Unclear and Present Danger - Enemy of the State

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

On this week's (somewhat delayed) episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by Matt Duss to discuss the 1998 conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State, directed by the late great Tony Scott and starring the late great Gene Hackman, as well as Will Smith, Jon Voight and Regina King.In their discussion, Jamelle, John and Matt talk the film's vision of the American surveillance state, its spiritual connection to The Conversation, Will Smith's superstar performance, and the ways the movie anticipated some of the political disputes of the post-9/11 era.The tagline for Enemy of the State was "It's not paranoia if they're really after you." You can find the film to rent or buy on Amazon.For the next episode of the podcast, Jamelle and John will watch The Peacemaker, a 1997 political thriller directed by Mimi Leder (of Pay It Forward and Deep Impact fame) and starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman.And don’t forget about our Patreon! You can sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod. For just $5/month, you get two episodes on the films of the Cold War. Our next Patreon episode will be on The Conversation!Our producer is Connor Smith and our artwork is by Rachel Eck

Satellite imagery coming through. Roger that patched visual in my location. Subject entering lingerie store. Robert Clayton Dean was innocent. You freeze there? Times 10. We have reason to believe that Mr. Zavits may have passed sensitive materials to you. What kind of materials? Sensitive, sir. Let's get into his life.

We have you bogged it, Mr. Dean. Move to Audio 3. He was unsuspecting. Hey, hey! Mine in the wrong house? Hello? He was unaware. You are the only woman in the world for me.

You and Janet Jackson. Coming your way over. Now, what he doesn't know could kill him. Request immediate keyhole visual tasking, maximum resolution. He's on your six o'clock. You have something they want. Two targets rooftop.

I don't have anything. Maybe you're doing you don't know it. You're a threat now. To whom? Everyone you know. Target's on the move. A name, a phone number. No, nothing. He didn't give me anything.

You're not any federal agents you had following your... Stay exactly where you are. I want to use every means possible to get what we need. From Jerry Brockheimer. Get the cat. What's the cat's name? Babe. Producer of the Rock.

Come here, baby. Baby, come, come here! A film by Tony Scott. Target is on 21. Director of Crimson Tide. Is this about me? 20. Do they know me?

19. Who is that? 18. He jumped to 17. Do they know me? I don't know what you're talking about. Will Smith. You're one of them, aren't you?

Former conspire. Switching, talking, switchy. Gene Hackman. This man, this is our problem. You live in another day, I'll be very impressed. It's not paranoia when they're really after you. Tell them to stop it now. Enemy of the state.

What the hell is happening? I blew up the building. Why? Because you made a phone call. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger A podcast about the political and military thrillers with 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. I'm John Gans. I'm the author of, well, where do I start here? Okay, I'm the, I write the substack newsletter on popular front. I'm a columnist for the nation. And I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the early 1990s, which is available wherever good books are sold. And we'll soon be available in the United States.

Kingdom. I think an e-book is already available in the UK, but it's coming out in paperback in the UK with a slightly different title. It's called When the Clock Broke Conman Conspiruses and the origins of Trumpism, just to give a hint in case UK readers don't know what it's about. So be on the lookout for that if you're over there. All right. And we have a guest today. Please welcome to the show Matt Duss. He is at the Center for International Policy and was a former foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders. Hello, Matt. Hello.

Hey, Matt. Great to be on. I've been looking forward to this. Yes, way back when I was planning out the movies for this little show of ours, I reached out to Matt and see if he wanted to do an episode. You were like, Enemy of the State. Yeah, I looked at the list. I was like, that's the one.

And although enemy of the State doesn't come out until 98, and we're sort of still in 97, our previous episode was on conspiracy theory. the great Gene Hackman passed away recently and a very tragic death. It's really actually quite rough to read about so I would not recommend it. Just imagine he died peacefully in his sleep. He did not.

Gene Hackman passed away recently and so sort of in honor of Hackman who has been in multiple films on this podcast including one by the director who directed enemy of the state, Crimson Tide. We are doing a little Gene Hackman that will feature, so on the Patreon next week, we'll be recording an episode on The Conversation, which is sort of the spiritual prequel to this film, or rather this is the spiritual sequel to the conversation. And the film, of course, as I already mentioned, is Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott, the superior Scott brother, in my opinion.

Strong. Strong fame. They both, I mean, listen. Ridley Scott, you know, people are like he is, he's the high-minded one, but he's made a lot of slop in his life. He's made a terrible, a lot of terrible movies. And I, I think, I think Tony Scott, by virtue of sort of knowing his lane, which is basically sort of like very much taking the, the aesthetic of music videos and bringing the Hollywood blockbusters, actually has like a way more, oh, had he passed away about 15 years ago, had a much more

consistent output um there aren't very many bad tony scott movies but like ridley scott basically basically gives you like a bad movie every other year you're saying ridley scott is pretentious yes yeah i mean i don't know this is a whole other podcast but yeah love tony scott fantastic as you said very solid um you know he doesn't have a blade runner he doesn't have an alien very few directors do so on average i don't know that's that's a tough one Uh, but, um, but, uh, we're getting, yeah, it's a different, which Scott is better is a different podcast. Um, maybe we should have in the Patreon where I argue viscerously for Tony Scott superiority. Um, you have your whole take on Blade Runner, which we won't get into. No, I think it's a bad movie. Uh, no, we've argued about this. All right. All right. You guys, this has been great. Okay. Uh, okay, but, but enemy estate direct by Tony Scott, written by David Marconi, produced by Jerry Brockheimer. I mean, this is, the kind of the height of a Brockhammer's influence on the blockbuster starring kind of, you know, big stars, Will Smith, Gene Hackman, John Voight, Regina King, Jake Busey, Gabriel Byrne, and you'll find a bunch of other people you'll recognize. Jack Black shows up in the film. Jamie Kennedy shows up in the film Scott Kahn, James Kahn's son, Anna Gunn, who people will recognize from Bray.

