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Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals
Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals, hosted by Nicole Havelka, helps everyday radicals and world-changers who are tired, but not giving up to find connection, support, and soul-deep inspiration to keep resisting grind culture while staying true to their values.
Nicole Havelka is a burnout survivor, ordained pastor, yoga teacher, and founder of Defy the Trend. She spent years trying to change the world by working harder, staying later, doing more, but realized that real change doesn't come from depletion—it comes from deep, aligned, joyful living. Now, she coaches others to make rest a non-negotiable part of their resistance. Every week, you'll hear honest, unfiltered conversations about what it takes to build differently and rest radically. Episodes talk about resistance, spiritual practice, failure, boundary-setting, burnout, recovery, and the sacred power of saying, “no more".
Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals
Contact (1997): Faith, Science & My Formative Film (Media/Lit Encore)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This is my summer playlist of podcasts where I guested this past year. I am really excited to share this podcast with you because it shows a different side of me that rarely gets out in public. (DIdya know I trained to be a film and theater critic in college?) I was invited on Media/Lit where all media gets treated as great works of literature with hosts Randy Allain and Kris Ingersol. I was overjoyed to invite these generous hosts to watch and discuss one of my all-time favorite movies, Contact (1997). You get to hear why this movie was formative in my journey and how it still resonates with me today.
We cover everything from interstellar transmissions to a killer performance from Jodie Foster. We compare this piece of media to other important cultural texts, and most importantly, we explore the intersection of science and faith. As always, the panel wraps up the chat with an extra credit section in which we pick our “Bardo Buddies” and take home a prop from the film
Want to get in touch? Visit our website & YouTube page! Follow us on YouTube: @MediaLitPodcast, Instagram: @media.lit.pod, Bluesky: @media-lit.bsky.social, and Twitter: @MediaLitPod! Also, hit us with your questions, comments, and episode requests at media.slash.lit@gmail.com.
Chapters
00:00 Nicole's Excitement to be on Media/Lit
01:09 Welcome to Media/Lit (encore)
03:39 Burnout Recovery Coaching in Challenging Times
04:59 Introduction to Contact (1997)
11:32 Insights on Rewatching Contact's Famous Intro
17:46 Personal Connections to the Movie
28:20 Gender Representation in the Film
33:40 The Role of Science and Faith in the Narrative
37:19 Contact as Literature: CGI Corner
43:27 Themes of the Film
55:18 Pop Culture References and their Impact
59:43 Contact Comparatives
01:08:09 Favorite Performance in the Film
01:20:40 Favorite Scenes
01:30:10 Most Quotable Line
01:46:15 Who is your Bardo Buddy?
01:52:21 What prop would you take?
02:00:22 Closing
02:06:07 Nicole's Final Thoughts on Media/Lit
CONNECT WITH RANDY, KRIS & MEDIA/LIT:
Website: https://mediaslashlit.weebly.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MediaLitPodcast
Instagram: @media.lit.pod
Bluesky: @media-lit.bsky.social
Twitter: @MediaLitPod
CONNECT WITH NICOLE HAVELKA:
Nicole is going nomadic. No lease. No car. Just one question: how do I actually want to live? Join the Rest Rebel Collective for $7/month or $70/year and get front row seats to her Year of Expansion with exclusive monthly live video — plus you keep Just Rest in your podcast feed. → defythetrend.substack.com
The Calm Calendar Club is a brain-friendly planning community for neurodivergent adults, ADHD minds, and sandwich-generation caregivers who are tired of systems that don’t fit real life. We help you build a flexible, values-based calendar that reduces chaos and protects your energy. This low-cost, community-based program is ready for you at defythetrend.com/calm-calendar.
Send me a message via Speakpipe.
A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.
Hey Rest Rebels I have really been looking forward to sharing this podcast with you, which is going to reveal a side of me that you probably haven't heard before. Around the time I was crowdfunding to pay for the launch of Just Rest. I got invited very unexpectedly by Randy Allain and Kris Ingersoll to be a guest on their podcast, Media/ Lit. This is a podcast where they invite people like me to bring a favorite and formative TV show or movie to discuss with them. We talk about everything from the interplay of science and faith to sexism in the sciences to how this movie helped me own my own sense of call, and how the lead of the movie, Dr. Ellie Arroway, played very ably by Jodie Foster, gave me the valuable example of a smart, driven woman living life on her own terms. I really could go on and on because I so enjoyed being on this podcast. Without further ado, let's jump into my episode on Media/ Lit. Hello and welcome to Media Lit, where we treat each piece of Media/ like great literature. I'm your host Randy Allain and joining me as always is the wonderful Kris Ingersoll. Kris, how are you doing tonight? So good, buddy. You we're coming off a couple of special episodes. We've done some spooky season stuff. And tonight we've got a good old fashioned Media/ lit. We've got a great topic assigned to us by a great new guest, one of my favorite types of nights, and I think you know that. But how are you? I'm also feeling incredible. I'm happy to do just like a fully traditional Media/ lit episode, as you mentioned. And we're going back to our roots, Kris. ~ as is well documented on this podcast, we met over our shared love for podcasting, specifically our love of the storm and house of our. We met over a slack, and ~ we tonight get to podcast with another one of our slacker buddies, and this is the great Nicole Havelka. Who is just about to release the Just Rest Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals this is a new podcast launching in December or January. So we are coming up on that launch date. Nicole, how are you doing tonight? And tell us a little bit about your pod. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I love nerding out about favorite movies and other things. So this is ~ This is so fun and different than what I normally do in my social Media/ life. So thank you. So the the podcast is coming along. I did the reason we met was because I posted in Slack about crowdfunding for the launch of the podcast, which is absolutely not technically necessary. I could DIY this, but ~ I've been a small business owner for about six years or maybe longer now. And I am really tired of DIYing things. So and and fronting my own money for things. So I did and still am. I still have a little bit more to raise for the actually. I'm just almost there. I have about $1,400 more to raise.~ but the anyway, the podcast, Just Rest, burnout tips for everyday radicals is going to be conversations with world changers who are out there trying to do their good in the world. And who are also trying to get enough rest. So, what I do for my business is that I'm a burnout recovery coach and sustainability strategist ~ for organizations and businesses that don't to burn their people out in the first place. So that's that's the reason for the podcast. And so that I get to c talk to really cool people about what they do and how they want to change the world and hopefully inspire people to,~ I don't know, fight authoritarianism and and do all kinds of other really good things and make a a better, greater world even out of the mess we're in. Love that. What a what a wonderful niche to have found yourself in in this very hurried world. It's a weird niche, that's for sure. It's cool. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I don't think I can think of anything more relatable than like burnout and trying to affect positive change in your world. Everyone's grappling with that in what in some form or another. Even if we don't all see it the same way, everyone has that on their minds. So yeah, I'm I'm really excited for the podcast. I'm excited to listen. And we're really excited to have you on the show with us tonight because we know you're like minded and you appreciate the same sort of conversations that we do. ~ so Kris. they already read it in the subject line, but what are we talking about tonight? Yeah, yeah, we we always love to bury the lead on the pod as if it's not published in the feed already. But tonight we get to go back in time,~ not via wormhole, but via the television in front of us, because we're going back to 1997 to revisit Robert Zemeckis' Contact, one of my favorite movies. ~ I was not pleasantly reminded upon this rewatch. Really, what a tremendous film. Homework assigned to us by the fantastic Nicole, and I am So grateful to have had the reason to re watch it.~ but before we can talk about it, folks at home need to know what it's about in case you missed nineteen ninety seven's Contact Randy, can you hit us with your signature synopsis? Yeah, so my signature synopsis is my sometimes overly convoluted summary of a property. ~ with some films and television series and and things, I can keep it light. Other times there are so many layers I have a hard time. This one was a little bit lengthier. I had a really hard time making cuts without, you know, kind of losing what was at the center of the film. Nevertheless, there are some things that I probably passed over, some things I might have joked about lovingly.~ so at the end. Please feel free to jump in. You can either yes and me, or if you might have framed something a little bit differently, I'd love to hear an alternate take. so let's go. Mm-hmm. Contact 1997. Ellie Arrowway is defined by her lifelong search for connection and answers to the existential questions of the universe. While communicating with Saratoga over a ham radio is an early thrill. She dreams of hearing voices from beyond our world. Ellie's passion becomes ensconced in empirical science as she distinguishes herself within her field. She shocks her mentor when she devotes her talent to Seti in the search for extraterrestrial transmissions. Despite her technical expertise, her patriarchal peers see her as a dreamer. Even her most supportive colleagues sometimes shift from admiration to pity. Ironically, the person who understands her best is a sexy theologian named Palmer Jos. A walking daddy issue who would have become a man of the cloth if it weren't for that whole celibacy thing. After burning a lot of bridges to keep her research afloat, Ellie finally gets the transmission she's been dreaming of her entire life. Once her hard work pays off, a series of vultures swoop in to take credit and or mime the discovery for intellectual and material gain. When Ellie and the team finally decode the alien transmission, they uncover blueprints for a machine that is designed for a single passenger. As the world takes a collective leap of faith to build the mystery device, Earth's power brokers develop a diverse team of experts to handpick a single passenger to represent humanity. Ellie loses out due to her refusal to play politics, but when a domestic terrorist sabotages the machine and kills her asshole former mentor, Ellie is next in line to pilot a top secret backup orchestrated by tech mogul weirdo and Ellie's patron saint. SR Haddon. Ellie puts her life on the line, has a mind-bending but life affirming trip, and confirms that there is a scattered intergalactic network of civilizations out there leaning on one another for support. Sadly, nobody can perceive that she traveled since only a couple of seconds passed in Earth time, and the expedition is panned as a failure. In fact, Opportunistic National Security Advisor Michael Kitts paints her as delusional and spins the whole affair as a hoax orchestrated by Haddon. It sucks. But Ellie finds comfort in the power of her experience and in the arms of her hot priest. Just as viewers feel the rug has been pulled out from under them, the White House chief of staff reveals that Kitts is hiding a key piece of information. Ellie's camera somehow recorded eighteen hours of static in the mere seconds it took for her sphere to drop into that safety net. And that, my friends, is Carl Sagan's contact for Carl. any yes ands or revisions? Thought I had you this time as I listened to the very end. And then you you closed it with Carl. And that was always waiting to hear.~ no great synopsis as always. efficient, impressively efficient considering how dense this movie is across~ just north of two and a half hours. And still still managed to sneak in some cheek for what is ~ generally a self serious film. So kudos to keeping it fun. Thank you. Nicole, any yes ands or alternate takes? Just the yes and is that her her mentor,~ David Drumlin is just a prick. Like ~ such a political prick. I would just give more words to that. It's you you got it. You nailed it, but I would just add that. When he repeats the we lovingly call him Elmer soundbite for the second time, I almost threw up. ~ Yeah. You know, his we'll get into it, but his mustache is much reduced from his appearance in Top Gun.~ and he deserves that. So, anywho, thank you, Randy, as always, for your wonderful synopsis. ~ we said this is a pretty traditional Media/ lit tonight, but we're still gonna play some games. We've got to do a little mini-game to get ourselves warmed up here.~ this film, if you are familiar with it, opens up with a pretty iconic bit of~ audio work, really tremendous overlay of all these radio transmissions in outer space, kind of come crashing in after a a silent opening credit card. So I'm curious for you both, what would ~ if you could add like one thing to a transmission that's going into the outer space, it's gonna reach intelligent life, what would you want to make sure was included? Nicole, we'll go to you first. So I have I as I've said ~ well I said before we turned on record that I've seen this movie dozens of times. Like that's not even exaggeration. But I've never watched it with closed captioning before. And so these two rewatches that I did before the pod, I watched so I looked at the closed captioning and I've watched that opening. Now that I knew that this was gonna be a question, I l watched that opening sequence probably a six times or seven times. And what Stuns me is there's not a single female voice in all of the like the political stuff that gets interspersed with music and other pop culture references. There's not a single woman's voice in there. And granted, this is 1997, and finding those would have been a little harder at the time, but I even started brainstorming. I'm like, you couldn't have picked a Barbara Walters. Or Geraldine Ferraro would have been nominated for vice president by that~ I was trying to think of other women like Margaret Thatcher, you know, there's any number who would have been in the TV age that they could picked. ~ but if I were gonna add like a pop culture thing, I would drop in REM's it's the end of the world as we know it. Yes. Featured featured to perfect effect in Independence Day. Yeah. Correct. Association with some aliens. No, really or used to perfect effect and what a great inclusion. Love that. ~ yeah, spot on. Randy, what about you? Yeah, so I I thought I was gonna pick something fun, but like this movie hit me on such an existential level. one of my many love languages, can we get into existential stuff?