Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff?
Speaker 2: Another rerun. Why are there so many reruns?
Speaker 3: Well, I told you each one made sense for different reasons,
Speaker 3: and this one is.
Speaker 2: Because cool Zon Media takes off for.
Speaker 3: The holidays sometimes, And so we're going to run a
Speaker 3: rerun about anti fascism and film.
Speaker 2: Why because I like it and I want you to
Speaker 2: hear it again or for the.
Speaker 3: First time, but also because I think it's really important
Speaker 3: that we understand about how culture can shape things and
Speaker 3: also specifically how we can use culture to resist. And
Speaker 3: also I just think it's cool that all the original
Speaker 3: vampires are on our side. Anyway, I hope you all
Speaker 3: are well, and here's an episode. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 3: you Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Margaret Kiljoy, and each week I talk about cool people
Speaker 3: who did cool stuff. This week, I'm super excited about
Speaker 3: our guest because she's Kitlyn.
Speaker 2: Or One, which is exciting.
Speaker 3: Hello. Yeah, you're the co host of the Bechdel Cast,
Speaker 3: which is about movies.
Speaker 2: Is that correct? It is true movies? And we watch
Speaker 2: a movie, we say this is a sexist pile of garbage.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes I'm like, oh, but I still like it.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's not the piles of garbage that I still like.
Speaker 3: This is a good episode for you.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, I don't know what we're talking about,
Speaker 2: so I'm excited to find out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, basically, eighty percent of the men in history
Speaker 3: who are worth talking about as cool are also sexists.
Speaker 3: So you know, no matter what you do, there's going
Speaker 3: to be some of them.
Speaker 2: Don't worry.
Speaker 3: This is not an episode about one particular one. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to build up the suspense. The audience will already
Speaker 3: know what the thing is about because they've seen the title.
Speaker 3: Caitlin is not But how are you doing? How are you, Caitlin?
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well. Well, let's see. I just saw
Speaker 2: R R R in theaters for the third time. It's
Speaker 2: my new favorite movie. I'm spreading the gospel. I had
Speaker 2: the catalytic converter stolen out of my car, and I
Speaker 2: was told that it would take Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I was told it would be months before I would
Speaker 2: get a replacement part because there's a supply chain issue
Speaker 2: because everyone's getting there things are stolen. But they happen
Speaker 2: to have a spare one and it fit my car.
Speaker 3: And it's exactly like the one that was in your car.
Speaker 3: Someone just happened to come by and sell it.
Speaker 2: Oh, I wonder where that came from. So I got
Speaker 2: my car back much sooner than Anticif things are looking up,
Speaker 2: things are looking up. I love that for you. Thank you.
Speaker 2: How are you, Margaret? I'm okay.
Speaker 3: I'm on this long road trip and I'm paranoid that
Speaker 3: someone's going to steal the catalytic converter around my truck.
Speaker 3: And I was like looking into like welding things on
Speaker 3: the underside of my truck, and then I was like,
Speaker 3: this is you know, I'm still more likely to there's
Speaker 3: other bad things that could also happen that are worse.
Speaker 2: Let's hope not. Oh that's true.
Speaker 3: Only good things will happen because this is the only
Speaker 3: Good Things podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We also this show is produced by Sophie Lichterman, who
Speaker 3: is also my friend. She has a cute dog. Sophie,
Speaker 3: how are you?
Speaker 1: I thank you for complimenting Anderson. She appreciates that she
Speaker 1: is a cute dog, and I am honored to be
Speaker 1: your producer and friend. I am well, I am well, Anderson,
Speaker 1: are you well? She just looked at me. She is well,
Speaker 1: she got a new piece of furniture that she can
Speaker 1: comfortably lounge on today, So that is that is always
Speaker 1: good news.
Speaker 2: Shout out, and not to brag or anything, but Sophie
Speaker 2: is also my producer and also my friend. Yeah well
Speaker 2: then oh it's a competition. Well I'm also Sophie's producer
Speaker 2: and you're no, I got nothing.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh my producer's Anderson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 3: Ian is our audio engineer and the theme music was
Speaker 3: written by unwoman. And today's episode is not about Anderson.
Speaker 1: That's upsetting. She is cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 3: Absolutely one day, one day there's just going to be
Speaker 3: the dog's episode.
Speaker 1: I just read your next sentence and it's perfect.
Speaker 2: Do it, do it.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is about movies, Caitlin, have you ever heard
Speaker 3: of movies?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: What are they?
Speaker 3: Well, if you take a bunch of still pictures and
Speaker 3: you move them very quickly, okay, the rest is beyond me,
Speaker 3: I think. Then you claim to be the inventor even
Speaker 3: though it was actually so many worked for you who
Speaker 3: invented it.
Speaker 2: If you're Thomas Edison and then oh sure, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that makes sense if it were me, you know,
Speaker 2: putting still images together to create the illusion of a
Speaker 2: moving image. I would maybe do it at like twenty
Speaker 2: four frames a second.
Speaker 3: I don't know, no call, okay, but what about twenty
Speaker 3: nine point ninety seven?
Speaker 2: Sometimes that happens too, because you know, if you're like
Speaker 2: using film versus digital, like, it is probably a little different.
Speaker 2: But again I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So I actually am curious. I have a
Speaker 3: feeling that you know quite a bit about movies, and
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if you would explain to our audience your
Speaker 3: authority on movies.
Speaker 2: I would be happy to I lied before. I do
Speaker 2: know some things. I do have two degrees, that's what
Speaker 2: I was thinking. Yeah, okay, yeah, so one of them
Speaker 2: is is just a lowly bachelor's degree and it's in
Speaker 2: film production. And then I do have a master's degree
Speaker 2: in screening. Screen What is it I'm writing? I'm really
Speaker 2: tired today, screen writing from Boston University. But this is
Speaker 2: something that I never mentioned, and that's why I like
Speaker 2: stumbled over my words because I really first never said it.
Speaker 1: DAYLN Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3: Well today we're going to talk about movies, and we
Speaker 3: are going to talk about anti fascism.
Speaker 2: In movies even better, we're going to talk.
Speaker 3: About in the movies themselves having anti fascist themes, but
Speaker 3: mostly we're going to talk about the ways in which
Speaker 3: a ton of people in Germany and Hollywood in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties and thirties and a little bit into the
Speaker 3: forties stood up to fascism and risk their reputation and
Speaker 3: often their lives to try to stop the fucking Nazis.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 3: So that was why I was excited to have you
Speaker 3: as the guest for this particular episode.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I hope to not disappoint oh Kaylin, Yeah, no, I
Speaker 4: I but the only other downside, right, like, like I
Speaker 4: try to pick a guest who knows background material about
Speaker 4: the thing that I'm talking about, but not the specific story,
Speaker 4: and this one, I was a little bit like, Okaitlyn
Speaker 4: might know all the things that I'm going to say,
Speaker 4: but whatever.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 1: Well, they do have a master's in screenwriting.
Speaker 2: So it's what I hear. Actually two degrees. How did
Speaker 2: you know that? Again, I've never said it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just you, just you just you just
Speaker 1: radiate that master's in screenwriting energy.
Speaker 3: And don't forget the unmarried degree that you have a
Speaker 3: degree in not being married or something.
Speaker 2: That is something I actually that's it ohe And it
Speaker 2: was a joke. Yeah, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I'm not taking into your personal life on air.
Speaker 2: I well, you're right though, I am unmarried and I
Speaker 2: do identify as a bachelor. And when people are like, oh, like,
Speaker 2: what do you do you have a are you single?
Speaker 2: Do you have a partner? Are you married? And I
Speaker 2: say no, I'm a bachelor and I am living a
Speaker 2: bachelor's life. I like to think.
Speaker 3: So there's anyone who can see on the zoom screen,
Speaker 3: I see a lot of piled up takeout containers of
Speaker 3: giant TV. That is the only piece of furniture in
Speaker 3: the room.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't do laundry, and I know I
Speaker 2: well I do. I can't. I don't cook, so I
Speaker 2: do order a lot of takeout and you know, I'm
Speaker 2: out there kissing people. And I feel like that's what
Speaker 2: bachelors do.
Speaker 3: I think they aspire to. They aspire to.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm doing it, so maybe have a degree in
Speaker 2: it above exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, if I want to talk about anti fascism
Speaker 3: in film, there's only one logical place to start. Vampires
Speaker 3: let's talk about vampires.
Speaker 1: Great, wait, wait, wait, very important question Margaret that I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm hoping you understand the pop culture reference.
Speaker 2: I probably don't.
Speaker 1: Team Jacob tam Edward.
Speaker 2: This is a.
Speaker 3: Twilight reference, and I don't know which one is which,
Speaker 3: Kayle Sophia, I probably.
Speaker 2: Don't like you don't. They are both horrible options. Edward
Speaker 2: is Edward Cullen, of course, the vampire played by Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 2: He is creepy and abusive and a major gas lighter
Speaker 2: among them.
Speaker 1: But his skin sparkles in the sun.
Speaker 2: This is true. But now we've got.
