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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 2: In today's episode, We're going to cover a unique film

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Speaker 2: that I've wanted to cover for a long time here

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Speaker 2: on the show. It's nineteen seventy four Space is the Place,

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Speaker 2: starring and built around the visionary, experimental jazz composer and

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Speaker 2: band leader Son Raw. There's nothing else out there quite

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Speaker 2: like it, just like there has never been anyone else

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Speaker 2: quite like Sun Raw. So I'm really looking forward to

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Speaker 2: discussing this one. Joe, had you seen the movie before?

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Speaker 3: No, I had never seen the movie before, And what

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Speaker 3: a treat. I loved it. I thought this was great.

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Speaker 3: It's totally unique. I've never seen a movie like this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is quite a treat. In its best moments,

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Speaker 2: I think Space is the Place delivers the kind of

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Speaker 2: avant garde surrealism that you would find in certainly nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventies cinema such as Jo Darowski's Holy Mountain, while also

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Speaker 2: channeling various works of contemporary and classic science fiction. Certainly

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Speaker 2: early scenes also bring to mind seventy two silent running,

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Speaker 2: you know, where we have these sort of artificial forests

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Speaker 2: or some sort of an alien landscape that we're visiting.

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Speaker 2: And of course all these examples speak to something about

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Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and often something to do with dislocation

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Speaker 2: in the early nineteen seventies. Meanwhile, there are other elements

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Speaker 2: again of spaces the place that harken to B movie

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Speaker 2: science fiction in the fifties and sixties, and all of

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Speaker 2: this while providing a platform for sun Raw to express

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Speaker 2: his own particular philosophy on personal identity, creative liberation, mythology,

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Speaker 2: and above all, the spiritual power of music. Speaking of music,

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Speaker 2: it is worth noting that this is, in a very

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Speaker 2: limited way, a concert film, or more to the point,

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Speaker 2: it's a project that kind of started out as an

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Speaker 2: attempt to do some sort of a concert film too.

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Speaker 2: I think the earliest idea was, let's get Sun Raw

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Speaker 2: and his orchestra inside a planetarium and they'll do a show.

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Speaker 2: There'll be lights, and we'll film it. That never came

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Speaker 2: to fruition, but that project idea ended up becoming Space

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Speaker 2: as the place. It ended up becoming a narrative film

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Speaker 2: that has sequences of actual solar orchestra performance, but also

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Speaker 2: has this narrative structure that in times also has elements

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Speaker 2: of say, black exploitation cinema of the seventies, but also

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Speaker 2: again keeps using these sci fi and surrealist elements as well.

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Speaker 2: So when this film is firing in all cylinders, it's

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Speaker 2: just absolutely mesmerizing, offering a sort of crystallization of some

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Speaker 2: of Sunraw's cosmic afro futurist ideas.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of parts of this movie

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Speaker 3: where soun Raw seems to I was gonna say, break character,

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Speaker 3: but I guess that's to the extent that he is

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Speaker 3: playing a character in the movie and is not just

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Speaker 3: speaking for himself. I do think there is some element

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Speaker 3: of performance, but also he is putting a lot of

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Speaker 3: his real self and his real thoughts into the movie

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Speaker 3: from what I can tell, But there is a lot

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Speaker 3: of Sunraw just speaking his ideas in some monologues that

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Speaker 3: occur within scenes or at least are intercut with scenes,

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Speaker 3: but feel almost just improvised. He's sort of like sharing

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Speaker 3: his thoughts or kind of commenting on the plot of

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Speaker 3: the movie, if that makes sense.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, in the nature of these little monologues, they

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Speaker 2: feel again, they feel almost improved. Though. I'm to understand

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Speaker 2: Sonraw wrote all of his lines and actually, you know,

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Speaker 2: wrote them out before delivering them. But yeah, there's almost

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Speaker 2: kind of a documentarian feel to his presentation at times,

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Speaker 2: and then his whole character is bound up like in

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Speaker 2: this sense of, you know, a very wise figure, almost

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Speaker 2: kind of a Buddha like figure who is sharing wisdom

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Speaker 2: with you, but also laying out riddles and asking questions

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Speaker 2: of you and so forth in a very tantalizing way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 2: Now, there have been multiple books written about sun Raw,

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Speaker 2: and several of these seem very well regarded. I was

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Speaker 2: reading through Space is the Place, The Lives and Times

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Speaker 2: of Sun Raw by jazz historian John Zwed, in addition

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Speaker 2: to DVD extras on Space Is the Place and a

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty musical documentary piece titled Sun Raw A Joyful Noise,

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Speaker 2: which you can find in various places. I watched that

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Speaker 2: one an Eternal Family, but I think you can also

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Speaker 2: find it like on YouTube.

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Speaker 3: I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, but

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Speaker 3: you shared it with me. You shared the part where

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Speaker 3: Sunraw is warming and he's doing this thing on the

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Speaker 3: keyboard where he starts spinning around in circles and ultimentually

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Speaker 3: hitting the keyboard each time he revolves. Impressive.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, A Joyful Noise has some great sit downs bits

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Speaker 2: with Son Raw, and there's also bits where he's like

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Speaker 2: wandering around the ancient Egyptian segment of a museum, perhaps

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Speaker 2: in Philadelphia, I'm not sure where, you know, talking about

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Speaker 2: some of his concepts. But also some great performance footage,

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Speaker 2: including this scene where he's just tearing into the synthesizer.

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Speaker 2: Just passion on display there. But the book by Zwet

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Speaker 2: is quite good. He was born in thirty six. The

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Speaker 2: author actually saw Sun Raw in his orchestra play, and

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Speaker 2: as he points out in the book, like Raw. He

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Speaker 2: grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, later lived in Philadelphia like Raw.

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Speaker 2: So he was like, I was the ideal person to

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Speaker 2: write a book about him, while also acknowledging that this

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Speaker 2: was like the first biography that he wrote. Generally not

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Speaker 2: advisable to pick somebody who say denies having been born

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Speaker 2: or or is very cagey about various aspects of their

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Speaker 2: terrestrial biography. Yeah, but it's a great book, and I

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Speaker 2: wanted to share just a couple of excerpts from it.

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Speaker 2: Particularly there's a part where he's talking about what it

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Speaker 2: was like to go and see Sun Raw and his

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Speaker 2: band the Orchestra perform in the late sixties and early seventies,

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Speaker 2: you know, basically the time period around and just before

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Speaker 2: the release of this film.

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Speaker 3: And just as a bit of context by there was

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Speaker 3: sort of an arc of Sunraw's career where earlier on, say,

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Speaker 3: in the forties and fifties, he was a more conventional

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Speaker 3: jazz musician. Maybe not totally conventional, I think, always sort

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Speaker 3: of you know, more innovative, but he was playing in

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Speaker 3: more familiar styles like maybe swing or I read that

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Speaker 3: maybe some of his stuff is considered hard bop.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, hard bob b boban. I'm gonna have to admit,

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Speaker 2: as we discuss Son Raw and his music, I've never

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Speaker 2: been like a huge jazz person, so I'm going to

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Speaker 2: use some of the wrong terminology to describe jazz inevitably.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, he was, this is my understanding as well,

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Speaker 2: and more traditional, but then you know, really gets on

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Speaker 2: this space trip, you know, certainly by the late sixties,

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Speaker 2: early seventies.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So in

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Speaker 3: the sixties is when the stuff it starts getting very

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Speaker 3: strange and going in much more experimental, avant guard directions,

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Speaker 3: and by the seventies is incorporating just lots of weirdness.

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Speaker 3: Is like famously weird at this point.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, so the biographer here writes that, yeah, going

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Speaker 2: to one of these concerts could be mystifying and even scary.

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Speaker 2: Quote the exotic, the down home, eccentric, hip, archaic and

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Speaker 2: even and the freaky could come at the audience in

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Speaker 2: overlapping waves. He writes that are performed might begin in

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Speaker 2: total darkness, and then the lights would come up on

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Speaker 2: acrobats and dancers while the band chanted marched around and

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Speaker 2: various costumes you know that might reference both ancient Egypt

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Speaker 2: and also a kind of space age future. You'd have

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Speaker 2: saxophone players engaging in battles, musical battles. And then quote

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Speaker 2: there was also the maestro himself and his cockpit slash

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Speaker 2: pullpit playing an electric keyboard, his fingers sliding upside down

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Speaker 2: on the keys, sometimes with his butt. All of this

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Speaker 2: enacted in front of a silent movie of the band

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Speaker 2: capering among the pyramids of Egypt.

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Speaker 3: That sounds pretty amazing. I wish I could have seen that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, I'll come back to this

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Speaker 2: as well. But even though soun Raw has been gone

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Speaker 2: from the mortal realm for quite a while, the orchestra

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Speaker 2: is still around and still tours, so it is possible

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Speaker 2: for folks out there to catch them. More on that

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Speaker 2: in a bit, but any rate, so this was the

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Speaker 2: basic vibe of the show, and some music fans, critics,

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Speaker 2: and commentators loved all of this. Others distrusted it or

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Speaker 2: scoffed at it. You know, it wasn't universally loved, but

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Speaker 2: a lot of people were into it. But the band

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Speaker 2: was doing something very unique. They were creating excitement, generating

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Speaker 2: excitement about jazz, drawing in all these different jazz influences

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Speaker 2: while also exploring new ground. Son Raw was a pioneer

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Speaker 2: in the use of electric music in jazz, and he

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Speaker 2: was also of course a founding pioneer in afrofuturism itself.

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Speaker 2: So he's bringing in space age concepts, sci fi concepts,

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Speaker 2: esoteric concepts alongside Black egyptomania to generate his own personal

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Speaker 2: mythology and this unique take on afrofuturist philosophy.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and a big part of This comes through in

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Speaker 3: the movie. It's one of the main themes of the

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Speaker 3: movie is something about a different form that black liberation

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Speaker 3: can take, So like black liberation being not just a

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Speaker 3: political project in this world, but kind, to some extent

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Speaker 3: expansion of consciousness and to some extent maybe a literal

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Speaker 3: transportation to a cosmic realm.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, this is one of

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Speaker 2: those things that I think it's difficult to codify exactly

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Speaker 2: what his philosophy was. I would say to really understand it,

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Speaker 2: you need to listen to his music and hear him talk,

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Speaker 2: and you know, hear the lectures that he gave. My

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Speaker 2: perhaps limited understanding of it is that basically the idea

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Speaker 2: is that human beings can only achieve a kind of

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Speaker 2: freedom and liberation via creative inward journey, with space being

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Speaker 2: the source of life and the infinite expanse of inner creativity,

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Speaker 2: mythology and personal identity. Earth, on the other hand, is

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Speaker 2: a doomed world, and our individual lives are much too

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Speaker 2: short and each of us much too powerless to ever

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Speaker 2: enact meaningful outward change. But on an individual inward facing level,

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Speaker 2: we can all grow ask what he referred to as

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Speaker 2: the altered destiny. Yeah, so it does seem to be

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Speaker 2: a recurring theme that, like when he's talking about space

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Speaker 2: and going into outer space, it's also talking about going

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Speaker 2: inward into the creative world.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. That is an interesting point of interpretation where I

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Speaker 3: want to be careful not to go too far either

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Speaker 3: way to either over or underliteralize the extent to which

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Speaker 3: he's talking about really traveling into space, because to some

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Speaker 3: extent it seems like it's not just a metaphor for

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Speaker 3: like expansion of consciousness or transformation of the self into

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Speaker 3: a different kind of being. What I detect, you know,

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Speaker 3: and caveats for my own understanding, but what I detect

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Speaker 3: from the film and the stuff I've read is that

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Speaker 3: there is some amount of a metaphor at work there.

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Speaker 3: That it is about changing the self and turning inward

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Speaker 3: and expanding your own mind through creative expression and the

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Speaker 3: finding of inner piece and transformation. But there is also

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Speaker 3: some sort of externalization of this into ideas about transportation

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Speaker 3: into space and the creation of new types of science

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Speaker 3: and technology powered by this creative expression and by music.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, Again, I think ultimately you have to

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Speaker 2: have to let Raw in his music and then this

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Speaker 2: film speak speak for itself. Yeah, I have a few

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Speaker 2: points here I want to cover from Sweed in that

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Speaker 2: biography that concerns specifically this film. He points out that,

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Speaker 2: you know, it originally originated as a as an attempt

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Speaker 2: to do some sort of a concert film at the

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Speaker 2: San Francisco Planetarium. He says that he does stress that

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Speaker 2: it would be a mistake to take the film too

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Speaker 2: literally as a reflection of Sunraw's ideas, but he does

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Speaker 2: point out, you know, Sunraw wrote his own lines, he

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Speaker 2: made suggestions during filming, but that it was ultimately collectively

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Speaker 2: written and considerably re edited. And he says, quote and

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Speaker 2: Son Raw, though he took directions well, kept leaving the

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Speaker 2: script behind or ignoring it. So you get the sense

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Speaker 2: from from various people involved that this was a film yeah,

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Speaker 2: that was kind of shot in in layers and then

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Speaker 2: reassembled and then reassembled again, and then there were thoughts

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Speaker 2: about you know, cutting stuff out, then the thoughts about

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Speaker 2: adding stuff back in. And it was apparently kind of

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Speaker 2: a frustration point for the director and the producers because

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Speaker 2: one of the things about Raw with his music is

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Speaker 2: like no piece was ever really completely finished. To a

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Speaker 2: certain extent, like you would always potentially play it again

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Speaker 2: and change something about it. You know. He had that

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Speaker 2: musician's approach to the content, whereas the filmmakers were like,

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Speaker 2: this needs to be done at some point, it has

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Speaker 2: to be finished so we can send it out. You know.

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Speaker 2: So there was you know, maybe you know, there were

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Speaker 2: differing philosophies on the creative process there. Yeah, but yeah.

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Speaker 2: Later on, raw Won wanted to cut the film down

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Speaker 2: to like sixty three minutes, and some of the cuts

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Speaker 2: that he wanted to take out, he wanted to take

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Speaker 2: out two sexual situations the pool hall scene that will

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Speaker 2: refer to in a bet. And he began to study

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Speaker 2: film himself and took to editing the film himself apparently,

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Speaker 2: but then increasingly thought, well everything should just be reshot.

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Speaker 2: We didn't get it the first time. He wanted to

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Speaker 2: be more beautiful, more spiritual, but then later on also

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Speaker 2: talked about, well maybe I want to put make sure

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Speaker 2: the street stuff, the pool hall scene, all this is

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Speaker 2: back in there for one reason or another. So the

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Speaker 2: movie here, it showed it. It showed just a couple

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Speaker 2: of times in San Francisco and New York when it

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Speaker 2: came out in What's seventy four, but then it largely vanished.

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Speaker 2: It kind of became not quite a lost film, but

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Speaker 2: very much an underground film for a while. And the

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Speaker 2: version that we watched the show, and the version that's

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Speaker 2: most commonly available out there, the eighty two minute cut,

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Speaker 2: this resurface, This came back out in two thousand and three,

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Speaker 2: and yeah, that's the version you're going to find in

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Speaker 2: most places.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the version I saw. So that's the longer

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Speaker 3: version that has all the stuff in it. Yeah, but

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Speaker 3: some of the especially some of the earthly present scenes

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Speaker 3: where were cut out of Sunraw's initial edit.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but then again it sounds like he had a

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Speaker 2: shorter edit. But it's not like he was like this

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Speaker 2: is my definitive cut, Like he kind of approached it

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Speaker 2: like perhaps like something that had not yet found its

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Speaker 2: ideal form.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, that strikes me. The classic artists

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Speaker 3: move like you keep changing your mind about what would

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Speaker 3: be the best form of something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally understandable. So elevator pitch for this film,

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Speaker 2: I came up with a couple of them. The Harrowing

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Speaker 2: of Earth by sun Raw there, that's kind of what's

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Speaker 2: going on as well as The Day the Earth Stood

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Speaker 2: Still jazz version.

