Halloween, Horror, and Hamlet: What Scares Us and Why?

Oct 29, 2018

TAA 0043 – In honor of Halloween, C. Travis Webb, Seph Rodney, and Steven Fullwood discuss their favorite horror films. They explore why some movies affect them more than others, and what those susceptibilities say about their world views. Some of the films discussed include: Carrie, The Changeling, Prince of Darkness, The Skin I Live In, Ringu, and Cabin in the Woods.

[music]
C.T. WEBB 00:19 Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening, and welcome to The American Age podcast. This is C. Travis Webb, editor to The American Age, and I’m speaking with Seph Rodney and Steven Fullwood. Gentlemen.
S. RODNEY 00:30 Hey, what’s going on?
S. FULLWOOD 00:31 How you doing?
S. RODNEY 00:32 I am Seph Rodney and I’m an editor at the most excellent Hyperallergic Blog, which covers arts and all things related to the arts, and I teach at the new school in the Parsons School, actually.
S. FULLWOOD 00:48 And– oop.
S. RODNEY 00:50 All right. No, go ahead. And I’m talking to you from the South Bronx.
S. FULLWOOD 00:55 Okay, great. this is Steven Fullwood. I’m coming to you from Harlem and I’m one of the co-founders of the Nomadic Archivists Project, a consulting company that works with individuals and organizations to identify and preserve their archives. And I am a Capricorn [laughter].
C.T. WEBB 01:13 And this is to remind– this is to remind our listeners that we do our best to practice what we call intellectual intimacy. We try and give each other the space to say what we want to say and to work through stuff out loud with one another, so.
S. RODNEY 01:28 Amen.
C.T. WEBB 01:29 And I wanted to do a small plug. So Steven, you are in the works for planning a podcast for the Nomadic Archivists Project, yes?
S. FULLWOOD 01:36 Yes, definitely. And yes, and we’re trying to find the easiest way to do it [laughter]. Miranda Mims and I, the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, want to begin interviewing different kinds of people who are concerned with memory work, work where you are taking care of history or culture. And just to kind of give our listeners or, excuse me, our audiences, something to taste in addition to the website and some of our projects. So, yeah.
C.T. WEBB 02:03 Great. Well, keep us updated about it, please.
S. FULLWOOD 02:06 I certainly will.
C.T. WEBB 02:08 And I’m speaking to you from Orange County, California, which again, I regularly omit from my introduction, which I’m pretty sure I should go to therapy for that, but–
S. RODNEY 02:20 Yeah. Paging Dr. Freud [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD 02:23 That’s the O.C.
C.T. WEBB 02:25 It is the O.C. And thank you again [inaudible] listeners. So today we’re going to talk about horror films, Steven’s suggestion, who I think amongst us– I mean, I think we all love films, but I think Steven is probably the biggest film buff amongst us. I don’t know if I’m taking anything away from Seph on that one, but I would definitely put myself–
S. FULLWOOD 02:46 No, no, no, no, you are not. Yeah, that’s right.
C.T. WEBB 02:49 So I’d like to kick it to you Steven and sort of leave– I mean, I certainly have things to say and films that I love, but why don’t you take us in?
S. FULLWOOD 02:57 Yes. Okay, so the whole thing is the spirit of Halloween and I think what I love about this season is that everyone gets– at least in the north, that trees are changing, the colors are changing, and so things are kind of going quiet and at the same time sort of building up because of the holiday season. And Halloween in New York City starts– I don’t know. It never ends it feels like in a way, because if you’ve ever been here, in addition to the parades and all the other different kinds of things that inspire dressing up, in addition to people who just look like that all the time, it’s really kind of cool. But people really kind of go out during this season with costumes and whatnot. And I was thinking about the kinds of films that the three of us have seen, that have left an indelible mark on the way that we see the world, or just excited us or scared the hell out of us when we were kids. And I wrote this six-page– just a list of all the films and why I love them and why they scared the hell out of me, what were the connections? And I want to begin with one film, The Prince of Darkness.
S. RODNEY 04:07 Okay.
C.T. WEBB 04:08 Ah, I remember Prince of Darkness.
S. RODNEY 04:10 I don’t. I’m eager to hear about it.
