Episode 187
Gattaca (1997) with Why We Roll podcast
In this episode, we analyze the 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, alongside Wythe Marshall and Chris Pickett from the "Why We Roll" podcast. We examine the film's portrayal of a future shaped by genetic engineering and social stratification, contrasting 'valids' and 'in-valids' in a society that discriminates based on genetics. Our discussion highlights the film's casting choices and the moral ambivalence surrounding its individualistic narrative, embodied by Vincent's journey to overcome systemic barriers. We also reflect on the film's aesthetic and its critique of reliance on genetics, acknowledging its limitations in addressing classism.
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Transcript
Evan: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host, Evan,
Speaker:Evan: back again with another film discussion from the left.
Speaker:Evan: You can follow the show on all platforms at leftoftheprojector.com.
Speaker:Evan: The year was 1997. We had sci-fi like Fifth Element, Contact,
Speaker:Evan: Event Horizon, Face Off, Jurassic Park, the second one.
Speaker:Evan: But down at the bottom of the office box office charts was Gattaca.
Speaker:Evan: Directed by Andrew Nicole, starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman,
Speaker:Evan: Jude Law, Alan Arkin, and others.
Speaker:Evan: We have maybe this wasn't on your radar.
Speaker:Evan: Yes, Sonja Lube. The others.
Speaker:Chris: Gore Vidal.
Speaker:Evan: I know, Gore Vidal. And there's actually another classic actor that I'm blanking
Speaker:Evan: on at the moment who's in it. Oh, fuck.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, Ernest Borgnine.
Speaker:Chris: Ernest Borgnine? Wait, what? What is he in the movie?
Speaker:Evan: He is the the like the older cleaner guy.
Speaker:Chris: The older avuncular yeah don't clean the glass too well there kid.
Speaker:Evan: Yes yes exactly this
Speaker:Evan: was probably a film that maybe kind of fell off most people's radar
Speaker:Evan: just didn't do well in the box office you know
Speaker:Evan: it only netted a uh 12 and a half million dollars on its 36 million dollar budget
Speaker:Evan: you know not good as as they might say but to discuss this forgotten although
Speaker:Evan: now you'll remember it sci-fi film from 1997 we have the hosts of why we roll
Speaker:Evan: podcast wife marshall and chris pickett thank you both for being here today.
Speaker:Wythe: Hey thanks for having us.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah salutana mikoi.
Speaker:Evan: It's a little little.
Speaker:Chris: Esperanto for you.
Speaker:Evan: That's that's perfect uh but before we jump into the film at hand i thought
Speaker:Evan: you might both introduce yourselves further tell us about your podcast still
Speaker:Evan: fleet studio which i didn't even mention until now but anything that uh the
Speaker:Evan: listeners may not be aware of.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah uh chris do you want to you want to kick us off.
Speaker:Chris: Hey what's up everybody i am christopher pickett i'm a multidisciplinary
Speaker:Chris: artist living in brooklyn new york and uh yeah i make i make lots of stuff i
Speaker:Chris: make tattoos that's my kind of day job and how i know our wonderful host evan
Speaker:Chris: here um and i also make tabletop role-playing games um with still fleet studio
Speaker:Chris: with my wonderful friend wife marshall here.
Speaker:Wythe: Hey uh and i'm wife marshall i'm a writer and i live in queens now i used to
Speaker:Wythe: live in brooklyn for a super long time um and i'm a science writer and science
Speaker:Wythe: fiction writer uh which are a little bit different things so by day i write
Speaker:Wythe: about food and medicine in the future um and by night i run this game company
Speaker:Wythe: and we make weird sci-fi and sort of a fantasy,
Speaker:Wythe: I'd say a lot of it's like sort of historical re-imagining type games,
Speaker:Wythe: all coming from a leftist perspective.
Speaker:Wythe: Uh, and yeah, I'm a fan of the show. So it was super exciting that,
Speaker:Wythe: uh, randomly, um, you know, was connected, uh, through Chris.
Speaker:Wythe: So, you know, I'm excited Evan to, to meet and chat about a,
Speaker:Wythe: yeah, forgotten gem in a way, especially in the, uh, the tradition of like very
Speaker:Wythe: specifically like biotech, um, nerded nerding out, you know, movies.
Speaker:Evan: So, yeah, it was, it all came together very oddly. Like I was literally getting
Speaker:Evan: a tattoo and we, I don't, I don't even know exactly how came up we often talk
Speaker:Evan: about like books and sci-fi and these things and it's just yeah.
Speaker:Chris: I i feel like uh we were what
Speaker:Chris: we were talking about i i think when i last saw you in person evan um i was
Speaker:Chris: in the middle of a spate of uh biopunk novels that i was reading and i feel
Speaker:Chris: like we talked about that quite a bit um and then uh i think maybe i told you
Speaker:Chris: about why we roll which um By the way,
Speaker:Chris: my wife and I have a podcast called Why We Roll for those listening.
Speaker:Chris: It's a chat show where we talk to other tabletop role-playing game designers.
Speaker:Chris: We talk to them about their games, the things they're making,
Speaker:Chris: why they make it, and we also try to get into the politics of the game at hand,
Speaker:Chris: one of the ludonarrative politics.
Speaker:Chris: We always approach it from a leftist perspective, and yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker:Chris: But yeah, we were talking about
Speaker:Chris: that, and then you brought up Left of the projector and now stars aligned.
Speaker:Evan: And so I guess that leads me to why you chose this film, which I mean,
Speaker:Evan: actually, after describing all of what you just said, it seems maybe obvious.
Speaker:Evan: But, you know, picking, you know, it was on my list of films and no one has
Speaker:Evan: been like, oh, yeah, I want to do Gattaca. Or maybe it was on my list.
Speaker:Evan: I think it was on your list. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was. And so,
Speaker:Evan: but what, I mean, given both your, your interests, I mean, maybe it's obvious,
Speaker:Evan: but what maybe grabs you about this film now it's, you know,
Speaker:Evan: we're talking it's 28 years ago, still, as we'll get into, you know,
Speaker:Evan: relevant and very interesting.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. Very, very prescient in a lot of ways.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, I mean, I know from my perspective, I, I was, uh, intrigued, uh,
Speaker:Wythe: to know if you had done um boots riley
Speaker:Wythe: sorry to bother you and then you had and i just hadn't listened
Speaker:Wythe: to the episode so i was like ah damn it of course um speaking of you
Speaker:Wythe: know other great biopunk adjacent you know movies about
Speaker:Wythe: sort of genetic engineering of people and um culture and that's almost the opposite
Speaker:Wythe: of this movie which we'll discuss sort of one is from a very much like a black
Speaker:Wythe: perspective and one is like the whitest movie ever in some ways which i is very
Speaker:Wythe: creepy and adds to the sort of retro future um weird timeliness of it given
Speaker:Wythe: we're recording this you know in april 2025 and And, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: white supremacists have ascended to the highest offices of the United States openly,
Speaker:Wythe: right? Like it's mask off time.
Speaker:Wythe: So I think it's sort of timely. But, yeah, I think it comes out of also just
Speaker:Wythe: Chris and I both read a lot of biopunk sci-fi.
Speaker:Wythe: And we work on games that are about imagining other futures through this kind of lens of being other.
Speaker:Wythe: And I think that comes out of imagination-based games in the,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, if you don't know what tabletop role-playing games are,
Speaker:Wythe: kind of the Dungeons and Dragons tradition, it comes out of it very naturally
Speaker:Wythe: because it's a kind of game where you imagine in your mind, you have a different body.
Speaker:Chris: Right.
Speaker:Wythe: And I think that essential insight drives, um, I don't want to speak for you,
Speaker:Wythe: Chris, but I kind of feel like for both of us, all of the art we make is like,
Speaker:Wythe: well, what if bodies were just different and how would we, how would that change society?
Speaker:Wythe: And like, maybe we wouldn't be such dirtbags to each other, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: like maybe, or, you know, things could be better or worse, whatever.
Speaker:Wythe: So I think Attica as a weird uh you know it's it's in classes about this kind
Speaker:Wythe: of science it's like people show it as like oh look it's the only movie about this.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah it's.
Speaker:Wythe: Got a weird sort of ambivalence a moral ambivalence at its core so i mean i'm
Speaker:Wythe: excited to unpack that with y'all what it's really saying.
Speaker:Chris: I think it has a i agree it has a moral ambivalence at its core it's it's like this this,
Speaker:Chris: astonishingly um liberal movie which like
Speaker:Chris: re-watching it i watched it twice um since
Speaker:Chris: we decided to do it and yeah re-watching it again
Speaker:Chris: the second time i was just like i was floored by how ambivalent
Speaker:Chris: it is about actual economics and about race and
Speaker:Chris: about actual class and yeah it's amazing um but yeah i think for my part i wanted
Speaker:Chris: to do existens um and i think you already did existens so i was like well what's
Speaker:Chris: another biopunk movie i can think of off the top of my head and lo and behold
Speaker:Chris: gattaca was in front of me on the list.
Speaker:Evan: I actually haven't done Existence.
Speaker:Chris: Oh, you haven't. I thought you did.
Speaker:Evan: No, was it? I'm trying to... Maybe it just wasn't. It might have just not been on my list.
Speaker:Wythe: You've done a lot.
Speaker:Evan: Cronenberg is like someone that I actually haven't covered at all,
Speaker:Evan: which is shocking. I know.
Speaker:Chris: That is surprising. Well, I guess we'll just... We'll have to come back.
Speaker:Chris: We'll just have to watch Existence together now.
Speaker:Wythe: We'll have to pitch you. Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I'll happily...
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, we'll pitch you on a Flesh Gun episode.
Speaker:Evan: Episode yeah maybe i'll
Speaker:Evan: give like everyone like the very the quickest snapshot
Speaker:Evan: of the film and then i'm gonna ask you sort of how this kind of like the technology
Speaker:Evan: of this film might kind of like look in sort of real life as you know how realistic
Speaker:Evan: it is or you know the science behind it but for anyone who hasn't seen it or
Speaker:Evan: hasn't seen in a long time this is first your chance to pause and then go watch the movie.
Speaker:Evan: And now that you've watched it, you can come back and hear we describe what happens.
Speaker:Evan: And it's sort of this weird, not too distant future kind of movie where we'll
Speaker:Evan: also talk about kind of like the technology and the way that things look is
Speaker:Evan: it makes it feel very, you know, mid-century, despite the fact that it's this,
Speaker:Evan: you know, futuristic film where people now are all registered in databases.
Speaker:Evan: And rather than having regular births the way, you know, we have them now,
Speaker:Evan: it's all done through genetics where you can use all the things you want in
Speaker:Evan: a person, in your child, and avoid disorders and all these different things that plague society.
Speaker:Evan: You know, I say in scare quotes.
Speaker:Evan: And we have our protagonist, played by Ethan Hawke, who is a natural birth,
Speaker:Evan: and then his brother is this sort of futuristic birth.
Speaker:Evan: And we see how much Ethan Hawke wants to move and go to the stars and be kind
Speaker:Evan: of a cosmonaut or an astronaut or whatever. They don't even really use that terminology.
Speaker:Evan: And slowly we see his attempt to use a person's genetics, in this case Jude
Speaker:Evan: Law, to achieve his goal.
Speaker:Evan: And we'll get into further how that works.
Speaker:Evan: Ends up working out for him or not. And so that's a, you know, very limited,
Speaker:Evan: short, short synopsis, but I don't know how you want to, if you want to describe
Speaker:Evan: why it's sort of, there's like a very early, early scene in this where his parent,
Speaker:Evan: Ethan Hawke's parents are,
Speaker:Evan: you know, bring him to the doctor and they're basically creating the plan for his brother,
Speaker:Evan: you know, and like, he wants to have this colored, what colors,
Speaker:Evan: you know, what color eyes does he wants you know the getting rid of diseases
Speaker:Evan: and it's just it's kind of a it's very creepy.
Speaker:Chris: It's super creepy that.
Speaker:Wythe: There's.
Speaker:Chris: A moment where the doctor is going through the list of like the things that
Speaker:Chris: the parents have specified that they want and the last thing that he lists is
Speaker:Chris: fair skin and this is the only speaking role for a black person in the entire
Speaker:Chris: movie which is of note and when he says fair skin he's like ah yes and fair
Speaker:Chris: skin of course there's this like weird.
Speaker:Wythe: Attitude to.
Speaker:Chris: It where like the delivery is is extremely scary and yeah it's it's uh it's chilling.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah re-watching it made me think of almost like you
Speaker:Wythe: know man in the high castle like like how intentional was nickel
Speaker:Wythe: and i don't know i haven't read enough around his his work
Speaker:Wythe: to say um if this is meant to be a common on race when
Speaker:Wythe: i watched it as a kid i thought it was more just about sci-fi and re-watching
Speaker:Wythe: it you know i was thinking okay it'll be you know
Speaker:Wythe: a chance to kind of unpack how this has or hasn't aged well
Speaker:Wythe: in terms of you know in science fiction studies talk about the
Speaker:Wythe: novum like the core idea um and there's a tradition
Speaker:Wythe: of classifying them what you know what if like a novum a new
Speaker:Wythe: thing that we can't possibly imagine versus like a if left
Speaker:Wythe: alone a current trend will lead to right um and that's something like heineland
Speaker:Wythe: talked about octavia butler talked about that and this is definitely in the
Speaker:Wythe: tradition of if lift left alone the science is headed in this direction so um
Speaker:Wythe: you know you know gattaca is not real science in any way it's meant to be this kind of silly,
Speaker:Wythe: summery, squish-down version, but it is based on real science, which is.
Speaker:Wythe: We can get all into the acronyms, they're really fun, but there's things called
Speaker:Wythe: genome-wide association studies that look at different areas,
Speaker:Wythe: lots of genetic regions, and how they might relate to traits,
Speaker:Wythe: like not just, you know, okay, something physical, but also how people behave.
Speaker:Wythe: And so there's a whole science called behavioral genomics that looks at different
Speaker:Wythe: regions and they calculate scores, polygenic indices or polygenic scores,
Speaker:Wythe: which basically say this person is likely to have this trait or not and be good
Speaker:Wythe: at this type of behavior or not.
Speaker:Wythe: Um a lot of this is coming out of medicine but you
Speaker:Wythe: can imagine right away right your mind jumps to well can this
Speaker:Wythe: have other uses and yes i mean this is real science that has other
Speaker:Wythe: uses and is very controversial within biology because people can say on the
Speaker:Wythe: one hand you know well yeah i mean studying um how genetics relates to behavior
Speaker:Wythe: is very old it goes back to looking at fruit flies and things but uh the origins
Speaker:Wythe: of modern molecular biology but like it also gets into this creepy I think of
Speaker:Wythe: it as Gattaca territory, where it's like, well,
Speaker:Wythe: if you believe these things, that a certain polygenic index will lead to a certain
Speaker:Wythe: behavior, then could you control for that? Could you select for that?
Speaker:Wythe: Could you engineer that?
Speaker:Wythe: Theory um i mean the answer is yes
Speaker:Wythe: right like as far as i know no one's doing this currently but in
Speaker:Wythe: theory um the more that we build up the this information this
Speaker:Wythe: database of kind of these regions of genomes seem
Speaker:Wythe: to lead to control for these behaviors
Speaker:Wythe: so we're talking about lots and lots of genes in different states
Speaker:Wythe: different alleles so different ways that the gene is
Speaker:Wythe: is written and you know in theory
Speaker:Wythe: once you have enough of that information it's just in a computer you could design
Speaker:Wythe: right we can basically 3d print um dna
Speaker:Wythe: so you could like go in there you know you'd use crisper and change
Speaker:Wythe: what what's happening um now again we don't
Speaker:Wythe: as far as i know no one's doing this but gattaca assumes in the near future
Speaker:Wythe: this becomes like trivially cheap and easy and everyone basically has what's
Speaker:Wythe: called in science fiction often designer babies they design all the traits um
Speaker:Wythe: and our hero vincent is like the last he's the og like kid who didn't get the
Speaker:Wythe: designer treatment He's just a norm core.
