Unclear and Present Danger - Tomorrow Never Dies

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Tomorrow Never Dies, the 1997 action thriller, the eighteenth film in the James Bond series and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, it follows Bond in his effort to stop the media mogul Elliot Carver, played by Jonathan Pryce, from starting World War III in order to expand his reach over the world’s information environment.Is Tomorrow Never Dies the superior film to Goldeneye? Is the power-mad media mogul a more relevant villain in 2025 than it was in 1997? How different is our media landscape, really, from that of an earlier age of American life? How much fun do you think Jonathan Pryce was having on set?Tomorrow Never Dies stars Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Götz Otto, Ricky Jay, Joe Don Baker, Vincent Schiavelli, Judi Dench and Desmond Llewelyn.The tagline for the film is “The Man. The Number. The License...are all back.”You can find Tomorrow Never Dies to rent or stream on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.Episodes come out roughly every two weeks (we’re working on it) and our next episode will be on Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog. And over on the Patreon, we’re celebrating spooky season with The Thing From Another World. Come and join the fun at patreon.com/unclearpod.Our producer is Connor Lynch and our artwork is by Rachel Eck.

Action stations. Hi, sir. Shall the general all laugh? The Chinese pilot insists we're inside their territorial waters and he will fire. An act of violence. torpedo, torpedo, torpedo. It was an unprovoked attack on a ship in international waters. The promise of war.

And instead of decisive action, all you want to do is investigate. My goal is to prevent World War Free Admiral. Now, the world has only one chance for peace. When will our ships be in position? Forty eight hours. And just one man. for the job. Bond.

James Bond. How much do you know about Elliot Carver, W7? Worldwide media ban. Most newspapers, radio, satellite TV. There's no news. Like bad news. I understand he once had a relationship with Carver's wife. Was it something I said?

How about the words, I'll be right back? I'm from the new China news agency. Looking for a news story? I'm sorry? I could have taken care of him. Let the mayhem begin. Case two is underway. This holiday season, the world.

His holiday season, the hand is he doing. His job the world belongs. to bond when you remove mr bond's heart there should just be enough time for him to watch it stop beating i would have thought watching your tv shows was torture enough hello hello and welcome to unclear Hello and welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times Opinion section.

And I'm going to see if I can remember my name and what I do. I'm John Gans. I write a column for the nation. I write the substack newsletter on popular front. And I'm the author of when the clock broke, con men conspiracists and how America cracked up in the early, in the early 1990s, which is now available in paperback, wherever books are sold. Okay, I think I did an okay job. I think you did an okay job. You know, I was at this event for alums of the program I was in, in college, a small program, and the program's like 50 years old. So, like, you know, the alumni gatherings. and I met a student who, a student's currently in the program that said they listen to the podcast

and that they actually, they really enjoy that you don't remember the subtitle of your book. It's a mouthful. Yeah, as I've explained before, it was not my piece of writing, which might have something to do with it. So anyway, that time I pretty much nailed it. It's as good as it's going to get. All right. On this week's episode of the podcast, we watched Tomorrow Never, Never, dies, the 18th in the James Brown, James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It's the second

Pierce Brosnan film. It came out in 97. And it was directed by Roger Spotswood with a screenplay by Bruce Fierstein. I have no idea who these people are. Spotswood is a Canadian British director who directed Turner and Hooch. I've seen that. Mostly just like a straightforward, you know, directing middle-level Hollywood stuff, directed the sixth day with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And wrote was part of the writing team responsible for 48 hours starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nulte. Great movie. Very, very enjoyable. Not decidedly not a woke movie, very problematic, but good. Of course, this movie in the James 1 series based of by the novels by Ian Fleming. I do not think this has any particular connection to any

Ian Fleming novel. I think they were what I think they were basically past the books by this point. So this is a fully original script. It stars Pierce Broson, as I said, as James Bond, Jonathan Price as the villain, Elliot Carver, a media mogul, the great Michelle Yo as Wailin and Chinese intelligence agent, Terry Hatcher as Paris Carver. People will forget get Carrie Hatcher, remember her from Lois and Clark, the Adventures to Superman back in the 1990s. There's also Ricky Jay, the magician, as Henry Gupta, a American techno-terrorist and the employee of Carver, and then Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade, Bond CIA liaison.

We also have Judy Dench as M. Desmond Louie Llewellyn. Yeah, Lou Allen, I think, yeah. Lou Well, maybe it's Louie. I don't know. Lewin. Yeah. SQ, head of M.I.6, Samantha Bond as Moneypenny. And then a number of other character actors who you may or may not recognize.

All right. Tomorrow Never Dies opens with James Bond on a covert mission in a terrorist arms around the Russian border. Some very classic 90s situations here. There are arms dealers. trying to buy Russian-made weapons. The Royal Navy decides it's going to destroy the depot while Bond is still there. But Bond discovers that there is nuclear weapons there. Bond hijacks a fighter jet to prevent a nuclear catastrophe and get out of there.

So that's our opening sequence. Soon after we see a British warship, the HMS Devonshire, Devonshire, sunk in the South China Sea by what the British thinks is a Chinese attack, but what is actually the manipulations of Elliot Carver, a media mogul whose news empire the Carver Media Group network seems to have had early knowledge of the crisis, putting on a paper shortly thereafter, before even British naval officials had a full sense of what had happened. Carver's plan, and I got to say, I love Jonathan Price in this role. He's just like, he's just hamming up as like a perfect bond villain. Carver's plan is to create