S. FULLWOOD 04:12 Sure, sure. So here’s the Google synopsis. “Poking around in a church cellar, a priest, played by Donald Pleasence, finds an otherworldly vial filled with green slime. Frightened, he brings his discovery to a circle of top scholars and scientists who eventually learn that the strange liquid is the essence of Satan [laughter]. The slime then begins to seep out”, of this–
C.T. WEBB 04:37 So satanic jizz [laughter]? He finds satanic jizz?
S. FULLWOOD 04:40 — – and by the way, I totally disagree with all this, but I’m just going to finish it – “turning some of the academics into zombified killers. As the possessed battle of the survivors, one of the students is infected by a large quantity of the liquid and becomes Satan personified.” I think it’s maybe three-fourths true, but I’ve actually read it as science and religion coming together, and this notion of antimatter and anti-Christ becoming this thing personified. And what scared me about the film– I was 19 years old, I saw it on television, and there was just scenes in it where people are frozen. They’re “street people” who are just on the street and they’re just stock-still. And I thought with– John Carpenter’s pretty good at creating films that excite me. They’re kind of plain in a way, but they don’t overly rely on special effects. It’s just what the people do, so it’s a theater of the mind kind of thing for me. He leaves enough scary space for you to put your scary in.
S. RODNEY 05:41 Mmm. I like that.
S. FULLWOOD 05:43 Oh. And Alice Cooper’s in it. Who doesn’t love Alice Cooper [laughter]? So they got cosmic shit going on. It’s not really cosmic horror, but it’s really– it’s a fun film to watch. I would recommend it to anyone. And so it’s just– you’ve got to watch it. Travis, you said you saw it before, correct?
C.T. WEBB 05:59 So I did. I saw it in high school. And it’s funny. Our production engineer, Chris Ebmeier, would probably be better equipped to talk about this than I would because, I mean, we grew up together. He’s a couple years older than I am. I suspect we saw the movie together because he and I had a group of friends that were into– certainly into that stuff like many teenage boys were. I would play role-playing games and things like that which is one of the remaining things that are still – I think we’ve talked about this before – that are still not cool. Millennials have recouped and revamped all dorky hobbies, all of them: record collecting, films, shoes. It doesn’t matter. Like weird xylophones and shit like that. It doesn’t matter.
S. FULLWOOD 06:46 Old-time instruments?
C.T. WEBB 06:47 Yeah. Hipsters have made everything cool but role-playing games.
S. RODNEY 06:52 Dungeons and Dragons [laughter].
C.T. WEBB 06:53 That’s exactly right, Dungeons and Dragons. It is the one– Stranger Things came close to doing it.
S. RODNEY 07:01 I was just thinking about that.
C.T. WEBB 07:03 Yeah, it’s true. But really only to show these kids’ alienation from the rest of [crosstalk]–
S. RODNEY 07:10 Precisely [laughter].
C.T. WEBB 07:11 So anyway, I was part of that group. But anyway, we saw it. I saw it in the movie theater. I don’t remember the movie. I mean, I remember the general premise around what you had basically just said. The one thing I would– as far as the underlying theme, I read things like that more of kind of [inaudible] imagination and horror and fantasy trying to drub the limits of human knowledge, right? So trying to push back against science and say, “Here are all your brains and all the things that you can study and understand about the world, but really, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” to borrow from Hamlet. So but in a kind of a sometimes fun, sometimes mean– it just depends. I think that movie’s kind of fun and like I said, really is kind of, I think, demonic jizz is sort of what Satan’s [inaudible] is, but that’s a great lead-in. That’s a great film, actually. I thought about it when you mentioned the topic, so–
S. FULLWOOD 08:15 Oh, get out. Okay. So–
S. RODNEY 08:18 Okay, so maybe you should keep going, Steven, because I don’t have a lot to say about that. I may not have actually ever seen the film and if I did, I don’t remember it. I just looked it up on my phone to see if visuals of the trailer might jog my memory, but no–
C.T. WEBB 08:39 Oh, no. Go ahead Steven.