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Speaker 3: I think both of those work, yeah, because while it

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Speaker 3: is a tale of cosmic consciousness and liberation, and it

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Speaker 3: is also a tale of doom and salvation.

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Speaker 2: All Right, Well, at this point, you're like, I need

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Speaker 2: to duck out. I need to watch this film in

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Speaker 2: its entirety and then come back or rewatch it, whatever

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Speaker 2: the case may be, or just make sure that you

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Speaker 2: can watch it later. Well. Space Is the Place is

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Speaker 2: currently available to stream in the US on both HBO

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Speaker 2: Max and the Criterion Channel. You can also find it

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Speaker 2: on DVD and a Blu ray is available via a

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Speaker 2: three LP box set from Sundays Music. For my own part,

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Speaker 2: I watched it a couple of times for this episode,

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Speaker 2: once on HBO Max and then another time on the

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Speaker 2: PLEXIFILM DVD, which I rented from Atlanta's own Video Drum.

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Speaker 2: It has a couple of extras on there. I mentioned

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Speaker 2: that that sometimes sun ron Is Orchestra would play the

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Speaker 2: Place sequences of band members in front of ancient Egyptian ruins.

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Speaker 2: They include that as bonus content on there. You can

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Speaker 2: actually watch that footage, and there's also an interview with

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Speaker 2: the producer and the director.

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Speaker 3: By the way, if you hear us saying Sunra's orchestra,

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Speaker 3: it is spelled like it sounds the way we're saying

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Speaker 3: it there, So if you're looking it up, it's a

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Speaker 3: r k arch estra. And I believe that some amount

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Speaker 3: of allusion to the idea of a biblical arc is

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Speaker 3: some is somewhat intentional.

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Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah. So Sunra's lingo is full of

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Speaker 2: various you know, unique takes on words, combinations of words

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Speaker 2: and terms. And as I'll mention again, he was a

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Speaker 2: voracious reader, read a lot of like esoteric content, alternative histories,

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Speaker 2: and also, especially earlier in his life, a lot of

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Speaker 2: like biblical material, so you know, it's very well acquainted

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Speaker 2: with with the Bible and interpretations of the Bible. And

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Speaker 2: then in his own reading, Yeah, this is this is fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Apparently he had, at least later in life, had his

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Speaker 2: own take on reading where he believed, or at least

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Speaker 2: he told people that the idea was that you had

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Speaker 2: all the knowledge that was in books already your head

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Speaker 2: and you were just unlocking them by reading books. And

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Speaker 2: therefore you could start reading a book at any point

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Speaker 2: and stop reading it at any point you're just kind

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Speaker 2: of like refreshing your brain with that content. And then

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Speaker 2: on top of that, he would tend to read like

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Speaker 2: any material as if it were like a careful analysis

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Speaker 2: of like biblical writings, and he would often hinge on

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Speaker 2: words that sound sounded similar, like orchestra orchestra, you know,

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Speaker 2: and combining things and so forth, so that there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of that in his in this film and just

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Speaker 2: in his language in general.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that there are also some kind of

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Speaker 3: Egyptian religious ideas Tupstra I think, you know, raw of course.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but even things like altered destiny comes up,

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Speaker 2: which of course you get the sense of altered destiny,

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Speaker 2: but also an altar as in a like a place

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Speaker 2: where some sort of religious ritual takes place and so forth.

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Speaker 2: So they were more of that to discuss as we proceed.

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Speaker 2: But let's go ahead and get into the people behind

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Speaker 2: this film, starting with the director. It is John Coney,

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Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty five through twenty fifteen American director

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Speaker 2: who has the sole directorial credit on the film, and

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Speaker 2: outside of this film, Outside of Space is the Place,

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Speaker 2: he's also credited with directing Pink Floyd Kqed so kqed

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Speaker 2: IS was a San Francisco TV station and basically, you know,

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Speaker 2: around this time, late sixties, early seventies, I guess they

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Speaker 2: had a lot of access to and maybe sent up

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Speaker 2: kind of a mandate to film a lot of like

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Speaker 2: a lot of bands and a lot of musical acts,

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Speaker 2: including Pink Floyd. And so this was what Pink Floyd

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Speaker 2: kqed is slash was just a film studio performance with

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Speaker 2: I think some added like you know, light show, bells

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Speaker 2: and whistles. And of course this ties into the original

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Speaker 2: plan for Space is the place that it would be

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Speaker 2: some sort of a just a film performance in a

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Speaker 2: cool setting, and that of course morphed into this narrative film. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and it's also stressed that like different people were brought

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Speaker 2: in at different times to add elements that would be

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Speaker 2: eventually stitched together into this mostly cohesive narrative form that

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Speaker 2: includes writer Joshua Smith, who will get to in a moment,

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Speaker 2: cinematographer Seth Hill, who was I should note a writer

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Speaker 2: and director on in search of with Leonard Nimoy, and

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Speaker 2: then all of this gets edited together by editor Barbara Pocras,

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Speaker 2: whose credits include Knight of the Cobra Woman, The Giant

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Speaker 2: Spider Invasion, Fade to Black Chud two, and the Return

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Speaker 2: of a Living Debt.

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Speaker 3: Chud to Bud the Chud exactly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, oh boy. All right, so we've covered the director.

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Speaker 2: The producer on this was Jim Newman born nineteen thirty three.

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Speaker 2: This was the first of only three production credits that

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Speaker 2: he has from the seventies and eighties. Newman was himself

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Speaker 2: a jazz saxophonist and a multi instrumentalist who ultimately became

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Speaker 2: involved in a number of artistic interests, from music performance

364
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Speaker 2: to art gallery management. He will also worked with KQED

365
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Speaker 2: TV at the time on programs featuring a variety of musicians,

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Speaker 2: and it was roughly out of this work that the

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Speaker 2: idea emerged to do this Sunraw project. He went on

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Speaker 2: to co found the music festival organization and record label

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Speaker 2: Other Minds in I believe nineteen ninety one, and that

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Speaker 2: continues on to this day. The festival especially, I think

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Speaker 2: the next one is this October.

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Speaker 3: Oh cool. Do you know what kind of acts they get?

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Speaker 2: I was looking at it. I think it's a lot

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Speaker 2: of like jazz and jazz adjacent tie ACKs. But I

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Speaker 2: was not super familiar with it, so Bay Area music

376
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Speaker 2: fans and jazz enthusiasts write in and tell us about

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Speaker 2: it all right. The writer again, Joshua Smith, is the

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Speaker 2: credited writer, alongside Sonraw, who will get to in just

379
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Speaker 2: a second. Smith's only other writing credit was nineteen seventy

380
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Speaker 2: five Super Seal, a kid's movie about a seal that

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Speaker 2: is I guess super and its stars. One of the

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Speaker 2: stars is Sterling Holloway and it was directed by a

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Speaker 2: director by the name of Michael Duggan.

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Speaker 3: So this is about a super seal as in a pinniped.

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Speaker 3: It's not about a super seal.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, not like a navy seal, like a straight up

387
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Speaker 2: animal seal. And I think it's sometimes. It was also

388
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Speaker 2: released under the title Captain Nemo. For some reason, I.

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Speaker 3: Wasn't even thinking navy seal. I was thinking, like, it

390
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Speaker 3: couldn't be about a gasket.

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Speaker 2: It's not a gasket, it's not a soldier. It's just

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Speaker 2: a straight up seal.

393
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Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but hey, we've been putting off. Okay, so

394
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Speaker 3: now we're going to get to the main, the main attraction.

395
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Speaker 3: What is this movie about. It's about Sun Raw.

396
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Speaker 2: That's right, and Sunraw depends This is a difficult Does

397
00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 2: Sunraw play himself? Does he play a fictional version of Sounraw?

398
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Speaker 2: This is I guess this is kind of an opening question.

399
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Speaker 2: It depends on how you want to approach it.

400
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Speaker 3: This was one of my big questions about the movie too,

401
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:03,399
Speaker 3: and this will come up again when we start talking

402
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Speaker 3: about parts of the plot.

403
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Speaker 2: Yeah. But he also again is credited as writer. He

404
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:11,840
Speaker 2: at least wrote all of his own lines, and he

405
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:14,080
Speaker 2: is the composer. All of the music you hear in

406
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Speaker 2: this film is Son Raw.

407
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Speaker 3: And his orchestra.

408
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:21,440
Speaker 2: So Sounrah lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety three, one

409
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Speaker 2: of the most enigmatic performers of the twentieth century, regardless

410
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Speaker 2: of genre, and a highly influential figure in avant garde jazz.

411
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Speaker 2: As Zwed discusses in his book, Raw gave multiple and

412
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Speaker 2: sometimes contradictory origin stories about himself and his early history

413
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Speaker 2: as a human being, while also denying being born, denying

414
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Speaker 2: being a human, and dismissing any previous names that he

415
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 2: had as mere pseudonyms. So again, this is not one

416
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Speaker 2: of those cases where he was professionally known as Son Raw.

417
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Speaker 2: It seems to me like he was Son Raw I

418
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 2: mean that's the name he went by. People called him

419
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Speaker 2: son Raw or Sonny Raw or Sonny or Raw, and

420
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Speaker 2: it was either a persona that he deeply lived or

421
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Speaker 2: indeed simply who he was. Still we know he was

422
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 2: born Herman Sonny Blount in nineteen fourteen in Birmingham, Alabama,

423
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Speaker 2: and that he quickly proved himself a quite gifted and

424
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Speaker 2: unique individual. He was a voracious reader even at an

425
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Speaker 2: early age, a high achieving student, and something of a

426
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 2: musical prodigy. From a very early age he was reading

427
00:24:30,119 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 2: and composing sheet music, playing in adult bands, apparently coming

428
00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,879
Speaker 2: home from gigs with every last song memorized that they played.

429
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Speaker 2: Just had an amazing aptitude for music. He attended Alabama

430
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 2: Agricultural and Mechanical University, and he was considering further education

431
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 2: in music, teaching, and even the church, while also just

432
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Speaker 2: reading on a variety of topics, including commentaries and concordances

433
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Speaker 2: for the Bible. And it was during this time, this

434
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 2: would have been on nineteen thirty six when he was

435
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,719
Speaker 2: I guess around twenty two, he had a visionary or

436
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:07,400
Speaker 2: paranormal experience, or that those are the terms we would

437
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 2: use for it today, in which he felt himself experienced

438
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 2: himself transported in energy form to the planet Saturn by

439
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 2: other worldly entities that had antennas over their eyes and

440
00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 2: ears that told him to decease teaching training because there

441
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 2: was going to be quote great trouble in schools and

442
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:29,199
Speaker 2: that a time of chaos was coming and that he

443
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 2: would need to speak and the people would listen to him.

444
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 2: And this vision also included, like it's detailed in the biography,

445
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 2: like thousands of spaceships landing on Earth beneath a purple

446
00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:40,760
Speaker 2: and dark red sky.

447
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 3: Wow, that's interesting. I had read about his experience of

448
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 3: being transported bodily to Saturn, but I hadn't read this

449
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 3: detail about the spaceships descending on Earth beneath a purple

450
00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 3: and red sky, which maybe I'm taking the implications of

451
00:25:58,080 --> 00:25:59,879
Speaker 3: that wrong with that sounds kind of ominous to me.

452
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 3: And usually though a lot in the movie Space Is

453
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 3: The Place is about the future doom of Earth, the

454
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 3: doom of Earth does not seem to come from external

455
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 3: cosmic sources. Really. It seems like that, you know, the

456
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,640
Speaker 3: cosmos going outside beyond the Earth is like the good thing,

457
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 3: that's the salvation and the doom of the Earth is

458
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 3: somehow intrinsic to it.

459
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:27,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bit in a Joyful Noise where he's

460
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:31,159
Speaker 2: giving a a lecture where he's talking about how, like

461
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,159
Speaker 2: all life everything comes from space, like space is the

462
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 2: source of everything that is vital, but then Earth produces

463
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 2: nothing but death. And I think his view is that, like,

464
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,639
Speaker 2: it's the people on Earth are out of line with

465
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 2: the spirit and with their spiritual existence, and it's because

466
00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:51,679
Speaker 2: of these problems on Earth that we are kind of

467
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:55,439
Speaker 2: like dooming ourselves. But this will be interesting to get

468
00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 2: into when we discuss the plot of the movie as well. Yeah,

469
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 2: so I mentioned earlier that sun Raw would sometimes give

470
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:07,639
Speaker 2: contradictory ideas about his past human life, but Zwed writes

471
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 2: that Sunraw, concerning the story of Saturn, quote told this

472
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 2: story many times, unembarrassed, ingenuously and with remarkable consistency of detail.

473
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 2: So you know, no matter how he would sort of

474
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:23,919
Speaker 2: play with other stories, he basically told the same story

475
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,159
Speaker 2: every time with this one. And he points out that

476
00:27:27,240 --> 00:27:31,200
Speaker 2: while in retrospect we might compare this to UFO abduction tales,

477
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:35,920
Speaker 2: except with the aliens here being friendly, which isn't always

478
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 2: the case with alien aduction narratives obviously, but more to

479
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 2: the point, he points out this was many years before

480
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 2: the UFO abduction script really took off in the early

481
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. Now, it is also worth pointing out that

482
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,720
Speaker 2: you can compare this story to various traditions of Christian

483
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 2: conversion experiences as well, and of course, broadly, you know

484
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 2: that is always the case. The paranormal experiences that involve UFO,

485
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 2: those are just you know, very much adjacent to stories

486
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 2: involving angels or spirits, these various visionary experiences people have

487
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 2: had throughout time for a variety of reasons. We've talked

488
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 2: about this on the show on Stuff to Will Your

489
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:14,320
Speaker 2: Mind multiple times before.

490
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 3: Have we talked about how a lot of the UFO

491
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:23,160
Speaker 3: lore is just is coming full circle to spiritual phenomena beliefs?

492
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that well, today, a lot of the people

493
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 3: who you know, twenty years ago they were really big

494
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,399
Speaker 3: about UFO is like as aliens coming from space. Now

495
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 3: a lot of them have concluded that actually aliens are

496
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 3: angels or aliens are demons that like the same phenomena

497
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:44,239
Speaker 3: they believed in exist, but now they are convinced it

498
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 3: is spiritual phenomena.

499
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 2: Oh, Wow, yeah, I mean it, I really have to

500
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 2: unpack what it says about us today as a civilization.

501
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 2: But it makes sense because again we're dealing with the

502
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:01,200
Speaker 2: same meat with different dressing here, I think. Yeah, so

503
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 2: I'm providing the brief version here concerning son Raw. But

504
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 2: after this experience, the man who would become Sonny Raw

505
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 2: and finally Sun Raw began to devote himself to creating

506
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 2: music with a tightly selected group of spiritually like minded musicians.

507
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 2: What followed, most notably with the son Raw House in

508
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 2: Philadelphia was something sometimes described as a house of perpetual rehearsal.

509
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 3: So just playing music constantly, yeah, just through yeah, yeah yeah.

510
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 2: And you know, if you're like me and you don't

511
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 2: know a whole lot about jazz, you might you might

512
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 2: hear orchestra music or see performance footage and think, well,

513
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 2: this is is just kind of improvising. They're riffing, right,

514
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 2: But the orchestra music was the result of meticulous rehearsal.

515
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 2: That's one thing that all these different sources point out

516
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 2: is that like they were just always rehearsing when they film.

517
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 2: Space is the place, Like son Raw and his band

518
00:29:55,760 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 2: showed up and they were just ready to go. They

519
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 2: had everything, you know. You know, I don't know to

520
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 2: what degree there is still playing around and riffing and

521
00:30:02,880 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: so forth, but you know, it's still a lot of

522
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 2: work goes into creating what you see on the screen

523
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 2: and what you hear on these various audio releases.