Speaker 1: Best line is hold on, spider Monkey.
Speaker 2: Spider Monkey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So.
Speaker 2: Then we've got team Jacob. He's a warewolf.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm on team Jacob, so I usual I.
Speaker 2: Was for a long time. And then you find out
Speaker 2: what happens in I think it's the fourth and final
Speaker 2: book and he falls in love with a baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, there's some weird. There's some weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Best worst jacob lyone in the movie is uh, Bella,
Speaker 1: where have you been? Loca? And I just want to
Speaker 1: put out all these things so that you may properly pick. Also,
Speaker 1: I really want to watch these movies with you, Margaret.
Speaker 3: That would be fun. We should do a show, Margaret
Speaker 3: pop culture.
Speaker 1: I think that next time.
Speaker 3: This isn't from the nineteenth century. How would anyone know it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think we should do. We should do a compound
Speaker 1: Twilight watch party.
Speaker 2: All right, I come, yeah, my gosh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I request both you and one Jamie Loftus at this
Speaker 1: event to curate it properly. We will be there. Fantastic anyways, Vampires,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So the first Hollywood vampire not Hollywood actually sorry, the
Speaker 3: first movie series of still photos shown in rapid secession
Speaker 3: to create the illusion of motion in life. Max Shrek,
Speaker 3: who played the original screen vampire in No Sfaratu nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty two. So the silent movie called nos Faratu Max Shrek.
Speaker 3: First of all, his last name means Terror, which is cool,
Speaker 3: Shrek means terror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna look at the Shrek movie so differently now,
Speaker 2: and do you trust me?
Speaker 3: I look at the Shrek movies. I absolutely believe you. So,
Speaker 3: so Max Shrek the actor, not the character.
Speaker 2: Max does not it.
Speaker 3: Max Shrek is Max Terror, which is the punk ist
Speaker 3: fucking name, right. Yeah, And it fits because he was
Speaker 3: a punk, fucking guy, and this is a guy he
Speaker 3: paid played Count Overlock in nineteen twenty twos Knows Faratu.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that film in a minute, but we're
Speaker 3: gonna sort of he's gonna be a little character that's
Speaker 3: going to show us through nineteen twenties and thirties Berlin,
Speaker 3: the time when I secretly wish I lived, even though
Speaker 3: it would have ended terribly. Also would have been terrible
Speaker 3: the entire time.
Speaker 2: From I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He was born in eighteen seventy six to some civil
Speaker 3: servants in Germany. I think his dad was like a
Speaker 3: type a topographer, oring like that, and his dad didn't
Speaker 3: want him to act, but his mother slipped him money
Speaker 3: and he went off to go to acting classes. And
Speaker 3: this guy is like an actor's actor. He got his
Speaker 3: start in traveling troops, going around from town to town.
Speaker 3: He slowly moved up to like some playing some cities,
Speaker 3: and the end he ends up winding up playing the
Speaker 3: most respected theaters in Germany. But he's never the central
Speaker 3: starring character, right. He works from the shadows. He took
Speaker 3: on almost eight hundred roles over the course of his life,
Speaker 3: and he would photograph himself in the costume of each one,
Speaker 3: like each role, which is fucking cool. People only found
Speaker 3: those photos recently or something.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 3: He lived a quiet life with his wife, who was
Speaker 3: an actress, and they had no kids, and his friends
Speaker 3: describe him I'm totally not describing a vampire here. His
Speaker 3: friends describe him as very remote. He lives in his
Speaker 3: own world. He spends hours walking through the darkest forests
Speaker 3: he can find. Nice And there's only one biography of him,
Speaker 3: and it's from two thousand and nine, and it's just
Speaker 3: kind of a list of all the places he played.
Speaker 3: It's not really about his life because no one knows
Speaker 3: anything about his fucking life, Okay, because he was just
Speaker 3: this like reserved, quiet actor who would go out and
Speaker 3: play every night for his entire life, and.
Speaker 2: Then he'd go into a dark forest and stroll around.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and apparently mountains too. I found one reference
Speaker 3: to he liked hanging out in the mountains in an
Speaker 3: obituary of him. But he was a quiet man and
Speaker 3: also an anti fascist man, because the world's first screen
Speaker 3: vampire was played by a committed anti fascist in the
Speaker 3: Weimart and early Nazi era in the sort of anti
Speaker 3: fascist theater and film scene. And this was huge, a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. I mean, actually, there's one time period
Speaker 3: that doesn't get to depoliticized. It's like the rise of
Speaker 3: Nazi Germany. But overall people still talk about like theater
Speaker 3: and film as in sort of depoliticized terms. And so
Speaker 3: that's what I'm going to try and undo here today.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: So they developed entire styles of performance, the anti fascist
Speaker 3: theater and film scenes, and expressionist horror and theater are
Speaker 3: two of those styles. Have you heard of of these styles?
Speaker 3: I don't know what, you know. It's like I look
Speaker 3: at these things and I'm like, I don't know what
Speaker 3: gets talked about it.
Speaker 2: Is it like German expressionism or is that yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: yeah I'm familiar, not deeply, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no totally. So they go on to influence fucking everything,
Speaker 3: especially German expressionism in specific. And since I like making
Speaker 3: grand statements that I can only partially defend, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go ahead and claim that film noir and modern
Speaker 3: Hollywood horror are descendants of a direct lineage of anti
Speaker 3: fascist filmmaking.
Speaker 2: Mmmm.
Speaker 3: Max shrek by By one article I could find in
Speaker 3: addition to his film and theater work. He was a
Speaker 3: bouncer for Pertult Brex Theater Company. So fucking count Orlock
Speaker 3: the Vampire. I mean, he probably didn't do it in
Speaker 3: the count Orlock outfit, but I prefer to imagine.
Speaker 2: It'll rewrite history and say that he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, have you have you seen Sarato? I'm really not
Speaker 3: trying to put you on the spot about film shit.
Speaker 3: I guess I am accidentally.
Speaker 2: Look, I I'll say every movie I've ever seen on
Speaker 2: this episode. No, but I have seen No Fratu. It
Speaker 2: was in my when I was getting my degree in
Speaker 2: being unmarried. Yeah again, hilarious joke that I am very funny.
Speaker 2: I truly loved it. And then I've also seen Shadow
Speaker 2: of a Vampire. Yeah, pretty cool movie. Yeah, but yes
Speaker 2: I've seen Nou.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's creepy looking as fuck, right, anyone who hasn't
Speaker 3: seen this, you've You might even recognize it if you
Speaker 3: see stills from it. Not you, you've seen it. But
Speaker 3: like anyone listening is instead of the like most vampires
Speaker 3: we see in Hollywood and stuff, sparkle in the daylight
Speaker 3: and gently abuse their romantic partners. Count Orlock, I haven't
Speaker 3: reatt enough. Twilight to make that claim as a specific
Speaker 3: thing about what happens in Twilight. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: count Orlock is a creepy monster, right, count Overlock looks
Speaker 3: inhuman and like runs around with like long fingers and
Speaker 3: this super fucking creepy and cool. M So I just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's this is who I like to imagine bouncing for
Speaker 3: Bertolt Breckt, and in particular, basically what was happening is
Speaker 3: Bertolt Brecht was a Marxist and was making very political
Speaker 3: theater and Nazis would come and try and fuck it up,
Speaker 3: and so it had to be bounced very actively. So
Speaker 3: this wasn't a very like passive job just being like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm a bouncer. It was like, it's like if The Proud.
Speaker 2: Boys was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I'm going to use that to talk
Speaker 3: about Bret, right, He's my framing character, Max Shrek, Max
Speaker 3: Maximum Terror. Bertolt Brecht was this theater director and a
Speaker 3: Marxist who was really upfront about his political engagement and
Speaker 3: so the Nazi brown shirts fucking hated him and they
Speaker 3: were always trying to shut him down. And Brett was
Speaker 3: into a movement called epic theater, the idea that and
Speaker 3: this is actually I see a lot of influences once
Speaker 3: I read what this is about. The idea is that
Speaker 3: the viewer shouldn't just blindly identify with the characters of
Speaker 3: the thing that they're watching, and instead they should It
Speaker 3: was kind of cool because this whole point was to
Speaker 3: do political theater, but it was in this kind of
Speaker 3: counter propaganda way where he's like, I want the viewer
Speaker 3: to have to think about what's happening instead of just
Speaker 3: accepting the themes and the concepts that are being presented
Speaker 3: to them, and so watching the piece should cause the
Speaker 3: viewer to criticize how they feel about what's happening. And
Speaker 3: some of the ways that he used to do that
Speaker 3: was to avoid climactic catharsis, which leaves the viewer complacent
Speaker 3: in his point of view. And it's interesting to me
Speaker 3: because I have this thing where I watch modern movies
Speaker 3: and I kind of hate the climax of the film
Speaker 3: every single time. But that's usually because I kind of
Speaker 3: like action movies, and I hate action movie climaxes because
Speaker 3: it's just fifteen minutes of the same shit we've already seen,
Speaker 3: devoid of.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: The other way that he would do this, and epic
Speaker 3: theater is breaking the fourth wall because you're reminding the
Speaker 3: viewer that they are consuming media.
