Speaker 1: This is a Night Call special announcement. We're so happy
Speaker 1: to be back from our hiatus and with our new
Speaker 1: network I Heart Media. For the next two weeks, we'll
Speaker 1: be opening a time portal and releasing the episodes we
Speaker 1: recorded during the break with some very special guests and
Speaker 1: excellent night calls from our listeners. We'll also be releasing
Speaker 1: an extra episode next week to thank you for your
Speaker 1: patients and now that we're back, give us a call
Speaker 1: at two four oh four six night or email us
Speaker 1: at Night Call podcast at gmail. Now back to your
Speaker 1: strange days and lonely nights at eight pm in a
Speaker 1: research island in the Long Island Sound and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Night Call. Hello and welcome to Night Call, a
Speaker 1: podcast for your strange days and lonely nights. I am
Speaker 1: Tess Lynch in Los Angeles, and with me I have
Speaker 1: Molly Lambert, and joining us from New York, we have
Speaker 1: Emily Yoshida and we'll be joined in the second half
Speaker 1: of the show today by writer John Levinstein to discuss
Speaker 1: his new show, Frankenstein's Monster's Monster Frankenstein. But first an
Speaker 1: Area fifty one update. Yeah, so I can't remember when
Speaker 1: I saw this, but this was viral at some point,
Speaker 1: I want to say last Wednesday, so it's old news
Speaker 1: by now, but the parents it's night call news. It
Speaker 1: was very up our alley, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: had to address it on our like I felt like
Speaker 1: I was a spokesperson for a big company and it
Speaker 1: was like, yes, we've seen, we we know about the
Speaker 1: viral Facebook invite is aware, We've been made awareness. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was the US government having I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there was Yeah. It was a Facebook invite
Speaker 1: to storm area fifty one. Yeah, yeah, started by um,
Speaker 1: started by an account called oh wait I had it
Speaker 1: um ship posting because I'm in shambles, so you know
Speaker 1: it's probably for real and um and yeah at this
Speaker 1: at this point has over one million rstps, which are joking,
Speaker 1: means like five people will actually show up for it.
Speaker 1: Um but but the uh, the I think the full
Speaker 1: text of the the invite is just like if we
Speaker 1: Naruto run, which is a specific style of anime running
Speaker 1: where your arms are back and you run really first,
Speaker 1: that they can't they won't be able to stop us. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess the goal is to The stated goal was
Speaker 1: to free the aliens. Look, I mean, okay, all of
Speaker 1: this is stuff that I am behind in in in theory. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just saying, like I think I was
Speaker 1: going through the person's account who posted this the ship
Speaker 1: posting because I'm in shambles, because I was just like,
Speaker 1: what level of ship posts is this person? Like? Are
Speaker 1: they a horrible like for Channer or are they just
Speaker 1: like idiot Team? Yeah, and it seems more like idiot
Speaker 1: team having a laugh. Like I went through almost their
Speaker 1: entire history and I was like, there's nothing here that's
Speaker 1: like crazily racist or anything like that. As I'll just
Speaker 1: it's like stilly you know, ship posts. But um, but still,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the person was sort of
Speaker 1: like overwhelmed by the degree which it went viral and
Speaker 1: also how many um, dead serious people. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing is that there are the people
Speaker 1: who are dead serious, the people who are not at
Speaker 1: all serious, and then the very interesting gray area between
Speaker 1: them where you just can't tell if these people are
Speaker 1: serious or not. Because I was like, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that we were doing still doing things like this as
Speaker 1: a joke anymore, right as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: in nineteen when people are like re forming a militia
Speaker 1: and going to the pizza place they like do it.
Speaker 1: So this also seems kind of ill advised because it's
Speaker 1: a military base and you're not going to get very far.
Speaker 1: It's not like the official statement was like please don't,
Speaker 1: just please don't. But I've seen a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: talk around this where people are like, is this a
Speaker 1: subconscious reaction to wanting to take people out of ice concentrations? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it does feel like, I mean, why don't
Speaker 1: you just start a petition to do that? Then? Well?
Speaker 1: Let yeah, I think four thousand people showed up in
Speaker 1: l a um outside a detention center. I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like nice to see something that
Speaker 1: is kind of just like a good framing on how
Speaker 1: everybody is so frustrated by, you know, just feeling this
Speaker 1: immediate need to change things and how like everything you
Speaker 1: do is still insufficient because it's like a massive projected fantasy,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, I mean that was like the joke
Speaker 1: that I posted was like, we'll totally join in to
Speaker 1: free the aliens from Area fifty one once we've taken
Speaker 1: care of a couple of more important things right now.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I do feel like it's it's Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be a joke about it could be a
Speaker 1: joke about, you know, that kind of powerless feeling of
Speaker 1: not being able to do anything about everybody in these
Speaker 1: ice detention facilities. Or it could be a joke on
Speaker 1: these like crazy conspiracy things. Yeah yeah, yeah, um and
Speaker 1: and and in that, in that way, you can understand
Speaker 1: why it went viral. It just resonates. You know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's fun to just join a group. Uh, more fun
Speaker 1: than being by yourself, no matter what the group is.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a little movie called Midsummer Oh my god,
Speaker 1: you guys made. We still need some are our respective
Speaker 1: coastal locations, and then we came together to talk about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've all been very excited to talk about this movie.
Speaker 1: We've had some time to think about it, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if you guys have the same experience that I
Speaker 1: was very glad actually to have some time to let
Speaker 1: it breathe in my brain. Uh. When we when Molly
Speaker 1: and I came out of the l A screening, we
Speaker 1: we were both like, what does it mean? And then
Speaker 1: realize it's gonna take a long time to figure it
Speaker 1: out probably, Um, but we all really enjoyed Midsummer Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, you should go see uh,
Speaker 1: but don't go with someone you're dating. Probably not. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: I also want to say that another person told me
Speaker 1: about the Blue Valentine Curse, which tests are spoken about
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, that if you watch that movie
Speaker 1: with a significant other, you will break up, and that
Speaker 1: uh true true spears from the uh This podcast of
Speaker 1: Self Care podcast said he wants to talk about the
Speaker 1: plot of Blue Valentine with a girlfriend. That'll do it.
Speaker 1: They broke up. Yep. You don't have to actually sit
Speaker 1: through the movie. You can have a discussion about what
Speaker 1: you thought about the movie, and that can make you
Speaker 1: break up. It is um. I I did a poll
Speaker 1: a while ago on Twitter and only I think it
Speaker 1: was only like seventy percent of people broke up who
Speaker 1: were surveyed after watching Blue Valentine. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and say, fake news, a hundred percent of
Speaker 1: you will break up. I know, I mean it. I
Speaker 1: was like, what is it going on? Who is messing
Speaker 1: with my poll? Um? If you're uh forced a loot
Speaker 1: of self reflection on the part of everybody, Yeah, about
Speaker 1: UH bad trips it did trips and bad relationships or
Speaker 1: just like stale. They don't even need to be like
Speaker 1: I think the kind of point of the movie or
Speaker 1: why why a lot of it works to me, is
Speaker 1: that the relationship doesn't need to be like operatically bad.