global chaos to boost his network's ratings and secure exclusive broadcasting rights in China. Here we have broadcasting rights appearing in another film. Red Corner, the movie with Richard, Richard Gear, also centers around getting exclusive broadcasting rights in China. So Bond is sent to investigate, figure out what is going on with the Carver Media Group, and if necessary, neutralize Carver in these plans. And so we then see Bond travel to Hamburg, Germany, where he encounters Paris Carver at a party for the launch of Carver's new satellite network. It's here that Carver recognizes that Bond is some sort of government agent and then tries to kill him. We get, I think, what is one of the best set pieces in a Bond. film like just period not just in the brazen films but like in the entire franchise which is the remote control car chase through the parking garage yeah which is it's very cool it's a very cool uh it's very cool set piece but also it's just extremely well staged and put together um it it it's clearly influenced by video games has very video game field to it with the kind

of succession of goons and traps and the way that Bonn has to use the various things on the car to get out. But it is extremely well done. And really, I think actually elevates, elevates the film. It's so much fun and just a perfect set piece. In all of this, Bonn meets Colonel Wynne, Michelle Yo's character, who's also trying to figure out what is going on with the car, which is the Chinese intelligent agent. And the two, realizing they share the same. same adversary, then works together to infiltrate Carver's stealth ship. This is the ship through which Carver is using to manipulate GPS and create a confrontation between the British and the Chinese, the hopes will erupt into a third world war. In fact, Carver's plan is

to launch a missile directly at Beijing, killing Chinese leaders, and ensuring the outbreak of this war, at which point his media empire will profit from coverage. And the movie concludes basically, as you'd expect, Bond and Weilin destroy the stealth ship. They kill Carver. And they prevent the missile from launching and avert World War III. They then have sex with each other. And the movie ends. Yeah.

It's kind of, I'll say. It wouldn't be James Bond movie if they didn't. It would not. And I will say, I want to make two observations here. Michelle Yo. Is super hot? Is that what you're going to say? I mean, yeah, it's super hot.

I wasn't going to say that. Although people should watch Yes, ma'am, which is an early Michelle Yo martial arts film where she is cool as hell and also very hot. No, I was going to say that she often, especially in this period when she does show up in Western films, often isn't well served by them. But here she gets actually kind of a full exposition almost. It's like a full sequence just for her that is not as well paced and shot and put together as a Hong Kong film, but it's still closer than what you might get from a Western filmmaker in the late 90s. And that's very cool as well. And the, yeah, that's the film. It's kind of, we'll talk about it later.

But if Golden Eye is an attempt to do maybe a grittier kind of James Bond film in the in the mode of. the living daylights. This, I feel, is if you made a Roger Moore film a little more serious. That's how I would describe Tomorrow Never Dies. Tomorrow Never Dies was released in the United States on December 19th, 1997, and made almost $340 million off of a $110 million budget. Unfortunately, which is a great, fourth highest grossing film of that year, unfortunately for Tomorrow Never Dies and MGM distribution, it launched, it debuted the same weekend as Titanic, which was a monster hit, Big Jim, James Cameron. I'm not sure if it's his biggest hit, but it remains maybe close to his biggest hit.

I think it's pretty high up there. I mean, what's high up there? Avatar beat it? I don't know. Titanic was massive. People were going to see it over and over and over again. So its total box office, because it's been re-released a couple times, is $2.264 billion. Its initial worldwide gross was $1.84 billion.

And the only film to surpass it was Avatar. which was the first film to gross $2 billion and has a lifetime gross that's far of $3.5 billion. I don't know if we'll ever get to a James Cameron film on this podcast, but we did true lies.

We did that earlier. It's not terrible, I guess. I like James Cameron, but I'm more amused by Cameron than anything else because the guy... He's a megalomaniac. He's a mega maniac. He's a crazy person. But the guy knows how... He's like, he's like, figure

it out how to make not just a Hollywood blockbuster, but the kind of film that grosses two billion dollars. Yeah, it's true. And he just, he just does it. And, you know, I saw the most recent avatar. And I, I know what the formula is. It's sort of absolutely astounding visuals, right? The kind of things that, like, people want to go see Titanic multiple times, in part because the sequence in which the Titanic sinks is just extraordinary. But also, He matches that with very, very basic, almost insultingly basic stories, but they are like archetypal. And so everyone can follow them. They're not hard or difficult to follow.

And they kind of hit the notes of melodrama and the notes of excitement and tension that make for good Hollywood storytelling. And together, it's just sort of a, it's kind of an unbeatable combination. And so people, you know, before Avatar 2 came out, there was a little bit of skepticism that it would do well. And then it did fantastic. And it's like, you can't doubt Big Jim. Big Jim figured out movies. Yeah. I wouldn't bet it.

I would, I would not bet against him. No, in fact, I would, if I could, if I could bet money on box office grosses for James Cameron movies, I would do it. But, okay. So movie, this movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, came out on December 19th, 1987. So what's the New York Times front page for today, John? Okay. Well, let's see what we got here. Angry Koreans elect long-time dissident. Governing party is rebuffed over crisis. Enraged by the financial crisis that has humbled their nation, Koreans overturned their political establishment on Thursday and elected as their new president Kim DeJung, a legendary pro-democracy campaigner whom past dictators had repeatedly tried to murder. The outcome was all the more surprising because this is the first time in Korean history that an opposition candidate was elected to lead the nation. As in Japan and Taiwan, politics had been dominated here by a single ruling party, and Mr. Kim's victory may help nurture the rise of two-party politics in

