Inception (w/ Elijah Davidson)

Eli Price (00:41.715)
Hello everyone. And welcome to the Establishing Shot, a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies. Uh, we are here on episode 23 of the podcast, um, getting, uh, deep into our series on Christopher Nolan. And, uh, we're going to be talking inception today. Uh, so, uh, unfortunately we, uh, in audio format is, it's hard to

depict a starting off in a dream within a dream. So I don't really have anything for you there other than this really bad tongue in cheek joke. So yeah, but I'm really excited today to have Elijah Davidson on the podcast with me, joining me to talk about Inception. Elijah is the

co-director if I'm not mistaken of the Brim Film Institute at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California and Yeah, I'm excited to have you on Why don't you introduce yourself tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do? and Yeah, we'll go from there

Elijah (01:59.57)
Well, now my mind is My is racing because I'm trying to think what inception would be like as an audio play like a radio play inception How they would even do that? I don't think it's possible. So I talked about myself in a minute, but now I'm just like Can't get that out of my head because it's so like it's so visual and like the way the movie works depends so much on Like movie things you can only do in movies. I Don't think it would work. I get they'd slow people's voices down. Maybe here you need to like later on

Eli Price (02:09.071)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:22.612)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (02:26.983)
Maybe. I mean, you could definitely slow down a Edith P. off track.

Elijah (02:31.114)
You can do that. You can definitely do that. Slow it way down. And that might be the way to do it. But that's, we'll get to there. We'll get to that. Yeah. I'm like you said, I'm Elijah Davidson. Been co-directing Brim Film at Fuller Seminary since 2011. And it's a, it's a faith in film Institute. So we, we do all that we can to.

Eli Price (02:39.829)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:59.946)
encourage and support kind of that intersection between theology and film. So we have a screening series that we run here in Pasadena, California, where the seminary is. We attend festivals. We have a website where we have movie reviews and things like that, write reviews. We have book series that we edit. We have students who come through and who work in the film industry and also are taking...

theology classes, kind of with that theological kind of foundation to their work and will do whatever they need to support their studies. So we do, whether that's helping them find locations on campus to shoot something or organizing movie discussion groups if they want to do that alongside their studies. So just whatever we can do to support them, we try to do it. I love it. It's a lot of fun. I initially came to Fuller to study at Fuller.

Eli Price (03:51.827)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:57.234)
because I was interested in doing something to help Christians in the church be nicer to artists, because I love artists and Christians have a kind of a bad track record of treating how they treat artists. And so I wanted to encourage a better relationship there. And very blessed to be able to work. I love movies forever. And so very blessed to be able to work with Brim Film to kind of support.

Eli Price (04:07.787)
Sure.

Eli Price (04:18.813)
Yeah.

Elijah (04:26.854)
cinematic arts and cinematic artists. Yeah.

Eli Price (04:29.235)
Oh yeah. Yeah, I think the first time that Fuller came across just my radar, I came across Robert K. Johnson's book, Real Spirituality, and kind of saw where he was kind of working out of. And yeah.

Elijah (04:40.018)
Yeah, Rob. Yeah. Clever.

Elijah (04:48.406)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, Rob's great. Rob's a mentor and a good friend and the reason I get to do what I do. In that book, Real Spirituality was a real kind of foundational text for a lot of this current era of theology in film. We actually called Brimfilm, was actually called Real Spirituality for the first 20 years or so of its existence. Renamed it Brimfilm a few years ago, but yeah, called Real Spirituality, which I always liked. I mean, candidly, I like that name better than Brimfilm.

Eli Price (04:53.727)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (05:04.051)
Yeah.

Eli Price (05:08.873)
Okay.

Eli Price (05:16.807)
Yeah, real as in R-E-E-L, spirituality. Yeah.

Elijah (05:17.81)
because it, that's right, a little play on words there, yeah. But the spirituality part is the part that I really liked because it kind of, it's a little bit more generous and open, which I think you gotta be when you're talking about artists and filmmakers if you don't wanna over-spiritualize their work. But spirituality is kind of like a wide enough net that you can let a lot of stuff in and have a lot of good discussions. So yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (05:31.688)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (05:38.132)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (05:42.663)
Yeah. Common human experience sort of word. Yeah.

Elijah (05:49.038)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Eli Price (05:52.679)
Yeah, and you have some published works yourself.

Elijah (05:57.75)
Yeah, I do. Yeah, I'm a writer. Writer by vocation. That's the word that means kind of like calling. So writer by vocation. By profession, I work in marketing for the seminary. But by vocation, I'm a writer. And I have a few books that I've done, including one on Christopher Nolan. So one little book on Christopher Nolan.

Eli Price (06:06.827)
Sure.

Eli Price (06:23.644)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (06:25.186)
Very little book, very small book, like 10,000 words. Hardly a book, but hopefully just enough. But yeah.

Eli Price (06:32.827)
Yeah, yeah. I've mentioned it a few times, just some points that you've brought up in past episodes that may or may not have released yet at this point of the recording. But yeah, I kind of describe it as almost like a film critic devotional almost in the way it's kind of written. But yeah.

Elijah (06:45.956)
the

Elijah (06:58.442)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The devotional is kind of the model for it. It was... There's three books in this little series that I do. I call it the Icons of Cinema because it's fun to call it that. And I get to make a little icon to go along with it. And then the Nolan book, you know, in this little book. So I've done one on Nolan. I've done one on Guillermo del Toro. And I just recently put one out on Hayao Miyazaki.

Eli Price (07:04.244)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (07:28.246)
And in these books, kind of like you do on your podcast, you look, go through a filmmaker's filmography. And I'm keenly interested in, okay, what's driving them? Like what kind of question are they asking? What questions perhaps, but usually it's a question that they are kind of asking over and over again as they make their movies. And how can we see this play out? And then, not like, I don't wanna,

Eli Price (07:28.597)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:36.991)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (07:57.738)
Jesus, Duke him or anything like that. But I'm more interested in like what kind of, what's a good solid, correct Christian response to this? And we, Rob Johnson and Fuller, we film, we kind of teach a stance toward culture that, it comes from C.S. Lewis, if you want to understand, first you must stand under. And so you let the,

Eli Price (07:59.708)
Right.

Eli Price (08:06.408)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (08:28.002)
the film speak first or the artist speak first and then respond to what they say. So you're not trying to impose anything, you're gonna respond to the questions that they bring up. So just try to do that as going through these filmmakers work. So yeah, I'm glad you found it helpful. I also, they also are very short, like the Nolan book's like 10,000 words, the Miyazaki one's the longest one, it's like 12,000 words. And...

Eli Price (08:30.324)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:51.122)
Yes.

Elijah (08:56.878)
Because part of the deal with these little books is, I mean, there are great resources out there if you want to go deep film theory wise on these filmmakers. And I've read a lot of those, a lot of great books out there. And also drew like a lot of good biographies of a lot of these filmmakers as well. And I think people should read those. It's good work. But there's not a lot of kind of sustained theological interaction.

Eli Price (09:03.004)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (09:11.819)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (09:25.014)
with these filmmakers and their careers. And so I wanted to do just that because that's the piece that I do. So, and I want to give it just enough where people can read it and hopefully get a little bit more out of the movie and see it a little better. Yeah.

Eli Price (09:26.163)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (09:32.615)
Yeah.

Eli Price (09:39.355)
Yeah, it's kind of refreshing because I'm also kind of reading along through with Tom Shone's The Nolan Variations, which is very, very deep in each film. And so having like a nice little palette cleanser in the middle of that is nice. Yeah.

Elijah (09:46.978)
Hmm, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Elijah (09:57.239)
Yeah.

That's good to hear. Yeah, that's good to hear. Yeah. My goal is on those, just get people just enough, you know, like to get them back to the movie because the movies are really where it's at, you know? So yeah, good. I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's good.

Eli Price (10:08.875)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Oh yeah, and I like to, for maybe listeners that are more theology-bent, I like to think of it as trying to do film exegesis instead of film eisegesis, reading out of the text instead of into it. Well, in this case, it's not a text, it's a film, but yeah, I love that. And for maybe listeners that aren't...

Elijah (10:29.067)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elijah (10:35.551)
Right.

Eli Price (10:42.795)
uh, Christians and just trying to dig into the movie. Um, you know, don't let, uh, don't let the Christian talk scare you away from, uh, getting that transcending time and, uh, looking into it. Cause it really has, um, very like just human applicable themes that you're, you're kind of trying to dig into. Um, and you know, Christopher, it's not like Christopher Nolan is.

Christian making quote unquote Christian films. So a lot of the themes that are being dealt with aren't specifically Christian necessarily, but very like, you know, just common human things that we need to reckon with and deal with.

Elijah (11:10.154)
No.

Elijah (11:25.074)
Yeah, I always like to think of them as artists ask questions primarily, and they might give some answers to those questions, but they're asking questions mostly. And it's, I think, a fair and honoring way to interact with their work is to engage those questions from your own perspective.

Eli Price (11:29.588)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (11:45.798)
know, for me, that's a Christian perspective. For somebody else, it might not be. But just trying to honestly engage with them. And then also the other part of it is, you know, from film studies side of things, like, you know, theological film criticism is just a lens like any other. So like people do feminist film criticism, you know, they do queer film criticism, they do all kinds of different film criticisms.

Eli Price (11:49.588)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (12:14.47)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (12:14.654)
our film theories and theological is another one. So it's like an extra nice little tool to have in your toolbox, I think. And a nice extra lens that you can use sometime when it's applicable, you know? So yeah, cool. And people can, they can get the books for free. Also this is worth stating. The...

Eli Price (12:20.308)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (12:25.319)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So what?

Eli Price (12:34.516)
Yeah. I think if you sign up for, I think you have a newsletter and you can choose. I think you, you can choose if I'm not mistaken between the Nolan or the del Toro book, I think. Okay. Yeah.

Elijah (12:44.362)
or the Miyazaki one now. Yeah, Miyazaki's been out of that too. So yeah, you can get them for free. You can just go to my website, ElijahDavidson.com and go to books and you'll find your way to them. Pretty easy to do. And sign up for my newsletter, get it for free, then unsubscribe if you want to, I don't care. But if you want to get them, this PDF, you get a PDF that way. But if you want to get it on Kindle, they're available on Kindle as well. They're like three bucks or something like that piece on Kindle.

Eli Price (13:01.515)
Sure.

Eli Price (13:13.843)
Cool. Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (13:14.706)
And there will be, so they're just digital right now. I'm currently working on a new one on James Cameron. And once I finished the Cameron one, I'm gonna put these four all together and do a print version of these books as well. So if you really want the print thing, just gonna wait six months or so. They'll be one of those, so yeah.

Eli Price (13:28.008)
Oh great.

Eli Price (13:35.507)
Yeah, great. That's awesome to know. Yeah, so what was your, I guess, like, personal journey, I guess, into loving film? Like, what sparked that in you and in your life?

Elijah (13:54.738)
Yeah, I can't remember a time when I wasn't watching movies. My parents really love movies. And they were always watching movies. They were always showing us movies that they loved. And they're big fans of classic films. I think there's like never a time when TCM is not on in our house, my parents' house on some TV. And so they love classic films. They love new movies. We're always going to the movies all the time.

Eli Price (13:59.089)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (14:24.234)
I just love movies. I have so many memories of them sitting me. I have five younger siblings and they would sit us all down to watch something, you know, and maybe it was I mean, my vertigo was one that we all sat down and watched, you know, Hitchcock's vertigo or what else? They they really loved Terry Gilliam. They really love Terry Gilliam. So Time Bandits was one that they made sure we all sat down and watched. And then as I got older, you know, my

Eli Price (14:39.264)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:51.258)
Okay.

Elijah (14:54.166)
parents would sit me down to watch movies that were maybe a little bit too old for my siblings. So I have great memories of watching like The Godfather and Psycho and things like that with my parents when I was older. So movies were always there. And then I, of course, loved them and watched them on my own as well, all growing up. So one of the best summers though, I got a job in the nearby...

Eli Price (14:59.167)
Sure.

Eli Price (15:04.008)
Yeah.

Elijah (15:23.39)
I grew up in a very small town, like 700 people in the country. And but the county seat town, I got a job in that town at a grocery store. And I would I would get off work and blockbuster video had this promotion going on when I was working there. And it was for kids. And you can sign up for it. And then you were allowed to rent like a movie for free every day or something like that as a kid. And

Eli Price (15:52.623)
Bye bye.

Elijah (15:53.142)
They didn't really have a standard age limit on it. So I signed up for it. I was in high school and I signed up for it anyway. And I would get off work at the grocery store. I would go to Blockbuster. I would get a movie, come home and watch it that night. And then the next day go to work again, return it. When I was, I get a new movie and did that. I did that like all, you know, all summer long and through the fall. And that was a, that was a time when I really watched a lot of stuff that I'd always heard about. Cause I just pick it up from Blockbuster and watch it and move on through. So.

Eli Price (16:12.273)
Yeah.

Eli Price (16:18.207)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (16:22.035)
Yeah.

Elijah (16:22.722)
fun memories of that summer and fall. Doing that. Yeah. So yeah, so movies have always been there for me and it's never wavered, I guess.

Eli Price (16:26.105)
Yeah, that's awesome memory.

Eli Price (16:37.371)
Yeah, followed right through to your career, I guess.

Elijah (16:42.866)
Yeah, yeah. Writing about movies came about, not accidentally. I've always been a writer, and I always kind of wrote about everything in my life, including the movies I was watching. And then when I started working for Van Real Spirituality, my first big job was to revitalize our website. And so I started writing film reviews of current releases all the time because we needed

Eli Price (17:05.567)
Hmm.

Elijah (17:11.714)
content on our website. And I've just continued doing that. And it ended up being a nice, as I was figuring out, like my, whatever ministry leanings I had and my writing and all that kind of stuff, they just seemed like this is the thing that God put in front of me to do. So this is the thing I'll write about and continue doing. So as long as I feel like there's something new in front of me to write about when it comes to movies. So.

Eli Price (17:36.511)
Sure.

Elijah (17:40.102)
I've always said my only real sense of like calling is just to write. And this is movies are the thing that are in front of me to write about now. So keep doing that.

Eli Price (17:49.543)
Yeah. Great. Yeah. And what about Christopher Nolan? What's your first memory of a Christopher Nolan film?

Elijah (17:58.41)
I knew you were gonna ask me that and I've been thinking about it and trying to figure it out. I'm pretty sure my first Nolan...

Eli Price (18:00.423)
Ha ha ha.

Elijah (18:09.846)
Did the Prestige come out in 2006? Yeah. So I don't think it was the Prestige in theaters. Though I do remember that being in theaters because The Illusionist was also out at the same time, the Ed Norton movie. And I remember going to the movies and seeing both those films with my mom and my sisters. And we would talk about which one we liked more. And we liked The Illusionist more at the time.

Eli Price (18:12.456)
Yes.

Eli Price (18:27.207)
Right.

Elijah (18:39.754)
which I haven't watched in years and I've watched the Prestige so many times since then. It's kind of held up more. But so I remember that one being in theaters and seeing that one in theaters, but I'm pretty sure I saw Memento on DVD. I think I was kind of when I was in college, I think, which would have been around the same time it came out. So it would have been relatively new and like newly on DVD.

Eli Price (18:44.478)
Yeah.

Elijah (19:07.962)
And I went through a little phase during college where I watched mindbender movies I read about. This is early internet days. Not really early internet days, good internet days. And I found lists of mindbending movies. I watched Primer around the same time and really enjoyed Primer. I was really into Lost, which has a lot of time messed up things and mindbending stuff. And then I'm pretty sure in something I was reading came across...

Eli Price (19:15.147)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (19:38.038)
the film Memento. And I remember watching that when I was in college. But I don't think it registered for me as like a Christopher Nolan movie. It was just a weird movie, you know, and watch that. I think the first time I knew I was watching a Christopher Nolan movie, like a Christopher Nolan movie, you know, kind of thing, was probably.

Eli Price (19:39.584)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (19:47.396)
Right.

Eli Price (19:56.447)
Right.

Elijah (20:02.326)
Like I definitely knew he directed Batman Begins. And we liked Batman Begins. We thought that was pretty fun for a Batman movie. I remember that was during a time where like my family, my dad and I would always liken everything to like, oh, it's like they made a Bourne movie, but with Batman. And they made a Bourne movie, but it's James Bond. Jason Bourne influenced so much we thought at the time.

Eli Price (20:05.66)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (20:22.533)
Yeah.

Elijah (20:30.594)
So I know that he, I knew he directed Batman Begins. But it was probably, it was probably The Dark Knight, probably when I first realized I was watching a Christopher Nolan movie. And then it felt, it feels to me in retrospect, like Inception was the one where people were really like, oh, this guy's for real, you know? Like that back to back of Dark Knight and Inception and that kind of like.

Eli Price (20:40.619)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (20:44.255)
Right.

Elijah (20:59.47)
Skyrocketing his popularity, his notoriety. It feels like that era was somewhere in there. Yeah.

Eli Price (21:02.3)
Yeah.

Eli Price (21:05.763)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, jumping, jumping into inception off of that, it really does feel like inception was the first movie that was kind of almost like marketed as a Christopher Nola movie, kind of, you know, yeah. So I mean, you have, yeah, I mean, you have Leo in the movie. And so it's easy to market a movie with Leo in it for sure. But it did feel like

Elijah (21:19.714)
Hmm. Probably off the success of The Dark Knight, yeah. Yeah.

Elijah (21:32.654)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:35.175)
you know, okay, now he's done Batman Begins. He did the Dark Knight, Dark Knight made, you know, so much money. And now they're like, hey, this is the guy that made, you know, the Dark Batman Begins and the Dark Knight and come see this other like huge budget movie that he's made that we don't really know what it's about, sort of thing. So yeah.

Elijah (21:52.75)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (21:59.89)
Yeah.

Eli Price (22:03.035)
Uh, really interesting. I was, um, when inception came out, I was in college. Um, and I remember, um, which I feel like is the perfect, like age for, to like, for inception to come out at it's like prime, like philosophical mind bending, like you were talking about, like, uh, digging into those questions with your friends, you know? Um, so that.

Elijah (22:16.052)
Uh huh.

Elijah (22:19.455)
Yeah.

Elijah (22:24.166)
Uh-huh. Yeah.

Elijah (22:29.345)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (22:31.731)
That was a lot of fun having that come out, you know, when I was in college. Um, but yeah, I, you know, um, I, uh, my, you know, my memory is a little bit fuzzy too of my personal, and I want, I'm pretty sure it was Batman Begins. Just because, you know, I would have definitely seen a Batman movie no matter what, you know, who did it sort of thing, but

Elijah (22:54.795)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (22:59.443)
But yeah, I definitely, you know, once the Dark Knight came out and Inception was coming out, I went back and watched, you know, The Prestige. And so, Nolan was, for me, he was like my kind of next level into like loving film. And, you know, that college kind of excitement of, oh, there's more to movies than just like,

Elijah (23:23.19)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:30.529)
what cool line or what blows up or that sort of thing. And so...

Elijah (23:32.514)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (23:37.542)
Yeah. He's definitely a good gateway philosophical filmmaker. Yeah.

Eli Price (23:43.035)
Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, I think I described him in an earlier episode as like a cinephile gateway drug, sort of.

Elijah (23:52.606)
Yeah, totally. Uh-huh. Yep. We don't have, we really don't have a lot of like big budget movies these days that have a very strong like, auteurist perspective. Like really big budget stuff like blockbuster stuff like that. Like even filmmakers like Spielberg, you know, have kind of, his movies don't open like that anymore. You know, like people go see him, but he makes a lot, much smaller movies now than he used to. And

Eli Price (24:00.211)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:04.39)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (24:16.296)
Yep.

Eli Price (24:20.276)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (24:22.686)
I was trying to think of other, I mean, a Tarantino movie is kind of an event, you know, kind of an event, but kind of not in the way that Nolan is. Like you don't, like people go see Tarantino movies, but like my mom and dad don't go out of the way to see a Tarantino movie, you know, as much as they love movies, but they would definitely go see a Christopher Nolan movie. You know, you can't miss that. It's like, it's like popular, popular level.

Eli Price (24:35.039)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (24:41.035)
Sure.

Eli Price (24:44.689)
Right.

Elijah (24:52.642)
filmmaking, but with like real ideas and vision. Like it's like.

It's like Ridley Scott or James Cameron or Hitchcock. It's like that level of popular and also thoughtful kind of interesting filmmaking. Yeah.

Eli Price (25:05.951)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (25:11.631)
Right. And someone that you can really like dig into, you know, perfect for a series like this or for, you know, your book that you can really dig into and see, you know, the thematic lines and also like the technical, like how they made it lines going through their movies. Like, yeah, it really, really love that. And the cool thing about

Elijah (25:17.774)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (25:31.97)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (25:41.563)
Um, inceptions, uh, specifically is that this is a movie that like goes back, goes all the way back to, you know, his kind of inception of loving film. Um, you know, he, he was, um, you know, in our overview episode talked about, you know, his kind of high school, um, boarding school days and he would.

Elijah (25:54.027)
Yeah.

Eli Price (26:07.231)
you know, listen to sound movie soundtracks on his Walkman after it lights out. And that's sort of where, um, where he kind of traces the idea for this movie all the way back to then. Um, just kind of like that dream space of wondering like how can, can dreams interact and, you know, just laying in, in bed, probably like half dreaming as he did. Um,

Elijah (26:19.862)
Hmm.

Elijah (26:34.547)
Yeah.

Eli Price (26:38.243)
And you know, he back then he was kind of conceiving of it as like more of a horror Movie and it kind of stayed Just that idea for a long time and Yeah, he He kind of talks about how when he went to university he had like a I guess like a meal plan of some sort

that he had paid for at the beginning of the semester. And so he would stay up these late nights doing, you know, whatever college students do, but he would always make sure no matter when he went to sleep that he woke up at 8 a.m. and went and ate his breakfast that he had already paid for. And then he would go back to sleep. And when he would go back to sleep, he would have these like lucid dreams where he was like, he felt like he knew he was in a dream and he was in control. He even talks about.

Elijah (27:16.622)
that he paid for, yeah.

Eli Price (27:30.991)
he would have a dream on a beach where he was aware that he had like created every grain of sand on the beach and in his, you know, in his dream, in his mind. And so it's just like this growing idea of dreams, what are dreams, what are they for, what do they do? That yeah, like a fascination with them, which is interesting in and of itself.

Elijah (28:00.522)
It is the...

Eli Price (28:01.151)
But yeah, so go ahead.

Elijah (28:03.742)
Yeah, I was gonna say his approach to thinking about what dreams are and what they do is just, is always like, it's very interesting to me because there's like an old movie thing that like movies are dreams, like shared dreams that the audience shares together. And I've always kind of balked at that kind of definition of what a movie is because movies aren't dreams. Like there's some filmmakers who make

Eli Price (28:09.479)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (28:19.131)
Yeah.

Elijah (28:32.802)
dreamy movies, you know, like, and are really good at making movies that behave like dreams. So like, someone like David Lynch, you know, like, I just got to see Mulholland Drive really see in theaters recently, that was fantastic experience in the theater with the crowd. And, you know, that's a movie that works on dream logic, like really works on like a dream, like dreams do. Or, you know, you think of filmmakers like, like Andre Tarkovsky.

Eli Price (28:34.251)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (28:42.195)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (28:54.068)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (29:02.634)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (29:02.71)
where things don't work exactly like real life in his movies or, you know, and you can go back to, you know, Boonwell and people like that who were like, really trying to work in the surrealism, dream state kind of thing. But no one doesn't do that thing. Like he's too much of a materialist. And so it, like, it's like, I think his thing of like the memento thing, where like,

Eli Price (29:10.889)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (29:15.39)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (29:19.931)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Elijah (29:30.438)
I think it's truer that most movies we watch work like memories, not like dreams. It's a shared memory that we have because in memory, we leave out all the boring stuff. We only remember the highest points and the low points and that's what a movie is. And there's like a cause and effect thing that we make up in our head about why something happened and that's what a movie is. Like it's almost like an after the fact. After the fact. What's the word?

Eli Price (29:34.548)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (29:43.475)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (30:01.127)
justification, that's the right word, but for like why something happened. We make a set of memories, tell ourselves a story about it. And like Nolan does, gets that, I think, better than most. And so it's easier that he made a dream movie and when he's interested, it is not the surreal stuff. It's just that, wait, how did dreams work? And why do our minds do that?

Eli Price (30:04.687)
Right. Yep.

Eli Price (30:12.254)
Yeah.

Eli Price (30:22.939)
Yeah, and even like, I mean, there's exposition in the movie about how dreams and memories kind of interconnect. And, you know, how that relates to reality is, you know, right there, said out loud in the in the script. So. Yeah.

Elijah (30:31.4)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (30:36.595)
Yeah.

Elijah (30:42.802)
Yeah. There's there is so much exposition and things said right out loud in the script and inception. The fact beyond the interesting ways edited together, that's like the distinguishing factor of this movie is how much exposition there is. And I went through a phase with this film where I didn't like that, how much exposition it was. And I've kind of come all the way through that point now where I like I appreciate the exposition.

Eli Price (30:47.444)
Yes.

Yes.

Eli Price (30:55.787)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (30:59.442)
Yes.

Eli Price (31:11.467)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (31:11.695)
all over again, like better than I did before, and kind of admire it for how really audacious it is to put so much acquisition in the movie.

Eli Price (31:14.895)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (31:21.775)
Yeah, yeah, I think I can't remember where, but I saw it. It really like when I read this, it clicked of like, oh, this makes total sense. So like when you think about a heist movie, which this very much mirrors, you know, you think about that. So like think about Ocean's Eleven, like how much exposition they do in that movie. And it's just like,

Elijah (31:38.504)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (31:50.955)
part of the fun of the movie is like talking through how you're going to do what you're going to do. Um, and that's exactly what's happening in inception. Like that's part. So like if you, I guess, I guess you have to take off your like critic glasses a little bit, um, and just say, okay, but is it kind of fun to learn all the rules and think about this? Like

Elijah (31:57.057)
Yeah.

Elijah (32:01.564)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (32:15.358)
Yeah. Uh-huh.