~ and I was thinking like we we do get a little MLK drop mixed in there. We get a little bit of I have a dream.~ but I would love a little sound bite ~ from I've been to the mountaintop, you know, this final speech he gives the night before he's assassinated. there are so many great sound bites in there.~ but when I'm thinking about both, you know, as much as I hate Kitz in this movie and his like constant concerns of a security threat, as much as I hate him, he's not wrong to be curious about security when it comes to interacting with a new civilization. ~ I don't think he's the guy I want handling the job, by any stretch of the imagination.~ But I was thinking there there are so many great moments in that speech, but specifically like his telling of the story of the Good Samaritan,~ in that speech, you know, where he says, and so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the Good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question. If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? ~ and to hear that and MLK's voice,~ with his oration, ~ would be incredibly powerful.~ and I even kind of jumped ahead to the end of that speech.~ you know, where MLK says, I would love to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I am not concerned about that now. And he he's got all these aspirational ideas. So what a great way to communicate that we intend this as a friendly transmission. We're not naive. We know this is risky,~ but we want to build a positive connection. Love that. Not at all surprised the depth you were able to mine out of this fun mini game. Thank you for taking us ~ taking us there. Really what a a beautiful choice.~ and to your point, in his oration, in his voice. ~ the words they have extra a little extra depth that way, figuratively and l literally. Love that.~ I was also thinking of a a fairly famous Speech, ~ less famous, I think, though, but maybe more modern.~ do you guys remember where sunscreen? Yes. Baz Lurman, ~ yeah, it's like just a spoken word. And it's it's it reads like a commencement speech. It was taken from a sort of hypothetical commencement speech that was once once published. ~ I don't know. I've always found this to be so poignant in the most approachable way. There's something very inherently sort of silly about the punchline, right? ~ that the advice here, the core of this commencement speech is to wear sunscreen, but it is absolutely so much more than that throughout.~ I think we are more than that. We are layers, we contain multitudes. I really like the idea of sending this out to some other intelligent life to experience us. ~ we are strange and we are curious. And I think that ~ that is a really kind of fun modern way of capturing our humanity. Beautiful stuff. I love it. See Yeah. I almost went much sillier than that, if I may smuggle. I'm like yes sometimes apologetically, mostly unapologetically, a huge Kevin Smith fan. And I really love those Jay and Silent Bob films and like the opening that very crass opening rap to Jay and Silent Bob strike back when they're standing in front of the the store. ~ Part of me would really like to include that.~ but I'm afraid that we would just alienate the aliens that way. So I I withheld. Perfect stuff. Well, I want to thank you both for playing that mini game, Kris. Thanks for leading us through it. But this is Media/ lit, so we've got to get into our personal connections.~ now I've seen the movie Contact before, but it had been a while. I didn't have any deep formative memories here, and I reached out to Kris. We both had a little something. So before we get into like really going deep with Nicole on her history, I just want to shout out my best sort of like personal connection to this movie.~ is I had this one friend in high school,~ who was brilliant, st remains brilliant to this day. he was accepted into the inaugural class at the Olin College of Engineering, which is this yeah, very very highly advanced, very selective institution. I think there were something like only seventy-five people from the entire maybe selected. ~ I'm making up that seventy-five, but I'm in the ballpark. The reason I bring this up is I remember going to his house one day, I think it was to work on a project for school,~ and he was always like on the cutting edge of technology. So this would have been probably like 2001-ish, somewhere in that vicinity. ~ and I saw all this like funky data on his computer, and I was like, like, what is this?~ and he was one of the early adopters of the SETI at home program, where they would kind of like mine out like data processing to like individual people. So I remember him doing that back ~ in high school and that was like my first memory of this whole like SETI phenomenon making a personal connection. Wow, that is so like much more literal than I ever expected it to be. Wow. Do you have something more abstract, Kris? I know you said you had like one little tidbit to sneak in here. Yeah, well, my experience is just much more closely related to the film itself. I don't remember my very first viewing of the film because we were like a a movie family. We saw stuff that came out. We like to go to the blockbuster, rent the VHS, what what have you.~ so I don't recall the very first viewing of this, but I do recall a film class in high school, Mr. Muchica. Shout out to Mr. Muchica. This was the very first film that was shown to me with the intention of like there's more to To this than just watching it. We can talk about this. We can explore this. We can dive deep into this. And I had kind of like memory hold that until this episode came about and I reflected on this film. I was like, ~ my gosh, there was something very formative about watching this movie in high school in that context with that teacher who invited us to think more about it, to take it beyond just what was on the screen and get into the subtext and into the themes and really appreciate the craft that was on display. He was a a wonderful educator. be challenging to the people that that didn't take to him very well. But he and I got on nicely. He was my senior year English teacher. I think I took T V production with him in a film class. And contact, yeah, it was one of the very first films that I got to really appreciate as a work of of art and not just entertainment. Beautiful. Well, those are some quick connections for Kris and I, but we are here to talk with Nicole. Nicole, you assigned us this homework. you mentioned to us earlier off the pod, like you've watched this movie dozens of times over the years. So Nicole, I've got to ask, what is your earliest memory associated with contact? And also do you connect this film with any specific relationships in your life? Yeah, this is a great question. So I'm I think I'm just a a little older than the two of you. So ~ I know that just from listening to the pod. So, but you'll also remember these. So I was probably 24 when this came out. So I was just out of college and I went to see this movie in the theater with a my roommate at the time. And I I was blown away by it. And as we've just said It's a long movie. Like it's I mean, bar movies barely get made that are two and a half plus hours ever, but certainly not anymore. ~ and ~ the one of the distinct memories of watching it in the theater was that I was so enthralled, and we'll get to this later, but in that section where she's taking the journey, like the wormhole journey, which is long for ~ any like if you got made that now, it would probably be two and a half minutes or something. It's much longer than that. And ~ I remember I had gotten like the big drink and the big popcorn and I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I couldn't leave. Like so that's one of my most like it's such a bodily memory of seeing it the first time.~ and then I was a big ~ at the time I was working ~ as a journalist and I had actually aspired to be a TV and or like a movie and theater critic ~ in my early days. Like I had worked as a community journal at like a Community journalism in the Chicago suburbs at the time. That's where I was living then. And ~ and so I was just enthralled by this movie and it asked such big questions and I just adored it. And my my roommate who loved movies, and I was just wax then when we left, I was waxing poetic about all these, like the deeper meaning that we'll get into a little bit later, these things that I was seeing in it. And I remember her saying, I loved it, but like I didn't see all of that stuff that You're talking about. So that's sort of my initial memory of it. And then you all probably remember the days when you couldn't just dial up any movie that was ever made using your remote control and a tiny device to attach to your television, right? Which you can now. Like then what I used to do because I was a journalist and made virtually no money is wait until the video would be, you know, the video store had like a gajillion copies of them initially when new releases came out. And then they'd sell them off for like five dollars or less. And I bought a VHS copy of this movie as soon as I it was available as as soon as it was like three dollars in the three dollar bin or whatever. I watched that this was a movie then I had that and I had a really bad insomnia problem at the time. And so this was one of the movies I would put in to try to get myself to sleep. So like I so some of it is that I've probably absorbed it by being like being asleep while watching this movie a lot. So like I would watch part of it. And I'd seen it so many times at this point that you can sort of pop. It was one of those things you could sleep through and pop in and out of, because I had seen it so many times. But probably even more significantly in terms of my relationship with it, this is just before it was when I was ex so I was at that age where I was exploring those big questions. I was like, ~ what is life all about? And are we connected and are we are are we alone and all of those sorts of things? So this was. in nineteen ninety seven. I probably had that VHS in nineteen ninety-eight, you know. ~ and then ~ through a very interesting and weird series of events, after growing up Roman Catholic, I felt a call to ministry and I went to I like ended up going to ~ seminary. And so one of the things that I I was sort of an I had been a journalist, so I was sort of an anti-academic in some ways. Like I was smart, I could do the work ~ in grad school.~ but When I did my final constructive theology paper, which you had to do and defend as part of this masters, I included movies as source material, including the other sort of theologians and Bible references and things like that that you're expected to do. And Contact was one of like five or six movies that it in there. And Kris will be interested to know one of the other movies that made it into there was Dogma, Yeah. which is one of also one of my all time favorite movies. That's one of my formative films from what I was finding myself as well, so great. It's actually really good theology in it too. yeah. It's got great theology. It is excellent theology. I agree. The DVD is in the closet behind me. I could reach for it right now if I wanted to. Great film. Yeah, one of my favorites. So the relationship isn't so much like associating a relationship with a person, but it was more like the movie was was sort of a way for me to explore my own and this will make me sound really like weirdo religious person, which I'm actually not quite like that or a little woo-woo, but like, well, I am woo-woo. Who's not? Who am I kidding? So like the best Yeah. ~ of us are exactly Listen, the the bar for that definition has really shifted in recent years, so I think you're good. True. I'm good. So that that is very true. The bar has shifted on the religious nuts. What does this mean? But I think it was like it was a window or a way for me to explore my own relationship with God and with my faith at the time because I had rejected being religious at all as a teen and then like back to it then in my like mid mid and later twenties. And It was a window for finding for me for finding faith again.~ and my memory of this was that it was a little later, like it was more like concurrent with when I started seminary, but it's like three years apart, which I found so there was something about it that I think triggered me. I mean, the other part of why I love it, I think, and this is I'm seeing this now with a 2025 lens as someone who's 52, so a different, like a different lens that I I think. The character of Ellie Airaway made me feel seen in a way that I never had been. Like a smart driven woman who wasn't as worried about getting married and having kids and like just someone who's driven and smart and br and prickly. Like the she's she's aggressive and like doesn't has trouble filtering herself. And I I that makes me feel seen because I also am prickly and have trouble filtering myself. Only now as someone in you know slightly past middle age, I just don't care anymore. Like I don't feel the need to soften my edges, which is things people have actually said to me.~ but I don't do that anymore. I'm like, I don't really care. But but that I think that character really made me feel seen, although I didn't have words for that quite yet then. I really, really dig that. I'm I'm in the midst of a a Game of Thrones watch right now. I've never seen the show before and you immediately just brought~ Lady Olena Tyrrell to to mind. Yeah, also prickly. Yeah, well just that is isn't gonna isn't gonna soften the edges. Right. Not like This might be like the most Jodie Foster part that Jodie Foster has ever played. Right? But like, yeah, she she throws her weight around. She shows her anger in a way that that I have at least observed society often punishing women for doing. ~ in a way that that men don't tend to get punished the same way for doing.~ so I love I love seeing her go for it in this movie. Love that. Okay. ~ I'm so grateful to have gotten to know so much about you just for those first few answers and how much this film really did shape so much of your personal life. ~ so you love this movie. I think we've talked about that we love it too.~ but we have to ask, we always do. Does it have any flaws? What do you think, Nicole? For sure. I think you can love things and like highlight their flaws. I have no issue with that. I told you I trained to be a film and theater critic, so I was like, you can love things and have and critic criticize them. I you know, I expected to say that it's too long. but I after watching it t ~ twice for this again, I I don't know what I would cut. You know, like I I'm sure there's like little people who know editing probably can come up with better answers to that, that they could shave certain things down. And I would especially said that last section where she takes the journey could be shorter, but I just don't want to shortchange that at all now.