Speaker:Wythe: I think they call them godchildren or godbirths in the movie.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, there's a bunch of different names for them. Yeah, there's godbirths.
Speaker:Chris: There's, I think they call them a luck child at one point.
Speaker:Wythe: Oh, luck child. Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, but yeah, godchild, godbirth, invalid. There's another one.
Speaker:Chris: Degenerate. There's a lot of, Andrew Nichols uses a lot of these like very ham-fisted,
Speaker:Chris: I think intentionally ham-fisted, you know,
Speaker:Chris: know portmanteaus of stuff um which i think to your point earlier white is it's
Speaker:Chris: a way of like compressing um the world building down and kind of like making
Speaker:Chris: it like serving it to you on a platter which you know i don't think is necessarily
Speaker:Chris: a bad thing or a good thing but it is a thing and it does make you roll your
Speaker:Chris: eyes a few times in the movie and.
Speaker:Wythe: It represents like just to finish in the science part a weird like end of it
Speaker:Wythe: it represents where behavioral genomics stops and a new field called,
Speaker:Wythe: sociogenomics starts, which is basically saying, wait a second,
Speaker:Wythe: even if you have all that data, the way those things are expressed has everything
Speaker:Wythe: to do with how you're raised and how you develop,
Speaker:Wythe: you know at the level of mind body everything so it's like nowadays it's studied
Speaker:Wythe: very differently and it's not like gattaca in real science um but this movie
Speaker:Wythe: assumes none of that nurture stuff ever enters the conversation it's just nature
Speaker:Wythe: it's just like programming um except it it then under.
Speaker:Chris: It does come in it.
Speaker:Wythe: Undercuts it because vincent is this god child luck baby whatever
Speaker:Wythe: so so it's interesting tension about what is the real science and what is the
Speaker:Wythe: movie arguing i don't think it necessarily is i don't know how much nickel at
Speaker:Wythe: all cared about that but it has kind of the seeds of you could read it as like
Speaker:Wythe: you know hard nature or like oh no there's actually this argument that like
Speaker:Wythe: you can overcome nature um to to you know astonishing degree there's.
Speaker:Evan: Like several times in the film when people are questioned for the murder later
Speaker:Evan: on of the of the the head of the of.
Speaker:Chris: Gattaca and.
Speaker:Evan: They're like oh i don't have a violent bone in my body like you can like go.
Speaker:Chris: Check it look.
Speaker:Evan: It up and so it's very clearly they're trying to almost like weed out the potential
Speaker:Evan: for crime you know from these people in addition to the traits i think that
Speaker:Evan: also plainly fits into the idea that there's no people of color in this film.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah so yeah for sure but yeah
Speaker:Chris: go ahead it's interesting to see it's interesting i was gonna say it's interesting
Speaker:Chris: to see how the nature nurture stuff comes up um
Speaker:Chris: i was gonna bring up uh gorf doll's banger line
Speaker:Chris: of i don't have a violent bone in my body and then spoiler alert
Speaker:Chris: hopefully you watch the movie during the very quick break that
Speaker:Chris: evan gave us uh but spoiler alert gorvidal fucking
Speaker:Chris: kills a guy in the movie uh violently i might
Speaker:Chris: say so he certainly does have a few violent bones but it's
Speaker:Chris: also true for um eugene which
Speaker:Chris: again until the rewatch i didn't catch this eugene
Speaker:Chris: good genes you gen like yeah it's just so fuck it's so dead there in your face
Speaker:Chris: it's so good um but even his like malaise that he gets to because he's like
Speaker:Chris: oh well i got second place i was supposed to have the world handed to me on
Speaker:Chris: a platter because of my perfect genetic profile, but I still got second place.
Speaker:Chris: And that makes him commit suicide because it
Speaker:Chris: fragility that comes with that but um you do see these instances of you know
Speaker:Chris: with sociogenomics where where you can't you don't live in a vacuum you know
Speaker:Chris: like our genes don't live in
Speaker:Chris: a vacuum there are still outside influences that you cannot edit for but.
Speaker:Evan: They're very clearly trying to create this society of i mean we also can talk
Speaker:Evan: about you know like the very clear caste system that you kind of have.
Speaker:Chris: Created where.
Speaker:Evan: You have these people who are working for these you know for gattaca this you
Speaker:Evan: know this uh company that's sending
Speaker:Evan: people to the you know to various moon saturn and all these places and.
Speaker:Chris: All this technology for.
Speaker:Evan: Some reason like it's never really nothing ever of that's
Speaker:Evan: ever really explained i guess i guess that's kind of immaterial in
Speaker:Evan: some sense but then you also have the underclass of people
Speaker:Evan: who are just i guess you could just call them service workers you know
Speaker:Evan: the people who work as waiters at the fancy clubs the people who
Speaker:Evan: clean gattaca and they have special places
Speaker:Evan: they live too it's very clear that they live in you know probably what
Speaker:Evan: you would consider a project or you know a housing you know a public housing
Speaker:Evan: kind of situation and it's very much that they've attempted to i don't know
Speaker:Evan: i guess with these people that they weren't couldn't their families couldn't
Speaker:Evan: afford to get their get fancy jeans like do you think that all these people also are natural births.
Speaker:Chris: Well that's that's something that's another like weirdly
Speaker:Chris: ambivalent thing in the movie is that there's they don't talk about
Speaker:Chris: the the economics or accessibility of the
Speaker:Chris: gene editing and having a vitro or
Speaker:Chris: made man babies or whatever they call them i remember
Speaker:Chris: that's another one they call the natural births is
Speaker:Chris: uh uteros you're right you're a fucking you fucking
Speaker:Chris: utero like imagine saying that as an insult to somebody
Speaker:Chris: um but yeah yeah
Speaker:Chris: no they're they're super uh there's there's no
Speaker:Chris: information about like accessibility to the gene editing about
Speaker:Chris: like what it costs any of that stuff like there's an assumption
Speaker:Chris: that vincent's parents are able to afford it and they're kind
Speaker:Chris: of shown as like very middle class like a
Speaker:Chris: very 1950s atomic family middle class thing um
Speaker:Chris: but then they don't touch it again so like you know it it does make sense that
Speaker:Chris: a lot of the men that vinson has shown with working the cleaning crew at gattaca
Speaker:Chris: are older men i think they're trying to account for that but then it is left
Speaker:Chris: up in the air where it's like well what does accessibility to this look like
Speaker:Chris: and does it really matter and.
Speaker:Wythe: I think that's The strength and weakness of the movie is it's really weirdly
Speaker:Wythe: tight on the one novum of like designer babies.
Speaker:Wythe: So it kind of ignores like all of the other what ifs that would go along with
Speaker:Wythe: that like you're bringing up around what kind of economic world is this like
Speaker:Wythe: what is the makeup of it feels like Los Angeles it looks like JPL skin bringing up you know.
Speaker:Wythe: Butler it's it feels like it yeah the gattaca is the.
Speaker:Chris: Marin county civic center.
Speaker:Wythe: Okay there you go so it it feels like a place we've
Speaker:Wythe: known in a kind of sci-fi we should be familiar with but it
Speaker:Wythe: sort of cuts away so much of the world and has these retro
Speaker:Wythe: future choices around like everyone's listening to jazz and
Speaker:Wythe: driving old school cars and it just feels like they did
Speaker:Wythe: you know there's no attempt to have futuristic computers everything looks
Speaker:Wythe: sleek but not really thought through in terms
Speaker:Wythe: of the sci-fi it's just kind of clean and generic with the
Speaker:Wythe: one exception that designer babies and all we're going to talk about is designer babies
Speaker:Wythe: and you know so in a weird way it holds up because like it's focused and it
Speaker:Wythe: doesn't have like things that have aged badly but it also to your point it just
Speaker:Wythe: leaves a lot of mystery around like yeah what is everybody else doing why why
Speaker:Wythe: are so many people hired to wash the windows at gattaca all the time it's like
Speaker:Wythe: the clean it's the cleanest place everyone's just the window vipers are just always you know No.
Speaker:Chris: But again, but again, you know, don't clean the windows too well,
Speaker:Chris: kid. You might get ideas.
Speaker:Wythe: Right, right, right.
Speaker:Chris: That's why they need so many people to clean the windows because nobody's doing their job.
Speaker:Evan: It reminds me a lot of like the technology that you see in Fallout with sort
Speaker:Evan: of like the like the retro vibe, but it's also the future, you know,
Speaker:Evan: and it's I don't know if maybe I tried to look up a little bit about that.
Speaker:Evan: I couldn't find too much, even in the way of like interviews from Nicole about it.
Speaker:Evan: And it seems, I don't know, maybe just like they thought it looked cool.
Speaker:Evan: It just kind of, you know, electric. I don't know. Oh, your theory.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, I have a theory. I've got a theory on it. And a part of it is that,
Speaker:Chris: I mean, they do use a lot of, so again, Gattaca, the building that they use
Speaker:Chris: to shoot Gattaca, the site is the Marin Civic Center, which was built by Frank
Speaker:Chris: Lloyd Wright at the end of his life.
Speaker:Chris: He didn't even, he died before the project was finished. But it was meant to
Speaker:Chris: be a building with a lifespan of over 300 years and meant to be futuristic.
Speaker:Chris: But it's also like this very, especially for Frank Lloyd Wright,
Speaker:Chris: like later in his life, it's this kind of pure expression of brutalism and like
Speaker:Chris: this trend that you see in architecture, both in the US and in the USSR with
Speaker:Chris: like these brutalist, brutalist architecture scapes,
Speaker:Chris: which are kind of taking focus away from humanism and more towards just like pure progressivism.
Speaker:Chris: Like everything is clean, everything is efficient, everything is scientific,
Speaker:Chris: you know, all of the angles, you know, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.
Speaker:Chris: So I think, you know, they make a lot of use of that in the movie.
Speaker:Chris: The other thing too is just like boomers or like, sorry, not boomers.
Speaker:Chris: Like Nichols is just in that age range where like his conception of science
Speaker:Chris: fiction is still within a retrofuturist framework.
Speaker:Chris: And I think like in the late 90s, well, throughout all the 90s,
Speaker:Chris: really culturally in the United States, we were referencing the 50s so much
Speaker:Chris: because... the people that were producing...
Speaker:Chris: Television and movies and things of that time grew up in that era so i think
Speaker:Chris: that there's a little bit of that in there there's a little bit of like what
Speaker:Chris: does utopian sci-fi look like well it looks like the jetsons so we're going
Speaker:Chris: to go with this kind of like modernist sheen on everything if that makes sense no i.
Speaker:Wythe: Think yeah that.
Speaker:Evan: Makes sense to me.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah it's like referencing um you know 2001 which
Speaker:Wythe: is referencing the bow house and it's sort of like sleek design as a
Speaker:Wythe: as a kind of filler that just says don't think too much about it which
Speaker:Wythe: again i think is really effective if you look at star trek which was
Speaker:Wythe: a really like popular show and not in some
Speaker:Wythe: ways like um not high concept but to but now
Speaker:Wythe: we can look back and say oh wow it broke all these barriers and was really smart and kind of
Speaker:Wythe: kind of left us right but like a lot of that was just you know make it
Speaker:Wythe: sleek like make it so that your brain turns off like how
Speaker:Wythe: would that work and i think gattaca weirdly achieves
Speaker:Wythe: that well where like even though a lot of these choices like
Speaker:Wythe: the jazz club is so corny in some ways it's also
Speaker:Wythe: like okay i get it this is a stand-in for whatever
Speaker:Wythe: music is popular at this time like it kind of doesn't really matter right
Speaker:Wythe: it's not about the music it's only about will uma
Speaker:Wythe: thurman who by the way is the love interest this movie is full of like a-listers
Speaker:Wythe: uh you know will she fall for uh vincent ethan hawk's character you know the
Speaker:Wythe: our degenerate uh utero which every time i hear utero i hear kurt cobain screaming
Speaker:Wythe: lyrics in utero in my head it's great so it's yeah fair enough a lot of musical associations um.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah and one of the the things like separate from the kind of like the
Speaker:Evan: setting too well actually this is one other thing i'll mention because i think
Speaker:Evan: maybe you may put it in your note just because we're talking about the aesthetics
Speaker:Evan: and the the the set design and all of the things the choices there is the the
Speaker:Evan: apartment where both you know where uh,
Speaker:Evan: ethan hawk and jude law share to you know prepare all their blood samples and
Speaker:Evan: fingerprints and all these things they have to do which is also worth talking about too.
Speaker:Wythe: Is the.
Speaker:Evan: The staircase in there is like just the dna
Speaker:Evan: strand which i think is it's just a double helix yeah yeah
Speaker:Evan: like it just like looks cool and and also for anyone who doesn't know that the
Speaker:Evan: title of the film is also the g-a-t-c which is the different you know nucleo
Speaker:Evan: nucleo bases of dna which again you know it's all it wasn't the original title
Speaker:Evan: i saw on wikipedia it was supposed to be called the eighth day referring to the day they created.
Speaker:Wythe: The bible and.
Speaker:Evan: That would have been i don't know somehow just that title change,
Speaker:Evan: almost would like change the idea of the film in my head somehow,
Speaker:Evan: like making it religious.
Speaker:Chris: It would recontextualize a lot of the film, which I think there's notes of that
Speaker:Chris: in there, like calling them godchildren and like there's these echoes of religion
Speaker:Chris: throughout the movie, but it is largely done away with.
Speaker:Chris: Although isn't there like an Ecclesiastes quote that the movie opens with?
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah, it opens with a sick quote, Ecclesiastes 713, and a quote from William Galen and it's...
Speaker:Wythe: It's interesting to think about specifically the eighth day.
Speaker:Wythe: I mean, you know, I think that the idea, again, of the ambivalence of like,
Speaker:Wythe: it's a critique of this, right?
Speaker:Wythe: Clearly, I mean, Vincent wins in a sense, but it's not of great critique in
Speaker:Wythe: the sense we're identifying of.
Speaker:Wythe: It doesn't really look at the systems, the structures in which Vincent prevails.
Speaker:Wythe: It's just one person's triumph of nurture allowed his imperfect nature.
Speaker:Wythe: It basically is a movie that assumes the premise will sort of happen, right?
Speaker:Wythe: It's like, yeah, eventually we'll have designer babies and you'll be shit out
Speaker:Wythe: of luck if you don't have the designer genes, but maybe if you work hard, you can be like Vincent.
Speaker:Wythe: I think the real hero is Tony Shalhoub is the lumpen bad guy mobster who sells
Speaker:Wythe: him like the ability to what they call in the movie, borrow a ladder, right?
Speaker:Wythe: Like become a fake, um, designer person, uh, with Jude law, right?
Speaker:Wythe: So Jude laws, um, lost the ability.