Eli Price (32:18.736)
how you're going to pull this off with these guys, just like you do.

Elijah (32:21.935)
So maybe you take your glasses off and like clean them a little bit, put them back on so you can understand that, oh it's a heist movie and in heist movies you always have exposition.

Eli Price (32:28.224)
Hehehe

Uh-huh. Now, like, is it a fun, high-smoothie like Ocean's Eleven? Not exactly. It is in some ways, but it's a little bit heavier, I guess, in content than that. But yeah, the formula is definitely there of why it's needed. And really, like, a lot of, you know, I've heard the kind of criticism of, you know, why can't you just show us visually, you know,

Elijah (32:36.982)
Yeah.

Elijah (32:49.436)
Yeah.

Elijah (32:58.987)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (33:00.083)
these rules and why you have to do things. But really, for one, the movie's already two hours and 20 minutes. And yeah, right. And there really is, I feel like a lot of the exposition is kind of tied to visual cues that kind of tie into the exposition. Just one of the things Nolan does a lot of in all of his movies is.

Elijah (33:08.35)
Uh-huh, and it's doing tons of visual things. It's not like there's a lack of visual storytelling going on. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (33:29.503)
these intercut shots with objects or flashback memories. And there's a lot of that going on, like when there's exposition happening here. So I even think that criticism is a little bit misjudged of this film.

Elijah (33:32.831)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (33:47.938)
It's also kind of funny. Like now, what are we like, one, two, three, four films past inception in his career now. And now the most common criticism in his films is that you can't understand the dialogue. So now we have a movie where people are tired of the dialogue and don't want to hear the dialogue because it's too much. And now we're upset because we can't hear it. It's just so funny to me. Like we're never happy.

Eli Price (33:56.751)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (34:02.221)
Yeah

Eli Price (34:10.139)
Yeah. Oh, we gotta find something to throw at this guy making hundreds of millions of dollars on all of his movies. Yeah. And that he doesn't even see, cause he doesn't, you know, he doesn't even have a cell phone. Yeah.

Elijah (34:17.554)
Yeah. That's right. Making these great high concept films that nobody else is even attempting. So we got to clear this out for something. I know. Yeah. I will say, I will say that the first time I watched Inception, the first few times I watched Inception, I did not notice the expedition at all. You know, like I was just so caught up

It never occurred to me to complain about them talking as much as they do, because I needed it. You know, like, it's complicated enough and that I really appreciate those moments when they explained to me again, oh yeah, here the time's moving slower than there. That's why it just looks that way. It's not like it really helps the first time you're watching it. Because it's something that like I had never seen before. Never seen anyone do this kind of layered thing.

Eli Price (34:52.211)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (35:00.447)
Yeah.

Eli Price (35:08.027)
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Eli Price (35:12.819)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (35:17.718)
And then, you know, they set it up in the first like hour and a half of the movie, all the rules of what goes on. And then they enter the dream within a dream, within a dream. And you start seeing the effect of those rules in action. And it's just mind blowing. The first time we watch it. Absolutely mind blowing.

Eli Price (35:36.323)
It is. Yeah. Yes. I mean, jumping back a bit, he so he first pinned this sort of draft, like the draft that looks most like that kind of has the highest element in it instead of the horror element. He did that after insomnia and kind of felt like, you know.

It's there's something missing and then back of course he got Batman begins and he kind of set it aside But yeah after Dark Knight came out, you know, he really like jumped back to this He had I guess he kind of presented it to WB I think actually in 2002 they had given him the go-ahead to like

pin them something. I can't remember the term for what studios do, like there's a term for what studios give filmmakers, like, yeah, an option, exactly. They gave him the, you know, an option to pin this script for them. So that was what he did in 2002. And I think he got like 80 pages and just was like stuck. And yeah, he went, he...

Elijah (36:44.618)
an option? Did they take an option? Yeah.

Eli Price (37:03.131)
It was the third act that he, that he says he got stuck on. And he said, um, that it just didn't lead anywhere that paid off. Um, which is, you know, I appreciate that he was like reckoning with that as like a, a writer, as a, as a filmmaker. Um, and then, so when he went, when he finished with the dark night, um, while they were making that his fourth child was born and, um,

Elijah (37:17.58)
Yeah.

Elijah (37:20.788)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (37:32.847)
He, he kind of during the making that movie kind of was like, man, I'm missing out on so much with my family. Cause he had to fly in for the birth and then like fly right back. Um, uh, to, to keep working on the dark night. Um, and so after the dark night, um, spent wrapped up, he went on like a month long vacation with his family and floor somewhere in Florida. Um,

Elijah (37:38.091)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:02.807)
And it was returning from that, that he kind of he revisited this script and finally it clicked with him because all those things were like rolling around like missing his family feeling like he. I guess even like feeling like you're losing that lifetime of experience. With them and then just like.

Elijah (38:12.031)
Yeah.

Elijah (38:19.466)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (38:26.143)
this even like imagery that he brought back of his kids, like playing with sandcastles, like that you kind of end up seeing in the movie, all that kind of like ran together. And he, that was, I think that's when he finally like found the wife as the kind of emotional center, the thing that it all like leads to the relationship with the wife, the kind of family aspect. And yeah, he,

The the quote that I really liked that he said and talking about that was in terms of like writing this movie He says I think I just had to grow into it Which I love that I just love that thought of An artist or a creator Really like you can think of that like whether you're creating art or creating, you know a business or whatever Just having the insight to know

to see like I had to grow to a certain point in my life, in my maturity, in my wisdom to know what to do with this, which I thought was really a cool aspect of the background of this movie. Cause it really was a lifetime in the making, going all the way back to his boarding school days, that idea.

Elijah (39:40.554)
Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is, isn't it? Yeah.

Elijah (39:47.99)
Mm-hmm. That's good, that's really interesting. And also like, it reminds me that like, a conception does not immediately strike you as a personal film, you know? Like, how can a movie this big that has exploding mountainsides and, you know, and zero gravity fist fights and stuff like that be a personal film, you know? But there it is, right there, you know? Like,

Eli Price (40:02.756)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:12.273)
Yeah.

Elijah (40:17.29)
It's a movie that ultimately is motivated by Christopher Nolan missing his kids and hating that he has to be away from them so much to make the films that he's making. And working that out, working out the grief over the life, the years lost with his children because of the work that he's doing, which is, I mean, that's Cobb's driving thing there.

Eli Price (40:23.848)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:28.764)
Yeah.

Eli Price (40:33.003)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:38.94)
Yeah.

Elijah (40:46.222)
I mean, it's the grief over his wife, that Maul is dead, of course, a lot of grief there, but it's also what he's really sad about now is that he's not with his kids and that's what he's trying to fix. Yeah, yeah. So even something as big as Inception is a personal thing, yeah.

Eli Price (40:51.851)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:58.906)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:05.159)
Yeah. And I even like, like thinking about this as we're talking, you know, I've even heard like the people like poking like plot holes, like, why doesn't he just fly the kids to Paris or whatever? And thinking about like the parallels to his life is like, why doesn't he just fly his family to the set? And it's like, well, it doesn't really work that way. Like he's even if they're there, like he's not with them. He's on the set. He's working.

Elijah (41:17.555)
Yeah.

Elijah (41:28.052)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (41:32.138)
Right. Yeah. And, and cops always cops on the run. Yeah, cops on the run all the time. He can't be anywhere because he's, he's hunted he's a hunted man. Like even when he first decides to go to Paris to talk to Michael Caine, I guess it's malls dad. You know, like, Arthur asking, Are you sure, like, are you sure about that he's like yeah no one's gonna care. Like I can, I can get away with it.

Eli Price (41:35.035)
And so the parallel still works. Mm hmm. Right.

Elijah (42:01.938)
like they address that he can't really settle anywhere which is you know I have um you know my friends who are filmmakers and like work in the industry and like work on big budget giant movies you know like stuff like Inception or whatever like that's a hard thing about their life is that they're gone so much um you know they're always they're always like a month or two away from their next gig where they're going to be in I don't know

Poland or somewhere, you know, or Canada or Atlanta or whatever they're going to be shooting their next film. And they're always away. And they do they miss they miss their family. They miss their community. They miss everything. They're gone. So big, big hard part of it. Yeah.

Eli Price (42:32.267)
Sure.

Eli Price (42:36.733)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (42:45.576)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (42:49.051)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's, I mean, it's a sacrifice. Um, for sure. Um, but yeah, um, yeah, no, you know, keep it on going. Nolan. So he gets the script to WB and they're like, sure. You know, here's $160 million, you know, go make your movie that we don't really understand, which, you know, um, that's the other thing about Nolan at this point in his career is like,

Elijah (43:11.094)
Hahaha.

Eli Price (43:19.015)
He has worked so hard at building that trust with the studio system, which I feel like is, I feel like it's a strange relationship filmmakers have with studios. I mean, we're in the middle of two huge strikes with the actors and the writers. And that relationship is just,

Elijah (43:38.518)
Yeah.

Eli Price (43:48.475)
So it's such a strange, I guess, world of navigating the politics of that. And I guess Nolan just has figured his path through. Through. Yeah.

Elijah (44:02.942)
Yeah, he's like one of the few lucky ones. But it's even hard for him, though. I mean, yeah, they'll give him $160 million to make a movie or whatever. But he and Warner Brothers ran a foul of each other about the release of Tenet. And so he did not make Oppenheimer with Warner Brothers.

Eli Price (44:10.151)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (44:30.946)
Um, could it, could it work with them? And even, even Nolan, someone like him, you know, can still, you know, that clash of the commerce and the art thing can happen. So it's tough. It's tough. Yeah.

Eli Price (44:40.207)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, when this, so when, at the same time, you know, along those same lines, when this came out was when like IP film material was really like exploding with, you know, Marvel coming on the scene with their cinematic universe and just everyone was, you know, this is, I think this is,

Elijah (44:57.303)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (45:05.458)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:09.323)
probably the beginnings of a lot of the The reboot remakes that we you know, we're still getting today Back in 2010. Yeah

Elijah (45:16.704)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (45:20.778)
Yeah, 2011, that was, yeah, 2010, that was like, that was before Avengers. That was still when people were like, I'm not sure this Marvel thing's gonna work, you know? Well before it, that kind of thing became a cultural...

Eli Price (45:26.304)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (45:30.683)
Yeah. But what, but Avengers was like on the calendar though. I already at that point, like people knew it was coming. Um, cause I w that was 2012. Right. Yeah. Um,

Elijah (45:37.81)
Yeah.

Elijah (45:45.162)
Mm-hmm, 2012. Yeah, 2012 for Avengers. Yep. So that was, I remember that time it was still like, well, you know, this Thor movie is kind of okay. That's kind of fun. Captain America is fine. I'm not sure how they're gonna put all this together, but you know, they said they got big plans. We'll see how that goes. Little did we know.

Eli Price (45:52.849)
Yeah.

Eli Price (45:57.675)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (46:00.987)
Yeah. I mean, so you, you have that where they're like telling you everything they're going to do. Like we're going to make this movie and this movie, and then we're going to put them all together in the Avengers. And then you have inception where it's like the, the trailer is just like crumbling buildings and it's like dreams. And you're like, what in the world? Yes. What in the world is this movie?

Elijah (46:14.252)
Yeah.

Elijah (46:21.486)
Mm-hmm. Wham-wham sounds. Yep.

Yeah. Good on him.

Eli Price (46:29.899)
And it just like the juxtaposition there is great. And having the, I guess, you know, the marketing part wasn't on Nolan, but whoever it was marketing that with, you know, the secrecy of it being what was, what made it, what gave it all the hype, I guess you would say, is, was really well done. But I mean, that's Nolan's MO too.

Elijah (46:34.955)
Yeah.

Elijah (46:45.303)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (46:51.327)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (46:59.587)
Like even for this movie he had, for the script the actors either had to come to his office or he had like some guard take it to their house and they wouldn't leave until he finished and then they would take it when they left. Which I love. I've always, there's several stories of that sort of thing happening with Nolan that I just love.

Elijah (47:09.919)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (47:14.63)
Yeah. Yep.

Elijah (47:22.354)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it makes sense to be like it's because it's not like his movies have like. Twists in them that you don't want spoil. I mean, prestige kind of does, but like the rest of them only have like big twists, but it's more like if you heard someone describe what this movie is before you've seen it, you would think it sounded really stupid. And there's no way that can work, you know, like.

Eli Price (47:33.145)
Yeah.

Eli Price (47:42.715)
Yeah.

Elijah (47:45.962)
And so you wouldn't want that kind of bad word of mouth out there if people were like, it's something about dreams within dreams. I don't know. Because you wouldn't want, if I was knowing, I wouldn't want people coming into my weird high concept movie with a preconceived idea of what they're going to see. Because it's not going to be what they think it is. You would want a clean slate for everyone. Yeah, clean as possible.

Eli Price (47:52.86)
Yeah.

Eli Price (48:03.689)
Yeah.

Eli Price (48:07.163)
Yeah, yeah, you don't want you don't want Like your film bro buddy to explain it to you. You want leonardo to caprio to explain it to you?

Elijah (48:13.836)
Yeah.

That's right. Again and again and again over the course of two hours and 20 minutes. So you always know exactly where you are. And it really helps Ellen Page is there too. So in case you don't get it, she can ask questions so that you can hear it all over again.

Eli Price (48:19.519)
Yeah, exactly. Yes.

Yeah, yes, exactly. Oh man. But yeah.

Elijah (48:36.502)
Again, I love the exposition. I love the exposition now. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (48:38.683)
Yes. Yeah. And as far as influences go, this, I mean, there's the list could probably go on and on. You know, Nolan notoriously references Ridley Scott for every movie. Ridley Scott's influence. I didn't see when I was doing my research, I didn't see Blade Runner.

Elijah (48:57.247)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (49:05.203)
Mentioned for this movie and that might be the first time I've seen Blade Runner mentioned for one of these movies But yeah, I mean

Elijah (49:08.504)
Hahaha

Elijah (49:12.91)
That's funny. So when he mentions Ridley Scott, I was thinking about this, like what's he latching onto there? Cause I think of Ridley Scott, I always say Ridley Scott makes movies about buttons and cups. Like he's a detail filmmaker, and like sometimes his movies aren't, even when his movies aren't good, they're fun to watch because he's gonna get all those details correct all throughout. Like that...

Eli Price (49:31.199)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (49:39.38)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (49:42.09)
that Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie. Not very good, but like I can watch that movie anytime and just geek out over the textures of their clothing. And I think Ridley Scott geeks out of the texture of their clothing too, you know? And I guess like I could see Nolan really like attaching to that. Like there's a real visceralness to Ridley Scott film always. There's like kind of a big classic emotional

Eli Price (49:44.988)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:56.123)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (50:05.788)
Yeah.

Elijah (50:11.434)
movements and that no one does that too. And then Nolan the materialist, I think would probably really enjoy how much texture there is to a Ridley Scott movie. That's just my guesses though. Have you read like what he loves about Ridley Scott? They're British. They're both British. So I guess that could be it too.

Eli Price (50:14.187)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (50:25.641)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think, right. So I mean, part of it is he, Blade Runner was like his favorite movie. It was, he saw, I think, Blade Runner and he watched Alien around the same time and it was like the first time he realized that there was a director behind the camera. So I think part of it is just that, that latch back to the first time that he like really

Elijah (50:44.342)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (50:49.102)
Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Elijah (50:56.998)
aware of it. Yeah.

Eli Price (50:57.211)
realized, oh, there's a thread between these two movies. They have a similar atmosphere. And I think of the atmosphere of those movies, like if you think of the, like you said, like kind of the textures and the atmosphere of Blade Runner, you get, I mean, you do get that in the Gotham of Batman Begins a lot.

Elijah (51:02.935)
Hmm.

Elijah (51:14.515)
Yeah.

Elijah (51:21.547)
Yeah.

Eli Price (51:23.387)
And then too, like you get the kind of, in those, in his more sci-fi ventures, you do get those kind of philosophical musings kind of like into who we are as humans and what, you know, no one seems very interested in the choices we make and why we make them. And, you know,

Elijah (51:46.918)
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. For sure.

Eli Price (51:50.444)
Scott seems interested in that too. So maybe it's some of that. And even like...

Elijah (51:52.525)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (51:55.958)
Yeah, I can see that. Like throughout Ridley Scott's work, like an underlying moral question about like, how do we, which is very true of Nolan, like how do we decide what's the right thing to do? And that kind of being a fundamental question that Ridley Scott's protagonists tend to face. I can see that.

Eli Price (52:02.714)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (52:10.539)
Sure.

Eli Price (52:16.711)
Yeah. And the simplicity of it too, of that, of how you deal with that question. Because if you think of, so I haven't seen a ton of Ridley Scott, but I've seen, I feel like enough, a good handful. And, you know, I've seen all of Nolan and that the way he, he boils down those moral questions to something that's simple and easy to like dissect.

Elijah (52:19.982)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (52:34.87)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (52:42.631)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (52:46.191)
And so like, yeah, I feel like that's a common theme. But even just like he pulls random things like one of the things in my Batman Begins research was he was very interested in making, in like why the gangsters would be scared of Batman. And he pulled like the kind of elusive horror of alien.

Elijah (52:52.11)
Let's see that. Interesting.

Elijah (53:07.896)
Hmm.

Elijah (53:15.412)
Yeah.

Eli Price (53:15.839)
Um, into how he used Batman in those action scenes. Um, and like, I mean, it's even, you think about like the, that first, uh, scene with, um, the fight at the, um, in the freight yard, like the guys backing up, like, where are you? And then it's his face right there, like saying here. And that's like very reminiscent of like the alien upside down, like, you know, um, yeah, so.

Elijah (53:18.946)
Huh. Yeah. Huh.

Elijah (53:31.242)
Yeah, uh-huh, totally. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep, yeah, I can see that. Interesting.

Eli Price (53:45.147)
There's a lot of stuff. He does love, he just loves Ridley Scott. Yeah. And Kubrick too, you know, one of the visual of the centrifuge was something that like he latched onto from a young age. And then this, yeah, this is where he finally gets to do his own centrifuge.

Elijah (53:50.918)
Yeah, that's a good one to love. This guy's hardly ever made a bad movie, so, huh.

Elijah (53:58.398)
Yeah, you can see Kubrick all over this stuff.

Elijah (54:04.385)
Yeah.

Elijah (54:08.957)
Uh huh, yeah. And then he got to spend the hotel hallway around.

Elijah (54:14.554)
Yeah. Oh gosh. I've seen Inception countless times, but that scene, that hallway fight scene with Josh Groenlewitsch running on the walls, still makes my heart race every time. It's just amazing. And just to know that he's really doing that. Because it's Nolan, so we're not watching a lot of digital trickery to make this happen. They've choreographed this thing.

Eli Price (54:15.379)
Um, which is really masterfully done.

Eli Price (54:27.435)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (54:39.615)
Right.

Elijah (54:43.658)
and they're doing this. And it just, it's like, well, it's like another movie that old movie, like it's like Fred Astaire dancing on the walls, you know? And even if you know how they do it, it's still incredible to watch. Yeah. Oh.

Eli Price (54:43.996)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (54:51.464)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (54:56.041)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and the, there's part of the artist interest there too of like, a lot of times artists are just as interested in how something is done as like what's done, which comes through both in the exposition but also like in you kind of seeing, you know, you, it's, you know, in the movie they kind of bring eventually Fisher along for the ride like they clue him in that he's watching a movie.

Elijah (55:10.825)
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Elijah (55:27.959)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (55:28.071)
And when you watch a Nolan movie, you know, there's things that happen where you're kind of clued in, oh yeah, I'm watching a movie. And I think Nolan's okay with you watching it and thinking like, wow, how did he do that as you're watching the movie? Like he wants you to have those moments. And that's definitely one of them for sure.

Elijah (55:45.67)
Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is probably his most movie movie, you know, like where like you, I mean, it's, I love the, I love the idea that like, this is all a giant metaphor for filmmaking. Like I love the inception is all a giant metaphor for filmmaking, even down to like, like Cobb looking like, looking like Christopher Nolan, you know?

Eli Price (55:58.443)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (56:05.713)
Yeah.

Eli Price (56:12.207)
Yeah. He does.

Elijah (56:13.002)
And like being the director and you got the producer with Arthur and you had the set designer production designer with Ariadne and on and on and on. Actor with Tom Hardy and so forth. I love that little wrinkle to it all that you're talking about how movies are made. And then of course Fisher is the audience and whatnot. But he's done that other times too. Like that's one reason I really love watching Tenet is Tenet is a movie that's about how movies work.

Eli Price (56:16.606)
Yeah.

Eli Price (56:22.667)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (56:29.995)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (56:33.14)
Right.

Elijah (56:42.962)
also, you know, and like the kind of.

Eli Price (56:44.317)
Okay.

Elijah (56:48.778)
what it means when you watch a film go backwards. And what that would be if you were living in that frame that was going backwards, but you could walk through it. And the way that you mess with time, like the way that movies allow you to mess with time is like a central interest to no one. And I always love the Tarkovsky quote that movies are sculptures in time, are sculptures of time. And I think no one really latches on to that.

Eli Price (56:58.377)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (57:04.553)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:11.509)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (57:16.37)
and explores that in the same way that someone like Tarakoski does just in these giant big-budget action movies. Yeah, and then what that does to us, we're getting ahead of myself, but yeah.

Eli Price (57:21.961)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:27.815)
Yeah. I mean, it's he's. Yeah, he is interested. I like so my theory on that is so a lot of people are like, oh, Nolan made a movie about like filmmaking. And my kind of take on that is like, well, I don't think like, well, I even wrote down a quote where he said, like, I didn't set out to make a movie about movies. Like he recognizes that it's in there.

Elijah (57:30.894)
It's a movie movie.

Elijah (57:52.287)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:56.383)
Like he kind of talks about how like, oh yeah, it's, I can see how that's in there, but it's not what I was trying to do. And so my take is just like, he's just working from what he knows. Like he's been doing this, you know, nonstop for a decade. And so.

Elijah (57:57.472)
Yeah.

Elijah (58:03.785)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (58:07.347)
He is, totally.

Elijah (58:13.342)
Yeah, I think of it as like a band's second album, right? Like a band's second album is almost always about how much it sucks to be on the road. And you know, and like whatever else is going on in the album, like that's always a big part of what's going on. And I know this is not Nolan's second movie, but it feels like his second album. Where even if he didn't intend for it to be about that, it's a lot about how it sucks to be a filmmaker. You know, like what's hard about that.

Eli Price (58:17.951)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:24.648)
Yeah.

Eli Price (58:38.136)
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah, I even, this is one that I didn't really see anywhere, but I almost wonder if Mal in the movie represents the filmmakers subconscious, this kind of subconscious things that they're dealing with in their life, keeping on forcing their way back into his movies.

Elijah (59:03.734)
Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, I like that. That's good. Yep.

Eli Price (59:08.339)
I mean, she keeps showing up. He can't get rid of her because, you know, he's trying to deal with his grief, but he doesn't have time to. And so, she just shows up in his movies.

Elijah (59:15.734)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Until he finally sits down, right. Until he finally sits down and deals with it at the end. Yep. That's good. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah. Maybe it's his guilt over missing his kid's life. I mean, obviously, his guilt over being away, his guilt over everything and his other, who knows what else is going on with him. Things we'll never know that are going on in his movies. Yep.

Eli Price (59:23.995)
Yeah. Yep.

Eli Price (59:32.168)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:35.87)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (59:43.252)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (59:45.667)
That's good.

Eli Price (59:46.043)
Yeah. Um, that other, other influences, uh, I think so he's mentioned MC Asher, uh, before, but this is the first time where like, I really think it's, I mean, it's like in your face MC Asher like stuff going on. Um, as far as like, I mean, the, the Parisian street folding, the city folding, um, you know, the, the Penrose steps, um,

Elijah (59:53.774)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

Elijah (59:59.798)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:00:07.271)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:14.343)
all of that stuff is like, he just, he was having a lot of fun with that, which I love. What a.

Elijah (01:00:19.134)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love his awareness that, you know, like you look at Escher drawings and stuff like that and they're 2D drawings, that's why they work, right? But I love his realization that, oh, when I make a movie, I'm putting people into a 2D environment so I can make this stuff happen in this environment with people walking around and doing stuff, real people. That's fun. You know, that's really cool.

Eli Price (01:00:29.547)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli Price (01:00:37.131)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:00:42.759)
Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. And the, and the like behind the scenes on the, the DVD, um, the, uh, I think it was, um, a couple of different guys just talking about like, they had to like plug in numbers, uh, like they had to use a computer to like work out mathematically how to make illusion work for the Penrose steps in 3d, um,

Elijah (01:01:03.049)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:01:06.77)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:07.759)
which was really fun. Um, uh, you could see like the guys that were talking about the math, like geeking out, like they were like, this is my time to shine. I'm going to talk about math on a behind the scenes thing. Um,

Elijah (01:01:14.83)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:01:18.494)
Yeah. I that shot when Arthur is explaining it to Ariadne and the steps and you know, the camera move is so simple. The camera move is just it just raises just a boom lifting the camera up, which shows you what you were just looking at that you could have swarmed was one thing, but it like shifts the shifts the angle and you can see what it is. And like, I was watching that this time just thinking about how

Eli Price (01:01:27.1)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:01:32.188)
Right.

Eli Price (01:01:37.959)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:01:46.518)
difficult that would have been to set up for it to be as perfect as it is. Where then all you have to do is move the camera up to show, you know, what's really going on. And like it's a simple thing, like a simple visual, but that was probably so incredibly complicated on set to actually do that one little trick, you know. So cool. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:51.052)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:02:00.891)
Mm-hmm.

Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The other influence that comes up a lot with Nolan is Jorge Luis Borges, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce it, but yeah, I've never read any of his stuff, but I'm really intrigued and I'm kind of feeling motivated to read some of his short stories, because like he keeps coming up. Have you ever read any of it?

Elijah (01:02:19.338)
Yeah. Yeah, for his.

