not what we do here. Anyway, rate review us and make people who want that annoyed. If you don't like it, just don't watch it. Don't listen. Like, what's the point? Like, okay, you listen to, what, three minutes of it? It's not for you. Just turn it off.

No one's forcing you to listen to us. Just go do your own thing. There's a million podcasts. Leave us alone. I think one of my crankiest beliefs these days is exactly this. Like, listen, if it's not for you, you'll, you'll, this was an example of someone used on TikTok. You'll, you'll post a recipe for a bean soup and people will be like, well, what if I don't eat beans? I don't know.

Don't make the fucking soup if you don't eat beans. Well, then fuck you. Just eat something else. This is my Gen Xer cranky, anti-woke thing, I guess, is that, although I'm not. Gen X or everyone thinks that everything has to accommodate them perfectly. It was just dude, there are a billion things on the internet. If you don't like it, you can

find your own community. Like, if you don't like this show, that people complain about our politics. People know what our fucking politics are. Like, we're two left-leaning writers. Like, oh, there's too much politics. Dude, if you know that what you're getting here, like there's not false advertising.

Anyway, that's my end of rant. I agree with. you. You can reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week and feedback, we've an email from Cooper titled Sorkin and Kushner. This is a comment on our American president episode, the last episode with the great Linda Holmes. Love the podcast. Your mention of Lincoln and the American president episode actually got me thinking about Tony Kushner and how Kushner and Sorkin actually provide interesting contrast to one another. to one another, Kushner and Sorkin both often wear their politics on their sleeves and

their writing if they're not being nakedly political. But a big difference seems to be that Kushner is far more honest about how messy all of the politics can be at every level. While Sorkin is certain that with the right people who are good and smart, enough, bad things will be fixed eventually, Lincoln may still do a bit of mythologizing, but it is at least honest about how so much of politics actually is dirty and dishonest, but in service of something good, usually. I mean, this is a film where a major moment is a guy lying and saying he's, in fact, a very racist, and the film goes, yes, that was the right thing for him to do. He did a good thing. Then there's Kushner's Angels in America, which is a

modern epic, that also handedly serves as a kind of manifesto for American progressivism. But here, too, Kushner acknowledges the unpleasantness of politics. A major character is Roycone. Another character has AIDS. The ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up. But even more interestingly, Kushner acknowledges that the changes demanded by progressivism are hard. A character even describes change as God taking a jagged hangnail, splitting you open from throat to belly, ripping out your bloody tube, stuffing the back in, and leaving you to do the stitching. But these changes are also extremely important and we must do them. There's a reason angels in America ends with the world only spins forward.

We will be citizens. The time has come. The great work begins. I just find this contrast very interesting. Both raters are clearly on the left side of American politics and have certainly engaged extensively with American politics and managed to produce artistic manifestos for American liberalism, but they both went through extremely different routes. I, of course, find Kushner's approach much better in basically every single way, but I was wondering if y'all had any thoughts

or if any Kushner pin works might end up on the podcast. The most obvious candidate seems to be Munich, but also I wouldn't mind an hour of discussion on Lincoln as well. Thank you for the email, Cooper. Munich would be far in the future of this podcast, but that's a movie I do like quite a bit. It's from Spielberg's post-9-11 period, which I think it's super interesting and people don't give enough credit for how kind of buck wild those movies are, including War of the Worlds. I don't know that much about Tony Kushner. I don't know. I don't know a ton of Kushner's work. But, I mean, I have seen Munich and Lincoln and Angels of America.

So I'm familiar with that stuff. So, Munich will happen eventually. So, again, so will Spielberg's entire post-9-11, you know, it's, it's War of the World's Minority Report. What else? Munich. There's another movie that's bad, but there's at least three that are good.

And Lincoln, I mean, you know, maybe that will be eventually be on the main feed. Maybe you'll do it on the Patreon. Lincoln, as I've said before on this podcast, is a movie I truly love for many reasons. It would be happy to talk about it. I think you're right, Cooper, though, about sort of the difference between Kushner and Sorkin

in their kind of orientation towards politics. Episodes come out every two weeks, so we will see you then with an episode on The Shooter from 96, also called Hidden Assassination. There's a lot of movies called The Shooters. Just look up Hidden Assassination, and it'll be like the shooter, parenthetical Hidden Assassination. It's an action thriller starring Dolph Lundgren,

and it is about a CIA agent who gets caught up in political intrigue after he gets brought in to solve the murder of a Cuban ambassador. This looks like it's going to be drag. We haven't done Dreck in a while, so I'm kind of excited. I know, it's been a while. There is a period where we're just going through crappy movies, and we've run into one. But the one after this is going to be going to be quite good and fun. So a little break in between good movies.

The shooter, Hidden Assassination, whatever is called, is available for rent on Amazon for like three bucks. easy to find it's like 90 minutes so very something something to watch while you're like on a treadmill or something i don't know um don't forget our patreon the latest episode of our patreon podcast is on a face in the crowd the uh uh elia kazan movie elia kazan kazan still don't know how to say his name um you can listen to that in much more alia kazan alia kazan okay you can listen to that in much more at patreon com slash unclear pod for five dollars a month you get two episodes a month it's totally worth it for john gans i am jemel bowie and we will see you next time