Speaker 1: It could just be kind of dysfunctional and not like
Speaker 1: you know, something that people should know both parties should
Speaker 1: you get out of and just you know, cut their losses.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't need to be anything, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like kind of emotionally abusive and manipulative in some ways,
Speaker 1: but that's about it. But even still, like that's all
Speaker 1: it takes to go into this sort of heightened environment
Speaker 1: of this Midsummer festival and in Sweden and like have
Speaker 1: every single aspect of it exposed and open forum. This
Speaker 1: prompted me to tell to us about the time when
Speaker 1: I graduated college and I went to visit my college
Speaker 1: boyfriend who was abroad. We were like technically on a break,
Speaker 1: but we were like theoretically going to get back together.
Speaker 1: When I went to visit him, um and I've never
Speaker 1: been to Europe before, and I got there and he
Speaker 1: had a new girlfriend that he hadn't told me about
Speaker 1: because he was like, she's twenty six, so she knows
Speaker 1: that it's not serious. And I told her when my
Speaker 1: old girlfriend gets here, we're going on a trip together. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we went on a trip together. And it
Speaker 1: made me think about that a lot during this movie,
Speaker 1: but we didn't. It wasn't you know. I was mad
Speaker 1: at him, and then at a certain point I was like,
Speaker 1: but also got to enjoy this trip. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I would not have been able to handle it as well.
Speaker 1: I remembered when this happened in college. But when Molly
Speaker 1: told me about it again, I got the chills of
Speaker 1: how awful that is. I have a really hard time
Speaker 1: traveling anyway. So I kind of came I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever really took a trip. I never took like
Speaker 1: an extended trip with anyone I was dating, probably because
Speaker 1: I knew that I would lose. It's a litmus test,
Speaker 1: you know instantly whether or not it's gonna work. And
Speaker 1: it's just like this person had already like shown me
Speaker 1: when I showed up that they were no longer. So
Speaker 1: then I was like, we're alone on a trip together.
Speaker 1: How weird is that? Because I don't trust you any more?
Speaker 1: But also like going to go on this trip and
Speaker 1: have to like prove my worth in some weird way.
Speaker 1: And then we went to Croatia. Instead of you know,
Speaker 1: horrible things happening, it was fine. We did go to
Speaker 1: a weird festival though, um in Austria, the weirdest place
Speaker 1: I've ever been, which this movie also made me think about.
Speaker 1: And we went to like we were in Vienna, and
Speaker 1: this waiter was like, go to the festival in the Danube.
Speaker 1: And then it was literally like a state fair, like
Speaker 1: a Viennese state fair. So it was like people cutting
Speaker 1: up logs with chainsaws and playing Austrian pop punk and
Speaker 1: like eating fried food. Um well, well, in in Midsummer
Speaker 1: we should summarize the plot for those who haven't seen it. Um.
Speaker 1: It is about a young woman named Danny played by
Speaker 1: Florence Pew, who is she suffers from some anxiety it
Speaker 1: seems like already, and then a horrible thing happens to
Speaker 1: her family, which we shall not spoil here that kind
Speaker 1: of center to a very dark place for a long time.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile she's dating this guy whose name I can't
Speaker 1: remember because he's just like that's Christian, that's right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but played by Jack Grayner, who um, who is not
Speaker 1: the best boyfriend, kind of like a claude. He's in
Speaker 1: some kind of graduate school and he's an anthropology student,
Speaker 1: and so him and his buddies have planned this like
Speaker 1: wild summer trip to Sweden because one of his friends
Speaker 1: is Swedish, grew up on a colummune and they have
Speaker 1: this wild festival every summer. So all these dudes are
Speaker 1: going to go, and uh, these two Danny and Christian
Speaker 1: are still together for some reason, and she decides that
Speaker 1: she wants to come along with them, kind of to
Speaker 1: their disappointment. So they all go to the festival. They
Speaker 1: do a lot of hallucinogens, the sun never goes down,
Speaker 1: and and she has a journey of self discovery among
Speaker 1: the flower people. It's part of the movie at the end. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a theory about this movie, Yes, stand by
Speaker 1: It's my theory the moment I saw it, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stand by it. Weeks later, I think it's movies
Speaker 1: about white supremacy, y'all. Okay, I'm gonna back that up
Speaker 1: with because so Molly brought that up and I was like,
Speaker 1: he's a little fan. It's not because the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was. This movie is about like a white
Speaker 1: blonde girl and she goes to Sweden and she's accepted.
Speaker 1: It's it's all scary white people doing scary European things.
Speaker 1: It's true. If really captures that feeling of being in
Speaker 1: Europe and being weirded out by the tradition. There's also
Speaker 1: I think that well go ahead. Oh and I found
Speaker 1: a Business Insider article that Um talks about Ari Astor
Speaker 1: uh talking on a podcast, I believe, or in an interview,
Speaker 1: but Ruben so there's a cure her in the movie
Speaker 1: that that kind of is like a commentary on closed
Speaker 1: societies and incest Um there is this is a commune
Speaker 1: of people in Sweden and they they go to great
Speaker 1: lengths to not inbreed, except when they intentionally inbreed, to
Speaker 1: to produce an oracle basically, and there's an oracle named
Speaker 1: Reuben Um and it says in the Business Insider they're
Speaker 1: like an aster's words. Reuben embodies the political message of
Speaker 1: the film, which is perhaps partly critiquing the global rise
Speaker 1: of xenophobia and the return of the far right in Sweden.
Speaker 1: As Astor said in an interview, if you consider Swedish history,
Speaker 1: it's a very closed society, and what does that really mean.
Speaker 1: There are things happening in Sweden right now that are
Speaker 1: echoes of things that happened in the Second World War.
Speaker 1: There you go, there you go, Because again I do
Speaker 1: think there is part of the way that the far
Speaker 1: right pushes their ideology is to be like, we have
Speaker 1: to go back to this older, more innocent time. And
Speaker 1: you know when everybody was the beautiful girls everywhere in
Speaker 1: flower crowns and everything was great, um, and all we
Speaker 1: had to do was kill some people for the crops
Speaker 1: every once in a while, and I did get super
Speaker 1: And and also the Nazis are very into, uh, you're
Speaker 1: like this kind of esotericism. A lot of the the
Speaker 1: Nazi love love that weird occult stuff. And turns out
Speaker 1: that the form of Swedish paganism was the same form
Speaker 1: of paganism in Germany, so there is a common history there. Um.
Speaker 1: You should take our nightcall from Let's have some inside intel.
Speaker 1: This is a night email, I believe right, it's a
Speaker 1: night email from I'm probably totally mispronouncing as Oscar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm Osgar. You might note me as Bordo Blues on Twitter,
Speaker 1: writing to you from Stockholm, Sweden, to hopefully share something
Speaker 1: of use to your episode about Midsummer as well as
Speaker 1: my general bewilderment I felt because of the experience around
Speaker 1: this film. I saw the film and it's European premier
Speaker 1: here with a bunch of producers in the Swedish actors
Speaker 1: present A few days after Midsummer's Eve, which we observe
Speaker 1: as a holiday, always landing on a Friday, making the
Speaker 1: following Saturday, Midsummer's Day, a day off. Hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people leave the major cities for their hometowns, unless
Speaker 1: you're from Stockholm like I am, to be with their
Speaker 1: extended families and maybe raise a maypole and ring, dance
Speaker 1: around it and definitely eat fermented or pickled herring with
Speaker 1: potatoes and then get very drunk on beer and schnaps.
Speaker 1: You drink up, you sing a song, you fill the glasses,
Speaker 1: you repeat, all of which can lead to messy situations.