Elijah (01:02:30.206)
Yeah, yeah, I've read a few there. I have, yeah, I've read a few. A good friend of mine is a huge fan. And every now and then he'll be like, you have to read this. And we're like, hand me his collection, you know, and like maybe read a great couple. But yeah, they're great. It's mind-bending and philosophical and kind of in the vein of, oh, like,

Eli Price (01:02:41.659)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:02:48.767)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:02:59.554)
Kafka, like Kafka-esque, kind of mind-bending circular things going on, but super, super fun. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:01.948)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:03:05.179)
Yeah. Yeah, though the one he referenced most here was called the circular ruins, which I pulled up. I found it where I could read it online. I just didn't get around to it. And it's not even that long. So I might read that maybe later this week. Finally get around to reading some. But yeah, this so this movie, the making of this movie. So

Elijah (01:03:14.242)
Hmm

Elijah (01:03:27.417)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:34.955)
When I, this is probably the most fun. A lot of his movies are fun to dig into, like the production of how he did it. But this one was just so fun, uh, to read about all the, all the ways he made, like the movie magic happen, you know? Um, but I mean, this is, and this is too really his most like wide ranging film. Like they shot in, uh, five different cities, I think.

Elijah (01:03:52.129)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (01:04:04.787)
around the world. He spent as much time on this as he did shooting the Dark Knight, like over half a year, I think, shooting. But yeah, and then, like you said, he was very interested in, he's always interested in shooting on location, but for this case, he was very interested in making his dreams not like...

Elijah (01:04:13.584)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:04:28.098)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:04:34.483)
like super surreal, which is the typical way that dreams are shown. Like we kind of talked about that a little bit.

Elijah (01:04:35.864)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:04:39.378)
Yeah. Like you think about like the Dali sequences and like spellbound and things like that, like, you know, where dreams are weird spaces. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:46.655)
Mm hmm. Yeah. I watched that recently. Yeah. And it was strange. I watched it for we did a memory loss and manipulation draft for the memento episode and I watched caught up with spellbound and yeah, that sequence is wild. Yeah, it's really fun.

Elijah (01:04:58.543)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:05:06.058)
Oh, cool. It's fun, right? Yeah, it's wild fun. Yeah. Yeah, I love I love that stuff. I love remembering that Salvador Dali was like a mid-century artist. You know, I shouldn't forget that. But it's just cool. Those little crossovers. But yeah. Or, you know, or Lynch, you know, like Mulholland Drive, and you think about what he does to show dream imagery in his films, which there's a little bit more of a

Eli Price (01:05:16.456)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:22.555)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:27.296)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:05:33.066)
little bit more grounded in reality thing to what Lynch will do, which is kind of what makes it a little bit more disturbing when the weird stuff starts happening. But it's still like, he gets a lot of it across in his editing as much as anything else. Not so much in the production design like Hitchcock did in Spellbound.

Eli Price (01:05:37.067)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:05:52.539)
Yeah. And, and the sound like, um, there's like, uh, like I think of like twin peaks. Um, especially like once you start getting into like the kind of other world and like the voices are like, sound like they're running backwards and forwards at the same time. Um, um, yeah, just wild, but, um, but I love. Yeah.

Elijah (01:05:59.042)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:06:08.911)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:06:14.854)
Yeah, but Nolan would never do that because he's way too much of a materialist to do anything like that. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:20.955)
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think like just reading about the way he talks about dreams. I think he just this is how he dreams I think and I yeah, that's I listen to There's a few podcasts that I kind of listened to I like to you know here if they have any interesting thoughts that I didn't think of and several of them had like you know two people saying like

Elijah (01:06:30.078)
Yeah, probably is.

Eli Price (01:06:50.863)
I do dream in that way, well I dream in a very surreal way. And so like, there's even that like, maybe part of like, liking this movie depends on like, do you think that, do you have like this subjective experience where you think dreams are surreal and no one's not being true to dreams? Well like, no people do actually dream in a very like, real, um, real way like, like happens kind of in this movie.

Elijah (01:06:54.635)
Hmm.

Elijah (01:07:18.407)
Interesting. Huh.

Eli Price (01:07:21.519)
I mean, just even thinking about like the lucid, you know, him talking about those lucid dreams and like he would be on a beach and like be aware of like all the sand. It's like he's actually like dreaming of something real in his in his dream space and being aware of it. And that and then.

Elijah (01:07:31.511)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:07:38.046)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:43.843)
he was even like becoming aware of I am like creating and perceiving at the same time, which they kind of talk about in the movie, which is an interesting just concept. It's true and it's also, I think it's true not just in dreams too. I think that's kind of how we live. We perceive and create at the same time, like even just like, you know,

Elijah (01:07:49.558)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:07:54.61)
Just true, I suppose. Yeah.

Elijah (01:08:02.827)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:08:07.551)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:08:10.879)
Thinking about like philosophy or 101 is like thinking, thinking about, you know.

Elijah (01:08:13.516)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:19.419)
you know, is this tree real or is it a projection of my mind? You're, you're like perceiving and creating the idea of the tree at the same time. Um, so yeah, I mean, he's. These are all things. And that's one of the things that Nolan, um, has talked about is like, I like to sneak these really interesting philosophical ideas that I like to think about that most people don't.

Elijah (01:08:30.443)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:48.451)
into my movies to kind of force people force like everyday people to think about these strange things that I like to think about, which I love. Yeah. Oh, man. But yeah, so this talking about like shooting in camera. This was this was so there. This probably has the most CGI out of

Elijah (01:08:49.844)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:08:58.447)
Yeah, good for him.

Eli Price (01:09:16.815)
all of his films, I would guess. But it still uses in-camera shots as the foundation. So whenever you're seeing, so the scene that comes to mind that is easiest to think about is when everything starts exploding, when Ariadne realizes, oh, we're in a dream in Paris, all that starts exploding. Well, they actually used air cannons to like,

Elijah (01:09:18.594)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:09:36.046)
Yeah, when she... ..turned a dream. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:09:46.683)
like blow stuff past them. And they had the digital artists like come in on that foundational like real footage of them sitting with stuff blasting around them and add all the extra like stuff in. And so the, I think I heard somewhere or read somewhere that the standard today is like 2000 plus digitally, like CGI scenes, like digital effects shots.

Elijah (01:09:48.587)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:09:58.638)
Hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:10:13.902)
Okay. Uh-huh.

Eli Price (01:10:16.035)
is like 2000 plus is like kind of the standard for a movie like this today. And this film had like 500, like right around 500. So it's really like even still like by the standards is still like really low.

Elijah (01:10:21.047)
Okay.

Okay, wow, yeah.

Elijah (01:10:32.394)
It's like digital augmentation. I love the series Better Call Saul. Have you ever watched Better Call Saul? I just love it. And I love, I always buy the Blu-rays and I love watching all the behind the scenes stuff, all the commentary tracks for every episode. Just because it's one of those shows that the people working on it had nothing to prove.

Eli Price (01:10:34.463)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:39.499)
Mm-hmm. I've watched a couple seasons of it. It's been a while.

Eli Price (01:10:49.64)
Hmm.

Elijah (01:10:57.946)
They'd already proven everything with Breaking Bad. So they had nothing to prove. So they got to make this show that was just everything they ever wanted to do. And they had the greatest time just doing whatever they wanted and doing it well, doing it excellent and just having fun with it. And so the commentary is super fun to listen to. And one of the things you learn is how often there is digital augmentation to what's on the screen. And it's never like an explosion that's all...

Eli Price (01:11:10.175)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:11:22.286)
Mm.

Elijah (01:11:27.786)
CGI or whole green screen things like what happens in a lot of movies nowadays, whatever. It's just like, okay, we shot this and then we made that sign say a certain thing. So that sign that you're looking at is, that's digital. Or we had this car roll over two or three times, that really happened. And we fixed this thing here where the tire didn't do what we wanted it to do. So it's just like a little bit of an augmentation to what you're seeing.

Eli Price (01:11:28.636)
Right.

Eli Price (01:11:33.312)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:11:42.505)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:11:57.462)
not full on created animation, basically. And that's what Nolan does, digital augmentation.

Eli Price (01:11:57.579)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:12:02.964)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and it worked out. So Nathan Crowley is his normal production designer up to this point, but he was working on something else. I don't remember what, but Guy Dias was kind of an up and coming guy at this point. And like got connected to Nolan and actually listened to, have you ever listened to the podcast that the Deacons?

Roger Deakins and his brother do It's it's really interesting. I've only listened to a few episodes But I listened to they had this guy DS on And it was fun to hear him talk about working with Nolan on inception and But he had like they had kind of like kindred spirits and like that idea of like having in camera being the foundation and then

Elijah (01:12:36.558)
I haven't. Yeah, I've heard about it, but I've never listened to it. Yeah.

Elijah (01:12:46.568)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:13:04.775)
adding in. So he worked really hard, like really hard on coming up with stuff like the air cannons for the explosions and even like they used similar air cannons for like the water coming in the opening sequence within the cat and like the Sidos castle. They actually like blew like thousands of gallons of water through air cannons like through the windows.

Elijah (01:13:11.117)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:13:20.938)
Hmm. Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:13:26.039)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:13:34.091)
Cause they were trying to think like, how can we make this different than the, the typical thing you would do is just have a big dumpster container full of water and just open it and let it flood in. But they were like, they were like, what can we do where we can actually have the actor stand in the scene and film it real in camera? And that was kind of what they came up with, like shoot it through the windows. Yeah.

Elijah (01:13:44.904)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:13:53.013)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:13:57.69)
So smart. It also works with what's happening to Cobb in that moment as he's dropped in the pool, because you would think of the water splashing over him, and it splashes over big inside. It works both ways. That's cool.

Eli Price (01:14:03.631)
Right. Yeah. It's one of those, one of those visual things that like people, I don't know why complain about in this movie show us visually. And he's like, well, I am, you know, uh, but yeah. Um, I also liked that, uh, Sidos Castle, uh, Diaz talked about how something that he kind of brought was, um,

Elijah (01:14:15.894)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:14:19.882)
Yeah, so much.

Eli Price (01:14:33.091)
He had spent a lot of time in Japan when he was starting off his career. So a lot of that architecture, bringing that kind of old castle, like Japanese castle with modern lighting and stuff in it, is stuff he kind of brought that he had seen in Japan. And I love that, like, the way Nolan works with...

Elijah (01:14:51.095)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:15:02.251)
with like his production designers and you know, Hans Zimmer, which we'll talk about. But it's very like, you know, it's a, no one has his ideas, but when someone has an idea that's going to enhance his idea, like he's, like he's all for it. Like Diaz said, you know, he, I think at first he had a more of a Scottish looking thing that he was going for. And Diaz was like, well, this guy's

you know, Japanese, like I have these ideas and Nolan's like, well, show me, you know, show me what it would look like. And he drew it out and he was like, yeah, I like it. Let's, let's do it. Yeah. So, you know, something that, um, something that I've appreciated with the West series that I did, and then this Nolan series was just like learning about how these filmmakers kind of build these like little small communities of artists and like,

Elijah (01:15:32.404)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:15:36.468)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:15:39.766)
Huh, that's cool.

Elijah (01:15:56.366)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:15:58.867)
grow with one another in their work. And that's just like a really small example of that, of like two people kind of growing in their work and coming together to make something really cool. But yeah, and just the way the camera works in this too is all real, like when the earthquake happens, like you can see, I think you can see a little bit of like,

Elijah (01:16:02.1)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:16:09.246)
Yeah.

Yeah, that is cool.

Eli Price (01:16:28.147)
B-roll footage of like making of stuff. But Nolan talks about how he had Wally Fister, his DP, like physically like shaking the camera himself for the like the earthquake shots. And so like even that's like not digitally done. It's he's like literally shaking the camera, which I love. But yeah, so I think some of my favorite, like I think one of my favorite,

Elijah (01:16:41.327)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:16:47.518)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:59.503)
I did this for real things was the train in the first level dream. Once we start getting into the heist. So that train is was built with like plywood and plastic molds on a semi truck chassis. And yeah, and they literally just drove that through those cars and stuff had to figure out a way that it could like hit the cars and not break.

Elijah (01:17:02.462)
Uh huh. Yeah.

Elijah (01:17:17.61)
I could drive it through.

Elijah (01:17:28.946)
Uh-huh. Nolan, man. That's the thing that like, kind of, I don't know how it's endearing. I'll say that it's endearing about Nolan is that like other filmmakers would use miniatures. You know, if they want to do it real, they'll use miniatures. And Nolan's like, nah, I'm doing miniatures. Like we're going to drive through real cars. We're going to flip a real semi truck. We're going to drive an airplane into a hanger. You know, like he does it.

Eli Price (01:17:29.468)
Um, yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:40.124)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:17:47.323)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Heh heh heh. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I have a hundred and sixty million dollars. Why would I do a miniature? Heh heh heh.

Elijah (01:18:00.93)
Why would I do that? I know. Cracks me up. I was working on the Cameron book lately and I was watching special features on Terminator 2 and on Terminator, on Terminator, first Terminator. And there's a scene in there where a tanker truck blows up. And I've watched Terminator so many times and I always assumed it was a real tanker truck because it looks incredibly real. And then I watched a special feature and it's like a miniature that they did. And it's like such an astoundingly good miniature, you know?

Eli Price (01:18:06.342)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (01:18:21.291)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:18:24.895)
Oh wow.

Elijah (01:18:28.134)
I was watching that thinking about talking about Nolan too. I was like, Nolan, Nolan would just, he'd just blow up a tanker truck. You know, like he just doesn't think, he doesn't think that way that people like Cameron think, which I love. It's great.

Eli Price (01:18:34.787)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. He even like had the, had like the visual, I guess, insight, um, uh, probably like along with like the, the production designer and whatnot, um, to think about like, oh, but there's no rails. Um, okay. Well, we'll just like great into the asphalt, um, to make it look like it's been like driving through the asphalt. Yeah. And just

Elijah (01:18:59.843)
Right.

Elijah (01:19:03.203)
Ha ha.

like going on the asphalt. It's so good. That's so good. And so, yeah, and I'm like, it's so good. And like in an era where so much, we know so much is fake, you know, that it's so much that we watch as CGI and like it doesn't have, even if it's really well done CGI, we know it's CGI. And so I think like in that context, Nolan's insistence on doing it for real.

Eli Price (01:19:10.771)
The visual of that is just great.

Eli Price (01:19:19.028)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:26.91)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:19:33.57)
contributes to his reputation and why we enjoy watching his movies so much, you know, like and why his movies are so popular because You know when he goes to the anolan thing Even if it's something like interstellar which is all kinds of out there, you know, you're still gonna see something real On some level you're watching something real and not just something that is made in a computer Not just really good animation, you know Like he wouldn't have no one wouldn't have worked in another era the same way

Eli Price (01:19:37.887)
For sure.

Eli Price (01:19:46.324)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:19:55.76)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:02.441)
Right.

Elijah (01:20:02.902)
Cause like you can watch David Lean movies and David Lean's doing it for real because you have to do it for real. Like, you know, there's not computers to make your armies to make your armies in large Arabia. You just shoot in the desert and you have an army there. You know, you just dancing on a train. That's what you do. Yeah, no one's classic like that.

Eli Price (01:20:09.147)
Right.

Eli Price (01:20:17.135)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:23.183)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I always think about, um, that scene in Lawrence of Arabia where the, um, the guys come into like from the horizon on the horse and you just sit there and watch, watch him come and it's like, he's literally just like riding the horse from a long way off and running the film. Uh, yeah. Um, but yeah. Oh yeah. For sure. Yeah. I.

Elijah (01:20:33.23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:20:40.986)
Uh huh. Yep, let's go watch it. Yep.

Elijah (01:20:47.362)
Another great British filmmaker. Another great British filmmaker, yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:52.143)
I love that. And I love the other thing I loved from that first level was, which this kind of gets into like the idea of time that Nolan deals with, which is the van falling that you know is going to be the, the kick. Yeah. You saved me. I was blanking. Yeah. The kick. And so, you know, they shot. So one of the things that is like

Elijah (01:21:02.03)
Mm.

Elijah (01:21:08.746)
kick. Yeah.

Elijah (01:21:13.454)
I'm going to go to bed.

Eli Price (01:21:21.215)
kind of interesting and backwards is when you want things to look really slow, you actually shoot it faster. And that's like, that's like a, I guess a meta filmmaking thing of like, playing with time like so he shoots this and like, I think it's like 1000 to 2000 frames per second, this van falling sequence, you know, and, you know, that shooting it faster makes it look slow.

Elijah (01:21:29.11)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Elijah (01:21:37.165)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:21:43.137)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:21:50.951)
like run, run that.

Elijah (01:21:51.274)
Yeah, because then when you play this film back at normal speed, you have all these frames that you end up running across the lens. So it extends the amount of time that you're watching that thing. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:21:56.35)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:22:02.491)
Yeah, yeah, which is a fun, I guess like, it's not something you're thinking about watching it, but it's something that is a fun thing to like think about when you're thinking about like, how did he do that after you watch it? It's like, oh, it's like, time is sped up. The literal like film is sped up, but then like when you play it at normal speed, it's slowed down, which kind of plays into the different, the way time works in the different levels.

Elijah (01:22:14.348)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Elijah (01:22:24.078)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:22:31.118)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:22:33.575)
And yeah, it yeah, really fun. Um, yeah, the, we can, you know, we can talk about to the, the centrifuge that he made, um, he, he constructed all that hotel stuff in the same air hanger that he made the Gotham city block in for Pat man begins. Um, what, which I think was, um, like the, like the slums area. Um,

Elijah (01:22:53.665)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (01:23:01.183)
But so he went back there and made this hotel and centrifuge and the hotel bar that shifts on some pistons. And yeah, but the centrifuge is the thing, which they made two different ones. So the one is horizontal. And then there's another one that's vertical.

Elijah (01:23:09.395)
Yeah, uh-huh.

Elijah (01:23:24.61)
Uh huh.

Elijah (01:23:28.576)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:23:29.627)
And so the vertical one is where you start getting like the zero gravity fighting sequence, cause they're hanging, they're just hanging from cables. Um, and I love what I love about that is like how visceral it is. Like, so you think about like the matrix, like everything is so like clean and choreographed and like the way they move is like, uh, dancing and this, this fight sequence and this zero gravity is like.

Elijah (01:23:34.879)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:23:38.72)
Right, yeah.

Elijah (01:23:45.082)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (01:23:48.718)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:23:55.022)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:23:59.407)
It's like they're clumsy, like it's rough.

Elijah (01:24:00.414)
rough. Yeah, uh-huh. It's exactly how it would be if suddenly I found myself in that situation. You know, wouldn't be flying around like Trinity. I'd be scrapping like Arthur. Yeah, I love that. I think that sequence, that part of the movie is when the first time I watched this in the theater, I think we were about there where I found myself

Eli Price (01:24:06.551)
Yes. Yeah, maybe a little better, but yeah, you know, just...

Elijah (01:24:28.886)
like getting up out of my seat because I was just like so excited about what I was watching. And I remember thinking, I thought for a moment, I thought, this is the greatest film I have ever seen in my life. Like I had that thought. And then I think this is typical of like no one invites you to do. I thought that, and then I sat back down and I sat back and I thought, wait a minute, that can't be true. Why do I think that?

Eli Price (01:24:31.293)
Mm.

Elijah (01:24:57.366)
Like, why am I thinking that right now? And like, there's something about Nolan that like, like we were talking about, like he wants you to realize you're watching a movie. And he like, even that sequence with the, with a roll and it all happens at the end of it, Yusef turns and says, did you see that? You know, like to the people in the back seat, which is kind of a joke, but he's kind of sending it to us. Like, you know, can you believe you just saw what you just saw, you know? And like, I think that.

Eli Price (01:24:58.004)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:04.683)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:25:17.563)
Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (01:25:23.63)
aspect of what Nolan does made me sit back down in my seat in that moment and go like, okay, wait a minute. Why did I think that? What is going on here? And then I started to analyze and understand the way the film was constructed, which may have taken me out of that visceral moment of like almost standing up in the theater thinking I was seeing the greatest film I'd ever seen in my entire life. But it also made me really appreciate the intricacy of how this

Eli Price (01:25:31.583)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:37.081)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:25:45.746)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes.

Elijah (01:25:53.81)
even another level of amazed by what I was watching. It's so good.

Eli Price (01:25:57.457)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:26:00.827)
Yeah, and it's fun, like I had written down a quote from the special effects supervisor, Chris Korbold, who's worked with him before, and his quote was that Nolan is a brilliant engineer artist. So like, I mean, you just think about the... Like he didn't build this thing, obviously, but he had the vision for it and how it would work. Like having this rotating...

Elijah (01:26:17.053)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:26:26.67)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:30.943)
hallway and the camera on a gimbal Yeah

Elijah (01:26:32.701)
And what he could film in it, you know, like what it would look like in the movie if they could build that thing and make it work.

Eli Price (01:26:38.395)
Yeah, right. To be able to like envision that and even envision like this is possibly how we can pull it off. Let's try to build it and see if it'll work. It's just like, it's just so cool. And it is like thinking about that is like how he did it is like almost just as fun as watching it, which I think I think guys like Nolan would appreciate that.

Elijah (01:26:47.118)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Elijah (01:27:02.547)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:08.115)
You know, people are just as excited about how he did it as much as like what, what came out on screen. Um, yeah. But yeah. Um, the, you know, the third level. So the, the fun thing about the third level, which I learned on that, um, that rod, that Deacon team Deacon's, I think is the name of the podcast with, uh, guy Dias is there, he, you know,

Elijah (01:27:14.67)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think so too. Ha ha.

Elijah (01:27:31.982)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what's called.

Eli Price (01:27:37.503)
They're like, Oh, let's build a fortress there. I think it was in Calgary, um, like a ski resort outside of Calgary, Canada. They did that. Um, and so they're, they're talking, they're all there. The whole team, Nolan's there. Um, they have the park Rangers there or whatever. Um, and yeah, they're like, yeah, we're going to build it. We can build it here. And then, so Nolan and whoever gets on their helicopter and goes off and, you know, they, they start like.

Elijah (01:27:41.304)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:28:06.523)
walk in and the ranger told him something like, you know, you can't build a foundation here and you can't do this and you can't cut down these trees and you can't do that. And he's like, well, why didn't you tell me that while he was still here? And so what he actually ended up doing was he ended up digging out dirt and he didn't tell like,

Elijah (01:28:15.991)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:28:20.639)
Yeah.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Eli Price (01:28:34.579)
I don't think that, I think he said like that Nolan and the actors and stuff weren't aware when they were actually like acting and working on the set on this, you know, big set that they built. He put water in these holes and like, you know, I guess put the posts for the foundation in this water and waited for it to freeze and literally just used, yeah, he just used ice as the foundation.

Elijah (01:28:57.056)
Oh, like I said, I've used the cement. Yeah.

Huh?

Eli Price (01:29:03.599)
And he had like run it past like the, I guess the park people and they're like, Hey, what if I just use ice so that it melts away? There's no damage done to the, you know, to the earth or whatever. It's like such a cool thing, which isn't. Well, yeah. Which, which if those actors would have known, maybe they would have been like, I'm not getting up on that thing. Uh, yeah. But, but yeah.

Elijah (01:29:18.766)
That's terrifying. Ha ha ha.

Elijah (01:29:26.782)
I know, I'm not gonna go stand on your ice fortress up in the mountains in Calgary. I don't think so. I think we can go back and do this in CGI.

Eli Price (01:29:34.331)
Yeah. And it is literally an ice fortress. But yeah, I mean, uh, to like, to build that set, like, obviously the insides of it were, um, like on a studio. Uh, but, um, but the outside of it to build that thing to come up with, you know, obviously Nolan isn't the one that did the ice, um, but you know, his, his team did and, uh,

Elijah (01:29:37.918)
Yeah. Wow.

Elijah (01:29:47.554)
downstage. Yeah.

Elijah (01:30:03.35)
Mm-hmm. He wanted his mountain bond for a dress? Yeah.

Eli Price (01:30:06.202)
You know, his production designer was so bent on pleasing him as a director that he built it on ice. Yeah. And then they blew it up.

Elijah (01:30:16.728)
That's the job. He got his bond fortress. So, yep. Yep.

Eli Price (01:30:20.719)
Yes, and blew it up literally. Um, yeah, I, I had, uh, I wrote down from, uh, a book that I was reading. Um, I think they used 40 sticks of dynamite and 80 barrels of gasoline to blow up this set. Which. Yeah. Which is, which is fun, but, um, you got, but like, but remember you got to stretch that budget, you have $160 million. So.

Elijah (01:30:35.754)
Nice. Yeah, I could have done it with half as much.

Elijah (01:30:48.974)
That's right. You gotta make it last.

Eli Price (01:30:49.883)
Instead of 20 sticks, we're going to get 40 sticks of dynamite. Um, yeah, the, the music is the other, like just fantastic thing about this movie. Han, this is his first time working solo with Hans Zimmer. So, and, um, and, uh, Batman movies. Uh, what'd you say? Sorry.

Elijah (01:31:00.974)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:31:05.172)
Mmm.

Elijah (01:31:08.45)
Thomas Newman also did part of the Batman movies, yeah. Thomas Newman also did part of the square for Batman.

Eli Price (01:31:15.815)
Uh, it wasn't Thomas Newman. It was, um, James Newton Howard, I think. Yeah. Um, he did, he worked with Zimmer on. The Batman begins and dark night. Um,

Elijah (01:31:20.95)
James Newton Howard. Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Mm-hmm. Batman Begins. Yeah. So they use some. So James Jett and Howard did all the themes and stuff that got carried through to The Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:31:35.739)
Yeah, the very like, swell-y, like, more emotional sounding stuff was him. Yeah. And then this, so this is really like Nolan's first time working solo with Hans Zimmer. And he's, Nolan is one of those guys that doesn't like to work with like, temp music. And so he pulls Zimmer in from the beginning. And...

Elijah (01:31:42.182)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Elijah (01:31:51.374)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:31:58.571)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:32:02.966)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:04.887)
One of the things he talked about was when he started working with Zimmer towards the beginning of like getting this movie made, he didn't like, he didn't really show him the film. Like he didn't show him anything. He would bring him in, show him a little bit of like the production. You know, he had the script and so he wanted Zimmer to make this off of like the feeling of the movie. Um, and then like.