Ricky Bad, Jason Lee. I mean, there are- Lisa Bonnet, Tom Seismore. Gabriel Byrne makes a quick appearance. This is a stacked cast. In Enemy of the State, Will Smith plays Robert Clayton, Dean, and labor lawyer who is currently working on a case involving a restaurant owner and mob boss, Paulie Pintero. Dean occasionally hires a man named Brill through his ex-girlfriend Rachel.

and brook kind of conduct surveillance operations. It helps Dean in his cases. One day when Dean is out shopping for lingerie, he runs into an old college classmate who appears to be running away from someone. And this college classmate drops something into his bag. Dean returns home and is later that evening two men who say they're from the D.C. police show up asking about his interaction with this old college friend. And as it turns out, that old college friend had accidentally recorded the murder of a congressman, Phil Hammersley, played by Jason Robards, another great actor. Hammersley was skeptical of, an opponent of a new piece of counterterrorism legislation that

would expand their surveillance powers of the American government. And the assistant director of the NSA, played by John Boyd, when he cannot persuade Hammersley to support the bill, has him murdered. Kind of simulates a heart attack, makes it appear like he wasn't killed, but he's killed. And the Jason Lee character accidentally records this while it's recording migratory bird patterns. And so this, there's a tape now with footage of the murder that could incriminate, incriminate Reynolds. And it's in Will Smith's possession, or so the NSA thinks. That begins an effort by the NSA to completely destroy Will Smith's life, discredit him, accuse him of corruption and affairs and potentially murder, and put him on the run. And while he's on the run, he ends up encountering Brill, his contact, who provides him in surveillance videos.

and now Brill and Dean have to stop Reynolds, clear Dean's name, and bring this conspiracy to a close. You can watch enemy of the state. I rented it on, no, I didn't rent it on iTunes. I streamed it on Amazon Prime. It's available to stream it on Amazon Prime. You can rent it or buy it on Apple TV, iTunes, whatever to call these days. I did not check if there was a physical media release, but I think. there probably is. If there isn't, there ought to be one because I think this movie is actually

kind of great. I mean, the state was made on a budget of 90 million, a grossed 250 million domestic and international. It was a big hit. I think critics were a little mixed on it. They were generally like, this is a good entertaining, you know, fun movie, good time at the weekend, a good time of the movie theaters on a November weekend. But it wasn't hailed as an evening. great thing. I think looking at it in retrospect, it's pretty much better than most things that come out of the Hollywood blockbuster machine. So a frequent theme on this podcast, people did not realize the embarrassment of riches they had in the 1990s. And it would be great if we could get back to even a shadow of that. The tagline for Enemy of the State, it's not paranoia if they're

really after you, which is a great tagline. Enemy of the State came out. on November 20th, 1998. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Sure. So we often joke that, you know, especially in the middle of the 90s, we get some pretty boring times covers. But this one is pretty big, pretty explosive.

Big headline here is rancorous house panel here, Starr's case for impeachment, inquiry defended. Across a long day and well into the night, Kenneth W. Starr fought off Democratic assault on the conduct of his office on Thursday and repeatedly sought to return attention to what he described as President Clinton

of President Clinton's pattern of obstruction of justice. In a 12-hour day that opened the House impeachment hearings, the Independent Council testified in a mostly dispassionate monotone about his four-year investigation that began with Whitewater and ended with the Lewinsky matter.

The Democrats challenged Mr. Starr's tactics and his judgment and the motives and fairness of the Republicans who control the committee. But for all that, they rarely defended Mr. Clinton directly. Republicans, for their part, praised Mr. Starr often and extravagantly. As you will know, many of our audience will know, this was the Monica Lewinsky scandal that eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. This inquiry, Monica Lewinsky was incidental to an inquiry about a law firm that Bill and Hillary Clinton

I'm sorry, a business deal that they had through their law firm in Arkansas. Kenneth Starr was in the office of the Independent Council, which no longer exists. I think a Supreme Court decision struck it down as being a separation of powers issue. Conservatives on the court, Thomas in particular, views the entire notion of an independent council to be kind of in the front to separation of powers, its Congress, sort of interfering too much into the business of the executive. So, and there is an interesting connection here to this movie because Lewinsky was dragged into this case through an act of secret surveillance by her former friend, Linda Tripp. Oh, right. Yeah. A book agent Luciane Goldberg began recording their conversations as Monica was telling, you know, Linda about her past affair with Bill Clinton, was then detained by the, you know, officers of stars.

stars officers who tried then to get her to wear a wire, threatening her with, you know, decades of jail time. So, yeah, trying to stage, you know, essentially a sting. But yeah, that, you know, because the enemy of the state is just all about surveillance. Yeah. So I thought that was an interesting connection here. For sure. I just want to say I understand that the independent, office of the independent council may be a little iffy because it's under Congress and has some

police powers, but I think we kind of miss it today. I wish they had some sort of very robust ability to do investigations, especially of the executive branch. So maybe, although I don't think any of us here were probably big fans of Star, Kenneth Starr and his going after Clinton on this, in retrospect perhaps not such a bad institution. The other very interesting article here on the head on the on the on the front page of the times is israel's right wing turns from fury to resignation from the picture windows of his office atop of commanding hill pinkus wallerstein has a sweeping view of the chival chiseled lionstone of romola but he sits with his back to the palestinian city snug behind barbed wire and his jewish settlements the palestinians may be a fixture on his

horizon he said but it does not mean he wants to stare them in the base and said of Mr. Wallerstein, Chairman of the Settlers Council, the umbrella organization of the Jewish Settlers Movement, looks at maps, grids filled with colored splotches delineating the shifting boundaries of Jewish and Palestinian areas in the West Bank. His days of ideological lecturing against the peace accord are behind him, he says, another Israeli pullback is about to begin, and Mr. Wallerstein has shifted his concerns to roads, power lines, water systems, and security systems. Well, this did not go the way that people thought it would.

There would look like there was going to be a piece of cord and a lot of settlers were disappointed. There was going to be a pullout of some areas of the West Bank. Things have gone differently. I'm sure Matt can speak to this. No, I think they've gone precisely the way Mr. Wallastien wanted them to go. And it was because of continuing to build roads, power lines, and waters to, to facilitate the continued growth of the settlements, which I think have more than doubled since 1998. That sounds right.

Yeah, I mean, they were frustrated with. Nitin Yahoo is the prime minister at this time. They were frustrated with him, but eventually they got his way. And now the national, I don't know if they were, the National Religious Party was a part of his coalition at that time, but they definitely are now, or they were until recently. So Israel has lurched farther and farther rightwards. settlers are more and more in control, and the situation, obviously, is extremely dire, depressing, but we won't address that all right now. I think those are the, really, oh, well, there's another, there's another interesting little Watergate's story here, not Watergate,

Whitewater, not nearly the same thing. Attacked by the president's lawyer at length ruffles a cool witness. President Clinton's lawyer, David E. Kendall, Haven't heard that name in a long time. Tonight finally got his chance to confront Kenneth W. Starr, and he used his entire hour not to defend the president's actions or his veracity, but attack Mr. Starr and the conduct of his investigation. Mr. Kendall struck with his first minute of a cross-examination criticizing Mr. Starr as engaging an overkill in his four-year inquiry as hiring undisclosed number of private investigators to gather evidence of Clinton misdeeds. The president's lawyer then spent the next 60 minutes in an assault on Mr. Starr's honesty, his prosecutor, tactics and his ethics. I have to say, all of this stuff sounds so quaint these days.