Speaker 1: Even the official website for Sweden points out that quote
Speaker 1: legend has it that the night before Midsummer's Day is
Speaker 1: a magical time for love. It still is in a way.
Speaker 1: During this night many a relationship is put to put
Speaker 1: to the test under the influence of alcohol, the truth
Speaker 1: will come out, which can lead both to marriage and
Speaker 1: to divorce. So he Oscar goes on to talk about, Um,
Speaker 1: a group of people like cliff diving while they were
Speaker 1: drunk and that ended very badly. Um, somebody got impaled
Speaker 1: on a they did. Uh. People being careless and not
Speaker 1: noticing bears sitting in the middle of a desolate for forest.
Speaker 1: Road fires that people like burning out of control because
Speaker 1: they're too drunk to handle them. The disasters befalling the
Speaker 1: poor tourists in the film are at least to me,
Speaker 1: just exaggerated and more murderous than this stuff you almost
Speaker 1: always here has happened to someone you know every summer.
Speaker 1: The wild disorientation you feel from the constant light isn't
Speaker 1: strange either, despite living with very little light for seven
Speaker 1: to eight months, then your constant sunlight during summer is
Speaker 1: still jarring, even if you've lived your all your life.
Speaker 1: Your mind doesn't really adjust to it, and you need
Speaker 1: black outlinders and sleeping mass to get through the days
Speaker 1: with two hours of twilight not dark for a few months.
Speaker 1: And that's just in Stockholm, which isn't in the North.
Speaker 1: Florence Pugh looking exactly like someone you'd run into it
Speaker 1: a Midsummer celebration or just wandering around here in general,
Speaker 1: adds to the uneasy feeling of it all being just
Speaker 1: a little too close to home, just like a two four.
Speaker 1: Buying the Midsummer hashtag on Twitter did, which added an
Speaker 1: emoji of her whaling, which became truly strange when Swedes
Speaker 1: started tagging their Midsummer photos. I want to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting. I learned about Midsummer maybe like
Speaker 1: a year ago because a friend of mine went um
Speaker 1: and it was very much like the setup for this movie.
Speaker 1: It was my friend Mike Hernando Stern went with his
Speaker 1: friend Max, who Swedish, back to Max's hometown for Midsummer
Speaker 1: and I said to him, are you sure you want
Speaker 1: to go into the forest with a bunch of like
Speaker 1: white Swedish people. You know you're a Mexican Jewish person.
Speaker 1: Are they going to sacrifice you for the crops um?
Speaker 1: And then there was a movie about it, so well,
Speaker 1: I think that's just my personal stereotype of all pagan
Speaker 1: celebrations is that I think I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: one who gets killed. Also, you love pagan celebration. I
Speaker 1: feel like we've talked about this so many times, like yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think I mean, obviously, this movie is in
Speaker 1: many ways a remake of The wicker Man, which is
Speaker 1: about another place sort of a weird ethno state removed
Speaker 1: from time where they still do the pagan things. So
Speaker 1: I did get really into researching uh pre Christianity, uh
Speaker 1: and found out that a lot of the stuff in
Speaker 1: Midsummer ripped from the headlines. Um. There, we didn't make
Speaker 1: up a lot of stuff, just like totally whole cloyeah.
Speaker 1: Something called something called a bloat Apparently blo with an
Speaker 1: accent t um was a thing that you had to
Speaker 1: do every summer where they would sacrifice a few people
Speaker 1: to ensure that the crops remained, uh going good of course, um,
Speaker 1: and that being a widespread phenomenon among every culture and
Speaker 1: pre Christianity. It is really weird and interesting how everybody
Speaker 1: like refers back to that as this time of brutalism,
Speaker 1: when obviously we live in an extremely brutalist, horrible time
Speaker 1: now that is just sanctioned. And you know, some of
Speaker 1: what they were saying was very seductive of like oh,
Speaker 1: we just acknowledge that, like you killed the old generation
Speaker 1: and that's how you get the new generation. Also, by
Speaker 1: the way, friend of Pod Colin Dicky, wrote about Midsummer
Speaker 1: for Mother Jones, and his take on it was that
Speaker 1: it was basically a commentary on people criticizing socialism, which
Speaker 1: I was like, also a very interesting read. Right, well,
Speaker 1: so this is more where I fall with this. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's not about white supremacy, and I think
Speaker 1: that that the I mean, well, the reason that it
Speaker 1: takes place there's for like very boring industry reasons because
Speaker 1: he got an assignment from a British that's true. I
Speaker 1: think the fact that it's Sweden is part of what
Speaker 1: makes it interesting because of all those things being played
Speaker 1: into it. And like, honestly, as somebody who reads a
Speaker 1: lot about like Germany leading up to the Nazis, like
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that the Nazis used, like
Speaker 1: the Nazi youth came out of stuff that Germans already
Speaker 1: did and loved. That all had to do with like
Speaker 1: scouting around outside and being in groups and living communally,
Speaker 1: and the other branch of that is like hippies, you know,
Speaker 1: comes out of that. So obviously it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Tess was just also talking about something she heard about
Speaker 1: that was like a tech attempt to update communes, but
Speaker 1: it costs so much money. Yes, it's like eight dollars
Speaker 1: a month for just a bedroom, and then you get
Speaker 1: to enjoy communal suffers. I was like, well, oh, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna say. I mean, so, I don't think
Speaker 1: that it's not about white supremacy, and I think that
Speaker 1: that imagery is like being used very intentionally of just
Speaker 1: like the creepiness of a town or a village just
Speaker 1: full of white people, like dressed in white Like I
Speaker 1: think that that he knows what he's doing with on
Speaker 1: the aesthetic level there. But I think I think the
Speaker 1: way that the movie hits deeper for me, and it's
Speaker 1: not not it's not in opposition to that as a theme,
Speaker 1: but I think it's like maybe a little broader is
Speaker 1: this idea of like how a community can make your
Speaker 1: individual feels feel bigger. So that is like obviously a
Speaker 1: phenomenon that happens with the all right, that happens with
Speaker 1: these sort of how people get radicalized online, but it
Speaker 1: also happens in more mundane ways, and I think like
Speaker 1: this kind of shows it happening through a breakup and
Speaker 1: like I was just thinking about like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you see somebody on Twitter or something who is having
Speaker 1: a hard time or is mad about something um and
Speaker 1: you know, because it's Twitter, you get the very brief
Speaker 1: cliff notes version of it. But then if you do that,
Speaker 1: you can get like a chorus of people and your
Speaker 1: mentions like like grieving with you, telling you that you're
Speaker 1: right to feel upset in some cases, like drumming up
Speaker 1: your feeling of being upset, like providing an echo chamber
Speaker 1: to make your individual feeling that up until then you
Speaker 1: were feeling by yourself a big shared thing that is
Speaker 1: even more justified and can be weaponized really easily too.
