Unclear and Present Danger - Company Business

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

On episode 12 of Unclear and Present and Danger, Jamelle and John talk about, and puzzle over, the 1991 action comedy (comedic thriller?) “Company Business.” They have an extended discussion of Gene Hackman’s career, talk Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and think about the surge of populism that struck American politics in the early 1990s.Our new logo is courtesy of the great Rachel Eck! You can find her on Instagram.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front-page for September 6, 1991Martin Chilton’s 2020 profile of Gene Hackman“Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” by Vladislav M. Zubok

Gene Hackman, Mikhail Berishnikov. Looks you think you're being a little theatrical? Someone's got to take care of you. Company business. D'evidanya. D'vidana. Welcome to Episode 12 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade.

I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gaines. I write a column for Gawker, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. And today we are talking about the movie Company Business. Company Business is a 1991 sort of comedic thriller, written and directed by Nicholas Mayer, and starring Gene Hackman and Mikhail Barysnikov, along with Kurtwood Smith, who you'll recognize from That 70s show and Robocop, Terry O'Quinn, who you'll recognize from Lost, he played John Locke, and Daniel Van Bargain. It was released on September 6, 1991, and promptly flopped making $1.5 million on an $18 million budget.

Here is a quick plot synopsis. An aging agent, it's called back by the company, to run a hospital, its trade of a Soviet spy for an American agent. You can find company business for streaming on HBO Max, and it's also available for rental on iTunes and Amazon Prime. Critical reception on this movie is pretty mixed, and I think the assessments of it were more or less on target. The movie moves very quickly. It's like Nicholas Mayer, who directed prior to this Star Trek 2, The Rath of Khan, probably the best Star Trek movie. Nicholas Mayer knows how to make a film. He knows how to make keep things moving quickly, you know, sort of make things like conversations seem exciting.

And so that stuff all works, but the movie is sort of saturated with cliches. And as you put it out, John, it sort of just kind of falls apart at the end. It's, you know, I really, I need you to explain this movie to me because I, I'm usually, I usually like convoluted plots, but there are parts of this one that I just sort of didn't quite follow what the motivations were. And yeah, the ending just is really odd. It just kind of ends in an almost French movie style very suddenly. I think it almost seems like they ran out of a budget or they just couldn't figure out how to end it.

It certainly doesn't have a normal Hollywood ending. Maybe the ending is kind of, we could kind of tease out some interesting content out of the ending. But it definitely felt a little bit abrupt and not well thought out. so yeah i mean yeah go ahead no i don't know i mean you know like this movie was like it wasn't terrible i i was not expecting much i mean it's not good but it's not terrible i had like all these ingredients it would have made a really good spy thriller i was like ah this pot is kind of complicated what's going on like and i like i like that and then i was like oh the acting is pretty good it's well shot there's like some cool editing some even some interesting

exciting scenes but then it just like all kind of fell apart and like there were points at which I was like, oh, this is almost like La Corae level of like having a really convoluted plot. But then I was just like, I don't really understand really what's going on here, why these people are doing anything. And I just sort of, I didn't lose interest in the

movie. Like I watched the end, but I was like, oh, this is not working. And then at the, I was like, what the fuck? Why do they end here? I was like expecting the movie to come to kind of some kind of resolution, but I guess it's kind of hard to see what kind of satisfying resolution it could have come to. Anyway, it wasn't a great

movie it was interesting on a number of levels as our subject matter tends to be with just teasing out some things of political and historical you know note of the era but it was it was sort of of a failure of a movie but a kind of promising failure that seemed like hey this could have been a really good spy thriller but they sort of dropped the ball or just couldn't bring it together I feel like this kind of flop or like this kind of genre movie like again this is sort of like this doesn't I mean, I don't go to the movies all the time, but like, I feel like this sort of like, eh, like they tried to do a genre movie and it didn't work out. Now it's kind of a forgotten example of the genre. Like that just happened all the time, I feel like in Hollywood.

Just like they tried to do this picture and it didn't work. Like, this is just not a classic. No, I think that's right. I mean, I think there was, you know, it's funny. I've been reading the last month a bunch of books on Hollywood in the 60s and the 70s just out of my own curiosity. And one thing that's just sort of interesting is that it's not as if Hollywood has ever been a place where executives are like, yes, let's finance lots of small movies and see what hits. The general, it's always been sort of chasing trends, chasing sort of what audiences seem to like. Sort of if something hits, if something's big and successful, then there's, you know, a ton of copycat movies afterwards.

This was a big thing in the 50s and 60s, a certain musical hits, a certain Western hits, and then there's a half dozen, you know, basically a rip-offs that come out. And so sort of like the post-blockbuster, or post-Star Wars, post-Jaws, Hollywood is more sort of like a variation in a theme, more than a new thing. But even still, I think that, you know, the extent to which you could, you know there wasn't how do I put this this the age of streaming right and the age of sort of mega blockbusters has created a world where I think studios either if they're going to put money into something they want it to be sort of it's they want it to be something that's going to be just a massive hit right that's going to make them ungodly amounts of money

then otherwise you're just going to sort of shove it on the streaming service because you know you can make it for you make movie for two million dollars it goes to some streaming service it gets you some subscriptions you make up the cost pretty quickly and because that like ladder thing just didn't exist you know for most of the history of movies yeah there was just sort of a little more space in terms of like the studios to make something like a company business that is pretty cheap all being considered you know even if it doesn't make a ton of money on the at the box office you can sell the TV rights. You can, you know, you can sell foreign rights and maybe make up

the cost that way. Right. And yeah, I mean, this is not a Hollywood industry podcast, but it's sort of interesting to think because so many of the movies we've watched and that we will be watching are exactly in this kind of mode. They're sort of small. They're not terribly expensive. And they just, I mean, they literally made, I mean, people keep on asking, well, how many movies you guys have. It's like they made a lot of these goddamn goddamn movies. And so yeah, uh, uh, this just, it's just, uh, I think the business of it sort of made it a bit more feasible. For sure. The structure's changed. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, but I think like, you know, it was not, um, I see what they were trying to do. And I, I think it could have been a really good

movie that just didn't quite. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the things that work most about this movie are sort of the relationship between Hackman and Berritsnikov. I think that's what Meyer was probably most interested in since he wrote it. And that's where it's strongest. And all the plot, all the sort of the actual scheme in question, like the thing that is driving things, it's totally unclear to me what exactly sort of.

of is happening with the KGB and the CIA that the two yeah I have no idea do you understand that at all like what do they cooperate like why do they start cooperating like what are they up to I think I think it's sort of the the KGB wants money needs it's just two million dollars yeah yeah it's and this this prisoner exchange is an excuse to get cash to the KGB and get right an American prisoner back right but Hackman's character at the moment of the trade things it's something that's fishy and where it gets convoluted is sort of like Kurtwood Smith's character who's his handler doesn't realize there's something else going on

but Kurtwood Smith's boss who's played by Terry O' Quinn there is something going on but it's never clear what that thing is right it's not like the it's not like a plot stock plot that we've discovered and a lot of these movies of like the security state and the Soviet Union is cooperating secretly with the security state in the West to like prolong the Cold War plot. That's not what's going on. No. No, it's just like they're working together because they're trying to get the money back.