Speaker:Wythe: He's been paralyzed. He can't, he can't walk. so he's kind of given up his whole
Speaker:Wythe: thing was he was really good at swimming and he liked you know physical stuff so
Speaker:Wythe: he's kind of given up on life and he basically is trading you know
Speaker:Wythe: he needs money um and he's given up
Speaker:Wythe: so he allows you know vincent um ethan hawk's
Speaker:Wythe: character vincent to kind of take on his persona and i think
Speaker:Wythe: i think there's something interesting about the fact that um you know
Speaker:Wythe: to your point like gattaca makes it about the fake jpl like research
Speaker:Wythe: institute where they're also constantly sending astronauts to
Speaker:Wythe: different moons of the outer planets um for
Speaker:Wythe: no overstated reason for no for like how does the
Speaker:Wythe: economics work i don't know and they speak esperanto but like it moves it away
Speaker:Wythe: makes me so mad the like biblical the critique of like man's hubris and redesigning
Speaker:Wythe: things like taking over the role of god you know which i think the movie is
Speaker:Wythe: sort of it's a critique but also sort of like it's not that it's not that worried
Speaker:Wythe: about it feel it feels like you know well.
Speaker:Evan: That's why i think you said before chris like that it's you
Speaker:Evan: you commented it's kind of a very liberal take or whatever
Speaker:Evan: you know something what that means and you were just saying how
Speaker:Evan: the idea that ethan hawk you know he's clearly he doesn't
Speaker:Evan: have any money he like runs away from home at whenever he's
Speaker:Evan: 18 or you know something like that when he's able
Speaker:Evan: to to get away and he's a cleaner at gattaca eventually decides he's gonna go
Speaker:Evan: through this process to you know use the borrowed ladder but you said as the
Speaker:Evan: idea of like oh he could just you know if he just works really hard he could
Speaker:Evan: get there and it sort of gave me the vibe of like you know pull yourself up
Speaker:Evan: by your bootstraps and you can just yeah achieve anything.
Speaker:Wythe: And it's sort.
Speaker:Evan: Of like that it's but it only was able to do that through you know cheating
Speaker:Evan: and doing these other things that really is what the what reality is this.
Speaker:Chris: This is where this is where for me um the connection with andrew tate comes in,
Speaker:Chris: But no, yeah, precisely what you're saying.
Speaker:Chris: That's why it feels like a very, maybe not liberal, it feels like a very neoliberal
Speaker:Chris: movie to me in a lot of ways. In that, like, it's not about,
Speaker:Chris: Wythe, to your point, it's not about breaking down this oppressive system.
Speaker:Chris: It's not about having a revolution, about banding together.
Speaker:Chris: It's about one person through sheer tyranny of will and bootstrappedness achieving
Speaker:Chris: his singular goal, which is still to be productive within the larger capitalist,
Speaker:Chris: you know, assuming, I'm assuming, they never say otherwise.
Speaker:Chris: So I'm assuming it's like a late stage capitalist kind of system that they're
Speaker:Chris: in that has a new case kind of slapped on top of it.
Speaker:Chris: But yeah, I mean, that's that's the whole thing is like, yeah,
Speaker:Chris: if you work hard enough, you can be productive under capitalism,
Speaker:Chris: too, even though you are an invalid or even if you are.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, it feels to build on what you're saying, it feels very 90s and then it's
Speaker:Wythe: this kind of history inability for Nickel at all because he wrote and directed the film.
Speaker:Wythe: So I'm not I'm not attacking him as much as pointing out it's his vision.
Speaker:Wythe: And it seems like he hasn't imagined what the society could be other than an
Speaker:Wythe: extension of, okay, everything else just keeps going, right?
Speaker:Wythe: Capitalism keeps going, but let's add designer babies.
Speaker:Wythe: I really want to talk about, you know, advanced reproductive technologies where
Speaker:Wythe: we can go in and make your baby.
Speaker:Wythe: Everyone is six foot tall, has whatever eyes you want.
Speaker:Wythe: And it makes this basically eugenical Uber, you know, white guy society where
Speaker:Wythe: everyone is basically like Jude Law.
Speaker:Wythe: Um and you know if you're poor then that's left
Speaker:Wythe: you sort of in the dirt in terms of your ability to get a good job and
Speaker:Wythe: all this stuff um and because he's done that and
Speaker:Wythe: he's really focused on that in that time period of the 90s it just feels
Speaker:Wythe: very much of of that story of well you know we've we've solved it we solved
Speaker:Wythe: racism guys you know we've we like if you remember like i remember kind of jesse
Speaker:Wythe: jackson and clinton declaring that that was it right um we're done and and we
Speaker:Wythe: beat the communists so there's one world system it's capital it's it's not perfect
Speaker:Wythe: but hey it's as fair as you're going to get, right? It's emergent fairness.
Speaker:Wythe: Everyone's competing and right. Pull yourself up. If you want to,
Speaker:Wythe: if you want more money, work harder.
Speaker:Wythe: You know it's the american dream and of course it was all a lie but i mean i
Speaker:Wythe: remember hearing that just from every commercial every tv show and there was
Speaker:Wythe: very little ability growing up in that to sort of see the outside and i feel
Speaker:Wythe: like this movie the fact it has no outside is it's like this is also the guy
Speaker:Wythe: who did the truman show right or he wrote the truman show yeah he literally.
Speaker:Evan: Took the words out of his mouth.
Speaker:Wythe: You know to say there's no there's no beyond and i really want you really want
Speaker:Wythe: to just punch through the wall of like okay forget even hawk he's the least
Speaker:Wythe: interesting person in the movie what is going on he really is world you know yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I was gonna say like i mean you want i want to know more about uma thurman and
Speaker:Evan: like the fact that she somehow is able thing she also has a heart condition
Speaker:Evan: how did she get into gattaca you know she's way.
Speaker:Chris: More interesting and we get nothing about her.
Speaker:Evan: No it's actually very other than other than.
Speaker:Chris: The heart condition thing yeah it's extreme it's extremely disappointing.
Speaker:Evan: And you also would love to know more just about you know jula it's like you
Speaker:Evan: know clearly his family was wealthy but where did all the money go you know i'm fine not.
Speaker:Chris: Knowing anything else about him.
Speaker:Evan: Personally he.
Speaker:Wythe: Is given kind of the most dynamic character though in terms of his ups and downs
Speaker:Wythe: right he's given things to act that are like more more human than the sort of
Speaker:Wythe: inhuman i'm i'm ethan hawkeye i'm just preternaturally focused on astro navigation
Speaker:Wythe: or whatever you know he's always like just reading textbooks all the time.
Speaker:Chris: And he's working out with astro navigation textbooks.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah yeah they're so big it's like 25 he's doing like.
Speaker:Chris: It's like a 50 pound textbook that he drops on the floor.
Speaker:Evan: And you i mean you look at some of the other films that you know that nickel's
Speaker:Evan: nickel has done and you know a lot of them are related to like uh also even
Speaker:Evan: hawk in it like i don't i haven't seen it i don't think but i was looking at
Speaker:Evan: the description lord of war which is i think.
Speaker:Wythe: Like 2005.
Speaker:Evan: This is also like kind of that post 9 11 you know uh i don't even know that's.
Speaker:Chris: The one with uh nicholas cage where he's like an arms dealer, right?
Speaker:Evan: Yes.
Speaker:Chris: Something like that. He also did In Time.
Speaker:Wythe: Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, with Justin Timberlake?
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah.
Speaker:Chris: He brought sexy back, but he didn't have enough time. I haven't seen that movie.
Speaker:Chris: That one looks admittedly, you know, whatever.
Speaker:Chris: Andrew Nichols, you're great. I don't know about that movie. It looks real bad.
Speaker:Chris: Maybe it's just the time that it was made. I don't know.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, it's another like mononovum. Like in time, your lifespan is currency.
Speaker:Wythe: And so you know it's time and money being the same which
Speaker:Wythe: of course is both like a platitude but
Speaker:Wythe: it's also something in economics that we think about especially in the
Speaker:Wythe: marxist side you know how to sort of think about labor so it's
Speaker:Wythe: again a mist it's like a movie that starts with a kind of marxian premise engine
Speaker:Wythe: just becomes just in timberlake shooting guys and it's like not it's like again
Speaker:Wythe: there's no there there even though you want there to be so it's like i feel
Speaker:Wythe: like it's like gattaca in that sense of like almost really interesting i think
Speaker:Wythe: gattaca is more interesting um i have not seen in time since it came out so it's been a while.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i mean the thing about i mean again this is this
Speaker:Evan: comes up a lot in lots and countless number of episodes where
Speaker:Evan: i we talk about sometimes like oh like do you think that the director had a
Speaker:Evan: you know like was he using his his personal politics sort of playing into this
Speaker:Evan: and whether it is intentional or unintentional is you know you could always
Speaker:Evan: you know just be as i think you said chris like the age he is and like looking at technology and.
Speaker:Wythe: How sci-fi.
Speaker:Evan: Is and all of that so So it seems like a lot of those kind of played into here.
Speaker:Evan: And, you know, I'm sure I don't didn't find much about his politics.
Speaker:Evan: I imagine he's probably just kind of a run of the mill liberal type.
Speaker:Evan: You know, that's just kind of what the film seems like it's politics are to
Speaker:Evan: me. And I don't know. I was going to say something else.
Speaker:Wythe: It would kind of have to be. Sorry, Evan, you should think about what you're going to say.
Speaker:Wythe: I just wanted to follow up that, like, how could a communist or a fascist make
Speaker:Wythe: this movie? Because a fascist would celebrate the eugenics and have no ability
Speaker:Wythe: for there to be a critique of it.
Speaker:Wythe: And we would have made a movie that's like, this is awful.
Speaker:Wythe: Like eugenics is the worst and like have, you know, characters who are racialized
Speaker:Wythe: in the movie and responding to this world and living in it.
Speaker:Wythe: And instead, Nichols made a movie that just is totally, it like walks the line
Speaker:Wythe: perfectly on whether this is kind of good or bad.
Speaker:Wythe: I think i think it's supposed to be a critique that just doesn't feel that critical
Speaker:Wythe: of like yeah basically a case like money-based cased system inscribed into your dna that like,
Speaker:Wythe: I mean, they talk about the lifespans, like people, the people who do not have
Speaker:Wythe: this engineering die much more easily, more often.
Speaker:Wythe: You know what I mean? Like, so it would over time, you would start to see basically like speciation.
Speaker:Wythe: Like this is like nightmare fuel stuff. If you think about the consequences.
Speaker:Evan: Well, I think, I think it says they live 30.2 years or something like that,
Speaker:Evan: you know, because you have disorders and these things that they're also,
Speaker:Evan: they have the technology to do all this genetics. They have the ability to go.
Speaker:Evan: There's how many rockets do they send it? Like during this film,
Speaker:Evan: like 50, 100, like every day.
Speaker:Chris: I think at the beginning of the movie, Uma Thurman asks, uh,
Speaker:Chris: uh, Vincent Ethan Hawke's character, um, how many they launch a week.
Speaker:Chris: And he's like 15, sometimes more. So at least 15 rockets shooting off a week.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah per week yeah that's a
Speaker:Evan: lot of rockets and and i was going to say is that it's
Speaker:Evan: uh you know so they're spending all this money again this is
Speaker:Evan: a private company it's not a government it's not nasa
Speaker:Evan: or whatever it is so but they could spend this money on
Speaker:Evan: i don't know preventing people from living only 30 years that
Speaker:Evan: don't have genetic you know disorders i don't know that that would be that would
Speaker:Evan: be the the thing to do and that they're not putting money into public good they're
Speaker:Evan: it's all going into this private you know the only government person you really
Speaker:Evan: see is the police officer which we later find out the big twist is his brother oh.
Speaker:Wythe: My god i think i think that like uh that's a really good point and i i will
Speaker:Wythe: say i think that it's supposed to be he would only live 30 years because he has a heart abnormality.
Speaker:Evan: Right that.
Speaker:Wythe: Is very likely to kill but it's supposed to be i think you know so if the lifespan
Speaker:Wythe: now is petered off around 80 or whatever in the you know,
Speaker:Wythe: If you're, if you're lucky enough to, you can live around 80 years, roughly.
Speaker:Wythe: And then, so I think this assumes that like, we're not told explicit numbers,
Speaker:Wythe: but like if with genetic engineering, the designer baby generation will live
Speaker:Wythe: a lot longer and be healthier.
Speaker:Wythe: And then the normal people will just die however they die. And so,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, over time that would just get that the world would become so crazy
Speaker:Wythe: so quickly, I think if this were widespread, but to your point,
Speaker:Wythe: can't they cure every disease?
Speaker:Wythe: Well, isn't that kind of the case?
Speaker:Chris: Right.
Speaker:Wythe: Like we have amazing medical technologies. They're just very unevenly accessible
Speaker:Wythe: in the United States, like especially, but broadly in the liberal,
Speaker:Wythe: right? It's because it's tied to money.
Speaker:Wythe: So I actually think in that same sense, I don't think he could have sort of
Speaker:Wythe: could have imagined another system maybe, or just wasn't interested in like,
Speaker:Wythe: what if everyone had, you know, what if it was more fair?
Speaker:Wythe: It's just not part of the world.
Speaker:Evan: And it almost seems like the private, private corporations
Speaker:Evan: in the way that you're describing now is like being able to
Speaker:Evan: if they wanted to cure more diseases or do all
Speaker:Evan: these things it's they created the technology probably
Speaker:Evan: through government funding as it always is and you know
Speaker:Evan: to do these genetic things and instead of that it's
Speaker:Evan: almost like they drastically changed like the course
Speaker:Evan: of america or society through this ability to control this i mean theoretically
Speaker:Evan: you could the government could then say oh we want super soldiers who have actually
Speaker:Evan: have the you know capacity for for you know a violent bone in your body or whatever
Speaker:Evan: so like the technology isn't just every.
Speaker:Chris: Bone is violent.
Speaker:Evan: But instead they're using it for going to saturn moons like are they going to
Speaker:Evan: look for resources i don't know.
Speaker:Wythe: And to your point if there was a sequel implied it's like
Speaker:Wythe: maybe not the gattaca institute but another job totally
Speaker:Wythe: different industry how does this work and i think that's where then it
Speaker:Wythe: probably would break down quickly in some ways um but in
Speaker:Wythe: other ways it is a real like these are real
Speaker:Wythe: fears these are things bioethicists actually talk about right is we
Speaker:Wythe: can already there are various ways to screen uh fertilized
Speaker:Wythe: you know embryos um and you can you know getting genetic material sequenced
Speaker:Wythe: is now trivially cheap but you in the 90s it was expensive but this movie predicted
Speaker:Wythe: of course it would be very cheap and now it is so like one thing that's come
Speaker:Wythe: out within bioethics that's a big deal is like the concept of generalist medical
Speaker:Wythe: ai i don't know if y'all have heard of this,
Speaker:Wythe: but like if you fed all kinds of information, not just genomic,
Speaker:Wythe: but all kinds of information into a really powerful AI in the very near future,
Speaker:Wythe: companies are trying to do this. It could...
Speaker:Wythe: Help you in all kinds of ways, like with very specific to your body ways to
Speaker:Wythe: like live longer, treat disease, basically prevent disease, figure out what
Speaker:Wythe: would likely happen to you before it happens and stop it.
Speaker:Wythe: And like, who will have access to that? You know what I mean?
Speaker:Wythe: Who will have the money to like pay some company for this service?
Speaker:Wythe: And so it's not that far off from the things that it's, that this movie is implying
Speaker:Wythe: about in the near future medicine is going to really change and it's going to
Speaker:Wythe: be very uneven and terrible.
Speaker:Wythe: And I feel like in that sense, it is like kind of accurate like it feels like
Speaker:Wythe: creepy not because it's you know bad or something because it feels like oh yeah
Speaker:Wythe: this is the america that we live in right.