Even I watched, I mean, the Mono-Lewinsey scandal at the time was a huge deal and all these stories were quite scandalous and the conduct of both sides' lawyers were big news and everyone thought, oh, this is horrible. It looks like nothing today. I would say even Watergate, I recently watched a Watergate documentary. and I was shocked with how kind of quaint everybody's belief in norms and of conduct were. So at the time, the Clinton impeachment scandal looked like a massive deal in American history, and now it looks not so big of a deal.

Obviously, the levels of lawfare and noncompliance with orders and legal wrangling have reached proportions that looked very, very, look much bigger than anything that was going on during, during, uh, Clinton's time. So I don't know. I would, it's definitely, I'm of several minds about this. One is I always have a kind of beef of, I, I tend not to call it the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It's the Bill Clinton scandal. The Bill Clinton scandal. Um, you know, has, I don't know, I have a lot of admiration for what she went through and what she survived and what she's made of herself. Um, and Bill Clinton was, you know, You know, Ken Starr was a villain. Bill Clinton was a villain here, too.

You know, he was... Sure. An older boss who preyed on a young woman, and that's vile. And I'm sure the right would have found some excuse to give themselves permission to kind of go where they've gone anyway. But as I remember it, I mean, I think there was some, I think, legitimate disbelief that Democrats were just circling the wagons around a president who did this. And I don't dismiss that out of hand at all. no it does it did create certain precedents that probably weren't positive uh first of all it was just a sign of extreme republican obstructionism and aggression um yeah and also the partisanship of the democrats in

supporting a president that you know arguably was disgraced and maybe ought to have resigned to create more positive precedence of behavior um i think in this day and age with that that that that precedent could have been useful. Now, do I think the Republican Party is capable of being shamed or has any notion that certain precedents should guide them to do certain things? Probably not. But, you know, maybe in the first Trump administration, there was an argument that perhaps the memory of Clinton's resignation, the fact of Clinton's resignation could have had some political effect. Maybe. So, yeah, I mean, and just for the sake of the dignity of the office, perhaps he should have resigned. I'm open to those arguments,

although back in the 90s, I was just, in my, I was very young, but I was just a total democratic partisan like my family and thought the Republicans were just evil and going after this poor guy, who was our guy, our first president after so many years of having to put up with Republicans. Yeah. Of course, Bill Clinton was very lucky to have Newt Gingrich leading the charge against him. Yeah, which definitely polarized people. Yeah. I mean, my, my thoughts always been that in the abstract, Bill Clinton should have resigned,

but the fact that part of what was motivating Republicans is just the notion that there was no such a thing as a legitimate Democratic, Democratic president, right? Like, Democrats could not be president on some sort of a fundamental level is why I probably would have been like, yeah, don't resign. Like, don't give them that victory. I think that the Democratic Party is the problem of the Democratic Party's response to all of this was that there was seemingly no awareness, no ability to comprehend that their friends and colleagues in Congress did not think that they were legitimate political actors, which would show up again, right, like just a few years later with the 2000 election and Bush v. Gore. and now it's just sort of like ought to be taken for granted, but still apparently is not by some number of Democratic elected officials. It's like it's, I find the whole thing, I find it very strange that this like, this is so hard to kind of wrap one's head around if you're in Congress. Well, I think the Democratic base has basically arrived, maybe not the, the electates, but I think the base has basically arrived, I mean, with some good reason. I think. at the level of partisanship that Republicans had already arrived at in the 1990s,

which is basically other guys are traitors. And everything they're doing is either, you know, kind of conspiracy in the interest of a foreign power or something close to it. So I think that the partisanship, the high degree of partisanship, which I think actually has to do with kind of the ideological polarization that was beginning to happen between the parties, which was kind of a new thing in American history. has really, you know, for reasons, I'm not just saying, everyone now is equally crazy, has taken over both parties.

Is there anything else on the page that you want to highlight? I think that's the really interesting stuff to me. I want to just note real quick that this paper, this edition of the Times notes that Alan Pakula died that week. Oh, yeah. You know, Pekula, who at this point, I think, is in his 70s, you think, if you don't, when you don't know how he died, you think, oh, he must have died of old age or whatever, you know, Hollywood guy probably drinks a lot, smokes out, whatever. No, he dies in a highway accident, a pipe smashed through his car windshield on Long Island. He had, like, a final destination death.

Oh, that's horrible. Really terrible. So, Alan Pekula died. And then I want to note this other little headline ruling on racial admissions, a federal court rejected the affirmative action policy of Boston Latin, the elite public school. And just sort of like the backlash against affirmative actions, like well underway at this point in the 90s. And of course, in a couple years, the Supreme Court rule issue, its ruling where basically is like, listen, this really can only be around for like 20 more years. And then 20 years later, a bunch of those members, really just Thomas at this point, Justice Thomas, but his conservative colleagues. more or less in affirmative action. And here we are the current administration that is basically treating diversity as if it is itself racial discrimination. I think you said on Twitter, John, that it was like having David Duke run the government. I think it's about right.

I can't see any particular distinction between what President Duke would do on D. He would be less friendly to Israel. That's the only difference. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Enemy of the state. The film, Enemy of the State.

Matt, you, I assume, really like this movie. Yes, I do. No, I was like, you know, Tony Scott, solid director. This is basically, you know, an update, tricked out version of a classic Hitchcock wrong man thriller. Right. Which Hitchcock made several versions of probably North by Northwest is the most famous, but there's The Wrong Man, there's Saboteur. There's a number of others that deal in this.