S. FULLWOOD 08:40 I was going to say one last thing about the film and then– and that is that during the film, there is another film happening that’s a dream sequence that the different students are dreaming. So they’re all dreaming the same dream but they’re dreaming in different parts of it.
C.T. WEBB 08:55 That’s right, that’s right.
S. FULLWOOD 08:56 And it’s a wonderful way to build tension, and I remember feeling like, “Oh, that’s a great way to bring something into being.” And so what they’re hearing is, there’s this sound that they’re hearing: “This is not a dream, not a dream. We are using your brain’s electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neuro-interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.” 1999. “Technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough for it to reach your consciousness, but this is not a dream. What you are seeing is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.” That shit just makes me so excited! I just love that [laughter]! I love layers. Give me layers. Don’t give me Saw. Don’t give me Saw or one of them slasher films. I want to see something that’s going to engage me in a lot of ways, and so I love that message. Love it. So that’s it.
S. RODNEY 09:54 So now I’ve got to go watch the film. Okay, so, let me counter that, or riposte, with my own favorite horror film, which does, I think, some of the things that Prince of Darkness does for you, Steven, in that it makes me think. And I did have some time to think about it during the week. It is absolutely my favorite film, and it’s The Cabin in the Woods, which is directed by Drew Goddard, and has Jesse Williams in the cast, and Chris Hemsworth, and Kristen Connolly and Anna Hutchison, and Bradley Whitford, who I love from his time in West Wing. So the essence of the film is the typical horror genre, teenage slasher set up, which is a bunch of kids who are friends go to a cabin in the woods. And two go off into the darkness, and of course there are these weird markers along the way, like the place is really secluded. It’s off the GPS system. There’s a creepy guy at the gas station who says “Well, I can take you there, but I don’t know about getting you back.” And they’re like, “Ah, [crosstalk]–“
C.T. WEBB 11:09 Oh, this is Joss Whedon! Ah, now I–
S. RODNEY 11:11 Yes.
C.T. WEBB 11:12 –know. Okay, I’m sorry. Okay, now I’m with you. I was like, “God that sounds so familiar.” Now I’m with you, okay.
S. RODNEY 11:17 Right. When you say this is Joss Whedon, what do you mean?
C.T. WEBB 11:21 Director, producer. I think he either produced or directed it.
S. FULLWOOD 11:24 I think he produced it.
S. RODNEY 11:24 I think he produced it. Mm-hmm. Okay, so right. So they start knocking off the kids one by one, right? But eventually the kids get into the vehicle and try to flee the scene, and we figure out– this movie eventually shows you that there are these controllers, the kind of guys behind the curtain, who are constantly shifting things in their environment to bring about their demise. They make it out somehow. They crash through the matrix and they get to the central command and then they find these guys pulling the levers behind the curtain and they release all the fucking demons. And they’re the ones from the horror films that were from like Saw, and what’s the one where the woman crawls through the television screen to come at you?
C.T. WEBB 12:16 Ring.
S. FULLWOOD 12:16 The Ring.
C.T. WEBB 12:16 The Ring.
S. RODNEY 12:17 Yes. Oh, The Ring was great. Ring was amazing. That’s actually another one of my favorites. So literally all hell breaks loose. And it’s really about the sort of structure of the horror film, right, that we’ve inherited. And the notion that there’s always a kind of sacrifice that needs to happen in order to appease this darker god that’s just beyond the sort of range of our typical perception. There’s this sense that we’re always sort of living in a matrix that is real but it’s not real, right? There’s a realer real sort of behind the curtain and we have to sort of– I mean, it’s the story that Travis and I have told each other or talked about over the years and I never remember the title. But it’s The One from Omarosa– The One Who Escaped–
C.T. WEBB 13:13 Oh, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
S. RODNEY 13:16 That’s the one [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD 13:17 Almost [laughter].
S. RODNEY 13:17 That’s the one, right. I was close–
C.T. WEBB 13:20 That’s a horror story.
S. FULLWOOD 13:21 That’s a horror story, too, but–