But it's such an inconsequential amount of money like in geopolitical terms that just like hard to take seriously. They're like, oh yeah, they're willing to risk life and limb for $2 million. I mean, come on. It's like Dr. Evil. Some of money. Even in 1991, so... Yeah, $2 million in 1991 in today's dollars is like, I think it's barely $4 million.

It's like not that much money. It's nothing. Yeah. I want to say, before we move any further, this is the third movie we have watched with Gene Hackman. No Way Out in the package are also Gene Hackman movie is the package of Gene Hackman vehicle. And this is a Gene Hackman vehicle for the most part. So I feel like it's just worth talking about Gene Hackman for a little bit because he is an actor I really like and I'm always pleased to see in movies. And he is an actor with a pretty interesting life.

He's born in 1930. He's still living. I don't know people know that. Gene Hackman's still alive and well. He notably eats at one particular diner in the town he lives in and rides his bike all the time, just enjoying retirement, which I think rules. he served four years in the Marines from 1940 to I think 46 to 50 or 45 to 49 you didn't see combat but he was stationed in China and then in Hawaii and Japan he got started late in acting I was reading a profile of him in the way he explains it as his wife at the time

and he'll have been married twice so his first wife was a receptionist or something of that nature and basically was like you should do what you want to do you should pursue your dreams he wanted to act he got into theater uh he was friends and sort of roommates with dust and hoffman at one point which i think is very funny uh just the two of them together size wise funny to me yeah um it's also funny to me that you know hoffman who uh yeah his big breakout film was the graduate and sort of he when he was cast when mike nichols cast him for the graduate that was considered to be an insane choice because he is this short dark dark hair jewish guy and no one's like this guy is not a star he's too ethnic right and then kind of a similar

way hackman who was an older guy he's like seemingly always been balding yeah um doesn't look like a star but they're both very much sort of like of the 60s and 70s and of that moment. The 70s was such a great time to be a weird looking guy. So Hackman's first credited role is in 64. And so, you know, he's more or less 30s by this point. And his first, sort of his breakout role was in Arthur Penn's, Bonnie and Clyde, a quick parenthetical, really shouldn't Arthur Penn directed it, but that's really Warren Beatty's movie. He's the kind of guy who like brought it to fruition. But anyway,

Hackman played Clyde Barrow's brother Buck. He got his first Oscar nomination for it for Best Supporting Actor. It's a really great performance. He sort of electrifies the screen. And then in the 70s, his career kind of takes off. He's in Freedkins, the French Connection. He's in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. He's in Arthur Penn's Night Moves, which is a really great movie that people should see. He's in both of Richard Lester's Superman films. And then he kind of keeps on trucking in the 80s and 90s with movies as I feel like people of our age will have heard of. Reds, Hoosiers, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, Enemy of the State.

So, you know, for me, I know I saw Superman as a kid and sort of like, he, He plays Lex Luthor. He's sort of, you know, stuck in your brain. And then my dad, who loves paranoia movie, is himself a little paranoid. I hope he doesn't listen. He probably doesn't. If he does, then, you know, I'll get in a little trouble. Okay.

I saw enemy of a state with my dad when I was a kid. And so that's the other kind of Gene Hackman role that's sort of like stuck in my head. Yeah. Hackman's last big role was the Royal Tenen Bombs in 2001. That was his last big row? I mean, he had a couple films after that, but the Royal Tenen Bombs was like his last sort of like won a bunch of awards, made a big splash kind of role.

And then he more or less retired after that. And he's been kind of living in retirement. I mentioned I found this profile of him. It was from 2020. And I really like a paragraph for it. from it, so I'm going to read that paragraph. Hackman is truly a man of wild contradictions. Robert Duvall, who has been a friend since the 1950s,

called him a, quote, tormented guy, always into his own space, his own thing. Where director Arthur Penn saw a man normally full of great, I don't know how to say that, it's great joy, a French word, a French phrase, I don't know, I'm sorry. Morrison saw an inveterate loner, hackman's volatile bust-ups. with directors on set earned him the nickname Vesuvius. Although he was forgiven for his temper tantrums, there's something very charismatic in him,

even when he's being his worst, said Wes Anderson, who directed Hackman in the real tenant bombs. So yeah, gruff guy, kind of blue-collar energy, tormented, a little wry, always kind of on the edge of violence. I think, I think... This is what you like it, an actor.

You like this, like, borderline explosive, like someone who's kind of in a rage. Right, right. Whose rage is sort of simmering. It's why I like Yopacado. Yeah, exactly. For the same reason. And you also like that Brian, you talked about with Brian Cox.

Right, right. Like all these actors whose whole thing is sort of like, maybe at some point I'm going to lose my fucking mind. Yeah. I kind of, that appeals to me. Yeah. Yeah, he's great. I mean, it's interesting. like this movie like he has all these like

kind of journeyman Hollywood roles but he's also like a great actor who kind of like transcends that it's just like he's just like yeah he does these work in these sort of you know so-so movies or you know genre movies and he's good in those roles but like he's also like yeah he's a great actor you know who's had some really outstanding

performed yeah yeah sort of truly one of the best of his cohort of actors generation's the wrong word because he's like older than everyone he kind of came up with but yeah he's really great Okay, with that out of the way, with my Gene Hackman fanboying over, let's go to this New York Times front page for September 6th, 191. It's a big one. It is a huge one. How about you take it this time?