East Asia. So, yeah, there was a big financial crisis in East Asian countries, and apparently it upset the, you know, the stranglehold of the dominant party in Korea. Korea had a couple of, actually, you know, like, obviously we all know North Korea as a nightmarish totalitarian dictatorship, but Korea, South Korea has a history of dictatorships, heavy government censorship, blacklisting, very, you know, kind of one of these right-wing authoritarian regimes that the United States propped up and sponsored during the Cold War. And it's, the assertion of its democracy has been a really fascinating story. And I don't know if you guys remember, but the, I think he's current or maybe they removed

him, president of Korea tried to have a coup and he was roundly rejected. I mean, like, you know, the Korean people just weren't having it. And the Koreans also regularly jail their ex-presidents for corruption and things like that. So, you know, democracy in Korea is really interesting. It's really fierce. People, because of the experience of dictatorships and coups, are really militantly defensive of it. And I think there's some theorists of democracy that say, you know, the habit of jailing ex-presidents is actually dangerous for democracy because it can lead to authoritarian paragraphs in order to avoid that. But, you know, coming from a country

where there's very little elite, very little elite culpability, it's, it's interesting to see. So let's see what else we got, you know. I'll say just about that, that idea that it's somehow dangerous to democracy, the whole elite figures accountable for breaking the law. So far, right, as far as I can tell, there's no evidence that that's the case. yeah there's no evidence that that countries that have held heads of state or heads of government the very least um accountable legally for breaking the law not for ordinary political disagreement but for breaking the laws uh so for no evidence that this has degraded their democracy by contrast here in the world's oldest democracy we don't do that and look where we are now so yeah there's a lot to

that. Let's see what else we got. Clinton calls for keeping troops in Bosnia with no new exit date. Abandoning his Judean deadline for withdrawing American forces from Bosnia, President Clinton called today for an open-ended commitment of troops in the international peacekeeping mission, arguing that is helping to rebuild that nation's roads, schools, economy, and political system. Mr. Clinton denied Republican accusations that he and his aides had misled Congress and saying they would meet the June exit deadline. Yeah, as you know, the United States and NATO intervened in the Balkans and the Balkans Civil Wars, Yugoslav civil wars and genocides, and led peacekeeping missions, which, you know, I think we're actually in the annals of

peacekeeping missions, which have a mixed record, a fairly successful example of them. And, you know, those countries are no longer fighting, although there's been more issues in Kosovo, but that and stuff like that. So, yeah, that was a big part of American foreign policy in the 90s, and we have a very different foreign policy now, obviously, we would never, well, we may get kind of forced back into a peacekeeping role in Gaza. Who knows? I mean, it's interesting to watch.

I mean, they're kind of saying we won't and then we will and we won't, but that's just Trump being all over the place. I mean, my inclination is that Trump is not going to commit U.S. troops to a peacekeeping operation in Gaza. Trump seems to be genuinely allergic to the use of, to boots on the ground. Right. To use the cliche. So I don't imagine that that's going to be the case.

But who knows, right? It looks like we might be going to war with Venezuela. Who knows? Yeah. Well, geez, you're right. I just flipped through the newspaper because I kind of ran out of headlines that I thought were interesting on the front page. But this one is interesting on the seventh page.

Last days of Kim Filby, his Russian. widow's sad story. The fourth and last wife of the British master spy Kim Filby has written her memoirs of life with the most famous mole in the history of espionage. And his life in Russia, at least initially, was grim. Philby's loneliness, oppression, and heavy drinking after his defection are well documented. His Russian widow, Rafina Filby, has added one startling new detail. According to her book, I Went My Own Way, which was released today, Filby attempted suicide in the 1960s. She once felt deep scars on his wrist and asked him about them. She said that Philby, well on his third whiskey, refused to discuss them then or ever. She wrote,

he answered in high style unnatural to them. We communists should be patient, strong, and not give in to weakness. So I think you guys remember our episodes that dealt with John LaCarré movies, the traitor in the Carla trilogy of novels and movies. although I think they only made two of the movies, is, or two screen adaptations of the novels, is based on Kim Filby, who was one of the famous traders in MI6. And I think actually sold out the networks of Graham Green and maybe John LaCarray as well.

Because it says here, his vast collection of Russian classics line in the living room itself, His study is crammed with books by his good friend, Graham Green. I think Graham Green kind of maintained a friendship with them even after the defection. Detective novels, the spy novels of John Carway, as well as dozens of books about his betrayals. Yeah, I think he led, after the defection, he led a kind of lonely and depressing life in Moscow. And I don't know what the lesson is there, except I don't know, don't betray your country. Yeah. Or if you do have the courtesy to do it and being like,

a high-profile national politician. Yeah. Well, that's right, too. Um, yeah, so anyway, I think, you know, it's the middle of the 1990s. I think that 1997 was sort of the high point of the end of history. Not a whole lot of crazy stuff was going on. Um, there's an article about collegiate wrestling deaths. There's articles about bond firms. There's articles about police discipline, which I guess it maintained. This is pretty fucking terrible. The security camera captured at all. Two off-duty police officers entered the vestibule of a Midtown Manhattan bank late last night in 1993. Oh, late one night in 1993 and one urinated in a trash can. When a homeless man asked him to stop, the officer shoved him.

A fight broke out and the officer's face was caught. When the homeless man in a companion complained to the police, the officers who had been drinking said they had been mugs, according to police documents. The homeless man was charged with armed robbery since one had been carrying a knife. They spent three days in jail before a prosecutor viewed the security state throughout the case and recommended to Manhattan District Attorney that the officers, Thomas Kavanaugh and Robert Summers, be charged with filing a false report. Instead, their police went to the police department's internal disciplinary system, obscure administrative process for reviewing police misconduct. The officers were only accused of lying at their departmental review, minimizing their chances of being dismissed. an administrative judge ruled that they had fabricated the arrest and recommended that given a 30-day suspension. But Howard Safer lowered Kavanaugh's penalty.

Yeah, I mean, you know, this has changed somewhat, but it's still not great. Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to hold a police officer accountable for anything. Yeah. I think New York eventually did get this kind of civilian review board reform that the NYPD resisted for so long. long, but this is pretty funny. I mean, like the homeless guy in the bank festival was like telling the cop not to piss in the in the trash can and like that's, that's, it's just, it's just, you know, it's all there.

Anyway, anything else look interesting to you? Not so much. Okay. So let's move on to the film. John, when, I assume you probably saw this in theaters as a kid because I did. I definitely did. Yeah, I definitely saw this in theaters. And I have it.