S. RODNEY 13:23 –but basically it’s the idea– that story’s based on the idea that there is some dark god out there who we– who threatens us with chaos. And we make our sacrifice of some innocent on a regular basis. Our oldest civilizations have ritualized these practices and they’ve called the gods by different names. But essentially that’s the idea, that chaos threatens us and we need to sacrifice someone to it in order to live in peace.
C.T. WEBB 13:59 Yeah. Omelas in the story, Ursula K. Le Guin, Omelas is a paradise. And she starts the story out beautifully by saying basically stories are supposed to be dystopic but this is a story about a paradise. And in order for this paradise to be maintained, this civilization has to keep an innocent child locked in some basement that has to be degraded and spat on and mistreated. And that it’s not talked about regularly, it’s not mentioned in polite company, but that at a certain age, all the children are taken to see this innocent child in the basement. And that it’s this innocent in the basement that makes all of Omelas possible. But the title, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, is that sometimes people just leave. They just walk away from paradise. They walk away from Omelas. And–
S. RODNEY 15:03 Because the sacrifice is too much.
C.T. WEBB 15:05 Yeah, that they renounce it. They renounce paradise for something else.
S. FULLWOOD 15:10 Is this a film or is it–?
C.T. WEBB 15:12 It’s a short story. It’s a beautiful little short story. You probably can find it online.
S. FULLWOOD 15:16 Is it Austrian?
C.T. WEBB 15:18 No, Ursula K. Le Guin. Omelas is just a– I actually used to teach this story. I forget what it was, but she was passing some city in Nebraska or something like that, and she scrambled the letters of this city. And that’s how she came up with the title Omelas. And–
S. RODNEY 15:42 Can I just jump in to say, Steven, if you haven’t read Ursula K. Le Guin, I highly, highly, highly recommend her. She is one of the best science fiction or writers period that I’ve ever read. The big ones, the really important books, are The Dispossessed, which makes one of the best arguments for socialism I have ever read, and The Left Hand of Darkness, which makes one of the best arguments– and it doesn’t actually make an argument. It’s just sort of– the book exists as an argument for thinking really differently about gender. In fact, she’s the first person who I ever encountered– she might actually be the first real intellectual, American intellectual. I think she’s from Canada, but the first intellectual to actually make us think really seriously about this sort of– about gender being on kind of a continuum, and not being sort of– not binary. She’s amazing.
S. FULLWOOD 16:37 Wow, thank you. That sounds interesting.
C.T. WEBB 16:38 Yeah, Left Hand of Darkness makes it on Bloom’s list as one of the great books of the 20th century, actually.
S. RODNEY 16:43 Yes. Yes. Definitely.
C.T. WEBB 16:45 So one of the things that has occurred to me, which is, I think, one of the reasons that I like that we have come up with a way to sort of encapsulate the show as a kind of intellectual intimacy, is that I actually figure– like most intimacies, you figure things out when you’re intimate with people, right? There are things that you can figure out in an intimate exchange that you can’t figure out on your own. That’s what intimacy is about, I think. Part of what it’s about.
S. RODNEY 17:12 I agree with that, yeah.
C.T. WEBB 17:12 You figure out things about yourself. So I realized in Seph’s description why many horror films fall down for me, and then the ones that don’t. And I wouldn’t have known that until he described it. When he was talking about Cabin in the Woods and sort of the underlying structure and what is horrible about it, right, in this sort of system in which things are moving beyond your control. And I know that– so The Ring is a great movie, and there are a number of horror films that would make it on my list of movies that I enjoy. Prince of Darkness would be on there, as well. One of the things that always falls down for me, though, in those types of horror movies – and I’m going to give a couple of alternate examples that don’t fall down for me – is as soon as the explanation for the evil moves into the realm of the supernatural, my feeling of horror and suspense is dissipated and–
S. RODNEY 18:13 Wow.
S. FULLWOOD 18:14 Wow. Tell us why [laughter].
C.T. WEBB 18:15 So here’s why, because I don’t find it a credible threat [laughter].