524
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:14,239
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know to what extent the sun Raw

525
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 3: Orchestra did involve improvisation. I mean, it looks to me

526
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 3: like at least some things are maybe some improvised solos,

527
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 3: maybe some of what Sunra himself is doing at least

528
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 3: like him when he's spinning around and stuff that it

529
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 3: seems like that would have to be somewhat improvised. But

530
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,000
Speaker 3: one thing that I think is definitely true is that

531
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 3: it is hard to improvise effectively if you don't have

532
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 3: a well rehearsed skeleton to base the improvisation of, you know,

533
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 3: to have like a tight band that knows when the

534
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 3: changes are coming, knows how long to vamp, and has

535
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 3: a strong you know, has strong things going on in

536
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:52,280
Speaker 3: a structural and rehearsed way. That sort of creates the

537
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 3: opportunity for a soloist to go on a big you know,

538
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 3: improvised festooning of those those strong bones underneath. So rehear

539
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 3: they're not mutually exclusive. Like you know, strong planning and

540
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 3: rehearsal gives rise to the opportunity for good improvisation.

541
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 2: That's a great point. That's a great point. Yeah, And

542
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 2: so you know, you see, you hear people talk about,

543
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 2: you read about the Sunra House, and you see footage

544
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 2: of it. And basically this is a place where Sunrat

545
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 2: had his instruments and his various books were already touched

546
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 2: on some of the subjects he was into. And he

547
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 2: lived there along with the current orchestra members, and there

548
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: would also be a revolving assortment of guests as well.

549
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 2: But you had kind of like a communal living space,

550
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 2: almost like an asheram, except devoted to the pursuit of music.

551
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 2: Under Sunra's leadership, he might give you a new name,

552
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 2: or instruct you. Instruct you too for the first time

553
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 2: in your life, carve an ancient Egyptian infinity lightning and

554
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 2: thunder drum out of the stump of a tree that

555
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 2: had been struck by lightning across the street. That's detailed

556
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 2: and a joyful noise. And so like my musicians were

557
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 2: drawn to him like it was a you know, they

558
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 2: considered like an honor to be able to be there

559
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: and partake of this, to sort of engage in the

560
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 2: study of the deep cosmic background radiation of jazz wow.

561
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 2: And so the orchestra toured the US, toured around the world,

562
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 2: and when sun Raw passed in ninety three, leadership of

563
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 2: the band at least by ninety five, I believe passed

564
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 2: to orchestra member Marshall Allen, who is in this film,

565
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 2: and Marshall and the band continues to tour and as

566
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 2: of this recording June ninth, twenty twenty six, Marshall Allen

567
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 2: still leads the band and performs with them at the

568
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:42,960
Speaker 2: age of one hundred and two. WHOA, yeah, very impressed.

569
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 3: That's awesome. Yeah, okay, Well, so we know that Sunraw's

570
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 3: ideas are the core of the film's content. He's sort

571
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 3: of the star of the film, sort of playing a

572
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 3: character maybe, but also to a large extent, playing himself

573
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 3: and representing. But there are also characters in the movie

574
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 3: that are fully just fictional characters, right, and they might

575
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:11,959
Speaker 3: sort of represent ideas within Sunraw's philosophy or theology. But

576
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 3: one of these major characters in the movie is called

577
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 3: the Overseer sort of a primary villain, a kind of

578
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 3: Satanic figure in a way, though I don't want to

579
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 3: overseell that connection because I don't think you can just

580
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 3: straightforwardly say he is the devil. That's too simple.

581
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's There are shades of Satan to him,

582
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 2: for sure, But yeah, he is this clearly supernatural manipulator

583
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 2: type character that is all about the manipulation and in

584
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:44,719
Speaker 2: the corruption of human beings.

585
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he likes people to meet their bad destiny.

586
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 3: I've got more detail about that later on, But there's

587
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 3: sort of different ideas about how sun Raw versus the

588
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 3: Overseer influence people with respect to destiny, at least as

589
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 3: far as I could tell from the storytelling.

590
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I should also exploitation is also a

591
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 2: major theme of this character. So The Overseer is played

592
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,720
Speaker 2: by Raymond Johnson who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty

593
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 2: twenty one. He's great in this role. He really really

594
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 2: digs into it, has a nice evil laugh that he

595
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 2: gets to belt out quite a lot. He previously appeared

596
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:25,359
Speaker 2: in an uncredited role in seventy one's Dirty Harry, and

597
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:28,600
Speaker 2: afterwards appeared as Ray Johnson in the seventy six Rudy

598
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 2: Ray Moore Picture of the Human Tornado. His later credits

599
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,560
Speaker 2: include a nineteen eighty eight TV adaptation of The Bourne Identity,

600
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 2: so he has a lot of screen time. He's pretty great.

601
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 2: Another major character, and this is the first human character

602
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss here, because so far, like sun

603
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 2: Raw is some sort of cosmic being, and then likewise

604
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 2: the Overseer is some sort of non human being. But

605
00:34:56,320 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 2: then the character Jimmy Fay is just a mortal man

606
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,320
Speaker 2: trying to make his way in the world in early

607
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:07,760
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies what Oakland, and he is played by Christopher Brooks.

608
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:11,359
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any dates on him or what his

609
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 2: age is, but he's an actor whose other credits include

610
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 2: seventy one's roseland seventy three's Alabama's Ghosts, seventy threes, Magnum Force,

611
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 2: and seventy threes The God Monster of Indian Flats, as

612
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 2: well as seventy six. Is almost a man all right.

613
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 2: A few other characters, a few other actors of note here.

614
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 2: A number of cast members in this were in nothing else.

615
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 2: This was, for the most part, I think a scrappy,

616
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 2: lower budget affair, and so there are various folks that

617
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:42,920
Speaker 2: just have this as their sole credit. But we have

618
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,840
Speaker 2: a character. This is another one of the mortal characters

619
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 2: in the show. Character Bubbles is played by Jack Baker,

620
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty seven through nineteen ninety four. Mainstream

621
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 2: American actor throughout the seventies, with appearances on such TV

622
00:35:56,840 --> 00:36:00,800
Speaker 2: shows as Mission Impossible, Good Times, One Bug, and The

623
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 2: Croft Super Show, as well as such films as seventy

624
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:07,320
Speaker 2: five's Friday Foster and seventy sevens The Kentucky Fried Movie.

625
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 2: But by the eighties he pretty much completely transitioned over

626
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 2: into the adult film industry, outside of a small role

627
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one's The Guyver, which we talked about

628
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:20,720
Speaker 2: the show, a science fiction film.

629
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 3: That was one of some kind of like powered suit

630
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 3: or mask.

631
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, biotechnology suit with screaming Mad George effects. That's right, yeah, yeah,

632
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 2: some fun stuff. Mark Hamill is in that one. But

633
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 2: at any rate, Baker, outside of that film just adult industry.

634
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:39,760
Speaker 2: After this point. He continued to work in that industry

635
00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 2: for the remainder of his career. Was nominated for awards

636
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 2: in the adult industry and eventually transitioned into comedic, non

637
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 2: sexual roles in the adult industry. And this is interesting

638
00:36:53,120 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 2: as well because there's at least one more adult actor

639
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 2: in the film. Johnny Keyes, who lived nineteen forty through

640
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, is in this film. I'm not sure who

641
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 2: he plays. It must be like a small part. I

642
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,760
Speaker 2: don't think he's credited, but he was in the Picture

643
00:37:07,200 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 2: Behind the Green Door, pretty famous adult film of the

644
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,000
Speaker 2: of this time period that shot on the same sound

645
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 2: stage as Space is the Place, oh, you know, using

646
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 2: some of the some of the same space, so you know,

647
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:24,479
Speaker 2: I don't know if like one shooting days, one shooting nights,

648
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, but yeah, these were both coming

649
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 2: together at the same time. Cool, all right? There There

650
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 2: are other like secondary antagonists in the film, and they

651
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 2: are NASA operatives. They are this will NASA assassins.

652
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,279
Speaker 3: One of the weirdest plot elements that I did not

653
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 3: expect is this movie has absolutely wicked, racist, murderous NASA technicians.

654
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:55,399
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and the main one, the nastiest of them,

655
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 2: is Agent number one and he is played by Morgan Upton,

656
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety one. Upton is

657
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 2: best known as one of the four Stormtrooper voice actors

658
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 2: working in nineteen seventy seven Star Wars.

659
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 3: Oh wow.

660
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:14,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you hear the original Star Wars any

661
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,440
Speaker 2: of that Stormtrooper chatter, Morgan Upton is in there somewhere.

662
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 3: Must be another one of these drills.

663
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. His other credits include seventy two's The Candidate, seventy

664
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 2: seven's Nightmare in Blood, seventy nine's More American Graffiti, eighty

665
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 2: six is Peggy Sue Got Married, in eighty eight s

666
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 2: Tucker the Man in His Dream, and then finally I'll

667
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 2: just mention that we have Son Raw and his orchestra

668
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 2: in this, so you will see a number of orchestra members.

669
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 2: The credited members of the orchestra president are John Gilmore,

670
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 2: Danny Davis, Larry Northington, Kawami Haddi, Ken Moshesh. June Tyson,

671
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 2: she's the vocalist. You see her multiple times. She's great.

672
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of Sunrise music, like, she's pretty iconic.

673
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 2: Can you hear someone singing? Space is the place? It's

674
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 2: June Tyson.

675
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 3: She's doing a lot of the doing a lot of

676
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 3: the chanting.

677
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Marshall Allen, we already mentioned the current member

678
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:16,799
Speaker 2: of current leader band Leader of the Orchestra, you see

679
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 2: him in this as well, elo Emoe, Danny Thompson, Lex Humphreys,

680
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 2: and Tommy Hunter uh and of this group, I think

681
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 2: Marshall Allen and Danny Davis are the only ones who

682
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,600
Speaker 2: are still part of the band. You know, several have

683
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 2: passed on since this film was made, but again, the

684
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 2: Orchestra is still out there touring by all means, go

685
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:38,919
Speaker 2: out and see them and listeners. If you have seen

686
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 2: the Orchestra perform live at any point during its existence,

687
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:44,759
Speaker 2: write in and tell us about it.

688
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 3: Have you been a member of the orchestra at any point?

689
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 2: That would be impressive as well.

690
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 3: Would please please write in Contact that stuff to blow

691
00:39:51,719 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 3: your mind dot com. Okay, are you ready to talk

692
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:05,319
Speaker 3: about the plot to some extent at least?

693
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 2: Yeah?

694
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:08,919
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do a chronological scene by scene

695
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 3: narration of this movie, as we've said before. I think

696
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,319
Speaker 3: that works better for some of the like sillier like

697
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 3: B movies we do. Instead here, I think we should

698
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 3: talk about the opening couple of sequences in detail, because

699
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 3: they established some of the themes and structure of the rest,

700
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 3: and then we can move on to some general comments

701
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:27,799
Speaker 3: and observations.

702
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 2: Yeah.

703
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 3: Oh, and by the way, inserting this from later because

704
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 3: I forgot to say it earlier. If you're not familiar

705
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,479
Speaker 3: with our show, we usually we will discuss like through

706
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 3: the whole plot of the movie and including ending details.

707
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:41,400
Speaker 3: So if you want to have things not spoiled and

708
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 3: see the movie, you know, going in fresh, you should

709
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 3: stop here and go check it out. The movie opens

710
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 3: in space, appropriately with stars hanging in the darkness.

711
00:40:51,719 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 2: Most of the films we talk about started, it's.

712
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 3: A very common opening. Yeah, so stars in space and

713
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 3: these steady pulses of organ music, just a chord on

714
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 3: the organ pulsing and then swelling and then fading, and

715
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 3: then a spaceship enters the scene, gliding through the middle

716
00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:16,359
Speaker 3: distance of the shot. This is the sun Raw Spaceship, Rob.

717
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 3: I don't know if you found is there a name

718
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 3: they give to this ship. If they mentioned it in

719
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 3: the movie, it went past me.

720
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:26,440
Speaker 2: I don't think they refer to it as is anything

721
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 2: other than sun Raw Spaceship. I often think of it

722
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 2: as the arc, yeah, because it's kind of an arc,

723
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:34,439
Speaker 2: and you know, we think of the orchestra. But yeah,

724
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:36,000
Speaker 2: I think it's just the spaceship.

725
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 3: It is sort of a yellow gold color of fire,

726
00:41:40,320 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 3: shaped a bit like a dumbbell, with two spheres connected

727
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 3: by a tube in the middle, but the two spheres

728
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 3: on each side of the handle if it's a dumbbell,

729
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 3: have tails that make themach look kind of like a tadpole.

730
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 3: And then on the front of the two spheres there

731
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 3: are these concentric circular designs that look like rings of

732
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:06,800
Speaker 3: green and orange flames surrounding central dots, which you could

733
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,720
Speaker 3: think of as the pupils of eyes or the nipples

734
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 3: of breasts. So the spaceship is a very interesting image,

735
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:17,279
Speaker 3: and like how many different other images it suggests all

736
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:20,799
Speaker 3: at the same time. Clearly there is something of the

737
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:25,439
Speaker 3: sun and solar deities about it, light and fire, there's

738
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,360
Speaker 3: something of gold about it, organic imagery like breasts or eyes,

739
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:35,280
Speaker 3: and also gamat cells to some extent ancient Egyptian religious

740
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 3: motifs are suggested by it, and I think not just

741
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 3: by proximity to the costumes. There's something about like the

742
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 3: concentric circles around the front that looks kind of Egyptian.

743
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:50,240
Speaker 3: There's also the concept of balance, with the two lobes

744
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 3: balanced on a central bar. But also there are some

745
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 3: elements of more conventional science fiction spaceships, because later we're

746
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 3: going to see the ship flying through the air shooting

747
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 3: basically laser beams out of the eyes, though not as

748
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 3: a weapon in any scene that I recall. I believe

749
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:10,800
Speaker 3: it's more for I don't know what. What do you

750
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:11,879
Speaker 3: think the beams are for?

751
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 2: Oh, and it's a great question like is it scanning?

752
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 2: Is it judging? We have this detail, we'll get to

753
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 2: where we have the card of judgment. The Tarot Card

754
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 2: of Judgment is held aloft by sun Raw and it

755
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 2: shows the spaceship on there. I don't know that that

756
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 2: gets into a question of like the doom that is

757
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:32,240
Speaker 2: coming to Earth, the death sentence that is on Earth.

758
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 2: Is it like self generated or is there some degree

759
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 2: of judgment that is taking place because sun Ra and

760
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 2: his spaceship have come to Earth.

761
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 3: It could be transmolecularization, yes, yes, it could very well be. Yeah.

762
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,480
Speaker 3: So we see the spaceship, it's like gliding through space

763
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:54,399
Speaker 3: and the voices voices start on the soundtrack. They ring

764
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,439
Speaker 3: out in this reverberating call in response, and what they're

765
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:00,400
Speaker 3: saying is it's after the end of the world. World,

766
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 3: don't you know that yet? And this goes on repeating

767
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 3: for some time, and then we start to hear the

768
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 3: instruments of the orchestra come in, playing this free jazz

769
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:15,760
Speaker 3: crescendo with chaotic drums and the kind of scrambling high

770
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 3: pitched trumpet. So if you've heard free jazz before, sometimes

771
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,240
Speaker 3: you'll hear a motif like this, like a horned instrument

772
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 3: just playing this fast, skittering, very high pitched solo that

773
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:29,800
Speaker 3: it feels like it's just frantic.

774
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:33,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love the music in this opening sequence.

775
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:40,799
Speaker 2: It feels like fittingly cosmic and dark and mysterious. Will

776
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 2: One sort of side question here is like, some of

777
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 2: you out there are very well acquainted with Sun Raw

778
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 2: and his orchestra, and perhaps already have your favorite albums.

779
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:51,399
Speaker 2: Some of you might wonder, like, well, what's a good

780
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 2: place to start with Sun Raw? It's easier now than

781
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:57,720
Speaker 2: ever before to go out and sample our new artists

782
00:44:57,719 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 2: that you're interested in, or artists that are new to you.