And I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of similarities to what I love about the Hitchcock movies. You know, the innocent man kind of who has to run for his life wrongly charged. Is he really that innocent? I mean, because the movie kicks off with, you know, Robert Dean engaging in an act of illicit surveillance himself, you know, by obtaining the video to essentially blackmail the mob boss into making a better deal with his, his, his labor union. But also, and we can get more into this later, especially in North by Northwest, but throughout a number of Hitchcock's movies, they're like meta commentaries on movie making. And you see this throughout this movie is that Dean is being forced to play a role in kind of

a staged series of events. We see this in the beginning with the assassination of Hammersley. It's a staged heart attack that it's actually an assassin. And towards the end, when Dean hooks up with Brill, they decide, no, we're going to make our own little movie and turn the tables and stage our own version of this. And so, I mean, but it's, like I said, you know, updated for, you know, the 90s with all this technology and, you know, these extreme cuts and the use of different, you know, film styles. And, you know, and the last thing I'll say here, too, is like, yes, it's about surveillance. Yes, it's about you can't trust the government, but I don't, you know, it doesn't dwell too much on the politics because, and I say this with respect and admiration for Tony Scott, Tony Scott's movies are about boys and their toys, you know, Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Crimson Tide, and definitely this movie is about, you know, guys using cool shit, cool technology. And in that way, I mean, in the same way that, you know, I think is Truffaut said you can't make it an anti-war movie because any movie that shows war, that shows sacrifice, that shows, you know, courage is in some way going to be a pro-war film.

This movie does show surveillance and it's frightening, but it also shows all the cool stuff that the government can do and it's chilling, but also you can see it and just be impressed by it. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, okay, so when I watched this movie when I was young and I don't really remember my impression of it, but I remember at this age, I was starting to kind of become, I guess you could say, politically conscious. I was really into computer hacking subculture. I read 2,600 magazine. So I was really aware of NSA in particular surveillance programs. There were lots of articles about echelon. the International Surveillance Program. So I kind of already thought that the NSA could sort of watch everything. And I was very, as, I don't know, as it animated as a 12-year-old can get politically about issues of surveillance.

And that was a big part of my, I don't know, coming to political consciousness was kind of from this civil libertarian point of view about government over. overreach, which I think, unfortunately, I did not hold on to strongly enough during the Obama years, I will admit. The other thing about the movie is, yeah, I think Matt's point about the way that these films that depict surveillance kind of, okay, first of all, yeah, it's interesting, you know, we have all these films in the United States that depict the federal government in a very sinister way.

and what does that actually do to people's political consciousness it does not really create a groundswell to end these programs it creates a kind of paranoia but then look what we have now which is like there's all there's both a extreme paranoia about the deep state involved in the political movement that's taken over the white house but also the belief that these people should have even more expanded powers of surveillance and, um, and, uh, and police powers and intelligence powers. So there's a strange feeling like, I don't know, these movies make it so abstract. It makes these figures so shadowy that you're, that people, I think going back to our discussion of partisanship, think like, well, as long as my guys are in charge, I'm not that

worried and we'll get the, we'll get the guys out, which is sort of not. the point. You know, you kind of have to have a principled case against these things, which I think this movie sort of begins to, you know, is open to that idea. But I think Matt is absolutely right. There's a weird thing where this kind of encourages a fascination, but perhaps not a revulsion with these things. Although the people doing the stuff are shown to be real creeps. But yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. I saw this movie and I was a kid as well. My dad

my dad was like, yeah, they could really do this. And I remember being kids, like, I'm not sure they can. Yeah, I'll return to that point later. Just talk about the movie as a movie. I think one thing I like about Tony Scott quite a bit is just the dynamism. Yeah, there's kind of

a kind of throw everything at the wall approach to editing and direction. And sometimes I can be um quite overwhelming the last boy scout with uh what's that damon wayans and yeah bruce willis i think is is overstuffed in a lot of ways but this particular film where you do have a kind you do have multiple um technological perspectives like you have the surveillance cameras you have the satellites you have everything and kind of cutting all that in with traditional footage it works like it really it really makes this movie

move. And the chase scenes are dynamic and interesting. It's just like it's a movie that immediately holds your attention. Will Smith, of course, is a next level movie star. At this point, this is sort of like in this period where he went from being popular TV star, guy you're happy to see in movies, to genuinely being the biggest movie star on the planet. The previous year is Independence Day. The previous year, is Men in Black. This is a somewhat more, I mean, it's still a blockbuster, but more of a serious play. Nothing like, what's the movie he's in? Is it 60-3-A-to-separation?

Nothing, nothing like that, but still a little more of a more grounded role. And he's just magnetic on screen. Gene Hackman, of course, shows up and just immediately takes over the film. He's exactly locked in. Regina King. Any time he shows up. up. I mean, in any movie, it adds like, okay, I'm safe in. Right, right, exactly. But yeah, go on. Regina King. Yeah, who is great. It's great. The scene where they are fighting when she's

like, are you having an affair with me is terrific? I was like, oh, wow, she is locked into this character and to this performance. Very few scenes, but just nails everyone. Right. And so I think, I think as a movie, it works, it's like it's very entertaining and it works very well. hackman obviously kind of reprising the sort of character he played in the conversation maybe sort of like maybe i mean it's so here's an analogy basically back to back hackman a couple years earlier does two westerns he does unforgiven and he does the quick and the dead and unforgiven of course is clinny's wood's sort of um almost like retrospective on his own career, his own kind of deconstructing his own mythology, and Hackman in that plays the kind of

villain that you often see in an Eastwood Western, but is, it's a much more kind of nuanced and, I hate him, Kenes, we're getting grounded for the performance. This is, this is a real kind of person, Hackman's playing, and whatever menace and evil is in him is not something that is distinct from the kinds of things that animate Eastwood's own character. They're kind of two peas and a pod a bit. And then the quick in the dead, Hackman is playing just sort of like a cartoon character villain. And it's a great performance. He's like, I mean, it's, he's, he's cackling. He's, he's great. It's, um, it's a lot of fun. Uh, and something similar here is happening. Obviously, the films are decades apart. But the character in the

conversation is is kind of a loner very he's not he's not he's not he's not like he doesn't have a lot of um he's not a big personality um in in really important ways this character is this character very much is sort of like jean hackman um uh but there are still some similarities there uh right that's right his his hideout it's very similar to his as um where he runs his business or whatnot in the conversation right um there it's a clear i mean it's clearly there's clearly doing callbacks even though as you said matt this movie has much more in common with like a north by northwest and it does with um with with the conversation or a kind of surveillance thriller of that sort um i had one more no oh go ahead please well i just

wanted, you know, go back to, to Will Smith's performance, because, yeah, I mean, this was, he was kind of reaching the peak. I mean, he had done Independence Day. He had done Men in Black, Wild Wild West. He was a superstar. But to step into kind of this everyman role, I mean, takes, you know, that's, and to not, like, get in the way of the movie. Yes. I think there is restraint in this performance. Like, you see, like, some of his Will Smithness coming out here and there. Um, but. But to play this role, which is, you know, again, the Kerry Grant role or a Jimmy Stewart role to keep the audience on your side, I mean, that is, I think, really impressive. Yeah, I think you're right.