Speaker:Evan: I was also thinking of it i mean just kind of what we're
Speaker:Evan: both saying is sort of the relevance to this like why would
Speaker:Evan: you say you know if i said like why is this film relevant today
Speaker:Evan: in the sense of this technology and the things that they want
Speaker:Evan: to do i think there's like multiple ways of you know
Speaker:Evan: as you're saying why the like technology that this is going to have that
Speaker:Evan: will probably lead to more wealth inequality because
Speaker:Evan: people will be able to afford this while others will not and
Speaker:Evan: then you also have people like Elon Musk who want to I
Speaker:Evan: say this in quotes like colonize Mars I don't think that's actually what he
Speaker:Evan: wants to do exactly it's sort of you know we don't need to go down the rabbit
Speaker:Evan: hole of what's in his brain and what he's actually thinking but like just the
Speaker:Evan: idea that like there is this concept of shooting people into space you know
Speaker:Evan: rich people into space with rockets as like space tourism and,
Speaker:Evan: maybe that's in a way kind of what this is, but I don't really understand.
Speaker:Evan: Like none of the people are scientists. Like Ethan Hawke is not a scientist,
Speaker:Evan: right? He's just a guy that has good genes and can run on a treadmill.
Speaker:Evan: Like, you know, he actually can't, but you're supposed to be able to have like
Speaker:Evan: really good fitness and good genes.
Speaker:Evan: Like what is it just, they need people with good genes that can withstand living
Speaker:Evan: in space for a year. Is that it?
Speaker:Wythe: I think he's supposed to be an astro navigator like
Speaker:Wythe: he's a scientist who would chart plots for a spaceship
Speaker:Wythe: to interact with a slingshot around
Speaker:Wythe: moons and get to titan and then safely get back whatever with
Speaker:Wythe: this you know we actually don't have the technology to do this right
Speaker:Wythe: now right but like you can imagine that because we have the technology to go
Speaker:Wythe: to the moon so it's more of that um we're doing right with mars like that's
Speaker:Wythe: all these rich guys want to go to mars okay so it's the same idea you have to
Speaker:Wythe: slingshot around the moon go to mars whatever it is um so he's trained i think
Speaker:Wythe: what's implied is He just learned that by getting textbooks from like the library,
Speaker:Wythe: which is really funny to imagine he goes like the Santa Monica library and gets
Speaker:Wythe: like a 25 pound textbook on like, so you want to be the greatest engineer in
Speaker:Wythe: the history of NASA. And he just like reads it.
Speaker:Wythe: Um, but he's so, he's so smart even without the engineering and he's,
Speaker:Wythe: it's really just, he's so determined.
Speaker:Wythe: It's not that he's so smart. He's so determined that he makes himself be the
Speaker:Wythe: baddest ass like navigator.
Speaker:Wythe: And they hire him because he has the fake, he has Jude Law's like card that
Speaker:Wythe: says, I have these designer genes. I have an IQ of 300 or whatever.
Speaker:Wythe: They hire him. And they hire him based on the card, assuming he'll do the job.
Speaker:Wythe: He does then do the job well, and so it's all simpatico until...
Speaker:Wythe: The opening of the movie right that that was my read on.
Speaker:Evan: It well the thing i was going to mention before is i think it's interesting i
Speaker:Evan: just just like the way they do it in the movie i think we're chris and i were
Speaker:Evan: briefly just talking about it before we started recording was the like the process
Speaker:Evan: that ethan hawk has to go through every day to like burn off like scrape his
Speaker:Evan: his skin cells and you know apply this little special finger that has blood in it so that it can
Speaker:Evan: pinprick them every day to make sure it's the same person i mean it seems like
Speaker:Evan: it's just this massive amount of work that just like when do you have time to
Speaker:Evan: even do anything else right that's that's.
Speaker:Chris: The that's the question is like how do you have a life outside
Speaker:Chris: of this and i guess the answer is that you just don't you just dedicate and
Speaker:Chris: and maybe that's like a part of vincent's character is that he's just so determined
Speaker:Chris: he's so dedicated and just has such a tight focus of will that it doesn't matter
Speaker:Chris: to him if he's dating or going to see movies or having friends or anything, I guess. But, eesh.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I guess that's right. I mean, the only time you see any external socializing
Speaker:Evan: is when he goes with Uma Thurman to that sort of club.
Speaker:Chris: He goes to one jazz bar.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, twice. They go there twice. Or I guess you see this place three times?
Speaker:Wythe: He goes there with Jude Law, drinks a bottle of water.
Speaker:Chris: He goes there with Jude Law. Yeah, Jude Law gets really drunk.
Speaker:Chris: He goes there with Uma Thurman. And then he punches a J. Edgar,
Speaker:Chris: a cop, and almost gets caught by his brother. I think it's just twice.
Speaker:Chris: I think it's twice, but yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Okay, just twice. Yeah, and then I guess the only other time he goes to Uma
Speaker:Evan: Thurman's beautiful mansion type house.
Speaker:Evan: Apartment house whatever and.
Speaker:Chris: All these people have mansions it.
Speaker:Evan: Does seem like that but clearly jude law and ethan hawk live in sort of normal
Speaker:Evan: housing which is still very nice.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah you.
Speaker:Evan: Know it's clearly like multiple floors and the whole i don't know i don't know
Speaker:Evan: like i lost my oh i think it's just like the whole idea of all the things he
Speaker:Evan: has to do in this house of just all the materials.
Speaker:Chris: And blood.
Speaker:Evan: Spinners i these that's probably not what it's actually called but the blood like spins around and.
Speaker:Chris: Centrifuge yes i did
Speaker:Chris: i did um i came into my second rewatch
Speaker:Chris: of being like you know they don't talk about the economics of just
Speaker:Chris: like how do you get all this equipment how do you maintain it
Speaker:Chris: all that stuff but then like actually rewatching it they do there's a
Speaker:Chris: couple little bombs that they drop so like tony shalhoub's character is
Speaker:Chris: like if this thing doesn't work out you have to return the equipment
Speaker:Chris: within seven days so there's like this you know like hint that
Speaker:Chris: this is kind of a least agreement thing um and
Speaker:Chris: then another one where uh later in the movie jude law is
Speaker:Chris: having a tantrum because they sent him a hair dye that's two shades lighter
Speaker:Chris: than his hair color for right for ethan hawk's character so they they touch
Speaker:Chris: on it a little bit but yeah i mean it's it's like hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker:Chris: worth of equipment just to like live live your life in a shitty way you'd.
Speaker:Evan: Think that when they were investigating like wouldn't it be pretty easy to track
Speaker:Evan: that there's this a random guy that's ordering all this hair dye for like yeah you know they have.
Speaker:Chris: They can like you.
Speaker:Evan: Can get like a sequence of someone's dna by just like giving them like an eyelash
Speaker:Evan: or swabbing your cheek at like a little booth like it's also weird that they
Speaker:Evan: have just like booths for people to just do.
Speaker:Chris: Sequencing i there was a lot of there was a lot of like uh pre or early internet
Speaker:Chris: kind of imaginaries in this as well,
Speaker:Chris: I think like instead of having like massive, like they have databases for like
Speaker:Chris: who's a, who's valid and invalid and things like that.
Speaker:Chris: But you know, there's not like a concept of like.
Speaker:Chris: Just having the internet and like tracking purchases or, or cell phones even really.
Speaker:Wythe: It's part of the, it's part of the retro future is, is not just design at the
Speaker:Wythe: level of like the cars look old and they're listening to jazz.
Speaker:Wythe: It's also at the level of the, the way that the cop and, um,
Speaker:Wythe: criminal, the fact that we're rooting for the criminals and the cops are old
Speaker:Wythe: school cops who knock on doors.
Speaker:Wythe: They're like gum shoes who like take little notes and like,
Speaker:Wythe: they don't have real computer they don't have like surveillance uh networks
Speaker:Wythe: so it's a very different kind of fear from the world the way we're surveilled
Speaker:Wythe: now it's nowadays actually um there's something called um environmental genomics
Speaker:Wythe: which funny enough like you can.
Speaker:Wythe: Get a lot of information from like just some a water
Speaker:Wythe: sample from anywhere about you know what's going on there you know human
Speaker:Wythe: non-human all kinds of things and so you know the in
Speaker:Wythe: a weird way the movie is like super futuristic and
Speaker:Wythe: also like really old school where they only have this one technology they
Speaker:Wythe: only use it a certain way they have a couple they have spaceflight i guess they're really good
Speaker:Wythe: at space and they're really good at yeah bioengineering in a
Speaker:Wythe: limited way and then everything else is kind of stagnated and that's kind
Speaker:Wythe: of like you're saying about fallout evan it reminds me of like the the
Speaker:Wythe: random choice you know you have the fader of like far future sci-fi stuff and
Speaker:Wythe: you like move it up for a couple things but you leave everything else kind of
Speaker:Wythe: at zero at normal or whatever or even you know move them down so i don't know
Speaker:Wythe: i don't know why that was a choice and if that was just a style thing about
Speaker:Wythe: like wanting it to feel noir and old school or timeless but it
Speaker:Wythe: definitely the coppery is like hilariously bad the cops are the most god-awful
Speaker:Wythe: inept cops jude law outwits them by just being like by just being just trolling
Speaker:Wythe: them yeah and they're like oh my god i have to leave.
Speaker:Chris: The uh i forget the actor's name but the the the cop brother from breaking bad
Speaker:Chris: is one of the j edgars in this movie has a brief.
Speaker:Wythe: Scene with.
Speaker:Chris: Jude law he's actually not even his character doesn't even have a name it's
Speaker:Chris: he's just like cop number three or some shit like that Oh.
Speaker:Evan: Dean Norris?
Speaker:Wythe: Dean Norris, yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, Dean Norris, thank you. But he has a brief interaction with Jude Law where he's like,
Speaker:Chris: Oh, this, my Game Boy here with my green and black two-bit LED screen says that
Speaker:Chris: you're not, he uses the word crippled.
Speaker:Chris: And Jude Law is like, oh, I'm not crippled, you moron. And then he like chases
Speaker:Chris: him down and he's like, what's your badge?
Speaker:Chris: What's your badge, you fucking flat foot?
Speaker:Chris: And when he called him a flat foot, I almost lost my shit. I was like, that's too much, man.
Speaker:Chris: Like, that's, you're already calling him J. Edgars. You're already like, come on.
Speaker:Evan: Well, another funny thing, just thinking about the technology and just what they have available,
Speaker:Evan: the thing that I think is also hysterical that is never not funny to me is every
Speaker:Evan: time they do the blood dropping and the screen pops up and it shows Jude Law's
Speaker:Evan: face, it kind of glitches out.
Speaker:Evan: And it's like, oh, they can go to the moon, but they can't fix their little
Speaker:Evan: screen watches and other things.
Speaker:Chris: Well, there's even, there's a point where Tony Shalhoub's character is like,
Speaker:Chris: nobody looks at photographs.
Speaker:Chris: Like, it doesn't matter that you don't look at him. Who looks at a photograph anymore?
Speaker:Chris: And it's like, why has photography just disappeared? Like, that's a huge miss.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, that's true. That's true. And the other technology, just like thinking
Speaker:Evan: about like Tony Shalhoub and like what he has to do to get Ethan Hawke to be able to do him.
Speaker:Evan: He also like has to, I guess, graph bones onto his legs to make him.
Speaker:Chris: Oh, no, that's a real procedure that people undergo to be taller because of masculinity grifters.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, I didn't realize that was actually it.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, the idea is that you break the bone in certain places and then you keep
Speaker:Chris: the bone separated using the pins and rods.
Speaker:Chris: So the scene where he's laying down trying to learn how to right-handed,
Speaker:Chris: trying to not be a southpaw.
Speaker:Chris: You see he's got this like apparatus around his legs that's like stretching
Speaker:Chris: him and holding the bones.
Speaker:Chris: And then as the bone heals, it regrows into the spaces that are left behind,
Speaker:Chris: which is how you can get taller.
Speaker:Chris: The downside is, which they don't talk about in the movie, is that you can really
Speaker:Chris: easily just break your fucking legs by like running or playing basketball or
Speaker:Chris: doing anything that's like minimally active.
Speaker:Evan: But he never has to run in this movie.
Speaker:Chris: But he does.
Speaker:Evan: He's on the treadmill.
Speaker:Wythe: He's on the treadmill.
Speaker:Chris: He's got to run for 20 minutes and he almost, he almost bites it from that 20 minutes.
Speaker:Wythe: But Chris, that reminds me, cause you were talking about the toxic masculinity
Speaker:Wythe: and that was like such a theme that, that came through really, um, evidently.
Speaker:Wythe: Cause I also didn't know, I was amazed that that was a real thing.
Speaker:Wythe: I was like, this has to be just like kind of sloppy sci-fi, but apparently no,
Speaker:Wythe: uh, Shalhoub does not deal in sloppy sci-fi.
Speaker:Chris: Shalhoub is hard sci-fi only baby.
Speaker:Wythe: But, but I wanted to hear more about, cause I, not, I mean, I feel like I can
Speaker:Wythe: guess, but But like, can you say more about kind of how you read it as this
Speaker:Wythe: kind of like, oh, no, Andrew Tate has one kind of universe?
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it comes in. I see a lot of it in Jude Law's
Speaker:Chris: character, honestly, but also in kind of the overall message of the movie where.
Speaker:Chris: So like Tate, you know, he uses terms like you have to hack the Matrix,
Speaker:Chris: you have to break the Matrix, which for him is like exactly what happens to
Speaker:Chris: Vincent's character in the movie, where it's like.
Speaker:Chris: Tate will criticize capitalism and be like, millionaires don't care about you,
Speaker:Chris: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Chris: But his solution to capital is not to tear down the system and to build something better.
Speaker:Chris: It's instead to hack the system and break laws and to exploit everybody around
Speaker:Chris: you to make as much money as possible because that's what's going to free you from the matrix.
Speaker:Chris: And it's not a one for one but I do see that in Vincent's character arc where
Speaker:Chris: it's like we're not criticizing the system we don't care about that I have one
Speaker:Chris: goal my goal is this thing I'm going to do whatever it takes to get there but you also see it in.
Speaker:Chris: In the frankly like the the,
Speaker:Chris: petulant frail masculine nihilism of
Speaker:Chris: of eugene of the original uh i
Speaker:Chris: forget his name in the movie whatever judah's character um
Speaker:Chris: and how like you know he just kind of jerome thank
Speaker:Chris: you yeah jerome eugene whatever his last name is
Speaker:Chris: but yeah i also see it in the kind of like petulant nihilism that
Speaker:Chris: he has um where he believes
Speaker:Chris: that he was supposed to be the best at everything he
Speaker:Chris: did and the fact that he got fucking silver sent him
Speaker:Chris: into like a spiral of malaise that made him hate the
Speaker:Chris: entire world is crazy you know
Speaker:Chris: and like we could talk about sociogenomics with that as well
Speaker:Chris: where it's like just a random factor could have
Speaker:Chris: kept him a point of a second behind the gold winner but
Speaker:Chris: like still that's enough to kind of break down the fragile masculinity that
Speaker:Chris: he has built up and also just the kind of privilege and you
Speaker:Chris: see that a lot with people that follow tate usually like
Speaker:Chris: young angry men who feel like
Speaker:Chris: they are entitled to a lot of things and their privileges have not been
Speaker:Chris: met or it's getting harder just because you know
Speaker:Chris: fucking tariffs and life and basic economic
Speaker:Chris: shit uh the fact that we're not getting paid to keep
Speaker:Chris: up with inflation yada yada yada um but instead
Speaker:Chris: of but instead of you know trying to think.