I don't know if I've seen it since. I don't think I'd seen it since maybe. No, I must have. And it's good. I mean, I liked it a lot. I thought it was really enjoyable. I kept on comparing it to Golden Eye in my head. And I think you're right when you said Golden Eye was like a little grittier and this one was a little more lighthearted. I think I kind of like this one more. Not because of the atmosphere, but I think it's like action scenes are better. yeah i i'm except i'm very much uh golden eye is probably the better film right but tomorrow never dies is i will watch this multiple times like i enjoy it goes down really smooth it's just like you're watching and you're like it's just really slick movie and and the and the yeah the set pieces the action sequences are really good the dumb jokes it's it's very much to put it in bond terms again so like The Living Daylights, which is my other favorite Bond movie, is like, it was specifically meant to be a gritty, dark bond film. It's Timothy Dalton's first one of two. It's his first one.

And Dalton himself, although very handsome, isn't like pretty. He's just like a very handsome man. And he kind of works. They would do this again with Craig, right? Like Daniel Craig, very handsome, but like his almost like cragly face, rough face works for the vibe they're going for with those films. And in the same way, Dalton, he doesn't have a cragly face, but just has like a, like an interesting handsome face. I think works for the kind of darkness they want with tomorrow and ever, with that rather the living daylights. Brosnan is a pretty man.

My wife was watching this with me and she, she was just sort of like, he is beautiful and he is. And his, his almost sort of like magazine glossiness kind of doesn't fit GoldenEye as like if GoldenEye's vibe. Yeah. But it fits this vibe. Yeah, because this is like the cool, the height of cool Britannia vibe almost going on this movie. It's like, that's right. Right.

And he also looks. I mean, yeah, he's extremely good looking, but like his clothes in this movie are great. Like, I don't think there's, I think he's got the best tailoring in this movie. And that's, you know, Bond always looks great in a suit or a talks. But like, I noticed like his suits in this movie were amazing. Like I was like, oh, yeah. Damn, like this has got some great costumes. So, yeah, Italian tailoring, too.

Yeah, yeah. So it's just very, it's, yeah, the movie on a visual level is like, and the detail, you know, it's just kind of a perfect little Bond movie and, you know, hits all the right notes and it's just purely enjoyable to watch. And it's like not even like, it's not even like date that. It's not, you know, Bond movies can be sexist and even misogynistic. And this one barely is, it's really not that dated. Like, I don't think it's got any pretty that way. weird attitudes in it. I wasn't like, oh, that wouldn't fly today when I was watching it. And in terms of its content or like it's, it's interesting, you know, like, obviously like

the old joke, you know, the old cliche of the Bond film is like, they're threatening to blow up the world for money or something like that. This movie, like, is both, it feels a little bit of anachronism in that it's kind of calling back to like early, early 20th century, late 19th century yellow journalism, like Hearst, like starting the Spanish-American War type deal. But then it's also like obviously about Murdoch, these big international media cable empires, Murdoch, Robert Maxwell figures like that. And, you know, Robert Maxwell is that father of Galilee? It certainly is. And I think that that he was one of the models, which the screenwriter based Raymond Carver's on. But yeah, Carver is obviously partially meant to be Rupert Murdoch.

The danger of mass manipulation by the media is the concern of the movie. You know, it doesn't age that badly because like that's still an issue. And then you have, you know, in the age of big oligarchs, like Elon Musk owning entire social media platforms, it just seems, it seems pretty, I mean, there's something kind of quaint about like, oh, like, you know, the tabloid or the or the or the cable TV channel is like, is like the cutting edge of media technology. But yeah, I mean, and I think that I wouldn't go so far as to say, as any James Bond movie does that this has some kind of radical message. But, you know, I read that the, the, the Firestein, the, well, who also wrote Koldenai, I think. He, he wrote the screenplay for this. He was working at CNN. No, he was

watching. He was watching. He used to work in journalism, but he was watching CNN and Sky News during the Gulf War. And he quoted, he wanted to write something that was grounded in the nightmare of reality. So now, James Bond is not usually the most critical property about, you know, the world capitalism, what have you. But I would say as they go, this is the most woke James Bond movie when it comes to, like, criticizing great inequalities of wealth and power. I mean, usually, I will say, though, like, usually it's not an ideological rival. It's usually like some extremely rich person in James Spahn movie that's a villain, which is kind of interesting. And the other thing is, it's like, yeah, I mean, like, fucking Elon Musk is like literally a Bond villain at this point.

He acts like, he's like a satellite network. Like, it's, it's, it's, he's got, you know, it's very bizarre figure. He feels like a Bond villain. And the other thing about the movie that's notable is Bond is dealing with a friendly China. And the idea, you. know, we've seen the theme of friendly Russia in a lot of these movies, right? So you got like the U.S. and the Russian, the, the FSP team up to catch terrorists or international gangsters. But there's not a lot of movies, you know, that show the U.S. having kind of friendly

relations with not just people in China, but the actual, you know, the state. This woman is a, is a ministry of state security officer, and they collaborate. And China's not, you know, seem to be like this kind of evil faceless place. There's like, she's a good Chinese operative and there's, there is a corrupt person. But yeah, I mean, you know, this was, I think comes out like a few weeks before the, wait, I don't remember if it was at the beginning of 1997. Let me see when the Hong Kong, this was definitely the year of the Hong Kong transfer of power. That happened in July 1st, 1997. So it had just taken, it just taken place.

So there was kind of like, you know, the British Empire had passed over China. This movie shows Britain and China almost getting into war, but it's manipulated by these outside forces. The transfer of Hong Kong had just taken place. You know, it looked like China was going to basically leave Hong Kong a look. alone, the China was being integrated into the Western trade system, did not seem as scary as the Soviet Union. They were, you know, kind of potentially, you know, a competitor, but but reasonable people. So, yeah, I thought that was interesting.