S. RODNEY 18:19 Wow. You are a rationalist in your bones, dude, in your marrow [laughter].
C.T. WEBB 18:28 Yeah. But here’s what doesn’t. Alien, or Thing, The Fly, right? These are horror films in the sci-fi genre that are horrifying to me until the very end, because I do find human hubris a credible threat.
S. FULLWOOD 18:51 A credible threat. Right. So were you horrified by Get Out?
C.T. WEBB 18:56 Horrified, and, I mean, I have to say and I thought it was really funny, too [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD 19:01 Right, yeah, it worked [crosstalk]–
C.T. WEBB 19:02 And that was intentionally– yeah. I mean, and a lot of writing was done about sort of where you fall on the spectrum, like things that you’re laughing at versus things that you find horrible or whatever. And of course, it’s written that way. But, yes, I did find it horrifying, but it was hard for me to completely leave behind the comedic elements that sort of set the tone for me, so– but, yeah. John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien, The Fly, in which the threat is sort of– it’s either alien, right – which is just a stand-in for supernatural; I understand that – or sort of science run amok , like The Fly, for example [laughter].
S. RODNEY 19:52 Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.
C.T. WEBB 19:53 And so that for me maintains the element of suspense all the way through the end. Now, when I was younger, that wasn’t true, of course. I of course was– Rosemary’s Baby was very terrifying for me when I was younger, but yeah. So now I lose it when it comes to that stuff.
S. FULLWOOD 20:11 That’s very 1950s. That’s all I want to say [laughter]. With the monsters and posts of World War II, that’s very 1950s to me.
S. RODNEY 20:21 Can I jump in and say–? Hooking into that thread, there was a book which is not– and I know we’re talking about films but I can’t help but cheat this a little. There’s a book I read. I think it’s called The Hot Zone and I read it in the 90s. I remember I was in undergrad, and I don’t know how I– Barnes and Noble was big in those days, so I probably picked it up at a bookstore because it was recommended to me. And I remember being on the train and being on the way to the YMCA to take my fencing lesson because I learned to fence back in the 90s and I would go to the Y Mondays and Fridays, really without fail. And I was on my way to a fencing lesson and I was reading the book on the subway and I remember reading it and I was just like– I wasn’t actually sweating but I was close to it. It was so tense and I was so into it that I remember coming off the train and having to walk up the stairs and I was still reading it as I was walking through the turn-style and up the stairs and to the Y [laughter]. And then I got to the Y, had to change to get into my workout gear, and there was a– I went to the bathroom and there was a spot, a bright spot of blood right on the toilet seat and it just freaked me the hell out [laughter] because the book is all about the–
C.T. WEBB 21:52 An outbreak, right?
S. RODNEY 21:53 –of Ebola.
S. FULLWOOD 21:55 Yes, yes. I’m looking at it right now.
S. RODNEY 21:55 –and it described what happened to people when they got the disease, when they got infected by the virus, and it is not– I’m not going to describe it. It’s not cute. So that whole sequence of events was like, “What [laughter]?” It creeped me the hell out. And when I think about it now, I want to hug myself. I’m like, “Ugh!”
S. FULLWOOD 22:19 Well, picking up on the blood theme, I was going to ask you guys, name your top three horror films. You will always watch them again and again, they excite you, or maybe just watch it once and you’re done [laughter]. But that it was really impactful in some way. Got three?
S. RODNEY 22:37 Yeah, please [crosstalk]–
C.T. WEBB 22:37 Seph, do you want to go?
S. RODNEY 22:38 Oh no, please.
C.T. WEBB 22:39 Okay, so Alien would definitely be on that list and The Fly would probably be on that list. I mentioned those two. Come back to me for my third. You know what? I mean, it’s a really sort of a down the middle one but it is and I might want to revisit a third one, but Psycho would probably be there. I mean, I know that is regularly cited as one of the great horror films. So I know that that’s– I mean, not that I’m trying to be– not that I have the duty of being obscure or something [laughter]. But that would definitely be one.