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: And one of the things I was realizing was was
Speaker 3: researching all of this, I would have paid so much
Speaker 3: more attention in art history class if people talked about
Speaker 3: like why these various art movements existed instead of just
Speaker 3: being like epic theater wanted people to remember that they
Speaker 3: were consuming media, so they would break the fourth wall
Speaker 3: instead being like epic theater came out of the rise
Speaker 3: of Nazism, and it was people trying to help people
Speaker 3: fight against the propaganda that they were being fed, and
Speaker 3: so they wanted people to question media, and so they
Speaker 3: figured out how to put it into the fucking media itself.
Speaker 2: Hmm you really, Yeah, that would have been nice also, yeah,
Speaker 2: learn about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And I don't know, Like I'm curious because
Speaker 3: I suspect that you went further into these degrees. For example,
Speaker 3: then I have my two years of undergrad and art
Speaker 3: that I never finished or cared about because I didn't
Speaker 3: care about these art movements that they were talking about
Speaker 3: because they were just so deep, not just depoliticized, but dehumanized.
Speaker 3: They were just like and this is the way that
Speaker 3: these people painted the following river, and that was the
Speaker 3: Hudson River School, because they were at the Hudson River,
Speaker 3: and here are the pretty pictures of the river, and
Speaker 3: they're very pretty pictures of the river.
Speaker 2: I will say that a number of film classes that
Speaker 2: I took, I learned more about American history in those
Speaker 2: classes because the teachers often did, like contextualize, and this
Speaker 2: is why this movement in cinema happened as a response
Speaker 2: to like McCarthyism or so. I learned more about different
Speaker 2: pieces of American history in those and obviously like more
Speaker 2: modern American history, but like I learned more about that
Speaker 2: in film classes than I did in history classes, because
Speaker 2: up until that point I had just learned, like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I grew up in like a small town
Speaker 2: where no it's just I don't know, not not agreat,
Speaker 2: not great education I got. So they did, Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they all this to say, they did contextualize, Uh, just
Speaker 2: film me crements and stuff quite a bit. That's cool story. Yeah, okay, yeah, no, I.
Speaker 3: I I don't know. It makes me care about the
Speaker 3: stuff when I have these hooks into it you know, totally,
Speaker 3: and it made obviously these people care about it too, right,
Speaker 3: like that was part of They cared about both things
Speaker 3: is what was so interesting to me. They absolutely cared
Speaker 3: about different different leftism or just anti fascism, and also
Speaker 3: they cared about figuring out art and shit. I don't know, shit,
Speaker 3: I'm clearly very good at totally graduated with money. We're scholars, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: definitely not pop entertainment producers. And so okay, So Brett
Speaker 3: sadly his kid wound up, one of his kids wound
Speaker 3: but Nazi who then died on the Eastern Front. So
Speaker 3: sort of break even, you become a Nazi. Nazi games,
Speaker 3: Nazi prizes, they go together. Sure, But Breckt himself fled
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty three after Hitler's rise to power. He
Speaker 3: came to the US, whereupon he was treated like shit
Speaker 3: for being a communist. He got caught up in the
Speaker 3: Red Scare, and he did end up actually wind up
Speaker 3: kind of snitching into the House of on American Activities.
Speaker 3: He was like one of like the Hollywood ten, of
Speaker 3: these ten filmmakers who were accused of being communists. And
Speaker 3: in Breck's case, it was true right. He was a
Speaker 3: communist ye, and all of his peers refused to talk,
Speaker 3: and he kind of was like, but he named names.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what he said. I didn't get
Speaker 3: enough far into specifically this, but he did it go
Speaker 3: at least and go talk to them, and his like
Speaker 3: theory and the thing that he did was he was like, no,
Speaker 3: I got to get the fuck out of this country.
Speaker 3: And so he was I presume he was just a
Speaker 3: so he goes and he like goes and does, goes
Speaker 3: and talks to them and then gets the fuck out
Speaker 3: of the country again. He also he's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: He wasn't super consistent in his anti tootalitarianism. One of
Speaker 3: his main actresses, Carolina Naher, was caught up in Stalin's
Speaker 3: Great Purge. Everyone who wasn't the right kind of communist
Speaker 3: got like dragged off to gulags, and Bret.
Speaker 2: Was like, uh, I don't don't know her.
Speaker 3: What's up, like just kind of ignored her suffering under Stalin,
Speaker 3: and she died in a gulug and brecked himself wind
Speaker 3: up living in East Germany after the war, where he
Speaker 3: was critical of the Soviet government. Sort of he was
Speaker 3: like oh, I totally love you. You're great, don't murder me.
Speaker 3: And then he would be like, here's some poems about
Speaker 3: why the government sucks.
Speaker 2: I don't know whatever.
Speaker 3: Breckt cool theater guy, slightly disappointing in some personal levels
Speaker 3: or political levels. Sure, back to Shrek are our thread.
Speaker 2: My favorite phrase, especially in reference to the green ogre.
Speaker 2: But yeah, do you know, we're also happy to hear
Speaker 2: about Max.
Speaker 3: I read something that said that they named Shrek after
Speaker 3: Max Shrek, but I is there any do you have
Speaker 3: any idea?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. The spelling is not the same.
Speaker 2: Max Shrek has two extra SE's in his name. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just at the end. Yeah, I don't I don't know.
Speaker 2: But let's again, let's rewrite history and say that.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, yeah, and they just americanized it by cutting
Speaker 3: out extra letters. The americanization exactly. Shrek performed for Bract,
Speaker 3: I believe, and then also hung out with other anti
Speaker 3: fascists as well. He performed for Airwind Piscatour, who, besides
Speaker 3: Brect was the main epic theater guy. So the break
Speaker 3: the fourth wall question everything, think for yourselves. We're all individuals.
Speaker 3: I'm not, and fuck I'm in a mony Python reference.
Speaker 3: I think I have to quit. I'm done.
Speaker 2: I didn't even I didn't even catch that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't catch it. But I accept your resignation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's only fair. Let me just Caitlyn. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: send you over the script and you can.
Speaker 2: Can't kit you can take over. Maybe I should.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll finish this one out and then i'll and then.
Speaker 1: Why don't why don't we go to an ad break
Speaker 1: and you can collect yourself out out of the ground.
Speaker 3: Okay, come back for an accountability process about.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: You know who won't hold you accountable capitalism. Capitalism wants
Speaker 3: you to do everything that he wants you. Okay, here's
Speaker 3: some ads. We are back, and we are talking about
Speaker 3: nothing wrong that I did, but we instead we were
Speaker 3: talking about Erwin Piscator m hm. And he, like a
Speaker 3: lot of the directors and ship that we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about, right, fought in the trenches in World War
Speaker 3: One and he came back hating war, which is really
Speaker 3: hard to imagine someone fighting in World War One having negative.
Speaker 2: And then eating war.
Speaker 3: I know he must have just ungrateful. I think he
Speaker 3: came back ungrateful. Yeah, but he didn't hate war enough
Speaker 3: to not go and throw down in the November Revolution
Speaker 3: of nineteen eighteen when Germany got itself democracy. So he
Speaker 3: came back being like, I'm anti war, I mean, except
Speaker 3: this very necessary war to have democracy. So he's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And he was in the Communist Party. He staged films
Speaker 3: by communists and anarchists. I really just included this line
Speaker 3: so I can get Tolstoy in here, because Tolstoy has
Speaker 3: to show up and everything I do for no good reason.
Speaker 3: I don't even have strong feelings about this guy. But
Speaker 3: he staged some plays by Tolstoy, and he literally directed
Speaker 3: a play I want to see this play at some
Speaker 3: point called Oil Boom in nineteen twenty eight that was
Speaker 3: against the colonial and environmentally destructive production of oil, which
Speaker 3: I had no idea people were talking about nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it worked. One hundred years later, we don't
Speaker 3: have the colonial or environmentally destructive practice of oil extraction.
Speaker 2: And thank goodness for that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: For some odd reason, Erwin left Germany in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: and he went around and lived a ton of different places,
Speaker 3: including New York City and he taught at the New School.
Speaker 3: This is like part of how I'm tying all the
Speaker 3: threads together of how these people influenced fucking everything he
Speaker 3: taught at the New School, including with students including Marlon
Speaker 3: Brando and Tennessee Williams. And then he left the US
Speaker 3: because of anti communism. So it's basically all of these
Speaker 3: like German directors are like, oh fuck the Nazis, and
Speaker 3: they get to the US and they're like, oh fuck,
Speaker 3: oh no, the Usians.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, it all comes back to McCarthyism, as I
Speaker 2: brilliantly mentioned earlier. So it's very well done.
Speaker 3: If you have any actually, because I only know the like,
Speaker 3: I'll touch on some of this, but if you ever
Speaker 3: want to, like talk more about McCarthyism and House of
Speaker 3: an American and all that shit this relates to Hollywood,
Speaker 3: please interrupt me and talk about this.