Elijah (01:32:24.472)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:32:29.986)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:34.471)
very obviously he's using the Edith Piaf song, Non Je Ne Regrette Rien, which is probably a bit terrible pronunciation. But yeah, part of what Zimmer does is he takes like those, some of those notes from that song and like slows them down and has like

Elijah (01:32:38.495)
Right.

Elijah (01:32:57.742)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:59.743)
bass trombones and tubas play it. And so that's where you get like the famous like bwaa's from. Yeah, it's just that like slowed down, playing with time, Edith Piaf song, which is so fun and interesting.

Elijah (01:33:02.187)
Yeah.

Vom, vom. Yep.

Elijah (01:33:11.886)
Mm-hmm.

Is, do you know, is the Inception Wham! button website still active? Do you know? Do you remember it? Do you remember the Inception Wham! website?

Eli Price (01:33:21.947)
I don't know, but that would be... I don't think I was aware that there was a website dedicated to it.

Elijah (01:33:28.342)
So there's a webpage you could go to. It was called like bomb.com or something like that. Click a button and hear the sound. That's what it was. I didn't know if it's still available. So I'm looking this up right now.

Eli Price (01:33:33.812)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:33:37.478)
That's great.

Yeah, yeah, you look it up and we'll, we'll maybe I can, in post I can add in a Blom for us right there. But yeah, I love, I just love what Zimmer did with this film and no one talks about how he played him the track time.

that kind of plays over that last sequence over the phone. And Nolan had him like play it again. And the Nolan variations, it says that like Nolan hung up the phone and he was with his editor Lee Smith and he turned to him and said, that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Just like geeking out over what Zimmer had made. And yeah.

Elijah (01:34:13.486)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:34:30.557)
That's great.

Uh-huh. Huh.

Eli Price (01:34:38.355)
I mean, it's...

Eli Price (01:34:42.347)
It is, I think it's rare for a score of a movie to become iconic alongside the movie. You know, it happens, it happens, it happens rarely, I think. I mean, you obviously have like, yeah, you have you have John Williams stuff. And then really like, not much else is like that.

Elijah (01:34:51.203)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:34:57.782)
Mm-hmm. Happened with John Williams a lot and like nobody else. Like John Williams all the time. Yep.

Elijah (01:35:08.266)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And the score because it's a character and the score is almost a character in the film. You know, it has like a diegetic, it's a diegetic aspect of what's going on with the score. It's part of the part of the movie, which adds to its importance. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:11.932)
Um, and so.

Eli Price (01:35:16.957)
It is.

Eli Price (01:35:20.447)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And then like this. Okay.

Elijah (01:35:27.138)
The inception button still exists, by the way. So it's still a website. You can go, you can push a red button and hear the sound. So, yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:34.963)
Great, good to know. Maybe I can put the link for that in the show notes. Yeah, I even love, this is like one of the few Nolan songs where there's like a pop song like in the movie. You know, The Prestige had the Thom Yorke song in the credits, but really I think this is the first time there's like an actual

Elijah (01:35:40.694)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:35:51.271)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true.

Elijah (01:35:58.958)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:36:03.167)
pop song used. And, and it's a, it's what's interesting is like Marion, uh, Cotillard had just played Edith Piaf and, uh, Livia and Rose, if I'm not mistaken, um, which I've never seen. Um, but it's. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Elijah (01:36:04.75)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:36:15.534)
She played the Piaf, yep. Yeah, living on Rose, yeah.

It's pretty good. It's biopic. You know, it's fine. She's great in it. She really is great in it. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:36:29.315)
Yeah, it's just funny that like how that played out. That he cast her in this movie is, I mean, this song really is, if you like look up the translation of it really is a representation of. Cobb's journey with, you know, his relationship with her and his guilt, like through the film, like the translation is no, I regret nothing, but, you know, you look at the lyrics and.

Elijah (01:36:32.738)
Mm-hmm. Heh, heh, heh.

Eli Price (01:36:59.623)
Um, it kind of talks about like being done with the past and being done with memories and starting over with nothing, um, uh, letting go of those things to move on to the next, uh, which is like very representative and Nolan's had said, Nolan said he had this song in mind for a long time. So, um, I guess it's just something that stuck with him that kind of fit with the. The.

Elijah (01:37:12.491)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:37:28.923)
I guess that thematic element. And it's just fun to have that as an audio cue of something that's happening along with the visual cues. Yeah.

Elijah (01:37:31.529)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:37:40.302)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:37:43.979)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:37:47.963)
Yeah, I mean, this movie, it released in 2010. No one does his summer releases. We've kind of talked about the opposing critic reviews of this. One thing though that I think was common with all the reviews is the...

Elijah (01:37:57.462)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:38:04.481)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:12.491)
wonder by the positive ones and I guess the admission by the negative ones that it's technically like Masterful, you know it's kind of undeniable that what the things he's doing visually are like stunning and impressive and fun and so I you know, I Think that's something that even if you don't and I think Nolan himself said like

Elijah (01:38:20.861)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:38:28.93)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:38:40.963)
Even if you don't like the film, he wants you to see the effort put into it, which I think does come across. But yeah, it opened. Number one, I think it made 60 million its first weekend and went on to make over 800 million worldwide. And yeah, just yet another Nolan.

Elijah (01:38:46.155)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:39:09.095)
Surprising success story. I don't know if you could say it was surprising at this point Yeah Yeah, but this was his first time like getting You know awards a lot of awards recognition on the big scale to it had eight Academy nominations It won cinematography sound mixing sound editing and visual effects

Elijah (01:39:11.414)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, kind of expect it to do well at this point. Yeah.

Elijah (01:39:25.773)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:39:37.587)
None of it. So it had a best picture and screenplay nomination, which those are the ones that Nolan would have, you know, been like receiving in his name. Um, and you know, didn't win those. So I don't think Nolan, you know, to this point still doesn't have any, um, any Oscar wins like in his name. Um, so we'll, we'll see if that changes. Uh,

Elijah (01:39:48.267)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:40:01.122)
Mm-hmm. No, he makes the kind of movies that Yeah

Eli Price (01:40:06.087)
this World War season, but.

Elijah (01:40:08.074)
Yeah, you can almost expect the Oppenheimer will have a best picture, best director kind of nomination. And this is post-Dark Knight. So they did that thing where they expanded the best picture field so that movies like this, like no one's available to get nominated, even if they don't expand the director field, though. So you still only get five there. But it really is the kind of movie that wins. He makes the kind of movies that win technical awards most of the time. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:11.495)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:19.204)
Mm-hmm. They did. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli Price (01:40:35.063)
Right. Yeah. The we haven't talked a ton about the cast. What what are your who are your favorite like elements of this movie as far as like the cast goes?

Elijah (01:40:53.602)
I like, so I like this era in DiCaprio's career, where he has a string of movies where he's playing like...

Eli Price (01:40:58.313)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:41:04.586)
like tortured, tortured men. You can look at, like you can look at Shutter Island and the departed and this and aviator. So like all three of those were Scorsese. This one, like he, there's a type he's playing right here where it's like a, almost like a tortured genius or a tortured guy, I mean, genius and departed, probably a stretch. Yeah, yeah, very tortured. And so he...

Eli Price (01:41:06.537)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:12.063)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:21.404)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:24.715)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:28.179)
Yeah, Gangs of New York too. Another Scorsese.

Elijah (01:41:34.366)
I liked DiCaprio in that mode for a while. I felt like that he got out of that and started doing other stuff too. But he works really well, I think. I am in the bag for Mary and Coty Yardney, I think she's in. So she does a great job here playing that femme fatale, like literally fatale for some people in this movie, kind of role. She's super good. And then the rest of everybody else, like,

Eli Price (01:41:37.16)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:48.761)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:53.564)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:57.448)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:00.713)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:42:03.306)
I was thinking about this, watching it again to talk about it. They're all really fun. All the other characters are really fun. And they're all, of course, playing types and doing it really well. I could see other actors in those roles and it'd be fine. But they do a really good job for what they're doing. Tom Hardy and I love the relationship between Arthur and, oh, what's Tom Hardy's character's name?

Eli Price (01:42:10.239)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:14.025)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:21.499)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (01:42:30.884)
Eames Yeah

Elijah (01:42:31.83)
Eames, of course, Eames, designer, of course it is. I love the way their relationship is really fun and they're fun together. It's fun to see Tom Hardy having fun. He ends up in a lot of roles where he doesn't really have a lot of fun. It's like he's having a lot of fun. So it's kind of fun for him to become a smart alecky kind of guy in this, playing the actor or whatever. Yeah, what about you? Do you enjoy the cast? I think it's pretty good, yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:38.974)
Yep.

Eli Price (01:42:46.025)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:50.239)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:42:57.979)
Yeah. And we're, yeah, uh, I was going to say we're at Tom Hardy in a role where you can actually like see his face is nice too. Um, uh, but yeah.

Elijah (01:43:05.886)
Yeah, I know. Yeah. See his face. He cracks jokes. It's fun to see him cracking jokes. Like I love that line about dream a little bigger. That's just like, it's so fun, you know? Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:12.853)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:43:16.939)
Uh-huh. I dream a little bigger darling. Which you know, that's where like the rules of the movie are kind of like, how do exactly the rules of these dreams work? Because why do you have to have an architect if like everyone can create in the movie? But it's one of those things where you're just like, whatever.

Elijah (01:43:29.302)
I know.

Elijah (01:43:35.471)
I know, yeah.

Whatever. Yeah, you need an architect because no one wanted to be an architect and he worked as an architect and you need someone to design the levels and they memorize them. They do memorize them when you're going into their dream. They memorize what she's designed. So.

Eli Price (01:43:43.991)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:43:53.447)
Yeah, so maybe she's like hidden this, maybe she hid this grenade launcher right there for him. And he knew it. Yeah, but yeah, I think Tom Hardy is really fun. I think Joseph Gordon Leva is, he's interesting in this because he's playing this very like exaggerated like kind of suave, I don't know exactly what he's going for. But

Elijah (01:43:58.058)
If it's so, maybe so. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:44:23.507)
But I like how...

Yeah, he can't. So like, I love the way that he, I even like the way he interacts with DiCaprio because it's it, I think it represents like the producer director, like a relationship, like, no, we can't do that impossible. And, and, and the cab is like, no, yeah, we can do it. I've done it before.

Elijah (01:44:33.964)
Uh huh.

Elijah (01:44:38.047)
Exactly. He's the producer. Producers are like, yeah, figure it out.

Yeah, producers, I love producers are like producers. There's a reason that producers accept best picture wins, right? Because producers are responsible for making sure everybody does their job and all the pieces, they do all the work so that so that you can get to that moment where the director and the actors can work on set. And so producers are like constantly exasperated.

Eli Price (01:45:08.018)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:45:12.622)
Talking to everybody, getting everything lined up, everything scheduled, everything just right, so that the situation is there for that moment when the director and the actor need to work together. No.

Eli Price (01:45:21.243)
Yeah. Maybe that parallels too with that second level dream. Like the amount of detail that he has to figure out to get them to experience the kick is way more than either of the other ones. Yeah.

Elijah (01:45:28.916)
Mm-hmm.

exactly the kick. You know what? It's exactly who you want. That's right. The only person you want in a situation is your producer because nobody else is going to know, figure out how to pull all the things around to make that work.

Eli Price (01:45:40.871)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. You have Yusuf. He's just driving a van off a bridge. Everyone else is just falling off of an exploding building and he's having to like intricately like tie everyone together and cut an elevator shaft cables. And

Elijah (01:45:49.459)
I know.

Elijah (01:45:53.777)
Uh-huh.

Elijah (01:45:57.486)
It's a little bit hallway. Yeah. He's the real hero. Producers are the real heroes.

Eli Price (01:46:05.343)
Yeah. Yeah, maybe so. But yeah, you know, I think so. DiCaprio is the one. So I will say Cotillard, I think I think she is pulling off maybe the best performance in the movie. Just with the you know, she doesn't have like a ton of screen time. She's kind of like a pop in character.

Elijah (01:46:25.111)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:46:34.151)
Um, but the, the range of emotion and the, even the range of like, um, the range from like kind of pitiful and endearing to like, even like scary that she's pulling off, um, is really impressive. Um, she's just doing, she's doing so much and it's not like one of those acting jobs where like you, you feel like, wow, this actor is doing too much.

Elijah (01:46:49.966)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:03.687)
Um, it's like very appropriate and fit fitting for the role.

Elijah (01:47:08.106)
Yeah, and I was thinking about realizing that she is playing a projection of Cobb's subconscious. So there are only a couple of shots in that movie where she's playing the actual Maul. And it's in his memory when he's explaining, when they're in the substrato, whatever it's called, and he explained to Ariadne what they did when they were there together. There's a couple of shots where it's actually Maul. But the rest of the time...

Eli Price (01:47:15.184)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:21.012)
Right.

Eli Price (01:47:34.292)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:47:36.142)
She's a projection of his subconscious. So he can be all like analytical and business oriented and whatever, but she's the part of him that he won't listen to, which is this emotional, the guilt, the pity, all this stuff that is actually driving him, that he like tries to push away so he can just get his job done, you know? But all that emotion always comes in, yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:38.367)
Right.

Eli Price (01:47:48.873)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:52.659)
all of that.

Eli Price (01:47:59.003)
Yeah. And it's what's impressive too is like she first comes shows up the first few times she shows up. She's this like menacing figure that like she you don't exactly know why she's there. You don't know what she's going to do. And she kind of shows up and like messes everything up.

Elijah (01:48:12.974)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:48:21.486)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:48:27.111)
the first few times, but then to take that and then progressively, she has to portray this progression of the way you look at her as a projection, as a victim. This projection of him is sort of a victim of his grief and of his not willing-

his unwillingness to like to face the reality of the situation. And it, you know, it does. I think it does culminate very well with, you know, her performance there, you know, and that kind of like climactic moment. DiCaprio is. I struggle with like, if I'm all on board with DiCaprio in this particular movie.

Elijah (01:49:11.681)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:49:27.368)
I think he's an amazing actor and I think he's really good in this. And there's moments where he's really hitting it and nailing it, but then there's other moments where I'm like, I don't know, I think he's a little too something. I can't put my finger on it. So one of the things that stands out in my mind right now is when he wakes up on the airplane.

Elijah (01:49:45.773)
Hmm.

Elijah (01:49:55.054)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:49:56.043)
And he's like, got this like, this just like weird, bewildered look on his face that like, is like, what exactly are you doing? It's kind of like this, oh, like, and I'm like, surely like you've put things together by now. You don't have to keep the bewildered look on your face. Like it only takes a fraction of a moment to like piece together what.

Elijah (01:50:08.97)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:50:24.243)
what just happened in your mind. And I think that's what it is maybe, is there's moments where he holds an emotion for a little bit too long. But it's probably, I'm probably just like overthinking and nitpicking, because like at the end of the day, like it doesn't really like detract a whole lot from the film.

Elijah (01:50:26.094)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:50:35.202)
Hmm.

Elijah (01:50:50.558)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think he, like, I think it's.

Elijah (01:50:57.994)
On the one hand, it's kind of a hard role because he has repressed all the emotional side of himself. He doesn't really get to, like DiCaprio doesn't get to express Cobb's emotions. Only in a few little moments does he get to do that. The rest of the time, he has to play it cold. And there are probably moments where, I think of like,

Eli Price (01:51:00.)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:51:07.868)
Mm-hmm

Eli Price (01:51:16.823)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:51:25.734)
Um, when they're, when they first get, when they're in the first level of the dream and Saito gets shot and he's going to put him out of his misery. And he has to stop him real fast from, from shooting Saito because there's the reveal that you can't die now, which is, we're not going to talk about that. Cause it annoys me a little bit, um, that they changed the rules on us that they have already told us the rules, but they need to have real stakes. I get it, whatever. Um, but anyway, but he has to stop, uh, stop beams from shooting.

Eli Price (01:51:39.028)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:51:55.298)
Saito to wake him up because he won't. And he reacts a bit big right there. And it's like one of the only times he has a lot of emotion in the course of the actual narrative, of the plot narrative of what's going on. And so it was a little bit where his iciness kind of cracks a little bit. But the rest of the time, he's so

Eli Price (01:52:01.771)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:52:24.066)
He has to be so removed because he has repressed everything. I think it'd be hard to play that. Especially for an actor like DiCaprio, because DiCaprio can sometimes be really big, you know? And this is a film where he's not really allowed to be big most of the time, yeah.

Eli Price (01:52:27.291)
Yeah. And maybe that is it.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:52:39.271)
Yeah. And I think so. I think like that bigness like can be like, can pull you away from what you're supposed to be figuring out with, with a character that he's playing. But then like there's movies where it just like fits so well. Like, I mean, yeah.

Elijah (01:52:54.402)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:52:58.078)
Yeah, yeah, like Wolf of Wall Street is one where like it's a huge outsized performance, but it's exactly what it needs to be for that movie. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:03.667)
Mm-hmm. Right. Or like, Jingo Unchained, like his role in that is just like so outlandish and huge and he plays those so well. Yeah.

Elijah (01:53:11.41)
Yeah, it's a Looney Tunes character. Yeah. Well, you know, it's like no one movies, no one's films don't really, for the most part, they're not really canvases for an actor to be big and be super emotional. I mean, the one exception is Interstellar and Matthew McConaughey's character Interstellar has scenes where he gets to have big emotions. And it's like, it's hard like...

Eli Price (01:53:23.775)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:30.094)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:53:35.152)
Yes.

Elijah (01:53:37.494)
If you don't know that movie exists, and you only know the rest of Nolan's filmography, it would be a little bit hard to imagine McConaughey in a Nolan movie, because McConaughey is a very effusive actor, always. But it works in interstellar, because that's a character who has to feel and express big emotions. And it has to feel and express them early in the film, not just in the final moment of resolution. So...

Eli Price (01:53:56.572)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:54:05.352)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (01:54:07.058)
Most of Nolan's characters are kind of reserved. Yeah, analytical.

Eli Price (01:54:12.415)
Yeah, and it's partly because of just the way Nolan writes. He's very interested in the narrative structure and the logic and the ideas being portrayed. Even so, in Memento, he talked about in interviews, oh, yeah, the emotional connection you have with

Elijah (01:54:20.142)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:54:38.855)
with Guy Pearce's character there is all is all Pierce. He was like, he was like, I was not like thinking about you emotionally connecting with that character when I wrote it. But when Pierce came on, like, he really brought that out in the out of the script. And it's a similar thing. It's it is a similar thing here with Leo. He actually spent like months reworking on the script with Leo.

Elijah (01:54:41.75)
Leonard. Yeah.

Elijah (01:54:50.712)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:54:55.882)
Yeah, you feel pity for him.

Elijah (01:55:06.606)
Hmm.

Eli Price (01:55:06.919)
very closely, like they were going through it and Leo was like very adamant on, we have to like make sure we nail the emotional aspect of this. Um, and you know, Nolan kind of has readily admitted like, yeah, I'm not that great at writing that. Um, and he relies on these actors that are so good at tapping into that. Um, to like really get, bring that out.

Elijah (01:55:11.319)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:55:14.875)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:55:23.004)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:55:30.134)
Yeah, he's a analytical filmmaker. But he's also like, there are big emotions in his movies. And a lot of them do end up hinging on something like love, in the capital L largest possible sense, love. Which is, it's funny to call someone an analytical filmmaker when they make movies about how love transcends time. That's like rom-com stuff.

Eli Price (01:55:39.21)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:55:44.743)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:57.5)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:56:00.902)
or David Lean, epic stuff to listen to David Lean again. That's big time emotion stuff. But it almost I think feels to me like a lot of times, he like no one is so analytical that like when he wants to add emotion and he has to reach for that big emotional kind of thing because that's an easier thing to reach for rather than nuanced, like subtle emotions. You don't get subtle emotions. You get like love transcends time. You know?

Eli Price (01:56:22.021)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:27.207)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but so, and I mean, in this movie, I think there are sections where like, I think Leo is really like pulling off and bringing the emotion that's like, I guess like suppressed deep within the script. He's like bringing it out. Like the two times that they're actually like on different like ends of the spectrum of like emotional acting. One being

Elijah (01:56:44.782)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:56:56.135)
you know, when Mao does commit suicide in his memory, like, you know, his reaction in that moment is very like emotionally affecting. And I mean, it's hard for it not to be, but you could easily, an actor could mess that up by overdoing it or underdoing it, and I think he really nails it. And then this...

Elijah (01:56:59.618)
kill herself yeah mm-hmm that's a big moment yeah

Elijah (01:57:08.145)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (01:57:15.391)
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Elijah (01:57:19.918)
Mm-hmm. It's like a, it's kind of to me, it reminds me of like, it makes me think of like a man who is not emotional, but then something like that happens. And like, he's so unused to expressing his emotions, you know, but like you have to express something in that moment. And so it comes out in a big messy way, you know, because he's been, he's naturally so held back.

Eli Price (01:57:31.019)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:57:34.676)
Bye.

Eli Price (01:57:41.008)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, but the other end of the spectrum at like the climax, it's a very like subtle expression of love and the type of love that knows that you have to let go of the past, let go of a memory, let go of that projection.

Elijah (01:57:54.046)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:58:04.918)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:58:13.966)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:15.003)
And it's a very, it's a very subtle performance. His, his interaction, you know, Cobb with, with Ma there of like, um, you know, talking about the life that they did have together. Um, I think he does that very well, which is, which is, which is saying a lot for Leo because he is known for his big performances and that is a very like subtle expression of emotion that he pulls off very well. So. Uh.

Elijah (01:58:25.079)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:58:39.907)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:58:45.327)
Yeah, which we, you know, we can get into a little bit of, um, of that, uh, the emotional threads do, like, do the emotional threads in this movie work, cause that is one of Nolan's big critiques is his movies lack emotion. Um, and I, I honestly do think it's a fair critique. Um,

Elijah (01:59:05.998)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:59:12.559)
You know, he is like we've been talking about. He is a very like calculated analytical filmmaker. um, and so um You know, I think in this movie so like when um When I was I did i'm doing these movies a little out of i'm doing these recordings a little out of order um in nolan-esque fashion, um, I guess And so, uh the last one I recorded was um the prestige

Elijah (01:59:18.19)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (01:59:35.179)
Hehehehe

Elijah (01:59:41.842)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:59:42.055)
Um, and in your, your section on the prestige and transcending time, you, you kind of brought out, I loved, um, the way you kind of thought about Nolan as, um, that analytical intellectual filmmaker and how he is, it's almost like it's a reaction, um, maybe a bit of an overcorrection of

our society that is very interested in the emotional, but not the intellectual, and how we really need to bring both of them together. And I think that thought process applies in this movie too, bringing the head and the heart together. I think, but yeah, I don't know, does.

Elijah (02:00:14.637)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:00:25.868)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:00:30.102)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:00:37.915)
What works emotionally for you in this movie or not?

Elijah (02:00:42.73)
Yeah, I, you know, I, I was thinking about this again, watching it this time. And like I said, I've been on a journey with this film as I watched it many times over the years and gone from thinking it's the greatest movie I've ever seen for a moment, you know, to still being like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And then having a stretch where I was like, could really see the clockwork of it. Um, and wasn't sure how I felt about the clockwork, like that I could see it so clearly.

Eli Price (02:00:50.507)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:00:54.517)
Yeah.

Hehehehe

Eli Price (02:01:12.552)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:01:12.574)
if I like lessen the effectiveness of the film or whatever. And then kind of coming through that and really appreciating how like, almost like you appreciated a time piece. Like, oh my gosh, someone made that. You know, like that someone hand tooled those gears and put them all together and it works flawlessly. Like what an amazing construction that is. And like.

Eli Price (02:01:17.378)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:01:40.514)
being able to appreciate the artistry in something that is so perfectly engineered is I think it's valid. And I think the emotional, the main emotional thing that's going on there is a worthwhile thing. It's a good thing. So it does ultimately work for me. And I think at this point in my relationship with Inception, which we'll continue.

Eli Price (02:01:45.776)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:02:09.45)
knew as well be in after I watched it a few more times the next 10 years, you know, right now I it works for me on that level of as this whole thing is an allegory for movies and how movies work and the relationship between the artists and the film that they create and the people they make it with and the audience they make it for and all that kind of stuff. It really works for me on that level a lot. I like the

Eli Price (02:02:32.294)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:02:38.294)
Like that idea that like, he has to, he's, the artist or Nolan Cobb is dealing with stuff by making this heist, by going through these dream levels as by making this film that even maybe he's not entirely aware that he has to deal with this stuff. And, but the process of making the thing helps him deal with something that he's not entirely aware he needs to deal with. And for the audience, I think that translates when it's done genuinely.

Eli Price (02:02:56.924)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:03:04.157)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:03:07.614)
as it is here, I think, that translates to something like what happens for Fisher. Like Fisher, the audience, goes on this journey and he has true catharsis and like a true moment of being able to like forgive his father, move on. There's some kind of almost reconciliation healing in that relationship, which, okay, based on a lie, maybe, you know, that like his dad wanted him to break the

Eli Price (02:03:29.725)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:03:33.227)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:03:36.066)
break the company up, that's not true, you know? But I really like the reconciliation. You know, I really like that Fisher is free from, you know, what his father did for him. They, you know, they had that conversation about, he should pay us for this, this is cheaper, this is better than therapy, you know? Like he's finding a way out of this, we're finding a way out of this for him. And that's a great thing. And I do think that movies can work that way for the audience, you know? Like we don't always, the same way that Nolan doesn't know.

Eli Price (02:03:42.251)
Mm hmm. Right.

Eli Price (02:03:52.22)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:00.531)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:04:03.286)
the things he needs to deal with why he's writing this thing. And so after the fact that he realized what he was going through, audiences the same way. Like we don't always know the things that we need to deal with. And occasionally a movie can come along where it does that for us. It helps us. Cathartic Lee or spiritually or devotionally or prayer for everyone to say, um, helps us like work through some things. And so it can, that sense, that emotional core of the film, those two, those like,

Eli Price (02:04:09.035)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:04:25.672)
Right.

Elijah (02:04:31.01)
two side-by-side emotional things going on in the movie totally worked for me because they seem complimentary and are both very powerfully portrayed as well, you know?