Speaker 1: And I think, and I think, yeah, I think what
Speaker 1: we're all saying is like and then that feeling of
Speaker 1: group nous, which is a good thing in some ways,
Speaker 1: can be like manipulated in two directions, and those directions
Speaker 1: and fascism and that is where it feels like everything
Speaker 1: is going right now anyway is into one of those
Speaker 1: two directions. So yeah, I think the movie, I mean,
Speaker 1: we all really liked it. It obviously provoked a really
Speaker 1: strong reaction and all of us, which I think, well,
Speaker 1: I also, yeah, I mean, I I really liked it,
Speaker 1: and it's been interesting to see how people have responded
Speaker 1: to this also compared to how they responded to Hereditary,
Speaker 1: Ariaster's last movie. Because I really like Hereditary, but like
Speaker 1: it didn't really get under my skin, which feels weird
Speaker 1: because it's like very creepy on a very kind of
Speaker 1: profound level and it's very upsetting. You're probably the only
Speaker 1: person who got more creeped out by this one than
Speaker 1: that one. I didn't, you know, it's not that I
Speaker 1: got more creeped out by it. Like in many ways,
Speaker 1: Mid Summer isn't really trying to be a horror film,
Speaker 1: and the way that Hereditary is it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, it's like, yeah, it's funny. It's like
Speaker 1: kind of just more an intense experience than much less
Speaker 1: so than just like like a horror genre. But that's
Speaker 1: why comedy is how it felt. Sure, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: yeah it has yeah, but I think, like I think
Speaker 1: that it kind of depends on how how for me.
Speaker 1: I don't really have a huge like family, and I
Speaker 1: don't like the dynamics of a family are not dynamics
Speaker 1: that I obsess about a lot. Because it's just never
Speaker 1: been a big part of my life. But like relationships
Speaker 1: that I have with other people, like even just like
Speaker 1: the experience of traveling with people who don't want you
Speaker 1: to be there, that kind of stuff is all like
Speaker 1: very deep for me. So like that was very I
Speaker 1: felt this one on a much deeper level. It finds
Speaker 1: like the good veins of discomfort to tap into, because
Speaker 1: I definitely, I mean, like Creditary, I think maybe it
Speaker 1: is just like it affects you more, maybe if you
Speaker 1: have a sibling when you're just like that feeling of
Speaker 1: like yeah and caring about them. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think like all we would agree that, like all
Speaker 1: the readings are valid. Well, I read something interesting that
Speaker 1: um where are Aster said that he wanted the movie
Speaker 1: to function where the first for the first viewing, you
Speaker 1: see it as kind of like a straightforward story and
Speaker 1: the hard to have like their own you know, motivations
Speaker 1: and like Danny kind of comes in and and it's
Speaker 1: a story about her like interacting with them. But then
Speaker 1: he wanted, you know, on subsequent viewings for you to
Speaker 1: kind of see the harda as like the externalization of
Speaker 1: how Danny is feeling and how you know, they are
Speaker 1: all of these scenes where they mimic her grief and
Speaker 1: they mimic her anger, and so in a way, it's
Speaker 1: it's he said, it was like a fairy tale for Danny,
Speaker 1: where to everyone else it was like a horror story.
Speaker 1: But to her it's like a fairy tale. And I think,
Speaker 1: like all of our Asters, I mean all of our
Speaker 1: Asters movies, and I've only seen two of them. I
Speaker 1: didn't see his um his first, which was The strange
Speaker 1: thing about the Joneses is that the name is a
Speaker 1: short but they all deal with families and dysfunction within families,
Speaker 1: mental illness within families. UM. And I think pretty much,
Speaker 1: I think most people who have a family can understand
Speaker 1: what it means to to be to have a family
Speaker 1: member who has either you know, either their neurotypical or
Speaker 1: they have a mental illness, and how that kind of
Speaker 1: becomes this thing that's specific to your family, that's closed
Speaker 1: off and you can't really share with people outside your family. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't you know. I feel like in the beginning
Speaker 1: this setup of Danny's family experiencing this tragedy and her
Speaker 1: needing to reach out beyond her actual nuclear family for
Speaker 1: support and being very isolated within that in a way,
Speaker 1: her traveling to a commune where the family is not
Speaker 1: necessarily biologically related, but they all share the same kind
Speaker 1: of like mythology, so so there's no family secret, there's
Speaker 1: no family shame. It's a shared shame. But again it's
Speaker 1: like they're all creepy white people with blue eyes, and yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is something that I think everybody's experienced, regardless
Speaker 1: of if you're like a part of the area nation
Speaker 1: or not. Right, like you can feel alien especially like
Speaker 1: like people who are gay and like don't feel included
Speaker 1: in their family find a second family outside of it,
Speaker 1: Like there are a lot of positive applications exactly exactly
Speaker 1: and wanting to find a family outside of your own family.
Speaker 1: I think that's why for her it's a fairy tale,
Speaker 1: is because even though there are so many fucked up
Speaker 1: things happening among this this group, there, there were already
Speaker 1: so many fund up things happening in Danny's own Like
Speaker 1: the issue was that she could not share that with people,
Speaker 1: like no one understood, and now she's in a place where, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you found a quote from Ariastar also that supports my
Speaker 1: thesis about how the people of color who come on
Speaker 1: the trip are all killed off and not well yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they basically I'll find it basically it was
Speaker 1: that they are not they are not chosen to be
Speaker 1: mated with. Yes, the idea of beplaicitly because it's to
Speaker 1: keep the like it's well, yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: just something that you do notice of, like, okay, well
Speaker 1: the people who are sticking out as not being white
Speaker 1: Arian people are you know, dispatched with it reminded, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just like this the creepy atmosphere. And again
Speaker 1: maybe I'm bringing my own reading to it because of
Speaker 1: my own feelings about Germany and like you know, europe
Speaker 1: Pian paganism and you know, places that weird places in Europe.
Speaker 1: But you know, I always find all that kind of
Speaker 1: culture really creepy, and the fetishization of it by Americans
Speaker 1: especially to be really creepy. You know, all the sort
Speaker 1: of like Scandinavian cooking. It's like, what are we really
Speaker 1: Well there's also I read a theory that was not
Speaker 1: it wasn't backed up by a lot of stuff, but
Speaker 1: it was very interesting that the student, the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever anthropology student who ends up inviting these these other
Speaker 1: friends of his to visit. It's his village, it's his family.
Speaker 1: There's a theory that maybe he chose Danny, and that
Speaker 1: the whole tragedy that happens to Danny earlier is in
Speaker 1: fact orchestrated by this student because he's basically trying to
Speaker 1: bring her into the fold. I saw it as that
Speaker 1: he found a person who was coming out of like
Speaker 1: an abusive, fucked up situation and prayer. Yes, but it's
Speaker 1: also it's technically she's she's like twenty five, it's her birthday,
Speaker 1: and according to the Harda Seasons of Life, which plays
Speaker 1: a really big role in the narrative of the movie,
Speaker 1: she's in her own midsummer like, she's literally in the
Speaker 1: middle of the summer season of her life. So, I
Speaker 1: mean it does seem as though she was kind of
Speaker 1: like hand picked. Yeah, And I remember at the beginning
Speaker 1: being sort of like, oh, why did they pick such
Speaker 1: a like Jennifer Lawrence looking ask girl, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, oh, because it wants to
Speaker 1: be you know. Yeah. Also, I'm not a hundred percent
Speaker 1: positive on this, but I'm pretty sure like Florence Pierre
Speaker 1: is not a natural blonde like they made her blonde
Speaker 1: for this movie, and I think that's also shows how
Speaker 1: intentional it is, you know. Yeah, I mean she's really
Speaker 1: great in the movie. She's so good. She's so good.