I don't, you don't really see that much. And we saw, of course, the, the, what's it called? The Richard Gear movie, Red Corner. Right, right, right. But that's because Richard Gear, I mean, like, Richard Gear had a personal ideological crusade against Communist China. But it's interesting to see the range of attitudes in Hollywood movies or in major motion pictures where it's like this one is pretty China friendly and pretty anti-Murdoch. Yeah. So, yeah, I thought the politics of the movie insofar as it has them were actually kind of.

of a little different. And I was surprised. Yeah, no, the thing that makes this movie, I think, relevant politically today. And it's certainly in the moment is the media mogul villain, right? This, because also you have this concern about the impact of the internet on, on media. I mean, there's a way in which, so it's 97, internet. Internet. is still relatively low. I think something like only a third of households had personal computers at that point. And then only overall maybe like a quarter of households had some sort of connection to the internet, like a dial-up connection, right? So internet penetration is pretty low.

But we're seeing satellite networks emerge. We're seeing kind of the global news network come into being CNN at this point isn't even a decade old. Fox News, I think, is brand new at this point, right? we are we are seeing the international news network come into being and that there is this real fear and concern fear is maybe too strong concern about the impact of news as a form of entertainment of technologies impact on the news and all these things so this movie is very much in that zeit guys but i think what makes it relevant is a a carver is a recognizable was not was as you

note a somewhat recognizable figure in the 90s, you had these tabloid figures. But in the present, he's an extremely recognizable figure, not simply a tabloid figure, but kind of evil, right? Someone who really has no particular concern or interest in the preservation of the society in which he operates, and he was actively trying to create tensions. in divisions for the purpose of exploiting them. His, he's in profit, right? His speech at the satellite launch where he's promising to all, you know, to pursue the

news with no fear or favor to always uncover the truth. And we know the audience that he is planning to instigate a war for the sake of profit is just so on the nose for the moment. So on the nose for a world where a Jeff Bezos buys a newspaper and then turns it to, you know, transgendering a regime, Oregon, or a David Ellison buys a news network and then hands it over to Barry Weiss, right? It's very on the nose given the current moment. But also, there is this element of the disinformation problem, the fake news problem, right?

That Carver is trying to manufacture incidents and then run of them. And there are jokes. He makes jokes throughout about how he has manufactured scandals and other incidents for his own benefit. And so he's he's this kind of also this recognizable purveyor of fake news, which wasn't kind of a term, wasn't a thing then, right? Then in the 90s, the fear, I'm not even sure I can think of like a fear that people are going to be exposed to things that simply were not true. Sort of the notion that, oh, the internet can expose you to just nonsense wouldn't pop up until the early 2000s. Like when I was, I graduated in high school in 2005, and I feel like I was in the first cohort of students who are really using the internet to do, like, research for papers in school. And I, you know, I remember librarians explaining it, right, you can't, everything on the internet, you can't trust it necessarily. It might be false.

Might be, might be made up. So that wasn't really quite part of the discussion, I don't think. our older listeners can correct me here, if I'm wrong. But the concern about just the veracity of the things that you are getting beamed into your home by this multinational, you know, network, that feels very contemporary to our moment and feels very prescient on part of the film. I watched this back to back with network because I'm writing an essay for,

I wrote an essay, I'm writing a wrote an essay for the upcoming criterion release of network. Oh, great. That's great. Yeah, I'm very excited about this. It's very cool. And they like the essay too. They were like, this is good.

Wonderful. So I, you know, I watched two back to back. And network, the Sydney Lumet film, is all about the corporatization of news. Right. And I feel like this movie in its own silly, unsurious way is like that is like the same kind of observations and critiques, like push forward two decades. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, I think that the the mid

century to the 70s was like, oh, corporate news is going to, it's going to have all the wrong incentives and go to go to, you know, it's going to create sensational coverage and, and, and, and perverse incentives and so on and so forth. And then you, you kind of get this full circle by the end of the century and then the beginning of this one, where it's not corporations anymore. It's back to moguls and entrepreneurs and like these vast dynastic, you know, capitalist empires that are passed from family, you know, within families, where those people just have their own agenda altogether. And that's very much prescient because, you know, that's the form of capitalist domination that we're seeing, you know, of course there's big giant corporations. but the people who seems to really have the power are, you know, the majority owners of extremely powerful firms. And, you know, again, this is kind of a return to a 19th century or earlier

20th century paradigm, not just in capitalism, but in the media because you had these big barons that controlled the media and controlled newspapers. And, you know, I would say the professionalization of news was a was something that happens in the mid 20th century in america but newspapers in the in the 19th century and even into the 20th century were not always reliable sources of information were highly sensationalistic had uh nearly made up things you know the the yellow press was terrible and hurst basically he has the famous quote you furnish the pictures i'll furnish the war, highly manipulative, basically started the Spanish-American War, rumors, propaganda, sensationalist stuff. So, yeah, it's almost a return. I mean, obviously there's something

about these high technologies that seem much more sinister than the newspaper, but it is a little bit of a recursion to Gilded age you know media media barrens newspaper barons like Pulitzer or