Eli Price (02:04:35.1)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:42.587)
Yeah, yeah, I was reading in the Nolan variations before we before just earlier this evening and one of the little sections ends with this it says, a man loses his wife yet spends a lifetime with her, a son loses his father but is also reconciled with him. And I thought that was such a succinct way to like

Elijah (02:05:06.51)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:05:10.467)
encapsulate those two emotional resolutions that you get. And it's like, both are kind of paradoxical too, which is a kind of a, I guess, a running idea through the movie is these paradoxes. But oftentimes I think that's how kind of emotions and the human experience with emotions kind of work. They're...

Elijah (02:05:14.754)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:05:30.466)
paradox.

Eli Price (02:05:39.327)
they're not necessarily explainable.

Elijah (02:05:41.962)
Yeah. And we have to learn, and this is a common thread throughout Nolan's films too. Like, you know, his films are all about epistemology. Like, how do we know what we know? And what does what we know or don't know? How does that affect who we are, what we do, or what our hope is for the future or not? Like, this is all what he's dealing with, but it's all rooted in that, like, what we know and don't know. And there is an element of, he seems

Eli Price (02:05:59.957)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:06:11.902)
you can't know. There may be two things that are true and are also contradict one another. And it's like living in that paradox, that tension, we have to learn to live in that if we're gonna be able to forgive people that we've lost and we can't actually talk to them anymore. We make peace that way with ourselves and with each other in the past. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:06:25.983)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:06:37.831)
Yeah. And I, so we didn't talk really about Killian Murphy, but man, he, in the little, little screen time he gets, like, not, I mean, knocks it out of the park. I mean, he sells that, that moment in the, with the pinwheel. Like, I mean, that was, I think that in the whole movie, strangely, for some reason is the, the part that like makes me like,

Elijah (02:06:45.198)
That is so good.

Elijah (02:06:49.918)
He does, he, and he has.

Elijah (02:06:54.678)
Ah. Uh-huh.

Elijah (02:07:06.147)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:07:06.547)
Um, like this isn't a movie that makes me like well up with tears kind of like interstellar does, but that's the part that gets closest for me. Um, I think, which is strange because. It's you're like, you're not spending any time with this guy. And yet, like when you get to this emolment, like it's emotional and it works and you make the connection to the picture and, um, it's

Elijah (02:07:15.818)
Yeah, there's nothing.

Elijah (02:07:23.467)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:07:32.992)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:07:34.999)
It is this moment, this like meta filmmaking moment of, um, the payoff you can get as an, as an audience member watching a film, um, and I think.

Elijah (02:07:45.23)
Mm-hmm.

It's also, it's so like his, I mean, his arc is so his, that character's arc, Fisher's arc is so genuine, you know, like, and not gimmicky, you know, like, for a very gimmicky film, gimmicking the best possible way, it's not gimmicky. And like that moment when he pulls the pinwheel out, like, I think that works so well, because you're not expecting that, you know, like, that's a moment, the will, that's the thing.

Eli Price (02:07:56.977)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:08:12.171)
Yeah, you're expecting them to see the will and be that be the emotion.

Elijah (02:08:16.962)
That's the thing we've been told that they have planted there for him to like make this decision. And instead he pulls the pinwheel out. And so that's a moment where they're in his own subconscious, you know, like it's his own self helping himself reconcile to his relationship with his father, you know? Like, so it's very genuine. It's, that's right.

Eli Price (02:08:35.663)
Yeah. He found something in the, he found something in the, in the farce of this world they've created that they didn't even know to put in there. Like that they didn't even know to make explicit. Um, and that's something that we do as viewers of films, we find things in these movies, um, that the filmmaker has no ideas in there. Um, and, uh, you know, that's.

Elijah (02:08:42.798)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. That's right.

Elijah (02:08:52.606)
As viewers, yeah.

Elijah (02:09:01.374)
Yep. It can totally happen that way. Yep.

Eli Price (02:09:04.775)
That's a beautiful thing. Um, and that's something that like, um, uh, I like to think of movies as like mirrors and, and I'll think of it in two senses. One is it's a mirror of the culture and society it comes out of reflecting that, but also movies reflect you back to yourself. Um, and part of the reason it does that is because it brings you into an experience where you're kind of.

typical emotional barriers that you put up in everyday life are kind of like forgotten about. And so like you can dig into things about you that wouldn't normally come out just in your everyday life because you've entered this kind of, you know, non-reality experience. And so you think like, I can let my guard down now, but then the...

Elijah (02:09:58.635)
One might even call it a dream state of some kind. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:10:04.511)
the emotional or the ideas being explored in the movie can like pierce you in ways that don't happen outside of that art, which is something beautiful about art in general that it does. And, you know, when I was first thinking about that moment, I was like, man, is this like that idea of like, do the ends justify the means? Is this about like

Elijah (02:10:16.094)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:10:31.982)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:10:32.763)
a lie that ends up working like for good. But then I started thinking about it in these terms and I was like, no, that's not the point at all. The point is what a film can do for an audience member. Like you're watching, what you're watching is essentially a lie. It's all, it's just a made up story. But the, yeah, but the truth emotionally that you can get out of it is real.

Elijah (02:10:44.63)
That's right. Yeah.

It's all a lie. Yeah. A lie that tells the truth. Ha ha ha. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:11:01.763)
And so like even if, even if his father, that's not what his father wanted for him, the truth about himself that he needed to get out of that was, was found, which I think is beautiful.

Elijah (02:11:17.414)
Yeah, it's the truth that his father shouldn't have wanted for him. It allows his father to be a better father than he was. And there's grace in that. Even if it can't be real, we can have it in the fantasy. And that's a good thing.

Eli Price (02:11:20.399)
Right, right.

Eli Price (02:11:25.594)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:11:32.975)
Yeah, yeah and sometimes truth is in a situation like that. Truth, thinking about it less in a, like what is the fact of the matter and thinking about truth more like with a capital T, more like the, a logos truth or like what, thinking about it more in what should be.

Elijah (02:11:46.605)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:11:51.708)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:11:58.144)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:12:02.579)
Um, the, the real truth is not like the fact of the matter, but what should the world as it should have been, um, for him as it will be. Yeah. Right.

Elijah (02:12:02.711)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:12:10.462)
Yeah. Or you could say the world as it will be, you know, when all things are made right, and we reach that point where all things are reconciled. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:12:20.239)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, that moment just works so well for me. And I think Cobb's emotional arc is really good. I think it's the moment where you see their hands, like their old hands, like holding, is a beautiful visual. And just, you know, that idea of

Elijah (02:12:40.334)
Mm-hmm, hold hands, yeah.

Elijah (02:12:45.592)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:12:50.739)
I don't know, what it made me think of is like the...

Eli Price (02:12:57.783)
He didn't actually have a lifetime with her in reality, but the way that he knew her and was connected with her can feel like a lifetime. They had a lifetime together in the dream world, I guess you could say in this movie, but connecting it back to us in real life that don't have limbo that we can go to, you know.

Elijah (02:13:02.606)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:13:11.959)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:13:15.957)
Right.

Elijah (02:13:20.831)
Right.

Elijah (02:13:24.855)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:13:29.391)
Even small moments are with someone where love is shared is like a lifetime of moments. And I think that goes back to Nolan thinking about all the missed lifetime of moments that he had missed with his family while he was making on the sets, making these movies. And so I think that aspect of Cobb's arc

Elijah (02:13:43.31)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:13:47.498)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:13:57.971)
is probably the most like Both I guess both interesting like with the head with my head thinking about it and emotionally impactful at the same time Which I think is important and something that like maybe isn't appreciated enough about what no one's doing in his films

Elijah (02:14:07.845)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:14:16.974)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:14:20.458)
Yeah, I agree. That's good.

Eli Price (02:14:22.459)
Yeah. Um, something we haven't talked about, I guess, as we're starting to like, maybe get closer to wrapping up our talk on this is, um, is like the, the internet questions of like, you know, what does the totem fall at the end or not? Is he in reality or dream? Has he been dreaming the whole time? Yeah. No.

Elijah (02:14:48.426)
I know, does the top fall over, right? Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (02:14:52.163)
And, um, and, you know, like, obviously like the, the top, uh, is you kind of find out that's not even like his totem. Um, which, which I think is a really cool visual, another example of a visual cue, um, that's shown alongside the exposition because he's talking about like how he, how he planted that idea in her mind and you get the visual of the, the spinning top in.

Elijah (02:15:00.906)
Right, it's hers, yeah.

Eli Price (02:15:20.763)
in her little dollhouse safe. Yeah, I think that's really cool. But yeah, I don't know.

Elijah (02:15:32.874)
I think it's worth it.

Eli Price (02:15:33.136)
The more I see this movie, the less that question is interesting to me.

Elijah (02:15:36.858)
Yeah, I mean, it's worth, I always think when this conversation comes up about inception, which it always does, because it presents you with it, right, when it's over. And I can watch you talk to him. He does. Yeah, exactly. I think, I think, I always think it's worth remembering that it doesn't show you, you know, it does not give, it doesn't give you an answer. And

Eli Price (02:15:45.959)
Yeah, no one wants you to talk about it or he wouldn't have ended the film that way.

Eli Price (02:16:03.681)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:16:06.39)
we can argue and go frame by frame. I've gone frame by frame to the ending to see how much that tops wobble or not and what that means, you know, all that kind of stuff and done that. But I think, I think what it really, for me anyway, it gets back to that, what do you want to believe? You know, like, what do you want to think? Do you want to think this is all just a dream? Do you want to think this is that he, he really did get back to his kids? Cause that says as much about you as anything else, about you and what you hope for. And like,

Eli Price (02:16:12.852)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (02:16:31.112)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:16:35.74)
Right.

Elijah (02:16:36.19)
What do you think the movie hopes for? I think the movie wants him to get home, you know? And the movie really wants him to get home. And...

Eli Price (02:16:40.071)
Yeah. Yeah, it, I don't think it's a tragedy. Like I think Cobb, yeah, it doesn't. It feels like he's, Cobb has like, it would feel like disingenuous for it to end with him still in a dream space, like not in reality, not really with his kids. But like,

Elijah (02:16:46.118)
Yeah, mm-mm. No, doesn't feel like a tragedy. Doesn't feel cynical at all, you know?

Elijah (02:17:02.894)
trapped in a dream.

Elijah (02:17:07.528)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:17:09.683)
But I do think there is something to what you're saying of like, it ends without the answer because like, that's part of what he's doing with this movie is like the audience, you're the audience member, you've got to find what is your pinwheel in this movie, I guess, is the question, do you want it to fall or not? What?

Elijah (02:17:19.49)
That's Nolan, right? Yeah.

Elijah (02:17:24.683)
Uh huh.

Elijah (02:17:28.23)
Uh-huh. Yeah. And for a filmmaker who is so concerned with how we ascertain reality, he always, always comes back to, you can't know. You can't know. So what are you going to do about it? How are you going to live in the tension of not knowing? And Inception gives you that perfectly.

Eli Price (02:17:36.649)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:17:46.919)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:17:54.275)
Yeah. And he even says that him and Lee Smith spent like hours and hours going through frame by frame to find the exact frame they wanted to cut on. Which is, yeah, he said there was a there was one version where it did the little wobble it did and kept going and then did another one.

Elijah (02:18:07.366)
Uh-huh. Oh, it's so hard. Hahaha.

Elijah (02:18:20.82)
Uh-huh.

Eli Price (02:18:21.951)
but they you know they landed on just the one wobble I think in the end but yeah can I mean can you imagine two guys sitting there like going frame by frame of a top spinning turn aside well do we cut here or here yep

Elijah (02:18:24.77)
It's the one wobble, yeah.

Elijah (02:18:33.07)
I can't. I can't. I can't imagine it because that's filmmaking, right? That's like that famous story about speaking of Lawrence of Arabia, the match cut, the literal match cut in Lawrence of Arabia. They were working on that and it wasn't supposed to be a hard cut, it was supposed to be a dissolve, but they hadn't done it yet. And it was sort of just a cut and they were...

Eli Price (02:18:48.509)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (02:18:59.526)
watching the dailies, it was a hard cut. And David Lean saw it and he said, that's almost perfect. It's almost perfect. And then work to find exactly the right moment in that puff of air to cut like that. So of course they split frame by frame forever. That's what a filmmaker does, is break down time into these little moments and find just the right moment.

Eli Price (02:19:10.27)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:13.79)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:17.023)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's what Nolan's background goes back to is, um, you know, when he was at university of London, he, uh, the, the story is that he found an old steam back editing machine in the basement of the theater there on, on campus and just like went to work, you know, figuring out how to edit. So like he, he's very interested in that, that editing process, because that's, that's where he started. Like

Elijah (02:19:35.287)
Hmm

Uh-huh. Huh.

Elijah (02:19:47.614)
Yeah, that's filmmaking. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:49.895)
learning about filmmaking was on an editing machine, you know? But yeah, it's always a fun question to ask. Like, I think Nolan is quoted saying like the point isn't whether or not the top falls, but that he's not looking at it anymore, which I think there's, yeah, yeah. But I think there's a version, I think there is a version of the movie where

Elijah (02:19:59.261)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:20:08.002)
That's right. That's the most that's the most matters for Cobb. He walks on past. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:20:19.939)
if where the camera goes with Cobb, um, so that you're no longer looking at the totem either, but that's not the version we have. We have, we have this version. So it is, I think it is. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. There there's that. And I think that's, that's part of the point too, is like, I think, and I think he probably says that knowing that like.

Elijah (02:20:24.962)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:20:28.57)
Yeah. And that's not and that's not the Nolan who wants you to know you're watching a movie either, you know. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:20:48.255)
people are gonna hate that answer because, yeah, if you wanted that to be the answer, then why didn't you just follow Cobb out there as kids? Like, that's not the point either. The point is that you left the camera on the top to mess with us. Oh yeah.

Elijah (02:20:50.559)
Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Elijah (02:20:56.142)
Uh-huh. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You have to. It's the same Nolan that has Yusuf turn around and say, did you just see that? You know, like it's that same Nolan. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:21:12.988)
Yeah.

Yeah, there are other people too that have like went back and had the wedding ring totem theory Uh, i'm sure you've heard that um um, which actually is fairly convincing like if you If you kind of pay attention to when he had when he had when he has his wedding ring on it's always in a dream and then um I think at like customs you can clearly see he doesn't have the ring on so it's

Elijah (02:21:22.692)
Uh-huh, yeah. I've read that. Yeah, I've read that before. Yeah.

Elijah (02:21:29.102)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:21:33.154)
has the ring on. Yeah.

Elijah (02:21:42.839)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:21:43.827)
It's supposed to be an indicator of reality. And I can't remember if you see it in that last sequence or not.

Elijah (02:21:46.027)
Reality, yeah

You can't see his hand, you can't see his wedding ring hand during that last sequence. But it's also worth mentioning that there are four children who play the children and they're two years apart in age. And so there is the, from the casting of the children, it's also suggested that time has passed and he's going home, not to the kids he left behind, but to the kids that are two years older. So yeah, so that's there too, but.

Eli Price (02:21:52.319)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:22:09.242)
Okay.

Gotcha, I didn't even realize, I didn't even notice that. Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (02:22:16.47)
But that's just us trying to impose some certainty on something that's not supposed to be certain. So just let it be uncertain. Live in the liminal space.

Eli Price (02:22:19.163)
Yeah, it is. It is.

Eli Price (02:22:25.323)
Because at the end of the day, how did we even get there in the house? We don't even remember, just like a dream. But yeah, so if you get Transcending Time, you can read about all of Nolan's movies except Inception because you have the excerpt for that in another book.

Elijah (02:22:29.902)
That's right. We don't know. Yeah, I know. It's over there.

Elijah (02:22:45.454)
except this one.

Elijah (02:22:52.19)
Inception. That's right. Inception is in Come and See. A Christian Guide to the 250 Greatest Films of All Time. Yeah. So I decided that was so a little bit about that project. I basically I wanted to know if I watch through film history when I see evidence of God at work in how the art form develops over time. And so one thing I did one thing I

Eli Price (02:23:01.311)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:23:22.21)
As part of that process, I took a bunch of lists of the greatest films of all time and I cross-referenced them and got a list of the consensus canon of the greatest, most influential films that have been made. Now that meant that most of those movies in that list were not movies I chose. Pretty much everything up until about 1999, 2001, somewhere in there.

were pretty well established. People say these are the movies that matter the most. But everything past that point, like the last 20 years or so, I had a little more leeway in what I included in the book. And then, of course, there are lists of the best films in the last 20 years. And I consulted all these lists or whatever. But I did have a little bit of my own choice in there. And I had to include Christopher Nolan because of all the things we've been talking about, how there aren't many filmmakers working at his level who've had his kind of success. And

Eli Price (02:23:53.979)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:03.627)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:24:11.195)
Right, yeah.

Elijah (02:24:15.094)
all this kind of stuff for the last 20 years or so. And I had to decide which movie to include of his. And I decided to include Inception. So Inception is in Come and See as kind of what I still think of as like the most Christopher Nolan movie of all his movies. The one that really gets at all the things he cares about to this degree. So yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:37.707)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:24:44.79)
I included it for that reason. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:45.147)
Yeah. And since I didn't get to read the inception, cause I don't have the book yet, I need to get the book. Do you, I was gonna leave it up to you on if you wanted to share a final thought that maybe like, if you wanna like share something that from that excerpt or maybe just like hint at something as our final thought for this film.

Elijah (02:24:53.482)
No. Yeah.

Elijah (02:25:07.754)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I can do that. Sure, I can do that. Well, you know about the little prayer things I write at the end of things. Yeah. So that's all throughout Come and See 2. Come and see these little, like the Transcendent Time book, the Del Toro book, the Miyazaki book, they're sort of structured similar to how Come and See is. Come and See is 250 movies and it's not

Eli Price (02:25:19.623)
Right.

Eli Price (02:25:33.694)
Right.

Elijah (02:25:37.09)
kind of written interaction with the film and then a prayer, like a prayer of response. And the prayer is supposed to be like a model prayer and it might not be necessarily what you would pray, like after you watch the movie, you know, but it's kind of like my devotional response and kind of like a model or whatever kind of idea. So there's one of those, I could read that if you, would that be okay? Yeah, okay. Cool, so I'll read that prayer here from.

Eli Price (02:25:48.416)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:26:00.037)
Yeah, let's do that. That would be great.

Elijah (02:26:06.134)
the entry on inception. So here we go.

Movies are fun, Lord, and movies are also an opportunity to hear from you and deal with the complicated things bothering our spirits. May we be sensitive to your voice, willing to accept the difficult aspects of our lives, especially when we can't understand them. And may we be quick to forgive ourselves and others when we cannot respond graciously to our world. Help us to never forget that the people around us are carrying losses and longings they can hardly express. May we be gracious to each other always. Amen.

Eli Price (02:26:42.255)
Yeah, amen. That's beautiful. And I think that is a fitting way to end our talk on this movie that is so much dealing with the things that are deep within us that we're dealing with. And movies helping us find those things and face them as Cobb does, but also helping us build empathy with

Elijah (02:26:57.066)
Yeah, and how movies help us with that.

Eli Price (02:27:10.307)
experience that we may not know personally, but can build empathy with and learn to have grace for others through. So yeah, I love that.

Elijah (02:27:22.931)
Yeah, that's good. Good. So I knew that Inception was in the book. That's one of the reasons that when you asked me if I wanted to come on, I was like, I want to talk about Inception, because it's also not in the book, not in Transcending Time. And it is in Cumminsie. So I've done something, though. I can tell you about this now. So Cumminsie is a book that you can buy. It's also an email subscription.

Eli Price (02:27:31.291)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:27:49.492)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:27:49.85)
It's also deliverable as an email subscription. So I built a subscription that gives you one devotion from the series a week on Sunday mornings. And it starts at the beginning of film history and works through time. So you don't get into Inception for a long time. It's like number 229 in the book. So, you know, you got to get like five years into this thing before you get to Inception. But knowing that we were going to be talking about it.

Eli Price (02:27:59.68)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:28:08.628)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:28:15.336)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:28:19.354)
And so I built, I built, I went in and built a version of the email subscription where if people who are listening to this go and subscribe, it'll send them inception first, and then it'll flip back around and start at the beginning and work your way through. So if people are really interested in reading the inception one, and I'll send it to you because you're already signed up, Eli, so I don't wanna, yeah, so you can't re-sign up. So I'll make sure you can read the inception one.

Eli Price (02:28:35.992)
Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (02:28:41.339)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm already signed up to that email service, so.

Elijah (02:28:49.142)
But yeah, so they sign up to this thing. They'll start with an Inception immediately, and then beginning on Sunday mornings, they'll get from the beginning of time working their way through. So yeah.

Eli Price (02:28:59.015)
Yeah, great. That's awesome. Yeah, and I'll make sure that's in the show notes. So they can take it.

Elijah (02:29:04.498)
Yeah, it's and I can tell people to it's it'll be at Elijah Davidson dot com slash establishing shot. You can just go there and you'll find the sign up for it.

Eli Price (02:29:11.849)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:29:15.111)
Yeah Yeah, and that'll be in the show notes. So yeah that make sure you do that. I've been really enjoying these so I don't have the book and maybe It's so it's it works two ways I don't have the book partly because I was like well, I'm gonna sign up for the emails and see how I like this thing But also like I'm enjoying it so much that now I'm like, okay, I've got to get the book at some point so

Elijah (02:29:36.02)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:29:42.063)
That's good.

Eli Price (02:29:43.227)
Yeah, the marketing is working there for sure.

Elijah (02:29:45.702)
Well, it's funny. I wanted it to be a book because I got the most excited about doing the email subscription. I still love that more actually because I think it's a great way to do this because like it's.

Eli Price (02:29:56.699)
It is, because then you have time to watch the films if you haven't seen it before, because you have a whole week before the next one comes around. If you have the book, it's kind of overwhelming. But yeah, and I actually have done that. There's been a few that I've caught up with because I'm like, I read the excerpt for that week and I was like, one of them was Metropolis. I hadn't caught up with Metropolis and man, I loved it. Yeah.

Elijah (02:29:59.862)
That's right. Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:30:06.666)
Yeah, exactly. It's like a more.

Elijah (02:30:19.446)
Yeah!

Elijah (02:30:22.926)
Oh, I'm so glad. That makes me so happy to hear. Yeah. I like it. I would always say I don't want people to watch movies because movies are great. So that's great to hear. And I tried to write them. There's only a couple of cases in the book where it spoils, they spoil anything. They're really not spoilers. So you can read them before. I do think if you read them again after you watch, they mean a little more, but yeah. But I think they worked before.

Eli Price (02:30:29.067)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:30:39.305)
Yeah.

They aren't. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:30:48.463)
Yeah, yeah, I usually do both. So if there's one that I, there's been a few that I haven't seen. So like Metropolis Battleship Potemkin was one that I watched and I did. I, I read, I read the excerpt and I watched it and then I would go back and read. I mean, they take like, um, a few minutes to read. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So yeah, I highly recommend signing up for that. Um,

Elijah (02:31:07.31)
They're 400 words. Yeah, they're short. They're very short.

Eli Price (02:31:17.103)
and it'll make you want to buy the book too. So.

Elijah (02:31:20.226)
Yeah, buy the book if you want to. I really like the email subscription better. I ended up wanting it to be a book just because I wanted it to be on my shelf so that when my kids are older, they can find it and see what I think about all these movies. But the book's good too.

Eli Price (02:31:30.483)
Yeah. And that, that is, that is a reason I want the book is cause sometimes like I'm watching films, uh, and I'm like, I wonder, like, there's been a few that I'm like, I wonder if, um, that's in come and see, but like, I don't have the book. So I can't, um, and I'm, I'm right now doing, um, uh, a small group at my church, uh, called faith and film that I'm a concept that I came up with. And, um, kind of

Elijah (02:31:46.85)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:31:55.204)
Oh, cool.

Eli Price (02:31:59.295)
going through film, we only have like seven or eight meetings. So kind of, kind of just picking and choosing some big films in film history. And so we're, we're going to do citizen Kane next. And I'm like, I'm almost positive that has to be in Covent C, but, but I'm only on Frankenstein. I've got a decade left before I get the citizen Kane, um, it in film history. I'm not sure how, how long that works out too. And Sundays, but, um,

Elijah (02:32:02.765)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:32:07.96)
Yeah.

Oh, awesome.

Oh yeah, that's there for sure. Yeah.

Elijah (02:32:28.827)
I wonder if I can tell you. The book has, the one thing the book has that the beyond the ability to choose your own, you know, to join Avenger and go to whatever movie you want. It also has a section that has like suggested paths through cinema history. So it'll be like lists kind of kind of broken out by theme, like kind of large.

Eli Price (02:32:29.043)
But yeah.

Eli Price (02:32:40.01)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:32:46.975)
Okay.

Elijah (02:32:54.678)
like larger spiritual themes that I kind of saw as I did this project. And some of those will be like, you know, a list of like 20 movies and some are a list of like seven movies, you know, it just kind of everything. So if the idea of 250 movies is still intimidating for people, there's like a kind of some even easier ways to like work through and jump around a little bit. So anyway, I like the book, too. But I love the description more. It's free and anyone can do it.

Eli Price (02:32:59.059)
Very cool.

Eli Price (02:33:21.307)
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Um, yeah, uh, I guess, uh, just like moving back to like wrapping up our talk where, um, I I'm not really sure where does this movie lie for you in Nolan's filmography is it, um, towards the top middle bottom, where would you put this? Um,

Elijah (02:33:47.242)
probably have a list on Letterbox that I've made for myself. Let's see what I did there. So I did include it in Come and See, so I must think it's like his greatest film, right? Yeah, at least import it. Yeah. So there's like a, there's like an, there's that way to answer the question. There's also like a personal preference kind of way to answer the question.

Eli Price (02:33:54.471)
right. Or at least important in film history. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:34:08.124)
Right. I like the subjective answer, the personal answer, because it... I don't know, I like talking about the meaningless rankings and ratings that really don't mean anything because they're so subjective. But they're fun to talk about.

Elijah (02:34:24.754)
Mm hmm. So, so there's so I don't think he's made a bad movie. I don't. You know, there's some filmmakers where they have made a bad movie, but they're still like tears to what they've done kind of thing. And I don't have a lot of tears with Nolan either. Like, I would say, you know, following his first film, like, it's definitely rougher around the edges than the rest of his movies. But.