Speaker 2: I don't know that much about it, so I would
Speaker 2: I'm a fraud actually.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well, I feel really good that I set
Speaker 3: you up to could admit that, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he ends up back in West Germany.
Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, because he's a little bit
Speaker 3: I don't know it seems like he was like more
Speaker 3: on the democracy side of things than the Stalin side
Speaker 3: of things, and so Shrek he rolls with. This guy
Speaker 3: plays at his theater. He probably bounced the more Nazis
Speaker 3: there too. I don't actually know, but I in my
Speaker 3: head canon he also is a bouncer at each of
Speaker 3: these places and continues to dress like Orlock, or maybe
Speaker 3: actually the Orlock was the non costume and that the
Speaker 3: rest was the costumes when he was dressing up.
Speaker 2: To the normal Are you sure sure? Let's go with that?
Speaker 3: And then he played at my favorite place that he
Speaker 3: played an anti fascist cabaret, because this man cannot miss.
Speaker 3: He performed specifically at Erica Man's anti fascist cabaret called
Speaker 3: the pepper Mill, which I won't try to pronounce in German. Okay,
Speaker 3: Erica Man. I'd never heard of Erica Man, and I
Speaker 3: after writing this script, I was like, I wish I'd
Speaker 3: just done Erica Man, like she's so fucking cool. I mean,
Speaker 3: like I like Max Shrek, and I like this vampire
Speaker 3: through line just to continue to break the fourth wall
Speaker 3: of how I write script so that you all can
Speaker 3: think for yourself about the propaganda that I'm feeding you
Speaker 3: so wow, Erica Man theater right now, right? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So Erica Mann is the son of Thomas Mann, who's
Speaker 3: this Nobel prize winning author who is pretty interesting. But
Speaker 3: life is short, so I'm not gonna he's anti Nazi.
Speaker 3: He's good in that way. I don't know about him
Speaker 3: to claim he's a good person at all. Erica Man
Speaker 3: gay as hell. If you look at a photo of her,
Speaker 3: you'll be like, oh, that lady's gay as hell. And
Speaker 3: the first play she acted in was basically a gay polycule.
Speaker 3: It was this play in Weimar, Germany about four friends
Speaker 3: who were all in love with each other, two men
Speaker 3: and two women. And not only was the play about that,
Speaker 3: but that was the actors as well. The both the
Speaker 3: two women were dating, both the two men were dating,
Speaker 3: and each woman was dating one of the men.
Speaker 2: Okay, so a lot of threuttles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like complicated, like building multiple threatles out of a cubical. Sure,
Speaker 3: this is why people don't have relationships with four people,
Speaker 3: because then they'd be cubicles.
Speaker 2: Mmmm wait would that be six? How many cube has six?
Speaker 1: Eight?
Speaker 5: Eight?
Speaker 3: A square? Yeah, but it had, but but it's four people.
Speaker 2: A cube has eight?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: For intersections. Oh yes, I mean my master's I don't know. Again,
Speaker 2: wouldn't ever talk about it. It is in screenwriting and
Speaker 2: not geometry. I almost said geography. Yeah, fair enough. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm a scholar. I'm a scholar. I'm really smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, okay, So eric, amn uh six there's okay,
Speaker 3: but there's there's eight corners?
Speaker 2: Are there not eight corners to a cube on two? Four?
Speaker 4: Wait, dude, where are six sides?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, six.
Speaker 2: I know you're right, there are there are eight corners. Yeah,
Speaker 2: six sides. So which one is more applicable to the metaphor? Ooh,
Speaker 2: I we're gonna have to get like a physicist in
Speaker 2: here or something.
Speaker 1: In my degree is in psychology. I'm a bow out.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, you can just tell people why this is
Speaker 3: a bad idea to have that kind of or maybe
Speaker 3: it's a very good idea. Triangle is the strongest shape
Speaker 3: after all.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So she has two honeymoons at the same hotel. She
Speaker 3: goes first with the like man she's married or whatever,
Speaker 3: and then she goes with the woman that she's married
Speaker 3: illegally like on the side, and the woman that she
Speaker 3: marries like checks into the hotel dressed asm Man, and
Speaker 3: she dates a who's who of lesbian Weimar Germany cabaret people.
Speaker 3: And she acted in a nineteen thirty one film about
Speaker 3: lesbianism that's just a documentary about lesbianism. And she was
Speaker 3: a committed and active anti fascist as well, and she
Speaker 3: kept getting fired for her work trying to stop Nazis
Speaker 3: from recruiting people. The rest of her family are known
Speaker 3: anti fascists, and while they're Protestant, they have Jewish ancestry,
Speaker 3: and so most of her family, the rest of her
Speaker 3: family's already fucked off, and by nineteen thirty five, she's
Speaker 3: the last girl standing from her family, her whole big
Speaker 3: anti fascist family still in Germany. Her uncle Heinrichmand was
Speaker 3: literally the first person that the Nazis stripped of German citizenship,
Speaker 3: like the Nazis hated the man's and then oh except
Speaker 3: actually this contradicts because then her and her brother started something.
Speaker 3: Maybe her brother hadn't fucked off yet. I love reading
Speaker 3: all of these like weird translated things that I try
Speaker 3: to find like because everything contradicts with itself. Right, her
Speaker 3: and her brother and her girlfriend and another friend start
Speaker 3: an anti fascist cabaret the above mentioned pepper mill in
Speaker 3: July nineteen thirty three. She writes most of the material,
Speaker 3: they get the name from their dad, who's like, you know,
Speaker 3: when people are talking about like nineties band names, they're like,
Speaker 3: I don't even know, just like look at the nearest object,
Speaker 3: and that's the name of your band, like sewing machine,
Speaker 3: dishwasher or whatever. Right, that's how they got their fucking
Speaker 3: band name, their cabaret.
Speaker 2: Okay, their dad was what was it, pepper mill.
Speaker 3: The pepper Yeah, the pepper mill. Their dad was like
Speaker 3: kind of I think, basically trolling them and was like, whatever,
Speaker 3: just call it, I don't know any gestures at the
Speaker 3: table and he's like, uh, the pepper mill.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: So it worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it gets called legendary a lot. I'd never heard
Speaker 3: of the pepper mill, but apparently it's a very big deal. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: everything is refers to the legendary pepper mill. Maybe they
Speaker 3: wrote that into that, they didn't write it into the name.
Speaker 3: And our man Shrek big Green Ogre was there, the
Speaker 3: Quiet Vampire, and he performed there a whole fucking bunch,
Speaker 3: right because he just showed up to everything that was
Speaker 3: anti fascist and acted and then went home to his
Speaker 3: wife and then wandered around the dark forests.
Speaker 2: And also was so he would perform in some theaters
Speaker 2: and then be the bouncer at others.
Speaker 3: So I'm having the hardest time. I only have one
Speaker 3: article that references the fact that he bounced, and I
Speaker 3: know the author of that is someone who has access
Speaker 3: to a lot of languages that I don't. The author
Speaker 3: of that speaks fucking shit ton of languages. So I
Speaker 3: was unable to find more information about his bouncing. I
Speaker 3: found a lot more information about his acting than his bouncing,
Speaker 3: but I don't know. So in my mind, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I only have one source, Therefore it is not true
Speaker 3: because I've become that kind of paranoid pop historian. Actually,
Speaker 3: that probably makes me a very bad pop historian. I
Speaker 3: should probably just make thanks great. Oh, okay, thanks, I
Speaker 3: appreciate that anytime.
Speaker 2: Pepper Mill only only last two months, it managed to
Speaker 2: become legendary in the two months it exists. The Nazis
Speaker 2: shut it down. Did for them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they get the fuck out and they get the
Speaker 3: fuck out of Germany. And there's competing sources about exactly
Speaker 3: what happens at this point, but it sounds like the
Speaker 3: whole thing. Moved probably without Shrek to Zurich for a
Speaker 3: while m hm, and she she's like, all right, I
Speaker 3: get the fuck out of here. And so she finds
Speaker 3: a gay dude in England and is like, hey, you
Speaker 3: want to get married, like real romantic. You can do
Speaker 3: whatever you want. I can do whatever I want. And
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, totally, I'll get married. And then he
Speaker 3: was like, cool, do you have a gay friend I
Speaker 3: can set my girlfriend up with and.
Speaker 2: He does mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And so I love the gay poly world. That helped
Speaker 3: get people out of fucking Nazi Germany. And they moved
Speaker 3: to England. And at this point I'd love to even
Speaker 3: just be like happily ever after, but she kept fucking
Speaker 3: doing shit. Her and her brother reported on the Spanish
Speaker 3: Civil War. She wrote a whole bunch of anti Nazi books.
Speaker 3: When World War II broke out, she was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I got I got fucking help. We got a fucking
Speaker 3: deal with these fucking Nazis. So she worked in radio
Speaker 3: and worked for the BBC, speaking in German, basically like
Speaker 3: doing counterpropaganda against the Nazis. She became a war correspondent.