Soviet Congress yields rule to republics to avoid political and economic collapse. Gorbachev heated. He could play big role on new and powerful temporary counsel. So I'll just read the first few paragraphs. to the reality of the collapsing union and ultimately him from President Mikhail Gorbachev, the all-Sovviet Congress voted to surrender power to the new government largely controlled by the republics. The actions served largely confirmed the collapse of central authority over the 15 constituent republics in the 16 days since the aborted right-wing coup that an increasingly urgent need to restore at least a modicum of order before the centrifugal forces turned uncontrollable.

The major effect of the new central structures, etc. etc. Basically what's happening is this is the USSR is collapsing. The republics which were sort of autonomous on paper. So the way that the USSR was organized was that there was all of these autonomous republics and they usually correspond to some ethnic

people that was a constituent of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union. And they on paper had autonomy because Lenin believed in self the termination, but in fact, they were dominated by Moscow and the Communist Party, and the Russia Communist Party. I'm sorry, that's not quite right.

The all-Sovia Communist Party dominated the regional republics. So basically, now these republics are being taken seriously and powers devolving from them. So Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. on like these are all kind of breaking away from the Soviet Union with this vote um you know all of these bodies didn't really mean anything that the Gorbachev basically took the Soviet constitution seriously the Soviet constitution said all sorts of things and then basically it was like the real seat of power is the communist party and that was it and uh so it's like but but gorbet part of Gorbachev's reform which turned out to I mean according to some people

be why the country fell apart was that they uh they uh he took the he took aspects of the soviet constitution seriously he moved away from party control and he moved to you know basically saying oh well it says the republics are autonomous and they could succeed so we we have and that's what lenin intended so we have to take that seriously it's almost as if someone had tried to like institute like read the federal i mean i'm not sure this is a perfect analogy but had read the federalist really closely or started to read like some of jefferson's you know more speculative theories on government and and just like had the absolute power to like make it literally true and that's sort of like what gorbachev did with the soviet constitution it was like a lot of stuff

that had just atrophied wasn't taken seriously it was just like okay we understand the communist party who's actually a charge and then he started to these and when he started to take these things seriously it unleashed political forces that he you know no one could control so this is really this is not the end the end because that happens you know christmas around christmas um but it's uh it's really there's really not much left after this um and and also set up you know a lot of the issues that we're dealing with right now with this war that is ongoing in Ukraine. So, yeah, this is a crucial moment in the collapse of the Soviet Union that we're seeing.

And the film is a little behind, as often with the films we watch, I think. Isn't that right? Yeah, I see the film was probably a year behind or a year or two behind. Sort of Glasnoss and Perestroika are clearly happening in the world of the film. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Yes. But the Soviet Union is still intact. It's clear that the intelligence agencies and officials on both sides assume that it's going to be like this for at least a while.

Yeah. Hence the attempt to kind of figure out some kind of new status quo between the two. But yeah, the movie is very much behind these events. Just a quick question. I know you've been reading a book about the fall of the Soviet Union, right? Like, collapse. Collapse by Vadaslav Zubok, which is a very good book. My understanding is that the argument of the book is, I mean, the cover kind of hints at this,

that he really does blame Gorbachev for. It's all Gorbachev. I mean, in his view. I mean, that's basically the, I mean, a little bit of an oversimplification, but that's the upshot of the book. Basically, look, the Soviet Union had enormous problems. And someone needed to reform it. But his argument essentially, and you know what, this is to be, to be frank, his is only a little bit more of a civilized perspective than say what you might hear Vladimir Putin say about the fall of this of the Soviet.

This is a very Russian perspective, just to put that out there. Basically, you know, Gorbachev's reforms were ill-conceived. They were too idealistic. they were based on this belief that Lenin's system could be made to work and that you didn't need all the cynical apparatus of party control and centralization, so on and so forth. And the economy could be reformed very quickly. And basically, like, you just needed to, you just needed to, like, put a new wave of revolutionary energy into the system and to shake up the old ways that have done, things were done, and it would create, you know, basically, you know, a new,

new a new lease on life and a new era in um in the soviet project so bach's attitude is basically like I think he doesn't have a super high regard for for Gorbachev as a as a man or a statesman and basically thinks like his his ideas were impractical and the execution of it is not only just the ideas but the execution of it wasn't competently done and this created a lot of problems and it's really interesting to see the process there's a lot of fascinating facts in the book about collapse to the soviet Union just how you know dire the economic situation was and you know I'm not sure what could have been done I mean to prevent it but basically his his he he basically makes pretty clear that it was Gorbache's fault I mean but I don't

know, I mean, there are other takes on it from, also from less Russian perspectives, from other, you know, from, you know, nationalities within the Soviet Union. But this is a, I would say, sort of the, the educated Russian perspective is Zubolk's take on it. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very interested to read this. Sort of I have like a big backlog of stuff, but I think this is going on, going on list because it seems interesting and I just I personally don't know a ton about the collapse of the Soviet Union so even getting specifically Russian perspective seems uh seems useful to me oh yeah it's a very cool though um okay so company business the movie uh as we said it is jean hackman plays basically a old spook who has brought in to uh facilitate a trade of a russian or soviet

prisoner for an American prisoner. This goes sort of sideways, and then Hackman and the Soviet prisoner, who is again played by Mikhail Baryshnikov, kind of become buddy, buddy, and are trying to figure out basically how to get to some sort of resolution to get to some sort of freedom. And, you know, the... A lot of the vibe of the movie um is sort of everyone going through the motions and i feel like that's sort of what to the extent that this movie is trying to say anything um or beyond the story is trying to tell i think it's trying to dramatize and and with the comedic twist the extent of which everyone in this world of spies uh is kind of just going through the motions there is a my favorite i think my

favorite scene in the movie is when hackman takes his takes them to um an arms dealer uh in berlin that he knew and they it's this arab arms dealer yeah kind of a stereotype but you guys put of this um and they're chatting and and hackman's talking up like you know this guy lives in this big house and he's very rich and he has all this stuff and they show up and the house is kind of empty and things look a little dilapidated and this guy's like surrounded by papers and he's like oh you know hackman says you know we have two million dollars and he says oh well you know we can help you launder that and we can launder it for arms for the contras and hackman's like well the contras don't really exist anymore and the guy's like well you know i can you know i can turn that

into you know german marks and we can purchase weapons for uh uh uh the cubans in angola and Hackman's like well the Cubans aren't really in Angola anymore yeah um and then he that arms dealer jokes well I guess I could I could we could provide arms to the PLO but let me guess they've recognized Israel by now and sort of like the whole exchange is this sort of you know this lament of you know what do we even have to do anymore what is our point what is our what is our reason for existence in this world yeah yeah that's very much one of these movies which is like the dying of this whole you know class of people and their and their you know uh usefulness in the world and like how they're kind of um going through that there i just want to know one thing before we

move forward is that there's also kind of like a weird man churine candidate subplot which is like the u2 pilot so it's like goes back to early cold war stuff where they like trading berishnikov who was a kgb guy for a u2 pilot who shot down like in the 60s and but he turned out to be actually a double agent who was like running Brishnikov? Yeah, he was Prishnikov's handler, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, does that seem plausible? No.