~ I'm glad they kept it the way they did. But so I expected to say that. But what I think I would say is that I'm I'm now annoyed. And I wish I didn't think that I had I'm now annoyed by the fact that when they this screenplay, even though they center a woman and they do a great job of centering her, and like I just said, she's allowed to be prickly and angry and all those things that she tends that women are just generally on film not allowed allowed to be, or in real life for that matter, aren't allowed to be. ~ they also have to frame her story with men. Yeah. Which isn't true in the book, which is interesting. I didn't I read the book after I saw the movie. And like Palmer Joss is an afterthought. Yeah. You know, the the ~ so that relationship doesn't exist in the book.~ I don't think they ever meet each other in the book. And it's been over twenty years since I've read it, so I might be forgetting something. Her the the loss of her father is a significant thing, but you don't get all these flashbacks, like you would get You know, that's just a different medium, I think. Sure. ~ but that they really wanted to frame it with that, and then you know, Palmer Jos almost sort of subs in for like this, like her dad in a way. you know, I think it emotionally there's like,~ he's like her dad, you know, like there's that connection between them and that's part of the attraction. Not the whole thing, but that's part of it for her. And so that annoys me about the film is that they have to frame that because in the book. Her mom is actually alive. And ~ they have a very estranged relationship. You know, like she had this relationship with her dad, and then when he died, like they never really can which happens a lot if there's like a death of a parent early in life.~ what if you had pulled that thread? Yeah. If you needed to frame the film with relationships, why couldn't it have been a female relationship? So I I would like to see that version of the movie. I love this version of movie, like I said, but I would like to see the other version too. Yeah, love that. Really ~ thoughtful thoughtful answer. I can I agree. Randy, did you have something that you wanted to share? Well, I was just gonna confess that I've not read the book, but maybe that answers one of my questions because, you know, I joked in the synopsis that that Palmer is a walking daddy issue.~ 'cause the way that plays out in the movie is like that's his whole game, right? Like like she gets turned on after he goes after her shitty mentor.~ he like repeats the quote from the dad. He doesn't know he's repeating it, but you know, seems like a waste of space is there. later on their next steamiest moment gets interrupted when he's telling her to prove it that she that she loved her dad. And he he I think he's trying to get at like a theological point about belief. But you know, the the chemistry is really running on all cylinders in that moment. So yeah, maybe that maybe that's part of where this is coming in this stand in for the influence of the dad.~ maybe they weren't even fully aware of how much that dipped into their romantic entanglement in this movie. Yeah, I think so. I did a little reading and like there's actually it actually started as a screenplay, which is interesting. Like that they wrote they had written a I don't remember what they call it, but not a full screenplay. Both Carol Sagan and his wife, who's a writer. ~ nice. And Annie someth I'm forgetting the last name. I'll maybe look it up, but like they actually wrote the stuff together, but she's not credited, not for contact anyway. Maybe other books he wrote they were, but ~ So anyway, they had written a treatment, they had trouble getting it made, and then ~ they wrote the book because they couldn't get the film made and then eventually kept hacking away at trying at a screenplay, and then d a number of different writers were associated with it until they finally found kind of the right team. And it really got apparently casting Jodie Foster pushed it over the edge. Yep. Like is what got it made. Not surprisingly, she was like the it girl at this point. And she had what just won two Oscars. So ~ that helped push the film into getting made. Glad glad that it did. I did have only only one flaw to share to kind of piggyback off of your point because as as I was watching this, and again to your point, it isn't too long. I thought that that could be a valid answer. It's almost three hours, but it would be like a cynical take to say that you could cut this movie down. I think everything that's in it is is worth taking the time with if you're enjoying the film. That being said, I also noticed like and much of it is textual and subtextual, like the the patriarchy of it all in this film. But I don't think intentional was what you observed. The fact that they they had to frame the narrative in this way. And as a result of that, one of the only meaningful interactions she has with another female character in the film isn't meaningful at all. Yeah. It's her turning to the White House chief of staff. Yeah. Angela Bassett's character. Angela. Angela Bassett. And I was so disappointed watching it this time around because she leaves that room. It was a frustrating moment for her, like in this room with. With these men. And she walks out and she gets Angela Bassett's attention. She asks if she can speak with her. And Angela Bassett immediately closes the folder and is like, yeah, what's what's going on? And it's where can I get a great dress? And that is the one interaction that we see these two women who like, this is the White House chief of staff. What a wonderful positioning for this woman of color in this film. I was, I again, I didn't have the freshest memory on this. So I for a moment was hopeful that she was the president when they cut to. The the power walk, the walk and talk down the hall before we got Clinton, which is just tickling. ~ but ~ I was shocked, disappointed that these two women who I ~ are are put in interesting positions of power who do certainly subvert what the expectations were likely the expectations in society at the time, not likely you'd catch this woman of color as the the White House chief of staff in real life in nineteen ninety seven, but still. As they're making this film, they felt the need to like these two characters, what they share, what they can bond over, is where you can get a great dress in DC. Yeah. So bummer. That's all. And I would just yes, San that like I wanted more of Miss Constantine. Yeah. Just in general, like what is her story? We could do a whole second contact two and include, you know, include more of the two of them. I would love to see more of just more Angela Bassett, please. There's something yeah. Something simmering under the surface between them throughout this film. You can see that there's like a shared respect and it's Angela Bassett who notes the eighteen hours and yeah, I love contact too, where she goes to bat for Jodie Foster's character. Right. I need the world to know that we've got 18 hours of footage from that two-second drop. I need the world to know. James Woods is not gonna tell the world. Unfortunate. Well, that does bring us to the end of our opening section here, the personal connections bit. And it's time to talk about this film as~ this is going to be for the whole group, we'll take some turns here going around the horn with each question.~ as we mentioned earlier in the chat, this film has aged pretty well. It's not perfect, but it has aged really well. let's each try to share a moment here where the CGI was really strong, and maybe a moment where the CGI Just took us out completely. ~ Nicole, we'll go to you first. Yeah, I I really think almost anything with the machine is pretty incredible, especially for 1997. Yeah, we would get like sharper edges on the machine and we would get like it would just be so much more vibrant if they did it now. But I think for 1997, that's where the budget went was on for CG is was on the machine. And then ~ the I think it's after the I think it's after the first machine is blown up and then it's when Haddon puts the satellite in in Ellie Airaway's like little apartment or whatever, so he can call her from the in motel or wherever she's at. And Mir, like he's on Mir, the space station. And he looks like one of those flat cardboard cutouts as he's like floating. It's the worst CG ever. And I'm like, clearly they spent all the budget on the machine, not on that space that moment where he's floating, like trying to float toward a thing. Like You didn't even need to do that. Like just c that's one place where you could just cut that out and like show him sitting at a computer monitor or something. Like ~ but it was so that was one moment where I was like,~ like I cringed audibly and and got out of the movie because I saw that. There's a few other spots that are I think less cringe we cringy, but that was the one that really strikes me, I think. You isolated the exact one I was going to mention. I wasn't even certain if it was CG versus actually just bad practical effects. And he was on like a really bad harness. He definitely wasn't floating through a zero gravity environment. It was so stilted. Great call out. Absolutely spot on. Randy, ~ what about you? Something that worked really well, and you gotta pick a new one for Well, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna cheat here. I'm gonna yes and by like a just adding to the conversation about the machine. Cause it really is incredible.~ the design evokes something otherworldly without getting pinned down in explanations. but what I really like about it is not just that the CG itself is good. ~ and we do get some close-up shots, yes. But most of the time when we're looking at it. It is it's framed in the distance. We're seeing it from an observation window. It's framed against an interesting backdrop. It's put into this real environment in a way that makes that effect more timeless. you know, I think in a modern day we they'd be tempted to just have us spinning in that gyro for like fifteen minutes, and you'd start to think about how fake it looked. But I was more focused on how real it looked.~ in terms of the fake out, yeah, mirror was also my number one that that silly little float away. But I will add, ~ this isn't really a knock on the movie because I think it looks beautiful. And I loved the opening sequence. But as they are pulling us through all these star systems and galaxies, at some point, like about two thirds of the way through, sort of like the layering of those images starts to get like a little choppy and feel a tiny bit like copy and paste it on. It's not egregious, not like the mirror thing, but that was one moment where the age was showing from me just a little bit. Some of those layers started to get a a little too obvious. It's like almost like the the software they were using was still just a little too primitive to that up. It like almost too simple what they were doing and the technology. Yeah. I'm with you. great call out. I want to further yes and the machine bit. Obviously, this was the moment of biggest CGI, where I think they really succeeded. To your point, Randy, they kind of picked their spots well. Yep. There were times where they enhanced the ~ otherworldly nature of it, right? Like when we're actually in this Pensacola, facsimile, which shout out to seeing a fax come in labeled facsimile in this film, real time capsule moment. But then we get that kind of a facsimile of her father and of Pensacola for her to to be in. And in that space, it doesn't look real, but that's good. Like it it feels otherworldly. It feels like she should be questioning it. Like she should come to the conclusion that this isn't this isn't real. Like the father feels like he's there and not there at the same time. That was all they picked their spots beautifully. But what I want to highlight more specifically is in the sphere itself, when she's having those when the it's becoming translucent. And we're getting glimpses through the space. And then later it's kind of wherever her gaze goes, wherever she points the light, she can the the wall becomes translucent. She'll see out into the wider galaxy. That was all used to tremendous effect, I felt. at no point did it look like she was looking at just an image pasted on the wall inside the sphere. It looked like very much that sphere had. at chains and she was glancing through with that.~ there was a technology beyond our pers our perception at work. Like another good example is when the door of the sphere gets put on and the seams just disappear. It was a wonderful ~ production choice there.~ yeah, Chef's guest really, really well done. So I think they picked their spots well to make sure that they were able to maximize that great CGI ~ and not leave us in any one moment long enough to really say, hmm, that looks like a man on cardboard floating through space. Hmm. So the spot that I want to call out then, if we're if you've already done ~ SR Haddon, I don't know why this struck me as so darn fake looking and almost frustrating. They open up, it's like after the big ~ courtroom moment at the end. She's been in front of this panel, a congressional hearing of some kind, and they like open up the doors onto Washington, DC. And there's like that whole crowd out there. Mm-hmm. That's not there. Like we're shooting from inside the building, and the building is real, and what's outside of the building is not real. And then they they cut to like her walking down the stairs through that crowd, and you could like they framed that, and that's all happening. But all those people, it looks super flat. It looks like a picture of a bunch of people standing in a field. ~ it's like too bright out there. That was the moment that that that very real, earthly moment that I was like, that looks so fake. Yeah, I think those are perfect shout-outs, Kris. ~ so yeah, we we talked about the CGI. It largely came out well, but let's get into the themes here.~ so our next little segment here, I'm gonna call this ~ woman of science, man of faith. ~ I mentioned earlier that the three of us met over a podcast, the podcast that covered the television series Lost. we are all lost fans, losties, whatever you want to call us. that question of science versus faith. It's it's one of the big themes in the universe, but certainly a big theme of lost in here. We have a woman of science in Ellie and a man of faith in Palmer Jos. And certainly the line gets blurred at times between all those things. But ~ I was just curious, what do you think this film has to say about this of science versus faith and whether or not they can live in harmony? Kris, I'm gonna go to you first on this one. What does this movie have to say? Really interesting to me that this was conceptualized by Carl Sagan, right? I think that a lot of folks like to point to Carl Sagan as like the supreme sort of naturalist, right? Like the great thinker, not somebody that you closely associate with theological musings, right? But I do think this film i is interested in simply asking the big This film is, I think, very interested in inviting all of us. To admit we don't know. I love the close closing sequence where Ellie connects with that group of children. Yeah. After her experience now, she's much more available to Earth in a way that she wasn't available to Earth before.