Hearst. Yeah, Hurst. Yeah. So, no, I mean, we should do citizen game on the Patreon. It would give me an excuse to watch the criterion with the commentary,

which I hear is quite good. But yeah, No, I mean, the Carver character is reminiscent of actual big media moguls, and today we were back to this era of big media moguls. I mean, what's interesting is that the one to only, you know, I'm a big, I've given plenty of talks over the years about how I think that the media environment of the mid-century is the, is the weird deviation in that, in that the media environment of, the pre-war era of the early 20th century, the late 19th century, is, it's closer to the norm and that we're kind of returning to what the media environment used to be like prior to the emergence of the big broadcast networks and big national newspapers. But one of the things missing, I think, in our media environment, and this isn't part of the movie, now we're just

kind of talking, is the partisan broadsheet, right? The partisan newspaper. the way in which in the United States at least the political parties at their national and state and local levels were as much to engage in the in the in the in the in the process of producing and disseminating news as any kind of like neutral essentially neutral institutions and so if you were a consumer you weren't just buying a hearse paper or whatnot you maybe were also getting the paper produced by your your local democratic party or your local republican party and in In fact, when you look at the names of still existing local regional newspapers, you can see what their partisan affiliation was. Right. Yeah. So-and-Dem Democrat or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That was them telling you this is who we align with. Yeah, absolutely. And I think like, and that's, that was the case in Europe, too, where, you know, major political parties had their own, especially the socialist parties, of course, had their own newspapers and outlets, you know, that, yeah, it's not really,

now we have a press that we have aligned presses, right? You know, like, which obviously have sympathies and there's accusations of bias and so on and so forth. But yeah, there's not, there's not a central information bureau. I would say the Republican Party is moving in that direction. Yeah, I would say so, too. And, you know, I'll say, I think it's a good thing, right? There's always going to be a role in a place, necessity for the kind of neutral, ostensibly neutral right like we don't have to get into the to all of it about you know the

the fact that true neutrality is not possible just ostensibly neutral publications national publications that are doing that kind of work they're always going to be a place for them but I actually think that there there is a place for the partisan broadsheet and for political parties to like directly participate in the process of producing not not and I say news I really do mean news, like not simply producing partisan propaganda, but doing that in addition to producing news, which is what the old, which is what the old parts in Brochie did. It was simultaneously, here are actual things happening in your community. Here's actual stuff that, you know, the reporters that work for us are providing for you. And then also don't vote for the wigs.

Right, right. Right. Right. Right. And then also did you see this perfidious, you know, Democrat. Masonic. Yeah. Masonic murder that took place. Did you see the papist? Did you see that they've been murdering children again? It is like,

it is like kind of weirdly a return. Like all the like the pedophile worries and the like every time there's like a death in D.C. There's immediately an accusation that it was like a political hit. Like you see that in early 19th century newspapers. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like the body turns up and they're like,

The Masons did it. I mean, part of the point I do encourage people to read more 19th century American history. It's going to feel so familiar to you. Like it truly was obviously the past, the past things are different. But like there is kind of, there is like an American, a set of American personality types and kind of a distinctly American approach to politics. And you see it right in the 1820s and 1830s with that kind of stuff as well. And you're seeing it, you know, that's the, to talk about the current president, Trump,

Trump to me feels so much like some combination, modern big city mayor and like 19th century demagogue. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there are many 19th century kind of throwbacks going on. And just, yeah, just like, I think like, you know, the, just the kind of businesses that he runs and are attracted to him, you know, like it's not big. it's like we're kind of exiting the paradigm of big 20th century corporations with bureaucracies

and returning to these like these almost kind of feudal dynasties of old capitalism where you know giant family fortunes and trump is obviously kind of an example of that not the biggest fortune but you know that that kind of family capitalism um so yeah you know i i i there are things about today that are obviously, you know, newspapers, well, you know, I also think is like the amount of tumult. I just was reading, I was writing something recently about Edgar Alan Poe because I had to do something about him for, like, there's 250th anniversary of America, and I had to write about a writer that influenced you or whatever. So I wrote about background, Po, who I liked when I was a kid and I don't read very much anymore. But he

infamously wrote a hoax in a newspaper, and this happened a lot. In like 1840s, New York, he wrote a hoax in a newspaper and it was about a hot air balloon that had gone to the moon and returned. And people went berserk because they were so dead. The news was so exciting that they went like crazy and it caused riots. And they were like breaking it. And they were like breaking it down the door of the newspaper to get more copies. So, you know, the effect of news on people and everyone says, oh, fake news is is making people crazy. Yeah. But I mean, the effective news on people in that time was like really, like we talk about mobs. This is another thing that's interesting about the 19th century. It's like we talk about mobs today. And yes,

there are mobs. But it's, it's slightly metaphorical because they're on the internet. Back then, like newspapers would cause literal mobs. Like there would be there would be people. in the street like going berserk you know like and um so it it was i think you know life in the country was was and you know i think one of one of one of one of abraham lincoln's early speeches that he's a very famous for um i think it's a license yeah 18th yeah lecine speech young man's license and the topic is mobs because it was a huge problem um so yeah i mean like the the the the unreliable source of information news the scurrilous source of information news, not new things in American history. I do think like the, there's something very

eerie, dystopian and sci-fi about the technological aspect of it, right? Like, it's, it's piped right into your brain because it's on your phone. Like, that feels creepy and dystopian and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, lies, like her style feels kind of quaint, you know? But we've talked about this and, you know, it's not, they were the mass media. And I think it was, we talked about this when we talked about sweet smell of success. Like, yeah, I mean, like, there was a time when columnists had enormous amount of power and could ruin people's lives with innuendos and so on and so forth. Yes, less the case now. But what we see in Tomorrow Never Die is the kind of media mogul who does

have real influence over governments. That is very much. The case. You mentioned Elon Musk being kind of like a bond villain. I mean, the destruction of USAID, which is on track to kill a lot of people worldwide, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, is bond villain. Yeah, the actual legitimate bond villain activity. The way he kind of, you know, snickered and, you know, look what I'm doing about it on Twitter is reminiscent of, you know, carver's monologing in this. film. So, I mean, there's probably an extent to which Musk is himself reflecting back his absorption of like the Bond villain, right? He's sort of performing in a way. But he is a media mogul. You know, Twitter is a media property in its own way. And he has an immense amount of power. Bezos has an immense amount of power. And he's fucking up the, the Washington Post right now. Right. I mean, that's that that's a publication that he is actively destroying. it's very sad i think that it's yes yes in the film in tomorrow never dies of course they