But, I mean, it's just to give you an example of how they construct the plot of this movie. But it, it mentioned, worth mentioning because like a lot of, let's say, tropes or cliches of Cold War films are brought together, I guess, kind of try to sum up at this kind of late Cold War moment. But, yeah, like, the vibe of the movie is like, okay, these men are older. They're no longer needed. I mean, at the beginning of the movie, Gene Hackman's character is, like, doing private corporate intelligence work.

And, you know, he's only asked to come back to the CIA, like, to do this one last, one last heist sort of thing. And, yeah, it's just like this is a post, this is a world of, where they're no longer they're no longer useful but but what it i mean even in the title company business sort of like and the fact that money it becomes the central uh even not a not a very you know what they the if there's more money was exchanged in the movie or stolen in the movie than it made the movie says it's made 1.5 million so two million dollars the ransom money didn't even make the ransom money in the movie so if out of a budget of 18 which is not good um so like the

yeah i mean it kind of suggests like okay well you know that i we don't nobody takes the ideological stuff of this seriously anymore it's all just about money it's also kind of a piddling amount of money um they're trying to kind of launder it that's because it's all they have to live off this money these these two uh agents left out in the cold um you know it's uh yeah it's it's you know many of the movies we have have sort of like shown the cold war as a kind of the end of the cold war is a kind of i don't know if honestly disappointed or letdown or it's definitely like ending a certain way of life and a way of of things making sense for the characters but these guys seem so cynical already that they they just seem to have reached the end they don't

believe it you know but it's kind of a lonely these guys have here's where it's almost a little bit uh lecar aish because it's like they don't have any like the cyst the structures are so alienating like these guys have been both betrayed by their sides they have nothing like all they have is each other i guess you know it's a buddy comedy but like there's no one he says at one point he's like oh like we need to go and like be taken in but by your side and he's like well there's no one to take us in they've tried to kill us you know so they're they're just um it's a very kind of bleak in a way i mean the movie doesn't quite totally portray that because of it's sort of like being a buddy comedy but it's sort of a bleak situation it's like these guys have nowhere to go

and in the end you know the the strange ending they're kind of trapped right i don't know exactly know what it's trying to say about the about the types of people who the types of people who um who did this sort of work but i will say you know a big a major leader on the world stage at the moment who's causing a lot of problems is a uh was for a while an unemployed veteran of his country's security services and uh you know this it's interesting to think about like well what happened to these people after their life stopped making sense, you know? And they kind of went on to second careers with, you know, disastrous consequences. One thing we keep coming back to as we go through these movies is the end of history thesis.

So Fukuyama and sort of the idea that kind of the age of ideological conflict is over and sort of we're moving into a world where, you know, democracy and capitalism are not just ascendant, but sort of like the dominant paradigms for governance. And one thing, I think this movie kind of gestures towards that somewhat in the kind of recurring evocation of sort of like, you know, it's not just that this, that everyone's cynical, you know, really believes in the fight anymore, if there even is a fight, but that, you know, the um you know the one character uh she says you know towards the end of the movies sort of like pretty soon it's all going to be one big corporation in europe that it's going to be you know it's

going to be uh uh there's not going to national distinctions don't really matter anymore because they're all going to be united by kind of you know uh uh financial capitalism by globalization these sorts of things. I think it's the Soviet agent character who says to Gene Hackman, he's like, you know, what are you even talking about, right? Like, your country is owned by the Japanese. Yeah, I remember. I was about to mention that. Yeah. Yeah. And I, this movie is, I mean, this movie is interesting in, in that it does, it does seem, it does seem to be channeling this sense at the beginning of the 90s and then with the end of the Cold War that sort of, yeah, the great struggles of history are more or less over and we're all going to be united in consumerism

and you know hyper-specific cultural catering to our taste which is also kind of a thing that's present in this movie they go to there's a there's a point at which they are trying to hide out and they are in some sort of like red light district in Berlin and um uh the soviet character you know says like you know the fruits of capitalism right right yeah which i think is like you know a slightly reactionary um thing like about which you know was a real attitude in the soviet union of like oh well like the west is decadent and all of this has all these pathologies because of the so-called freedoms of capitalism um what else did I occur to me while watching this movie yeah I mean the Japanese stuff is

really interesting it comes up a few times I mean that I mean that was a real that was a real anxiety we've discussed this and I think it'll come up in some of the films we watch but it was a real anxiety in the US at the time sort of like because of you know Japan's economic success at the time there all the investments Japan had made in the US economy and you know kind just the need, the realization that the Soviet Union was no longer, you know, fulfilling the role of arrival and something needed to come along, new needed to come along. So there was this big almost hysterical buildup of Japan that, you know, didn't last very long because Japan had a horrible economic crisis that kind of ended this whole, you know, the plausibility of it being a

second power to the United States. But yeah, I mean, there is a certain, this, this movie doesn't seem sad about the end of the Soviet Union. It just seems like, you know, there's almost something kind of like, okay, this is where I'm going to do my speculative class analysis stuff about this movie. But it's almost like, you know, Hackman and Beresnikov are kind of like the working class guys of their intelligence services. Like, he's like an operations guy and he's, you know, he was like in the field. And like they're not like the Yale wasps, you know, who are running things. He's sort of like. you know, gruff, rough business, you know, um, you know, like does the dirty work of the company.