783
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 2: I ask a friend, my friend David Streepy, who's been

784
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 2: on the show before, what his advice is because he's

785
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 2: learned he's listened to a lot more son Raw than

786
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 2: I have, and one that he suggested to me that

787
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 2: I will pass on to listeners is Astro Black. You

788
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 2: can find that one. It's like four or five tracks.

789
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:21,080
Speaker 2: You can find it wherever you stream your music, and

790
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:24,439
Speaker 2: it a lot of the music on that release has

791
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 2: this kind of vibe to it, which I really appreciate.

792
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 3: If I can also recommend one of his albums, I

793
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:33,319
Speaker 3: was not super familiar with Sunro's music before. I think

794
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 3: I heard a little bit before, but none enough to

795
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 3: have any real knowledge or expertise about it. But I

796
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 3: started listening to some things before recording this episode, and

797
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 3: if I can recommend one of his earlier ones, it's

798
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 3: a little bit weird, but it has not gotten super

799
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 3: weird yet. It's called Interstellar Low Ways. I think it's

800
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 3: from the year nineteen sixty. I really enjoyed that one. Awesome.

801
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's good to have a place to

802
00:45:58,280 --> 00:46:00,919
Speaker 2: start because he put out so much music, and I'm

803
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 2: to understand there's a lot of music that he recorded

804
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:05,960
Speaker 2: that has never been released, like this was his this

805
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 2: was his his compulsion, his passion, and yeah, so there's

806
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:13,120
Speaker 2: just a lot of music out there. And again he

807
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 2: moved in different jazz waters. So I guess if you're

808
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 2: into jazz at all, or you think you might be,

809
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:22,400
Speaker 2: there's a good chance something son raw recorded at some

810
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:23,840
Speaker 2: point is going to connect with you.

811
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 3: Anyway. Coming back to this opening shot, I really like

812
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 3: how there are dynamics, you might say, almost like musical

813
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 3: dynamics at play in this opening. So the main thing

814
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,320
Speaker 3: I was thinking about is there's a warm cool dynamic,

815
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,280
Speaker 3: Like you get the warm musical tones of the organ

816
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:45,920
Speaker 3: when the organ is pulsing at the beginning, and you

817
00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:49,879
Speaker 3: get the warm orange gold color of the spaceship, and

818
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 3: then against that you have the cool or cold sounds

819
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 3: created by like the reverb effect on the voices when

820
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 3: the chant is going on, and the high pitched brass

821
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 3: that feels like a cold sound, and then also the

822
00:47:02,200 --> 00:47:06,319
Speaker 3: cold imagery of deep space. And I don't know, it

823
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 3: feels like textually intentional to me.

824
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:09,399
Speaker 2: Yeah.

825
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 3: So after this opening, we pan over an illustrated image

826
00:47:14,719 --> 00:47:19,080
Speaker 3: of an otherworldly garden with diverse trees and flowers blooming

827
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:21,720
Speaker 3: on the side of a hill while some credits play,

828
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:26,240
Speaker 3: And then finally, while these strange jazz sounds are still playing,

829
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 3: we come up on a live action shot in a

830
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:33,320
Speaker 3: forest with two figures in view, just two figures at first,

831
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:37,440
Speaker 3: we'll see more later. One figure is sun Raw himself,

832
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:41,799
Speaker 3: wearing his elaborate Egyptian garments with lots of gold, a

833
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 3: feronic headdress complete with this great urb and nestled in

834
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:49,280
Speaker 3: a U shaped fork rising off the middle of his crown.

835
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 3: I think this is imagery of the solar disk pointing

836
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 3: to Auta or Raw. And then there's another figure alongside

837
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,839
Speaker 3: sun Raw here, which is a figure closed entirely in

838
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 3: black robes with a black hood, so it's face its

839
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:07,640
Speaker 3: face would be the only thing visible, but the face

840
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 3: is not visible because it is hidden behind a mask,

841
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 3: and the mask is just a mirror, so no face,

842
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:15,800
Speaker 3: just a flat oval mirror.

843
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's never really explained who these mirror faced

844
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 2: entities are. I don't know, there acolytes of Sunrise and

845
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 2: the cosmic Realm or something, but I have read that

846
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 2: at some point in production this was supposed to be

847
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 2: the Overseer, but then they ended up going in a

848
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:37,920
Speaker 2: different direction with how the Overseer would be represented in

849
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 2: the film. But I love the mystery of it here

850
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 2: and God, this whole opening sequence to spaces. The place

851
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 2: is one of the most mesmerizing things I could think

852
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 2: you could see. It's like the first like three and

853
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 2: a half minutes essentially the film. I mean, I defy

854
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 2: anyone to lose interest in the movie while watching this.

855
00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:00,360
Speaker 2: It just really sucks you in. It's so surreal, another

856
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:01,399
Speaker 2: world lay out.

857
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 3: It's wonderful, It's totally cool and so sunraw. He's walking

858
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 3: here in this garden. He raises up his hand, and

859
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 3: in his hand there is an object which he kind

860
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 3: of releases into the air. I think it is supposed

861
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:18,719
Speaker 3: to be some kind of alien organism, but maybe it

862
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 3: could be a kind of biotechnology. It looks like a

863
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,799
Speaker 3: cross between a jellyfish and a closed flower. So like

864
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,960
Speaker 3: a closed flower has a long green stem terminating at

865
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 3: the top in this colorful pink and purple bulb, But

866
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:38,560
Speaker 3: then above the bulb there is a transparent dome like

867
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:42,040
Speaker 3: the bell of a jellyfish, and the stem structure kind

868
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:44,880
Speaker 3: of tapers off below the body and becomes flexible, like

869
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 3: the trailing tentacles of a jellyfish. So it's this jellyfish flower.

870
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:52,799
Speaker 3: The jellyfish flower being floats away and then seems to

871
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 3: travel beside Sunraw and his mirror faced companion hovering in

872
00:49:57,640 --> 00:49:59,919
Speaker 3: the air, I think, maybe leading them through the four

873
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,879
Speaker 3: or maybe doing their bidding in the forest, and they

874
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 3: wander through the trees, seeing plants, some plants that look

875
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:13,239
Speaker 3: like familiar earth plants, but also seeing alien flowers, some

876
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 3: of which look like horns, like trumpets or trombones, and

877
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 3: then also seeing alien fruits that kind of look like

878
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:24,680
Speaker 3: huge pink dragon fruits. And by the way, the music

879
00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:27,480
Speaker 3: is still going, so the free form music of the

880
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 3: orchestra is still playing in the background here. And then suddenly,

881
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 3: underneath one of these pink fruits, we see a group

882
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 3: of flowers or other fruits shaped like human hands growing

883
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,719
Speaker 3: from stems which are reaching up from below like they

884
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:46,720
Speaker 3: are either praising the fruit or maybe ready to catch

885
00:50:46,760 --> 00:50:50,799
Speaker 3: the fruit when it falls. And then Sunraw sends his

886
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 3: jellyfish flower ahead of him into a clearing, and then

887
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 3: he stops wandering, and the camera focuses on him while

888
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 3: he seems to be contemplating something. First, he starts to

889
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 3: hum a tune, and you could think for a second, oh,

890
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:08,879
Speaker 3: he's humming a tune. He's just bored or passing the time.

891
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 3: But then you realize he is assessing something about this place.

892
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 3: He is judging its qualities in how it receives the tune.

893
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 3: He hums, and he starts to speak. He says, the

894
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 3: music is different here, the vibrations are different, not like

895
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:29,759
Speaker 3: Planet Earth. Planet Earth is the sound of guns, anger, frustration.

896
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:34,719
Speaker 3: And now we see Sunraw is facing the figure in

897
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 3: the mirror mask and the hooded robes as if he

898
00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:39,360
Speaker 3: is speaking to that figure. But if the face of

899
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 3: a mirror is he speaking to himself? I don't know.

900
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,320
Speaker 3: Also in the background here we can see other people

901
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,800
Speaker 3: we haven't seen before. So there's a man standing aside

902
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 3: wearing a headdress representing the Egyptian falcon headed god Horus,

903
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:57,080
Speaker 3: and he's back there. So we're getting more of a

904
00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 3: flavor of Sunraw's group people traveling with him, and their

905
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 3: Egyptian cosmology reflected forms and shapes. Sunraw goes on talking.

906
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,520
Speaker 3: He says, there was no one to talk to on

907
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:15,920
Speaker 3: planet Earth who would understand. We set up a colony

908
00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:18,640
Speaker 3: for black people here. See what they can do on

909
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,479
Speaker 3: a planet of their own without any white people there.

910
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:24,360
Speaker 3: They could drink in the beauty of this planet. It

911
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,280
Speaker 3: would affect their vibrations for the better, of course, another

912
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 3: place in the universe, up under different stars, that would

913
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 3: be where the altered destiny would come in. And during

914
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 3: this monologue, the camera pulls back and we see that

915
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:41,960
Speaker 3: Sun Raw is not standing anymore. He's sitting on a

916
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,480
Speaker 3: rock in the middle of this forest clearing. And I

917
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 3: want to note here we sort of alluded to this earlier,

918
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 3: but I think this is a good place to talk

919
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:53,279
Speaker 3: about because we're hearing his monologue at this part in

920
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 3: the movie that Sunraw does not project much emotion about

921
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:02,480
Speaker 3: this as he talked, though you can understand, like the

922
00:53:02,520 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 3: things he says are very full of feeling, They express

923
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 3: feelings about things. They're full of emotional verdicts and judgments

924
00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 3: about things, So you can understand his feelings about the

925
00:53:14,600 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 3: subject matter from the words he says. But his physical

926
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:24,760
Speaker 3: bodily performance throughout the movie is almost studiously calm, quiet, flat,

927
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 3: and unemotional. He has this air that is at once

928
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 3: mystical and intellectual, but never animated, and never showing much

929
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 3: emotion in his face, his body, or his tone of speaking.

930
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 3: And I assumed at first that this was a deliberate

931
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:44,880
Speaker 3: choice made for the movie, maybe for the kind of

932
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 3: the character version of himself that he's playing.

933
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 2: But I don't know.

934
00:53:48,760 --> 00:53:50,959
Speaker 3: Looking at some interviews and Rob, I think you said

935
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 3: this that it seems he often presented himself that way

936
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 3: in interviews as well, even outside the context of the film.

937
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:00,400
Speaker 3: So maybe it's just that's the way that he was

938
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:03,280
Speaker 3: or the way that he often presented himself in public.

939
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:06,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's likely the case. I

940
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:10,439
Speaker 2: would add another thing about the way he delivers these

941
00:54:10,719 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 2: these monologues is that he's there's not a clear sense

942
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 2: of affectation in his voice, like he is not trying

943
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 2: to speak like a space Buddha or something, or like

944
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:27,759
Speaker 2: he sounds like against sounds very wise, knowledgeable, very charismatic,

945
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 2: but also sounds very much like a guy who was

946
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 2: born in Birmingham and lives in Philadelphia. You know, So

947
00:54:34,520 --> 00:54:37,440
Speaker 2: there's a he's very relatable in that sense.

948
00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's not. Again, it doesn't feel like he's

949
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 3: putting on a character. I think that's why. You know,

950
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 3: we were talking earlier about this sense that lines in

951
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 3: the movie feel like they could be improvised from him.

952
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:52,239
Speaker 3: Of course they weren't improvised. He wrote them ahead of time,

953
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:55,240
Speaker 3: but I think what we're really tapping in there, tapping

954
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 3: into there is not improvised as in made up on

955
00:54:57,800 --> 00:55:02,480
Speaker 3: the spot, but improvised as in just flowing naturally from

956
00:55:02,560 --> 00:55:06,240
Speaker 3: his real way of speaking, you know, not like lines

957
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:10,720
Speaker 3: written for another character. But anyway, So in this scene

958
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 3: sun Ross start he sort of establishes the themes of

959
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:17,760
Speaker 3: the movie, the philosophical and spiritual themes of the movie.

960
00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:21,400
Speaker 3: So one of the premises is that he wants to

961
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:24,399
Speaker 3: set up a colony in space, a colony on this

962
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:28,720
Speaker 3: beautiful other planet that can be a place for black people.

963
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 3: He also talks about the premise that the Earth is doomed.

964
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:36,960
Speaker 3: In fact, it's so doomed that it's already after the

965
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 3: end of the world. Like we heard in the chant

966
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 3: at the beginning, there's a kind of there's a fatalism

967
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 3: about that. It's not just like doom is coming or

968
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 3: maybe coming, it's already happened in a sense.

969
00:55:48,640 --> 00:55:50,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think in that like this seems to

970
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:55,840
Speaker 2: tie into this idea like post colonial contact being a

971
00:55:55,920 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 2: kind of like a post apocalyptic existence some senses. But

972
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 2: at the same time, Sunrise very much will get into

973
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:08,439
Speaker 2: the way that he treats time there is the sense

974
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 2: too that like it's after the end of the world,

975
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 2: perhaps after time has since has has ceased to make

976
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 2: any difference to us.

977
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 3: Well, let's get to that. So he explains. He talks

978
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 3: about how, in his view, the Earth in its present

979
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 3: state is not a good place for black people. So

980
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 3: he's going to set up a colony for black people

981
00:56:28,280 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 3: on this beautiful garden planet and they can live out

982
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 3: what he calls the altered Destiny. And that's again this

983
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 3: theme that comes up many times in the movie. He

984
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:41,319
Speaker 3: starts to explain how people from Earth could be physically

985
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:46,600
Speaker 3: and spiritually transported to this new planet. He says, equation wise,

986
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:49,919
Speaker 3: the first thing to do is to consider time as

987
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 3: officially ended. We work on the other side of time.

988
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 3: It sort of suggests to me that time hasn't ended

989
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 3: in the sense of the end of life. We think

990
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:04,319
Speaker 3: of the end of time as like the destruction of all,

991
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 3: but that time has ended in some other since allowing

992
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,640
Speaker 3: the type of life idealized by Sun raw to go

993
00:57:13,680 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 3: on without it. That there can be life without time

994
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 3: on the other side of time.

995
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:20,040
Speaker 2: Yeah.

996
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 3: Anyway, after this, he gets to a very important point again,

997
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 3: like a core theme of the movie, which is the

998
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:31,280
Speaker 3: method of transportation. How are we going to get the

999
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 3: people here to the planet, He says, we bring them

1000
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 3: here either through isotope teleportation, trans molecularization, or better still,

1001
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 3: teleport the whole planet here through music. And then we

1002
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:48,479
Speaker 3: get the title on screen, space is the place as

1003
00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:51,560
Speaker 3: we see a human body. I think it might be sunrass,

1004
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 3: somebody's floating in space in the gold chain mail head

1005
00:57:56,760 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 3: dress with blue satin robes wrapped all around, or sometimes

1006
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 3: extended like wings like the wings of an angel, or

1007
00:58:04,200 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 3: maybe a bird like Egyptian god. But yeah, So the

1008
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 3: final thought here is this key theme of the movie

1009
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:16,479
Speaker 3: that music can be a kind of spiritual and I think,

1010
00:58:16,520 --> 00:58:21,680
Speaker 3: in some sense literal transportation technology which has powers to

1011
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 3: take people body and soul through the cosmos to a

1012
00:58:25,400 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 3: different place, to a better planet which is not dominated

1013
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 3: and despoiled by the evil powers that rule this world.

1014
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And other interviews I've hear him

1015
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 2: talk about music as indeed a universal spiritual language.

1016
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1017
00:58:45,720 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 2: So again, just an amazing intro to this film. First

1018
00:58:49,040 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 2: what almost three and a half minutes, just absolutely mesmerizing,

1019
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:57,280
Speaker 2: sucks you in, and then we transport in time and

1020
00:58:57,400 --> 00:58:59,680
Speaker 2: place to Chicago nineteen forty three.

1021
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:02,760
Speaker 3: That's a strange transition. Yeah, you get a cipia toned

1022
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:06,520
Speaker 3: still shot outside of a bar with an old timey car.

1023
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 3: There it says Chicago nineteen forty three. So yeah, we

1024
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:21,320
Speaker 3: cut to this bar, and this is where we're going

1025
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:24,600
Speaker 3: to meet some other major characters that appear throughout the film.