Speaker 3: She was like one of the first people on the
Speaker 3: ground at like all these like liberated German cities. And
Speaker 3: later she moved to the US, where she was treated
Speaker 3: like shit and investigated by the FBI because she was
Speaker 3: a lefty or whatever. And even worse than being a lefty,
Speaker 3: she was gay. So she moved to Switzerland where she
Speaker 3: lived the rest of her days. And I'm really glad
Speaker 3: that our gay, anti fascist Jewish heritage lady survives the.
Speaker 2: End of the war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know what you're thinking to yourself, what
Speaker 3: does this have to do with vampires? Everything has to
Speaker 3: do with vampires.
Speaker 2: I wasn't I've seen the connection, is cris Day? Great? Yeah,
Speaker 2: well then in nineteen twenty just for anyone in any listeners,
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay, you know who haven't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did the dots yet. I mean, what I
Speaker 3: find interesting about it right is like it doesn't specifically
Speaker 3: have to do a vampire myth inherently, but like this idea.
Speaker 3: These people are famous for their entertainment, most of these
Speaker 3: people Max Shrek certainly famous for nos Faratu and not
Speaker 3: for anti fascism, But this idea that like entertainment and
Speaker 3: myth and storytelling and horror and all of that they're
Speaker 3: not actually divorced from life, you know, sure, and that's like,
Speaker 3: that's the thing that gets to be really excited about
Speaker 3: this shit. I'm making weird eyes at the camera because
Speaker 3: I'm like over excited. Yeah, one hundred years ago, on
Speaker 3: this very night, that parts a lie. In nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 3: a German expressionist horror film called nos Faratu was released
Speaker 3: and it was put together by a studio called Prana Films,
Speaker 3: and it was their first film, and it was their
Speaker 3: last film because it was really obviously a ripoff. It
Speaker 3: was obviously bram Stoker's Dracula with the serial numbers rubbed off.
Speaker 3: It was apparently advertise basically as hey, check it out.
Speaker 3: We've got a film that's Dracula with the serial numbers
Speaker 3: rubbed off. We changed the names, huh, And.
Speaker 2: That didn't work.
Speaker 3: Bram Stoker was dead or undead at this point, but
Speaker 3: his widow wasn't Florence Balcom and she's like, hey, you
Speaker 3: know what, fuck this, fuck you, I'm suing. I owned Dracula,
Speaker 3: my husband wrote it. Prana Films declares bankruptcy because they
Speaker 3: couldn't afford to pay and most of the copies of
Speaker 3: the film were destroyed, but as an article in the
Speaker 3: New European put it, fortunately for posterity, if not copyright law,
Speaker 3: the film reappeared in the late nineteen twenties, when a
Speaker 3: handful of surviving prints emerged in far flung places, cut
Speaker 3: clumsily and with intertitles in different languages, but enough to
Speaker 3: save one of history's great cinematic achievements from oblivion.
Speaker 2: I assumed that they, I didn't know any of that,
Speaker 2: and I assumed that, you know, they had just acquired
Speaker 2: the rights to adapt in no Dracula narrative. I guess not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of a shitty move. I have like
Speaker 3: mixed feelings about copyright in general, but like especially the
Speaker 3: fact that they were Like I had always assumed that
Speaker 3: they had rubbed the serial numbers off and then like
Speaker 3: tried to downplay its connections to Dracula. But apparently the
Speaker 3: way that the widow Florence, the way she finds out
Speaker 3: about it is like an anonymous person sends her like
Speaker 3: a promotional flyer that's like, come see technically not Dracula,
Speaker 3: you know, all right, Yeah, So it's because of this
Speaker 3: that people rescued count Overlock. I mean knows fratu that
Speaker 3: we know Max Shrek today, and there were all of
Speaker 3: these rumors that he never existed. There were these rumors
Speaker 3: that he was a false persona of another more famous
Speaker 3: actor who was also super cool and anti fascist.
Speaker 2: But is short, wait, that Max Shrek never agested.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, that there was no Max Shrek, and that's
Speaker 3: almost certainly not true. He was just such a minor character.
Speaker 3: He was like this like behind the scenes guy. He's
Speaker 3: just this quiet guy who acts right. But then in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty three, a surrealist writer named a Donnis Krum
Speaker 3: suggested that Shrek himself might have been a vampire who
Speaker 3: is hired to play the vampire, which of course gets
Speaker 3: turned into another sick movie, The Shadow of the Vampire,
Speaker 3: which came out in the Ear of Our Lord two thousand,
Speaker 3: which is worth seeing also and possibly a documentary.
Speaker 2: And actually probably a documentary, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a biopic, I think so. Yeah. And I find
Speaker 3: that surrealists don't lie.
Speaker 2: They are known for depicting things very realistically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, as they are sir actually means more than
Speaker 3: real in German.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very very very realism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no lies realism. Yeah. Max Shrek ostensibly died of
Speaker 3: heart failure when he was fifty seven in nineteen thirty six. Obviously,
Speaker 3: of course he became an anti fascist vampire who single
Speaker 3: handedly brought down the Nazis, but that's a story for
Speaker 3: another time. The previous night, the last night of his
Speaker 3: regular life, he performed on stage, and then he checked
Speaker 3: himself into the hospital. And then he died the next morning,
Speaker 3: and he was buried in an unmarked grave next to
Speaker 3: his mother. And I don't know, like, like, there's like
Speaker 3: not that much about this guy. But I feel like,
Speaker 3: just like this, like you live your life. You're the quiet,
Speaker 3: shadowy actor. You got one big starring role that like
Speaker 3: rewrites filmic history, and then you like fight Nazis and
Speaker 3: hang out in the woods. Like I feel like that's
Speaker 3: a fucking good life.
Speaker 2: That's a great life. And yeah, you think there'd be
Speaker 2: that he'd I mean, he left a legacy, but that
Speaker 2: like more people would know about her, that there'd be
Speaker 2: more written about, more biographies. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: didn't know anything of this about about Shrek. The only
Speaker 2: the only thing I know about Shrek is that he's
Speaker 2: a green ogre with a donkey friend. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 2: not the same Shrek a heart made out of gold
Speaker 2: onions exactly. Yeah, I really like the Shrek movies. But
Speaker 2: I don't remember is a Twilight thing? Wait? What really
Speaker 2: in the first movie? All right? Right, Sophia might write
Speaker 2: about this. In the first movie when Bello Swan is
Speaker 2: trying to she's like kind of getting to know Edward Cullen,
Speaker 2: but he's being really.
Speaker 1: The first time. He especially creepy, like she thinks that
Speaker 1: she smells.
Speaker 2: Because he's he's hungry for human blood.
Speaker 1: He just wants to eat her and he can't read
Speaker 1: her mind. It's a whole thing. Their their lab partner,
Speaker 1: Lab partners.
Speaker 2: Okay, and the prize.
Speaker 1: Because he's under he's a teenager, but he's actually a
Speaker 1: hundred twenty something or whatever years old, and that's sketchy.
Speaker 1: She says to him, how old are you? He goes,
Speaker 1: I'm seventeen, and she goes, hollo ben so and then
Speaker 1: he's like, oh god, God, we really need to do
Speaker 1: this movie night.
Speaker 2: But they meet because they're lab partners in biology class
Speaker 2: or whatever and teachers.
Speaker 3: I dissect it pretty close.
Speaker 2: The teacher's like, hey, learn about photosynthesis or whatever, and
Speaker 2: so they're like looking at little at stuff the microscope,
Speaker 2: and then the prize for whoever does photosynthesis. The best,
Speaker 2: I don't know is a golden onion.
Speaker 1: So it's all arow.
Speaker 3: It all goes back to our man, Max Shrek Maximum Terror,
Speaker 3: Maximilian Terror properly. Okay, Well, uh, I know what you're thinking, Caitlin.
Speaker 3: You're thinking you're talking about the knockoff track. Sorry, I
Speaker 3: have to go back to my script. Tell my dumb
Speaker 3: joke even it no longer flows correctly. You're thinking, that's
Speaker 3: the knockoff Dracula. What about the real Dracula Bela Lagosi,
Speaker 3: who started as Count Dracula on Broadway in nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: seven and in the Universal Pictures nineteen thirty one Hollywood Dracula.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was exactly what I was thinking. But
Speaker 1: you know, you know what else I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: Margaret was that we need Caitlin to give us a
Speaker 1: good sponsor.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's true. We're out of sponsors. We need a
Speaker 3: good idea for like a Yeah.
Speaker 1: Previous sponsors that we have chosen for this show are potatoes,
Speaker 1: the concept of potatoes. Yeah, clean, clean, tap water and
Speaker 1: always cool pillow A front of the pod bridget Todd said,
Speaker 1: a really good comb.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, how about oh gosh, I know so much pressure,
Speaker 2: I'm cracking. How about a tasty piece of I was
Speaker 2: gonna say toast, but that I don't know. That's just
Speaker 2: the first thing I thought of. I was too busy.