And like, they almost have this like internationalist, um, working class solidarity as, as, uh, intelligence officers where they both are like, we've been betrayed by our bosses and we, now we all we have is each other. So weirdly enough, there's a moment of like socialist internationalism in this movie, uh, peeking out behind. it's end of the Cold War thing because they both like there's no there's no belief in the state structures and all these two guys who have just been the loyal company men for their bosses now just like only have their solidarity with each other um so that's a kind of an odd thing I noticed I was like yeah a lot of these movies like kind of have these this one is a

little more low key but I think the package especially when it's when it as you say you know, like Dean Hackens kind of coated blue collar and a lot of the stuff. Like the package was way more like there was like a weird, you know, kind of populist subtext that movie where it was like the sort of common people of the army against the corrupt officer class. This one has this a little bit. It was kind of a populist era in the United States, a moment of populist anger. So it kind of makes sense that people are angry or annoyed with like the betrayal of these

companies and structures and corporations. you know, of which the CIA is kind of like a, not a metaphor, but sort of like the ideal version of. Yeah, so I think that there's that going on too in the movie. There seems to be a kind of dissatisfaction with the, you know, there's already a dissatisfaction with the condition of post-history, which, you know, Fukuyama said, predicted essentially is that, you know, the end of history will be a very sad time. and you know I think that this movie is kind of tapping into that you know it's

interesting to think about nowadays because you know there is a there's a certain degree of I wouldn't it's like triumphalism is not the right word but there's a certain there's a certain type of person I think in our social class of intelligency and writers who are you know and I'm not immune to it in my own particular way are sort of like, oh, yes, our conflict with Russia again, you know, gives us meaning and kind of structures our entire civilization, it restructures our civilization. And we're out of the, we're out of the doldrums of post-history, you know. And we've, I don't know if that's, you know, one should celebrate war and, and the, and nuclear brinksmanship, you know, it's.

At least it gives us meaning, I think, that that's a pretty suspect. That's a pretty suspect proposition, but that does seem to be kind of in the air, wouldn't you agree? I think so. I mean, I think it's certainly the case that the conflict in Ukraine, it's like, so what I don't think is happening is I don't think we're in a place where people are like, finally, you know, we're back to something like, you know, Cold War politics. I don't think that. that's happening. Yeah. I do think that there is a there is a sort of welcoming of a conflict for which sort of the lines between, you know, antagonists and protagonists are well defined, right? There are clear, quote unquote, good guys here. And there are, you know, Ukrainians fighting for self-determination and fighting for the survival of a democratic state. And bad guys, which is, you know, Vladimir Putin's Russia, and really just Putin specifically, is sort of like a rapacious oligarch and authoritarian. Yeah. And that, you know, that makes people after, after 20 years of conflicts, which the United States is involved in directly, where you could describe these as sort

of like, are we the baddies kind of conflicts, right? Sort of, you know, aggressive wars, long-term occupations. patience, things for which, you know, only the most jingoistic Americans. Like, we were clearly in the right here. I think that's a welcome change of pace from that. And I also think, and you should have made this point, we're recording this on a Tuesday, you made this point on Twitter, which is that the Russia's actions in Putin's sort of worldview is, is like legible in a way because it kind of ties back to kind of the historic position of the Russian Empire. It ties back to sort of the historic ambitions of the Russian Empire

to kind of be this vanguard of counter-revolution in Europe and around the world. And so that, I mean, I think the extent to which Putin kind of just like represents something like coherent and ideological and something which operates sort of like a clear point of distinction with Americans and with the United States is sort of, it's refreshing is a weird way to put it, but I think it's refreshing to people. I think people like the fact that they can kind of like engage with this with a little less, or what they imagine to be a little less complexity than the conflicts for the last 20 years. Yeah, I think of the thing about Putin.

ideology in so far as he has one it's so it's so postmodern because it's it's like a weird combination of this throwback to the russian empire and a weird combination to soviet playing on his people's soviet nostalgia and i think that that makes the responses to it really incoherent as well because you have like the cold warrior old cold warriors like you know ready to fight the cold war again here and be like yeah it's the it's the soviets again it's the soviets again It's like, well, if you actually listen to what he's saying, it's not really what he's saying. And, you know, but there is an aspect of it, which is definitely in terms of the, you know, the, and how he gets domestic support for this kind of stuff is based on nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

And he plays on those things, especially with this denazification business, because, I mean, that's like the great moment of the Soviet Union was its defeat of Nazi Germany. And, but, you know, and then there's a mix of these older. themes of Russian imperialism. So it's like even now where we have a supposedly clearer world, it's still really like a pastiche of different ideological tropes. Like no one can really figure it out. Like certain people project the Soviet Union onto Russia still.

Both left and right do this. Like you have righty neocons and conservatives being like, yes, now we get to do Cold War, the Cold War again, like this is what we've always wanted. We'd never want to give it up. And then you have people on the left, like, you know, the kind of like, it's tanky, if you want to say left, who are like, oh, yes, now we have a side to pick again because, you know, this is still the Soviet Union. Like, it's not the Soviet Union anymore.

And then you have another, you have another kind of like group that's like, like me, basically. But there is, you know, there's an aspect of it with this is, this is. I'm taking, I'm picking and choosing what is in the world and, you know, shaping my beliefs around it. It's like, oh, well, no, actually, the West is now, and this has gone to the period, like it was before the World War I and before the Russian Revolution, where the West represents a democratic revolution. And Russia is the old reactionary power. It's this weird confusion. We're still, even though we're still in this period of confusion of what is actually at stake in all of these conflicts, psychologically and materially like you know for many people on the left Russia is I mean I think

this is idiotic but you know that's my politics is it's not kind of is standing up to the imperialism of the West but other people on the left you know are saying oh no this is the imperialism of the czar is all over again and some people on the right are say Russia is it's the old Soviet Empire and we've always had to stand against them and you know protect the the free people of Europe and then there's other people on the right who look at Putin and say no this is great you know this guy is defending traditional values and it's is sort of like these there's like these four quadrants that are just like basically seeing in it you know these different symbolic things going on I mean I happen to think my interpretation is correct the others are wrong but

it's interesting that there's such a there's such an ideological confusion about what these things actually stand for and I think that that's just the sign that we're still very much in this post Cold War the breakdown I mean in certain ways that there's there's conflict and there's opposition but the simplicity of the symbolic aspect of it where look the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union and no one and the West was the West and you know you chose your side and you know people fit their different interests in politics within that you know there was different different national projects fit into that, some more left wing, somewhere right wing. But it wasn't, I don't think, quite as like kaleidoscopic of what ideologically is going on.