Speaker 1: Everybody was good, and I liked the creepy guy who
Speaker 1: brings them all in. He was really good. I thought, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like a really interesting character. I think, like the
Speaker 1: whole part where he like draws the picture of her
Speaker 1: and like he really is so kind to her, more
Speaker 1: so than anybody else on the trip. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: needless to say, we've all been thinking about this movie
Speaker 1: a lot. So seeing it, yeah, I mean just to
Speaker 1: oh well, just to plug a little bit. I didn't
Speaker 1: pretty long interview with Ari Astor on Vulture that you
Speaker 1: can read. Um, I think it's in our newsletter, that
Speaker 1: our Night Call newsletter that we sent out. It was
Speaker 1: in yeah, this month's I feel like this movie really
Speaker 1: captures the feeling of being in another place, of being
Speaker 1: in somewhere that is not your home, and having to
Speaker 1: decide if you are going to feel homesick or just
Speaker 1: like give yourself over to how different it is. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: Nightcall Commune coming soon, No, thank you, no way. Communal
Speaker 1: tables as far as the eye can see. Nightcall, Commune
Speaker 1: will be like a bungalow court, so everybody has their
Speaker 1: own space. That's a good idea. Can I briefly just
Speaker 1: introduce U is a palate cleanser email from a listener
Speaker 1: about the cat fox? Okay, because I must um. We
Speaker 1: got a listener email the other day. The subject was
Speaker 1: cat fox bit my brother and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: force us to read this now, Dear night Call. I
Speaker 1: was listening to the episode where you talked about the
Speaker 1: cat fox, and as you described it, I slowly began
Speaker 1: to realize that it might be the animal that bit
Speaker 1: my brother. A few years ago, my younger brother was
Speaker 1: on a hiking trip in Corsica and late one night
Speaker 1: on the trail, he was attacked by an animal that
Speaker 1: he said looked like a giant cat or a fox.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to take the chance that it might have
Speaker 1: been rabid, he cut his trip short and found a
Speaker 1: hospital that could examine the bite on his foot. For years,
Speaker 1: my family of made jokes about the fox that attacked
Speaker 1: him on vacation and how strange it was considered they
Speaker 1: don't normally go near humans. I called him and asked
Speaker 1: him to look up this animal. He said that the
Speaker 1: place where it was discovered is the exact part of
Speaker 1: the island where it happened. Also the fact that they're
Speaker 1: nocturnal and aggressive also fits with his story. So all
Speaker 1: the oh, they're cute, don't go looking for the cat
Speaker 1: fox unless you want to get bit. Wow yep, thank god. Okay,
Speaker 1: what if I do want to get bit because I
Speaker 1: want to turn into a wear cat fox? I think
Speaker 1: you might just get rabies and die. So don't do that.
Speaker 1: You can might feel the same. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: just go in another kin direction. What if I get rabies?
Speaker 1: But I feel like I've become a cat fox? Yeah,
Speaker 1: mysterious burglaries keep happening at night. Oh by the way, um,
Speaker 1: a long time ago on this podcast, I talked about
Speaker 1: on legal Reddit how the bats in an abandoned attict
Speaker 1: we're going to give everyone in the house rabies, and
Speaker 1: someone corrected us and said, like, not all bats have brabies,
Speaker 1: and we issued that correction. But I have now come
Speaker 1: completely full circle where I am going to buy a
Speaker 1: bad airbnb is what they're called. It's a bad house
Speaker 1: that you keep in your airbat. An air bat I'll
Speaker 1: buy one. I'm actually thinking I might wait an will fall,
Speaker 1: just to be seasonally appropriate, but I will report back. Wait,
Speaker 1: go on, I'm getting a bad house for outside, so
Speaker 1: bats will eat my mosquitoes. They're backs yeahs in Griffith Park.
Speaker 1: I guess bats are so got to invite more bats
Speaker 1: to this party in l A. After we were talking
Speaker 1: on the podcast, I was talking about this jun Geto
Speaker 1: short story about bats that I've been thinking about a lot.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. You met an air bat and
Speaker 1: bat was going to be was like a house where
Speaker 1: you let bats feed on you know. But we'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, seasonal depression. I might have to go down
Speaker 1: that road. And if so, Yeah, what does the bad
Speaker 1: house look like, I'll show I'll show you a picture
Speaker 1: and we'll put it in the show notes. But they
Speaker 1: just come like eat food. Is like a birdhouse for baths.
Speaker 1: They live there. They like to be huddled close together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's that's where we're at with the bats now,
Speaker 1: speaking of um being goth af uh, we have a
Speaker 1: guest for the pod this weekend, John Levenstein, talking about
Speaker 1: his show Frankenstein's Monsters, Monster Frankenstein, Did I get it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so that is coming up in just a second. And
Speaker 1: now joining us are very special guest John Levenstein, writer,
Speaker 1: uh and creator of the new show Frankenstein's Monster, Monster
Speaker 1: Frankenstein Almost Frankenstein's Monster's Monster Frankenstein. I love the name
Speaker 1: of the show. Yes, um, and thanks for joining us, John,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to see
Speaker 1: what happens here. John, Are you a big Frankenstein fan
Speaker 1: out of curiosity? Not at all, need to be. I
Speaker 1: was just wondering, No, And I'd say, it's like danger
Speaker 1: of It's one of those areas like right on the
Speaker 1: precipice of being overdone, like zombies or vampires. Um. And
Speaker 1: I was upset why. I said, oh no, drunk History
Speaker 1: is doing a Frankenstein thing now. I I the idea
Speaker 1: first encouraged me just because I pictured David Harbor in
Speaker 1: the role. Well, yeah, so, could you explain to somebody,
Speaker 1: to an alien who's just landed on Earth and downloaded Netflix,
Speaker 1: could you explain the premise of the show of Frankenstein's
Speaker 1: Monsters Monster Frankenstein. Correct, all right, there was an evolution,
Speaker 1: but at this point, and I'm terrible explaining it by
Speaker 1: the way, and when I released the trailer, Max Silvestri
Speaker 1: texted me to say that this is a better explanation
Speaker 1: than I had ever given him any trying to explain
Speaker 1: the show to him. I'm not I'm not that good
Speaker 1: at it. But anyway, it's as if David Harbor from
Speaker 1: Stranger Things came from an acting family and his father
Speaker 1: had made a play for television in the seventies called
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's Monsters Monster Frankenstein. And in this play for television,
Speaker 1: and David's father played Dr Frankenstein. This is backstory who
Speaker 1: created life um it tried to kill him. He had
Speaker 1: to kill it first. Since then, he's been uh perpetrating
Speaker 1: a hoax where when the funding source shows up, he
Speaker 1: hires someone to pretend to be him, and he pretends
Speaker 1: to be the life that he created. So it means
Speaker 1: that David is going back and forth between speaking as
Speaker 1: Dr Frankenstein and then someone enters the room and he
Speaker 1: has to switch it up and pretend to be the monster.
Speaker 1: And part of what led me to the idea, aside
Speaker 1: from David's heavy brow is um I love like in
Speaker 1: theater for television, the clunkiness of entrances and exits, yes,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of them here. And also
Speaker 1: David is a very accomplished actor, and like watching him
Speaker 1: go back and forth is really entertaining. So things entertaining
Speaker 1: Aunt's own, Like, I think the script I wrote is funny,
Speaker 1: but it's also got this weird like sometimes lead in
Speaker 1: tone like Fraser without a laugh track or something like
Speaker 1: it's odd you know you just hear clump clumping on
Speaker 1: like hollow floor. Oh yeah, And like early on we
Speaker 1: have like a thirty second entrance. I would say that
Speaker 1: a doctor makes coming down this creeky staircase and then
Speaker 1: after this long, long entrance down the staircase, there's some
Speaker 1: unnecessary blocking and then she finally speaks, and it might
Speaker 1: be my favorite thing in the show, but it's not funny,
Speaker 1: and that you would know where to where to laugh, right, Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: we are big fans at night call of uh weird
Speaker 1: Things and um of the show Frasier, yes, um, and
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein and other monsters. So we were just wondering,
Speaker 1: like what were the other inspirations? Were there any horror
Speaker 1: movies involved in this or you just were thinking about
Speaker 1: a weird place. Okay, So the inspirations. I would say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was, you know, I watched frank I rewatched Frankenstein
Speaker 1: and The Bride of Frankenstein. I would say Dr Jackline Mr.