Speaker:Chris: About like all right well how do we collectively organize around
Speaker:Chris: this how do we build a better world it's it's instead turned inward
Speaker:Chris: and made extremely atomized and alienated
Speaker:Chris: and individualistic and then you get these kind of
Speaker:Chris: masculinity grifters like tate or you know
Speaker:Chris: like joe rogan these kind of fuckers who um actually there's another tie-in
Speaker:Chris: here like they push fucking supplements on people all the time so there's a
Speaker:Chris: there's actually like an interesting tie-in with post-humanism with that where
Speaker:Chris: they're trying to do this kind of like embodied post-humanism like i saw an ad today of.
Speaker:Chris: Pete holmes shilling for magic mind which
Speaker:Chris: is like a little shot drink that you take and it's supposed to be like liquid
Speaker:Chris: adderall make you more productive and smarter and whatever um anyway i'm rambling
Speaker:Chris: at this point there's a connection between andrew tate selling supplements mlms
Speaker:Chris: um designer babies i got the whole red red string board going.
Speaker:Evan: That just makes me think more like i'm constantly thinking
Speaker:Evan: about like the economics of this society and how
Speaker:Evan: like is there like because we
Speaker:Evan: saw originally like you're saying i think before one of you mentioned that
Speaker:Evan: like vincent's parents were seemingly middle class and like how did they yeah
Speaker:Evan: even afford the technology maybe it was like early on in the you know in the
Speaker:Evan: in the being able to do this or something it's not really stated but like i
Speaker:Evan: don't know it's this is more like us kind of just imagining what it would actually look like Like,
Speaker:Evan: you know, I'm just thinking like people in, you know, MLMs,
Speaker:Evan: like trying to sell the people who work at Gattaca, like things to make them
Speaker:Evan: like even better or, you know, I don't know.
Speaker:Evan: And clearly there's a pharmaceutical industry too, because Uma Thurman's taking,
Speaker:Evan: she has her little like little pill container. So she's taking,
Speaker:Evan: you know, taking some kind of drug of some sort. And I don't know, these are just.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. And there's, there's an obvious black market for things as well with Tony
Speaker:Chris: Shalhoub's character representing that. Yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it feels again like another interesting,
Speaker:Wythe: like, who are the people doing the barred ladder process?
Speaker:Wythe: And like, what is the sort of like lump in science serving that?
Speaker:Wythe: And how does it all work economically? How do you get in the hole with the mob?
Speaker:Wythe: And like, how many of these people succeed and fail?
Speaker:Wythe: And like, I think that's like, to me, one of the more interesting parts of the
Speaker:Wythe: movie that we really only get in the beginning.
Speaker:Wythe: And then basically Vincent just take, you know, he has no, like,
Speaker:Wythe: spoiler, he doesn't ever fail. You know, he just keeps going.
Speaker:Wythe: Um, but you know, it does imply that like, this is, this is this vibrant market
Speaker:Wythe: and it's, it's not one to one, but there is again, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: in real life, there are parallels like with, uh, for example,
Speaker:Wythe: um, you know, organs, right.
Speaker:Wythe: Are supposed to be, um, donated and assigned by doctors by, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: according to need. And people are on wait lists for years for lifesaving,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, organ transplants.
Speaker:Wythe: And there's also a black market and money enters into the picture.
Speaker:Wythe: So it's not controlled by money, but like, if you have money,
Speaker:Wythe: you might be able to get some other option depending on where you are.
Speaker:Wythe: How much money and whatever and that's um you know
Speaker:Wythe: we can we can again imagine like like really easily any medical technology
Speaker:Wythe: having um this kind of gattaca like downside because
Speaker:Wythe: we actually see it dated like it's it is our actual world it's just not quite
Speaker:Wythe: like we don't as far as i know bioengineer babies at the level that is implied
Speaker:Wythe: in this movie but pretty much all the other like you know parts of that sort
Speaker:Wythe: of uh there's shadow economies and there's the other sort of aspects um, I think do exist.
Speaker:Wythe: So in terms of the relevance, like I do think it's, it's kind of reflecting
Speaker:Wythe: on, um, you know, the world today, it's, it's still kind of hits home if not,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, much more now than in the 90s.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, no, I, I agree. I mean, I think there's a lot to think about with the
Speaker:Chris: commodification of the body in this movie. And we see that especially with, um, with Jude Law.
Speaker:Chris: Um, but I, I would be curious to explore that outside of it.
Speaker:Chris: Like, Like you're saying, black markets for organs and things like that.
Speaker:Chris: What does that look like? How does that kind of change?
Speaker:Chris: Do you get a weird kind of gig economy?
Speaker:Chris: I was thinking about another movie too, and I'm curious, Evan,
Speaker:Chris: if you've seen this one. Have you seen Transfer by...
Speaker:Chris: Damien Lukosevic?
Speaker:Evan: No.
Speaker:Chris: I might be saying that last name wrong.
Speaker:Evan: I have not.
Speaker:Chris: It's kind of like, it's kind of like get out in a way, but it's a little bit
Speaker:Chris: more pointed in like the economics of it. And I think that's where it ties into this.
Speaker:Chris: The idea is that these like rich, I believe German, white German people are old, they're dying.
Speaker:Chris: And there's a program where you can transfer your mind into a younger person's
Speaker:Chris: body who has rented out their body to you for all but four hours a day.
Speaker:Chris: Um, and of course the people doing this are poor African folks who like need
Speaker:Chris: the money to support their families back home and stuff like that.
Speaker:Chris: Um, but I, you know, I would be curious if like there's, there's room for imaginaries
Speaker:Chris: or narratives like that in the kind of Gattaca universe or like how far you
Speaker:Chris: can kind of push the commodification of like specific body parts, um,
Speaker:Chris: much in the way that they do with like pee and blood in the movie.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah yeah they do imply that really gross kind of chattel like um you know like
Speaker:Wythe: they said get out and transfer looks uh it looks really interesting actually looking at the.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i just looked at the article um well and
Speaker:Evan: also with like all the technology too is like clearly they have all
Speaker:Evan: these devices and like fake you know
Speaker:Evan: thumbs you know uh fingerprint you know i
Speaker:Evan: don't know what they're like silicon or something that like that's something yeah
Speaker:Evan: bioplastic glue to your like clearly if
Speaker:Evan: they if they have all of this technology it's probably
Speaker:Evan: not being used for good purposes it's
Speaker:Evan: being used in this black so it's like there's clearly a very enormous especially
Speaker:Evan: if like most of society is like these companies where you have to have a certain
Speaker:Evan: gene level like it seems like you know you know that this is like a big industry
Speaker:Evan: you know within the black market i mean i i don't know that would just be my opinion yeah.
Speaker:Chris: I mean, someone, someone's making, I mean, you know, you don't,
Speaker:Chris: you don't have demand without supply. You don't have supply without demand.
Speaker:Chris: Someone's making these things.
Speaker:Wythe: It also feels like an underexplored part that
Speaker:Wythe: could have been explored in an alt script where there's just
Speaker:Wythe: you see like i said other in this other uh places
Speaker:Wythe: so it's not just gattaca because i feel like it's so monofocused on this
Speaker:Wythe: one place that you don't really know what it would be
Speaker:Wythe: like to work at like the equivalent of you know it's
Speaker:Wythe: not because society there's always going to be sort of bell curves and stuff in
Speaker:Wythe: some way with class with class society right um so
Speaker:Wythe: this is taking class society and adding this kind of eugenical layer
Speaker:Wythe: um but i think you still it's an
Speaker:Wythe: interesting question what if you're not a gattaca but you're like the manager
Speaker:Wythe: at the best by equivalent right in this world
Speaker:Wythe: and so you know you maybe didn't have the same genetic score that jude law did
Speaker:Wythe: but like you have you had some sort of design like how does it work you know
Speaker:Wythe: to the perfect middle manager you're the perfect just passive aggressive like
Speaker:Wythe: i'm really sorry you can't return this uh my genes are telling me to tell you
Speaker:Wythe: the best way to get you to fuck off.
Speaker:Evan: I mean it's like it's like the gene test is like you know the sats or something
Speaker:Evan: like oh what did you score on your SATs you know I don't know I scored a 1200
Speaker:Evan: oh well you're gonna be the best buy manager but if you score a 1600 then you
Speaker:Evan: can work at Gattaca or something I don't know.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah like that's what they imply I feel like but I again I don't know how it
Speaker:Wythe: would work in Nichols mind or if it if it's supposed to be like we're never
Speaker:Wythe: gonna address like you know they very purposefully cut all that out and just
Speaker:Wythe: tried to keep it super focused on this this one story there.
Speaker:Evan: Was gonna be a tv show but it got.
Speaker:Wythe: I saw.
Speaker:Evan: That yeah and I think it was probably early stages in 2023 I think and it never
Speaker:Evan: actually happened that would be interesting to see what they would do in a especially
Speaker:Evan: doing it now like I almost picture it as like a black mirror style you know.
Speaker:Wythe: Like that could be the you know.
Speaker:Evan: Just dark and yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah that would have to be the direction yeah it's not a comedy I mean I,
Speaker:Chris: I don't know why I just thought of this, but I remember, so Wythe and his partner
Speaker:Chris: came over and we watched it for our first kind of rewatch together.
Speaker:Chris: And something that my partner pointed out, my partner Jen De La Vega said that
Speaker:Chris: was that the technology reminded her of like Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes,
Speaker:Chris: which I also think is kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker:Chris: It's like it's a lot of what they show is the technology in the movie for testing
Speaker:Chris: DNA is extremely inefficient. Like the little thing that you put your finger
Speaker:Chris: on when you walk in through the front door.
Speaker:Chris: It's like, how are you not giving everybody hepatitis A through Z, you know?
Speaker:Chris: And I'm sure there's a hand wavy thing for that, or it just doesn't really matter.
Speaker:Chris: But it's something that just like picked out as like a real life problem in
Speaker:Chris: applying that kind of technology. It felt more important probably now than it
Speaker:Chris: did back then to address that.
Speaker:Evan: It doesn't seem like there would have been a more efficient way for people to
Speaker:Evan: be checked when they come in than like pricking their finger each time.
Speaker:Evan: Also, I don't know. Can they just have like implant something in their skin?
Speaker:Evan: I don't know, like a chip, you know, I don't know.
Speaker:Chris: Sure.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, it's kind of the problem of the mono, like one of the,
Speaker:Wythe: it's like elegant to pick one thing and make your whole story and sci-fi about it.
Speaker:Wythe: But one of the problems is that's just not how real life works.
Speaker:Wythe: Cause it's not the most efficient, like biological stuff is often not the most efficient.
Speaker:Wythe: That's why like we don't live in goop houses, which are fun to imagine like
Speaker:Wythe: a world where biology is technology a hundred percent, but.
Speaker:Wythe: You know, it'd be easier to, yeah, like have some sort of implant with like
Speaker:Wythe: a unique signature that's very hard to hack.
Speaker:Wythe: And then you could scan that like something electronic, right?
Speaker:Wythe: That's not like, yeah, like opening up a wound and like passing along like tainted blood.
Speaker:Wythe: You know, it's like very like it makes it Cronenbergian because it's kind of
Speaker:Wythe: silly and surreal and over the top in this.
Speaker:Wythe: And it is actually the dissonance between so much goopy blood stuff implied
Speaker:Wythe: and like peeing. There's a lot of pissing.
Speaker:Wythe: There's a lot of penis size. There's a lot of like, hey, nice penis.
Speaker:Wythe: The rest of the world is so austere in this kind of 50s, creepy,
Speaker:Wythe: like, white bread, you know, vision of this retrofuture, right?
Speaker:Wythe: I think there is a dissonance there between the Cronenbergian and the,
Speaker:Wythe: like, cleaned up 2001 A Space Odyssey sort of stuff.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's an interesting tension between,
Speaker:Chris: like, the focus on bodily fluids and bodily function, but then in an extremely
Speaker:Chris: austere Spartan space like that.
Speaker:Evan: This this is like a completely different topic i
Speaker:Evan: think we like kind of talked a little bit about it earlier just the idea
Speaker:Evan: that this society is very very
Speaker:Evan: much white like you said there's only talking role
Speaker:Evan: the entire film for a non-white person
Speaker:Evan: was the genesis describing the procedure
Speaker:Evan: and giving them like the menu you know the happy meal menu or whatever of choosing
Speaker:Evan: what you want your child to be like but it also got me thinking about the just
Speaker:Evan: this world of like could you view some of this as sort of like a metaphor with
Speaker:Evan: the you know the borrowed ladder and these ways of,
Speaker:Evan: vincent's character kind of going through society as you know just a poor person
Speaker:Evan: who's a normal birth and not all these things in the same kind of way that you
Speaker:Evan: would you know that maybe people
Speaker:Evan: of color experience you know society of having to you know uh you know,
Speaker:Evan: You know, you apply for a job and, you know, just as a digital resume,
Speaker:Evan: it doesn't say like what race you are, but then you go to the interview and
Speaker:Evan: then all of a sudden like, oh, well, you know, like you can be discriminated
Speaker:Evan: in so many different ways.
Speaker:Evan: And like within policing, obviously, is like a huge way that people are discriminated against.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, that's what's weirdly, it made me think so much of Sorry to Bother You
Speaker:Wythe: because of the white voice and the masking of double consciousness.
Speaker:Wythe: And the fact that in this world, everyone immediately pricks your finger and
Speaker:Wythe: has your genome and then like decides how smart you are based on a computer
Speaker:Wythe: reading a blood sample of your DNA.
Speaker:Wythe: And you know but it's it's like we know we are sympathetic to vincent because we know he's really,
Speaker:Wythe: just as smart without all the design and just as hard working
Speaker:Wythe: and so it's like a weird like i think it's like trying to do that but
Speaker:Wythe: because it doesn't have people of color in the movie really it
Speaker:Wythe: feels very weird it feels like yeah it feels
Speaker:Wythe: like a the right move executed in
Speaker:Wythe: the wrong way maybe is one way to but but again maybe it's just to
Speaker:Wythe: what chris was saying it's just a very neoliberal take on on this we're like
Speaker:Wythe: oh we're all we're all gonna you know we're all in the same boat like it's a
Speaker:Wythe: kind of denial of like actual like race being part of how class plays out and
Speaker:Wythe: that being a meaningful difference that you know what i mean like i i feels
Speaker:Wythe: like the movie wants to reject that and just imagine this neutral future quote-unquote like neutral,
Speaker:Wythe: like you know uh okay just imagine a worker who wants a better world but what
Speaker:Wythe: this there's this hard science fictional what if preventing it you know and
Speaker:Wythe: it yeah it's it's like it's like a um an absence that you almost immediately
Speaker:Wythe: i feel like notice you know we're not watching.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah and And again, I mean, you know, they state like one of the one of the
Speaker:Chris: first things that adult Vincent says as the narrator of the movie is that like, no, racism's done.
Speaker:Chris: We fixed racism. We just have this thing to worry about now. Yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. Oh, I mean, is like, is it implication that they've just essentially used
Speaker:Evan: genetics to just not have people of color?
Speaker:Chris: Well, I think, yeah, I do think that that's an implication. And I think that
Speaker:Chris: goes back to what Wythe was saying about like kind of rapid speciation as like
Speaker:Chris: a potential kind of like logical path that you could follow to that.