1026
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:28,560
Speaker 3: So inside the bar is full of cigar smoke and

1027
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 3: hot piano music. We're hearing some bop, I guess or

1028
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:37,640
Speaker 3: some swing and there are tables with red tablecloths, folks

1029
00:59:37,680 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 3: all dressed up for a nice night out on the town.

1030
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:43,919
Speaker 3: We see young military servicemen in their uniforms. We see

1031
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:47,520
Speaker 3: men and women in fancy dresses and tuxedos. And the

1032
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 3: entertainment here at the club is music and dance. So

1033
00:59:51,080 --> 00:59:54,120
Speaker 3: there's a group of sort of burlesque or cabaret dancers.

1034
00:59:54,520 --> 00:59:58,360
Speaker 3: And then on the piano is Sonny Ray, a sort

1035
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:03,560
Speaker 3: of past earthly alter ego of Sun Raw. Not wearing

1036
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 3: his usual cosmic Egyptian clothing. Here he's dressed in a

1037
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 3: jacket with a very cool black and white chevron pattern.

1038
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:14,600
Speaker 3: I like that jacket, but underneath he's got this black

1039
01:00:14,640 --> 01:00:19,320
Speaker 3: shirt with a cool necklace on and sunglasses and a

1040
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:22,080
Speaker 3: knit cap. He's playing the piano and he is cooking.

1041
01:00:22,240 --> 01:00:26,160
Speaker 3: It's not the avant garde style of music. It's not

1042
01:00:26,160 --> 01:00:29,200
Speaker 3: that like climbing the mountains of Mars music we heard earlier.

1043
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 3: This is conventional, fast moving jazz piano. And I assume

1044
01:00:35,400 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 3: that this scene is somewhat a nod to Sunraw's own

1045
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:41,360
Speaker 3: history of his own you know, like his own past

1046
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 3: playing more conventional jazz music and as a more conventional

1047
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:48,720
Speaker 3: jazz band leader before his style started getting really weird

1048
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:50,080
Speaker 3: and different in the sixties.

1049
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:52,560
Speaker 2: I want to note this is one of those scenes

1050
01:00:52,600 --> 01:00:54,800
Speaker 2: where if you go back and rewatch the film, you

1051
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:58,040
Speaker 2: begin to notice that various other characters from the movie

1052
01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 2: Yes are present here, like the the two evil NASA guys.

1053
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:06,439
Speaker 2: They're here for some reason, totally unacknowledged. The big guy

1054
01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 2: Tiny from later in the film, he's here for some reason.

1055
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:12,040
Speaker 2: So it is the past, and we have a past

1056
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,560
Speaker 2: version of Sun Raw, but also there may be other

1057
01:01:15,600 --> 01:01:18,000
Speaker 2: mortal characters who are just here in a different incarnation.

1058
01:01:18,080 --> 01:01:18,640
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.

1059
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't know. Well,

1060
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 3: one thing I wonder is about where this scene originally

1061
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:27,840
Speaker 3: came in the ordering of the film.

1062
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:30,120
Speaker 2: Right right, yeah, again, it speaks to the way this

1063
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 2: film was kind of like found and it's edit.

1064
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:35,840
Speaker 3: But anyway, in this scene we also meet one of

1065
01:01:35,880 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 3: the main villains of the movie, named the Overseer, who

1066
01:01:40,320 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 3: on one hand is represented as a wealthy and powerful

1067
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:50,320
Speaker 3: pimp with expensive clothes and superficial charm though he can

1068
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:53,520
Speaker 3: he's charming and suave, but he can also be quite

1069
01:01:53,640 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 3: vicious and cruel in some later scenes, and we're introduced

1070
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:00,800
Speaker 3: to him through dialogue between a couple of waitresses at

1071
01:02:00,880 --> 01:02:05,360
Speaker 3: the bar. One explains to the other saying, that's the Overseer.

1072
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:08,240
Speaker 3: He sees something he wants, he gets it. He'll be

1073
01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:11,240
Speaker 3: getting around to you soon. And that hints at the

1074
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:13,560
Speaker 3: fact that often the something that he wants is not

1075
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:16,720
Speaker 3: a thing, but a person, maybe even a person's soul,

1076
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:19,040
Speaker 3: because on the other hand, so that's what he is.

1077
01:02:19,080 --> 01:02:22,240
Speaker 3: On one hand, he is a terrestrial kind of character,

1078
01:02:22,320 --> 01:02:25,280
Speaker 3: this rich pimp, But on the other hand, the Overseer

1079
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:30,800
Speaker 3: is depicted as a figure of cosmic and spiritual evil

1080
01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:35,800
Speaker 3: with godlike powers. He is shown as a tempter and

1081
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:43,440
Speaker 3: as a machiavellian manipulator, controlling and coercing people, coercing people's lives. So,

1082
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 3: in many ways, as we said earlier, a figure likes Satan,

1083
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:50,640
Speaker 3: but I think also importantly different from Satan in some ways,

1084
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 3: I see a big part of his role as being

1085
01:02:54,320 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 3: an enforcer of fate or destiny. Did you also see

1086
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 3: this theme that like many of the human characters in

1087
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 3: the film are kind of on a set of rails.

1088
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 3: They are on this predetermined path of destiny where they

1089
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 3: are headed for confusion, unfreedom, and doom, and the overseer

1090
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 3: wants them to stay on those rails and keep them

1091
01:03:18,200 --> 01:03:22,640
Speaker 3: headed for this bad place, the place of bafflement and powerlessness.

1092
01:03:23,000 --> 01:03:25,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, even as those characters at times like acknowledge

1093
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 2: like why am I on this path? Why am I

1094
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 2: doing this?

1095
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 3: Yeah? By contrast, Son Raw in his various forms, will

1096
01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 3: appear to people and offer them another path, an altered destiny,

1097
01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:43,320
Speaker 3: in which they can expand their consciousness, liberate themselves in

1098
01:03:43,360 --> 01:03:47,320
Speaker 3: some important way, and wake up to the knowledge that

1099
01:03:47,400 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 3: there is a place for them in something great and

1100
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:53,280
Speaker 3: wondrous if they will take it, a place in space.

1101
01:03:53,880 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 3: And it brings us back to this main metaphor here.

1102
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 3: But in this scene in the Bar Chicago, the overseer

1103
01:04:01,560 --> 01:04:04,240
Speaker 3: he arrives at the bar with a couple of women.

1104
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:06,600
Speaker 3: There's like a woman on each of his arms. He's

1105
01:04:06,680 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 3: in sunglasses indoors, and he's got a pink flower on

1106
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:13,640
Speaker 3: his lapel. His party is seated at a table near

1107
01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:16,320
Speaker 3: the front row, and he buys a cigar. He talks

1108
01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:18,800
Speaker 3: to the matre d and comments on the piano player,

1109
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 3: which again this is son Raw is Sonny Ray, And

1110
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:24,480
Speaker 3: of course you know the matre d is very proud

1111
01:04:24,520 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 3: of their music there. You know, this is one of

1112
01:04:26,280 --> 01:04:29,240
Speaker 3: the best piano players he's ever heard. But the overseer says, no,

1113
01:04:29,360 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 3: I hate him. I want him off the stage. So

1114
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 3: he instantly recognizes that's his enemy. And the matre d

1115
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 3: goes up on stage and I don't know if he's

1116
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 3: the matre d he took. He's some kind of a

1117
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:44,400
Speaker 3: central figure announcer. He goes up and takes the microphone

1118
01:04:44,680 --> 01:04:47,920
Speaker 3: and tries to move things along from the piano segment

1119
01:04:48,040 --> 01:04:50,720
Speaker 3: into the next act. So he announces, you know, the

1120
01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:53,000
Speaker 3: cabaret dancers are going to come out and perform. But

1121
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:57,480
Speaker 3: here things get kind of funny. Sonny Ray is supposed

1122
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 3: to play the dancers on, but he refusing to shift

1123
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:05,160
Speaker 3: into the dance music and is just vamping on the

1124
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 3: piano from the end of the song he was playing,

1125
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:13,200
Speaker 3: and the vamping just gets weirder and weirder musically, and

1126
01:05:13,320 --> 01:05:16,280
Speaker 3: eventually he and people are getting very annoyed with him

1127
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:19,680
Speaker 3: because of this. Eventually he does start picking up the

1128
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:23,400
Speaker 3: tempo and the dancers start to come out, but while

1129
01:05:23,480 --> 01:05:26,080
Speaker 3: it sounds like the rhythm is right for the dancers

1130
01:05:26,120 --> 01:05:29,840
Speaker 3: to start, he's also playing all of these bizarre dissonant

1131
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:33,760
Speaker 3: chords and scales on top of it, and it seems like,

1132
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 3: I don't know if you interpreted it the same way

1133
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:40,160
Speaker 3: that I did, but it's like the weirdness of the

1134
01:05:40,280 --> 01:05:44,280
Speaker 3: music unleashes a kind of elemental force on the bar,

1135
01:05:45,240 --> 01:05:48,520
Speaker 3: and it's like the weirdness is a power of itself,

1136
01:05:48,560 --> 01:05:51,920
Speaker 3: and it starts blowing like wind starts blowing and kicking

1137
01:05:51,960 --> 01:05:56,680
Speaker 3: up clouds of dust and glass breaks everywhere, and people

1138
01:05:56,720 --> 01:06:00,520
Speaker 3: start screaming and running for the exits. And then the

1139
01:06:00,560 --> 01:06:04,560
Speaker 3: sounds of the real son Raw Orchestra come in on

1140
01:06:04,600 --> 01:06:07,320
Speaker 3: the soundtrack So Gone, or the sounds of the nineteen

1141
01:06:07,400 --> 01:06:11,000
Speaker 3: forty swing. Now we're hearing these high pitch scrambling horns

1142
01:06:11,320 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 3: and the avant garde space music.

1143
01:06:14,160 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, a mighty wind is summoned by this. It's almost

1144
01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 2: like this whole club was in an airlock, and now

1145
01:06:20,240 --> 01:06:22,120
Speaker 2: the air lock has been breached.

1146
01:06:22,360 --> 01:06:26,360
Speaker 3: Yes, So people are streaming down the staircases, tripping over

1147
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:29,280
Speaker 3: each other to get out. There's a mirror ball hanging

1148
01:06:29,280 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 3: from the ceiling that falls down and crashes to the floor.

1149
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:34,160
Speaker 3: I don't know if that has any significance.

1150
01:06:35,040 --> 01:06:38,120
Speaker 2: There's one of the burlesque dancers has a pasty blown

1151
01:06:38,200 --> 01:06:39,040
Speaker 2: right off the nipple.

1152
01:06:39,200 --> 01:06:40,160
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, there you go.

1153
01:06:40,440 --> 01:06:43,440
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of humor in this sequence.

1154
01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:49,520
Speaker 3: So yeah, smoke, wind, flashes of colored lights, beings that

1155
01:06:49,600 --> 01:06:53,000
Speaker 3: seem like maybe they could be aliens appear briefly in silhouette,

1156
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:57,560
Speaker 3: and the smoke, and eventually the piano itself rolls away

1157
01:06:57,600 --> 01:07:00,480
Speaker 3: from under Sunny Ray's hands, leaving Sunny Ras and the

1158
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:06,120
Speaker 3: overseer sitting across from each other alone in silence. So

1159
01:07:06,520 --> 01:07:10,200
Speaker 3: I think by refusing to just play the dance music

1160
01:07:10,680 --> 01:07:16,720
Speaker 3: and insisting on his own strange and unpredictable musical explorations,

1161
01:07:17,200 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 3: Sonny Ray has somehow unleashed a storm of literal physical

1162
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:26,200
Speaker 3: energy and transformation, and people are frightened and they run

1163
01:07:26,240 --> 01:07:29,960
Speaker 3: from the music, but it is altering reality all around them.

1164
01:07:30,040 --> 01:07:32,120
Speaker 3: I don't know if I was reading too much into that,

1165
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:35,680
Speaker 3: but it feels significant about what it's supposed to mean

1166
01:07:35,920 --> 01:07:37,080
Speaker 3: for sun Ra's life.

1167
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:39,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, yea, and I think that that seems fair. That

1168
01:07:39,880 --> 01:07:43,000
Speaker 2: lines up with with my viewing of the of the scene.

1169
01:07:43,240 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 2: But now we have just the sun son Raw and

1170
01:07:45,600 --> 01:07:49,480
Speaker 2: the overseer just contemplating each other, and this is where

1171
01:07:49,480 --> 01:07:51,760
Speaker 2: we're going to eventually get to a game of cards.

1172
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:55,080
Speaker 3: That's right. So they're left alone, and the overseer says,

1173
01:07:55,120 --> 01:07:58,040
Speaker 3: you think you're ready for me? And Sonny Ray says,

1174
01:07:58,160 --> 01:08:01,520
Speaker 3: are you ready to alter your desk? That's a good reversal.

1175
01:08:02,200 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 3: The overseer explains that they're going to play a card game,

1176
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:08,640
Speaker 3: and he starts listing games that his opponent can choose from.

1177
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:11,320
Speaker 3: He's like, you want to play seven up whist and

1178
01:08:11,440 --> 01:08:13,760
Speaker 3: son Raw holds up a deck of cards and says,

1179
01:08:14,040 --> 01:08:15,600
Speaker 3: I say the end of the world.

1180
01:08:16,080 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a Tarot deck.

1181
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't catch that at first, but yeah, it

1182
01:08:21,400 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 3: does have taro like imagery when we start seeing the

1183
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:28,800
Speaker 3: cards and then they are suddenly teleported. They teleport out

1184
01:08:28,800 --> 01:08:32,839
Speaker 3: of the club to the middle of a vast desert plane,

1185
01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:37,160
Speaker 3: where Sun Raw now I think appearing. Would you say,

1186
01:08:37,240 --> 01:08:40,519
Speaker 3: at the moment of the teleportation, he's no longer Sunny Ray.

1187
01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:44,280
Speaker 3: He is now as his transcended self. Yeah, he is

1188
01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:45,599
Speaker 3: son Raw here, Yeah.

1189
01:08:45,400 --> 01:08:46,559
Speaker 2: Fully for sure.

1190
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:49,280
Speaker 3: So now he is son Raw wearing his gold chain

1191
01:08:49,360 --> 01:08:52,680
Speaker 3: mesh head dress, and he's sitting across from the overseer

1192
01:08:52,800 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 3: at a red velvet topped game table with gold fringe

1193
01:08:56,400 --> 01:08:59,160
Speaker 3: and this diamond shaped hole in the middle of the table.

1194
01:09:00,120 --> 01:09:03,880
Speaker 3: Once again, the overseer asks Sun Raw to name the game,

1195
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 3: but he specifies that he will cut the deck, and

1196
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 3: this happens a few more times in the movie. The

1197
01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 3: overseer always wants to cut the deck, which I think

1198
01:09:12,360 --> 01:09:15,559
Speaker 3: is supposed to imply he's cheating. Some of that means, Okay,

1199
01:09:16,080 --> 01:09:16,519
Speaker 3: I don't know.

1200
01:09:16,479 --> 01:09:18,519
Speaker 4: A lot about cards, but I would assume the see

1201
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:22,160
Speaker 4: I cheats the cards. Yes, yes, So the overseer draws

1202
01:09:22,320 --> 01:09:25,080
Speaker 4: a couple of cards from this tarot like deck. First,

1203
01:09:25,120 --> 01:09:28,719
Speaker 4: he draws the World, showing a picture of the planet Earth.

1204
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:32,240
Speaker 4: So to me, that signifies the connection of this planet

1205
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:34,040
Speaker 4: with the overseer.

1206
01:09:33,600 --> 01:09:38,240
Speaker 3: The evil deity. It seems to go with Sunra's philosophy.