Speaker 1: Hyde was an ration, but was more just theater, and
Speaker 1: specifically theater for television. So things that we were watching
Speaker 1: included I. Claudius, and again, like takes place in ancient room,
Speaker 1: you would think it has nothing in common, but what
Speaker 1: has in common with what we did. We were trying
Speaker 1: to this like ambitious, high prestige, low budget television. And
Speaker 1: so when you're watching I. Claudius, some will be walking
Speaker 1: away from camera, and first of all, it's a long exit,
Speaker 1: which I love. But then as they're moving away, you
Speaker 1: start realizing, okay, that door that they're walking to, that
Speaker 1: set is completely undressed, and they stuck a big a
Speaker 1: couple of big candle holders or pillars there or something.
Speaker 1: Just basically they did not quit furniture everywhere because they
Speaker 1: didn't have the money, but they have this big set.
Speaker 1: Actors are always positioning themselves in these plays for television
Speaker 1: to see little performances within the performance. So it's like
Speaker 1: basically they're sitting around. Someone will enter with a report
Speaker 1: or a story or sing as a song, and the
Speaker 1: way the other actors will just position themselves to see
Speaker 1: the play with aunt play is so fun is so
Speaker 1: funny to me, you know. And so we started just
Speaker 1: attaching to these little things that were happening in every
Speaker 1: play that we watched, and the main one was that
Speaker 1: there's all these jokes about theater and talk about acting
Speaker 1: and the nature of acting in plays, and like a
Speaker 1: lot more resides. But like you're watching I Claudius, and
Speaker 1: like someone makes an announcement the Emperor is coming, as
Speaker 1: please stand, and then the other guy says, from this
Speaker 1: happens in the foreground for like thirty seconds, I'm you
Speaker 1: have a wonderful voice. Are you an actor? This is
Speaker 1: ancient rome? And the guys like yes, but the work
Speaker 1: just isn't there anymore, isn't what it used to be?
Speaker 1: And the other person says it never was, my friend,
Speaker 1: and then on with the scene, and there's like so
Speaker 1: many things like that place, Like so within this place
Speaker 1: supposedly about Frankenstein, there's a moment when like David's character
Speaker 1: does a two minute diversion to talk about the nature
Speaker 1: of acting and what acting is and what acting isn't
Speaker 1: and there's like a lot of things like within the
Speaker 1: play that could be from any play. I would say,
Speaker 1: we're doing like moments where like mother is dying, but
Speaker 1: she's introduced in a crazy way where it's like generic,
Speaker 1: you don't have to know that much. We have mother
Speaker 1: upstairs who's dying. We have a little niece who does
Speaker 1: a dance in place with a gun. But like, but
Speaker 1: like the backstory, the backstory is contained within the moment,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Um as fans of the theater,
Speaker 1: big fans, fans, this sounds so good, Like there's something
Speaker 1: so I feel like. I mean, I haven't seen Eye Claudius,
Speaker 1: but I feel like there there's something about watching, uh
Speaker 1: like filmed stage productions, especially when you're really young, that
Speaker 1: are just it's so dream like. There's something really hard
Speaker 1: to like it's such a weird kind of unreality. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like one that a lot of maybe you
Speaker 1: guys watched this for like the Mary Martin Peter Pan one,
Speaker 1: just like Peter Pan. And I mean, now there are
Speaker 1: all these live musicals and everything on on NBC and
Speaker 1: whoever else is doing them now, which is sort of
Speaker 1: like a weird throwback to this this idea of like
Speaker 1: filming the stage, which is just I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: like an interesting thing to do on purpose. Um. And
Speaker 1: sometimes now they're including an audience, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that Jesus Christ Superstar one had an audience
Speaker 1: in it. But yeah, I love when they try to
Speaker 1: make theater edgy. That's my favorite thing. Also we did
Speaker 1: that too. We have some intense lighting effects, just as
Speaker 1: do you have the belief pattern you we don't have
Speaker 1: the leaf pattern. But like as we were about to
Speaker 1: start shooting, um, Eva Anderson sent me the crazy Frankenstein
Speaker 1: that was done a few years ago, um in Great
Speaker 1: Britain where they were switching rolls back and forth. Who
Speaker 1: was it? You did it? Remember the British David Hart
Speaker 1: was the guy who did slum Dog Millionaire Danny Boyle
Speaker 1: with his Frankenstein, And that had like some intense lighting
Speaker 1: effects that we borrowed and reminded me of like bullshit
Speaker 1: lighting effects in True West where it's like suddenly their
Speaker 1: brother against brother in the Old West. Yeah, they've been
Speaker 1: arguing about toasters five minutes ago, and now we're doing
Speaker 1: like a lighting effect as if they're on the prairie
Speaker 1: or something climax of the play spoiler. We've got a
Speaker 1: couple of those of like really clunky lighting effects that
Speaker 1: take forever when suddenly we dropped the music out of
Speaker 1: the thing too, where you just have to wonder what
Speaker 1: am I watching. There's a lot of moments in the
Speaker 1: thing where if anyone made a noise, it would be
Speaker 1: odd because there is no audience. You'd have to do
Speaker 1: a little cough. You'd have to wonder who was that.
Speaker 1: I do love that weird feeling. I feel like I
Speaker 1: watched the Bergman Magic Flute that was on PBS a lot.
Speaker 1: How's that kind of weird? Like high ambition, low budget
Speaker 1: glitter face paint on everybody? One that people loved that
Speaker 1: got sucked into yesterday that was so bad you wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe it. It's called I Think the Comedian. It's with
Speaker 1: Mickey Rooney, maybe written by Roder and it's like the
Speaker 1: it's the desperate comedy writer who's stealing material from a
Speaker 1: dead man. But it's like an hour and half about
Speaker 1: comedy without a laughing Yes, I am the person who
Speaker 1: bought that Criterion set that was like great filmed plays
Speaker 1: of the nineteen fifties and sixties and watched them all
Speaker 1: and was like, A were not good. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're very weird and boring. My question for John is
Speaker 1: what kind of doings do you have? Because my favorite
Speaker 1: thing about televised plays is the doings, in particular the
Speaker 1: sweeping of the floor, which on this podcast, the sweeping
Speaker 1: of the floor is the thing that I cannot know
Speaker 1: when you say doings, what is that? Man? What is doing?
Speaker 1: What was the business? The fifth business? Something different that
Speaker 1: I joined from Stephen King, but not it doesn't relate
Speaker 1: to the theater. But the fifth business is the agent
Speaker 1: of change who shows up and it's like I'm chaotic
Speaker 1: now everything is different and moving the plot a lot.