Speaker 2: I was too busy trying to make a joke about
Speaker 2: bella logo si Bella Swan. And then that's where my
Speaker 2: mind was.
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like Kit then wants the podcast
Speaker 1: to be sponsored by the toilet here.
Speaker 3: All right, we can be.
Speaker 5: I don't condone that, but what about what about like
Speaker 5: a really good movie, just the concept of a really
Speaker 5: good concept of r r R, the concept of r
Speaker 5: R There we are there, you go there, we.
Speaker 2: Are are are rr. Okay, I'll stop.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's the meds. We are back, and we're talking
Speaker 3: about the fact that while Caitlin was thinking bellis Swan,
Speaker 3: I was thinking Bella Legosi is Dead by the by
Speaker 3: Bauhaus and didn't know about bellas Swan's Belliswan from Twilight. Yes, yes, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: I really need to do that movie night.
Speaker 3: I know pop culture. I just know pop culture that
Speaker 3: is not pop culture, but goth culture. From the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: It's true. I know songs that work came up that
Speaker 3: were from before I was capable of coherent thought.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Yeah, and now you know who Bella Swan is.
Speaker 3: That's right, it was Belliswan, one of the vampires.
Speaker 2: Was that spoiler? Well, it's yeah, it's just she's the
Speaker 2: cool question. It's a it's a yes, exactly, it's a
Speaker 2: difficult it's the lead. Difficult answer.
Speaker 3: Okay, the lead. Okay, she is Twilight in Twilight. Well,
Speaker 3: her precursor to the the filmic interpretation of vampires, bel Legosi,
Speaker 3: was Hungarian, much like Belliswan. Born in eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: Like Belliswan, ran away from a conservative household when he
Speaker 3: was twelve to become an actor like Belliswan. But this
Speaker 3: is actually where the similarities end. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I had twelve, I know, and things were wild in
Speaker 2: the turn of the century.
Speaker 3: This guy was fucking tough, like this guy rules. He
Speaker 3: runs away from home. He wants to be an actor,
Speaker 3: but it's not like, oh great, you're an actor school
Speaker 3: now and you get to be an actor. He works
Speaker 3: at various blue collar work as a laborer while he
Speaker 3: sorts all that out. Eventually ends up a silent movie
Speaker 3: film actor in the nineteen tens in Hungary until World
Speaker 3: War One, when he volunteers as a ski fighter and
Speaker 3: he works his way up in the ranks as a
Speaker 3: ski fighter. He's not fighting, he's on skis.
Speaker 2: What that is a thing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, totally soldiers on skis. Yeah, because there's snow,
Speaker 3: you're in the mountains, sure, yeah, okay. He gets wounded
Speaker 3: in action several times, and at one point he was
Speaker 3: trapped falling on this probably yeah. And then a very
Speaker 3: common accident happened to him that has happened to everyone
Speaker 3: when they're at the ski slopes, which was that he
Speaker 3: was trapped under a mound of corpses. Ah uh, And
Speaker 3: for some odd, unknowable reason he got what was called
Speaker 3: shell shock back then but we now call PTSD, possibly
Speaker 3: related to being buried under a pile of corpses.
Speaker 2: Could be.
Speaker 3: World War One doesn't last forever. Nineteen nineteen comes around
Speaker 3: and him and a bunch of his buddies, an awful
Speaker 3: lot of his buddies like the whole working class of
Speaker 3: Hungary kind of, They decide to overthrow capitalism, so he
Speaker 3: goes and he overthrows capitalism.
Speaker 2: They win for a moment.
Speaker 3: One hundred and thirty three days you have the Hungarian
Speaker 3: Soviet and this is nineteen nineteen, so it's like kind
Speaker 3: of before before the promise of the Soviet Union did
Speaker 3: not live up to its promise.
Speaker 2: I will put it that way.
Speaker 3: That's my most diplomatic attempt to phrase that. Sure, And
Speaker 3: so for one hundred and thirty three days they had
Speaker 3: the Hungarian Soviet and bel Legosi fought in That was
Speaker 3: because he was a proud union man. He was a
Speaker 3: member of a locksmith union and a laborer union, and
Speaker 3: later he helped form an actors union. And he specifically
Speaker 3: who was like against all of the weird hierarchy and
Speaker 3: shit within the acting move scene in Hungary. And he
Speaker 3: has his quote, the former ruling class kept the community
Speaker 3: of actors in ignorance by means of various lies, corrupted
Speaker 3: it morally and materially, and finally scorned and despised it
Speaker 3: for what resulted from its own vices. The actor, subsisting
Speaker 3: on starvation wages and demoralized, was often driven driven, albeit reluctantly,
Speaker 3: to place himself at the disposal of the ruling class.
Speaker 3: Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting. So if
Speaker 3: you want to be an actor, you gotta like get
Speaker 3: treated like shit. And I think that this is not
Speaker 3: something that happens now. I don't think that people go
Speaker 3: and get treated like shit by the industry just because
Speaker 3: they love acting.
Speaker 2: Right, that's changed. Actors are famously treated so well, especially
Speaker 2: the ones who are still obstensively working class. Yeah no,
Speaker 2: they're they're they're gods among humans. Yeah, that's they're treating
Speaker 2: that way. Yeah, No, that's amazing. Yeah, the industry doesn't
Speaker 2: chew you up and spit you out.
Speaker 3: No, why would it do that. That doesn't seem like
Speaker 3: it would work against his own interests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, dry humor with Margaret and Katon. So that the
Speaker 3: Soviet falls and a wave of reactionary terror murders a
Speaker 3: ton of people, and so you got the fuck out.
Speaker 3: And he goes to Germany, and that's not far enough away.
Speaker 3: He needs to get further the fuck So he starts
Speaker 3: working on like a steamboat, and he like steamboats over
Speaker 3: to the US and he like sneaks into the country
Speaker 3: illegally because the Hungarian government still after him so illegally
Speaker 3: immigrates to the US, which is cool. I just want
Speaker 3: to point that out for anyone who's listening who might
Speaker 3: think that I have negative feelings about this, I'm listing
Speaker 3: this as one of the things he did that is.
Speaker 2: Cool, that's badass. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Later he goes back and does it the proper way,
Speaker 3: and he actually gets used in a lot of like
Speaker 3: propaganda for like don't illegally immigrate. If you do, go
Speaker 3: turn yourself in and you'll get treated well and you'll
Speaker 3: become a star like Bella Legosi. But he gets to
Speaker 3: the US and he helps found the Screen Actors Guild
Speaker 3: because unions fucking rule, and in the nineteenth no kidding, yeah,
Speaker 3: and in the nineteen thirties help start another project, the
Speaker 3: Hungarian American Council for Democracy, which wanted quote Nazism to
Speaker 3: be wiped out everywhere. It's a very understandable position. In
Speaker 3: the nineteen forties, he leveraged all of his fame to
Speaker 3: help fight for the US to accept Hungarian Jewish refugees.
Speaker 3: And the final cool thing he did from my point
Speaker 3: of view, is that when he was buried, he got
Speaker 3: married in his like Dracula cape nice.
Speaker 2: I actually think is there a reference to that in
Speaker 2: the movie Ed Wood, I think I there might be,
Speaker 2: and that might be. How I know about that.
Speaker 3: I believe you, and I think I even saw that movie.
Speaker 3: But I saw that movie before I understood anything about anything.
Speaker 2: Got it. It's one of my favorite biopics. Although I
Speaker 2: can I you know, a lot of the people involved
Speaker 2: in that project, such as Johnny Depp and Tim Burton,
Speaker 2: you know, suck ass as people. Yeah, but Bela Lugosi
Speaker 2: played by oh my gosh, who plays him?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Martin Landau is a great character in the movie, and
Speaker 2: so shout out to that performance. Hell yeah, now I
Speaker 2: want to rewatch that.
Speaker 3: Although as pointed out, sometimes I struggle to enjoy things
Speaker 3: when I know just exactly how terrible some of the
Speaker 3: people involved there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are correct on the casting for that movie.
Speaker 2: Mark Oh, do I know movies or do I know
Speaker 2: Moviesly do.
Speaker 3: So we've established that all the old draculas are on
Speaker 3: our side, sorry, old vampires. Some types of people refer
Speaker 3: to them as draculas because it's funny. But do you
Speaker 3: know who else is on our side? Kaitlin, tell me
Speaker 3: it's not the goods and services that support this show.
Speaker 3: Instead it's one of the most influential styles of cinema.
Speaker 3: German expressionism. We talked about her a little bit earlier.