He's too much of a distinct superstar, a really truly pull off in every man. Like, he can't, like, Jimmy Stewart convincingly can pull off in every man. Smith can't quite do it, but he's still great to watch this. I want to just, we'll talk about other things, but I feel like I have to mention this. One thing I just noticed about this movie, and I've noticed this about a bunch of the movies, oddly, in this, on this podcast, is their portray of black domesticity. And again, we have a film here where you have, like, a upper middle class black family in Washington, D.C., not an uncommon thing, Washington, D.C., like, known for many upper middle class black families. But not something you see very much in Hollywood, especially not at this time. and although there are marital problems, this is a, this is shown to be a stable household.

I just find that interesting. I find, I'm interested in how in the 90s, there really does seem to be this effort either intentional or kind of no one's really thinking about it. They're just doing it because, hey, maybe this was supposed to be a white actor that we cast. We cast Will Smith instead, so here we are. But images of kind of mainstream black domesticity, I find interesting. I also wanted to comment real quick on something you said, John, which is just the way that this movie's portrayal of the government might shape people's thoughts. We prior to the show, Matt and I were talking a bit about how in the current administration, there really does seem to be, there really does appear to be this belief that there is. this all-powerful deep state that actually controls all political opposition. And I feel like

as much as I find this movie quite entertaining and I like it a lot, it's portrayal of the government of the surveillance state as being all-knowing and all-powerful. I'm sure has contributed to kind of like a cultural notion of that's what the government is like. That is possible you know, that these people are so sophisticated and so skilled that you can make a phone call at a random gas station and they can immediately trace it and within minutes show up with armed men to take you away. Yeah, I mean, the villain of this movie is the deep state. You know, it is the security state. Yeah, and I think that basically that was my concept. That is both a, um, a highly frightening, but also a highly reassuring idea of the state in the government that I think both liberals and conservatives have and relate to in a different way. And I remember, we've discussed

this many times, but my, you know, my react, and we talk about this as like my baseline reaction that I took away from these movies was the omnipotence of the American security state when after 9-11 happens, which is not too long after this film, my belief was, oh, we're going to kill Osama bin Laden tonight because of the absolute power. of our surveillance and military. And in fact, it took, you know, a decade to trace him down. And there were many mistakes. So I think my attitude towards these things became also just modified by my observance of the limited power of the United States in the face of actual determined opposition, which is something we should have known from our experiences earlier in the

20th century with Vietnam and so on and so forth. You know, the United States government is enormously powerful, but its power is not limitless. So there is an aspect to this depiction of the infinite power of the U.S. surveillance state as not only being frightening, but also kind of being propaganda. In the same way now, we have like AI doomerism and AI boosterism are kind of the two sides of the same coin. Like the propaganda about the U.S. surveillance state is also kind of like, yeah, we can find you, we can hunt you down. But the United States is not all power. The United States government is not all powerful. It's extremely, it has some very impressive capabilities, obviously, that have developed since this film.

But, yeah, I think the impression this gives people is of an omnipotent power of the state, especially when it's in institution, like, okay, the CIA, I would say, obviously has a certain facelessness, but it was given a face by both its scandals and the films of the 20th century. We have an idea of what a CIA officer looks like. The NSA, in particular, is it as an institution in the American imagination because of its building, because it focuses mostly on surveillance and data, is really almost like this proxy for something that's completely faceless, completely bureaucratic, is not associated with personalities at all. And I think that that leads to the idea of the state as this bureaucratic, I mean, they call the NSA headquarters the puzzle palace.

this Byzantine bureaucratic maze where, you know, it's just who is really responsible for these things. It's just kind of systems and processes taking over. I, and I think my just just learning more about the way the government works, learning more about the nature of, of United States power, kind of disabused me of what I think I once believed about the security state. I don't think everybody else had the same process of education. I think in the popular imagination do impart with films like this, as you guys were discussing, there is a perception of the United States that has this kind of cartoonish idea of what the surveillance state does. And I think revelations, even like I think we got to talk about Snowden and Chelsea Manning here,

you know, which do give us some insight into what the state does, I think actually make it more mysterious. I don't, it's the same thing. Like, look today with the revelations of the JFK files. Now, I think that this administration is idiotic. But I think they have a good sense of propaganda in the sense that they know that this is actually not going to answer any questions. This is only going to create more questions and make people more curious and say they must

not be releasing all of the files. The more, in a weird way, the more people. learn about the function of the United States government, the more the holy of holies recedes and people understand it less or don't believe it. They think there is some omnipotent core. They don't think, look, it's just the people who do their jobs. They think, oh, once we turn this button, once we'll do this, things will do this. But yeah, I wonder what it is. Something about what the state, because I think the Cold War, I don't know. I'm sure Matt has some thoughts about this. I'm sure Jamal has the thoughts of that. Revelations don't.

really seem to demystify the state they seem to always make it more mysterious well i i think that's right but i think a big part of it is that we've had multiple you know revelations over the years you mentioned snow and you mentioned manning um and nobody went to jail you know there was zero accountability whether we're talking about surveillance whether we're talking about torture run down the list and like one of the most i i think adorable scenes in this movie is, you know, when Brill and Dean start working to kind of frame up the people who are chasing them and they plant a bug in a senator's hotel room for it to be found, and then there's a meeting at the NSA and the head of the NSA is like, if someone did this on their own, they're going to go

to jail, you know, and it's like, oh, that's so cute to imagine that these abuses would actually be punished and that's depressing because people should absolutely. be punished when they break the law, as we know that so many have broken laws in very serious ways. But if we keep finding this stuff out and again and again and again, no one pays any real price, then people tend to just not notice. American political culture has always had like a real allergy to meaningful accountability for people who do bad things.

As I like to say, Jefferson Davis died peacefully in his bed, you know? As did Donald Rumsfeld, yes. You can lead a secessionist movement and still end up basically okay. Robert Lee likewise, he got to be a college president before he died. But it does feel especially acute at this moment. And yeah, we are constantly getting revelations of wrongdoing, of overextension, of all these things. and there never really appears that anything happens. A movie that I really love that I feel like doesn't get enough love is the report from a couple

years back with Adam Driver about the creation of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture. And that's a whole movie about sort of like, yeah, we know who did what. We know what laws are broken. We know that the wrongdoing happened, but there's no, there's no accountability. And in fact, as we're all aware, right, there is an active push to not impose accountability to say that, you know, we've got to look to the future. We can't look to the past. Obama's line.