~ I thought it was interesting that SR Haddon noted that she turned down the teaching position at Harvard. Yep. Right. She wasn't interested in using her knowledge and her gifts to really touch other people. She was looking outside of the world. And then you in the end, she's not she's connecting now and she's giving her time to these kids and she's ~ she's in a much different place. But the big questions are still there, and I love the way she congratulates that child. It's a good answer. And that child wants to know are there is there other life out there? And Ellie doesn't know the answer. And she asks him what he thinks, and he says, I don't know. Good answer, she says. And I really think that's what Carl Sagan wants to say here. We have big. Huge questions. And when we fall short as humans is when we think we have the answer. More importantly, it's when we fall short and we are sure that somebody else doesn't have the I don't know for sure, but I know what you think isn't right. And that's kind of where we find Ellie early in this film when she's challenging~ the faith of of what's his name there, Palmer. He asks her, you know, what why the aliens? And her questions are the questions, why are we here? Who are we? What's the purpose of all this? Those are very spiritual questions. Depending on who you're talking to, I suppose. So it's interesting. I think this film wants to have us seeing both of those questions, those big, big, big questions being asked on both sides of the coin by the spiritual and by the scientific.~ and and the right answer is we we don't know. We need to stay together as we walk the journey to finding out. Yeah. Beautiful stuff. Nicole, how about for you? How does this film tackle that question of science versus faith or the union of science and faith or however you want to approach it? Yeah, I mean, I like you, I couldn't stop thinking about Lost rewatching it.~ I I'm not sure that I've watched the movie since watching Lost, interestingly enough. Like that's probably true. They probably overlapped. I mean, I was probably in my insomnia phase while I was watching Lost, and I probably was re-watching this movie, but for whatever reason I've never ~ never quite consciously made that connection before. And ~ I actually like the treatment of of that question of that science versus zert versus faith slightly better in this movie than I do even in Lost, which I love, by the way, because they make it so ~ so diametrical, like so one or the other. Like s you know, like it's a you know, it I don't know. I don't ~ there's things about that that I don't like. But I like Jack have big questions. Yeah. No, no, Jack doesn't really have big questions. He's like, no, it's just What we see is what we get. Like he he really doesn't go beyond that, versus the two main characters here who are opposed in some way, but not really. They I mean, his comment, Palmer Joss's comment at the end when the press is saying, Well, what do you do you believe her? And he says, you know, we're we're bound by I love this line, is like we're bound by a different covenant, but we're pursuing the same thing. We're pursuing truth. Yeah. And and I think that is a really key. piece of this that I think that that it's a both and like there it's just two different ways of getting at the same thing, I think is what this film is trying to say on some level. That it's just we're all exploring the same questions, just one one person is doing it by being an astronomer, one person is doing it by being a theologian, someone else is doing it in yet another way. And I I don't think they're not opposed. They're like interrelated and and they can sort of coexist. Which I which is such a lovely and refreshing thing, especially for the days we find ours like it's more relevant now than it was in 1997 and it was relevant then to the conversation. And so I love that. I love that about it for sure. And I think one of the other things I wrote down in my notes, I think after my first rewatch was was that I think another point, maybe a little bit more subtle, is that like both good science and good theology is at its heart about connection. Mm. And and like you had said, like she's totally changed by this experience. And she says that in that final speech in the congressional hearing, that is really one of my favorite speeches of all time, perhaps in all of film, which is saying something because I've watched a lot of a lot of TV movies. ~ I I just love that. So like that she is changed, she's connecting in a different way. And I hadn't quite thought of it that way before, Kris. So thank you for giving me that insight. That's lovely. Yeah, like as I mentioned on this podcast from time to time,~ grew up in a a quite religious household. My my father went to the seminary for a while, and while he did not choose to pursue the priesthood ultimately,~ religion remained a really big part of his life and how he interacted with me and taught me things. So as much as the end of this movie pains me, where she doesn't get to know the detail about the eighteen hours of static, it's kind of the most religious thing in the movie, right? Because she's able to find A piece that's based on a sort of faith versus this empirical evidence, right? Like if she had that, she would still have her empirical evidence, her aha moment. She could keep fighting.~ and it's tough because I love Ellie fighting, but I also feel like Ellie deserves to be at peace. And maybe that's also the most lost thing about this whole movie, someone who needs to fight, but also deserves to be at rest, is something that's happening here. I just have two quick things I want to add. The first one is when I was re-watching Contact, at one point I paused and went on like a 30 minute search through YouTube because I was desperately trying to find this one talk I remembered watching a while back~ with Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson.~ and I found I found the clip I was looking for. And you know, they are talking about the possibility of life on other planets and How they both believe it's likely true, but the you know the probabilities of us ever encountering discovering this life are are so low based on like the vastness of the universe. And it's this really interesting conversation.~ but I love the way Neil deGrasse Tyson gets at the question. and he makes this comp to ~ a worm crawling out of the earth. You've seen a worm crawl out of the earth onto the ground, and you know. You probably have never stopped to think very much or care what that worm is thinking. You know, at best, maybe you've taken like a scientific interest in the life of a worm.~ and similarly, that worm is not really even perceiving that you were there. You're a thing that went by. It doesn't really it's not really equipped with the tools. So it kind of lands ~ on this point like like even if we were in close proximity, who's to say they'd have any interest in what we are thinking? And who's to say we would even perceive them if they're there?~ and one thing that both Carl Sagan did really well and and a protege of his is Neil deGrasse Tyson, right? Like he he did a reboot a few years ago of the Cosmos series that really made Carl Sagan a household name back in the day.~ they they love this idea that faith and science overlap. So I love that that sort of spiritual nature of it. And the only other thing I want to say is I love how this movie the entire time is making sure you don't miss the fact that Ellie is a spiritual person, even if she doesn't see it. it all starts in her childhood bedroom, right? She has a lot of whimsical things.~ you know, real life animals and things, lots of different animal artwork.~ but she has a unicorn up there, a very fantastical creature that's not really of this world, which jumped out to me. She also has her picture of Saratoga with those really specific palm trees lurching off to one side, which are then in her vision at the end. So like it's her childhood drawing coming to life in that final alien simulation. I love the whimsical nature of that. There's the obvious stuff of of young Ellie screaming into that ham radio, desperately trying to contact her dad. Asking earlier in the movie if there's a radio strong enough to talk to her mom. It's like really moving stuff. And then maybe my favorite one is when the government's getting ready to, you know, cut their access to the satellite array.~ and there's this comment about like, you know, they don't want to put the high priestess of the desert in charge of the equipment anymore. She sees herself as this empirical scientist, but even people in her field see her jokingly as the high priestess of the desert, this dreamer. ~ and yeah, like the like the way they kind of challenge it with her is that she keeps getting walked up to the these these logical conclusions and the only conclusion kind of left to her is some version of faith. In order to answer my question, you have to admit that you're acting on faith is that sort of like I would call it the trap that she walks into, but she ultimately is comforted by it. In the grand scheme of things. So yeah. Lots to say there. Thank you both for going down that road with me. Yeah, really wonderful. Thank you, buddy. well, shifting back maybe to some some more of the fun of this film. The opening sequence, we we, as I said, the credit cards are dead silent, and then we crash into these radio transmissions coming from Earth as we travel through space further and further away from Earth, traveling kind of back in time through these radio and television transmissions, absolutely packed with overlapping clips.~ what clip stood out to you most and why? Maybe not a favorite, but what c what catches your ear most and why why do you think that is? We'll go to you first again, Nicole. Because it's part of my growing up, but the when they have the little clip of the commercial, Sometimes It Feels Like a Nut, like stands out to me. Like it's just, it's so dumb. Like this is not a high, like this is not like a high-minded answer. Like it was like, that's so like of like it just could not be a more Gen X sort of pop culture reference for me than that. I think like I love it. and This stood out to me only because I'm not I watch it with close captioning, but there's actually a little Hitler clip Yeah. in there, which I didn't I don't speak German, so I didn't catch when I watched it the other gajillions of times I've watched it, which I thought was really interesting. and then the like it's so the sound of it is so well known, the I am not a crook from Richard Nixon. Of course, also relevant to today's world, but like that also really For whatever reason stood out to me. Love that. Absolutely. It it caught my ear too. That was one of the ones I was gonna highlight. I think yeah, maybe it's because I've heard it like mimicked so many times and mocked so many times. Yeah. Right, right. for sure. I think what caught my ear was like, that's the real clip. That's the real quote. Yeah. That's when he actually said it. Randy, what about you, bud? So this is my big lost connection. This is the one I was eager to talk about.~ it's gotta be Perry Como, Catch a Falling Star and Put it in your Pocket.~ like I mean the ultimate Lost song, right? When Claire is going to give up Aaron, she wants the foster parents to sing that song. you know, Kate sings this song later in the series, and like we even get like a version of that, like an instrumental version of that, you know, after the Man in Black attacks the temple like in the aftermath, Claire's walking amongst it. So yeah, I I went serious with MLK earlier and I'm just gonna say my lost brain was activated. And there is a sort of ~ existential stardust vibe to those lyrics if you take them seriously, right? Catch a star, put it in your pocket.~ you know, Jodie Foster staring at it's a celestial event, and she's going for awestruck and I've never seen her face move that way. in anything else. So like like a star in your pocket. It's a celestial event. Because of lost, it was bringing in all the the dad and family connection stuff for me. So that that one made me kind of surprisingly emotional to hear that little in there. Beautiful. Really beautiful. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you sharing that.~ so besides Richard Nixon, for me, it was the It'sy Bitsy Teeny Weeny, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. what a fun song. I heard that and I was like, I love the idea that that's making it into outer that intelligent life somewhere is hearing that and and wondering what the heck is going on down here. It sounds fun. It's got a nice like rhythm on on the tongue as you s as you sing it out. So yeah, just a silly fun thing that I was happy from our culture made it. into the the wide array of space. All right. We also got a purple pee pee people eater in the film itself. A lot of great music in this movie. So yeah. We got that was gonna be if we'd had a needle drop question, yeah. I would have said purple people eater when she comes back to the VLA after being away in Washington after doing the dis making the discovery and then this circus has just formed ~ outside of the VLA and and they drop Purple People Eater as the as the song, which I think is just brilliant. Just brilliant. Yeah, yeah. By the way, shout out to the nineteen eighties Neil Patrick Harris vehicle film inspired by the song. I don't know if either of you have had the pleasure. I've not my. ~ if we ever need a really weird episode of Media/ Lit, maybe maybe someday we'll do that one.~ Sounds good. yes. Well we we got to talk about that opening sequence, that opening transmission, but I've gotta keep the door open to any other pop culture connections, right? 'Cause at the end of the day, comparative literature is what we do. It's what helps us get at the themes. so Nicole, what is some other pop culture that was on your mind or literature while you were watching Contact? The other things that are a little bit present, or at least in the back of my mind, were some of the other films that made their way into my constructive theology paper.~ and I didn't think about them a whole lot consciously, but I think the themes are really similar. So, like, ~ the the movie Pleasantville was one of them, was also in that era of when I was sort of like, What does it all mean? What what is my purpose in this world? Like Pleasantville came out and it like It rocked my world at the moment when I needed needed to have my world rocked in that way. I also included dogma, which I shared earlier, which is just one of the funniest treatments of theology ever. And it's so well done. and it has ~ I think the part that I quoted in my paper is actually the scene, if you remember, where Bethany like gets the information she hears from ~~ the the disciple, what's his name? I can't think of it. Played by Chris Rock. Rufus, Rufus, Rufus. Yeah, The 13th disciple. How can I forget that? Rufus, the 13th disciple, tells her that like you're like a dis like a very far removed jet, you know, descendant of Jesus. Yeah. And she's like, seriously, what the fuck? And runs into like runs into the river. There's this really cool almost baptism scene. And she has it, she's shouting at God, saying, You know, what what do you want from me? Yeah. You know, like, and so all of these movies, I think, have for me, have like Are like little threads of that kind of a question. Like, what do you want from me? What does it all mean? I what is my purpose in in the world? And all of these movies helped shape my under my understanding of that for myself. They were conversation partners, not direct, like here's the answer, but they were all conversation partners for me. love the way you say that conversation partners. I'm gonna think a lot about that. Perfect. Kris, how about for you? What was on your mind?