Speaker 3: German expressionism is on our side. German expressionism in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen tens, Germany was like fucked as hell. They
Speaker 3: just lost World War One. There's like runaway inflation, totally
Speaker 3: unfamiliar to today's listeners, and people were like, well, I guess
Speaker 3: as saving money doesn't do any good because it's worth
Speaker 3: less every single day, So I'm going to go to
Speaker 3: the movies, which is kind of a funny response to that,
Speaker 3: but like, fuck it, I don't know. Hedonism looked different
Speaker 3: than I guess, you know, And so they everyone went
Speaker 3: out to the movies and they made really fucking weird movies,
Speaker 3: and there were intentionally low budget movies, although I think,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, they also didn't have any money, right,
Speaker 3: and so they would use intentionally fake looking sets, and
Speaker 3: they would make movies that talk about like losing your
Speaker 3: mind and is basically a response to the realism and
Speaker 3: film that everyone else was doing about these like grand
Speaker 3: traditionally structured adventure films or whatever. As one film critic
Speaker 3: put it, it was the visual manifestation of the romantic
Speaker 3: ideals with not like romances and people dating, but like
Speaker 3: romantic as like the romantic poets and shit. R This
Speaker 3: is at odds with the Nazi worldview. And this stuff,
Speaker 3: esthetically is what creates both film noir and the first
Speaker 3: Hollywood horror movies ten years later, and it also found
Speaker 3: its way into crime film and a bunch of other things.
Speaker 3: This idea, it happened both because all the filmmakers had
Speaker 3: to flee the Nazis. The reason that it influenced everything
Speaker 3: is that all the filmmakers had to fucking flee the
Speaker 3: Nazis and move to Hollywood. Of them actually while they
Speaker 3: were there, like donated all their money to the war
Speaker 3: effort and shit. But film was also influenced by them
Speaker 3: because Hitchcock went to Berlin in nineteen twenty four and
Speaker 3: made a film and he was like, oh, this rules.
Speaker 3: I'm really into what people are doing here, which is
Speaker 3: to say that anti fascists invented the horror genre. Which
Speaker 3: again I'd like making these grand, sweeping narrative statements because
Speaker 3: I'm a fiction.
Speaker 2: Writer, but I'm not un for it.
Speaker 3: I don't disbelieve what I'm saying to be clear, of course,
Speaker 3: and the expressionists, they were really fucking clear in their
Speaker 3: anti fascist sentiment. In the nineteen twenties and thirties, Germany
Speaker 3: wasn't a subtle time for subtle political laity allegiances. The
Speaker 3: filmmakers who made the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari said they
Speaker 3: used they used like shocking contrasting lights, you know, and
Speaker 3: all of this like really intense visual stuff. And it
Speaker 3: was a reference to their experiences as infantry in World
Speaker 3: War One with nighttime artillery bombing. And they all came
Speaker 3: home from that committed anti militarists and pacifists and anti fascists,
Speaker 3: and they were like, it wasn't just we hate the
Speaker 3: Nazis because they're taking over our country. They all hated
Speaker 3: Mussolini and shit. So I'm gonna tell you about one
Speaker 3: of those actors, Conrad Vite. Have you heard of Conrad Vite?
Speaker 2: I haven't, okay.
Speaker 3: He was an openly bisexual actor married to a Jewish woman,
Speaker 3: and when the Nazis made everyone in the film industry
Speaker 3: fill out a form to say what race they were,
Speaker 3: he just wrote in I'm a Jew, which he knew
Speaker 3: what the fuck he was doing when he did that
Speaker 3: and he was like, it was like, I'm in solidarity.
Speaker 2: With my wife. If she's a Jew, then I'm a Jew.
Speaker 2: Fuck you.
Speaker 3: And they both survived that particular move, which is good.
Speaker 3: They got out to England, whereupon Vite donated his entire
Speaker 3: life savings to the English War Effort because he was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, please go kill all the Nazis. And
Speaker 3: then he moved to the US, and he moved to
Speaker 3: the US specifically because he was like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: use my star power, etc. To go to Hollywood and
Speaker 3: try to influence the US to join the war because
Speaker 3: if the US doesn't join the war, world fucked. And
Speaker 3: he wounded up playing a villain in Casablanca. It's the
Speaker 3: role he's most famous for, and he played Nazis.
Speaker 2: He knew.
Speaker 3: He was like, I'm going to go to the US
Speaker 3: and I'm this like German speaking person in late nineteen
Speaker 3: thirties or whatever. I'm going to be playing Nazis when
Speaker 3: I get there. But he wrote into his contract that
Speaker 3: he would only play Nazis if they were the villains good.
Speaker 3: And then he kept sending all of his money back
Speaker 3: to like he would do things like buy thousands of
Speaker 3: packets of chocolate for British kids who were stuck in
Speaker 3: bomb shelters on Christmas and shit. And he used his
Speaker 3: fortune to smuggle his Jewish in laws out out of Austria.
Speaker 3: And he uses influence. He had a bunch of ex
Speaker 3: wives because I don't know, people used to marry when
Speaker 3: they should have just dated.
Speaker 2: Just I mean, living a bachelor lifestyle, but not because
Speaker 2: they were getting married. Yeah. Look, everyone's a slot and
Speaker 2: I love that for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he stayed friends with his exes,
Speaker 3: which I feel like is like a good judge of
Speaker 3: a man when he's dating women is if he stays
Speaker 3: friends with his exes even more than staid friends with
Speaker 3: his exes. He smuggled his fucking exes out of and
Speaker 3: his like kid with one of them out of Germany.
Speaker 1: M I I was gonna say, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: it's a green flag unless his only friends are his exes.
Speaker 1: Then it becomes a red flag.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, fair enough, fair enough. It makes you.
Speaker 1: Think, as someone who unfortunately dates men, it happens to
Speaker 1: the best of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, including uh Conrad Wighte who also dated men.
Speaker 2: Orally slept with them.
Speaker 3: I don't think you're married and Conrad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The most famous of these expressionists today is probably Fritz Lang,
Speaker 3: called the Master of Darkness by some like Film Institute
Speaker 3: or something. I think they even wrote it down in
Speaker 3: that way where they said, like, please say it like that.
Speaker 3: He directed Metropolis. That's what I know him for. He
Speaker 3: did a bunch of other shit, but when I was
Speaker 3: like a little edge lord fucking school kid, I really
Speaker 3: liked Metropolis. And what inspired him was the human instinct
Speaker 3: to revolt against totalitarianism, whether that totalitarianism was Fascist or Bolshevik.
Speaker 3: His first day of work as a director, January fifth,
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen, he takes a taxi to work and something
Speaker 3: else happens that day. There was a big fucking uprising
Speaker 3: in Germany, because Germany in nineteen nineteen was a really
Speaker 3: interesting time. Basically, the Communists tried to overthrow the Social
Speaker 3: Democratic Party and the Spartacist uprising and it didn't work.
Speaker 3: And Fritz Lang didn't take a side in it, but
Speaker 3: he watched it and he was like, he says, his
Speaker 3: quote is it was that day, the first day I
Speaker 3: was to direct that I understood the pawn revolts. I
Speaker 3: did not become a director that day, but I did
Speaker 3: become an artist because of that experience. And Fritz Lang
Speaker 3: fucking interesting. He was a Catholic atheist with Jewish heritage,
Speaker 3: and like the rest of his generation, he fought in
Speaker 3: World War One. He lost his right eye. He was
Speaker 3: wounded four times during World War One, and he's committed
Speaker 3: anti fascist. He also hates the Bolsheviks, he says everyone
Speaker 3: when he's talking about why he made Metropolis, he was like,
Speaker 3: I'm afraid of sutalitarianism. His quote is everyone was talking
Speaker 3: about the future, and I was afraid of their vision.
Speaker 3: So I made mine that reflected that fear. And as
Speaker 3: he said of the Bolsheviks in particular, they're just another uniform.
Speaker 3: I hate all uniforms. And this is the first dystopia,
Speaker 3: right as Metropolis. Again, it's funny because when I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: the first, this the first that I'm kind of like,
Speaker 3: I don't know that we know of, right, you know, sure,
Speaker 3: like there might have been these film scenes and like
Speaker 3: countries that didn't have end up in America, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, his wife, he had worse choice
Speaker 3: in wife, Thea von Harbow, who wrote Metropolis. She she
Speaker 3: probably saw it as propaganda of a different sort. She
Speaker 3: became a Nazi. Uh so Metropolis was made by a
Speaker 3: couple that was an anti fascist and a fascist.
Speaker 2: Huh uh, Fritz Langdov. That's why you always talk about
Speaker 2: politics before you marry somebody.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, so what do you think, do you think
Speaker 3: like master race?
Speaker 2: Like yes, no, you know, important conversation to have. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well yeah, So first, Lange divorced her, which makes a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. It is possibly over politics if you
Speaker 2: read things from his point of view, it's like divorced
Speaker 2: over politics because she was a fucking Nazi. And if
Speaker 2: you read things that are like intended as neutral or
Speaker 2: more from her point of view, are like they were
Speaker 2: both boning other people and he was a hypocrite because
Speaker 2: he couldn't stand it because she put up with him
Speaker 2: boning other people, but he couldn't put up with it
Speaker 2: when she was bonying other people. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think it was the Nazi thing based on everything
Speaker 2: else I was reading, I'd imagine. So they were married,
Speaker 2: I'm seeing for eleven.