defeat carver by uh sending like a bladed you know drill into him uh jonathan jonathan price i bet jonathan price had so much fun with that scene wait i haven't spoken much about jonathan price's performance in this but he's having he's he's so good he's having a blast the exact level of energy that you want for a bond villain performance he's just he's hamming it up slightly you know baking himself a big old ham sandwich every scene he's in so but you know in our present moment and thinking about media consolidation and concentration you know i i'm of the view that i'm not entirely sure what it was what there what there is to be done you can use antitrust to break up some of these big media conglomers like paramount

skydance, we're just trying to acquire Warner Brothers, right? You can, you can break things up with the Antitrust. But I also think that part of what needs to be done is just to create a more robust news environment. And that's going to have to come either from some sort of public subsidization, which I don't think can happen. Or, as I kind of suggested, through the political parties and other civil society organizations, right? Like, that's not, that's going to be the path towards rebuilding a more robust news ecosystem. So, yeah. Well, I think that, yeah, I mean, like, okay, the problem with the antitrust thing,

as I understand it, is that as we've seen, you know, the federal government's powers to prevent the creation of trusts, which I think, you know, is broadly a good thing, also gives them an enormous amount of power over corporate behavior. Because if there is a need for a, you know, if the company wants to do a merger, you know, the government can basically impose political conditions on approval, right? Especially if the executive branch is completely deprofessionalized and just kind of the will of this one guy. And vice versa, I mean, it could potentially use antitrust suits politically to break up firms that don't politically quote. And this has always been a kind of libertarian warning that us New Deal liberals have been, have poo poohed because we were always thought that the big powerful state was was in our interest.

But now kind of make a lot more sense to me where I'm like, oh, shit, dude. Like this gives them a lot of power and choke points over, you know, over corporate. decision making where and we've seen the limits of that too obviously you know the public does have a say I mean like the FCC trying to put the screws on on on ABC um I'm sorry yeah on ABC with the with the chemical situation um backfire but it was you know it's a um it's it's it's difficult to say and I don't think a lot of people kind of like come up with these glib things where like this whole suite of policies, like, I mean, I think a lot of people who are into antitrust think it's like a silver bullet that will solve everything. But it's not. I mean, like, every policy

regime has costs and has unforeseen problems with it. And, you know, the problem with having a republic is like balancing different power sectors against each other. And right now we're kind of like seeing what it's like when, you know, there's rapid power consolidation. And then you're just like, oh, where are the checks and balances? And it's just like, you know, it's hard to get a grip of where they are. You know, apparently, as we're seeing, not every institution is being coordinated and forced under, but they would like to do that. And probably more energetically than any administration since, I mean, what they think they're doing, but it's much more ham-handed and brutal and stupid is something. like a new deal type recreation of the federal government realignment towards the parties,

priorities, et cetera, creation of a new regime. But, you know, this is not with the same kind of people staffing it, let's just say. So, yeah, I don't know. I've always been a little bit of, you know, we came out of, we, our generation is, we saw what the effect. of neoliberalism were, right? And we thought that the New Deal era and the progressive era and, you know, all of that stuff, their idea of expanding government to help people, they had the right idea and the idea of shrinking government was always, you know, going to help corporate interests and help rich people and so on and so forth. And, you know, the, the era of small government liberals or like anti-bureaucracy liberalism that kind of came out of

the new left and then came out of like, you know, consumer advocate type people like Ralph Nader. Yeah. Ralph Nader. Yeah. And, you know, and Carter was sort of in on that where it was kind of like a liberalism that was suspicious of big bureaucracies. I was always just such a new dealer that I was like, you know, man, you need a big powerful institutions that can handle the problems of modern society, you know, and I wouldn't say I've

been totally shaken in that, but I think there needs to be like a broad institutional rethinking because, okay, here's a perfect example. A lot of the institutions that developed over the 20th century were to counterbalance the power of big capital in the United States, right? So first you have the progressive era, you have some populace reforms, you have progressive reforms, and you have new deal. But we've seen, and critics have said that since the middle of the century from the 60s and 70s, well, those institutions are subject to capture. So maybe there needs to be a kind of new rethink of what kinds of institutions would check and balance the capture of the state by, you know, a corporate oligarchy or I'm

sorry, a capitalist oligarchy, private capitalists. I don't know what that looks like. Part of me thinks that some of the solutions old-fashioned, right? That like part, the one explanation for the rise of a corporate oligarchy is just the total destruction of organized labor is like a real meaningful force in the economy, right? The height of new due era. something like a third of private sector workers are unionized. Now it's, now it's run, you know, five or four or five percent.

So what can you do to just revitalize organized labor? What can you do to give labor a kind of stakeholder in the overall economy? And I think, I think that would

that would go a long way, right? Because a powerful organized labor is also going to be a a state, a government, that it has to be more responsive to the concerns of labor and the concerns of workers and laborers, which may mean a government that isn't going to be so eager or quick to, you know, organize the economy around the production of financial returns. Yeah. I think actually, you know, this AI stuff, which is scary from a certain standpoint, I think it actually, if it actually does proletarianize a huge.

amount of the American population that could lead to a new labor move a new growth in labor movement yeah you know if it if it really if it really you know um automates these skills lowers wages um you suddenly are going to see much more worker solidarity because everyone's going to be like this fucking sucks and my my job is being ruined and my life is being ruined um yeah people's experiences the thing is like, you know, we had a period of de-proletarianization, I think some neoliberal economists call it, which is like everybody, try to make everybody like a private entrepreneur, they have a home ownership, private credit, instead of welfare state, so on and so forth.