Speaker:Chris: I don't know if it's that intentional.
Speaker:Chris: Like I would like for it to be that intentional, but I.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah i read it differently but but i could see that now it's just like it's
Speaker:Wythe: so yeah it's just like it's really eugenics this is a really creepy movie and
Speaker:Wythe: i think it's like very dark it's.
Speaker:Chris: It's very dark um for being kind of vanilla pudding um it's got a dark center.
Speaker:Evan: Well this is another thing you two i think i've noticed in
Speaker:Evan: your notes we kind of like talked about this already is the the
Speaker:Evan: idea that this film is like it's a sci-fi you know
Speaker:Evan: dystopia i think that's what wikipedia
Speaker:Evan: calls it but it's also very much like a neo-noir in some sense of like the i
Speaker:Evan: think you wrote like the shadows and just like the way that you know the mid-century
Speaker:Evan: vibe of the film and it like i almost wish that they leaned on that even more
Speaker:Evan: somehow i don't know like.
Speaker:Wythe: More more.
Speaker:Chris: Tim burtony tim burton batman kind of or.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah i think actual noir though like um
Speaker:Wythe: chinatown or sunset like i think
Speaker:Wythe: in real noir like you've done something wrong and i
Speaker:Wythe: think the thing that feels noir-ish is that vincent
Speaker:Wythe: is a borrowed ladder but then it doesn't matter
Speaker:Wythe: like he gets away with it and it sort of has nothing you
Speaker:Wythe: know it sort of feels like it's close but not actually looped into like a noir
Speaker:Wythe: you know narrative loop where we learn something deep about vincent's character
Speaker:Wythe: i feel like it you kind of can predict the ending from the beginning you know
Speaker:Wythe: um of like oh he's probably gonna succeed even though he doesn't have the designer
Speaker:Wythe: genes the uh the the new eugenics you know um.
Speaker:Evan: Upgrade yeah it doesn't have a lot of the other noir characteristics like yeah
Speaker:Evan: you have like the dame but i don't really see like uma thurman as like that
Speaker:Evan: kind of person you have the cop like the bumbling cop but in that case it would
Speaker:Evan: have been the you know the cop probably would have
Speaker:Evan: gotten his man i guess he does kind of but then he lets him get away with it
Speaker:Evan: yeah because he beats him in a swimming it all.
Speaker:Wythe: Comes down to swimming.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i was about to say it's like dude.
Speaker:Chris: It's all about the swim it's all about the womb brother it's all about getting
Speaker:Chris: back to the womb whether it's the ocean or outer space which again is is a specific
Speaker:Chris: line in the movie getting uh being in zero gravity feels like you're back in the womb.
Speaker:Evan: Well yeah i also found it i think it's when
Speaker:Evan: they their final swim race like this is another
Speaker:Evan: like masculinity thing right like the very for sure
Speaker:Evan: i know if it's kind of like brother versus brother
Speaker:Evan: kind of idea but i think in a more deeper way it's like this you can't let your
Speaker:Evan: brother you're this other man beat you in this game of you know strength and
Speaker:Evan: then i think he says like oh like we're closer to the other side now we like
Speaker:Evan: might as well keep going it's like aren't they at the ocean i guess it's a north south thing.
Speaker:Wythe: Like i don't i don't know enough you know yeah maybe they're in a sound.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i don't know yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Well yeah there's there's a line too where uh you know as adults when they're
Speaker:Chris: doing the the swim off where his brother is like how do you do it vincent how
Speaker:Chris: do you do any of this And then Vincent says,
Speaker:Chris: I never saved anything for the swim back, which again, like,
Speaker:Chris: I don't know, just everything that he says feels like something that Andrew Tate would say to me.
Speaker:Wythe: Also, it's also, we know categorically untrue because he had to swim back many
Speaker:Wythe: times. Like he wasn't saved every time by his brother and he didn't drown to death.
Speaker:Wythe: So, and he never beat his brother and went to the other side.
Speaker:Wythe: So every single time up until that time, he saved something for the ride back, you know?
Speaker:Wythe: So it's just one of those, like, it sounds like a 12 year old.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, it's just written for like a mind that is smart enough to jump ahead and
Speaker:Wythe: make the little connections in the movie, but not smart enough to see that like,
Speaker:Wythe: oh, the movie is this true.
Speaker:Wythe: Like we're saying it's this kind of bubble and the things around it,
Speaker:Wythe: the society is the interesting part, but we kind of, that's all shut out.
Speaker:Wythe: So it's a very to me like claustrophobic script in in that sense that's um.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah it's just.
Speaker:Wythe: Obsessed with germ choice technology you know designer babies.
Speaker:Evan: This reminds me of have you seen the film equilibrium yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah so it reminds me not the film doesn't like necessarily remind me of like
Speaker:Evan: the same plot or anything i mean i guess there is kind of this weird genetic
Speaker:Evan: you know they don't have feelings they take a pill to not to prevent feelings
Speaker:Evan: but But in the way that, like...
Speaker:Chris: It's a different kind of bioengineering.
Speaker:Evan: Much different. But in that way, too, you almost don't really learn much about,
Speaker:Evan: like, the society, too, in a way that I... Like, among the things that are troubling
Speaker:Evan: in that movie, like, it's almost nonsensical.
Speaker:Evan: Whereas in this, like, it's not that it's nonsensical. It's just,
Speaker:Evan: like, that just wasn't the focus of, you know, of Nickel to give you more about the world.
Speaker:Evan: They'll like give you a little world building at the beginning and some,
Speaker:Evan: you know, details. And then it's like, that's enough of that. Let's go to.
Speaker:Chris: Just enough. Yeah. Just a little push.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. Well, I mean, I do think that they both kind of indulge in a kind of noir pastiche as well.
Speaker:Chris: Like, aesthetically, Equilibrium does remind me of this movie and a lot of the
Speaker:Chris: choices of, like, brutalist architecture and, like,
Speaker:Chris: kind of, like, monochrome outfits and things like that, where,
Speaker:Chris: yeah, they're, like, kind of playing in the same sandbox, but in different corners, maybe.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah yeah it feels like these movies there's a spate of them and i actually
Speaker:Wythe: would really now that i think about include the matrix as well which has elements
Speaker:Wythe: of body horror but it's very retro futuristic in a lot of ways and it really
Speaker:Wythe: is ultimately about the limits of the human,
Speaker:Wythe: the matrix is more successful because it pushes through but these other movies
Speaker:Wythe: kind of hold back and they almost approach the they almost get the critique
Speaker:Wythe: right where they're like oh the version of humanity you're assuming is is specific
Speaker:Wythe: to like basically like um you know one one subset of humanity,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, uh, like, like white guys, right. Or whatever.
Speaker:Wythe: And, and sort of your vision of perfection is tied up with, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: whatever American liberal capital and like the culture of that.
Speaker:Wythe: Um, and there's many kinds of bodies and ways to celebrate, you know,
Speaker:Wythe: and, and think about like health, um, and, and distribute resources,
Speaker:Wythe: but instead you're focused on like this one guy gets to go to Titan, whatever.
Speaker:Wythe: Um, but it doesn't, you know, it, that's it, there's no critique.
Speaker:Wythe: It's just sort of, it, like, it almost gets there. You almost see the cracking apart.
Speaker:Wythe: Like you said, Uma Thurman also has a heart condition, but then it doesn't matter.
Speaker:Wythe: So it's sort of like, sets up all the.
Speaker:Evan: Pieces and just doesn't.
Speaker:Wythe: Quite pull the trigger on like the human and perfecting
Speaker:Wythe: the human is the problem like assuming there's one correct
Speaker:Wythe: like like the problem is that kind of enlightenment you know focus on like humanism
Speaker:Wythe: as as like okay there's there's a kind of perfection to to humanity that's inside
Speaker:Wythe: all of us and if we can all just work it out you know it's the intertate thing
Speaker:Wythe: of like you're saying uh you just just be be stronger you know be smarter than the next guy um.
Speaker:Evan: It's it's the it's like the very as you said like the neoliberal it's
Speaker:Evan: also like the very individualistic you know
Speaker:Evan: perspective of like he's basically just doing this all for himself
Speaker:Evan: there's no yeah no he could like right i don't know in like the real like revolutionary
Speaker:Evan: version he like blows the lid off all the things that they're doing inside of
Speaker:Evan: uh of gattaca and you know uh i don't know destroys the i i don't know something cooler they.
Speaker:Chris: Just stop sending people a titan for no fucking reason and redistribute the wealth.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah he blows up gattaca that you know there you go he destroys gattaca and
Speaker:Evan: then they you know redistribute the the money to do something actually good
Speaker:Evan: for society as opposed to slingshotting people.
Speaker:Chris: This is this this is hot i think we need to approach andrew nichols with gattaca too.
Speaker:Evan: He fixed.
Speaker:Chris: It yeah we figured out the sequel to gattaca and it's going to fucking roll.
Speaker:Chris: I mean, I actually, I, I do wonder like if they had made the TV show,
Speaker:Chris: would they have explored some of this stuff? Like I'm thinking about, um,
Speaker:Chris: The 12 Monkeys TV show, which I think was pretty bad if I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker:Chris: but it did at least like open the scope up a bit or like the Snowpiercer television show.
Speaker:Chris: Not a great treatment, but it does like it at least like broadens the scope
Speaker:Chris: and explores more of the world building in a way that I do think is interesting and generative.
Speaker:Chris: I guess we'll never know.
Speaker:Wythe: No, we'll never know.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, well, the 12 Monkeys, I feel like it started out okay,
Speaker:Evan: and then it just kind of devolved into like they didn't really know what to do anymore.
Speaker:Evan: And they're just like, well, what if we go back in time again? Or something.
Speaker:Chris: I agree.
Speaker:Wythe: There was no there, there, yeah.
Speaker:Evan: But also the thing about Equilibrium and Matrix and this film that I was also
Speaker:Evan: thinking about is like the Matrix, as you said, like kind of breaks through
Speaker:Evan: and it's like the revolutionary version.
Speaker:Evan: Equilibrium is like the conservative version and then Gattuck is like the liberal version.
Speaker:Wythe: Like they're like three different versions.
Speaker:Evan: Of it and guess which one actually succeeded because the matrix also is much a much better film for.
Speaker:Wythe: Many reasons yeah it's.
Speaker:Chris: Better written it's better directed.
Speaker:Wythe: It touched on um i mean even from it had rage against the machine right it touched
Speaker:Wythe: on uh you know some of these aspects in just a much more poignant way even if
Speaker:Wythe: it's like not quite um coherent it's you still get the idea that like wait i
Speaker:Wythe: can like that's uh you know we could talk about if you want post-humanism and
Speaker:Wythe: transhumanism and these ideas,
Speaker:Wythe: but like you can become information in the near future.
Speaker:Wythe: Even now, like a lot of things are quantized about ourselves and we can track,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, on apps, whatever our heart rate, you know, all kinds of things and
Speaker:Wythe: like share that information.
Speaker:Wythe: You could have, um, control over other bodies than your own.
Speaker:Wythe: You can spend a lot of time on screen. Like the way we're connecting right now,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, is like a very weird, like we're not face-to-face in a room.
Speaker:Wythe: We're talking mediated through all these levels but it feels very organic and
Speaker:Wythe: i think that the matrix took some of those insights and made
Speaker:Wythe: them fucking badass and cool and like kind of queer coded and like also kind
Speaker:Wythe: of ninja anime you know it made it like cool whereas i think both equilibrium
Speaker:Wythe: gattaca were on that path um but don't quite know what to do you know with with
Speaker:Wythe: with what's going on they're just you know one's kind of a dumb action movie
Speaker:Wythe: and gattaca is this kind of like failed noir.
Speaker:Wythe: Um but i think even you know jumping forward like severance right
Speaker:Wythe: is also about sort of norm core workers in
Speaker:Wythe: a dystopian future everything's retro futuristic super super
Speaker:Wythe: retro futuristic where there is an outside but it's
Speaker:Wythe: like you know we toy with how much we we need to
Speaker:Wythe: know that um but it obviously it's much more of this time where it's like i
Speaker:Wythe: don't i wouldn't say it's revolutionary but it's definitely this kind of nihilistic
Speaker:Wythe: like capitalism is clearly the bad guy like it's it's successful because it
Speaker:Wythe: sort of assumes that the viewer also thinks that i think um and treats you like
Speaker:Wythe: an adult you know it treats you as such um whereas yeah like in Gattaca,
Speaker:Wythe: like we were also saying, like,
Speaker:Wythe: the economics are just, like, not talked about in the way that a lot of,
Speaker:Wythe: to me, hard SF, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Speaker:Wythe: We're not interested in that. You know, we're interested in this what if,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, okay, aliens show up.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. I'm Arthur C. Clarke and I'm only interested in the exact,
Speaker:Chris: uh, the exact degree at which these thrusters are firing and how much jewel
Speaker:Chris: force is coming out of them. That's all I care about.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah. How, how the berserker ships would actually like, yeah,
Speaker:Wythe: how many missiles per second they would fight, you know, and it's like,
Speaker:Wythe: I, you know, it's wild that that was like, that was science fiction for so long.
Speaker:Wythe: I mean, you know, along with these like minoritarian strains that eventually
Speaker:Wythe: now it's like the, the foreground, right? Le Guin, Butler, et cetera.
Speaker:Wythe: But yeah, it's weird. It's weird how Gattaca comes close to being good to me in so many ways.
Speaker:Wythe: I still selfishly enjoy it just because I saw it as a kid. I went and saw it
Speaker:Wythe: and was like, oh, that's weird.
Speaker:Wythe: But I completely agree. The Matrix is like the much better version of same in a way, you know?
Speaker:Chris: Yeah and yeah i think the the kind of
Speaker:Chris: political compassing of it also makes it like putting equilibrium
Speaker:Chris: as as uh the conservative uh version of this like zeitgeist expulsion moment
Speaker:Chris: is really funny to me because yeah it's just about shooting gun gun fu is that
Speaker:Chris: what it gun gun gun kata yeah gun kata gun kata yeah i knew it was some horrible and.
Speaker:Evan: They also like the the flag in that too was It's like, it was like very,
Speaker:Evan: to me, to me, that movie, I actually did an episode of it.
Speaker:Chris: He's like a, he's like a jackboot enforcer, right? Isn't that the whole,
Speaker:Chris: like Christian Bale's character is just like a jackboot.
Speaker:Chris: With with a with cool gun stances i guess.
Speaker:Evan: And well that movie i think in my discussion of
Speaker:Evan: it i think that film is like also sort of an
Speaker:Evan: anti-communist like it's supposed to be like this
Speaker:Evan: is like the evils of what communism would look like everyone will won't have
Speaker:Evan: any feeling and everyone everything looks you know brown and dark and you know
Speaker:Evan: whatever but you can go listen to the art my discussion on that whole film but
Speaker:Evan: um what's that there's other questions so like Sometimes I ask towards the end, too, is,
Speaker:Evan: which you both kind of already said, would you recommend this film to someone?
Speaker:Evan: I mean, obviously, if someone listened to this, they probably,
Speaker:Evan: if they hadn't seen the movie, they're already like, oh, well,
Speaker:Evan: maybe I do want to watch it. Would you tell someone, you should watch Gattaca?
Speaker:Chris: I think under very specific conversational circumstances, yes.
Speaker:Wythe: If i if i knew.
Speaker:Chris: Somebody was like generally interested in in biopunk or um or you know transhumanism
Speaker:Chris: uh i i would i would definitely suggest watching this movie maybe it's just
Speaker:Chris: a big caveat attached to it.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah yeah.