1207
01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:41,679
Speaker 3: And then also he draws a card labeled the Chariot

1208
01:09:41,800 --> 01:09:45,760
Speaker 3: and it shows a big nineteen seventies luxury sedan. And

1209
01:09:45,800 --> 01:09:49,200
Speaker 3: then he throws the cards into the diamond pit. And

1210
01:09:49,400 --> 01:09:52,439
Speaker 3: now it's sun Ra's turned to draw. He reaches into

1211
01:09:52,439 --> 01:09:55,040
Speaker 3: the deck, he draws a card and reveals it has

1212
01:09:55,040 --> 01:09:58,080
Speaker 3: a picture of his spaceship, the one with the two

1213
01:09:58,160 --> 01:10:02,160
Speaker 3: golden lobes and the flaming like eyes. And that card

1214
01:10:02,280 --> 01:10:05,759
Speaker 3: is labeled Judgment. It's pretty brutal.

1215
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:08,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that's what does make me wonder. It's like,

1216
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:12,280
Speaker 2: to what extent is son Raw here to judge? To

1217
01:10:12,680 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 2: what extent are the laser beams from his spaceship like

1218
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:18,040
Speaker 2: beams of judgment and so forth.

1219
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:21,479
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think it is to the extent

1220
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 3: of the day the Earth stood still when it's actually like,

1221
01:10:24,400 --> 01:10:27,320
Speaker 3: you know, there is a weapon, but there is at

1222
01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:31,599
Speaker 3: least a sense of moral or spiritual judgment. I don't

1223
01:10:31,600 --> 01:10:34,000
Speaker 3: know if that extends to actual like punishment.

1224
01:10:34,479 --> 01:10:34,519
Speaker 1: No.

1225
01:10:34,720 --> 01:10:38,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've thought about this a bit, and I think

1226
01:10:38,640 --> 01:10:41,920
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty clear that the coming cataclysm is

1227
01:10:42,560 --> 01:10:45,800
Speaker 2: brought on by humanity. You know, it is because we

1228
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:47,760
Speaker 2: are out of tune with ourselves, and we're out of

1229
01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:49,719
Speaker 2: tune with the music, and we don't have true music

1230
01:10:49,760 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 2: in our hearts.

1231
01:10:50,520 --> 01:10:55,720
Speaker 3: It is for those who do not accept the altered destiny. Yeah,

1232
01:10:55,800 --> 01:10:58,360
Speaker 3: so a lot of the rest of the movie is

1233
01:10:58,360 --> 01:11:03,639
Speaker 3: going to consist of scenes with other characters intercut back

1234
01:11:03,680 --> 01:11:07,080
Speaker 3: and forth with this game of cards played in the desert.

1235
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:12,440
Speaker 3: So the game seems to be fought over the fates

1236
01:11:12,520 --> 01:11:14,400
Speaker 3: of the people of Earth. Did you take it the

1237
01:11:14,439 --> 01:11:14,920
Speaker 3: same way?

1238
01:11:15,200 --> 01:11:15,720
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1239
01:11:15,800 --> 01:11:20,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, But basically I would say every time something bad happens,

1240
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:24,240
Speaker 3: like every time the humans live in confusion and move

1241
01:11:24,360 --> 01:11:28,679
Speaker 3: toward the doom destiny, the overseer counts a hand as

1242
01:11:28,720 --> 01:11:32,200
Speaker 3: his he like notches one for himself. And every time

1243
01:11:32,280 --> 01:11:36,360
Speaker 3: something weird or good happens and the people wake up

1244
01:11:36,400 --> 01:11:40,400
Speaker 3: to self liberation and space consciousness, Sunraw wins a hand,

1245
01:11:40,479 --> 01:11:43,960
Speaker 3: but Sun Raw he falls behind. He wins fewer hands

1246
01:11:43,960 --> 01:11:45,599
Speaker 3: than the overseer until the end.

1247
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:48,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's generally how you wanted to go

1248
01:11:48,200 --> 01:11:51,320
Speaker 2: in any kind of card game or a sporting event

1249
01:11:51,360 --> 01:11:53,840
Speaker 2: that takes place in a movie, you know, the person

1250
01:11:53,840 --> 01:11:56,240
Speaker 2: you're rooting for, and he's slowly come up from behind.

1251
01:11:56,720 --> 01:11:59,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. But before we go to any of these other scenes,

1252
01:11:59,160 --> 01:12:03,200
Speaker 3: we cut to some concert footage, the son Raw Orchestra concert.

1253
01:12:04,120 --> 01:12:06,559
Speaker 3: So it is we come in in the middle of

1254
01:12:06,640 --> 01:12:12,880
Speaker 3: this awesome percussion frenzy where we first see the percussionists playing,

1255
01:12:13,240 --> 01:12:15,360
Speaker 3: you know, like the people who have hand drums playing

1256
01:12:15,400 --> 01:12:17,599
Speaker 3: the hand drums. But then we pull back and I

1257
01:12:17,640 --> 01:12:21,120
Speaker 3: love this. We see and hear that everybody is playing

1258
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 3: some kind of percussion, so like the woodwind section of

1259
01:12:24,120 --> 01:12:27,960
Speaker 3: the orchestra, they have their woodwind instruments set aside, and

1260
01:12:28,000 --> 01:12:30,280
Speaker 3: they're drumming on bells and I think even on their

1261
01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:34,240
Speaker 3: music stands. And then finally the saxophones and the horns

1262
01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:37,320
Speaker 3: come in and the energy of the band is crazy.

1263
01:12:37,400 --> 01:12:40,719
Speaker 3: And so while the music keeps playing, we cut away

1264
01:12:40,800 --> 01:12:45,360
Speaker 3: to the interior set of the spaceship, which is this

1265
01:12:46,160 --> 01:12:50,400
Speaker 3: odd glowing amber space with walls that look like they

1266
01:12:50,400 --> 01:12:53,960
Speaker 3: are made of polished wood but also have that water

1267
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:57,720
Speaker 3: dissolved Swiss cheese texture of karst you know what I mean,

1268
01:12:58,040 --> 01:13:01,320
Speaker 3: kind of karst rock. And then there is a clear

1269
01:13:01,560 --> 01:13:05,080
Speaker 3: glass door that you used to enter. I think this

1270
01:13:05,200 --> 01:13:07,160
Speaker 3: is the cockpit of the spaceship. This is where you

1271
01:13:07,200 --> 01:13:11,120
Speaker 3: pilot it. The clear glass door that opens by rotating

1272
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:13,200
Speaker 3: and it lets one person through the door of the

1273
01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:17,000
Speaker 3: space ship at a time. Sunraw enters first, and he's

1274
01:13:17,040 --> 01:13:19,400
Speaker 3: going to go sit down at the pilot console on

1275
01:13:19,439 --> 01:13:21,080
Speaker 3: the ship. And what's there? Is it going to be

1276
01:13:21,120 --> 01:13:25,000
Speaker 3: a steering wheel? No, because what powers the ship? It's music.

1277
01:13:25,400 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 3: So he sits down to pilot the ship and it

1278
01:13:27,600 --> 01:13:30,519
Speaker 3: is a keyboard. This is the method of space travel

1279
01:13:30,560 --> 01:13:32,200
Speaker 3: technology powered by music.

1280
01:13:32,400 --> 01:13:37,080
Speaker 2: That's right, synth powered space travel, just like in Prometheus.

1281
01:13:37,120 --> 01:13:40,920
Speaker 2: By the way, wait what I don't know the engineers

1282
01:13:40,920 --> 01:13:43,160
Speaker 2: there in like little flutes and music and stuff.

1283
01:13:43,520 --> 01:13:47,520
Speaker 3: They power it with music. I forgot about that. Yeah,

1284
01:13:47,560 --> 01:13:49,439
Speaker 3: but yeah. So this goes on and then we see

1285
01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:53,880
Speaker 3: the space ship approaches the Earth. It comes toward the

1286
01:13:54,320 --> 01:13:56,760
Speaker 3: planet Earth, and then it comes down into our atmosphere

1287
01:13:56,800 --> 01:13:59,519
Speaker 3: and it flies over some cities. We see it flying

1288
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:02,120
Speaker 3: over the mountainuntains in the neighborhoods. And this is the

1289
01:14:02,160 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 3: part where it's shooting like red laser beams out of

1290
01:14:04,840 --> 01:14:07,439
Speaker 3: the things that look like eyes or nipples. I don't

1291
01:14:07,479 --> 01:14:09,880
Speaker 3: know what that's it, because again I don't think we

1292
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:13,000
Speaker 3: see the lasers hurting anybody, so I don't think they're.

1293
01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 2: Part of the guidance system or something. Yeah, it looks

1294
01:14:16,280 --> 01:14:18,439
Speaker 2: very good too, I have to say, for what is

1295
01:14:18,640 --> 01:14:21,599
Speaker 2: by all accounts, you know, a lower budget affair here,

1296
01:14:22,360 --> 01:14:25,559
Speaker 2: and the effects here of the flying spaceship look really solid.

1297
01:14:25,600 --> 01:14:26,080
Speaker 2: I like it.

1298
01:14:26,680 --> 01:14:29,720
Speaker 3: So in the scene where the spaceship flies over the

1299
01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:32,519
Speaker 3: surface of the Earth, we meet the character Jimmy Fay

1300
01:14:32,680 --> 01:14:36,320
Speaker 3: as himself here. He is a TV presenter from Channel

1301
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:39,200
Speaker 3: five in Oakland, California, which they say is an all

1302
01:14:39,240 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 3: black TV station, and he's on scene reporting on the

1303
01:14:42,560 --> 01:14:46,640
Speaker 3: fact that quote. As you probably know, several local mystics

1304
01:14:46,680 --> 01:14:50,240
Speaker 3: have predicted a landing from space this afternoon here at

1305
01:14:50,240 --> 01:14:53,559
Speaker 3: this spot opposite the Sector five government building, in the

1306
01:14:53,600 --> 01:14:57,280
Speaker 3: person of a black musician and thinker named Son Raw.

1307
01:14:58,280 --> 01:15:02,360
Speaker 3: So apparently the backstory is that Sun Raw disappeared while

1308
01:15:02,400 --> 01:15:05,920
Speaker 3: traveling in Europe on tour in nineteen sixty nine, and

1309
01:15:05,960 --> 01:15:09,400
Speaker 3: now several years later he returns to Earth in his

1310
01:15:09,520 --> 01:15:14,240
Speaker 3: glorious spaceship with his what they called his intergalactic myth

1311
01:15:14,400 --> 01:15:20,479
Speaker 3: science Solar Orchestra, and then Jimmy Fay says, upon landing here,

1312
01:15:20,520 --> 01:15:23,080
Speaker 3: he will reveal to the world his so called plan

1313
01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:27,320
Speaker 3: for the salvation of the Black Race. So the spaceship

1314
01:15:27,360 --> 01:15:29,759
Speaker 3: sets down in the middle of a field, and Jimmy

1315
01:15:29,800 --> 01:15:33,080
Speaker 3: Fay seems at first not to believe his own eyes.

1316
01:15:33,840 --> 01:15:36,720
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think maybe the implication is that

1317
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:40,919
Speaker 3: he was initially reporting on this story like ironically, like Haha,

1318
01:15:40,920 --> 01:15:43,360
Speaker 3: what a joke you know this is? But then he

1319
01:15:43,439 --> 01:15:48,600
Speaker 3: sees the ship land and he's shaken. He's like, what's

1320
01:15:48,680 --> 01:15:51,040
Speaker 3: this going to mean? So he goes on reporting on it,

1321
01:15:51,960 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 3: and then along with the crowd, he runs up to

1322
01:15:54,280 --> 01:15:56,680
Speaker 3: the ship to greet Sun Raw and his crew as

1323
01:15:56,680 --> 01:15:59,800
Speaker 3: they come out of the spaceship. By the way, like

1324
01:15:59,800 --> 01:16:05,360
Speaker 3: the raw eyeball sirens are blasting the whole time. Yeah,

1325
01:16:05,439 --> 01:16:08,519
Speaker 3: And so Sun Raw disembarks with his retinue and they're

1326
01:16:08,560 --> 01:16:11,760
Speaker 3: all dressed in these gold and billowing capes.

1327
01:16:12,160 --> 01:16:15,439
Speaker 2: Wind machine blasting. This movie makes great use of wind.

1328
01:16:15,240 --> 01:16:19,000
Speaker 3: Machines awesome, and the costumes of Egyptian deities. You've got

1329
01:16:19,040 --> 01:16:22,839
Speaker 3: solar orbs, you have a Nubis and Horus all marching

1330
01:16:22,880 --> 01:16:27,000
Speaker 3: out with the band following playing music behind them. So

1331
01:16:27,040 --> 01:16:31,200
Speaker 3: it's like a marching jazz free jazz orchestra band coming

1332
01:16:31,240 --> 01:16:34,400
Speaker 3: out of the spaceship with these figures dressed like gods

1333
01:16:34,439 --> 01:16:36,559
Speaker 3: from ancient Egypt. It's just awesome.

1334
01:16:37,479 --> 01:16:41,559
Speaker 2: And Jimmy Fay is here to report. They bring out

1335
01:16:41,600 --> 01:16:45,880
Speaker 2: a like a crystal clear space helmet. Yeah, they present

1336
01:16:45,920 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 2: it to him, and I want to also mention that

1337
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:51,519
Speaker 2: the guy bringing it out, he walks kind of like

1338
01:16:51,600 --> 01:16:54,280
Speaker 2: he's on the surface of the moon. This is apparently

1339
01:16:54,320 --> 01:16:59,560
Speaker 2: something that was a feature of some of the orchestra performances,

1340
01:17:00,280 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 2: walking like this. So he brings this out. Jimmy Fay

1341
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:05,639
Speaker 2: puts it on, and I guess it allows Jimmy Fay

1342
01:17:05,760 --> 01:17:09,800
Speaker 2: to is it like an interpreter helmet, I don't know,

1343
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:13,639
Speaker 2: somehow allows them to communicate directly with his brain.

1344
01:17:13,920 --> 01:17:18,400
Speaker 3: It's like a radio helmet to transmit sun Raw consciousness

1345
01:17:18,400 --> 01:17:22,000
Speaker 3: into Jimmy Fay's brain. I think, well, like he puts

1346
01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:25,679
Speaker 3: it on and then there's you know, keyboard madness going

1347
01:17:25,720 --> 01:17:29,160
Speaker 3: into his head and Sundraw is inside his head saying

1348
01:17:29,320 --> 01:17:32,080
Speaker 3: I am the altered Destiny, I am the living myth

1349
01:17:33,400 --> 01:17:36,080
Speaker 3: and so in this scene and then also it like

1350
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:40,400
Speaker 3: triggers Jimmy Fay to ask questions about what's going on,

1351
01:17:41,720 --> 01:17:44,479
Speaker 3: or either he or somebody says, what is the power

1352
01:17:44,479 --> 01:17:48,680
Speaker 3: of your machine? And Sunraw's answer is music, and he

1353
01:17:48,720 --> 01:17:51,439
Speaker 3: goes on to say more. There's more monologuing in this scene.