Eli Price (02:34:30.831)
Mm-hmm. I would agree with that.

Eli Price (02:34:41.163)
Sure.

Eli Price (02:34:52.177)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:34:54.222)
There's nothing wrong with it. So if there's any tears, I'd probably put that at the last.

Elijah (02:35:02.97)
On my letterbox list, I have inception at the top of the list when I did this, I don't know when I made this list. Um, but, but I got it. I got to tell you, like, I'm, I'm kind of obsessed with Tenet. Um, I'm kind of obsessed with Tenet and that, that has like, it's almost like someone incepted my mind somewhere down there and it's like, you're going to puzzle over Tenet forever and it's not that I find Tenet confusing.

Eli Price (02:35:08.811)
There you go.

Eli Price (02:35:18.389)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:35:31.238)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:35:31.841)
I know the story, Lieutenant, by now for sure.

Elijah (02:35:37.074)
And yet I love puzzling over it. I like the way it's put together. I like turning it on. I turn it on sometime in the afternoon or in the evening if my wife's not around. And just like have it on like music. Like it's not a musical film. That's not exactly the thing. But it's like something about the way it's put together, the rhythm of it, the rhythm of the story, and how the story moves along.

Eli Price (02:35:52.459)
Hmm. All right.

Elijah (02:36:07.006)
And then when you get to the turn where he starts going backwards and he goes outside for the first time and. The the way the puddle splashes before he steps into it and the sound that's used to do that and all that kind of stuff like it does been my mind a little bit and I enjoy that quite a bit and it's almost like i'm trying to think what to describe it as what to liken it to.

Eli Price (02:36:13.045)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:36:26.685)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:36:36.046)
because it reminded me of something from my childhood, that it's almost like you would read magazines and they'd have brainbenders in them kind of thing. And I would sit and read those brainbenders, and you can't reconcile the brainbender, right? That's the whole thing. It just is there to confuse you. And yet you keep looking at it and thinking about it, because it's fun to feel that thing. And I feel like Tenet does that.

Eli Price (02:36:46.172)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:00.296)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:37:05.634)
Like maybe better than any of his films, it does that. Like it maintains that.

Penrose step thing, you know, where you know it doesn't work and it can't logically work. And yet it's so compelling to be in that thing. Because even a movie like Inception or Memento, you can solve them. It's like a puzzle, but it's a solvable puzzle, essentially.

Eli Price (02:37:15.868)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:37:22.125)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:37:32.273)
Yeah. Yeah, Inception really boils down to a pretty simple story. Yeah.

Elijah (02:37:35.67)
It really is. Yeah, it really is very simple. Especially if you buy the fact that he's awake at the end, then it's incredibly simple what goes on in that movie. And Memento has a very straightforward thing, and it's a very depressing story when you realize what it's going through, like straightforward, you know? But Kenneth, I don't think ever actually ever, like can't be exactly resolved in the same way. And I really liked that about it.

Eli Price (02:37:51.743)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:38:05.13)
Interstellar has grown on me quite a bit, quite a bit from when I first saw it. And I enjoy thinking about that movie. I, once I queued into where Nolan's emotional register was, I enjoyed that movie a lot more. The Dark Knight means something to me because of the 9-11, the 9-11 imagery and stuff that goes on there and how that fits into a post 9-11 world and kind

All that, I mean, I'm, you know, I was in high school when 9-11 happened, so like that was a very, it's a very living thing in my brain all the time. And The Dark Knight and War of the Worlds are the two movies that like helped me continue to process that moment in my life, you know? So those four kind of like loom largest for me. Inception, Tenet, Interstellar and The Dark Knight. And then...

Eli Price (02:38:50.524)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:38:59.071)
Gotcha.

Elijah (02:39:04.302)
I love his other movies too. Is that a good answer? I don't know.

Eli Price (02:39:06.683)
Yeah. No, that's a really good answer. I, I like, uh, I love the way you've, uh, you've analyzed, um, your ranking in a very Nolan way, like answering without exactly answering, but giving me, giving me enough to go off of, like I can, I'm feeling the atmosphere of what, what you're saying, you know, even if you're not giving us great answer.

Elijah (02:39:18.518)
Yeah, right. Exactly.

Elijah (02:39:23.7)
Uh huh.

Elijah (02:39:27.042)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:39:35.108)
I think that the Prestige and Dunkirk are like immaculately constructed movies and I really admire them so much. I admire those movies so much. He's going to win Oscars for those movies if he's going to win Oscars for any of them. But maybe they're a little too neat and I like the shaggier movies a little bit more. They get away from me a little bit. I'm partial to The Dark Knight Rises. People don't like it.

Eli Price (02:39:41.651)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:39:49.259)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:39:53.8)
Yeah, that's fair.

Elijah (02:40:01.954)
They're wrong. It's a pretty good movie. Way better than most superhero stuff that we get, so.

Eli Price (02:40:01.991)
Yep.

Eli Price (02:40:06.408)
Yeah.

Yeah. I agree with that too. Yeah. I agree. There's not any of his movies that I don't like. Inception is just, I think the reason Inception, like, it's hard to like put far down the list of novel movies is just because of, it just feels like the apex, like the culmination of who he is as a filmmaker and-

Elijah (02:40:12.183)
Ha ha ha.

Elijah (02:40:35.562)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:40:38.215)
you know, if you like Nolan at all, then Inception is at the is towards the top, you know, it's, it's just because of what he's doing in it. Visually and yeah. Yeah.

Elijah (02:40:44.93)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:40:48.502)
Yeah. And if you hate Nolan, if you hate Nolan, you're really going to hate Inception, you know? Yeah, because it's very Nolan. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:40:56.291)
Yes. Yeah, so I have the interstellar and Dunkirk are two that kind of sit at the top for me. Interstellar because it resonates with me emotionally so well, which is kind of an anomaly in Nolan's filmography for me.

A lot of his movies I understand, like so for instance, since when I understand what it's doing emotionally in my head, but the way it's written and constructed, it doesn't necessarily, like I was talking about earlier, really pierce deep into me. And Interstellar does that for me every time I watch it. And Dunkirk is kind of the opposite end of

Elijah (02:41:27.083)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:41:49.319)
sitting at the top in that, I just think, I don't think there is a such thing as a quote unquote perfect movie, but it's one of those that's constructed so perfectly that it feels, it's like one of those movies that's like, if you're gonna say a movie's a perfect movie, it's one of them sort of thing. Just in the way it's constructed technically so precisely.

Elijah (02:41:56.801)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:42:02.914)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:42:08.923)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (02:42:17.25)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:42:17.831)
which to me is just like a beautiful thing that I just love to sit and experience. But yeah, so Inception and Prestige sit like right under there as far as, and they're similar because they're movies that I love what they're doing, and I even like understand what they're doing emotionally, but don't necessarily like pierce. And I.

Elijah (02:42:24.694)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:42:46.53)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:42:47.059)
to me the same way that like Interstellar does. But yeah, yeah I really enjoy Nolan. This has been a fun series to go through so I'm excited to finish it up. But yeah, well...

Elijah (02:42:49.582)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:42:59.754)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying going through it. I, you know, I did when I did the Transcending Time book, that was the first little I kind of sent a book that I did. And I mean, I chose to do Nolan partially because I enjoy his movies. They're fun to watch, you know, and they're fun to watch again. So I knew I wouldn't have a bad time doing that. He's also a filmmaker who doesn't talk a lot about his movies and like.

Eli Price (02:43:11.932)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:43:27.306)
doesn't do a lot of commentary tracks and doesn't do a lot of interviews and all that kind of stuff. So they're like, there wasn't a large body of research material I could really do anything with, which made it easier to do the book. So I didn't feel like I needed to do all that. There's a lot of actually, which I even could do if I wanted to. But I did find it, I did, like you were saying, like I did find it to be a really rewarding experience to look at them closely and think of them in.

Eli Price (02:43:30.748)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:43:46.69)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:43:55.074)
context of each other and his career and look for similarities and stuff. It was very useful. Yeah, very good to do. It's a good way to, some filmmakers really works well to do that. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:43:57.276)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:44:00.86)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (02:44:05.319)
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, awesome. Well, we'll take a quick break here. Obviously, next week we'll be talking about The Dark Knight Rises to wrap up that Batman trilogy. But for now, we're going to cut away with the totem spinning. And you have to wait till next week to see.

what we have to say about the Dark Knight Rises. Again, really bad joke there for your enjoyment or not. But yeah, we'll take a quick break, and we'll come back, talk a little bit of movie news, and spend some time doing our movie draft, which will be, I'm really excited about. It'll be a fun one. So we'll be back in just a second.

Eli Price (02:45:04.295)
Okay, this is just stuff I'm gonna edit out. It's still recording, but do you need to break to do anything or?

Elijah (02:45:09.634)
Okay.

Elijah (02:45:17.034)
Nah, no, I'm okay. I'm good. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:45:18.727)
Okay, we can keep rocking and rolling. As far as like, I don't really expect much. Usually the movie news section is just kind of like riffing. I don't have anything structured or planned for it. So I'm just gonna bring up Killers of the Flower Moon and we might talk about it for a minute and then do the movie draft. So, all right.

Elijah (02:45:37.708)
Okay.

Elijah (02:45:44.662)
Cool, sounds good.

Eli Price (02:45:48.915)
I'm going to break for just a second so I can find it in the audio when I'm editing and then I'll jump back in.

Elijah (02:45:53.866)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Eli Price (02:45:59.579)
Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm Eli Price here with Elijah Davidson and we just had a great conversation on Inception. I hope you enjoyed that. But this is a big movie weekend. On the weekend, this is releasing, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon is releasing.

Of course, unless between here and now it gets pushed back, it could very easily happen. So we'll see. I hope not because I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah. So is this... So I'll say this Scorsese is one of my favorite directors. It's funnily enough, he's one that I haven't seen all of his movies still. I still have...

Elijah (02:46:31.146)
Which could happen, yeah. Yeah, I don't think it will, but it could.

Elijah (02:46:40.165)
No, me too.

Eli Price (02:46:55.631)
a good handful to catch up with. Um, just he, he has a lot as part of the reason, but, um.

Elijah (02:46:57.802)
He has a lot of movies, so yeah. I haven't seen all his movies either. I think I'm three short shy right now of seeing all his films, yeah.

Eli Price (02:47:06.243)
Okay, I have a few more than that I still need to see but um, but yeah, um, yeah killers of the flower moon is this uh, Have you been looking forward to this for years like I have ever since it was? Announced

Elijah (02:47:20.714)
announced. Well, I hardly ever believe a Squaresighted Movie is going to happen until it happens. Because he's one of those filmmakers who always has a bunch of projects you hear about he's going to make. And so when one finally does happen, then I'm like, yeah, I'm there. So it was like, as soon as we saw that photo of Lily Gladstone and Leonardo Caprio sitting beside each other, the other famous one photo we had forever, I was like, okay, there's an actual movie happening.

Eli Price (02:47:28.875)
Sure.

Eli Price (02:47:34.368)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:47:39.359)
Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (02:47:45.227)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:47:50.324)
I can get excited now.

Eli Price (02:47:51.867)
or at least one frame of it. Yeah.

Elijah (02:47:53.422)
That's right. I'll go watch that frame. If they project that frame in the theater for two and a half hours, I'll go sit there and do that. That's what Scorsese wants to do for me.

Eli Price (02:48:01.363)
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this. I don't, I try to stay away from trailers. So I haven't seen like the first trailer. I did watch like the teaser that they originally put out, which is, you know, really short, doesn't really tell you anything. And it's one of the best like teaser trailers I think I've ever seen.

Elijah (02:48:09.439)
Yeah, me too.

Elijah (02:48:14.414)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:48:24.79)
Hmm. I think I accidentally saw it. I avoid trailers too for any movie I know I'm going to see already. And I think I accidentally saw that in the theater before I saw, you know, before I saw Oppenheimer, I think they played it. And I think I couldn't avoid it. I was in a big theater for Oppenheimer. Often I'll do the like the put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes thing so you can't see or hear a trailer like that. But it was kind of an overwhelming experience there. So I think I saw a little bit.

Eli Price (02:48:37.415)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48:48.02)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48:53.775)
Yeah. Yeah, it was really impressive teaser, but, but yeah, I, I've been able to stay away from like the actual trailer. Um, T, uh, look, a lot of times teasers are pretty okay about not really telling you anything, just giving you some like visuals to get you excited. And I'm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:49:11.31)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:49:15.11)
Yeah. I don't want to know anything. I don't want to know anything at all about a movie that I'm excited about. I want to know nothing. Yeah. They don't got to sell me.

Eli Price (02:49:21.039)
Exactly. Yeah. Like, I mean, I know, I know, like, generally what it's about, because I mean, it's based on a it's being adapted from a nonfiction book about a real story. And so like, you kind of generally know what it's about. But yeah, I don't I don't want to know what exactly is going to go on. So yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's something that I'm really looking

Elijah (02:49:32.418)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:49:40.342)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:49:49.898)
I just hope we get a good theatrical release, not because of strike related things, but it's an Apple, like it's an Apple release. And I hope they put it in enough theaters for long enough that people can go see it. Like the Irishman, that was a Netflix release and it was in theaters barely, you know, barely. I mean, I went to see it in a theater here in LA because it was playing at the Egyptian.

Eli Price (02:49:58.6)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50:03.633)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50:09.279)
barely. I didn't watch it in theaters.

Elijah (02:50:18.454)
and which Netflix bought so they could premiere films every once in a while in there. But, you know, it was only there for like two weeks. So it was I'm glad I think Apple at least knows they have something that they can make a few million dollars off of a big theater. So why not do that? So I'll fix it around for a little bit of time.

Eli Price (02:50:20.063)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:50:25.353)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50:33.871)
Yeah. Yeah, I hope it does too. I think this one has enough hype around it that I think it should get a good theatrical release. The Irishman, I don't remember hearing it like, it didn't have as much hype around it as this did, which is a shame because I think the Irishman is great, but you know, it...

Elijah (02:50:47.178)
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. Yep.

Elijah (02:50:55.343)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:51:00.853)
Oh yeah.

That's pre-pandemic world, The Irishman. Movies were a little different then, so, yeah.

Eli Price (02:51:08.519)
Yeah, but yeah, Netflix released Apple. There's been, I don't know, the whole streaming and theatrical stuff is just, I think it's a mess. I think no one still has figured it out exactly what to do.

Elijah (02:51:19.059)
Mm-hmm.

I know it is. Yeah, I'm glad there are filmmakers like Scorsese who have enough notoriety that they're able to go in there and get their whatever million dollars they need to make the movies they want to make from these streamers. I think they would want a little bit more theatrical release time and all that stuff for their films as well. But I'm glad Scorsese is making movies. He's like 82 years old. So so getting money to make movies. I'm all for that.

Eli Price (02:51:36.859)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:51:45.61)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there are already rumors of more. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is just one of those things where like it's kind of the studios aren't necessarily going to give Martin Scorsese the sort of budget that he would maybe want to work with. But these stream streaming services will.

Elijah (02:51:51.906)
So.

Elijah (02:51:55.646)
Yeah, of course. He's not gonna stop. He'll drop dead on set. It'll be a sad day.

Elijah (02:52:12.885)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:52:17.491)
But then there's like the, the catch 22 of like, well, this is where I can get my budget, but also like, am I going to get the theatrical release that I would want? It's kind of like, well, which, which one am I willing to sacrifice? And it seems like a lot of them are sacrificing the theatrical release for the budget. Um,

Elijah (02:52:27.234)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (02:52:31.627)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:52:36.778)
I didn't have much of an option. There's no way to get money. So, I mean, another movie that I'm looking forward to is Hitman, the latest Linkletter movie. And that got picked up by Netflix, which means it'll barely be in theaters at all. And I'll just be on Netflix and people won't know it's there. It'll just disappear. And Linkletter is definitely like...

Eli Price (02:52:41.248)
Yeah. But.

Eli Price (02:52:49.843)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Elijah (02:53:05.202)
one of those filmmakers who is a bit more relaxed than Scorsese and doesn't have quite the same cultural cachet, but you still want to watch his movies in the theater. Like going to see Boyhood in a theater, that's a big deal. That was a real experience. To maybe not be able to see his latest one in the theater, it's sad to me. I want to have that moment.

Eli Price (02:53:09.14)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:53:31.015)
Yeah. Yeah, that's yeah. It's, it's one of those things. Um, I it's like, I, it's like a love hate thing because, uh, there's a piece of me that's like, man, I want these in theaters and I want to see them in theaters. But there's also like, you know, we were talking about our kids and it's like, I have a wife and a four year old and a nine month old. And it's like, well, at the same time, it's kind of nice to have these movies.

Elijah (02:53:50.59)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (02:53:54.494)
Yeah. Getting out is hard. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:53:59.751)
streaming so I can still catch up with them and be a part of the cultural conversation when I can't make it to the theater. So yeah.

Elijah (02:54:02.862)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's true. That's true. I've what I've done is it's hard to get out. That's for sure. And I have to prioritize that kind of thing to make that happen. And the I've decided that the movies I'm not wasting my time in the theater for are the superhero movies. All the that's going to come on a streaming service. I might have to wait a month or two, but I don't care. I'll wait and watch it then.

Eli Price (02:54:15.816)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:54:26.355)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:54:31.494)
Yep. It'll come to Disney Plus.

Elijah (02:54:33.438)
Yeah, I don't need to see that at the inner. I'm happily watch that at home. So what they should do, see if I was in charge, put me in charge. You can pay me nothing. Just put me in charge so I can make the world how I want it to be. I would, I think Disney, speaking of Disney, I think Disney should release every Star Wars thing they do. Like first two episodes of Ahsoka, first two episodes of A New Citizen Mandalorian, all that, that should be a theatrical release.

Eli Price (02:54:36.372)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:55:02.324)
Hmm.

Elijah (02:55:02.806)
where they would, it's just money on the table that they're just like giving away. And you could go in, you could spend a couple of hours in there watching the first two episodes of the thing, and then go home and watch on TV as it comes, build buzz for it, all that kind of stuff. Why don't they do that? You know, I love that. Give me some, yeah. Nope, you know, I don't wanna do it.

Eli Price (02:55:07.743)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:55:19.027)
Yeah. Yeah, and then they could also release, they could re-release the original animated versions of the live action versions they're making so that those of us that don't want to see the live action one can just go see the re-release of the better one. Yeah.

Elijah (02:55:29.194)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:55:34.958)
Uh-huh. Exactly. Yeah. I don't want to see Little Mermaid. I want to watch the original Little Mermaid in the theater like I did when I was four years old. My first, that's not my first, that's my second theatrical memory is going to the Little Mermaid. My first theatrical memory is going to see Oliver and Company. I remember going to see Oliver and Company in the theater. And then I remember, I distinctly remember going to see Little Mermaid. I would love to do that again. Come on, Disney.

Eli Price (02:55:43.087)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:55:52.583)
That's cool.

Oh, yeah.

Eli Price (02:56:02.919)
Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, you could take your kid, you know, to see it like you did. Yeah, I think a lot of parents wouldn't. I don't know why they don't do that. But yeah, I just feel like if you've gotta make your live action remake, then at least release the other one too, so that I can see the one that's better.

Elijah (02:56:05.302)
Take my money. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would do that in a heartbeat.

Elijah (02:56:16.554)
We had a, there was a.

Elijah (02:56:24.696)
Yeah.

For real.

I agree.

Eli Price (02:56:33.235)
But yeah, so Killers of the Flower Moon is adapted from a nonfiction book, like we said. And so that's what we're going to do for our movie draft. So if you're ready, we can jump into our movie draft. Movies adapted from nonfiction books. And there's a surprising number of these.

Elijah (02:56:52.362)
Okay, let's do it.

Elijah (02:57:01.215)
Oh, so many, yeah.

Eli Price (02:57:03.003)
a ton and a ton of really good ones. So I think we'll draft, I think we, did we decide on seven each beforehand? I think that's what we said. So.

Elijah (02:57:14.83)
Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm excited about this. I'm a big nonfiction reader. So I love, so I'm here for this. I even have a little list I'll share at the end of five nonfiction books I wish they would adapt as movies. So I got that ready to go too. So I'm excited.

Eli Price (02:57:20.308)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:57:31.055)
Okay. Ooh, that's fun. Yeah, let's jump into it. So, you know, if you're a first time listener and jumping in for this inception episode, basically we just, we're picking the best kickball team on the playground. But the options that we're picking from are movies from a specific category. So, you know, we wanna pick the best team and you as the...

Elijah (02:57:46.978)
Hehehehehehe

Eli Price (02:57:59.323)
listener get to vote on social media on who you think had the better draft. And so that's, I always enjoy seeing the results of those. Uh, see what, what the people think. Um, but yeah, um, I always give my guests a first time guests, the first pick. So I'll, um, I'll let you take the first pick here.

Elijah (02:58:24.05)
Okay, this is tricky now. This is the one time I get to not worry about what you're gonna pick and take off the plate for me. And so I gotta know, do I wanna pick the movie that is most important to me, that I wanna make sure I have on my team? Like, do I pick my best friend, you know? Or do I pick the guy who's the best athlete who's gonna help me win, right? That's the kickball thing that we gotta solve here. So that's tricky.

Eli Price (02:58:33.001)
Yep.

Eli Price (02:58:42.452)
Right.

Eli Price (02:58:47.267)
Right.

Elijah (02:58:57.346)
How would my friend feel if I didn't pick him first? That's what you do with your best friend in kickball. You pick your best friend first, because like it's fun to be picked first. More important than the winning, but winning's fun.

Eli Price (02:59:00.958)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:59:04.151)
relationship is more important you know than the yeah but winning is fun and technically the movie doesn't love you back so

Elijah (02:59:14.018)
That's true. And if you can rely on your opponent, who's also picking to pick their best friend first, well, then you don't have to worry about you can pick your best friend second, you can do both things you want. But I'm picking my best friend. That's what I decided in this cover. I'm picking my best friend to start with. And so I'm picking Apollo 13, which is based on the book Lost Moon by Jim Lovell. And Apollo 13 is...

Eli Price (02:59:22.237)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:59:29.822)
Okay.

Eli Price (02:59:35.848)
Ooh yeah.

Elijah (02:59:44.166)
One of those movies for me that is like, it's been part of my life for so long. I watch it very, very regularly. It always does something for me. We talked about like movies that help us like deal with stuff. I'm surprised by the number of times Apollo 13 has helped me deal with stuff in my life. Continues to do that. It is just one of those movies that means a ton to me. Also, it's really good. And it's like kind of popular to hate on Ron Howard.

Eli Price (02:59:57.482)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:00:09.532)
Yeah, it is.

Elijah (03:00:14.034)
and he's made some bad movies. But Apollo 13 is not a bad movie. Apollo 13 is a great movie. And there's not like a false moment in that movie. The performances are fantastic. The structure is awesome. I mean, you know how that thing ends because it's history, and yet you're still holding your breath to see if they're going to get home or not. It is an immaculate piece of entertainment with good weight and all that kind of stuff. Apollo 13, my first pick.

Eli Price (03:00:16.053)
Sure.

Eli Price (03:00:30.78)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:00:43.042)
Come on best friend, you're on my team. We may go down together, but we're gonna have fun.

Eli Price (03:00:47.471)
Yeah, I love that. You know, I so Apollo 13 is a movie I remember seeing as a kid. And I don't know that I've watched it since like, again, as an adult. So I think that's, I think that's one I need to revisit because I loved it as a kid. And I think, I think I would still love it. I've, I've always been a space lover. Um, just like anything dealing with space, like

Elijah (03:00:48.578)
Ha ha ha.

Elijah (03:01:01.87)
You got to watch it. Do it. Yeah. It's amazing. It absolutely holds up. Yeah. Maybe they'll finish Teller. So yeah.

Eli Price (03:01:16.391)
Yeah, I love Interstellar. I love space sci-fi, Star Wars, but also like I love reading like Stephen Hawking books about space and the universe. It's just like super interesting to me. So yeah, I love that pick. You picked your best friend. I'll pick one of my best friends. And we already actually kind of talked about it in the movie news section.

Elijah (03:01:27.211)
Mmm

Eli Price (03:01:46.619)
We talked about the Irishman and I love the Irishman. I think it's right up there. The Irishman, Taxi Driver, and Silence, I think, and maybe even King of Comedy are like my favorite Scorsese's. And so when the Irishman was, when I knew it was coming out, I watched all of Nolan's gangster movies kind of.

Elijah (03:02:04.832)
Mm.

Eli Price (03:02:16.727)
I think I watched them like in order that they came out. And I also watched all of his like collaborations with De Niro. And so by the time I got to the Irishman, like I was working off of like a history of Scorsese and De Niro, but also like Scorsese and gangster movies. And so the Irishman feels kind of like a deconstruction of

Elijah (03:02:19.746)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:02:23.778)
Mm.

Elijah (03:02:31.133)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:02:43.867)
all that work he had done with gangster movies in the past. Cause I think there's a group, so, so like Goodfellas for instance, there's a degree to which I think Goodfellas is showing you like the results of that sort of life and it's supposed to make you not wanna go down that road in a way. You know, obviously like maybe not too like joining a

Elijah (03:02:47.105)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:03:13.459)
becoming a gangster degree, but just making those choices. But also like it glamorizes it so much that I'm like, it almost works against itself in some ways because like it makes it look so good. And the Irishman kind of deconstructs that. And it's these older men that have lived a lot this life of gang, like being gangsters and Scorsese as an older director.

Elijah (03:03:23.923)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:03:27.852)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:03:42.611)
dealing with, you know, a lifetime of filmmaking. And I just love those concepts that he's dealing with there and thinking about those. And the way it ends is like...

kind of devastating in a way and but like in a in a way that I think is really beautifully done but also like makes you think about the things that you should be thinking about at the end of a gangster movie and so I love the Irishman it got it got I feel like it got a bad rap from like the CGI work which I didn't think was like

Elijah (03:04:02.386)
Yeah, it is.

Elijah (03:04:17.566)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. And maybe, you know, at the end of life. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:04:29.483)
that terrible? I mean it's not great but yeah.