Speaker 1: So it's like sweeping the floor, like you mean within
Speaker 1: the place would be like the stage manager in our
Speaker 1: town or something. The doings is like you have a monologue,
Speaker 1: but you have to be doing something. It's either you're
Speaker 1: putting on your make up, You're sweeping the floors, You're
Speaker 1: you're putting all the drink away, like all the glasses,
Speaker 1: you're like manning the bar. A lot of this comes
Speaker 1: from chairs up on table. We have. We do have
Speaker 1: some doings. We have um, we have one conversation between
Speaker 1: David Harbor and Cape Berlin in the lab where it
Speaker 1: takes you a few seconds to realize that she's climbing
Speaker 1: on top of him to funk him during this conversation,
Speaker 1: and they treat it surf by way. It's kind like,
Speaker 1: what is this business that's happening? And then suddenly you
Speaker 1: see it for a new angle, It's like, oh God,
Speaker 1: what they're really going at it? Now? We have we
Speaker 1: do have we have doings with of course it's an
Speaker 1: old play. We have doings with the decanters and glasses, yes,
Speaker 1: and this case we also have test tubes. Um. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of our doings are are around the
Speaker 1: gun on the stage and we have one of our
Speaker 1: sponsors for this play is check Off Guns and Ammo,
Speaker 1: and the gun does go off in the end. Um.
Speaker 1: We have like so we have any way, So there's
Speaker 1: a play. Would say of our twenty eight minutes show,
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen minutes of it is the play itself, but
Speaker 1: there's a few other parts too. There's a documentary aspect
Speaker 1: where David Harbor our David Harbor who were calling David
Speaker 1: Harbor the third. His father is David Harvard Jr. Is uh. Look,
Speaker 1: James was playing interviewing people. So the people he's interviewing
Speaker 1: are his father's old manager or his father's old agent
Speaker 1: and producer played by Michael Lerner and Mary Waronoff, who
Speaker 1: were both so fantastic. They're both about eighty years old
Speaker 1: with like some memory issues, but that made everything like
Speaker 1: super realistic too, And then we shot a bunch of
Speaker 1: archival material too, so we've got like later day David
Speaker 1: Harbor Jr. In like an awkward MTV type interview in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties based on like in the eighties used
Speaker 1: to see everyone while someone like Roger Moore would come
Speaker 1: on the show and those interviews were always really odd.
Speaker 1: So we have like one of those interviews on MTV
Speaker 1: type show. Because Alfred Molina is in Frankenstein's Monsters Monster Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: In the backstory, we have that he's the greatest actor
Speaker 1: in the world, I mean true story. He flew over
Speaker 1: from England to do the part, and he has a
Speaker 1: TV show called The Actor's Trunk, which we see clips
Speaker 1: of now. In the Actor's Trunk. He has a trunk
Speaker 1: on stage m Aubrey Fields. This is the Actor's Trunk,
Speaker 1: and today our guest is when my favorite actors David
Speaker 1: Harvard Jr. And I've given him a frying pan and
Speaker 1: then you'll like go to the same where he's teaching
Speaker 1: the audience how to act, the audience of like acting
Speaker 1: students using the props in the trunk um. And then
Speaker 1: we had him shooting a commercial for a London USA,
Speaker 1: a Beef Wellington company, kind of like modeled after the
Speaker 1: old Orson Wells commercial. It's all very Orson Wells just saw. Actually,
Speaker 1: my friend went to you will know who this person
Speaker 1: is ken Nordine's estate sale, and they had a Orson
Speaker 1: Wells like a thing from when Orson Wells would do
Speaker 1: basically well people do now where they'll record a video
Speaker 1: message for you. It was like Orson Wells will do
Speaker 1: your voiceover for the KTEL voiceover company. This big picture
Speaker 1: of Arson Wells. Uh God, very very amazing. That so grazy.
Speaker 1: And I'll see one last theater joke. David Harvard Juniors
Speaker 1: catchphrase which comes up several times is and that's how
Speaker 1: I got into Juilliard and the big drama, the Big
Speaker 1: I'll give you one spoiler, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: plot here, is that turns out he did not go
Speaker 1: to Juilliard. That's the greatest acting of all. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: we're all very much looking forward to watching the show.
Speaker 1: You can watch the show on Netflix. It will be
Speaker 1: out when this is released, because the episode we are
Speaker 1: making comes out soon. Um. Well, we have some nightcall.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a nightcall. Yeah, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to plug down Dan Longino. Is that how you say it? Correct?
Speaker 1: Catch one, Catch a one quick, Dan lunch And I
Speaker 1: was gonna say it's directed by Dan Longeno, who is
Speaker 1: a friend of the Pond and we're big fans of
Speaker 1: and you guys work together on Cruel Show, and I
Speaker 1: think you guys are the masters of uh doing really
Speaker 1: specific TV parody stuff that's really funny and weird, and
Speaker 1: nobody will is doing so. Yeah. Dan was one of
Speaker 1: the editors the first two years of Curl Show and
Speaker 1: then became a director's season three after Jonathan Chryso left.
Speaker 1: He directed Pen fifteen and then with this, And like
Speaker 1: Dan's hallmark is he just can't stand anything on screen
Speaker 1: that seems fake to him. And like, as an example,
Speaker 1: we had one moment that we were going to shoot
Speaker 1: where David was in a white wig as his father
Speaker 1: like looking back on stage and uh, the kind of
Speaker 1: like everyone's looking at like it looks a little cartoony
Speaker 1: hair is messing with it. Okay, I guess it's okay now.
Speaker 1: And I looked over it Dan and it seriously looked
Speaker 1: like Dan was about to cry, and uh, actually, Dan,
Speaker 1: what's going on? And he said, just it just looks
Speaker 1: so stupid. And so he was like physically incapable of
Speaker 1: doing something he thought was that fake. So like hair
Speaker 1: rushed in. They took off the wig. They like whitened
Speaker 1: David's hair instead. It was much better than what we
Speaker 1: were about to shoot. But like I have almost I
Speaker 1: have this internal mechanism where I was just gonna shoot it.
Speaker 1: I was just like, well, I guess the hair looks stupid.
Speaker 1: But as a director like Dan has these checks where
Speaker 1: he won't do it. Wow, it was a bridge to
Speaker 1: a wig too far. He likes authenticity. Yeah, well, we
Speaker 1: were going to ask a question about authenticity. A night
Speaker 1: email from friend Ken Night called friend Ken, Hey, Emily,
Speaker 1: Molly and TuS. It is twelve twenty am and the
Speaker 1: unseasonably cool suburbs of Milwaukee. I found out about the
Speaker 1: podcast a few weeks ago. And I've been making my
Speaker 1: way through the backlog. I just finished an episode where
Speaker 1: doppelgangers were brought up, and it reminded me of my
Speaker 1: own story. We were watching a fire safety video in
Speaker 1: third or fourth grade. A fireman was talking to students
Speaker 1: in a gym. The camera panned over the crowd and
Speaker 1: paused on my double I remember the kids next to
Speaker 1: me asking if that was me in the video. I
Speaker 1: was positive it wasn't, but he looked just like me.
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember feeling uneasy. The camera continued around the crowd,
Speaker 1: and that's when I saw the one difference between us.
Speaker 1: He had a wicked rat tail that went halfway down
Speaker 1: his back. I wonder what cool me is doing? Now
Speaker 1: take care? Can John do you have a doppelganger? I
Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to say no, but a couple
Speaker 1: of times back in the day, this was really irritating
Speaker 1: to me. Um cars stopped on the street and the
Speaker 1: driver like yelled out excitedly Suits because they thought I
Speaker 1: was the guy Rick Hoffman from Suits. It's like a
Speaker 1: little pod. It's like it's not the most flattering look alike,
Speaker 1: but like, look likes aren't usually that flattering. You know totally.