And I think that that's just the continuation of the post-historical thing, which is just like, what does this all really even mean? I mean, we're still always trying to figure that out. And I don't think we're any, like, no one, look, all of the arguments that we're having today, I'm like, like, this is why it's so confusing. I mean, look, when you're living through a moment, there's so much propaganda, confusion, historical. Hindsight has to reconstitute things and come up with interpretations of things. But look, we don't even understand, and I don't know if they understand what their war aims even were.

It's almost this, like, it's just, what is anybody doing? Like, why do they, like, there seems, I think one thing, why this war seems so upsetting. I mean, I mean, it just seems senseless. And it seems like, you know, people are trying to find these different rationales. for it, but ultimately, like the war on terror, or not like the war on terror, like the invasion of Iraq, there's an aspect of it that seems just because. Yeah. And trying to reconstitute an ideological world of opposites.

Like, we try to do it with Iraq. They're trying to do it with their Ukraine war. You know, they see it. They're bringing up Nazism. We tried to bring up all the Cold War. We tried to bring up the anti-fascist struggle with the Ukraine. this islamo-fascist concept like we tried this already and now they're trying it and it's really destructive to try to bring back these these past ways of organizing society and it's

confusing and it doesn't work doesn't it doesn't hold and just seems to you know further demoralize our our societies um so i'm not exactly it's just it's a very confusing thing I mean, there's lots of arguments right now. We're just trying to figure out exactly what Russia even wanted. Like, did they have these grand civilizational goals of returning the Russian Empire and swallowing up Ukraine? Certainly seems that way from the way Putin was talking. But now people are saying, well, maybe they just had these smaller realists, foreign policy goals all along.

I guess these sorts of matters interpretation always are part of living through great historical events. And historians work those out over years and years and years and different interpretations become. prevalent at different times but it seems to me especially confused um and i think that that's why we're still in the way we're strangely enough still in the universe of the films that we're watching it's just like there's still not a clarity about what anybody is fighting for or why yeah and and there's not there's not only not a clarity but everyone just seems exhausted right it's sort of like i mean the striking thing for me as an observer watching the conflict in Ukraine is how much the Russian military seems like

it's sort of not even that I just want to be there just sort of like there's no exhaust is the only word I have for it. It just seems exhausted. Sort of like what, you know, there's no, there's not that much discipline, you know, supply lines are shot, like equipment's falling apart, you know, every week you're learning a new general's being killed, which is a whole thing that's interesting to me. It seems to, I need to learn more about how the rush military is actually organized. But they're in the same way that in this film, you know, the, both the grunts and the higher-ups are largely, are largely done with all of this and are kind of just going through the motions. It both feels as if this war is happening because Putin's like, well, I can do

it who's going to stop me. But at the same time, there's no real passion behind it, which is what makes, which is sort of what makes us so, makes the conflict, one of the things that makes it to striking is that, you know, the Ukrainians do have this passion and this energy and this fighting spirit that is driving their defense and, you know, obviously helping rally much of the world into the Western world, at least to their side, There's also just stands and start contrast with where the Russian state appears to be right now. And in a funny way, sort of the contrast has, I think, been a little jarring for some Americans who imagine the Russian state to be much stronger than it was and much more robust and much more have much more vitality than it does or than it did. Yeah, I think a lot of people are disappointed.

I mean, both disappointed because they thought there would be a stronger right. and disappointed because they actually had sympathy with whatever ideological program Russia has. The thing about Russia being led by a secret policeman, essentially, is that, you know, the attitude of Putin and of people in secret services as generals is that politics is kind of fake, that it's all a, everything is deception and everything is, you know, a charade because that's the world that they operated. It's a particularly limited worldview that doesn't really, everything is manufactured, it's propaganda, or it's being confused and muddled and so and so forth. And I think that gives you basically a very limited worldview about what is possible politically. And I think that, you know, it is, you know, relates very much to his, what we talked about a few times ago with it. just like the total misunderstanding of democracy as a as an actual type of society and system of

government. I was listening to a military analyst who said, look, you know, this whole idea that they were going to do a surgical, a decapitation strike and get rid of Zelensky was probably not going to work because there was, you know, Ukrainian society is very horizontal and as a robust civil society that would have probably continued fighting under a lot of circumstances. And this was weird mirroring going on in in in of Putin being like well you know my country is top down so therefore they're top down um so yeah I think it's just like the the reason why this appears so confusing and and weird is because it's it's from the it issues from the mind of a of of the secret services and unfortunately that's what remains like and I think we we deal with this in the

states in a slightly different way, but I think that that's something to think about what we created this architecture in our societies to fight the Cold War, and when the Cold War ends, it still exists, and then what happens and what does it do, and why does it meld into? And Putin is an unemployed secret policemen, essentially, and needs to find a new career, and his new career is politics, and he brings with it, you know, his, his, his, his professional the way he used things professionally and the tactics of his of that of that profession of and it's a certain type of bureaucratic attitude too and i think we have that in the united states slightly differently but uh you know a lot of the people who staffed the bush

administration were and came up with the ideas uh uh for the iraqa were you know former bureaucrats from the security state right um and i mean condolies arise famously was sort of a Russia scholar. Yeah. And sort of, you know, very, it's very clearly her understanding of the world was shaped by the, by the structures of Cold War, you know, Cold War thinking and Cold War conflict. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to think, just on that point, it is interesting to think that

the, if the architects of sort of the second Bush administration and sort of foreign adventurism and its wars were these Cold War bureaucrats, the internal opposition often came from the military for whatever reason, right? Sort of like, or people with military experience. And I don't have anything to go from there. I have nothing to unpack from there. It's just sort of an interesting, an interesting thing about the ways in which these different kinds of experience sort of like manifests themselves on the political stage. I wanted to, you had mentioned something earlier, and I wanted to go back to it, but just sort of the populism of the early 90s and kind of the early 90s, and I don't think people necessarily think of the early 90s as being a

populist time. But as we've remarked upon multiple times in this podcast, it very much was. You have sort of the populist right kind of really emerging out into the open once again. You have not like a Sanders-style populist left, but like a sense among the, among liberals at the very least it's sort of that there needs to be a return to kind of basics a sort of a return to kind of a more populist approach to politics statewide office he won't well and I do think actually you can begin to say Sanders is a part of this because I think he won his first federal office in 1990 that's right yeah he won he won Vermont's house seat in 1990 yeah but one thing one thing I think this movie so