1354
01:17:52,439 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 3: But I also love the way that the radio helmet

1355
01:17:54,760 --> 01:17:57,680
Speaker 3: is held up like like a chalice, like it is

1356
01:17:57,720 --> 01:18:01,240
Speaker 3: a the sacred cup of ice, you know, being held

1357
01:18:01,280 --> 01:18:03,760
Speaker 3: up like that, but it's receiving these signals either from

1358
01:18:03,800 --> 01:18:18,880
Speaker 3: space or from cosmic sun Sun Raw consciousness. Yeah, yeah,

1359
01:18:18,880 --> 01:18:21,720
Speaker 3: so I think maybe we'll stop there and because that

1360
01:18:21,840 --> 01:18:25,200
Speaker 3: that sort of like sets up the the main themes

1361
01:18:25,240 --> 01:18:28,160
Speaker 3: of the movie. But after this we're gonna have continued

1362
01:18:28,200 --> 01:18:31,759
Speaker 3: themes of Sun Raw in conflict with the overseer trying

1363
01:18:31,800 --> 01:18:37,200
Speaker 3: to break through and reach the people of Earth. A

1364
01:18:37,200 --> 01:18:40,720
Speaker 3: lot of the story is building toward a planned concert

1365
01:18:40,880 --> 01:18:44,439
Speaker 3: that Sunraw and his orchestra are going to play in

1366
01:18:45,320 --> 01:18:47,160
Speaker 3: at the end of the movie, I think at at

1367
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:49,599
Speaker 3: an Oakland music venue. So a lot of the movie

1368
01:18:49,640 --> 01:18:54,280
Speaker 3: is set specifically in Oakland, California. But then there are

1369
01:18:54,280 --> 01:18:58,160
Speaker 3: these also these other scenes that intercut in between. There's

1370
01:18:58,240 --> 01:19:01,320
Speaker 3: one interesting scene that we probably talk about a bit

1371
01:19:01,840 --> 01:19:05,320
Speaker 3: of Sun Raw appearing to and preaching to the kids

1372
01:19:05,320 --> 01:19:08,560
Speaker 3: at the Oakland Youth Center. So they're just kid teenagers

1373
01:19:08,600 --> 01:19:12,320
Speaker 3: hanging out there and Sunraw appears to them and tries

1374
01:19:12,360 --> 01:19:14,439
Speaker 3: to sort of recruit them to his cause, or at

1375
01:19:14,520 --> 01:19:17,240
Speaker 3: least speak wisdom to them. I don't know if the

1376
01:19:17,320 --> 01:19:20,920
Speaker 3: recruiting is explicitly the goal, but he is appearing like

1377
01:19:21,000 --> 01:19:25,320
Speaker 3: a wandering preacher who is there to tell them truths

1378
01:19:25,360 --> 01:19:27,680
Speaker 3: that they are not ready to hear, and so we

1379
01:19:27,800 --> 01:19:30,760
Speaker 3: sort of met with skepticism, but he also breaks through

1380
01:19:30,800 --> 01:19:33,479
Speaker 3: a bit by speaking wisdom about their lives, about like

1381
01:19:33,600 --> 01:19:37,800
Speaker 3: racial inequality and injustice and about you know, things that

1382
01:19:37,800 --> 01:19:40,760
Speaker 3: people don't usually want to acknowledge about their lives. So

1383
01:19:40,800 --> 01:19:43,760
Speaker 3: he kind of wins some tentative converts from this appearance.

1384
01:19:44,200 --> 01:19:46,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great sequence in part because it's like

1385
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:50,519
Speaker 2: it's very obviously a real community center and it has

1386
01:19:50,800 --> 01:19:53,439
Speaker 2: almost exclusively non actors in it. You know, it's like

1387
01:19:53,560 --> 01:19:57,920
Speaker 2: actual youth, actual children that are asking these questions. And

1388
01:19:58,040 --> 01:20:00,200
Speaker 2: for me, someone who grew up on watching se Me

1389
01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:03,599
Speaker 2: Street from the late seventies and early eighties, it has

1390
01:20:03,720 --> 01:20:07,160
Speaker 2: very much that kind of that kind of feel. You know,

1391
01:20:07,400 --> 01:20:09,960
Speaker 2: this this film is steeped in nineteen seventies and nos.

1392
01:20:09,960 --> 01:20:12,920
Speaker 2: So if you have any amount of nostalgia for that

1393
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:15,200
Speaker 2: time period, you know it's going to connect with you.

1394
01:20:15,280 --> 01:20:17,840
Speaker 2: But yeah, sun Ross speaks to them, and I'm going

1395
01:20:17,920 --> 01:20:19,559
Speaker 2: to read some of what he says here. This is

1396
01:20:19,560 --> 01:20:22,240
Speaker 2: a bridge. But he says because they're asking him, like,

1397
01:20:22,280 --> 01:20:24,240
Speaker 2: are you real? What are these crazy shoes you're wearing?

1398
01:20:24,280 --> 01:20:27,240
Speaker 2: When does this outfit, you know, make fun of his shoes? Yea, yeah,

1399
01:20:27,240 --> 01:20:30,200
Speaker 2: they got those moon shoes. And he says, how do

1400
01:20:30,240 --> 01:20:33,240
Speaker 2: you know I'm real? I'm not real. I'm just like you.

1401
01:20:33,840 --> 01:20:35,920
Speaker 2: I do not come to you as a reality. I

1402
01:20:36,000 --> 01:20:38,439
Speaker 2: come to you as the myth. I came from a

1403
01:20:38,520 --> 01:20:41,719
Speaker 2: dream that the Black Man dreamed long ago. I'm actually

1404
01:20:41,720 --> 01:20:46,040
Speaker 2: a present sent to you by your ancestors. And he

1405
01:20:46,479 --> 01:20:48,519
Speaker 2: seems to win people over, you know, there were some

1406
01:20:48,600 --> 01:20:51,400
Speaker 2: doubters and people are like, yeah, yeah, I think I'm

1407
01:20:51,479 --> 01:20:52,800
Speaker 2: understanding what he's laying down.

1408
01:20:53,320 --> 01:20:55,559
Speaker 3: There will be a scene also later in the movie

1409
01:20:55,640 --> 01:21:01,000
Speaker 3: where some of the teenagers are wrestling with the accusation

1410
01:21:01,120 --> 01:21:02,559
Speaker 3: that Sounra sold out.

1411
01:21:03,160 --> 01:21:06,720
Speaker 2: Yeah plant by the overseer, you know very much. They're like, oh,

1412
01:21:06,960 --> 01:21:08,760
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to save you. He just wants to

1413
01:21:08,760 --> 01:21:11,720
Speaker 2: make money off of you. And so whether it's kind

1414
01:21:11,760 --> 01:21:13,519
Speaker 2: of clever how the film you know, plays with this

1415
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:16,919
Speaker 2: idea of like you know, I mentioned how not everybody

1416
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:18,880
Speaker 2: was like, oh, the Sunra guy is great, Like some

1417
01:21:18,920 --> 01:21:20,880
Speaker 2: people are like this is silly or this is you know,

1418
01:21:20,920 --> 01:21:23,799
Speaker 2: he's putting on a show for certain segments of the audience,

1419
01:21:23,880 --> 01:21:25,960
Speaker 2: and you know, this film is kind of acknowledging that

1420
01:21:26,000 --> 01:21:29,040
Speaker 2: to a certain extent. And also, you know, this is

1421
01:21:29,120 --> 01:21:33,559
Speaker 2: kind of anytime you have a you know, a preacher

1422
01:21:33,640 --> 01:21:35,720
Speaker 2: or a teacher or a bringer of wisdom, there are

1423
01:21:35,760 --> 01:21:37,400
Speaker 2: going to be those that doubt him. And how is

1424
01:21:37,439 --> 01:21:39,400
Speaker 2: he going to respond to those voices of doubt?

1425
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:43,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. So another thing that Sunrah does in the middle

1426
01:21:43,000 --> 01:21:45,120
Speaker 3: of the movie is he sets up the Outer Space

1427
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:46,280
Speaker 3: Employment Agency.

1428
01:21:47,000 --> 01:21:50,080
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean basically sets up an office for

1429
01:21:50,439 --> 01:21:53,920
Speaker 2: recruiting individuals to board the spaceship and leave for the

1430
01:21:54,240 --> 01:21:55,320
Speaker 2: other world colony.

1431
01:21:55,640 --> 01:21:56,240
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1432
01:21:56,320 --> 01:21:59,920
Speaker 2: And this is where we meet our NASA operatives. Who

1433
01:22:00,320 --> 01:22:02,920
Speaker 2: one of them though not Upton, but the other one

1434
01:22:02,960 --> 01:22:05,080
Speaker 2: I guess, like Agent number two comes.

1435
01:22:05,240 --> 01:22:07,879
Speaker 3: Here's the same guy who's later one of the killers.

1436
01:22:08,040 --> 01:22:10,760
Speaker 2: I think he is he or he looks a lot

1437
01:22:10,880 --> 01:22:13,640
Speaker 2: like Agent number two either way. But I love the

1438
01:22:13,640 --> 01:22:15,600
Speaker 2: scene where he's coming in and he's like, allow me

1439
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:19,639
Speaker 2: to be blunt, mister Raw, and he's inquiring about about

1440
01:22:19,720 --> 01:22:22,160
Speaker 2: working for him, of course, so that he can steal

1441
01:22:22,680 --> 01:22:26,040
Speaker 2: sun Raw's secrets of space travel and deliver them to NASA.

1442
01:22:26,360 --> 01:22:29,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he tries to sign up, but the NASA

1443
01:22:29,400 --> 01:22:35,160
Speaker 3: scientist is he is very confused by what sun Raw

1444
01:22:35,400 --> 01:22:39,200
Speaker 3: explains about his vision for space travel, a sort of

1445
01:22:39,320 --> 01:22:42,040
Speaker 3: in that it's not going to be like a capitalist

1446
01:22:42,160 --> 01:22:47,080
Speaker 3: material conquest but a musical transformation of our nature. And

1447
01:22:47,120 --> 01:22:52,599
Speaker 3: the fact that there is no money, there's no pay Yeah, yeah.

1448
01:22:52,080 --> 01:22:54,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great really one of the great comedic

1449
01:22:54,760 --> 01:22:59,240
Speaker 2: scenes we see later the with the with the agency

1450
01:22:59,360 --> 01:23:02,120
Speaker 2: that he's set up. Here is where we have this

1451
01:23:02,120 --> 01:23:05,200
Speaker 2: this character, the street character that is a drunk. We

1452
01:23:05,360 --> 01:23:08,679
Speaker 2: see that he is, you know, constantly drinking and scheming

1453
01:23:08,720 --> 01:23:11,240
Speaker 2: how he's going to get his next bottle. He comes

1454
01:23:11,280 --> 01:23:14,040
Speaker 2: in inquiring about work, and uh. He and Raw have

1455
01:23:14,080 --> 01:23:17,519
Speaker 2: a great back and forth about like you know, ros

1456
01:23:17,520 --> 01:23:21,040
Speaker 2: talking about being something and nothing and and what has

1457
01:23:21,040 --> 01:23:23,280
Speaker 2: this guy been doing? We's been doing nothing. What can

1458
01:23:23,400 --> 01:23:26,880
Speaker 2: Raw pay him? Well? Also nothing? Uh, it's it's it's

1459
01:23:27,280 --> 01:23:28,200
Speaker 2: rather well put together.

1460
01:23:28,720 --> 01:23:31,680
Speaker 3: Let's see, in the middle of the movie, there are

1461
01:23:31,720 --> 01:23:34,639
Speaker 3: a lot of scenes of like the overseer just using

1462
01:23:34,680 --> 01:23:39,719
Speaker 3: and abusing people. Uh, he's portrayed as a pimp and

1463
01:23:39,720 --> 01:23:42,200
Speaker 3: and there. So there's like that leads into this very

1464
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:46,360
Speaker 3: bizarre scene later where the two these two NASA employees

1465
01:23:46,400 --> 01:23:49,880
Speaker 3: who are like NASA technicians, but they're also like doing

1466
01:23:50,320 --> 01:23:55,360
Speaker 3: evil espionage trying to get son Raw's secretive space technology.

1467
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:59,080
Speaker 3: They end up going to a brothel and then like

1468
01:23:59,160 --> 01:24:03,080
Speaker 3: becoming horrible racist and abusive and like beating up these

1469
01:24:03,080 --> 01:24:05,720
Speaker 3: two women who work there.

1470
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:08,519
Speaker 2: The overseer has like pushed in their direction.

1471
01:24:08,840 --> 01:24:12,400
Speaker 3: Yes, totally. Yeah, so that was I don't know, it's

1472
01:24:12,520 --> 01:24:16,240
Speaker 3: like a bizarre tangent in the film, but like absolutely

1473
01:24:16,320 --> 01:24:18,720
Speaker 3: evil NASA technicians. And then after that they're like, well,

1474
01:24:18,720 --> 01:24:21,799
Speaker 3: we just got to kidnap son Raw. So that leads

1475
01:24:21,880 --> 01:24:26,960
Speaker 3: into the Sun Raw kidnapping plot where they they snatch him,

1476
01:24:27,040 --> 01:24:30,240
Speaker 3: put him in a van and kidnap him and tie

1477
01:24:30,320 --> 01:24:32,280
Speaker 3: him up, and they're going to try to force him

1478
01:24:32,320 --> 01:24:35,480
Speaker 3: to give up the secret of his space travel technology

1479
01:24:35,960 --> 01:24:38,920
Speaker 3: because they can't figure out how he does it. It's

1480
01:24:39,000 --> 01:24:41,920
Speaker 3: also like weird. They torture him by making him listen

1481
01:24:41,920 --> 01:24:45,240
Speaker 3: to marching band music. Well it's a marching band playing

1482
01:24:45,280 --> 01:24:50,479
Speaker 3: Dixie Yeah yeah, yeah, and so he So son Raw

1483
01:24:50,680 --> 01:24:54,880
Speaker 3: is trapped by these horrible NASA technicians, but then he

1484
01:24:55,080 --> 01:24:57,760
Speaker 3: is rescued by the young men who believe in him,

1485
01:24:57,800 --> 01:25:00,240
Speaker 3: so like they kind of find courage in themselves go

1486
01:25:01,120 --> 01:25:03,479
Speaker 3: they like recruit their friends and they go break into

1487
01:25:03,520 --> 01:25:06,000
Speaker 3: this facility and they get son Raw out and take

1488
01:25:06,080 --> 01:25:08,120
Speaker 3: him to so he makes it to the final concert.

1489
01:25:08,200 --> 01:25:12,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's Bubbles Bernard, I think is the

1490
01:25:12,280 --> 01:25:14,280
Speaker 2: the other guy, and then there's Tiny the big guy.

1491
01:25:14,520 --> 01:25:17,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1492
01:25:17,520 --> 01:25:20,439
Speaker 2: The the NASA plot is dinner. I keep thinking about it,

1493
01:25:20,960 --> 01:25:23,960
Speaker 2: you know, the evil NASA operatives who are also ultimately

1494
01:25:23,960 --> 01:25:26,559
Speaker 2: going to be kidnappers and assassins. And I guess this

1495
01:25:26,640 --> 01:25:28,759
Speaker 2: is also one of those you can't think too literally about.

1496
01:25:28,840 --> 01:25:32,799
Speaker 2: But I was thinking this over and I guess it's

1497
01:25:32,960 --> 01:25:35,800
Speaker 2: less maybe the idea that NASA wants to steal Sunraw's

1498
01:25:35,800 --> 01:25:38,639
Speaker 2: space secrets. I mean it's that too, obviously, but it's

1499
01:25:38,680 --> 01:25:42,360
Speaker 2: also like an attempt by a dominator culture to reverse

1500
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:46,720
Speaker 2: engineer some sort of artificial salvation for themselves based on

1501
01:25:46,840 --> 01:25:52,040
Speaker 2: the authentic salvation of a partnership culture to lean on

1502
01:25:52,439 --> 01:25:56,400
Speaker 2: terms from rain Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, which

1503
01:25:56,479 --> 01:25:58,960
Speaker 2: to be clear, didn't come out till much later eighty seven.

1504
01:25:59,360 --> 01:26:01,640
Speaker 2: But in kind of like looking at these ideas, I

1505
01:26:01,640 --> 01:26:05,439
Speaker 2: realized there's actually, apparently there's a jazz artist, but an

1506
01:26:05,479 --> 01:26:09,200
Speaker 2: him of Nicole Mitchell, who has done some afrofuturist work

1507
01:26:09,360 --> 01:26:12,479
Speaker 2: that directly plays with some of these concepts from The

1508
01:26:12,560 --> 01:26:15,160
Speaker 2: Chalice and the Play. So sorry tangent there, but I

1509
01:26:15,200 --> 01:26:16,720
Speaker 2: was like, oh, that's that's neat.