~ so it was hard not to have just like basic genre connections like time and So like X Files is top of mind here.~ I shouted out earlier, but Independence Day was very much top of mind as I was watching this. So many of the locales were sort of shared a lot of desert work. We're talking about aliens, so we're in the desert. ~ a lot of radio technology being put to use in ~ in Independence Day and think it's it's satellites that helps ~ I almost called them Ian Malcolm. His character from Jurassic Park,~ Jeff Goldblum. ~ he first picks up these this transmission via kind of satellite waves and and things like that. So a lot of like the Doppler radars at work, a lot of the ~ the sound design was similar. Yeah. As we were in the the alien research moments. And so Independence Day was very, very top of mind for me here. ~ Yeah. And then frequency. Do you guys remember frequency? Yes, I love frequency with the ham radio. Yeah, beautiful story. Super emotional. But the ham radio, exactly. So in that they they very much literalize sort of Ellie's big question here at the beginning, where she finally goes from could we talk to Jupiter? Could we reach, you know, so far into space? Could we talk to mom? Because in f in frequency, that ham radio connects our modern day main character to his father in the past. Yeah. His father who was since passed away. And they can communicate through time and space via the the ham radio. So that was very top of mind here as well. Such great call outs. I've got three, so I'm gonna try and keep them quick. The first one is my favorite show of all time is Northern Exposure.~ and as I as much as I love McConaughey, and I think he I think he was great in the movie. I think he he played his part well. you know, especially, you know,~ in the the Puerto Rico section of the film. I thought he was particularly effective there.~ But I love John Corbett as Kris Stevens, Kris in the morning on Northern Exposure.~ he is an unofficial theologian. He's always giving great speeches, but he has a whole tech speech that was very Palmer Jos.~ where he tells Maggie, We are on a total blitzkrieg toward isolation. Listen to me, the day's coming, and it ain't gonna be long when you won't even have to leave your living room. No more schools, no more bodegas, no more t no more tabernacles, no more cineplexes. You're gonna snuggle up to your fiber optics, baby, and bliss out. which is kind of ~ Joss's biggest fear, right? Like we are isolated from one another, we're losing touch. And ~ I could probably do a whole other podcast on on ways that was a prescient observation. but I'll I'll leave it at that for now. I've also got a shout out Doctor Who. ~ and not only for the good old fashioned wibbly wobbly ball of timey whimey stuff, Kris, that you know thanks to our time~ watching Blink together. Sadly our new to Who segments are currently on hiatus while we wait for Doctor Who to find a new streaming home.~ so if we've got our Doctor Who fans out there still, we're coming up on a year since our last Who episode. We we will be back to you. ~ I promise. We will get there. ~ But it's not just the timey whimey stuff. It is the doctor and his disdain for guns. Almost every iteration of the doctor has spent some time eye rolling at military types who roll in to try to solve a problem that's a cerebral one. That's a problem about empathy and intelligence and connection. So when Ellie ~ orders the military guys with the guns out of this civilian facility, she was really channeling the doctor there. that willingness to explore. This notion of like a slow burn, humanity needs to get this little breadcrumb trail of progress towards of like the interstellar community. It was all very Doctor Who. Obviously, the tone is more elevated here. And then the last one is gonna be Doctor Strange Love or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. We get a military officer wondering out loud if this Alien device could be some type of doomsday device, some type of weapon that's going to destroy them. But of course, we're really good at destroying ourselves. And at the end, Kitts is going full Doctor Strangelove mode. If you haven't seen that movie in a minute, all of the power brokers in the room at the end of that movie start planning how they are all gonna sequester themselves away in different mind spaces to emerge from the nuclear holocaust someday.~ And that's what he's doing. He's consolidating that information and that intelligence from the expedition. Earth's not quite ready yet. And, you know, he's he's the destruction. He's the problem. He's the one who's closed minded. So those were my three. Thank you for going down that road. But can I add just one? You made me think of a little more specific thing. And of course lost, which we've already referenced, right? But the thing The little exchange, just tiny little bit of loss that kept running through my head was, and I'm not remembering which episode it's in, but it's the fight that Jack and Locke have. And Jack says, Why, you know, why is it so easy for you? And in the best line delivery possibly ever that anyone has ever had, Terry O'Quinn, as John Locke says, it's never been easy. And I feel like that, like that exchange really undergirds a lot of what happens in this. because it's it is like this really complex exploration of these big questions. And it doesn't it doesn't either or things at both ands them all the time. Love that. Yeah, very much a both and film. And and Randy, love the Doctor Who poll. That was a really great call out. It's very specific to the guns. But you you called one more to my mind in your choice of language. I forgot ~ something that was in my notes because it was so one off. Interstellar. Yeah. Matthew McConaughey talks about time dilation in this movie and losing fifty years of your of your life and everybody dying. It's like Christopher Nolan likes contact. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.~ good stuff. Good stuff. ~ thank you both.~ maybe now we can start talking a little bit more about the who's who of the film. Let's talk about favorite performances. Randy, here's where I'm gonna go back to you first, buddy. This one's yours. All right. I'm I'm gonna say a couple of quick words about Jodie Foster and I'm going to invite each of you to sneak in your own thoughts on Jodie Foster if she happens to be at the top of your list as well.~ but yeah, I mean Jodie Foster's at the top. I I mentioned earlier this might be the most Jodie Foster that Jodie Foster has ever been in a role. ~ and I think all I'm really trying to do here is yes and what Nicole had to say about the the strength of this woman, Ellie, everything that she puts into it.~ but The two things I really want to shout out,~ number one, just her ability to sell all that science y language with confidence, right? Again, that would be great for her Doctor Who audition tape. That's something you gotta be able to do as the doctor.~ I also want to shout out what I mentioned earlier, her her face in that moment of awe is working overtime. Like she goes to a place. That's really special. And I found myself very moved staring at at her face and how much she was going for it.~ so that's beautiful stuff. and then just kind of jokingly, I just want to shout out her ability ~ to scrunch up and look comfortable. There are a few moments where she scrunches up in a chair to put on her headphones to listen. Yeah. She scrunches up next to the canyon. She curls herself into this little ball. And it's both like feels like a little bit of foreshadowing of the sphere, but also just something that made me feel good to watch her do. Like we've all maybe felt that insular kind of balled up thing. That that first night she gets kind of dozy with her headphones on. She looks like a reverse podcaster. She's listening but not speaking, but so intent on what's happening in those headphones. So yeah, I'm gonna give it to Jodie Foster. And ~ yeah, I'll leave it at that. I'll let you guys smuggle in some other folks.~ Love the note about the sc the scrunchiness. It's almost like ~ she that's her comfort zone, right? That's what she's doing what she loves most, what goes all the way back to her childhood, headphones on, listening to radio frequencies.~ Nicole, what about you? Somebody else you want to shout out or more Jodie loved? Well, ~ it's Jodie adjacent. So yes, Jodie Foster, and I'm glad that you shouted out the that very long sequence, which was I'm sure against a green screen. She wasn't looking at anything. Yeah. And having this whole celestial experience, and you buy it. Like you buy that she is in that space in the moment. And I there are few other I think there are few other actors.~ who could pull that off, I think. Especially at the time. They probably have like green screen acting classes now, I would imagine. But at the time that was not that was certainly not part of Jodie Foster's like, you know,~ you know, training at Yale. I'm pretty sure that was not a thing, Ben. ~ she's making this up in, you know, whenever they're making this in nineteen ninety five or six when they're filming. ~ I think that's amazing. But I'm gonna I'm gonna add a connection. It's Jenna Malone as the young elder. Also and they're so like they they I don't know how much of that was planned or if it was just perfect casting and they worked really well. The the the shout out I would give her, who she couldn't have been much more than 10,~ filming that I didn't look up her exact age, but I'm guessing she was young. And that that scene, which you've already mentioned, I think, Randy, where at her dad's funeral, she's just had this really terrible interaction with her priest.~ she goes up. You know, all the adults are doing what adults do at like a funeral dinner, and she goes upstairs to go to that ham radio and she's saying, you know, she's she's trying to connect with someone and then says, Dad, are you out there? And she chokes up. Like the, you know, the little Jenna Malone playing Ellie Arrowway at age nine,~ chokes up in that moment. And I don't know, that I certainly I have found that sad before in the like, but that just got me this time. Yeah. For whatever reason. That little moment where she's like, Dad, and this like just everything about like, this poor little nine year old who just lost her dad and has no one who's really doing a good job of of helping her with it. I mean, I hope someone else did that we didn't see on that in that scene. But She looks like Jacob's about to show up and make her a candidate. That's exactly right. Exactly. Exactly. He's got his creepy telescope pointed right at the~ yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I also I know he's a he's a total jerk, but I I also give James Woods credit for being like the quintessential like political animal asshole in this. And he just is like even like ~ because I actually just rewatched it before we went on pod. Like I rewatched just that little ending where he's interrogating her and he goes, and why won't you like just keeps at her? Like, why won't you just admit That this in fact never happened. And I'm not doing the delivery ~ of that line justice, but like that, and she's he's pushing her and pushing her and pushing her. And then she doesn't like is Ellie's way, like pushing back in an angry way. She's like in a totally different space. And then that that pushes. I mean, I think that that is that interplay between the two of them makes that scene. And then the intensity of her response in that, what is really a pretty short speech that she has. It's just a tiny little paragraph. has so much more has even more power because he's given her,~ he's pushed her in that way. And so I'll give I'll give him some credit for being Mr. Kitts, 'cause Yeah. he's he's good at being an ass, that's for sure. I think he's I think he's probably an asshole in real life. Yeah, he may be. Right. You're absolutely right. He is so good in this. Yeah. I I I wanna I wanna punch him in his face as much as I want to punch Joffrey Baratheon in his face, if not more. Like it i i when he's standing up yelling at Ellie in that room, to your point, like withdraw your t ~ somebody somebody strike this man. I cannot Yeah. speak to Ellie that way. Right. Yeah, he's he's really very good.~ well you both took I wasn't going to talk about Jodie because I figured we would all wanna talk about Jodie. She is tremendous and and you picked out the perfect part, right? Her mind is blown. No, no words. A poet. They should have sent a poet. You know, she's she's brilliant. but I was gonna celebrate Jenna Malone because Randy, you keep saying that this is like the most Jodie Foster role for Jodie Foster, but this was Jenna Malone at her most Jodie Foster as well. I yeah. I so very much believe that that young girl grows up to be. This this woman that we spent time with in the film.~ not just because they did a good job of casting the physical features, but because their mannerisms, the way they carry themselves. Nicole, I I also wonder how much time they spent off screen preparing this. I would imagine it's probably not that much. The way knowing the way films get made and the way actor schedules work.~ kind of like on Game of Thrones, it's like uncanny how well the young actors captured, not Game of Thrones, but House of the Dragon, captured. Rhaenyra and Alicent and then we get the the older actors. And it turns out they didn't collaborate really at all. And it was just, you know, tal talents abounding.~ I I wonder if that was the same case here, but they make some really intentional choices to draw parallels between them, you know, physical mannerisms that they they choose to mirror, which I'm sure was in the direction.~ but her performance is tremendous for such a young, a young performer at that time.~ I guess I will take some extra time then to celebrate.~ I mean some of my favorite character actors are are around here. Yes. William Fickner, baby, honorary podling William Fickner. We've I can't believe how many times we've had the opportunity to celebrate his work. Yeah, let's make that official at the end of the pod. Yeah, I love that. I I don't love that his character seemingly has like enhanced senses because he's blind. There's like he's the only one who can hear Ellie on the radio.~ I'll chalk that up to their their time working together, not like an implication that he has sort of enhanced hearing.