Elijah (03:04:31.27)
So I love the CGI work in The Irishman, because I think it's thematically appropriate, because it is a movie about old men. And the fact that you can see the old man in the young man, like I don't think it's bad de-aging. I think it's the right kind of de-aging. And like they could have cast younger actors in those roles, that would have been the typical way to do that. But if you do that, you lose...

Eli Price (03:04:40.254)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:04:59.238)
vision of the old men and the young men. And like, you would lose, I think what you're supposed to be thinking about is how all the regrets and guilt that weigh these men down when they're old, they're headed toward that when they're young. That that is in them already. You know, it's that original sin, Catholic, can't get away from sin thing that's already present in you when you're young. I think it's thematically perfect.

Eli Price (03:05:24.127)
Have ya.

Elijah (03:05:27.81)
the way that the CGI works in that movie. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:05:29.647)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I love the Irishman. Um, and I think part of the reason I love it is because the way I watched through those movies that led up to it really probably helped elevate it. Um, but yeah, adapted from, I didn't mention, um, the, I heard you paint houses is the name of the thing, which if you've seen the movie, you know what that means. Um, or if you've read the book, uh, which I haven't, I haven't read a lot of the books, probably any of the books on this list, honestly.

Elijah (03:05:38.958)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:05:53.425)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:06:00.738)
So I thought about that with my draft. I thought about, should I only pick movies where I've read the book? I thought about that, and I almost do that with my list. We'll see how we go here.

Eli Price (03:06:00.744)
Which is a shame.

Eli Price (03:06:09.443)
Yeah, I don't know that I would have any movies to pick. There are very many, so I couldn't really do that.

Elijah (03:06:12.394)
Hmm. Well, I will say that I have. I have found it to be really rewarding to read the books that the movies are based on, especially in nonfiction books. That's been a really rewarding experience for me. OK, we're into my next pick.

Eli Price (03:06:21.951)
Hmm. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah, what's, yeah, you're up.

Elijah (03:06:30.606)
All right, so my next pick is going to be Mean Girls, which is based on Queen B's and wannabes. So not a book that tells the story in Mean Girls, but a book that takes that book and makes a story out of it. So I absolutely love Mean Girls. One of those movies I can watch any time, you know? And I also love...

Eli Price (03:06:35.487)
I love it.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:06:53.224)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:06:58.19)
We'll see if I get to it or if you get it first. But I also love films based on nonfiction books where the book doesn't, it's based on, doesn't tell the story, it's in the movie. You know, like I like this remove. I think it's really clever and neat, neat screenwriting. So Mean Girls, Mean Girls. And Mean Girls is one of those movies that's kind of perfect. You know, like it's exactly what it wants to be. It has no beats that are wrong for what it wants to be. Just a great.

Eli Price (03:07:09.417)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:07:12.744)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:07:20.671)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:07:28.162)
Great, perfect movie. Mean Girls. Pick number two, got a good team. Ha ha.

Eli Price (03:07:32.699)
Yeah, it's, I mean, that's a good one. I don't think that is like a, maybe a strong kicker, you know, for your kickball team, uh, you know, Oh yeah.

Elijah (03:07:40.106)
Mm-hmm, it is. You want that mean girl on your team. That's what you want. Yeah, people don't pick the girl, but there's always that one girl who's like better than all the guys. So that's Tina Fey. That's who that is. Mean girls.

Eli Price (03:07:48.387)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I, I took Mean Girls. We did a 2000s comedies draft and I took Mean Girls in that. Uh, yeah, that was, um, that was a strong, uh, piece of that team. So, um, yeah. Uh, yeah, I love Mean Girls. It's, it's great. Um,

Elijah (03:07:59.691)
Nice.

Elijah (03:08:05.167)
Hahaha

Eli Price (03:08:14.003)
I and I love the idea of a book a nonfiction book that just has these ideas and concepts that it's dealing with and then taking that and like wrapping it into a story and yeah, I would wonder if this were to be like nominated for its Screenplay, which I doubt it ever would. Yeah, if it would be adapted or original, I'm not really sure

Elijah (03:08:35.258)
adapted original. Yeah.

Elijah (03:08:40.639)
I'm pretty sure it would have been adapted because usually there's like legal things about that and it says based on Queen B's and wannabes and the credits. So yeah.

Eli Price (03:08:48.483)
Okay, yeah, there you go. Cool. Sweet, well with my second pick, I'm gonna pick a very different good athlete for the team than Mean Girls, probably on the opposite end of the spectrum, like film-wise. I'm gonna go with Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Elijah (03:09:15.209)
Nice.

Eli Price (03:09:16.215)
adapted from the story Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which is about a... I've read it a long while ago. So this one I actually did read. It's... he was a... was he a missionary, I believe? And it was during colonization. He went...

Elijah (03:09:38.478)
I think that's right. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09:46.283)
to this village in Africa and set up, basically he made himself out to be a god. And when they found him, it was like intense, what he was going through. But yeah, it's a great little book, but also Apocalypse Now, taking that story and then like

Yeah, just taking that story and putting it in Vietnam and putting a like demented Marlon Brando. Um, and, and like, yeah, uh, I watched apocalypse now. I can't remember. Um, it wasn't that long ago, probably like a couple of years ago. I watched, watched it for the first time. Um, just kind of, you know, the past, like probably four or five years, I've really been working on catching up with.

a lot of like important films that I didn't see growing up. And this was one of them that, I mean, it's a haunting movie. Like those, a lot of images from that movie are like burned into my brain. So yeah, just a really interesting way to adapt a book like Heart of Darkness, to put it in a completely different context and to tell it in such a...

Elijah (03:10:56.863)
It is.

Elijah (03:11:07.47)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:11:16.967)
There is a lot of surrealism in this movie. So to take that and even make it even more surreal, just a really interesting way to adapt that work.

Elijah (03:11:19.97)
For sure, yeah.

Elijah (03:11:28.642)
Now, if you ever had the chance to see it in a theater, definitely try to do that. I had that chance a few years ago and it was one of the most aesthetically affecting experiences of my life. Not so much the images, the images are amazing, but the sound.

Eli Price (03:11:33.077)
Mm.

Eli Price (03:11:44.925)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:11:50.058)
um the sound design just completely blew my mind and to be like completely enveloped and inundated by the sound design of that film was an amazing experience so if you ever have the chance don't miss it um i would i would say like of all the films i've seen in theaters that are like classic movies that i've had a chance to see that's the one that was like i would do that again like it was just the best thing i've experienced yeah

Eli Price (03:12:02.855)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:12:16.871)
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I'll definitely will make sure to keep an eye. We do have like a, I can't remember what it's called. It's like flashback cinema, I think at our local theater. So I got to see the Godfather theaters a few years ago. Yeah.

Elijah (03:12:25.219)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:12:29.554)
Oh, fun. That's a great experience too, yeah. That's a movie you see in a theater and you like see things you never saw before. Like, like character moments and like things you never saw before. Great experience. Okay, number three, pick again. All right. Okay, this is tough now because I'm just gonna go for it. All right, I'm picking Seabiscuit. I'm going Seabiscuit. Yeah, picking Seabiscuit. So the reason I'm picking Seabiscuit,

Eli Price (03:12:36.179)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:12:39.755)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:12:43.688)
Number three.

Eli Price (03:12:52.267)
See you biscuit, alright.

Elijah (03:12:58.974)
Um, movies, great love them. Super fun. Good movie. Good experience. One of the worst speaking of movie theater One of the worst experiences i've ever had in a movie. Um theater was cnc biscuit. I was we went like It was like opening weekend. Maybe the weekend after packed theater um But we were sitting in kind of middle of theater, but there was this little girl sitting beside me sitting by her friend And she's seen the movie already

Eli Price (03:13:07.962)
Oh man.

Elijah (03:13:24.754)
And so before anything happened, she would say, oh, this is the part where this happens. Oh, this is the part where this happens throughout the entire film, okay? The entire, it was absolutely horrible. And she was like seven years old, you know? So I'm not gonna yell at her. You know, it was just like a miserable thing. And then, and that's not even all of it, there was also a guy that was sitting like down to the right on the side. And he answered his phone during the movie.

Eli Price (03:13:33.638)
Ugh.

Eli Price (03:13:38.415)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:13:51.195)
No.

Elijah (03:13:52.358)
and started talking and he was like, yeah, I'm in a movie. I'm seeing a Seabiscuit. Yeah, it's pretty good. I think I like it. Yeah, you know about the horse. And like he just like had a conversation about the movie and it was absolutely horrendous. And even though even that happened, I still love the movie. And the reason I'm picking it for my team, that's the fact that I like it, is it's one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read.

Eli Price (03:14:04.736)
Ha ha.

Eli Price (03:14:09.515)
That's terrible.

Eli Price (03:14:19.539)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:14:19.69)
Uh, Laura Hildenbrand wrote the book and it is so, so good. Like it's kind of like the movie. If you remember, like you get a little bit of history that was going on at the time and then you get Seabiscuit stuff and it kind of. Cuts in and out of that kind of thing. It does that Ken Burns thing for some of the, the Ken Burns actually directed some of the documentary part of it, whatever. Um, so it gets some of that, but the book is like that in the best possible way. Like it reminds me of, uh, like a non-fiction grapes of wrath.

Eli Price (03:14:25.204)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:14:43.295)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:14:47.214)
Because Grape of the Rath does that. It gives you a chapter that's in general during the Depression and then chapter on the Joan of Antony and back and forth. And it's like that, but about the real world. It's such a good book. And the movie's a really good adaptation of that book, too. I'd love to see it. I'd watch the book any time. So see you this week. That's my third pick.

Eli Price (03:15:03.539)
Yeah.

Yeah, I can't remember. Honestly, I can't remember if I've seen Seabass Seagate. I don't think I've seen it. So it wasn't on my list, but yeah, I'll definitely add it to the watch list now. The ever increasing watch list that I wonder if I'll ever watch everything on. Yeah. And they just keep putting them out. Yeah.

Elijah (03:15:19.575)
fun. Yeah.

Yeah. And he got a lot of life, you know? It's always more good movies to see.

Elijah (03:15:31.458)
They do.

Eli Price (03:15:36.659)
I have there so there's a few that I'm looking at that I'm like man I want so like I usually I try to like diversify my list and not make them all these like important heavy like because like the Irishman and Apocalypse now very like hefty films so I'm gonna take a little bit of a turn

Elijah (03:15:46.422)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:15:52.267)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:16:02.943)
There's some heavier parts of this, but most of it is just pure fun. My wife is gonna love me for taking this and taking it this early, because it's not my favorite of a lot of them left. But I'm gonna go with the sound of music. It's technically adapted from a stage play that's adapted from a book which I believe is...

Elijah (03:16:15.739)
Hehehehehehe

Elijah (03:16:20.715)
Nice, good choice.

Eli Price (03:16:31.839)
like a memoir or autobiography of Von Trapp family. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's a delightful movie to watch. You know, my son hasn't seen it yet. He will, but he already like kind of knows some of the songs cause we will like walk around the house humming them or whatever. So yeah, I'm excited to show him that. Yeah.

Elijah (03:16:34.474)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:16:44.259)
It's great, yeah.

Elijah (03:16:48.898)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:16:57.131)
Ha ha ha.

Good choice. I grew up watching that movie a lot. My sister was obsessed with it. One of my, my middle sister was obsessed with it. And I have to put my dog back in, sorry.

Eli Price (03:17:11.121)
No, you're good.

Elijah (03:17:22.702)
Yeah, so my sister was obsessed with it. She was, I don't know, she was like five or six years old and would just watch it again and again and again and again and again all day long. So I've seen that movie. From those movies I've seen more times than I could possibly ever count. Cause I would just sit there and watch it with her cause being movie crazy, I've always had that tendency. But good pick, good pick. I think it's a pretty good movie. Yeah. Edelweiss, a little trivia for you. Edelweiss written for the musical, not the actual.

Eli Price (03:17:29.579)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:17:39.987)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:17:51.754)
national song of Austria or whatever. Not an old song, but written for the musical. Everyone assumes.

Eli Price (03:17:54.259)
Yeah, OK.

Gotcha. Yeah. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful song. Um, I have, uh, I have a vinyl of a record by Sarah Watkins, who is, um, uh, bluegrass artist. Um, and she has an album that she wrote as like lullabies for her daughter. Um, and she has a cover of, uh, it's some originals and a lot of covers and she has a cover of Edelweiss that's just.

Elijah (03:18:10.314)
Mm-hmm. The creek, yeah.

Eli Price (03:18:26.931)
beautiful on there. Yeah, I think it's called Under the Pepper Tree is the name of the album. Yeah.

Elijah (03:18:27.182)
I bet that's awesome. Yeah, so you can really sing.

Okay, cool. We're gonna see Nickel Creek here in a few weeks. So I'm super excited about that. That'll be fun. She's amazing. And my favorite line about Sarah Watkins, I read a review one time of one of their concerts and the reviewer wrote he wasn't sure if he wanted to marry her or be her. After seeing the show, I've always liked that. That's pretty appropriate. Okay, I get to pick again now. Okay.

Eli Price (03:18:36.603)
Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's exciting.

Eli Price (03:18:53.567)
That's awesome.

Eli Price (03:18:59.26)
Yes.

Elijah (03:19:02.306)
So now we're at the point in the picking where do I wanna balance out my team? Do I wanna just pick my friends? You know, like, what do I need to go for here? So I've got a Paula 13, Mean Girls and Seabasket. I'm liking my team so far. What's my team missing though? What's my team missing? I feel like I need...

Eli Price (03:19:09.276)
Yeah, it's hard.

Elijah (03:19:24.842)
Mean Girls is kind of scrappy. Mean Girls is scrappy, Alphar 13's crowd pleaser, Seabiscuit's crowd pleaser. Maybe I need to go prestige now. Maybe I need a prestige pick or do I need... See, there's a movie I really wanna get. I don't wanna get taken, because I love it.

Eli Price (03:19:36.554)
Maybe.

Eli Price (03:19:42.795)
Go for it.

Elijah (03:19:44.758)
But I kinda need a prestige pick on my team. You know what? I got two prestige picks in my pocket. You can't take both of them with your next pick. So if you pick the one, I can pick the next one next time. So I can go and get the movie I really want now. I want Moneyball. I'm taking Moneyball. All right? Moneyball's my next pick.

Eli Price (03:19:55.155)
That's true.

Eli Price (03:20:03.219)
Good pick. Here's the trick. The funny thing about these is you don't necessarily know movies that the other person hasn't seen and couldn't pick. And that's one that my, like I have a few friends that love this movie and like hound me all the time to see it and I just haven't gotten around to seeing it. Yeah.

Elijah (03:20:13.314)
That's true.

Elijah (03:20:20.826)
Oh yeah. Well, good stuff. I'm, I was safe there with Moneyball. I love Moneyball. Moneyball, another one of those where the book is an adaptive thing based on something that's not that story at all. But extra bit of that, interesting about this. So it's, you know, the book is about sabermetrics, just the mathematical way of choosing the most efficient and advantageous way to win whatever it is that you're doing.

Eli Price (03:20:31.272)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:20:40.042)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:20:49.774)
kind of appropriate for a movie draft actually, that I would pick Moneyball. Cause you don't pick the big name, you pick the people who get on base basically. Like you optimize for what helps you win, not whatever else. So that's what the book is about. They actually did that on the athletic baseball team. They actually used that strategy to revitalize their team. And so the movie is a nonfiction story based on a book that's not actually about that thing, but it is a nonfiction book.

Eli Price (03:20:52.872)
Yeah, yeah, true.

Eli Price (03:20:57.684)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:21:19.414)
So it's also, I love Bennett Miller and he hasn't made enough movies. And apparently his next thing is a Christmas Carol adaptation, which is weird to me because that's like not the kind of thing he does. But love Moneyball, think about it all the time, watch it pretty regularly. It's one of those ones kind of like Tenet that I turn on like music because I just like living in its rhythm and living in its mood. And yeah, Moneyball, that's my pick. He...

Eli Price (03:21:30.003)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:21:42.44)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:21:47.712)
Yeah, it's definitely one that I'll.

Elijah (03:21:48.238)
I'm not going to tell you to watch it because I don't want you to feel like somebody else is telling you to watch a movie. But when you get to it, you'll enjoy it.

Eli Price (03:21:54.991)
Yeah, yeah, I, you know, it's one of the, it's, so some, there's some movies that people are like, oh, you gotta see this. And I'm like, well, since you keep bothering me about it, I'm not gonna see it. That's not, this isn't one of them. I do actually wanna see it. It's just, again, there's so many movies, so many movies to see.

Elijah (03:22:04.91)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (03:22:09.782)
It's not going to change your life, you know, but it's a really well-made movie. So really good movie. If, if we still live in a world where we all had cable television and just had cable TV on all the time, you would have seen Moneyball because it's the kind of movie that would have just been on cable, you know, and like on TBS or something. And you would have picked it up in pieces over time, but we don't live in that world.

Eli Price (03:22:16.835)
Um.

Eli Price (03:22:23.421)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:22:29.839)
Yeah. No, yeah. Yeah, it just doesn't happen that way anymore. And I don't know that it ever will. I don't know, maybe it will come full circle eventually. Yeah, this, so for my next pick, I'm gonna go with one that is...

Elijah (03:22:39.946)
Yeah, probably so.

Eli Price (03:22:58.503)
Absolutely like another heavy pick and I guess you would say a prestige pick that I caught up with a Couple years ago. I can actually see when I did because I locked it. Yeah in 2020. I caught up with this And I'm gonna go with Spike Lee's Malcolm X I just I mean Denzel is phenomenal in this

Elijah (03:23:21.769)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:23:28.119)
And like, I think it's appropriate for this draft being based on, adapted from a non-fiction book, which it's adapted from, I think two different, yeah, two different autobiography memoirs by him. So I think like, it's a great movie for this category for me personally, because I grew up in the South.

Elijah (03:23:40.03)
Autopography of MacMix. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:23:56.535)
And I don't think it's a secret that, uh, there's a higher concentration of, of racism, both personal and systemic in the South, not a secret. And so I always, I mean, I grew up with the impression that Malcolm X was more villainous than anything else. Um, and

Elijah (03:24:18.146)
Mm-hmm. Kind of that opposed to Martin Luther King thing, he was the violent one kind of thing, yeah.

Eli Price (03:24:21.603)
Right. Yeah. Like Martin Luther King is the was the good one. Malcolm X was the bad one. You know, just very general, like nothing specific, just that general impression. And so, like, I mean, the older I got, obviously, like the more I can, like, think about the nuance of, well, maybe not. But but watching this movie helped me, like, unpack that about Malcolm X and kind of deal with.

Elijah (03:24:33.185)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:24:49.951)
who he was and why he was who he was, why he made the choices he made, why he took the approach he did. And yeah, I just like reckon with the, you know, it is true of a story as you can get from a film based on autobiography. But yeah, so yeah, just as far as like non-fiction adaptations, I think out of all the ones that

I would have picked this was, this is the one that is like, it helped me like really reckon with some things that, just misinformation that I grew up with. So yeah.

Elijah (03:25:31.735)
Mm.

Elijah (03:25:37.806)
That's good, that's good. That's great. I'm going to follow you up there with one that I had on my list here. I think it's a good match to that. And I'm going to pick 12 Years a Slave, which is based on the Solomon Northup's account of his own life, an autobiographical adaptation there. And

Eli Price (03:25:51.529)
Mmm.

Elijah (03:26:04.286)
Yeah, for kind of similar reasons, actually. Like, I'm also from the South and also, you know, have a legacy of...

Eli Price (03:26:09.139)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:26:16.458)
I don't want to completely sell out my distant relatives. But there's some good in there too, but there's also some bad. There's definitely an uncle, a great uncle, a great-granduncle, something like that, that after he died, they found clay and robes in his closet that they never knew were there kind of thing. And Cellular Slave is one of those movies that it forced me to...

Eli Price (03:26:19.659)
Sure.

Eli Price (03:26:35.208)
Mm.

Elijah (03:26:44.926)
recognize where I was in that story, you know, that I have, you know, there's that thing with, like, we read the Bible and, like, we want to see ourselves as the, whoever the hero is in the story, whatever, and we often should it, you know, like, we're often should see ourselves as whoever the sinner is in the story. And 12 Years of Slave is one of those where I had to, like,

Eli Price (03:26:48.597)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:26:59.903)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:27:09.126)
I couldn't, it would not let me see myself as the protagonist. I had to recognize that if I'm anyone in this movie, I'm the people that kept that man in slavery and did horrible things to him. And that my legacy is that side of things. And what do I do with that now? Obviously, I don't, we don't live there anymore. And that's not my family, Drake family didn't do that and all that kind of stuff. But

Eli Price (03:27:13.673)
Right.

Eli Price (03:27:20.079)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (03:27:37.846)
The legacy is there, you know, like my distant relatives back in the day, like there were two brothers that had two brothers who fought for the Confederacy and had two of the brothers who fought for the North. They were in Tennessee and they split sides and after the war was over, they parted ways and never spoke to one another again. And half of them moved to Texas and the other one stayed behind and lost back to that side of the family forever. You know, like...

So there's definitely racism like that in my family's past. And that movie, even when I still watch it, makes me have to recognize that and reckon with that and force me to, what am I gonna do now? And it also challenges me Christianly, because I'm like, that movie turns on, he has a moment of faith in that film where he...

He learns the faith of the slaves and then, you know, sings with them. And it challenges media, like, he has, these people have claim to Christ. Do I have any claim to Christ? Because I, people that like this, that's who Christ is for. How could Christ be for me? You know, and if there's grace enough, if there's grace for me, if there's, if God has grace enough for me, then God has a lot of grace.

Eli Price (03:28:50.572)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:28:57.651)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:29:06.85)
like more grace than I can imagine, you know? So, topic, 12 Grades of Slave. I'll follow up your mathematics with 12 Grades of Slave. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:29:07.151)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:29:14.751)
Yeah, it's a great pick. 12 Years a Slave is one that I saw in theaters. I went with one or two other people and one of the most just like

Um, I don't want to say like incredible, but like visceral and like experiences I've ever had in a theater. Um, I remember I'll never forget, um, the movie ended and the credits were rolling and it's like the everyone in the, it was open, I think it was opening weekend. So it was a packed theater and it was completely silent and everyone got up and kind of filed out.

Elijah (03:29:37.986)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:29:42.274)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:30:01.183)
completely silent. Everyone was walking, you know, we all kind of floated to our cars just like, and you could hear, there was even like in the parking lot, it was just like nothing, a murmur here and there, you know. And I'll never forget that experience. Just an incredible movie, as far as like the filmmaking goes,

Elijah (03:30:17.855)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:30:25.34)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:30:31.847)
You know, the experience is, is hard. It's one of those, it's one of those movies that I would say like, it's one of the hardest movies you'll, you'll probably ever watch, but also maybe even at the same time, one of the most important movies to watch. Um, but yeah, and, and I had a similar experience to watching it. So, um, yeah, great, really great pick. Um,

Elijah (03:30:48.266)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:31:02.279)
I struggle to reckon with that. I haven't seen it since then, just because that experience is so burned in me. I'm like, I don't know if I need to experience that again. I probably do, but I resist it. Yeah.

Elijah (03:31:09.91)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:31:13.266)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, uh-huh, that was understandable. A one timer or make sure you set yourself up correctly before you do it, watch it again. Yeah, I get it.

Eli Price (03:31:23.932)
Yeah, yes.

Um, yeah, I think, um, I'm going to take a turn, a hard turn from these and I'm going to go with a director that, um, that's been, he's become pretty controversial as of late, not, um, more in the sense of like, is, are his films good or not? Um, and I'm going to go with Adam McKay's, the big short, which I really like.

Elijah (03:31:38.922)
Ha ha

Elijah (03:31:54.83)
Okay. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:31:57.079)
I think it's a good movie. I think it's funny. I think it deals with the housing crisis and the book, that information in a very like, I'll say this about Adam McKay. He's a director that's made movies like this that aren't really like great satire. But...

Elijah (03:31:59.829)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:32:24.451)
Hmm.

Eli Price (03:32:28.226)
for a moment.

Elijah (03:32:28.527)
He winks a little too much for it to be good satire. Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (03:32:31.211)
Exactly. But for some reason with the big short, and I think maybe it's because of the acting, I think is why it works in the big short. Just really good and raises some good questions that we should have about the housing market and just like loans and...

Elijah (03:32:39.458)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:32:58.459)
our financial system in general. So yeah, the big short.

Elijah (03:33:00.558)
Mm-hmm. Okay. I like that movie. That's a good movie. I've watched that movie a few times because it is Whatever else is it is kind of an enjoyable tour for through the horrors of all of that You know And that may be a criticism. Maybe it must have praised of it, but it's good It's really good well put together movie. I think it's his best film. Yeah, totally Also, I should note I want to note now that we're if there is an MVP

Eli Price (03:33:13.22)
Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:33:19.183)
Yeah, I agree. I agree, but I still enjoy it.

Elijah (03:33:28.634)
actor so far of our draft is probably Brad Pitt, who is in at least three of these films. So we'll see how many more he shows up before we're all done.

Eli Price (03:33:32.551)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:33:39.947)
I'm a Brad Pitt fan, so I'm okay with that.

Elijah (03:33:42.927)
Yeah, he's good. Okay.

Elijah (03:33:48.386)
I wasn't planning on picking 12 years of slave. So that threw me, I wasn't planning on that. So I'm glad I did, I'm glad that came up. But now I gotta readjust a little bit here.

Eli Price (03:33:55.912)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (03:34:04.266)
Okay, do I pick one of the greatest films of all time? Or do I pick one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I've ever read? But the movie's not that great, actually.

This is a movie draft, not a nonfiction book draft.

Eli Price (03:34:20.715)
That's true, you can honorable mention it.

Elijah (03:34:23.026)
I might audible mention this one, although it's a really good nonfiction book. Okay, I'm gonna go...

Eli Price (03:34:37.343)
drum roll.