We're going to look forward, not back, which I think, you know, in the moment made perhaps some shrewd political sense, but I think turned out to be one of his most devastating decisions. Right. In reality, not holding people accountable, even if that means powerful people have to go to jail, just creates permission structure for even more lawlessness, as we're literally experiencing right now. Right.

You know, and this, I thought about this a lot during the, you know, the presidential campaign because, you know, you cannot, you know, tout Dick Cheney's endorsement and then be surprised when Donald Trump, you know, gets off scot-free. I'm sorry. Wow. you know i mean these things are are connected yeah and i think also there's too much of a different i mean like some of the things that are happening now actually remind me most much more than the first term actually remind me most of the atmosphere of bush of of the bush presidency and

the things around national security uh surveillance police powers intelligence powers reasons of state given us justifications for things that were plainly illegal and unconstitutional and trying to kind of rally a public against for that that said, well, we don't care and we think this is a big enough problem that we're going to ignore those questions. And I would say the difference then is the hysteria then was palpable. And they had a lot of public buy-in to what they were doing. And people were very frightened after 9-11. I wonder if there's a little more skepticism now. I mean, Bush had fantastic approval ratings after 9-11, and that gave him an enormous amount of power to pursue these things. They're trying to kind of do Bush two type moves with not

nearly the kind of popularity or public buying for it. And it's frightening because then you wonder, are they practicing a kind of politics that doesn't pay attention to public opinion? But then you realize, well, I've lived through an era where we went to war based on absolute lies and they were, you know, disappearing people, not American citizens or people under the protection of U.S. law generally. But, you know, it did happen, you know, on flimsy pretext. So I have a weird deja vu feeling. It's not a good feeling of I've seen a lot of this kind of stuff happen.

This very aggressive, as much as we think of Trump as a break from the Bush era conservatism, this very aggressive attitude about American national security as providing the executive branch with this way out of the Constitution feels very weird and familiar to me. And I'm like, and the effort to whip up a public hysteria that would support that. Now, what was so depressing in the era of Bush was the absolute ability not only to get a public consensus, but also an elite consensus, you know, many liberals who should have been critics bought in. I mean, I'll say this movie gives an echo of some of this. The scene early on in the movie when Will Smith and Virginia King are discussing the news, the news of the surveillance bill. and Regina King, whose character is an ACLU lawyer, is like, listen, they're trying to take away your fourth amendment rights.

And Will Smith says, well, you know, if you're not trying to destroy the country, you know, if you're not, if you're not a terrorist, what do you have to worry about? You're doing anything wrong. You have nothing. Right. It very much was like, and we'll discuss this later when we get to the siege, another movie on the docket. But it's so interesting to me that how we're, it's the late 90s, we're getting very much like the preview. of American political discourse in just a couple years in the aftermath of a, you know, a devastating terrorist attack. Right, but there is some measure of accountability

and not full, but I think that's... That's what's misleading. Nothing close. That's Hollywood. That's what's leading, right? If only the heroes of the mob. This is... Right.

The, you know, and, you know, I'll just add to complicated more or expanded. It's bigger than national security, right? It's not just surveillance and torture. It's, you know, bankers who gain. the economy and blew up the global financial system, millions of Americans lost their homes, and these guys gave each other raises. You know, just elite impunity is the one enduring area of bipartisanship in this country. Right.

Matt, you were a senior aide to a United States senator. What can the government actually do that you can tell us? yeah oh man i i i wasn't prepared for this um you know they can they could do some and i you know i won't pretend that i had the highest clearance i had a clearance but you know they can do some pretty serious stuff um you know but i i you know i probably know in specifics you know i didn't i didn't see demonstrations of stuff in this movie um some of this stuff i don't think they could do at the time, but I think they've gotten way, way closer. Yeah.

You know, over the past, certainly over the past, whatever, 25 years or whatever since it came out. My assumption is that if they're dedicated to get somebody, they're going to get them. I mean, in terms of being able to surveil their communications. Right. I mean, it's interesting with one line from Brill, or that's not even his real name, or the Gene Hackman character. Right.

It's just, you know, he's like, now they just pull the data. right out of the air. And this is before cell phones were even very common. You know, we still had, you know, if not brick-sized cell phones, you know, they were still pretty big. You didn't have anything like smartphones. Yeah, you didn't have Wi-Fi. But still just the digital age was very much upon us. And that is, that's, that's obviously, you know, so much more so now. Right. I mean, many people have made this observation, but to a great extent, you don't really need a surveillance state when we're all sort of willingly engaged and sort of like surveilling ourselves right that like that it doesn't take you know even for a regular a regular person does

not take all that much to figure out what their daily movements are where they're going where they've been who they're talking to like it doesn't yeah it does and that's one of the themes of this movie is that everyone is surveilling each other right they're being surveilled in the store he's surveilling the mob boss right you know yeah this this kind of universal surveillance takes over um yeah i think like i don't know people seem to there was a lot of concern about privacy but yeah as you say there there is a there's a sense that well that cat's out of the bag let's just all be an open book yeah it's it's kind of like mutual surveillance by consent or or by by by mutual consent has been been taken over. And it's also like, you know, I mean, look, I don't want,

I mean, there's a conservative critique of this, which is also goes into, I don't know, you could, you could date it back to kind of Tocquevillian concerns about democracy, which is just like, well, you know, we are always putting our opinions out there and then the public on social media. And then like, you can find an angry public arrayed against you. It's very, frightening, you know? It's also like, yeah, a lot of people are kind of running their private surveillance operations against people that they don't like. And then trying to activate, you know, many Democratic publics, one might say, mobs against their political opponents. And this is, I mean, I think obviously when the right does it, because they're usually

the kind of people own guns and make those sorts of threats are usually a little more sinister. But this goes on all across the political spectrum in modern democracy, which is, you the kind of specific, I mean, usually the amount of scrutiny that happens to elected officials is obviously on a different level and the amount of criticism and focus. But in modern democracy, if you involve yourself in public life at all, you have to expect a kind of public scrutiny that is really intense. You can't just kind of fall back and say, you know, oh, I'm a private citizen. I was just expressing my opinion. They're going to be like, we looked you up and you work for this company and we know that your wife works for this law firm and that therefore you're a

hypocrite and we found all these old posts by you, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, yeah, I think some of times we discount. And I think this goes back to our discussion about the state being the source of oppression and repression is actually we do a lot of surveilling and bullying and mobbing of each other. And certain parts of that are like, well, that's frightening. And other parts of that are just kind of how living in a democracy works. You know, like, well, we bring figures to have pretenses to power and authority to account by kind of scrutinizing them and criticizing them and trying to activate

publics against them. But that's sort of a fearful thing, right? I mean, or a frightful thing. It's like, well, suddenly you wake up in the morning. I mean, I think we've all experienced this. We've woken up in the morning and we find the thousands of people are not happy with us that day and are really coming for us. And they're saying wild things about our personal lives. And so I think so much of this just happens in a way that the state is kind of besides the point that civil society is where sometimes repression happens.