~ he does talk about his enhanced smell. He identifies the the polo cologne. Yeah, Nice to smell you again. nice to smell you again. That was great. David Morse is tremendous in this. As Ted Arrowway, he's ~ I'm a girl dad. And so like I was immediately so taken by their bond in the beginning of the film. I was like weeping instantly just at them sharing like him nurturing her interests. There's nothing that suggests to us that he's some brilliant mind himself. He seems to have like a f ~ a a layman's familiarity with these things and a curiosity all his own, but he's so he's so nurturing to her. He's so soft and so approachable. and he does a great job, I think, of distinguishing between the real Ted Arrowway and the the projected Ted Arrowway in the end, where he isn't supposed to be her dad. And he's not supposed to be pretending to be her dad, right? He admits he's affecting certain things. They've chosen this 'cause they believe it'll make it easier for her. But he does still lean in and give her affectionate kisses. And I think he does a great job of of balancing ~ both there. And then lastly, I'll just shout out Tom Skerritt another person in this film who You don't like him, but he's a great job of being unlikable. He does a fantastic job of honestly capturing the ways in which men are just microaggressive at all times in this world. He is like walking talking patriarchy because he's never like outright rude to but he's constantly interrupting her. He's constantly just asserting his dominance as a male in the room. Yeah. And automatically his voice and his words are are to be valued and respected more highly. Yeah. Right. And I you know, I'm just yes anding because I've because I've read the book. And so the book has like you get interior monologue of Ellies and you get like you can have things like written in there like more overt like the sexism and just inherent in the field, you know, like that you get them talking about. And those actors do such a great job of showing not telling that. And some of that's the script, but you know, like, but they also like they know they're the walking talking patriarchy here. And they they do it to great effect. And I think that's fantastic. Do you know what else is great about it? Like, even though he's doing it, you know if someone called him on it, he would genuinely have no idea what they were talking about. Right. Right. He'd be like, What like what are you talking about? Like I told her how much I respect her work. Like what? You just you know he can't even see it. Yeah. And that's maybe the scariest part. And and yet he's you you can see that he's still wielding it. yeah. Even if it's not intentionally. It's just all it's all training, it's all programming and it's terrible. Yeah, like at least kits at least kits knows that he's an asshole. Drumlin doesn't even know it. No, I mean Dremlin thinks he's being like helpful to her. I mean he said that in the beginning, like I'm doing your career a favor by like cutting you off because you need to go teach at Harvard. You know, he doesn't say that, but you need to go do these other things that that will be good for your career and this isn't good for your career. It's so paternalistic, you know, and annoying. Yes, very paternalistic and and annoying. Absolutely. Now, can can I just tell you my favorite line delivery from Jenna Malone, because she was on my list as well. How's the weather down there in Florida? When She's so adorable. she's so proud of herself. That's such a great moment. My heart my heart melted ~ in that moment. Also, just we talked so much about the the sequence. I feel guilty to the podlings at home. I'm so sorry for not shouting out two thousand one a space odyssey, the original mindfuck, if you will.~ so there you go. ~ Good call. but two thousand one didn't have Jodie Foster emoting through it, so I think that's a check in the the Contact column there. Truly. All right. So next up let's get into the cinema of it all. I want to know what everyone's favorite scene and or shot.~ it you might have two distinct ones. It might be a shot within a larger scene. Feel free to do some light smuggling here.~ Nicole, how 'bout for you? What's your favorite scene or shot from the film? Well, I was going to use well, I can do more than one because that's what we do here. So I love the the opening sequence, which we've talked a lot about already. But what we haven't mentioned is how like the stars then all start coming together and it becomes just the little spot of white on on young Ellie's eye. And then we see her or we see we hear her actually. The first thing we've heard in a minute, like of her trying to contact on that ham. Contact someone on the ham radio and you get that ham radio scene, which is just delightful. I love that. And, you know, as Losties, we like a good close up of an eye, right? And we get like two or three of them that are really done well in this~ so shout out to all the eye shots, which I think are really well done.~ and then the other it's really a sequence, not a scene. So from the point where,~ and it also involves eyes where they get the they get the notice that. the government's gonna pull the plug on their lease on these telescopes, right? At the right before they do where she makes the discovery. And she goes off on her her really awesome convertible, like goes off to listen by herself, which is what she does, right? The going to the ham radio, going to ~ you know, stare at the red rock out in the, you know, or go to the telescopes and listen and put on the headphones.~ and that sequence where she's also like that scrunchy sort of Comfortable, but not quite comfortable because she's upset right there. And then she's listening. And then that you have this wide shot kind of of her on the hood of the car. And then it's kind of it starts coming in. And then she hears, like you get right up to her eyes when when she hears the message, the sound that they're listening for, and her eyes bolt open. Like I just love that. And then that whole sequence of her. running back and talking on the walkie-talkie and that whole thing I think is edited so well and like just is used to such beautiful effect when she when they make this massive discovery~ that they have. So I love that that sequence also involving an eye shot that is in there which I I c I'm a sucker for, I'll I'll admit. Beautiful. Kris, how about for you? Favorite shot and or scene? ~ and or sequence? yeah, first I'll just quickly yes, and that sequence where she's driving, she's on the radio, they're scrambling inside the room to get all the they're flipping on every single monitor. There is so much energy in that sequence. It is ~ it's jacked up to eleven for the first time. This film can be pensive. This film doesn't have a lot of pace at not that it feels slow, but that moment it's really a like the electricity is jacked up and it's a wonderful sequence. to your point, Nicole, it's in the editing, right? It's the way it's all cut together. But I want to go earlier in the film. This is so simple and small, but it felt so important and it was so perfectly executed by both actors. It's when we transition in time from young Ellie to grown Ellie. It's our first time seeing Jodie Foster in the film. And we close on Jenna Malone tucking her hair behind her ear, and we open on Jodie Foster tucking her hair behind her ear in the exact same way with the same, the same excitement in their eyes. Like Jodie Foster has this look when we see her in that moment. She tucks her hair back, she's got her glasses on, and she's like just arrived in Puerto Rico. And there's this like vivaciousness about her. You can see that she's just alive with the excitement for the possibilities that before her. She sets forth in this next endeavor, this next scientific endeavor. So I just love that choice to give us that parallelism. It's simple and small, but it was super effective and beautifully performed. So loved that. Yeah. And then another moment of beauty in the film, quiet beauty. There's a lot of silence in Yes. this movie. quite a bit of silence. I think I've highlighted the title card is quiet before the the it crashes in. I think even after those radio frequencies in the beginning, we fade out to silence before coming back in on on young Ellie. silent at the end of the film, it's quite quiet. But there's a moment, the first time we see Ellie sitting down at the edge of the canyon. She walks up to the canyon. It's a beautiful vista in front of her. A desert vista, not an ocean vista, but Beautiful nonetheless. And she she slowly lowers herself to the ground. She squats first. Yeah. And like from the squat slowly lowers her bottom ~ into a sort of knee hugging sit in this space where she is quiet and she's observing like earthbound beauty. Right. She's not so so focused on what's out there that she fails to quiet herself and appreciate what's what's right down here. And that shot I thought was framed beautifully. Again, it was performed beautifully. There's a slowness ~ in in her movements and something meditative about that whole that whole moment that I really enjoyed. And I'll just mention ~ you know, just to yes, and the meditative posture. The thing I noticed this time, so I'm also a yoga meditation teacher as well. And there's actually there's actually like in the form of yoga I was originally trained in, which is a weird sort of fringy one, but like there is an actual meditation posture where one leg is sort of tucked under you and that other one, the knee is bent in front of you. That's an actual meditation posture and I but I saw this before I did yoga. So I never made that connection. But it really that is a an actual medit. I don't think it's intentional. I doubt that Jodie Foster would have known something that weird and fringe. But but I I think the intention of that feeling sort of meditative when she has any of those shots of her in the desert, right? I think ~ are definitely geared toward that for sure. Beautiful. Well, all right. Quick yes and the whole finding of the transmission. Yes and to everything you said. The sound design of the transmission is just 10 out of 10. No notes. Put it in the hall of fame with the lightsaber sound effect. They got that just right. ~ it's incredible stuff. There's also this one line in there that really sells the whole sequence to me and shows me her scientific brain. And, you know, she she gets into the room. She turns to Fish and she says, Make me a liar, Fish. And she's prompting him to like play devil's advocate, throw out other things that might be happening. I know that my desire to hear this transmission could be getting in the way. And they do that with such a familiarity.~ Fish doesn't get a lot of screen time in this movie, but I feel like I know so much about their relationship in that one moment, and it really helps sell Ellie the scientist to me in a way that is really effective. Yes, and to we didn't talk about it here, but we clearly all love the sequence in the sphere. It's great stuff. ~ every time she kind of snaps back into a version of reality for a second, it's not quite a severance like Zolly shot, but they do this nice little like zoom effect to kind of slam her back into her seat a few times that is a really nice little touch as she's kind of going through it on that journey. And then the one I'm gonna shout out, it's just after. The world has been told about the transmission. We've acknowledged it. Everyone's weighing in. And you kind of cut to this overlay of multiple voices. You've got Rob Lowe, is Richard Rank giving his sort of theological but at the same time, you've got Jay Leno~ doing his little monologue joke about extraterrestrials. ~ and like all the naysayers have been saying, How do you know this is an alien transmission? Isn't it just noise? And I love the way like it's just it reinforces that we are just sending out so much noise. Like, you know, it it's sort of like this empty jokey monologue.~ the fact that this Richard Raint character could like take this information in just like the weirdest possible direction, just like back into his little niche interests in this very selfish, limited view sort of way. I loved the way they recreated that noise. And we so often get things through like a security camera, some kind of processed imagery that shows that disconnection. So there you have it. Excellent, excellent choices yourself there, sir. I'm glad we had a chance to shout out Rob Lowe doing a disturbing like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz. I don't know who but too many too many familiar faces in that one character that was happening there. I really didn't enjoy that. ~ glad you also found a way to shout out Fish. I if I didn't have time to shout out that he's the manager of the team X Blades in Brink from the Disney Channel, I would have been disappointed. So I just wanted to make sure that we all know. He's from Brink. ~ all right. Time to move on from scenes to to quotes. Let's do most quotable moments in the film. Nicole, we'll go to you first on this one. this was so hard. Yeah. It's like to pick one. I have like five. ~ but I think we we would be doing a disservice to Matthew McConaughey in the nineties if we didn't call out the line, if I didn't call out the line. You could call me a man of the cloth without the cloth. You know, you have to have that perfect little beat in between the two segments of the sentence. I think that I mean, it it really isn't the best line, but it's probably the most one of the most quotable lines, other than one we've already shouted out with which is nice to smell you again, Mr. Kitts. And then followed by I wouldn't have pegged him for a polo man, you know? That's also like it funny lines. But another line that I noticed. This time that I again because of close captioning that I didn't realize before, when she's having that whole like celestial experience in the pod, and she's having the the wormhole experience, and then it pauses and she sees everything. And she has a line where she says, You can barely hear it because she's in that state. And she says, No words, it's so beautiful. They should have sent a poet. Yeah. And I was like, I was just floored by that line, which I had never really heard before because again, it's and maybe there might be a little bit not great about the sound design in that moment, but like she's whispering almost, and so it's hard to hear legitimately. Yeah. And I that was like I was like, I've never heard that line before and it's so it's so beautiful. Like it's such a great line. So important for her character, right? I I was watching Close Captions as well, so that that stood out to me. Yeah.~ yeah, she was certain that it should be somebody fluent in the language of science that should go. And then she's confronted with it and she realizes that all of that just falls away in the face of this mind-blowing. It it doesn't matter, right? Like your training doesn't in the face of this, whatever you're trained in doesn't make a lick a difference, right? Yeah. Yeah, great. I love that. Great code. Yeah, yeah. Randy, what about you? Yeah, I mean, I think objectively the correct answer is they should have sent a poet. Like that's the line. but I'm gonna give you a runner up. I'm gonna go to our guy, Palmer Joss.~ I'm not against technology, Doctor. I'm against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.~ you know, Palmer is a little bit of a blowhard. You know, ~ there are things he says I agree with and I like. There are moments where he annoys me. but I think the main thing he's going for is something that I vibe with, like this this notion that there's an unhealthy relationship with technology. And as we unpack all of the layers of AI right now, that that's truer than it ever was before, right? you know, like the g a joke I've been making a lot the last couple of years is I tend to watch a lot of like NFL football games because it was something I always like shared with my dad and an uncle who I lost and it's got this special sort of like meaning to me.