Elijah (03:34:38.63)
Yeah, I'm gonna go Lawrence of Arabia. Based on T.E. Lawrence has been more Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his time in the army. So I'm gonna go Lawrence of Arabia and I'm going to do it because it's one of the greatest films ever made. It's a movie that kind of like Christopher Nolan's movies. The more I watch it, the more unsure I am about what I'm supposed to think about T.E. Lawrence, about Lawrence.

Eli Price (03:34:40.604)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:34:43.947)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:34:54.441)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:35:07.409)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:35:08.662)
The more amazed I am with the filmmaking every time I watch it and the acting, the performance is just incredible. Peter O'Toole and his like his first role, I mean just astounding, yeah. It also features that great match cut, which is just like everything that is great about movies and great about artistry. So I haven't read the book, so I do feel bad by picking one that I haven't read the book, but.

Eli Price (03:35:18.459)
Yeah, he's incredible. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:35:32.254)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:35:38.698)
Um, cause so far I've only picked movies where I've read the book. So I'm, I'm breaking my breaking my rule here so far. Um.

Eli Price (03:35:43.056)
Oh wow, okay.

I've only seen, I've only read one of mine, so.

Elijah (03:35:48.918)
Uh, but launch Arabia. I mean, he can't knock pick. You got, you got to just have lines for Rebbe on your team. You're going to pick lines of Arabia. It's like, it's like you went Derek Jeter. You went Derek Jeter, you know, you got to pick him. So here we are.

Eli Price (03:35:56.68)
It's a great movie. It was on my list. Yeah. I think it's probably good that you picked it because it was one that I've been considering for like a couple of picks now. Yeah. I'm going to go next pick with... I'm gonna do All the President's Men.

Elijah (03:36:09.037)
Oh yeah, now it's off your table, off your plate, you can pick something different.

Elijah (03:36:23.306)
Oh, it's on my list. I almost picked that one this time. So, yeah. That was my other prestige pick that I thought about picking earlier. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:36:24.683)
Uh...

Uh, I, um, okay. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's just a.

Eli Price (03:36:39.579)
It's kind of, I mean, it's not like a Nolan movie, but it's kind of constructed in that precise, um, just like suspenseful way, um, that you would ex like if Nolan were to do this movie, you know, it, it wouldn't look a whole lot differently just in the, at least in the narrative construction of it. Um, the way it builds the tension and is like, so like precise and what it reveals and when it reveals it.

Elijah (03:36:45.952)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:36:49.294)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:37:00.938)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:37:09.299)
Obviously it's based on a real story, so it's following the actual story, but the editing of this film is what makes it that uniquely visual experience of that story. Man, it's just, it's a really great, thrilling watch. Yeah.

Elijah (03:37:12.555)
Right.

Elijah (03:37:20.117)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (03:37:30.198)
Great movie. Yeah, yeah, it's one of those perfect movies. Yeah, absolutely perfect movie. Good pick, good pick, good pick. Yeah, it was on my list. It was when I said I had two prestige movies I was trying to decide between. It was that one and Lawrence of Arabia. And I went Lawrence instead of that one. See, I could have gone, you're right. It's a very Nolan-y movie. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of David Lean in Nolan's ambition, but there's a lot of that.

Eli Price (03:37:45.77)
Okay.

Eli Price (03:37:51.923)
You can go either way. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:37:58.335)
Hmm.

Elijah (03:38:00.514)
Jay, there's a lot of that Pacula matter of factness in what Nolan does too. So, yeah, makes sense. Okay, I got one more pick. I got one more pick. This is tough, this is tough because...

Eli Price (03:38:04.593)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:38:08.432)
One more, last pick.

Elijah (03:38:17.226)
Maybe this is where you go, you try to go for the win. You know, like people are gonna vote. You wanna pick the movie that's gonna help your team out. Right, yeah. Yeah, maybe this is what you do here. On the other hand, I don't know. I'm just partial to good movies. So these are all good movies though. So like, am I gonna go wrong here?

Eli Price (03:38:21.787)
Yeah, clean up. This is the cleanup pitter.

Elijah (03:38:37.13)
I like to introduce people to movies maybe they haven't heard of. So then I'm tempted here to pick something that people maybe don't know and I put them up on their radar. On the other hand, if you have a chance to pick a movie like the one I'm pointing at now, why wouldn't you pick it? Why wouldn't you pick that movie? It's tough, it's tough. I also don't have a Scorsese on my team right now.

Eli Price (03:38:42.244)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:38:48.309)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:38:54.925)
I'm gonna go.

Eli Price (03:39:05.69)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (03:39:05.834)
And Scorsese has adapted so many of his movies and adaptations. And we're talking about Kills of the Flower Moon. There's also, there's a Nolan on the table. There's a Nolan on the table that no one has chosen. And this is a Nolan episode, Nolan season. Maybe I should pick the Nolan. This is.

Eli Price (03:39:08.852)
He does.

Eli Price (03:39:14.912)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:39:27.499)
That's true. So usually the rule is we don't draft the movies of the director that we're discussing. I didn't really tell you that beforehand though, so if you wanna take the null and I didn't give that rule at the start.

Elijah (03:39:37.294)
OK, so Oppenheimer would be off the table. Yeah.

That's true. So op-in hybrid would technically be off the table in the normal rules. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:39:48.247)
Normally, but I didn't say that. I didn't tell you that, so yeah. But you know, that's the.

Elijah (03:39:51.874)
But you told me now, so I'll accept the rule. I'll accept the rule. I think I was actually aware of that from listening to a previous episode.

Eli Price (03:39:59.419)
Yeah. But if you, if you built your draft, assert, if you built like your strategy a certain way, and now I'm just now telling you, then that wouldn't be fair. So, you know, okay.

Elijah (03:40:05.346)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:40:08.702)
No, it's not. We're not, we're not there. So I had, I had five that I really wanted to pick. And, um, so.

Eli Price (03:40:19.856)
Yeah, there still is a lot of great ones.

Elijah (03:40:22.53)
There's a lot of great movies out there still. All right. Do I go for a Scorsese? Or I'm not to pick a Scorsese? Feels wrong. Not to pick a Scorsese. But there's another movie here that, yeah, I know you do. So I'm, it's my last pick anyway. But there's another movie here that I would love to pick. Especially since I didn't get all the Presidents Men. There's another movie that's like on that wavelength that I kind of want on my team. Tough.

Eli Price (03:40:35.571)
I got my Scorsese.

Elijah (03:40:51.85)
Tough tough tough.

Elijah (03:41:00.055)
very tough.

Very tough. I know.

Eli Price (03:41:02.999)
suspense is killing me.

Eli Price (03:41:10.539)
I think I know where I'm going with my last pick, so... Unless you take it. You might take it.

Elijah (03:41:22.229)
I can't believe I'm gonna leave Scorsese on the table. I can't believe I'm gonna do that. That just seems wrong.

Elijah (03:41:31.318)
But I am, I'm gonna pick the social network. I'm picking the social network. Was that it? Was that what you were gonna pick? Yeah, all right, I'm doing it. I'm picking the social network. I'm picking it because it's the social network. It's not about Facebook. It's about all of us, but it is about Facebook. It is if...

Eli Price (03:41:34.24)
Oh man, he sniped me. That's, that was it. Yep.

Eli Price (03:41:42.431)
Man.

Eli Price (03:41:46.291)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:41:51.569)
Right.

Elijah (03:42:00.886)
It's not in my book. Come and see, it's not in Come and See because I'm not sure Fincher has been that influential. As great as he is, as much people love him, I don't think he's been that influential. He's one of those that people can't really do that thing that he does. And so I don't think he, and so when I'm picking the last 20 years or so in movies and filmmakers, like, they just didn't make the cut. But it's hard not to say that Social Network's one of the most important films of the past 20 years.

Eli Price (03:42:09.876)
You're right.

Eli Price (03:42:13.396)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:42:30.463)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:42:30.874)
one that we still need to reckon with the kind of questions that asked or whatever. And you got two army hammers and get two army hammers and that's maybe twice as many as you need. And you got to admire someone who's like, let's put double army hammers in our movie. Hall of the Mountain King, Rowing the Boats, great sequence, you know? Jesse Eisenberg, I saw him at a coffee shop here in Pasadena the other day. So, you know, got a personal connection. He's great in the movie.

Eli Price (03:42:37.846)
Two army hammers, that's right.

Eli Price (03:42:42.847)
Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (03:42:47.667)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:42:51.248)
Yes.

Eli Price (03:42:55.923)
Yeah, there you go.

Elijah (03:43:00.498)
I don't know. Andrew Garfield. Feel like I'm making like a sly almost square size effect by picking this movie because Andrew Garfield's in it and silence is so good. So good in silence. So, all right, I'm good. Social network, that's my pick.

Eli Price (03:43:12.171)
Even Justin Timberlake is pretty good. He's great, yeah.

Elijah (03:43:14.666)
He's great. I think he's on drugs in the movie in every scene he's in, but it's great. He's great. He might be. Yeah, he might be.

Eli Price (03:43:18.015)
Ha ha.

Eli Price (03:43:21.639)
Maybe, maybe he is, you know, it is. Man. Uh, gosh, he threw me for a loop. And, uh, here's a, here's a tie in too. Um, also a 2010 film and, uh, beat, uh, beat out Hans Zimmer score for best score at the Oscars. Yeah. It's a phenomenal. Yeah. Um, they, uh, they did, um, they did part of, uh, the, that.

Elijah (03:43:40.522)
It has, it should have because it's an amazing score. Yeah. At, at construction. Yeah. Kurt Reznor did a great job.

Eli Price (03:43:51.871)
half of the score for Soul, which was phenomenal too.

Elijah (03:43:54.93)
I know. Yeah, their score, their sole work was amazing. It's one of those where you're like, really? Those guys are scoring a Pete Docter Pixar movie? That totally worked. Super good.

Eli Price (03:44:05.755)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. Yeah, that really threw me for a loop, and now I don't know what I'm going to do. Oh, man. Well, because now... Oh.

Elijah (03:44:12.222)
I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not. I'm too competitive to be sorry. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (03:44:24.975)
Now I think you're going to force me to pick another Scorsese.

Elijah (03:44:29.822)
That's good. I'll be happy they get to keep playing.

I hate for them to all to be left with the same lines. You could, it's true.

Eli Price (03:44:34.456)
I could pick a different Fincher movie, but I like the Scorsese movie more. Yeah, I guess I'll go ahead and this might be the Scorsese you were going to pick. I'm going to go Raging Bull. Where you going that good fellas? Or Gangs of New York?

Elijah (03:44:56.735)
Nice, good choice.

Elijah (03:45:01.542)
I couldn't, this is actually why I didn't pick a Scorsese is because I could not decide between Goodfellow is the Wolf of Wall Street and Raging Bull and Casino actually. These are all nonfiction and adaptations. But mainly it was between Goodfellow is Wolf of Wall Street and Raging Bull. I couldn't really decide. So yeah.

Eli Price (03:45:10.363)
Okay. Casino. Mmm.

Eli Price (03:45:19.399)
Yeah, it's hard. Raging Bull is, yeah, it's just an amazing movie. It changed, I think it changed even like,

Elijah (03:45:24.43)
Amazing movie.

Eli Price (03:45:37.235)
So like it, I think it changed the way like that sports movies are shot and especially boxing movies, which there's a large amount of, but um, but yeah, it, uh, man, it's a incredible movie. Um, that last scene of Ray LaMotta talking to himself in the mirror is just like another dev another devastating end to

Elijah (03:45:42.388)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:45:47.487)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:46:00.334)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:46:06.387)
Scorsese movie. But yeah.

Elijah (03:46:07.966)
It is, it is. So I have a, my personal story related to reading Bolas. So I was, I started working on Come and See before we had my son, before we had our first kid. And I worked on the book for like five years. So spanned my son being born and everything like that. But I actually, he was born.

We were at the hospital, you know, because you're there for a few days or whatever. And I took a break from being in the room and I walked over to a coffee shop that was nearby near the hospital. And I sat down to work on the book and I wrote. And that was the morning I was like up to raging bull and working through writing the book. And so I wrote about raging bull in the coffee shop after my son had just been born. And it was one of those moments where like,

I tried not to let personal stuff lead into the book too much. Like it's really about the movies, you know? But that context like made me think about like, I don't know who this boy is gonna be that was just born. I don't know who he's gonna grow up to be. I don't know what kind of man he's gonna be. I don't know anything about this kid or whatever. And he could end up being, he could end up being as despicable as, you know, as-

as Lamada, as Jake Lamada. And it's complicated and as. Hard to love as that he could be that way. But you know what? I think I think Scorsese loves Jake Lamada, you know, and. I think he critiques who he is and all that, because he clearly that he loves him and I know God loves him and. It was like a.

Eli Price (03:47:47.455)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:47:59.602)
And whoever my son grows up to be, even if he's Jake LaMotta, God's going to love him. And I'm going to love him. You know, even if he breaks my heart, I'm going to love him. And it was like a, I remember sitting in the coffee shop trying to write that devotion and like wrestling with all this stuff. Yeah, just because of how De Niro and Scorsese give us, you know, Jake LaMotta. Yeah. That's an amazing, amazing portrait of a man. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:48:22.055)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:48:27.499)
And yeah, that's beautiful. A really cool story and connection. Yeah, I feel like Scorsese is like that. He has a lot of grace and empathy for extremely flawed characters. I mean, not just like no one's flawed characters that are just kind of dealing with some inner grief or guilt, but like, I mean.

Elijah (03:48:45.107)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (03:48:54.138)
Right? Yeah.

Eli Price (03:48:57.323)
to the nth degree flawed min.

Elijah (03:49:00.702)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he really, he got, he really, as the book says, he really captured that Catholic, two Catholic, two Catholic things, sin and grace. He really got them. He really says you sin, he really shows you grace. Cool, good draft. I like my team. It's a good team.

Eli Price (03:49:12.015)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. I do too. I'll read them off and then we can say a few honorable mentions. Yeah, Elijah ended up with Apollo 13, Mean Girls, Sea Biscuit, Moneyball, 12 Balls, 12 Balls. Oh my gosh. Moneyball, 12 Years a Slave.

Lawrence of Arabia and the social network. I promise that was not me trying to sabotage your draft. Yeah, and I ended up with the Irishman, Apocalypse Now, The Sound of Music, Malcolm X, The Big Short, All the President's Men, and Raging Bull. Yeah, book ended with The Scorsese's. So, yeah.

Elijah (03:49:52.27)
Ha ha ha!

Elijah (03:50:09.823)
Nice. That's good. You only picked one movie I don't really care for and I'm not going to tell you which one.

Eli Price (03:50:13.659)
Oh no. Hmm.

Eli Price (03:50:19.275)
Well, now I'm curious. Now if... Oh man. Okay.

Elijah (03:50:24.931)
Sorry.

it just really doesn't do it for me. It's the way it goes. I'll watch it again one day, maybe I'll get it one, maybe I'll get it, but yeah.

Eli Price (03:50:30.079)
Hey, that's fair.

Eli Price (03:50:36.563)
Hey, that's great.

Eli Price (03:50:41.223)
Yeah, we'll see. Well, you know, I have a guess, but I won't say it. Yeah, that's fair. Okay.

Elijah (03:50:49.362)
It's Malcolm X. Yeah, that's a movie that like, I'm still very much wrestling with Spike Lee. And there's some of his movies that I really love, and then some of his movies that I'm like, oh, I don't get it, you know? And I think he'd be okay with that. Like he doesn't make movies that are easy to get. And yeah, and Malcolm X is one of those, I think I built it up too much in my head before I watched it.

Eli Price (03:50:59.243)
Sure.

Eli Price (03:51:10.252)
No, he- they're very tough.

Eli Price (03:51:17.073)
Mm.

Elijah (03:51:18.628)
And then I watched it. I was like, okay. Yeah, that was that was fine. That was good

Eli Price (03:51:21.895)
Yeah, see I had an opposite experience. I watched it like kind of on a whim. So I went in with like no expectations. Yeah. So yeah, it, yeah, his movies are rough around the edges.

Elijah (03:51:26.295)
Hmm

Elijah (03:51:30.934)
Mm-hmm. Hmm, that's the way to do it. I'm also, it was also complicated. Yeah, yeah. I like that about him, because he like, I like movies that refer on the edges, because it means the filmmaker's really trying to do something. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:51:43.995)
Yeah, like the Five Bloods was very rough around the edges, but I really liked it.

Elijah (03:51:49.246)
Yeah, yeah, he doesn't, he never sacrifices energy and emotion for like finesse. He always prefers energy and emotion and I admire that about him quite a bit. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:51:56.011)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:52:02.555)
Yeah, we already mentioned a few of the Scorsese honorable mentions. Did you have any others you wanted to just mention rapid fire?

Elijah (03:52:04.918)
Right? Bunders up. Yeah.

Elijah (03:52:12.302)
Sure. Yeah. I mean, the one that I almost picked but didn't pick because the movie's not very good, but the book is great, is Julie and Julia, the movie about Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, about Julia Childs. The half of that movie that's about Julia Childs is based on the biography about her called My Life in France. And that book is so good.

Eli Price (03:52:23.02)
Oh, yeah. Mm hmm.

Eli Price (03:52:41.684)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:52:42.334)
That book is so, so good. And the part with Amy Adams is based on something that's not so good. And it's kind of like, oh, there's some weird stuff happening here with this woman. But the part about Julia Childs and her husband is so good. And the book is so, so good because their marriage is fascinating. And it's like what you want a marriage to be kind of, like,

Eli Price (03:53:03.275)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:53:11.155)
The best way that a mid-century marriage between two white people can be is like their marriage. And it's just, it's such a good book and such interesting people. So love that one.

Eli Price (03:53:16.414)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:53:21.944)
Yeah. My wife will be happy to hear that because I think that's a book she wants to read, but hasn't yet. I can't remember. She did read the, the other one and hated it. Um, right. Yeah. She hated that book.

Elijah (03:53:26.752)
Oh.

Elijah (03:53:32.918)
The one that's the Julie girl one, whatever. That was like her blog thing. Oh no, that's, that's hate that. I hate that. I hate that woman that's wrong, but like the, yeah, the movie's a lot of fun. That was, I watched that movie on the front row over to the left side of the theater. That it was like a dollar theater. It was a terrible movie going experience, but I still enjoyed the movie. She and Stanley Tucci and them together are so much fun in that movie because

Eli Price (03:53:41.561)
But she loves this movie.

Eli Price (03:53:51.32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Meryl Streep is so fun, isn't it? Oh yeah.

Elijah (03:54:02.198)
The childs are so much fun. Like they're amazing. Love that book. Tell your wife to read that book. It is like, it is as not good as the other half of that thing is. It is that much better and more. It's so good. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:54:15.783)
Oh yeah, I'll have to tell her. I'll tell her first that she's asleep right now, but I'll tell her first thing. Yeah, that's awesome. I did have Julie and Julie on my list and it was one of those that I thought about, I actually thought about at one point drafting it just because my wife would be so happy, but I had already done that with the sound of music. So I was like, I gave her pick that I, so.

Elijah (03:54:21.571)
I'm gonna go.

Elijah (03:54:37.633)
Yeah.

Was that in music? Yeah.

Eli Price (03:54:46.087)
Yeah, I had a few. So one of them that, um, I, I have, I've taken in a draft a few drafts ago, or maybe even more than that. I don't remember what draft it was, honestly, but, um, I don't know if you could call it an adaptation of a nonfiction book. It's it is adaptation. Um, it's, it's a kind of. Technically.

Elijah (03:55:08.906)
Oh, yeah.

Elijah (03:55:13.678)
Yeah, it is. It is. It's the way Stanley Kaufman would adapt a book. So, yeah. I mean, if Mean Girls is an adaptation of a non-fiction book, then adaptation is too. Yeah.

Eli Price (03:55:17.791)
The... Exactly. I didn't draft it, but...

Eli Price (03:55:27.311)
Yeah, and I probably would have taken it if I hadn't already taken it in a different draft. But yeah, I love adaptation. It's a wild movie. Zodiac was the other venture that I was looking at. Lincoln, I really enjoy Lincoln.

Elijah (03:55:33.39)
Mm-hmm.

Elijah (03:55:40.926)
Yeah, mm-hmm. That'd been a good pick.

Elijah (03:55:47.946)
Is Lincoln based on Team of Rivals? Is it technically an adaptation of Team of Rivals?

Eli Price (03:55:53.897)
I think that's ringing a bell, because I was looking up all these before I was adding them to my list. Yeah.

Elijah (03:55:58.935)
Uh huh.

I love that movie. That's like top tier Spielberg for me. And one of those kind of like, well, kind of like Apollo 13, that I turn on quite often and just kind of have on because it does something for me. But not like Apollo 13, there's no movie, there's hardly any movies like Apollo 13 for me. It's like so much my favorite, but yeah, Lincoln's great. I had Into the Wild on my list as a potential pick.

Eli Price (03:56:21.791)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:56:27.099)
Okay, yeah, I haven't seen that.

Elijah (03:56:29.446)
almost picked it because I thought it would help my chances in the voting because it's beloved by people who love it. And I like it quite a bit. I like the book more than the movie, but the movie is still very good. I think about it a lot.

Eli Price (03:56:34.431)
Hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (03:56:45.426)
And then The Killing Fields, have you ever seen The Killing Fields? So Peter Weiril, Peter Weiril film from the early 80s about Pullpot. And it's an incredibly good movie. And it was one of those movies that like.

Eli Price (03:56:49.353)
I have not.

Elijah (03:57:03.314)
my dad sent me down to watch when I was of a certain age or whatever. And it was kind of like a, this is an important film, but also a film that people don't really talk about very much, but you really need to see it because it's great. And so, yeah, love the Killing Fields. So good.

Eli Price (03:57:18.212)
Yeah, I'll add it to the list for sure. Yeah, the only other ones that...

Eli Price (03:57:26.035)
I would want to mention would be, I think Argo is pretty good. Um, catch me if you can. Um, uh, is, is fun movie. Uh, and then I even, I like solely, uh, good. I think it's a, uh, enjoyable Eastwood movie. Um, uh, and I like, I've always liked, I thought that was a interesting story. Um, so.

Elijah (03:57:29.966)
Yeah, it's fine. Thought about catch me if you can. Great movie.

Elijah (03:57:40.146)
Oh yeah. Yeah, it's always good.

Elijah (03:57:50.366)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:57:54.139)
Yeah, there were some that I would have never picked ever that I have seen, but um, but I won't mention those. Um, I just put all of them that I've seen on a list that I could think of. Uh, but yeah, that's, that was a fun draft. Um, yeah. Uh, do you, um, do you happen to have a recommendation of the week? It can be anything.

Elijah (03:58:01.4)
Ha ha ha.

I didn't even write those kind of movies down. Ha ha ha.

Elijah (03:58:09.797)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (03:58:23.189)
Anything?

Eli Price (03:58:23.323)
A meal, a movie, a show, anything.

Elijah (03:58:26.154)
Well, I'm going to recommend another nonfiction book, actually. So I said I had a list of movies, books that I wish they would adapt into movies. So I'm going to recommend one of those books. And the book is called Running with Sherman. And it's by Christopher McDougall, who people may know because he wrote Run Free, which is the book about barefoot running. And a lot of people have, for some reason, have heard of that book. But.

Eli Price (03:58:33.886)
Yeah.

Okay.

Elijah (03:58:53.866)
Running with Sherman is a true story about him and his family. They moved to Amish country, bought a house in Amish country. And they ended up, he ended up learning about and doing this thing where you run with donkeys, like a race with a donkey. And

Um, the race happens up in Leadville, Colorado, but he trained in Amish country where he lived or whatever. And, um, the book is really about, I mean, it's about that, uh, about running with donkeys, but, uh, it's really about this whole community of people that they meet and, uh, that live in their neighborhood. Amish people that live there and then non Amish people who live there too, uh, the English, um, who live there as well. Um, and, uh, just the way this community comes around.

this donkey who's been neglected, and then other people in the community who also need healing in some way, and the way the community helps them achieve that through practicing how to run with a donkey in a race. So it was a book I picked up just completely randomly because I needed something.

Eli Price (04:00:43.58)
I didn't even think about that, but yeah.

Eli Price (04:00:52.08)
It don't...

No, that's great. Yeah. No, that's, that's great for recommendation of the week. Uh, it's supposed to be kind of. It can, well, not supposed to be, but it can be random. Um, but it's, it's a good tie in with our draft. Um, and I, uh, I was thinking as you were explaining it, I was like, man, I could see a world where like, even like a Spielberg adapted that story. Um,

It would probably look different than the directors that you named. Um, but yeah, I could see that. Um, I could see him do like doing a, uh, animal helps a community Hill kind of movie. Yeah. Um, yeah, uh, I'm going to, you know, I had it a lot of times I'll wing.

my recommendation on the week because I forget to think about it beforehand. Um, and so I'm just going to recommend that here at the end of the episode, you, uh, you know, click the link in the, in the show notes and subscribe to the, um, come and see email, uh, cause I've really been enjoying it. You know, we talked about it earlier, but, um, yeah, I've, I've enjoyed, uh, reading about movies that I have seen and catching up with some that I haven't.

Um, some great old movies. And so yeah, I'm, I don't, I don't remember how many I'm into it, but I'm the one that I got this past Sunday was, uh, Frankenstein, um, which is a great movie.

Eli Price (04:02:40.92)
No. Yeah.

It was, I think I signed up like a few months ago. So probably like.

Eli Price (04:02:52.571)
Yeah. Hey, it's great. I'm here for it. Yeah, that's my recommendation. Yeah, did you... Okay, there we go. Yeah, so I'm like over four months in, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, did you want to kind of just share real quick some places to follow you and find your work?

Eli Price (04:04:00.287)
Right.

Eli Price (04:04:08.871)
Yeah. And I'll, I'll put those in the, in the show notes too. And, um, yeah, that that's, uh, it was a fun episode. Uh, had a lot of fun talking inception and with the movie draft. And so, um, yeah, I hope maybe, uh, get you back on for another series in the future, um, but yeah, uh, yeah. I had a great time. Uh, thank you so much for coming on Elijah and, uh, we're gonna, uh, wrap things up. Um,

Yeah, next week again, we'll be talking about the Dark Knight Rises. I'm excited about that conversation revisiting that movie and so We will see you again next week. But until then you've been listening to the establishing shot