Speaker:Chris: That like it kind of doesn't really go anywhere and it's just kind of a centrist muddle about um.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah but uh yeah like evan one
Speaker:Wythe: reason i like your show is i because i i liked taking you
Speaker:Wythe: know i studied screenwriting in college and took all these courses where basically you
Speaker:Wythe: watch movies but you're watching a very specific set of kind of weird
Speaker:Wythe: random movies the professor likes but they they kind of do make sense
Speaker:Wythe: in the sense of you know how they're putting them
Speaker:Wythe: together and that's that's how i'd recommend watching is like if you
Speaker:Wythe: watch it on its own it's kind of you know
Speaker:Wythe: this weird eugenical like are like
Speaker:Wythe: are you andrew nickel you're not mad at eugenics you know kind of movie with
Speaker:Wythe: some moments that are interesting and it's very fast it's not a long watch
Speaker:Wythe: it's not annoying to watch it's very it has no fat right it's a very like
Speaker:Wythe: skinny plot um that just drives forward and ends so you
Speaker:Wythe: can watch it but i would recommend watching it with um you know whether it's
Speaker:Wythe: like alien resurrection the matrix sorry to bother you you know something where
Speaker:Wythe: we're thinking through some of these same themes about the near future of work
Speaker:Wythe: and bodies and and whose body transfer sounds awesome i think it'd be interesting
Speaker:Wythe: to pair it with other visions and to think through the.
Speaker:Wythe: To some degree the conversations we're having around you know how how do
Speaker:Wythe: different um depictions of the near future of work interrogate you
Speaker:Wythe: know society or just assume the
Speaker:Wythe: worst and kind of you know hold my beer you know run with
Speaker:Wythe: some plot um which you know like you meant in
Speaker:Wythe: your notes like alien like probably my favorite franchise of all time like alien
Speaker:Wythe: does a lot of that where just assumes the worst but i think it's it doesn't
Speaker:Wythe: feel as icky because the person you're rooting for because of
Speaker:Wythe: the person you're rooting for i guess you know and it's not it's nothing to
Speaker:Wythe: do with like ethnox performance
Speaker:Wythe: it's a good i think it's a decently made move gattaca is
Speaker:Wythe: decently made it's just not put together in
Speaker:Wythe: a way that that reveals a deep human truth in the way that like
Speaker:Wythe: you know ellen ripley is like a character you
Speaker:Wythe: want to root for in all the all the movies she's in you know i don't know i
Speaker:Wythe: don't know how to say it but i think there there is a there there it's just
Speaker:Wythe: not it's it's like on its own it's not as interesting as if you put it in conversation
Speaker:Wythe: with other works trying to understand how bodies probably will change frankly
Speaker:Wythe: to be real due to a lot of these technologies right um yeah.
Speaker:Chris: I mean it's already it's already happening in a lot of ways uh.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah yeah.
Speaker:Chris: I think that makes a lot of sense package it together uh put it put it within
Speaker:Chris: context and conversation probably the best way to do it.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah i think sorry to bother would be an interesting double feature with
Speaker:Evan: it and and i'm also sort of you know
Speaker:Evan: looking at this film like i saw this in the theater when i was i
Speaker:Evan: guess 14 or something and like probably didn't
Speaker:Evan: quite get it but i'm like oh this like this film is pretty cool like
Speaker:Evan: i kind of like it and then i think at some point in like college i
Speaker:Evan: had it on dvd and would watch it not regularly but like i watched it a bunch
Speaker:Evan: of times it was probably on tv as well and it just for me i just like the it
Speaker:Evan: just yeah it's like a it's a fine movie it's not you know insanely good it's
Speaker:Evan: not trash it's it's fine it's right there.
Speaker:Chris: In the middle of the road.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah it's it's it's perfectly acceptable and i think it's as you said like if
Speaker:Evan: you also are looking at if you want to just watch this on its own i think you
Speaker:Evan: just have to look at it from,
Speaker:Evan: You know, probably if you're listening to this and you're hearing us say this,
Speaker:Evan: you probably have a similar political mindset, most likely.
Speaker:Evan: And so when you're watching this, you're going to have some of the same ideas
Speaker:Evan: and like, you know, the things that are wrong with it. Liberalized version of.
Speaker:Wythe: And just enjoy Tony Shalhoub and Ernst Borgnine and just these,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, there's great weird little cameos that like kind of work.
Speaker:Chris: I do think that's kind of the best part of the movie is like the one spot Tony
Speaker:Chris: Shalhoub and Gore Vidal and Ernst Borgnine characters where it's just like, all right.
Speaker:Wythe: Gore Vidal, yeah.
Speaker:Evan: You know, so I was actually looking at the full cast. So Maya Rudolph was the delivery nurse.
Speaker:Wythe: That's right.
Speaker:Chris: That's right.
Speaker:Evan: No way. Also, Ken Marino was the sequencing technician. and there was another
Speaker:Evan: random uh well you said dean norris which we already mentioned like there are
Speaker:Evan: a lot of people in this wait.
Speaker:Chris: Wait wait ken marino from uh wet hot american summer am i thinking.
Speaker:Evan: The same is the same person the state yeah i
Speaker:Evan: love ken marino like he everything he's in is to
Speaker:Evan: me is this funny uh well most everything but yeah like thank ernest borgnine
Speaker:Evan: is just like a random character i mean just how did they get these people to
Speaker:Evan: be in this movie is another question of mine like this is his first movie it's
Speaker:Evan: his andrew nichol first film and he got this yeah the.
Speaker:Chris: Truman show came out after this is that.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah it was like a year or two but they.
Speaker:Chris: Were they were like within months of each other coming out um.
Speaker:Evan: I mean maybe it has the fact that danny devito was one of the producers on gattaca
Speaker:Evan: which is also kind of funny it's.
Speaker:Wythe: Funny to think danny devito's done this yeah like it's always sunny like you
Speaker:Wythe: know it's just like such radically.
Speaker:Evan: Different filmmaking can they do like an always sunny episode about gattaca yes oh.
Speaker:Wythe: I'd love that yeah.
Speaker:Evan: Like a gene what can i say.
Speaker:Chris: I just had to make a movie about the neoliberal bioeconomics of gene sequencing um.
Speaker:Evan: I'd love to hear the story about like how this movie came together yeah.
Speaker:Chris: I would too i bet it's really i bet it's really interesting i kind of wonder
Speaker:Chris: if just like concept alone could drive the movie. Like, right, it's 1997.
Speaker:Chris: We've got like, when was Dolly? When was Dolly the Sheep? Was that 99?
Speaker:Wythe: 94?
Speaker:Chris: 94 was earlier than that.
Speaker:Wythe: 96.
Speaker:Chris: 96. Okay, so we're like hot on the tail of Dolly the Sheep, and there's a lot of...
Speaker:Wythe: I think actually that's another thing. I'm really sorry, Chris,
Speaker:Wythe: but I have to say Human Genome Project.
Speaker:Wythe: That's what sold the movie, right? We should do a big blockbuster feature with
Speaker:Wythe: A-listers about the Human Genome Project.
Speaker:Wythe: Well, how are you going to make that interesting? Oh, we'll make it a noir. Sold the movie.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Boom. Danny DeVito signed on as producer immediately.
Speaker:Evan: And so this is i don't have the dvd for this film but in the in wikipedia it
Speaker:Evan: says that in the film there's deleted scenes where they talk about like famous
Speaker:Evan: historical figures who were having genetically deficient including einstein which i think is oh.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah because he had dyslexia.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah so i mean i don't know how they describe it i will i don't really want
Speaker:Evan: to own this film necessarily anymore like i don't need to if i have somewhere
Speaker:Evan: i might have my old dvd from like 2000, which probably has no deleted scenes on it.
Speaker:Wythe: But yeah, that's interesting to think about, again, the lack of critique,
Speaker:Wythe: but it makes sense of the time because at the time,
Speaker:Wythe: the Human Genome Project was the popularization of the science that had already,
Speaker:Wythe: a lot of it had happened, but it was very expensive and had no practical effects yet, really.
Speaker:Wythe: There were a couple of drugs, you know, it's basically the Human Genome Project
Speaker:Wythe: was when it was like, let's roll out sort of genomics and how this is going
Speaker:Wythe: to save medicine and change our lives.
Speaker:Wythe: And I think it makes sense that like this movie has this also like the original
Speaker:Wythe: HGP, like very uncritical view of like, oh, there's a gene for X,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, there's a gene for this problem, that problem, quote unquote,
Speaker:Wythe: without unpacking the fact that first of all, that's not rates.
Speaker:Wythe: It turned out to be way more complicated.
Speaker:Wythe: Like almost immediately, it just became bogged down. Like, oh,
Speaker:Wythe: these are all, like I said earlier, polygenic there. They involve tons and tons of regions.
Speaker:Wythe: And then they involve interactions with the environment. So it's not even obviously
Speaker:Wythe: just what's printed, but like, how does that blueprint quote unquote get worked
Speaker:Wythe: out and used and so you know i think in some ways it's just it is ultimately a product of its time um,
Speaker:Wythe: And it's interesting for that reason. Um, and it's creepy for that reason.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: Because it sort of is saying like, well, people really thought that people,
Speaker:Wythe: not everyone, obviously, but like a lot of people in power in the nineties in
Speaker:Wythe: America thought problems had been solved.
Speaker:Wythe: We've, we're pretty much living the dream. We're in the Star Trek good future
Speaker:Wythe: and look, look where we are now.
Speaker:Wythe: You know what I mean? So it's like, it's kind of a weird memorial in that sense
Speaker:Wythe: to this, this sort of Ozymandias like hand in the desert of just like what people
Speaker:Wythe: thought medicine would be like.
Speaker:Wythe: And it's, it's like, nah, no, that's, it's, I mean, I get it was supposed to
Speaker:Wythe: be a dystopia, but if you think of, you know, what it's assuming is,
Speaker:Wythe: I don't know, all the bad stuff's come to pass.
Speaker:Evan: Well, just thinking of that, so apparently NASA in 2010 released a list of films
Speaker:Evan: as the most plausible science fiction movies ever made. This was number one on the list.
Speaker:Wythe: Really? Number one? Wow. So they think eugenics is like the most likely outcome
Speaker:Wythe: of scientific advancement.
Speaker:Evan: And number two on the list was Contact.
Speaker:Wythe: Contact. Okay. So, Kindly Aliens. Okay. Sure.
Speaker:Chris: Kindly Aliens. Jodie Foster.
Speaker:Wythe: Contact Arrival. Yeah. I'll give them that.
Speaker:Evan: Well, here's the top. I'll just say the top seven just because I had it open.
Speaker:Evan: It's Gattaca, Contact, Metropolis, The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Speaker:Evan: Woman in the Moon, The Thing from Another World, and then Jurassic Park.
Speaker:Wythe: So, this is like the Academy Awards problem. They only surveyed like NASA engineers
Speaker:Wythe: who skew a certain direction demographically, I'm guessing, to get that list.
Speaker:Wythe: Which is not like there's a lot of good movies on that list,
Speaker:Wythe: but it's a very specific kind of, you know, old school SF.
Speaker:Evan: Oh, this is this is kind of stupid. It kind of lied as to what it was.
Speaker:Evan: It says scientists attending a meeting for their jet propulsion laboratory picked
Speaker:Evan: their top seven best and worst science fiction films of all time. So it's not which is.
Speaker:Chris: Oh, it's not most possible.
Speaker:Wythe: OK. Okay.
Speaker:Evan: This is just saying this is their favorite science fiction film is Gattaca.
Speaker:Evan: What does that tell you? I don't know.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah. I guess they all think they're those people. I think it's a mirror,
Speaker:Wythe: right? That they think they are the good gene.
Speaker:Chris: Well, I mean, you see that kind of shit in Silicon Valley with like the rationalists
Speaker:Chris: and stuff like that, where they believe that they have like a divine right to
Speaker:Chris: rule the world because they are the smartest people on earth.
Speaker:Chris: And yeah they're genetically superior like you see that kind of discourse come
Speaker:Chris: up within the rationalist community of like well you know genetically superior
Speaker:Chris: everybody because my iq is and i know how to program real good i can code good uh yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: And they're not racist because they i'm putting in quotes they don't care about
Speaker:Wythe: skin color even though the structures themselves that they prop up and take
Speaker:Wythe: advantage of are deeply racist but it's you know in their little world they're
Speaker:Wythe: not you know it's not all white or something in san francisco so hey we solve that too.
Speaker:Wythe: I think, I think you're right. I think, I think this movie, it is like you said,
Speaker:Wythe: arch neoliberal in that, in that sense. Um,
Speaker:Wythe: And, uh, and yeah, it's still, you know, at the same time, I mean, art is complicated.
Speaker:Wythe: I know Evan, you've, we've talked on your show, you talk about that with,
Speaker:Wythe: with other movies, I believe, but like there's good and bad pieces to kind of
Speaker:Wythe: pick out of, of the kind of, um, you know, the detritus of film culture, you know?
Speaker:Wythe: So I think this one, like, you know, like I say, it's still,
Speaker:Wythe: it's still interesting, actually, that a movie from 1997 is still kind of the,
Speaker:Wythe: it's not the best in some moral ways we're saying, but it's kind of one of the
Speaker:Wythe: more interesting depictions of actual biotech.
Speaker:Wythe: And I love Cronenberg and I love all that stuff, but that is,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, surreal body whore. It's not. Right. It's meant to be fantastic.
Speaker:Wythe: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. More of the hard SF premise. So I almost just feel like,
Speaker:Wythe: you know, this is, you know, somebody could do something else with, with this kind of.
Speaker:Wythe: Science, basically, and make maybe...
Speaker:Evan: Someone has to resurrect that TV show and have someone cool directed.
Speaker:Evan: I don't know who it would be.
Speaker:Chris: Dude, I'm telling you, we can make our own treatment for Gattaca 2 Eugenics
Speaker:Chris: Boogaloo and make millions.
Speaker:Chris: We'll all be cancelled. Rightfully so.
Speaker:Wythe: But...
Speaker:Evan: Well, the first one made 12.5 million. You gotta pitch it where they can top that.
Speaker:Chris: Oh, easy. that's 1997 dollars that's nothing that's true that's what with our
Speaker:Chris: current economy doing so well do.
Speaker:Evan: You think if this came out now which i don't think it really could given just
Speaker:Evan: like the environment like do you think it would do better.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah oh i
Speaker:Chris: think that if it came out now it would be it would it's not a stupid question
Speaker:Chris: i think it would just be a radically different film if it came out now i think
Speaker:Chris: it would hit a lot of the same points but in much more um maybe dangerous ways
Speaker:Chris: is my assumption um i don't know if it would do better or not that's a yeah i don't know.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah i it's hard to imagine um because
Speaker:Wythe: the movie is set and was created
Speaker:Wythe: kind of before the modern internet in a sense of smartphones you know
Speaker:Wythe: it's like it would be such a different movie like we're saying about the surveillance
Speaker:Wythe: state it feels so odd that the cops can't figure out anything except by gumshoeing
Speaker:Wythe: from house to house and like interviewing individual janitors throughout LA
Speaker:Wythe: like did you kill a guy did you kill a guy I need a piss sample from you yeah
Speaker:Wythe: every piss it is the most piss focused movie I've watched in ages that's.
Speaker:Evan: Like a Tom Hanks movie.