1510
01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:18,840
Speaker 3: How that comes to get well, yeah, I mean, I

1511
01:26:18,840 --> 01:26:22,880
Speaker 3: think it's the way it's portrayed is that these two

1512
01:26:22,960 --> 01:26:28,080
Speaker 3: NASA technicians represent a just sort of predatory white power

1513
01:26:28,160 --> 01:26:32,800
Speaker 3: structure that is sort of like beyond hope of achieving

1514
01:26:32,880 --> 01:26:36,519
Speaker 3: like a greater higher consciousness of cooperation or anything like that.

1515
01:26:36,560 --> 01:26:41,320
Speaker 3: They're just trying to steal and pillage and dominate.

1516
01:26:40,920 --> 01:26:45,320
Speaker 2: And and they're completely incapable of understanding what sunraw Is

1517
01:26:45,320 --> 01:26:49,000
Speaker 2: is even doing or offering. Like they're completely you know,

1518
01:26:49,360 --> 01:26:51,720
Speaker 2: when they're presented with it, they're like, I don't understand it. Well,

1519
01:26:51,720 --> 01:26:53,559
Speaker 2: I guess we've got to kidnap him. In torture him,

1520
01:26:53,800 --> 01:26:55,679
Speaker 2: and then when that doesn't work, they're like, I guess

1521
01:26:55,680 --> 01:26:58,040
Speaker 2: we need to kill him. We have to assassinate him.

1522
01:26:58,120 --> 01:27:00,240
Speaker 3: So I guess here we're coming to describing the end

1523
01:27:00,240 --> 01:27:03,040
Speaker 3: of the film, which does involve a big concert, and

1524
01:27:03,080 --> 01:27:05,879
Speaker 3: we get to see a lot of the musical performance itself,

1525
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:10,080
Speaker 3: of Sunraw and the orchestra putting together this great and

1526
01:27:10,120 --> 01:27:14,519
Speaker 3: beautiful noise here at the concert. But the concert also

1527
01:27:14,640 --> 01:27:18,519
Speaker 3: does have an assassination plot. So the NASA technicians break

1528
01:27:18,560 --> 01:27:22,680
Speaker 3: in and they end up trying to They put their

1529
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:26,240
Speaker 3: guns on Sunraw, they take aim at him, but intervention

1530
01:27:26,400 --> 01:27:30,840
Speaker 3: comes in the form of Sunraw's young disciples, like the

1531
01:27:30,880 --> 01:27:33,320
Speaker 3: young men he's been sort of reaching out to throughout

1532
01:27:33,320 --> 01:27:36,400
Speaker 3: the film. They get in between the bullet and Son Raw.

1533
01:27:36,880 --> 01:27:40,960
Speaker 3: But then we get some like back to life rejuvenation,

1534
01:27:41,160 --> 01:27:45,200
Speaker 3: bringing back to life through the magical power, magical technology,

1535
01:27:45,320 --> 01:27:47,599
Speaker 3: technology science, myth power of music.

1536
01:27:47,880 --> 01:27:49,920
Speaker 2: That's right. Bubbles, I believe, is the one that takes

1537
01:27:49,920 --> 01:27:51,720
Speaker 2: a bullet for Sun Raw jumps in front of the

1538
01:27:51,720 --> 01:27:54,559
Speaker 2: bullet and it seems like, oh, he's dead, but then

1539
01:27:54,640 --> 01:27:57,200
Speaker 2: Sunraw reaches out a hand, yeah.

1540
01:27:56,840 --> 01:27:59,720
Speaker 3: And so he's resurrected in the spaceship. So they all

1541
01:27:59,720 --> 01:28:03,080
Speaker 3: get to go to their place in space. They appear

1542
01:28:03,120 --> 01:28:06,400
Speaker 3: in the spaceship and they move through the pivoting glass door,

1543
01:28:06,439 --> 01:28:09,080
Speaker 3: remember the glass door that rotates to let you into

1544
01:28:09,439 --> 01:28:12,639
Speaker 3: the sort of wood kars amber room at the heart

1545
01:28:12,680 --> 01:28:15,800
Speaker 3: of the spaceship. And so they come in, and then

1546
01:28:16,120 --> 01:28:20,120
Speaker 3: through this musical performance, there is also kind of just

1547
01:28:20,200 --> 01:28:24,040
Speaker 3: a rapturing, a general rapturing of people from all over

1548
01:28:24,520 --> 01:28:29,000
Speaker 3: who are transported to or within the spaceship. There's also

1549
01:28:29,080 --> 01:28:31,679
Speaker 3: a discussion at the spaceship at the end about who

1550
01:28:31,720 --> 01:28:34,519
Speaker 3: can come in and who can't, or what part of

1551
01:28:34,560 --> 01:28:38,840
Speaker 3: somebody might have to be left behind. And so yeah,

1552
01:28:39,000 --> 01:28:41,479
Speaker 3: there's this whole discussion of like who is actually going

1553
01:28:41,520 --> 01:28:44,680
Speaker 3: to space, and so some many people are taken away

1554
01:28:44,720 --> 01:28:48,080
Speaker 3: with sun Raw into space. And then as we actually

1555
01:28:48,080 --> 01:28:50,559
Speaker 3: do get to see the spaceship leave into space at

1556
01:28:50,560 --> 01:28:53,960
Speaker 3: the end, and then the Earth just explodes. It's like

1557
01:28:54,000 --> 01:28:56,360
Speaker 3: a piece of fruit with a firecracker in it.

1558
01:28:56,360 --> 01:28:58,800
Speaker 2: It harkens back to something that Ross says earlier in

1559
01:28:58,800 --> 01:29:01,360
Speaker 2: the picture when he's in a car being driven around

1560
01:29:01,400 --> 01:29:04,519
Speaker 2: and they have some of his attendants with him. He says,

1561
01:29:04,720 --> 01:29:07,240
Speaker 2: if the planet takes hold of an altered destiny. There's

1562
01:29:07,280 --> 01:29:10,320
Speaker 2: hope for everyone, but otherwise, the death sentence upon this

1563
01:29:10,360 --> 01:29:14,519
Speaker 2: planet still stands. Everyone must die, and here we see

1564
01:29:14,560 --> 01:29:17,639
Speaker 2: that happen as he leaves planet Earth. With those who

1565
01:29:18,240 --> 01:29:21,559
Speaker 2: listen to his message and embraced the music and were

1566
01:29:21,600 --> 01:29:24,680
Speaker 2: brought aboard this cosmic arc, they get to pass on

1567
01:29:24,800 --> 01:29:28,040
Speaker 2: to the next world. The rest of the world explodes

1568
01:29:28,560 --> 01:29:35,280
Speaker 2: and the perishes and darkness. Yeah so quite I mean again,

1569
01:29:35,400 --> 01:29:40,040
Speaker 2: think of this as essentially a concert film. Pretty ballsy

1570
01:29:40,120 --> 01:29:43,360
Speaker 2: for your your your concert film to end with the

1571
01:29:43,400 --> 01:29:48,160
Speaker 2: destruction of Earth. The entire planet is destroyed. But it

1572
01:29:48,960 --> 01:29:50,880
Speaker 2: you know, but but it's not just like gloom and

1573
01:29:50,920 --> 01:29:53,519
Speaker 2: doom like it's you know, it's also it is about

1574
01:29:53,520 --> 01:29:56,920
Speaker 2: salvation through the music and and then the power of music,

1575
01:29:57,000 --> 01:29:59,200
Speaker 2: and we see that in play as well.

1576
01:29:59,360 --> 01:30:01,280
Speaker 3: Oh it's a old choice. It is one of the

1577
01:30:01,720 --> 01:30:06,040
Speaker 3: most joyful and interesting explosions of planet Earth I've ever seen.

1578
01:30:06,280 --> 01:30:09,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it looks pretty good. Pretty again, I

1579
01:30:11,320 --> 01:30:13,360
Speaker 2: especially given the budget that they had to work with,

1580
01:30:13,520 --> 01:30:17,639
Speaker 2: a lot of talented people made it work. They really

1581
01:30:17,680 --> 01:30:20,439
Speaker 2: stretched those dollars and made the effects worthwhile.

1582
01:30:20,479 --> 01:30:20,679
Speaker 1: Here.

1583
01:30:20,960 --> 01:30:22,840
Speaker 3: One of the last things we do see in the

1584
01:30:22,880 --> 01:30:26,519
Speaker 3: movie is just this fragment of the former sphere of

1585
01:30:26,560 --> 01:30:27,719
Speaker 3: Earth spinning in space.

1586
01:30:28,240 --> 01:30:30,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and then that's the end. We don't get

1587
01:30:30,880 --> 01:30:33,400
Speaker 2: to see these characters, of all the characters that were

1588
01:30:33,479 --> 01:30:35,240
Speaker 2: raptured by Sun Raw, we don't get to see them

1589
01:30:35,520 --> 01:30:38,719
Speaker 2: on the off world colony, in this new world or anything.

1590
01:30:38,760 --> 01:30:41,840
Speaker 2: But you know, we have the idea that now life

1591
01:30:41,880 --> 01:30:44,680
Speaker 2: is going to be better for everyone who took this

1592
01:30:44,800 --> 01:30:45,599
Speaker 2: message to heart.

1593
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:50,040
Speaker 3: In the moods where Son Raw wishes the movie had

1594
01:30:50,120 --> 01:30:54,040
Speaker 3: just had had more beautiful things in it, I wonder

1595
01:30:54,120 --> 01:30:56,000
Speaker 3: if that's what he had in mind, if you wanted

1596
01:30:56,040 --> 01:30:58,559
Speaker 3: to focus more on the other side of time, if

1597
01:30:58,560 --> 01:31:01,719
Speaker 3: you wanted to focus more on seeing that other life.

1598
01:31:02,080 --> 01:31:06,160
Speaker 2: Possibly, so yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. I wonder how

1599
01:31:06,240 --> 01:31:08,439
Speaker 2: much of it was it was even necessarily plot based,

1600
01:31:08,439 --> 01:31:11,759
Speaker 2: but more about like just visual expression of the ideas.

1601
01:31:11,840 --> 01:31:14,760
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but you know, that's that's a version

1602
01:31:14,760 --> 01:31:16,599
Speaker 2: of the film we never got. This is the this

1603
01:31:16,640 --> 01:31:20,880
Speaker 2: is the version we have, and it's it's it's pretty remarkable.

1604
01:31:21,080 --> 01:31:23,000
Speaker 2: One of the things that I read in Space is

1605
01:31:23,040 --> 01:31:25,280
Speaker 2: the Place the Life and Times of Sun Raw by

1606
01:31:25,360 --> 01:31:28,880
Speaker 2: John Sweed, is that at the time when this movie

1607
01:31:28,920 --> 01:31:32,000
Speaker 2: came out it was pretty weird, like like it was

1608
01:31:32,040 --> 01:31:35,160
Speaker 2: a weird film in seventy four, but you know, it's

1609
01:31:35,240 --> 01:31:38,719
Speaker 2: just it's it's it's become weirder in a way because

1610
01:31:38,760 --> 01:31:41,439
Speaker 2: of all the nineteen seventy miss about it, you know,

1611
01:31:41,479 --> 01:31:45,479
Speaker 2: all this nostalgia, you know, another time, and it's no

1612
01:31:45,560 --> 01:31:49,320
Speaker 2: longer the contemporary world in some respects. Though at the

1613
01:31:49,360 --> 01:31:51,439
Speaker 2: same time, obviously a lot of the messages of the

1614
01:31:51,479 --> 01:31:55,960
Speaker 2: film still resonate today. It is. Yeah, it is just

1615
01:31:56,000 --> 01:32:00,920
Speaker 2: such a resonant film. It just it some real staying

1616
01:32:00,960 --> 01:32:05,719
Speaker 2: power and it's absolutely a joy to check out, totally. Yes, Yeah,

1617
01:32:05,760 --> 01:32:08,479
Speaker 2: And you know, to whatever extent it draws people into

1618
01:32:08,479 --> 01:32:12,080
Speaker 2: the music of Sun Raw, Yeah, I think that's tremendous

1619
01:32:12,120 --> 01:32:15,360
Speaker 2: as well. Certainly, I think this was the main way

1620
01:32:15,439 --> 01:32:18,920
Speaker 2: I learned about Sunrise. I knew, you know, I'm interested

1621
01:32:19,080 --> 01:32:22,160
Speaker 2: in I've always been interested in in the nineteen seventies

1622
01:32:22,200 --> 01:32:25,519
Speaker 2: and nineteen seventies cinema and then to a certain degree,

1623
01:32:25,600 --> 01:32:28,639
Speaker 2: you know, space music. So this, this drew me in

1624
01:32:28,880 --> 01:32:31,960
Speaker 2: and has led me to explore some more of Sunraw's

1625
01:32:32,040 --> 01:32:35,320
Speaker 2: music outside of this, and again he's been highly influential.

1626
01:32:35,360 --> 01:32:38,599
Speaker 2: There are any number of people who list Sunraw as

1627
01:32:38,640 --> 01:32:41,920
Speaker 2: a primary influence as someone who really got them interested

1628
01:32:41,960 --> 01:32:47,519
Speaker 2: in music in general and specifically different forms of jazz. Yeah,

1629
01:32:47,560 --> 01:32:50,560
Speaker 2: all right, that space is the place. We're going to

1630
01:32:50,560 --> 01:32:52,559
Speaker 2: go ahead and close the episode out here, but we'd

1631
01:32:52,560 --> 01:32:53,960
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there if you have

1632
01:32:54,040 --> 01:32:56,439
Speaker 2: thoughts on Space is the place you have thoughts on

1633
01:32:56,520 --> 01:32:59,720
Speaker 2: the music and the enigma of sun Raw right in,

1634
01:33:00,080 --> 01:33:03,480
Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder

1635
01:33:03,520 --> 01:33:05,880
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science

1636
01:33:05,880 --> 01:33:08,600
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

1637
01:33:08,920 --> 01:33:11,320
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on

1638
01:33:11,400 --> 01:33:14,160
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk

1639
01:33:14,200 --> 01:33:17,040
Speaker 2: about a weird film on weird House Cinema. If you

1640
01:33:17,080 --> 01:33:19,800
Speaker 2: are on letterbox dot com, check us out there. Our

1641
01:33:19,880 --> 01:33:21,720
Speaker 2: username is weird Ouse. We have a nice list of

1642
01:33:21,760 --> 01:33:23,639
Speaker 2: all the films we've covered over the years, and sometimes

1643
01:33:23,640 --> 01:33:27,080
Speaker 2: a peek ahead of what comes next. And wherever you

1644
01:33:27,160 --> 01:33:31,160
Speaker 2: listen to the show, we just asked that you know, rate, review, subscribe,

1645
01:33:31,360 --> 01:33:33,280
Speaker 2: you know, if you're listening to us in a purely

1646
01:33:33,360 --> 01:33:37,040
Speaker 2: audio form, you know it's where wherever you get your podcasts,

1647
01:33:37,720 --> 01:33:40,280
Speaker 2: help us out there, but also a lot of you

1648
01:33:40,680 --> 01:33:43,080
Speaker 2: these days may be checking us out on Netflix, getting

1649
01:33:43,080 --> 01:33:46,360
Speaker 2: both the audio and the video. If you are a

1650
01:33:46,560 --> 01:33:51,519
Speaker 2: video listener slash watcher, by all means give us, give

1651
01:33:51,600 --> 01:33:54,200
Speaker 2: us a thumbs up, give us two thumbs up, or

1652
01:33:54,320 --> 01:33:58,479
Speaker 2: ask to be reminded remind me to watch the show.

1653
01:33:58,920 --> 01:34:02,439
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1654
01:34:02,600 --> 01:34:04,080
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1655
01:34:04,080 --> 01:34:06,080
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, if to

1656
01:34:06,200 --> 01:34:08,599
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1657
01:34:08,720 --> 01:34:11,200
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1658
01:34:11,200 --> 01:34:18,840
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1659
01:34:18,960 --> 01:34:21,920
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1660
01:34:22,000 --> 01:34:24,800
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1661
01:34:24,920 --> 01:34:28,120
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