thinking about the populism and thinking about the populist aspect of this film, I think that one thing it does touch on that you alluded to is this sense, I mean, this was a real thing, right, sort of with the transformation of the economy, of the freeing of global capital in the 80s, kind of like producing, you know, the polite way to put it as like, more fluid labor markets, but really sort of the ability to kind of like get rid of workers on mass for the sake of attracting investment capital. This sense that sort of you have this generation of men, right, like not quite boomers yet,

right? I mean, it should be the older generation of boomers, maybe, maybe the silent generation, right, is probably the right, the right people of Biden's age now. So people who would have been in their late 40s and 50s in this time who took the traditional path their fathers took and their parents took, taking jobs with these big companies, having these big careers, but then the transformation of the economy in the 70s and 80s results in them getting laid off, losing their pensions, losing the security they thought they had, having to kind of reinvent themselves in a way that, they may not be equipped to do and kind of the resentment over that um the anger over that is part of the populism of the early 90s i think there's some of this in this film there'll be some of this in films that we get to later um i've said before i'm looking forward to talking about falling down which really is i think like an important so cinematic artifact from this period because it

touches on so much of what's happening in the culture and in the country at the time But this resentment and this anger at being abandoned by the almost sort of like paternalistic companies that you thought would be responsible for your security is somewhat a part of this movie, not in the strong part, but it's there, especially in the beginning. But very much a part of this period. And I think it's a part of this period that I wouldn't say it's sort of like lost. but gets short shrift I think when we're thinking about the early 90s is an historical period I totally agree

well and I think there's a mirroring of a similar experience in the in the post-Soviet world which is that you know there were all these structures I mean they were more centralized and unified than the United States but you know I often say or it often occurs to me that you know there were aspects of the U.S.

during the Cold War that were very where state and and industry were very aligned. I mean, you know, you had, you know, Scoop Jackson was sometimes called the senator from Boeing, you know, like, and, you know, you had, you had representatives and senators from Michigan having extremely close relationships with the auto industry, so and so forth. So I think there was a sense of, you know, of a real integration between, like, the great industrial, you know, capacities of the United States and the state during the Cold War. I mean, it was obviously privatized, but, you know, even the structure of ownership was, was complicated with, you know, pension funds and everything like that. But, yeah, in the Soviet Union, there were lots of things that one could rely on, and then all of a sudden they were gone. And in the period of privatization was extremely traumatic for Russians, and, you know, it bred.

first of all, a real desire for stability, a good deal of cynicism about politics and democracy, and a willingness to put up with anything that could seem like it could end the period of chaos. And it explains a lot of Putin's success as a politician. You know, I think people were just, you know, found the 90s to be so intolerable that they were really willing to accept any kind of settlement after it. Which is not exactly our experience, but I mean, we definitely see, you know, the emergence of really troubling things in politics coming out of like the collapse of some of the things in American life, the structures in American life that seem to be stabilizing and provide people with things that they could count on. And life in the United States, I mean, it's possible to be prosperous as it, you know, but it is not easy. It's not easy in the way, you know, there's fewer and fewer of these great institutions that kind of just take you under your wing for your whole life.

I mean, what is one that it still exists? Maybe the U.S. military. How many corporations really provide, like, this kind of cradle to the grave thing you used to associate with, I don't know, IBM or something like that? You know, that sort of world, I mean, it doesn't really exist anymore. People, I mean, people get rich, some people eke out middle class life. It's not impossibly prosperous, but the stability of the Cold War and the post-war years is not something that's really, has ever, anyone's really succeeded on replicating. And I, yeah, and I think that leads to this populist anger because people are, because people are fed up, you know, feel like

betrayed and that they had a good thing going on and someone took it away from them right and I mean this starts to get really complicated right when you consider the extent to which the the post-war you know private welfare state or public private welfare state was itself structured by gender and race right so so you know the ability to be a breadwinner of the sort that you had this sort of corporate security that you that you know you by by by uh by having particular types of employment you then got access to a wide suite of benefits for yourself and your family there's a great recent book on this with regards to the steel industry called the next shift by gabriel winant who is a associate professor uh of history um uh but this this uh that

was structured by race and gender, right? It was more or less for white men. And to the extent that black men or black women or white women or any other group got access to it, it was on a very limited scope and highly circumscribed by sort of these received hierarchies. And one interesting thing historically, right, is that sort of the beginnings of the unraveling of these hierarchies in the 60s and 70s is more or less concurrent with the transformations in the economies. It's not that you can't say that one calls the other necessarily, but they're happening along parallel lines. And so in terms of politics, what it may look like to some people, right, is that the liberation of women, the end of Jim Crow and the receding of race hierarchy, the liberalization of immigration, these things which are, which are, I believe, the objective goods for our society are at least in close proximity to the unwrable. of the public-private welfare state and may unraveling of the welfare state itself.

And so there's there's a, it provides opportunities for a kind of demigodgery against those movements for liberation because you can say, right, that like it's their fault. And and there's, there's, I mean, there's been work done, right, making, pointing out that part of the path of neoliberalization in the United States involved exactly leveraging race resentment. and gender resentment for the sake of defunding public goods, for the sake of saying, you know, these people are threatening your security. And so let's sort of recede, let's retrench against them.

Well, I see that very, I mean, in the book that I'm working on all over the place, which is just like, you know, basically one of the big, big, you know, Clinton also went along with this. Clinton was, I just want to emphasize, in no way a populace. He had a folksy style, but by temperament and by philosophy, Clinton is an elitist. He believes that, you know, certain people are more competent to lead and, you know, they're cultivated in elite institutions. They get road scholarships, et cetera, et cetera. Clinton is a diet. He comes from a modest background, but he's a believing elitist.