Speaker:Wythe: I think you could rework it to your I think it would be a different movie is
Speaker:Wythe: all I'm saying you know what I mean it wouldn't be shot the same it wouldn't
Speaker:Wythe: it would have to sort of account for that in a way that some things do like
Speaker:Wythe: I don't know if y'all saw the Dead Ringers TV you know many sort of miniseries
Speaker:Wythe: version that was that came out last year is really good I haven't seen it,
Speaker:Wythe: Speaking of Kronenberg and whatnot, but, uh, you know, so I think it's possible
Speaker:Wythe: to take older SF and like fix it up. I don't know if anyone would want to do
Speaker:Wythe: that for Gattaca or should.
Speaker:Chris: I mean, somebody wanted to a couple of years ago. They just couldn't get the money, I'm assuming.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. It was, uh, it didn't say, I couldn't find any reason as to why it was
Speaker:Evan: ended up being canceled.
Speaker:Evan: You know, I guess they have, get pitched lots of projects and they just,
Speaker:Evan: you know, it was also 2023. three so maybe writer strikes potentially and like
Speaker:Evan: you know forget this it's too risky you know let's just have the another marvel
Speaker:Evan: show or something instead.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah well i think that's a good question too would uh would anybody make this
Speaker:Chris: movie uh these days would this movie be allowed to be made would there be producers
Speaker:Chris: who aren't cowards who would allow for gattaca to Danny DeVito would still do it.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. He's, he's got like that old school, uh, pre, uh, uh, I guess 2020s producer kind of energy.
Speaker:Chris: He's still got weight. He can throw around, you know?
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. We gotta just gotta, we just gotta run into him somewhere and then we can pitch to him. Yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: Him and boots Riley. I want to, I want to get them in a room and like,
Speaker:Wythe: we're going to just hang out for a minute.
Speaker:Wythe: We're going to be hanging out somehow. and then instead we'll just spend two
Speaker:Wythe: hours writing the script for Gattaca 2 and we're going to elevate it we're going
Speaker:Wythe: to bring in all the themes we want,
Speaker:Wythe: so before we get to fan casting and such, I don't know, Evan was there topics you wanted to touch on?
Speaker:Evan: I don't think I had any other we kind of asked whether you would watch it today
Speaker:Evan: I mean, was there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to bring up
Speaker:Evan: or any notes you missed? I don't think.
Speaker:Wythe: I just think, you know, again, in terms of what these movies,
Speaker:Wythe: like rewatch, cause I, I like you saw it in theaters when I was a little,
Speaker:Wythe: little boy and, and I did watch it again in college for sure,
Speaker:Wythe: but I haven't seen it in years and rewatching it. It was like exactly this.
Speaker:Wythe: It was like unsurprised in a lot of ways other than just like,
Speaker:Wythe: I felt ickier about it, you know?
Speaker:Wythe: Um, but I do think it's, it does, the retro future thing is interesting.
Speaker:Wythe: And I think says something about the inability to imagine a future,
Speaker:Wythe: which I know we, we sort of hit on, but I feel like, um,
Speaker:Wythe: it feels very present in that sense that, uh, like
Speaker:Wythe: fallout it's like i think these point to our collective failure
Speaker:Wythe: to imagine better outcomes other than we see a
Speaker:Wythe: lot of apocalypse stories and a lot of these kind of retro futures which
Speaker:Wythe: are almost like it's like this closed spiral of time where you just go
Speaker:Wythe: back um and i bring this up just because i read this book of haiku by a guy
Speaker:Wythe: named kareem rama um which is a really good haiku about sort of retro future
Speaker:Wythe: apocalyptic near future science stuff um and a lot of them touch on genetic
Speaker:Wythe: engineering and such but it's called we were promised flying cars and it's clearly
Speaker:Wythe: it's like a hundred haiku kind of,
Speaker:Wythe: basically assuming that like a lot of things could like
Speaker:Wythe: science could have made the world better in all these ways and like so far has only
Speaker:Wythe: made it worse or just has failed you know and i think the
Speaker:Wythe: movies like this kind of really point out um that sort of ambivalence with science
Speaker:Wythe: with techno science where like on the one hand yes it would be cool if we had
Speaker:Wythe: more control over human bodies um in the sense of curing cancer or something
Speaker:Wythe: but on the other hand like almost surely it would be used and is being used
Speaker:Wythe: for like bad ends to make money um and yeah like like i said In that sense,
Speaker:Wythe: it's very, you know, very present, very relevant.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah. I mean, it reminds me a lot of the Le Guin quote about imagining the end
Speaker:Chris: of capitalism, you know, where it's like, well, at one point we couldn't imagine
Speaker:Chris: that the divine right of kings wasn't a real thing either.
Speaker:Chris: So, yeah, I agree. I think it's kind of stuck in its political worldview and,
Speaker:Chris: you know, can't imagine a better future.
Speaker:Evan: It's one of those things like not to go down the same this
Speaker:Evan: topic but like the the problem with so many films not
Speaker:Evan: being able to like even if they have like a revolutionary concept
Speaker:Evan: they can't like describe what would be next and i don't know if some of this
Speaker:Evan: is hollywood preventing them from being able to do that or it's simply these
Speaker:Evan: directors most of them can't actually they don't have a vision of what that
Speaker:Evan: would be they can't understand it so just like a.
Speaker:Wythe: Problem with.
Speaker:Evan: Film like i think of you know like we might we're talking about the matrix earlier
Speaker:Evan: like that's better than most but still.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah yeah not there anyway and and i think
Speaker:Wythe: it is probably a limiting like who would who would fund that
Speaker:Wythe: you know who'd invest in that movie um probably one
Speaker:Wythe: of the the best versions of that i've seen is uh
Speaker:Wythe: she hulk which ends with a very matrix like it's all ai
Speaker:Wythe: it's all just slop it's all content slop and it's
Speaker:Wythe: very like wink wink haha like you're watching it you know um but
Speaker:Wythe: it feels like that ending it's it's kind of like the end of time it's just
Speaker:Wythe: like okay and then what oh that's it no consume more slop
Speaker:Wythe: please like it's the critique even when it's leveled plainly there's
Speaker:Wythe: no next step so i think i think in some
Speaker:Wythe: ways well you know um that that
Speaker:Wythe: is i think one of the goals of art and one reason maybe also to
Speaker:Wythe: do things like play games i still love movies but playing games with people
Speaker:Wythe: is a story games you make stuff up so you can kind of imagine difference um
Speaker:Wythe: that's true you know i don't know we can we can say more we can leave it there
Speaker:Wythe: but um thanks evan for letting us talk about weird biotech stuff yes.
Speaker:Evan: And i think we we and because you mentioned early like early at the beginning
Speaker:Evan: was like a cronenberg film and also that i haven't done one but would would
Speaker:Evan: the one you wanted to discuss would it be eggs and sends or do you have a different
Speaker:Evan: like what's your fate i'm just this is completely i could cut that i could cut
Speaker:Evan: this but what's your favorite Cronenberg film?
Speaker:Evan: Do you think would be a good discussion? There's a bunch.
Speaker:Chris: I mean, I think my personal favorite is Videodrome.
Speaker:Evan: I had a feeling you might say that.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, also Existenza is rad for the sheer gross biotech,
Speaker:Chris: like gross fantasy biotech.
Speaker:Wythe: But he's done so many cool movies. I mean, honestly I definitely want to say
Speaker:Wythe: Videodrome but I would love an excuse to watch either ones I haven't watched
Speaker:Wythe: or just ones I haven't watched in a while.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah um i never saw like some at the end too
Speaker:Evan: like that aren't the same body horror like i think of like history of violence
Speaker:Evan: eastern promises like excellent movies that are like a completely different
Speaker:Evan: you know side i remember seeing history of violence in the theater and hating
Speaker:Evan: it and then watching it recently and being like what the hell was i thinking
Speaker:Evan: and i just think i wasn't ready to appreciate it or something i don't know but yeah i.
Speaker:Chris: Haven't seen that in forever um yeah no i agree I think.
Speaker:Evan: Scanners is also great.
Speaker:Chris: Scanners is great. I agree.
Speaker:Chris: I mean, I think if it's a question of like favorite, I would,
Speaker:Chris: I would have to say Videodrome, but something I would want to watch.
Speaker:Chris: Um, yeah. Scanners, I would be down for, I don't know if I would want to watch
Speaker:Chris: Eastern promises again.
Speaker:Wythe: I think Existence would make the best episode of the ones I can think of.
Speaker:Wythe: You know what I mean? In terms of just like so much weird crap to talk about.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah.
Speaker:Wythe: I think you could do a really good one on Dead Ringers as well and honestly
Speaker:Wythe: bring in the new remake, which was so good and talk about it.
Speaker:Chris: I'll have to watch that.
Speaker:Wythe: It's a totally different vibe from, I mean, it has like horrific body related
Speaker:Wythe: stuff, but it's not like surreal in the same way, you know? It's about gynecology and like,
Speaker:Wythe: there's there's a lot of weird stuff in it but it would be more about sort of
Speaker:Wythe: you know gender and bodies and
Speaker:Wythe: some of the some of the themes we've been talking about um but yeah you.
Speaker:Chris: See did you see the trailer for the shrouds.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah no i haven't seen i haven't seen a bunch of he has a bunch of new movies
Speaker:Wythe: i think the last one i saw by him was a dangerous method i should.
Speaker:Evan: The kid i think he might even have one now he's working
Speaker:Evan: on it and i just read something about it but i actually have also a lot long
Speaker:Evan: thought about doing where i have a month where i just cover you know just one
Speaker:Evan: director for a whole month like each episode is then you could do like four
Speaker:Evan: of your favorite from Cronenberg forever but sometimes for some of those it's like hard,
Speaker:Evan: surprisingly harder to find people who no one's ever even asked to do a Cronenberg film let.
Speaker:Wythe: Alone yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I don't know maybe it's my the the people prefer other things but.
Speaker:Wythe: Now we talk about Cronenberg so much I feel like we talk about him all the time
Speaker:Wythe: game design I know so it's funny that uh yeah.
Speaker:Evan: I don't know it's it's it's i i've done a lot of horror films where i would
Speaker:Evan: say like his films like border on horror but aren't necessarily horror.
Speaker:Chris: Films oh yeah that is that is actually an interesting thing about gattaca specifically
Speaker:Chris: is that it's not a horror film but it is like i would say flirting with like
Speaker:Chris: biopunk whereas like most like most biopunk stuff tends to be horror like a you know like um.
Speaker:Wythe: Yeah existens.
Speaker:Chris: Or even prometheus i would argue or the movie splice which is like not great.
Speaker:Wythe: Oh yeah you know mentions crisper
Speaker:Wythe: yeah yeah i think a lot of a lot
Speaker:Wythe: of um that is about people fearing biotech
Speaker:Wythe: which is in part because it's about blood and it's gross and it's
Speaker:Wythe: also just new science and you can always say okay this new thing is going to
Speaker:Wythe: kill us killer robots killer whatever but i think a lot of it is specifically american
Speaker:Wythe: health care is a you know necro
Speaker:Wythe: fantastic death empire and we
Speaker:Wythe: all participated in enough to be grossed out not only by like literal mortality
Speaker:Wythe: but also by like specifically the structure of that um so i think weirdly again
Speaker:Wythe: gattaca does a weird job of like not getting into any of that and just assuming
Speaker:Wythe: like yeah whatever yeah this guy has a lot of centrifuges in his basement you
Speaker:Wythe: know just like accepts it and moves on uh.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah that's true i don't know this this is now giving me just an excuse just
Speaker:Evan: to watch a bunch of rewatch a bunch of Cronenberg films to do or not to do just to watch them.
Speaker:Evan: And then if I have to watch another one again, but, uh, but wife and Chris,
Speaker:Evan: it's been a pleasure to have you to talk about Gattaca.
Speaker:Evan: And, uh, I think we'll probably have to talk about a Cronenberg film to be determined.
Speaker:Chris: All right. I would be down. Yeah. Thanks for having us on.
Speaker:Chris: Uh, super fun. Love chatting movies and, uh, hanging out with both the use goo,
Speaker:Chris: use goose. I don't know what I was going for there.
Speaker:Evan: And people, I think you mentioned what your games and everything,
Speaker:Evan: but they can find it at stillfleet.com, is that?
Speaker:Chris: Yes. Yeah. If you would like to learn more about our tabletop role-playing games,
Speaker:Chris: you can always go to www.stillfleet.com.
Speaker:Chris: You can learn about Stillfleet The Game, which is White's game of a very gooey
Speaker:Chris: super future where you can fight space capitalists if you want to.
Speaker:Wythe: Everyone should want to do that it's fun it's like dnd but you fight the capitalists
Speaker:Wythe: uh it's great yeah there's a lot of yeah.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah it's awesome um and yeah you can oh go ahead.
Speaker:Wythe: I was just gonna say we're about to launch your game which is sort of body horror
Speaker:Wythe: and medieval um so dots macabre is gonna be our third big rpg game um and yeah
Speaker:Wythe: you can find out all about that at stillfie.com and chris do you want to say
Speaker:Wythe: anything else about your stuff.
Speaker:Chris: Uh yeah i mean if you if you're into body horror if you're into weird mutations
Speaker:Chris: and um also you know randomly 14th century history check out dance macabre it's
Speaker:Chris: very fun and preventing the rise.
Speaker:Wythe: Of capitalism or something i mean it's cool i don't know whatever it's it's
Speaker:Wythe: 1400s there's an apocalypse you know.
Speaker:Chris: Yeah yeah it's it's like it's
Speaker:Chris: like at the it's at the moment in time where like mercantile
Speaker:Chris: capitalism really started to take off in the mediterranean so it's like this
Speaker:Chris: moment where like we can imagine like history goes awry and we maybe don't end
Speaker:Chris: up with capitalism or like there's this this moment where maybe we can influence
Speaker:Chris: the kind of beginnings of it and nip it in the bud is how I like to think of it but um,
Speaker:Chris: But yeah, stillfleet.com. We also, like we said at the top of the show,
Speaker:Chris: we host a podcast called Why We Roll, where we chat ludonarrative and politics
Speaker:Chris: with other tabletop game designers. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker:Chris: It's pretty casual. But yeah, we get into some pretty good conversations on there.
Speaker:Wythe: And Evan, if you want to play a game, let us know. We'll play some games.
Speaker:Evan: It's funny you said that because during like
Speaker:Evan: well i can i can cut this up like in 2020 i had
Speaker:Evan: never played any like any of these kind of games like with
Speaker:Evan: other people like just you know if it's a video game and
Speaker:Evan: then during like the beginning of covid when everyone was like doing them on
Speaker:Evan: zoom i was playing a bunch of them and it just became like i was doing too many
Speaker:Evan: at once i was doing um vampire the masquerade with some people and oh wow which
Speaker:Evan: we actually never finished which is also kind of a disappointing moment we didn't get to that.
Speaker:Wythe: Happens that's that's everybody's campaign.
Speaker:Evan: So that makes you feel better organically.
Speaker:Wythe: Organized first campaigns uh yeah tend to just like someone has a kid and stops
Speaker:Wythe: playing and then one other person that was their friend stops and slowly everyone
Speaker:Wythe: homer simpsons into the hedges but the fun thing is now they're more popular
Speaker:Wythe: it's easier to find people so you could just get right back in you know yeah
Speaker:Wythe: it's just uh pop out the hedges with us.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah but um we should but yeah so uh you can follow your podcast in the same
Speaker:Evan: place You can follow this podcast wherever you're currently listening.
Speaker:Chris: All the platforms.
Speaker:Evan: All the internet places, and we will catch you all next time.