Or I would say that's different from, well, people can lose their jobs. I mean, that is serious stuff. And everybody, all the old conservative defense of McCarthyism was, well, it's not so much the state. Obviously, the government is doing something, but this is mostly just private people deciding who to hire and who to fire. There's nothing the state can do about that. So, and we see that in contemporary society as well. So I just think, like, we are, we repress each. other, as much in the United States and in big democracies, as much as the state represses us

in a certain ways. I get more upset. When the power of the government comes to bear on someone, that's not a joke. That cannot be laughed off in the way an internet mob can, which has only so much power as it's given or it can sustain. When someone is, the state has a power to detain, to remove, to, you know, to deprive you of your life and liberty in some cases, that obviously is a different level of seriousness. But I think people don't understand the power of civil society, too. And these movies don't really, I mean, they show the state's power to manipulate civil society. But I guess not, I guess you want to say the civil society's power to manipulate the state, which is also significant. Yeah. Or just the extent to which civil society often is a force,

maybe not as equally strong as the state, but a force that has a tremendous amount of strength and can bear upon our lives and really powerful ways. And that has, just by its nature, it's not easily restrained. I mean, we can, you know, we need to sort of wrap up. We could easily talk about how, for example, conservatives, when they speak of tyranny, they're never speaking of really state power they're speaking of a feeling that civil society is arrayed against them right well we can't finish without commenting on the kind of weird little internal competition in the NSA between the the roided out jock limp biscuit guys yeah i mean i that's just something that's a very like late 90s just that that those two cultures like these ex-marines who are detailed to the nsaa played by you know jake busey and scott con and on the other side you've got jack

black jamie kennedy yeah that i don't know that that little conflict always i just want to register a small disagreement i think they are less radio head types and like guys who would go to a me first in the gimmie gimmie show yeah okay yeah or you guys remember they might be giant they might maybe maybe they might be giants maybe uh maybe uh maybe you know both of those guys were into the beta band yeah mighty mighty boss tones um yeah that that's that's jimmy kennedy strikes me very much as like a ska type yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think i also like kind of i don't know there there was also like my i guess my my my feeling things about counterculture changed, too, where I was like, oh, well, I see the kind of hacker

culture and we're opposed to these uptight G men in the state. But then I'm like, dude, all the people I know who came from that either, like, I just, I don't know this is becoming more lived out or something. I just was like, a lot of the people who came out of hacker culture have now kind of turned into fascists. And a lot of the people who worked, who worked in the government were actually kind of decent and upstanding. people who like had a real belief in in American democracy and like who are these fucking and I was like who are these pissants who are like oh you know I know better than the government and I'm like well the government represents the elected power of the American people my friend who are you so

and now it seems like the culture of I know better than the government and I can re I can take over bureaucracies and get rid of all these evil and oppressive things this kind of idiotic libertarianism is much more oppressive than, you know, procedural liberalism from my perspective. So my perception of all these things has changed. That doesn't mean that I don't think I was a little too soft on what the extent of what was developed within the surveillance state. But anybody, but the lesson in democracy also is, look, anybody can get in power.

You know, some real lunatics can get in power. they have all the kinds of things that we developed that they're, you know, so we got to limit, limit what we, what the state can actually do. I've become much more Jeffersonian, I suppose. I don't know. But, um, yeah, I, those are just my last thoughts is like, I, I think my, my, my, my, my, I don't have much time for the kind of countercultural pretensions that, that, that, that, that, and I think those are actually turned out to be more sinister than perhaps the kind of, my, my, my, my, I don't have, my, my, my, I don't have, of bureaucrats that came under attack. Let me put out there that I think maybe the hacker to a fascist pipeline may have just

something to do with the contempt for the idea that the government could represent anything other than sort of like, you know, the most elite, you know, exclusive secret of interest. If you kind of take seriously the idea that like the government is representative of like the broad public in one way. shape form or another. You, you, I think it's, I think, I think you're less susceptible to the kind of thinking that leads to you. It's sort of like, well, you know, it's always a deep state, so let it be my deep state,

you know, it's always, it's always, uh, some kind of, uh, you know, conspiracy, so let it be my conspiracy. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um, all right. Uh, would, I mean, I would recommend people check out in the state because I like the movie. assume you would also recommend as well, Matt. Absolutely.

Great performances. Great thriller. It's a good time at the movies. And I just got a new sound system for my house, so it was a lot of fun to watch it very loud. Music by Trevor Rabin of yes. Oh, wow. Just throwing it in that there. Yeah, it's not my favorite of the films we watch. I think

too much stuff happens. I think it's to action. I like a little more of a low-key thriller. You know, when I like more bureaucratic intrigue, and this has got a lot of running around. But it's very cool. I've enjoyed it. It was nice to see again.

But it's definitely, I think, a little bit more on the action-adventure side of the genre for me, but not a bad movie in any way, really well made. Too much action in this action thriller? Yeah, exactly. I like movies where nothing happens. I'm looking for a spy thriller where it's just people like going through files, sitting in rooms, you know, that, although I love Ronan, which is action-packed. Yeah, I think that this movie, yeah, I'm just getting to the age, I guess, where I just want

nothing to happen in a movie. No, no. I thought this when I saw the preview for the new season of Andor, I was like, I hope there's not this much action. I want people, I want people sitting around in rooms talking. Well, I mean, that, you know, that's right. The best moments of Andor are exactly that, like the best. Low-key moments, yeah.

Right. I also think that it's because a lot of action sequences have become extremely cliched, so you've kind of seen them all. Like, how many times have we fucking seen a helicopter driving through a building, you know? Like, I'm just like, or like a car go off the highway into a building. I'm just like, I've seen a lot of these scenes before and I'm not that impressed by them. So I'm like, but have you seen a helicopter driving through this building? No, right, exactly.