Speaker 3: Years, yeah, yeah, throughout the whole twenties, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty two to thirty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so she becomes a Nazi, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of weird and nonsensical that she becomes a Nazi based
Speaker 3: on her other politics. She was a pro abortion activist,
Speaker 3: although of course the Nazis legalized some abortion because they
Speaker 3: believed in eugenics, because they were fucking Nazis. But and
Speaker 3: she had to secretly marry her next husband because he
Speaker 3: wasn't white. He was a dark skinned Indian man. And
Speaker 3: she later claimed that she joined the Nazis to help
Speaker 3: Indian immigrants who are living in Germany.
Speaker 2: But she made a.
Speaker 3: Fuck ton of Nazi propaganda films, and she was she
Speaker 3: was a fucking Nazi. Fritz Lang the Nazis uh cancel
Speaker 3: one of his films as being dangerous, right, But then
Speaker 3: the propaganda guy, Joseph Goebbels calls Lang to his office
Speaker 3: and Fritz is like, oh fuck, I'm fucked, Like fucking
Speaker 3: Goebbels has just canceled my film. And now I'm like
Speaker 3: walking into this office and there's like men with guns
Speaker 3: everywhere and shit, right, and like so Fris Lang walks
Speaker 3: in and Goebbels is like, hey, uh, we had to
Speaker 3: cancel your film. I'm sorry about that. You know, it's
Speaker 3: a verse bad or whatever. But you're really good at filmmaking.
Speaker 3: What if you become the in charge of the Nazi
Speaker 3: film studio. You could be like the person who creates
Speaker 3: nationalist socialist film, Like, don't you want that job? Isn't
Speaker 3: that amazing? And Chris Lang and Goebbels is like, and
Speaker 3: it's totally okay the fact that we know you're Jewish,
Speaker 3: because even though his mom was a practicing Catholic, she'd
Speaker 3: been like born Jewish or whatever. And so he's surrounded
Speaker 3: by armed Nazis and he does what probably anyone would
Speaker 3: do in exactly this position, which is he's like, oh, totally,
Speaker 3: I would absolutely love that job. And then he gets
Speaker 3: the fuck out of Germany. He just like goes home,
Speaker 3: being like, yeah, see you later. I'm totally your guy,
Speaker 3: gonna be in charge of.
Speaker 2: I'll be there on Monday.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He goes home, He packs up all of his stuff,
Speaker 3: including a bunch of all of like the Prince of
Speaker 3: films that he can. He gets the fuck out of Germany.
Speaker 3: He claims that he never went back, but he actually
Speaker 3: went back a couple times, I think to go get
Speaker 3: more shit. A couple times over the next couple of
Speaker 3: months before he is gone for good, and he grabbed
Speaker 3: a copy of Metropolis. It's probably for the best he did,
Speaker 3: although who knows, maybe the Nazis would have fucking loved Metropolis.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure someone knows. The answer is someone knows
Speaker 3: whether or not the Nazis love Metropolis?
Speaker 2: Is that the one I will want to say i've
Speaker 2: seen it? Is it three hours long? Is that the
Speaker 2: one that's like really long? And this is coming from
Speaker 2: someone who loves R R R, which is also three
Speaker 2: hours long. But I was like, I can't be watching Metropolis.
Speaker 2: It's too long. Oh no, I'm not even correct about that.
Speaker 2: It's only an hour fifty four. Yeah, so never mind.
Speaker 3: It's it's been I used to be obsessed with this film,
Speaker 3: but I barely remember it. But I barely remember anything.
Speaker 3: It's it's a dystopian thing about like there's like workers
Speaker 3: and they're all basically machines and they get like marched
Speaker 3: off and put into the underground and there's like a big.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have seen it brag. Yeah. Once again, I
Speaker 2: just just thought it just seemed maybe just seemed like
Speaker 2: three hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that is fair. There's also been a million
Speaker 3: different cuts of it. They like keep re releasing it
Speaker 3: with different cuts.
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe I saw the three Maybe I saw the
Speaker 2: r r R cut of my trumpet.
Speaker 3: Probably just where they just enter stitch r r R
Speaker 3: into it in order to make people actually pay attention exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I loved all these German expressions horror films,
Speaker 3: and then like my attention span stopped being capable of
Speaker 3: watching them for a very long time, and like, I
Speaker 3: feel like I could be in like the right mood
Speaker 3: to go and watch these things, but it's not what
Speaker 3: I'm like. It's not currently what I use film for.
Speaker 3: I use film to mostly to turn off my fucking
Speaker 3: brain at the end of work, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I don't think that's wrong as much as I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's cool that all these people rejected all that, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, it's also cool when you just fucking embrace
Speaker 3: it and do entertainment.
Speaker 2: You just got to put on Shrek too, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and escape into you know, far far away.
Speaker 3: Shadow of the ogre that's done saying yeah. Fris Lang
Speaker 3: in a nineteen seventy two interview, So he talked about
Speaker 3: how he like always puts all his violence off screen,
Speaker 3: because these there's no point putting it on screen. The
Speaker 3: viewer's imagination can do that. He made an exception, was
Speaker 3: very proud of this exception and his film Cloak and Dagger.
Speaker 3: There's a fight. To quote Fritz Lang, I am let
Speaker 3: me call myself a liberal, which is not very correct,
Speaker 3: but let me call myself that. And I hate fascists.
Speaker 3: And this was the fight of a decent man against
Speaker 3: a fascist. So seemingly my hatred got the better of me.
Speaker 3: So like, the only violence he puts in his like long,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, there might be other moments,
Speaker 3: but like, the only fucking violence he uses is someone
Speaker 3: stabbing a Nazi. Nice he gets to the US, he
Speaker 3: makes a film by how fucked up lynching in America is,
Speaker 3: because he's not trying to just be like only the
Speaker 3: Nazis are bad. He teams up with Bract he makes
Speaker 3: an anti fascist film called Hangman Also Die, which is
Speaker 3: a fucking cool name for a film. He stayed consistent,
Speaker 3: and so he's credited with the first dystopia, the blueprint
Speaker 3: for the serial killer movie, the entertainment warflick, and film noir.
Speaker 3: All fucking Fritz Lang anti fascists get shited done.
Speaker 2: That's my theory.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't just the Germans getting shit done against
Speaker 3: fascism and film. When we come back on Wednesday, we'll
Speaker 3: talk about the Hollywood Anti Nazi League, and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about why the Warner Brothers were cooler than you realize,
Speaker 3: and we'll talk about Walt Disney, but not as a
Speaker 3: cool guy.
Speaker 2: No. I was like Walt Disney way was anti Semite.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, shows, is Robert Evans gonna pop up?
Speaker 1: What's happening, Caitlin? Do you have anything that you would
Speaker 1: like to plug?
Speaker 2: Sure? You can follow me on social media on Twitter
Speaker 2: and Instagram at Kaitlyn Dronte because the more followers I have,
Speaker 2: the more validated I feel as a human being in
Speaker 2: that yes, a sad fact. You can follow and listen
Speaker 2: to my podcast, The Bechdel Cast, which is all about
Speaker 2: movies and examining movies through an intersectional feminist lens. Margaret
Speaker 2: has been a guest on the episode on We Are
Speaker 2: the Best, very fun movie about tween punk kids making
Speaker 2: a band in nineteen eighties Sweden, Right, I think so?
Speaker 2: And then also you can check out the movie r
Speaker 2: R R. It's streaming in a few different places, and
Speaker 2: depending on the city you live in, it might still
Speaker 2: be in theaters. I saw it last night in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 2: Ever heard of it? I hope this age as well.
Speaker 2: I mean like a school c R r R. Although
Speaker 2: it has been it's been criticized for being like, you know,
Speaker 2: Indian nationalist propaganda at a time where the politics in
Speaker 2: India are a little scary. So I understand. I know
Speaker 2: about the criticism of the movie, and yet it's the
Speaker 2: coolest movie ever made. So check out. And that's I'm
Speaker 2: gonna stop talking.
Speaker 1: Okay, And Margaret, you have a book that's out that
Speaker 1: people can order, correct do.
Speaker 3: I'm even on book tour right now. If you look
Speaker 3: at my Instagram at Margaret Killjoy, there'll be some of
Speaker 3: the tour dates posted, and then I'll get around to
Speaker 3: posting the rest of the tour dates when I get
Speaker 3: my shit together. But I have very little free brain
Speaker 3: space because I'm on tour right now for a book
Speaker 3: called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, which is a collection
Speaker 3: of short fiction available from Akpress anywhere you buy books.
Speaker 3: If you like people killing CEOs with drones, or you
Speaker 3: like mermaids who eat men, Or you like people dressing
Speaker 3: up as Orcs and then fighting Nazis in the woods
Speaker 3: with swords, or if you like arsonists who fall in
Speaker 3: love with ghosts, then you might like this book. You
Speaker 3: might hate it, yes, but you might like Yeah.
Speaker 1: So check out check out at Margaret Kiljoy on Instagram.
Speaker 3: From more Infro on that yeah, and we will see
Speaker 3: you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website foolzonmedia dot com or check
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