So everyone's kind of like a little member of the bourgeoisie. But if that breaks down and people aren't able to be like, well, I'm not a homeowner, I'm not a, I don't have a, like my 401K is fucked. My job is miserable. My wages are going down and expenses are going up. Suddenly, you have a very different attitude about people towards their material lives. It may turn a lot of more people to organizations rather than being like, well, I'm doing okay. You know, one possibility.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's wrap this up. would you recommend that people check out tomorrow never dies yeah i think if you want to have a good time you should watch i agree this is a i think it's a top tier bond movie it's it's just a lot of fun it's not it's not all that deep it's very silly but it's a good time at the movies and i think there's a lot to be said for just a good time at the movies um all right that is our

show. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can find this podcast, wherever podcasts are found. that includes Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, we're everywhere. And if you do like, if you did like this episode, please subscribe, give us a rating and it helps other people find the podcast. One of these things I should actually figure out how many listeners we have. I have no idea. I kind of stop paying attention to it. But I think it's more than, I think it's actually more listeners than either of us think.

I'll have to look at this. But people come up to me and they say that they listen. Yeah, no. Thank you. I'm glad you guys enjoy it. It's striking. But so thank you for listening and please subscribe if you haven't. You can reach out to us over social media if you'd like, but we also have a feedback email on clear and present feedback at fastmail.com.

And for this week in feedback, we have an email from Romana who writes, hi guys, a bit of trivia from the Jackal episode. During the news before the show segment, you mentioned Senator Patrick Leahy. because you made me go down the rabbit hole, I found he's a Batman fan and made cameo appearances in several Batman movies. An average photographer, 16 pages of his photos are included in his memoir The Road Taken. Cheers.

Yes, you will find Patrick Leahy in Batman the Dark Night. He's in a very critical scene in Bruce Wayne's penthouse where he's being confronted by the Joker. And I think he makes an appearance in a bunch of Batman movies. Patrick Leahy.

He's no longer in the Senate. He finally retired. He was one of the oldest senators serving, and he had the good sense to leave office. Unfortunately, we can't say the same for many people currently at serving. What's his name? Grassley, Chuck Grassley is still hanging in there. And that guy's in his 90s. Chuck Grassley has been in the United States Senate since like 1979.

He assumed office in 1981. Okay, I was wrong. But he was in the house from 75 to 1981. in on Reagan's coat. Yes. And he's been in elected office since 1959. Oh, my God. He's been an elected office since 1959.

He was born in 1933. We hadn't even gone to the moon yet. He was born in 1933. Yeah, he's born in 1933. September 17th. Was he old enough? He was old enough to serve in Korea. He's 92 years old.

my god that's wild he's so old he's he's kind of funny but like when he tweets about the history channel but he's like he's definitely just being run by grofer staffers at this point yeah yeah that's what happens with these ancient senators they just get propped up by like an evil staff i mean it's it's it's it's weekend of burnies i mean romney in his memoir described the Senate as a retirement community. And that's basically what it is. Yeah. All right.

Thank you, Ramana, for your email. And, of course, if you want to reach out to us, it is unclear and present. Feedback at Fastball.com. Actually, I want to give a quick shout out as well to a couple people who emailed us, which is sort of like nice things to say. David really liked really likes our recent episodes just dealing with politics in the Patreon

Mary emailed to just send words of appreciation for the podcast. So thank you so much, guys, for following the show, listening, and reaching out. We really appreciate it. Episodes come out roughly over two weeks. And so our next episode for this main feed podcast It's going to be on Wag the Dog.

A movie I've actually really been looking forward to getting to. Right Dog, 97, directed by Barry Levinson, starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Ann Hatch, you'll forget about her. Woody Harrelson, Dennis Leary, William Nelson, Andrew Martin, a young Kirsten Dunst, William H. Macy, just a murderer's row of famous 90s celebrities. Quick plot synopsis during the final weeks of a presidential race, the president is accused of sexual misconduct to distract the public until the election.

The president's advisor hires a Hollywood producer to help him stage a fake war. Everyone's doing Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton movies. So maybe we'll talk about this in this episode. There's really something to say about how Hollywood just like immediately pegged Bill Clinton, right? And it was just sort of like, you know, right?

We did the American president, like, what, last year or two years ago, which is what if we had a horny president who also wasn't like a scumbag. I think we'll soon do murder at 1600, which is a, you know, what if you saw the horny president kill someone? There's also, wait, didn't we do that one?

Was that, did we not do murder of 1600? Or was it, what is the Clint Eastwood one? Executive power, it's a Clint Eastwood one. Oh, no, absolute power. Is it absolute power? Yeah.

All the names sort of floating in it. Absolute power. Do we not have murder at, 1600 on this list. I'm looking at the list. And I don't know if it's there, which is, which is, it's a Wesley Snipes film as well. So, um, that's why I kind of want to watch it. But no, I got to add it to the list. Yeah, there's, there's, there's at least two horny president and kill someone movies. Um, uh, yeah, no, we don't got, we don't got murder at 1600, which stars Wesley Snipes and a young Diane Lane, man, Diane Lane.

did we watch my dad sent me something midnight in st petersburg from 1990 i do not think we watch midnight in st petersburg i think we might have to return to to because i think wait let's see when it was made in st petersburg 1996 douglas oh made for television film that's maybe we missed it but it's michael kane starring as a british secret agent so that sounds up our alley it is it is part of a series about the fictional spy harry palmer who appeared in the if crest file funeral in berlin and billion dollar brain and um there's bullet to Beijing which is 95 and then midnight in st petersburg is the immediate follow-up maybe you should watch both of them back to back yeah i think we got to watch yeah i do too should we should we go back to do these let's do i i do really quite well let's do brag the dog and then we'll go back to um these guys okay so that's your next film over at the patreon patreon patreon.com slash unclear pod we are doing our um weekly politics show just commenting on the news of the week the most recent episode that's going to be up you know by the time you hear

this is the thing from another world and then our next uh patreon episode after that will be john carpenter's the thing and then we'll follow that up with something i don't know we always we always decide on these things a little later so we'll follow that up with something but for spooky season we're doing we're doing two thing movies and that's that's it that's all thank you for listening everyone for john gans i'm jemel vui and we will catch you next time Thank you.