But he adopted, you know, this welfare reform ideology, essentially. Um, which was, you know, part of the, of the Democratic Party's, uh, you know, bid for white middle class people, essentially, who were going over to Republicans. Um, and, you know, it's interesting to see instead of people demanding, um, more in the, in the kind of recession period at the end of the Cold War, you know, instead of people demanding more services, there's, there's lots of just, let's cut him. for other people let's make let's let's let's you know well I'm not doing good so fuck them you know like why should I pay my taxes so somebody else you know meanwhile you know the welfare rules uh ballooned by people who previously had jobs and needed them but still there was this attitude uh you know we need to cut these programs they're they're causing social you know like social parasitism or whatever so yeah I mean it was a weird populist moment in the sense that

it was included austerity and not just a demand to soak the rich right but yeah um yeah i think this is a good place to end especially since a continued conversation along these lines could go for a very long time oh yeah and and we should save it for other movies and other other other opportunities so um i think i'm going to call call it a wrap right now do you have any lost thoughts all the time yeah i also have many lost uh thoughts uh thoughts uh but do you have any last thoughts on the movie no it's not great but it's not terrible i've spent worse times in my life and i'm i wouldn't necessarily recommend it to somebody who didn't have a completionist attitude towards this podcast or the genre but it's not the worst movie we've watched that's for

I'm going to disagree a little slightly. I'm just sort of a sucker for the buddy conceit. So I think I maybe liked it a little more than you did. It's also a nice, it's a clean 90 minutes, which is always... That's good. Yeah. This is something, if you don't want to watch in a single setting, single sitting, then like three nights of doing dishes, you know, you'll knock it out.

If you're like me and you watch movies while doing dishes. parenthood. Yeah, so I liked it. It's not great. I'm not going to say that it's particularly good among the Nicholas Meyer movies I've seen. It is definitely near the bottom. But it's a movie I enjoyed

and I would recommend checking it out if this is sort of the general genre of things that you like. Or if you're a Gene Hackman fan. Yeah, he's great always. Okay, that is our show. If you're not a subscription, subscriber please subscribe we're available on itunes spotify chitra radio and google podcast and wherever

else podcasts are found if you subscribe please leave a rating and a review it does help people find the show it boost our numbers and you can reach out to both of us on twitter i am at j booey john you are i'm at lionel underscore trolling uh we also have a feedback email it is unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com and this week I decided to be fun to read some of the feedback that we get. So I have an email here. It comes from a listener named Tom White. Hello Tom. It is a comment on our No Way Out episode from last December, but we got the email pretty recently. Here's Tom. I've enjoyed your series, though I've been running behind and just listen to your episode on No Way Out. Your commentaries were incisive as always. Thank you, Tom. I was hoping, however, that you'd

mention that the movie is also known for one of the greatest geographic whoppers in movie history. In one scene, filmed on location in Georgetown, Costner runs from the C&O Canal into a Georgetown shopping mall, which has been signed as Georgetown Metro Station. This scene was met with great hoots and hollers by DC moviegoers, since everyone knows there is no metro station in Georgetown. Indeed, the failure to include one was one of the most controversial aspects of the system's design. It was generally assumed. that the omission reflected the influence of the very important people who lived in the posh area and do not want tourists another riffraff using mass transit to encroach on their territory.

That's interesting. After we did that episode, a lot of people actually made this observation. We should have mentioned that there is no Georgetown metro station. Having lived in D.C. for almost a decade, I will say that is my fault. Yeah. But yeah, this is the case that if you look at a map of the, DC Metro, it makes zero sense that there isn't to stop in Georgetown. And if you are living in DC and trying to get to Georgetown, it's sort of actually a huge pain in the ass because there's

no, the nearest metro station is some ways away. You'd have to take a bus to get there. And there is a bus that cuts across the city that gets there to get to Georgetown, but it takes forever and there's a ton of stops. And I think, I think I don't know the exact details of why there isn't the Georgetown Metro Station, but Georgetown, rich Georgetown homeowners not wanting people from other parts of the city, which there are obvious racial overtones to that. It sounds like the right explanation to me.

That's so weird as a New Yorker because here, rapid transit access makes property values go through the roof. You know, like people, like, as soon as the subway station comes into the neighborhood, forget it. I mean, it's no longer, like the close, like as soon as it becomes convenient, it's no longer going to be affordable. I guess that's just, you know, just reflective of a particular way that the economy works here. I think, I think also just thinking of kind of the differing histories of New York and D.C., right? Like, D.C. for so long, D.C., up until relatively recently, was this kind of like weird provincial little town.

Yeah. for which like if you were an affluent you know person connected to the government you could live this almost like suburban life within the city and so a metro station ends up being sort of like a direct imposition on that in a way that it would have never been in New York where you know the age of New York of suburban existence within New York I mean I guess like you know parts of outer Brooklyn and outer Queens or whatever maybe today but really those aren't particularly like expensive places to live you know like if you're going to move to the suburb moves to the suburb those are sort of like the bedroom communities in Brooklyn or not like it's not like oh you can like a house with a yard is like where your property values start going up in New York it's like no you can be jammed into a tiny closet but if you're in like a cool neighborhood near a subway then you're going to pay a fortune you know Right. Right. Yeah. Well, that was feedback from Tom White. You can always reach us for feedback again at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. I intend to do more of this reading the emails we get. So please send them. I do read them. We do read them. And we were always glad to get them. As we teased on our last episode, our next episode is another Nicholas Meyer movie, perhaps. perhaps the greatest of them all. It's Star Trek 6, the Undiscovered Country.

I'm really excited to rewatch this, really excited to talk about it. Quick plot synopsis, if you've never seen a Star Trek movie, or this one in particular, after years of war, the Federation and the Klingon Empire find themselves on the brink of a peace summit

when a Klingon ship is nearly destroyed by an apparent attack from the Enterprise. Both worlds brace for what may be their deadliest encounter. Very easy to see why this movie is relevant to our podcast. Star Trek 6 is available for streaming on Paramount Plus. You can rent it on iTunes or Amazon Prime, or if you're me, you can own an entire box set of Star Trek movies. So you're just going to pluck out the DVD, the Blu-ray, rather, I don't own DVDs, pluck out the Blu-ray and pop it into the Blu-ray player and watch it. So I would highly recommend that you watch this before you join us for our next episode.

It's a great movie. It's a great watch. it's sort of it's not the last of the classic treks that's star trek generations um but it is it is one of the best of the classic it's i really like this movie yeah uh and i think we might have a guest right we may have a guest um i don't want to because we haven't officially confirmed it yet i'm not going to say who it is yes um name him yes um name him but we will have a guest and so this we'll have a guest joining us for um that episode which will come out in two weeks since episodes come out every other Friday.

So we will see you in two weeks with Star Trek 6, the Undiscovered Country. For John Gans, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We will see you next time. Thank you.