S. RODNEY 23:26 Okay. And as we are talking I’m trying to look this up on my phone because I don’t actually remember the name of the film, but I can start off with– oh, here it is. Good. All right, so Cabin in the Woods definitely because it is so smart and it is so meta-discursive and I love meta discursive stuff. Ringu probably the next one because Ringu was amazingly suspenseful and beautifully shot. Just beautiful film. And this is for a weird reason. It’s probably actually for one scene I love this film. The Prophecy, with Christopher Walken–
S. FULLWOOD 24:06 Oh, I remember that. Yes.
S. RODNEY 24:08 –where he plays the angel Gabriel. And there’s something really powerful about the way they depict the angels and essentially the guy who plays Satan because it’s really– what’s the word? I want to say sotto voce. It’s really quiet the way they play him. There’s a gesture at some point that Christopher Walken as Gabriel makes, when he just sort of kisses his fingers and gestures behind him and the body of one of the angels of some order I don’t know just combusts. It just lights itself on fire. And it’s powerful and it’s eldritch and it’s weird and–
C.T. WEBB 24:58 Good word. Eldritch is a great word.
S. RODNEY 24:59 Yeah. It’s just beautifully done, and there’s a scene – and I don’t want to say what he says – where the guy who’s Satan confronts this woman who’s trying to basically defy him. And he says something to her, and it is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard in a film. It’s just bone-chilling, and that film is great for that scene.
C.T. WEBB 25:25 So let me amend– I have two things to add. I would like to remove The Fly from my list even though it was a horror film – it would be definitely in a very short list – and insert The Changeling with George C. Scott which was, I think it might– in the ’70s, and a really, really, really good horror film. I think he’s a composer and his family dies and he moves to this house in Seattle in which this girl had been murdered. And there’s a really, really creepy seance scene. And George C. Scott is just amazing. And then I would like to add a scene to my list. It’s not the whole film because in total, I thought the film was not that great. But the scene in Poltergeist 2 where the old, gaunt preacher [laughter] sings that song, that religious song, that hymnal, and then sort of slowly walks up to the house and is like, “Let me in [laughter]. You are going to die.” And that scene probably would still creep me out if I saw it [crosstalk].
S. RODNEY 26:42 Wow. Okay. Cool. So Steven, what are your three?
S. FULLWOOD 26:45 So now you’ve got me thinking. So I thought I had my answer, then I had to go to — so for me, these are the things that connect these three films, and I might mention a fourth one, and that’s blood – but not a lot of blood; it’s kind of what you just said about just a drop–
S. RODNEY 27:02 The toilet seat?
S. FULLWOOD 27:03 –of blood, right? – women and gender and religion. So those are the four things and so Carrie, the Brian de Palma film–
S. RODNEY 27:15 Oh, wow.
C.T. WEBB 27:16 Sure.
S. FULLWOOD 27:17 [crosstalk]. Love that film. And I think that Piper Laurie was terrifying to me, and the religious imagery was terrifying to me. And I was, “Just leave Carrie alone. Stop throwing tampons at her.” And it was just [laughter] [crosstalk]–
S. RODNEY 27:30 I know.
S. FULLWOOD 27:30 –that was Verma [crosstalk] and I thought that Sissy Spacek was perfect. She was absolutely perfect. Nobody was a teen in the film, but that didn’t matter in real life. Then you have The Skin I Live In, the Pedro Almodovar film. And that film is so clinical and cold and the way that he frames it– he’s really great at soap operas. He just does high-tech soap operas to me. And so you’ll find yourself rooting for the wrong person. That’s how dope his shit is.
S. RODNEY 27:59 Damn. Damn.
S. FULLWOOD 28:00 That’s how dope that film is. So please look at The Skin I Live In. You’ll just find yourself going, “What–? Am I–? What’s happening here?” So that, I really, really love that film. And then lastly, the Entity. And this is a 1982 film with Barbra Hershey about a spirit raping this woman. That film tore me up as a kid. I bought the book. I had to have the book. I remember thinking about– I need films that are open-ended, so I don’t need them to resolve. That leaves me a lot of space to get in. I never believe that anything’s over [laughter]. I just think that the film ends [laughter]. So it’s the idea. And so the bonus track here is, the bonus film is Let the Right One In, which I thought–