Speaker 1: When somebody tells you the person they think looks like you,
Speaker 1: you're like them really well, but it can be worse
Speaker 1: if if you if you're doppelganger is better looking, then
Speaker 1: you're like, oh no, because now I'm the person that
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the disappointment. I'm the poor man
Speaker 1: somebody exactly. I do have a doppelganger story that just happened,
Speaker 1: a great doppelganger story. I have a doppelganger who runs
Speaker 1: an Instagram account called Valley Haunts. I follow that everybody
Speaker 1: thinks it's me because I also take I also haunt
Speaker 1: the valley, and I also take pictures of like weird
Speaker 1: l a architecture all the time that are very much
Speaker 1: in the exact same style as this person who goes
Speaker 1: around documenting all the weird, weird old architecture that still
Speaker 1: exists in the valley. Her name is Alex. We found
Speaker 1: out because I was like who are you and she
Speaker 1: was like, I'm a girl named Alex from the valley.
Speaker 1: She the other day messaged me and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have a brother named Ben? And I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: I do, and she was like, I also have a
Speaker 1: brother named what why also with the producer mad Lib.
Speaker 1: Wait what what so it's a double doppelganger. I called
Speaker 1: my brother. I was like, you know that Simpsons episode
Speaker 1: where they meet Board and Eliza, right and they solve
Speaker 1: the crown before them, Like, that's what this felt like.
Speaker 1: I was like, not only does she run a weird
Speaker 1: Valley Instagram like he? Does she look like you? Or
Speaker 1: is her her? I haven't seen a picture of her yet,
Speaker 1: doesn't know what doppelganger this is not my? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is my your intellectual dopple ganger. Yes, well it's just read.
Speaker 1: I guess there's only like two things for kids from
Speaker 1: the Valley to do is start a weird Instagram account
Speaker 1: or get into the underground hip hop game. Yeah, manage rappers.
Speaker 1: I feel like the guy who wrote that email, though,
Speaker 1: I don't think people really know what they look like.
Speaker 1: They did that the camera's going around and that lands
Speaker 1: on someone who looks exactly like me. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would know that someone looked ex about when
Speaker 1: they do that Instagram thing where people are like celebrity
Speaker 1: twins and everybody is very generous. That's terrible. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean the fact that it sounds like his classmates. Classmates
Speaker 1: are the ones who pointed it out, so that always
Speaker 1: because it's always somebody else, and the classmates went crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't know that the classmates said a word. People
Speaker 1: love to project in their anecdotes that like everyone around
Speaker 1: them had the same reaction that they just reading over
Speaker 1: the tale. Have you, guys, ever had an exact appleganger?
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen somebody that looks so much like
Speaker 1: you freaked you out? Yes, several times. It's for a while,
Speaker 1: I was my hairstyling glasses. It was like that's all
Speaker 1: you see, your glasses and hair, you know, bangs and glasses.
Speaker 1: So I had several and then there was apparently there's
Speaker 1: a couple who lives like about a mile from me.
Speaker 1: And frequently still people are like, oh, I just saw
Speaker 1: you walking on hill Hurst And it was like, wasn't
Speaker 1: we're talking more about like mirror pairs. Mirror pairs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not exactly doppelgangers, I mean not yeah, not like the
Speaker 1: exact would you say Frankenstein's Monsters in any way a doppelganger?
Speaker 1: I mean because David is playing Dr Frankenstein, who sometimes
Speaker 1: pretends to be the monster. And then in the flashback
Speaker 1: when the monster is alive. He plays the monster. It's
Speaker 1: wald Wald doppelgangers. Would you say that this is the
Speaker 1: first paraos, that he was just faking that he had
Speaker 1: done something in order to advance science because he didn't
Speaker 1: want to say the science wasn't there yet. I don't
Speaker 1: even know when this thing takes place, Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I don't, I guess I'm predates Edison. She wrote
Speaker 1: it in like well, she wrote it in eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: and then it came out a couple of years later.
Speaker 1: I was talking about my play, like my play about
Speaker 1: Dr Frankenstein, like, I don't know if I would be
Speaker 1: surprised if a phone rang or not. Right, we like things.
Speaker 1: That's a theater verse. Yeah, it's all the times at once.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I had a very like concrete prop guy
Speaker 1: who would ask me questions that I was answering metaphorically,
Speaker 1: and when he would say things to me like what
Speaker 1: decade is, would be like, it's not, it's no decade.
Speaker 1: It's a prestige play. I was reading about the old
Speaker 1: dark house genre and finding out that there's this play
Speaker 1: that's been remade like five thousand times. That's The Ghostbreakers.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning of the Universal Horror series. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I like that Frankenstein, like the Frankenstein myth, you
Speaker 1: can just bring it back over and over again. The
Speaker 1: one thing legal told us we couldn't do. It's like,
Speaker 1: you can't have a green like Frankenstein's public domain. But
Speaker 1: the Universal Frankenstein is not public domain, like they created
Speaker 1: that green creature where if you make it look too
Speaker 1: much like that, they'll see you. Really, that's so weird.
Speaker 1: How but I mean, there must be like a list
Speaker 1: of the things that make that image Dracula copyrightable. Not
Speaker 1: such is public domain, right, but it is the universal Dracula,
Speaker 1: like if you get too close to that Dracula. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I feel like that was already I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: was already an image before Dracula. Whereas I do, I
Speaker 1: do kind of see the case to be made for
Speaker 1: the Universal Frankenstein because there was no like all the
Speaker 1: images or illustrations of Frankenstein prior to that movie look
Speaker 1: nothing like that. They look they look like a they
Speaker 1: look kind of zombie ish. It's like a like a
Speaker 1: guy with like you know, fucked up a scorched scalp
Speaker 1: or whatever and makes some stitches on his body, but
Speaker 1: he's not green and he doesn't have that flat head
Speaker 1: and his head. How did you approach conceptalizing what you
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's Monster would look like? Oh, just that it had
Speaker 1: because David was playing his father, who had this huge ego.
Speaker 1: He thought he could do the transitions David's fictional father
Speaker 1: from Monster to Dr Frankenstein purely through acting. So it's
Speaker 1: like Bradley Cooper Elephant. We did We did nothing because
Speaker 1: that's the greatest thing an actor can do, not put
Speaker 1: on a up and transform. The prosthetic is my soul.
Speaker 1: And the transformations were happening kind of fast, as like
Speaker 1: people would enter an exit like back and forth. That's
Speaker 1: that's part of how he was showing off in the
Speaker 1: fake play Can't Wait, Well, everybody check out Frankenstein's Monsters
Speaker 1: Monster Frankenstein Correct. It from John Levinstein, directed by Dan
Speaker 1: Longino and starring an all star cast including David Harbor
Speaker 1: and Cape Berland. Cape Perland. Come on night call please,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we love you. Yeah, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us, Thank you for having that's all the night
Speaker 1: calls we have today. Thanks so much for listening, and
Speaker 1: please join us again next week and you can always
Speaker 1: leave us a question, comment, or fan theory about Midsummer
Speaker 1: Bats or Frankenstein and their Monster at two four o
Speaker 1: four six Night, or leave us a night email at
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