So think about that. Okay. So I think I would be more interested in a, like, okay, here's why Ronan rocks is because like, there's all these incredibly high speed chases in tiny European streets. There's not that many movies that do that. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like the the cliched aspect of action sequences has made me, it's not like I don't like to see things shot and blown up either. I'm just like I've seen this fucking movie so many times. So that's my, that's my kind of feeling. I think for me to think since that I get tired of action is that it's that, you know, I don't really want to watch a CGI car and a CGI helicopter or whatever. Like if you're going to show me. Exactly. Yeah. You're going to show me an explosion. I want you to actually blow something up. I want you to get an actual physical thing. line it with explosives and blow it the hell up.

Yeah, that's much better. That's a lot more fun. It's much more exciting to watch. You can tell it's real. I mean, like, it's a way big, it's a way, it's a huge different. I don't want the stuntman to be hurt, but I want to know that he could have.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, legitimately, yes. Yeah. All right. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify. and wherever else podcast are found.

If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find a show, and you can reach out to us on social media if you like to. You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For today in feedback, we have an email from Trevor titled Evolution of Conspiratorial Aesthetics from Critique to Power Fantasy. Hey, guys, I really enjoyed your episode on conspiracy theory, especially John's discussion of the conspiracy cheek of the 90s. It got me thinking about how representation of conspiracy theories has changed over the years in the film. Conspiracy theory captured the quintessential Gen X approach to conspiracy thinking, portraying theorist as flawed but compelling truth seekers. Jerry Fletcher is positioned as a sympathetic outsider battling institutional authority.

The same sensibility appeared in Richard Linklater's work, where figures like Alex Jones were featured in films such as Waking Life, not as dangerous extremists, but as provocative keepers of forbidden knowledge, worthy of screen time. A more recent film, Jason Statham's The Beekeeper, Jamel Parenthetical, movie Fuckin' Rocks, completely inverts this dynamic. Statham's character doesn't expose conspiracy, he embodies it, operating in a shadow war using coded language like QAnon's mythos, but presenting clandestine power as heroic rather than sinister. Where Gibson portrayed an outsider trying to convince others of hidden truths, Satham is the ultimate insider with all knowledge and authority. This transformation from conspiracy as frightening our relation to aspirational fantasy reveals a shift for modern narratives acknowledge broken systems but suggest exceptional individuals, not reform, or the solution. It shows the evolution from epistemological to ontological conspiracy, with 90s narratives focused on knowing hidden truths, while contemporary versions emphasize being the embodiment of secret power.

Also, with an emphasis on democratization of elitism or expertise, these narratives, suggest anyone exceptional enough could join the secret power structure, flattering audiences while reinforcing individualism over collective action. Anyway, big fan of the show. Thank you for, thank you both for continuing to produce its quality content best, Trevor. Thank you, Trevor. This reminds me, this argument reminds me of a book that came in a couple years ago. People are saying, I think it's called, which is about conspiracy, conspiracism, and tries to make a similar kind of distinction between an older form of conspiracy, which is, fundamentally is epistemological trying to explain events and a more modern form of conspiracy

thinking, which is hyper individualistic and seeks to present one as sort of like a character and a larger drama. Yeah. I mean, I like that I got something right. So that I like that letter a lot. I mean, that's exactly what I was talking about. And I didn't have all of that stuff at my fingertips, but that was the exact sort of things. I was thinking I was kind of thinking about link later when I was making that point on on the show that time um but yeah there was I just remember that being young and and it was also kind of part of my interest in my young interest in computer hacking was also kind of interest in conspiracy theories and fascination with hidden agendas and forces and so and so forth um that was very adolescent and then I feel like

I kind of grew out of it um I think like obviously there's something intrinsically adolescent about, I think Gen X, well, I don't want people to fucking get upset at me, but I think like Gen X sort of was a generation that really valorized adolescents, especially it's like sulky parts a lot and it's nihilistic parts. And, you know, obviously there is a certain adolescent appeal and the notion of parental authority that's both irrational and inaccessible. and can't be reasoned with and it's just a fact of the world. So I don't know what that's to say about all those things. As a Gen X or I can cop to somebody.

All right. Okay. That's fair. Speaking for an entire generation. That's what we do. We represent our generations. Yeah, so I don't know. I was fascinating with that stuff when I was younger and then I sort of was like, I don't know if I buy all of this stuff. I think some of its distrust of institutions is warranted, but some of it is actually puts faith in people who are less, have less, you know, should, we should have less faith in certain people outside of institutions of those in institutions.

No, as I'm sure you guys have covered before, I mean, there's a line, you know, at which skepticism just turns into slack-jawed credulity. Yeah, exactly. You believe everything because you believe nothing. Being so open-minded, your brains fall out. Yeah. Yeah. Chronic condition these days.

All right. Well, thank you again, Trevor, for the email. Episodes of the main feed come out every two weeks, and so we will see you then with an episode on The Peacemaker, and we're back to 1987, directed by Mimi Leader Letter, Letter, starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. Here's a very brief synopsis. When a train-carrying atomic warheads mysteriously crashes in the former Soviet Union, a nuclear specialist discovers the accident and is really part of a plot to cover up the theft of the weapons, a sign to help recover the missing bombs, a crack special forces, colonel. never seen this movie, which is a surprise to me. I'm kind of interested to watch it. It's one of the one of these thrillers that I'm just not familiar with. Over at the Patreon, we have an episode up on John Frankenheimer's The Year of the Gun, a very mediocre movie

that unless we got a pretty good conversation out of. And speaking of conversations or next Patreon episode will be on The Conversation, part of this Hackman double feature. So if you're thinking of like how is a double feature it's you'll hear this episode and if you're subscribed to the patreon the next episode you'll hear is the conversation and you should subscribe to the patreon you can join a bunch of us over there it's just five dollars a month you get two episodes on the films of the Cold War and they're putting up video episodes of those as well uh long ago when we created the patreon i said that if we got to 1200 uh 1,200 uh subscribers roughly that much we would do an episode on the Tom and Jerry movie because it's a poster references the Cold War.

Okay. So we're almost there actually. So if we want to hear an episode of the Tom and Jerry movie, sign up for the Patreon. This is like, it's like we get the audience, sadistic audience to force us to watch worse and worse movies. If you want to force us to watch this terrible movie, keep on giving us money. So that's the patron. So please sign up. Matt,

thank you so much for joining us. I know you're like over on the other side of the planet. So we really appreciate you taking the time. It was great. Thanks for inviting me. As always, our producer is Connor Lynch and our artwork is by Rachel Eck.

For John Ganson, Matt Duss. I'm Samoa Bowie and we'll see you next time. Thank you.