S. RODNEY 28:44 Oh, great film. Great film. Yes.
S. FULLWOOD 28:45 –was both romantic and loving and terrifying, but it was all about us. The camera was on the audience for me in that film. And so yeah.
S. RODNEY 28:55 Yes. Absolutely. I concur.
S. FULLWOOD 28:57 And not the one that they redid for the US. That’s okay, but Let the Right One In is quiet. Give me quiet. Don’t give me a lot of jump scares. Let me just absorb the full impact of what these people are going through. In fact, this is why I love a lot of foreign films because they don’t have a lot of soundtrack at times. Just let me come along with you as a witness. And so Let the Right One In is– I definitely recommend it, 2008.
S. RODNEY 29:28 Amen to that.
S. FULLWOOD 29:30 A Swedish film.
S. RODNEY 29:30 Because of what you said, Steven, I am going to go out and watch The Skin I Live In and Entity–
S. FULLWOOD 29:35 Yes. Please do.
S. RODNEY 29:36 –because those sound– and Travis’, too. I’m definitely going to watch the Changeling because none of these– I’ve never seen any of these films, and they sound fascinating to me now.
C.T. WEBB 29:45 Yeah. Don’t forget the Satanic jizz in Prince of Darkness [laughter].
S. FULLWOOD 29:50 Don’t forget the Satanic jizz, which is not jizz. Once you watch it, let’s have a conversation about what I think it is [laughter].
S. RODNEY 29:56 When you first said that, I thought, “You know, Travis enjoys saying that a little bit too much [laughter].”
S. FULLWOOD 30:01 I think so, too. I think Travis has got that teen part of him operating.
C.T. WEBB 30:08 Yeah. That’s really funny. I wonder if it brings back the sort of lowbrow humor that got me through my teenage years. Yeah.
S. RODNEY 30:16 Exactly. Exactly.
S. FULLWOOD 30:17 It got us all through our teenage years, yes [laughter].
S. RODNEY 30:19 So we should probably discuss what we’re going to discuss next week because we’re running up on time.
C.T. WEBB 30:25 Yes. All right. So–
S. RODNEY 30:25 What do you think, gentlemen? What’s a good topic?
C.T. WEBB 30:30 Well, I mean, we’re coming up on the mid-terms. I know we haven’t done– we don’t always do politics. We’ve got the mid-terms coming up. I know what we’re doing in two weeks– well, anyway, we’ll talk about that next week, of course.
S. RODNEY 30:42 I think this is a good idea. I do.
C.T. WEBB 30:44 The migrant caravan might be a good thing to talk about, the sort of insane nonsense that is the reporting on the migrant caravan. I mean, there’s so many ways to disassemble that story and look at its constituent parts, but– so yeah–
S. FULLWOOD 31:03 We talk a little bit about the war on the media.
C.T. WEBB 31:04 –I mean, either one of those.
S. FULLWOOD 31:06 And these kinds of ways that we’re shaping, and where you get your– we talked a little bit about it before where we– where do you get your information and how do you process the information?
S. RODNEY 31:14 Boom. Boom. That’s a question. Where do you get your information? I love that. Let’s start it there.
C.T. WEBB 31:22 All right. Where do you get your information? Okay. Yeah. That sounds good. Actually, yeah. Yeah, okay. I like it. So next week for our listeners, we’ll be talking about where do you get your information? And, of course, we’ll flesh that out a little bit. Seph and Steven, thanks very much for the conversation today.
S. RODNEY 31:38 Thank you very much.
S. FULLWOOD 31:38 Indeed. Thank you.
C.T. WEBB 31:39 And have a happy Halloween [laughter].
S. RODNEY 31:46 Thanks very much. Bye.
S. FULLWOOD 31:48 Take care.
S. RODNEY 31:48 Bye-bye.

References

First referenced at 02:57

The Prince of Darkness

The terrifying battle between humankind and ultimate evil. A group of graduate students and scientists uncover an ancient canister in an abandoned church, but when they open the container, they inadvertently unleash a strange liquid and an evil force on all humanity.

First referenced at 09:54

The Cabin In The Woods 

A rambunctious group of five college friends steal away for a weekend of debauchery in an isolated country cabin, only to be attacked by horrific supernatural creatures in a night of endless terror and bloodshed.

First referenced at 13:59

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author of novels, children’s books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction.

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