~ and I kind of miss all of the commercials during a football game just for like beer and snacks. Because now it's all for like gambling and like selling the rhetoric of AI to the masses. That's like what all the commercials are now.~ so yeah, that that moment of technology we can't deify it to a point that it's it's taking away our human truth, human expression. And obviously I'm applying twenty twenty five to it, but yeah, that That line really hit me. So it's a great line. I think that his character is is interesting, right? He's he's like faith without dogma, which I find really respectable. He I I like that his approach is fairly open handed, right? ~ and that that line really encompasses that pretty well. I like that. for me, I'm gonna go someplace different. This film definitely has a lot to say about those big questions we talked about. This certainly like a science versus faith thing. He has a lot of spiritual questions being asked, but we also talked about the ways in which patriarchy is very much on display intentionally, right? It's not just a ~ an artifact of the time in which this was made. It's very much a part of the text of the film and the subtext of the film.~ but it collides with that theme collides with one of my kind of my takes when when I think about my my faith in the way I think about us as people in the world. David Drumlin walks up to Ellie the day of the test. She's approached the tarmac. She's given this opportunity just to she wants to wish him well, right? He says, I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that's an understatement. What you don't know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Screw you, dude. That is such a a bullshit take because you are the one who took advantage of her idealism. Yep. So what you're saying is, well, I wish it wasn't this way, but the world is this way, so I just behave that way, because this is the world. I wish the world is based on fairness, but that's not our world, so I screwed ya. She answers him. And this is my favorite quote, why they go hand in hand. Funny. I've always believed. That the world is what we make of it. Yeah. And I think whether or not you come from science, like you you are totally a naturalist and you believe that we're on this earth to sort of like live our lives and, you know, do what we can to maximize our potential as human beings, or you believe that there's something larger, some greater purpose, you're more of a spiritual thinker. I think either way, at the base of that is the idea that we have a tremendous amount of responsibility to define this world, to make of it what we want it to be. Yeah. We have tremendous power as human beings to do that, whether it's divinely given or just the natural result of our evolution to this the place we have in the food chain, the hierarchy of this world amongst natural beings. I can't stand when people justify horrible choices in this world, when people set aside what they know to be right in order to do what they believe is necessary, and they'll chalk it up to something like, well, it's a dog-eat dog world. Yeah. And my challenge is always it's only a dog eat dog world because we keep raising dogs who eat other dogs. It's our choice to perpetuate this world, to make it a dog eat dog world. And every time a person like Drumlin shrugs and just offloads that from himself, he just shrugs, despite all of his all of his drive, all of his career ambition, all the things that he clearly does to make his life, his world, what he wants of it, he had takes no ownership, no responsibility for her his place in the the perpetuation of injustice in this world. And that that drives me nuts and I loved her response to it. It's bold, it's very L and it's right in his face. Yeah, and that really hit me this time for what again, I've watched this a lot of times, but it really hit me how he's saying,~ I really wish your idealism was rewarded. And I'm like, You fuck. Like you're the one who took advantage of it and you know what you did. You know, like it's not even that he's just sort of this ~ intuitive, like political animal. Like he's vi he's smart. He's not an idiot, he's a scientist. And he knew exactly what game he was playing. And then him saying that to her, like, so sorry. You're like, no, be sorry for the fact that you're a jerk. Like that you totally took advantage of that situation so that you could be the one to go and not her. ~ even though it was her discovery, her passion that made it happen in the first place. Even though he told her to give up on all of it. Right. Right. If it had been up to him, it wouldn't have happened. Never would've happened. Right. See, this is what I love about podcasting, because I love to hear both of your perspectives on this so much, right? not everyone is as horrible a human being as Drumlin, but I really do feel like one of the things that like distinguishes us from one another is I think there are there's a certain type of person who is very capable of this, like my political angling and maneuvering is a sign of my success and my power.~ and I'm comfortable with that and whatever compromises come with that. And for most people, they're operating on a smaller scale without the same sort of like life destroying stakes. And and I think there are those of us who who just can't play that game without feeling a sense of disdain. And it I think it's one of the things that pushes us into different sort of like roles and approaches to our our work and our callings. And yeah, so just love to hear you both reflect on that. So I I really can't leave this section without giving it's just desserts, the the little s the speech, and it's so short. you know, it it has such weight that I feel like it's longer ~ in my memory. But the speech that Ellie Araway gives when she's pushed and pushed by Mr. Kitts about like take back, you know this isn't this didn't really happen. You, you know, you hallucinated it or whatever. And then the speeches is this, and it's really not very long. She says, Because I can't. I had an experience. I can't prove it. I can't even explain it. But everything I know as a human being, everything that I am, tells me that it was real. I was giving something wonderful, something that changed me forever, a vision of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that what none of us are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope. But that continues to be my wish. And I'm not as good as just No, you could I was feeling it. I was over here. I was like I was like kinda grooving. I had my eyes closed. I was feeling it. So Well, good. See, maybe my theater degree did get me something. And then my that remains my wish. My wish wasn't that beautiful, yes. Yeah. ~ it's just such a beautiful speech and the way she delivers it. It in tears. And and I I think famously, Jodie Foster has trouble crying on screen.~ I I heard that in the context of ~ and maybe that wasn't true by Contact but like when she made The Accused When she's on the stand at the very end, there's one, like there's one tear that falls at some point. Like she's really steely through that whole like cross-examination in in the movie The Accused. And then there's a moment where, and it's in the script, I guess, where she has one tear that comes down. And there it took a really long time to get that shot because it's just not an easy thing for her to do on film. And again, that may have changed by this point, but like she and then the other. And I wouldn't like be a big shout out for Matthew McConaughey's performance. Matthew McConaughey is Matthew McConaughey most of the time, right? Yeah. I'd love it, but that's what he does. But he's watching her. His reaction shots to that speech, and he's in has like held back tears. He's not crying, but like held back tears. And the shots between the two of them, which I'm sure they didn't even see each other, right? Because they're half a room apart. But sure. ~ I think that is just A gorgeous part of that of that final. It's not the final scene of the movie, but it it it's sort of the pinnacle almost in the movie. And I feel like that speech wraps up what the movie is about Mm-hmm. Yeah. in a lot of ways. And I'm I'm in love with the line where she says that we are both tiny and insignificant and rare and precious, like all at the same time. And I just that's just such a beautiful I don't know who wrote which there's like three. attributed screenwriters. I don't know who wrote that, but it's it's gorgeous. I don't I don't remember if that's that whole sequence is in the book, but I don't remember if that speech is in there in the book quite that way. It's really wonderful. I love the way to your point it kind of helps to close her character arc for us in the film. Right. We'll have a few more scenes, but this is really the that arcing,~ the settling of that arc. And yeah, I love the parallelism with the experience that Palmer tries to share with her earlier in the film. Why does he have faith?'Cause he had he had this experience and he doesn't know what to make of that or how to how to convince her, but he knows what he felt and now she's received that gift as well.~ I love the way that tells shows us Suggest to us that whatever it is, whatever truth is, it's gonna find us in the ways that's right for us. We're gonna receive it in the way that we were made to receive it. And that looks different for every one of us. I love that. And I I like to think he's feeling a little bit guilty in that moment, right? 'Cause when he votes Ellie down, like his reasoning is kind of bullshit. Like he's not dumb. He knows her well enough to know that she is spiritual in at least in the way he sees the world, right? He's hearing it in that final speech. He's heard it up to that point. But because she won't like in this very like outlined in the lines way say that she believes in God, he votes her down, that's kind of like That that that's like his own hubris getting in the way, right? Like he's lost sight of his own sort of world view for me. He admits that's not he admits that's not really why he voted no, though. Yeah. So true, that's right. He didn't want to lose her. But but it felt I I felt was more frustrating, honestly. I was like more okay with him like standing on his principles conceivably and Yeah. You know, it was actually ~ a much greater conflict of interest. The idea is like they were trying to avoid a conflict of interest as if he would over advocate for her if they were in a romantic entanglement. Right? Like he would he would vote for her. But in fact, the reality is that the romantic entanglement caused the conflict of interest in the opposite direction, where he instead chose to vote no. Super annoying. Yeah. Right. And and in that s it reminds me that which I have all kinds of questions about the scene where they're on the mall. In Washington, DC, and he like calls her over there, like, at noon, are you insane? And why aren't there more people around? That was the other thing. You're like, there should be hundreds of people around the mall at noon on a random Tuesday or whatever it was. But like she he said, Why? Why do you want to go? And and she has this, and I'm gonna I don't have the quote right in front of me, but the line is is something like, you know, if I can even find out one little tiny piece. Of these big questions, like why are we here? And all of that. She's like, I think that's worth a human life. Yeah. If I die, I think it's worth that. And that's like a really, really good answer. Yeah. And and he votes against her anyway. Or he and he doesn't even just vote against her, he sabotaged her. Yeah. Because he knew that she wouldn't be able to answer. She wouldn't be able to lie. Like that's just not her way. She's not gonna political she's not gonna do the political thing like Dremlin does. And he knows her well enough to know that that's the case and he sabotaged her. So and then spokes no for her because because of that. And and hey, coming full circle, that's not unlike the the message at the end of I've been to the mountaintop.~ I'm not worried about my longevity in this moment because there's a larger struggle. Kris, there's only one way we could take this podcast to another level at this point. can you can you bring us to that next level? Yeah, of course. We've completed our coursework for the evening.~ but we've got a lit little bit of work left to do because it's time for extra credit. We don't get to leave the classroom without submitting one more assignment to the teacher for consideration. So the first ~ extra credit award we're going to be giving out tonight, appropriately for a fellow lossy, is our lost Bardo Buddy Award. Nicole. Unlike some other guests, perhaps you don't need a great explanation here, but this is where we're looking for a character from this film that we would be most likely to encounter in our own Bardo space.~ just to set the tone, Randy, I will throw it to you first here, buddy. What do you got? Well, see I was ready to go deep on this one, but like my most honest answer is it's Ellie.~ I I won't rehash every single thing I've said about that character tonight. However, I do just want to point out like she is the kind of person that I want to follow into battle. ~ I want to support her as she is following her heart. I think in this this Bardo space,~ my ability to put my money where my mouth is and and stand up for something alongside her, could be a a a way that I reach a spiritual awakening, right? To to stand up for something bigger and what's right. So I'm gonna say Ellie. I don't think that takes her off the table if anyone else was thinking it, but but that's my Bardo buddy. It's a solid choice. You know, she has a few things to say in this movie, so I'm not surprised that you found your way to Ellie. Nicole, what about you? Going someplace else? You're gonna meet up with you're guys gonna have coffee all three of you Maybe.~ I so I thought really hard about this and I kind of want it to be Ellie, but I sort of feel like we're two alike. Like I don't know that that we have much to learn from one another unless we're really annoyed by the similarities in our traits. That could very well be a spiritual growth moment.~ like we could be prickly at each other. I don't know. ~ but I think it truthfully if If the bardo is designed to like help you reach some sort of other spiritual level, probably I would be put in there with either Drumlin or Mr. Kids. Love this, yes. Because they drive me so bananas. And for us to work out our stuff and figure out like, you know, to come to a different place of maybe empathy for one another and being in that, like to be challenged by each other in that way, I think truthfully would probably be more likely to be in my bardo, quite quite honestly, I think. Yeah. And if we're going with lost, a few of those people just seem to appear in that flash sideways to get punished and beaten up and and ~ punched in the face by Jin. So if that's his fate, that's okay too. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, it so you guys both just combined to kind of nail what I had intended to be my answer, at least in one part. I also had a twofer. Like, is it somebody who's going to antagonize me in my Bardo space or somebody who's going to support me in my Bardo space? So I was thinking of Kitts as somebody who would possibly frustrate me so much that it really would wake, it would shake me out of it, right? It would bring me bring me forward. but I'm not gonna go there. I didn't want to settle on the negative. I didn't want my barto space to be about ~ me satisfying the itch to punch that face. no, I think for me it is it's Palmer Jos. I really do appreciate his very sort of his open handed approach to faith. You know, he has some really poignant concerns for humanity. I I do think it's important that we don't we don't deify technology to the point where we lose Our human connections and we we stop pursuing ~ the big questions, truth, because we think we've got it all figured out because we're so~ we are blitzed out on our fiber optics basis. Yeah. You know, these are very valid concerns. And I think he does a good job of remaining curious in the world. He's not shy about presenting his beliefs to others, not shy about challenging other people's beliefs, but I don't ever find him argumentative, right? I don't find him to be somebody who He just wants have a conversation. He wants to have a good, a good conversation over a decent meal. And that's very, very interesting to me, as opposed to somebody like, say, a a lock in Lost, who really needed people to come along with him in what he believed, right? He was willing to go off on his own. He was willing to pursue those answers for himself and not be shaken in his faith. But he really desperately needed some people to validate that by coming along him and believing what he believed. Yeah. I don't I don't get that from Joss. He seems like somebody who would c I come across in the bardo who would ask me just the right kinds of questions. Just the right kinds of questions to have an interesting conversation that that leads me to an awakening of some kind. Yeah. And just I think we can all agree, honorable mention to Ted Arrowway. If you're gonna wake up in the antechamber of a spiritual church and and hug someone tearfully, ~ you know, I I I'd hope to be reunited with my own father, but Ted Arrowway would be a solid backup. He knows how to provide that comfort.~ so great honorable mention. Intimidating guy in other roles that actually liked him in this for that Yeah, there's a warmth there and and so many like soft details. Like, you know, like like he's I think he is into the astronomy, like to support her, but like he's got his own telescope too. And I I get the I get the vibe that he had his first.~ yeah, so so much warmth. But let's wrap this up with ~ our best question.~ I think it's maybe one of my favorite things about the identity of our podcast, and that is if you could bring home one prop from this film, what would it be and why? We always go to our guests first on this question. So Nicole, you get first crack at this. What are you taking home from the set? That's such a generous thing to always give that to your guest, by the way. The And we get to do it every time. So it's a There is almost no other answer for me than the compass that comes out of the Cracker Jack box. and this gives me a reason to say another really line in the movie, which is, you know, p ja Palmar gives it to to Ellie and then she goes, in like the most flirty way that you can possibly say the line, gives it back and says No, you keep this. It could save your life someday. You know, she does this, and I'm not even totally not doing it just as much. She's like this super, because they're like into each other in five seconds, right? It's unbelievable the chemistry is just off the charts, right? Yeah. And yeah. So the compass, and then of course, it's kind of ironically saves her life. Yeah. And in the that final sequence, because she un she unstraps herself from that seat, which of course was not necessary. And goes chasing after that compass that she's had for years that's on that gold chain. Which I do have questions about where did it come from because like she was really strapped in there and it would have had to have been under her You know, like ~ but doesn't matter. It saved her life later later on. Yeah. Yeah. ~ and they kept exchanging it like during the the moment where he c portrays her in that scene and of setting her up and stuff. So I I the they're just There were a couple of other things that I keep as like lower on the list, but that's really the only one in my mind. I love that you're going for the Cracker Jack compass.~ also I'm glad you shouted at that thing with the seat, because not only is the seat not necessary, but it's harmful. It's making it an unpleasant experience for her. When she finally cuts loose and it kind of like magnifies onto the side of the thing, you know, once again, the men aren't listening to her. She's like, the plans didn't mention a seat. Like and they're like, basic safety precautions, lady. We we got this, men at work here. Yeah. no worries. Very Rudolph's dad and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. This is man's work. ~ but yeah, and that that's when it becomes a work. His hands were Nailed it. But yeah, that's when it becomes a peaceful experience for her.~ is once she's experiencing that that craft or whatever you want to call it the right way. Kris, what's your prop or souvenir? You're you're running out of time on your your new room for your prop cave.~ Friendly reminder. That's you know? No, no, no, that was very much top of mind here for me. And this is where I need a judgment call from you. Okay. I do want the machine.~ Mm. I want the machine with the sphere so I can be inside the sphere. Is this a whole room? Is this it's a whole room, right? It's a big piece of the set. I okay, I'm gonna give it to you. I'm gonna let you have I'm gonna let you have a whole machine. This is an imaginary space. I'm gonna let you have it. It's it's a Inside, right? The space, our prop caves are bigger on the inside? Yeah. ~ plus I'm I'm picturing this in your outdoor area.~ I I have, you know, like the very humble very humble trial by stone set from the Dark Crystal. You've got a whole interstellar device, but that's okay. I've got something to aspire to. I have another option. I th for consideration. I'm also willing to take I'm willing to take ~ S R Haddon's private plane and his that really sweet interior of his private plane. So if you'd prefer that I take the plane over the the No, I think they're both fair game. I think you should take the one that's truer to your heart. You've waited all year. You were you were more patient than I was. And I I think you deserve it. I'm gonna go with the sphere, ~ in the machine.~ I want I want that as my meditation chamber. I wanna sit in there with my like my new E four drone flute. I wanna do some sound bathing inside the sphere. So Yeah, you love these gyroscopic vibes. Like what a nice compliment to the the orrery from Dark Crystal. Right? That's your other spare room. So perfect Yes. stuff. ~ I've already selected my room. by the way, Fantastic Four was on my mind a little bit when the whole world very quickly agreed to build this device from the mysterious extraterrestrial plans. Yeah. some nice togetherness there. But no, I'm gonna go with something very humble. And I am going to go with the cork board that she sets up with the push pins in Puerto Rico ~ as she is mapping these different star systems.~ I've never done it with stars,~ but I actually, you know, I I bought the home that I grew up in, and I still have ~ certain possessions, including a bulletin board in my basement. It doesn't have like a fully active like map with all the push pins in it. but I did have a board where I would like mark like states and places I had visited ~ with my family for a while that I did ~ on the advice of my father. So not only would that evoke some nostalgia for me, but I love the idea of just having that cork board up on the wall as a decoration. it's in the same room with some of my ~ my great artwork from Batman the Animated series. Yeah. And I've really got a cozy living space in that living room. So there you have it. Great choice, brother. I love that for you. Yeah, good one. And if we can have even if it is smaller on the like or bigger on the inside,~ I would take her convertible. It's yours. It's yours, Nicole. Vehicles are on the table. If really it will fit somewhere, I would take the convertible because it's sweet. And if you approved your Cracker Jack compass is hanging from the rear view Exactly. Like you can just have both. Like if I can have both, I would take both of those things for sure. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. ~ also I'm realizing now where was Take Me Out to the Ball Game and the Transmissions? You could have the Peanuts and Cracker Jacks line. Ooh. On that note, Where were you in ninety seven, Randy? this has been Nicole, thank you so much for this conversation.~ this movie brings up exactly the kind of existential questions that really move me and excite me and make me want to have long conversations with people. So thank you for bringing us such an enriching conversation.~ Kris, before before you chime in, I just want to step in here and say I would like to finally just make it Our love For character actor William Fickner.~ we we've expressed our love for him in many pods since we started this podcast. most notably in Equilibrium. I think we spent the most time ~ talking about one of our favorite character actors. Yeah. But like the way my heart warmed when he appeared on screen. I don't know that that his character is used to the greatest effect in this film. But what's so warm and powerful about him is When Ellie needs a comforting hug and he gives it, I still believe their relationship perfectly.'Cause he's like Anchoring totem for her. You know, he serves us. I I love this, buddy. So glad that you you were inspired to to do this. I think sometimes we talked about the honorary podling and it's about~ the specific character and the ways in which they kind of project our values. I love that this is more of like a patron saint. Like William Fichner has just been in the DNA of this pod from very early on. And it's about time we properly acknowledge that. So I really love this. Perfection. Yeah. but yeah, so thanks again to Nicole. Thanks again to Kris for sitting through this with me.~ Kris, would you be willing to tell the people where they can reach out to us? yeah, but first, please let me say my own thank you to Nicole. This has been tremendous. I really appreciate you coming into the classroom assigning this as homework. It was wonderful to pod with you, wonderful to make a new friend. So thank you very, very much. For sure. And I'm I'm honored that you would ask, first of all. And this lets me nerd out in a different way than I usually get to nerd out. So thank you. And so hopefully this went well enough. This was my first audition. And then maybe if I could get asked for back for a lost and lit someday, I would be down like crazy for that. And it'll be shorter. One episode of Lost, you can watch three times in the same amount of time it takes to watch this So consider it done. we we might pod longer on it. Well, there you have it, podlings. ~ if you want to hear more of this podcast or you want to hear Nicole's next appearance on Media Lit, you've got to follow the pod. Find us anywhere that you find these streaming programs, Spotify, Apple, what have you. We're also on the YouTube now putting out some video content.~ But every audio pod also drops there on YouTube and we're on all the socials. Look for us on Instagram and Blue Sky and Facebook. We're still on that other one too, I think, sometimes. but but mostly just open up your favorite web browser. Search MediaLit Pod, MediaLit Podcast, and you're gonna find us all kinds of opportunities to interact with us. We love to get to know our podlings, so give us a follow. Perfect. Thank you so much for that, Kris. You're always so kind to shout out the podcast. But what else do you have going on?~ well, I would like to redirect folks back to our recent collaboration with the Should I Go See It podcast where we did a wonderful spooky draft. you can hear my voice on the Should I Go See It podcast, doing some guest hosting in the recent past as well. Wonderful film blog over there. So always happy to give them a shout out. but full time aside from this podcast, I'm also the co host of the Batman by the numbers podcast and the popbreak.com.~ we are a once a month podcast talking all things dark night. Our next episode will be focused on Superman's cinematic villains. We are in our world's finest era this year. We've done a ton of Superman content. We're gonna start ranking his cinematic supervillains next. So tune into Batman by the numbers on the popbreak.com. and aside from the pods, actor and a voice actor, father and a husband, you can find me doing those things on Instagram at Kris underscore Ingersoll. And that's Kris spelled like Kringle. Perfect. Nicole, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to shout out your upcoming pod one more time and let us know where people can find you if if you'd like to be found on social Media/. I'm always happy to be found. I'm it'll be~ just rest. The best way to find me, ~ find the pod will probably be to follow me on Substack. I have a newsletter of the same title. You will get my random musings sometimes about pop culture. I even weave that in occasionally. And you'll find that at defy the trend dot substack.com is how you'll find me if you want to subscribe to my Substack, which is where Bonus content and stuff from the pod will eventually live. You can find me on my website, defy the trend.com. you can find me also on the socials.~ I am most active on Blue Sky, where I am just hyp rest ~ at Blue Sky. And ~ I am on the Facebook and the Instagram, but not as much anymore. LinkedIn, I'm actually, if you just search my name, I'm not I don't have a common name. Nicole Havelka, if you find me. the one who's a burnout recovery coach, it's pretty obvious. So you'll find me on there. There's like one other Nicole Havelka that I've ever found. So we're pretty easy to find. ~ but you can find me on all those places and I love being found. So find me. I would love it. And I think that you all should.~ I'm your host, Randy Allain. And the only thing timey whimier, than a mysterious sphere at the center of an extraterrestrial device,~ is sometimes like ~ the recording date versus the release date of a podcast. So I'm not sure exactly where in the future I'm coming at you.~ but I'm happy to announce that in addition to my work on Media Lit, you can find me on the Pop Break podcast feed. In my my latest music project, Podole, a Beck Hansen podcast, with Justin Mancini, who I worked with on every pod you cast and Pod of Doom. We are now digging into the music of Beck Hansen, my favorite artist, with the one and only Kris Ingersoll joining the show. Show. It's me.~ you can also catch us monthly on YouTube and Spotify with our good friend Tyler McCarthy of Not Couple Goals with Remedial Rewatch Community 101. That is right. We are in the midst of a full series rewatch of beloved sitcom community. ~ and you can catch us reflecting on each batch of episodes and a few other special things we have planned along the way. But we've got about one calendar year. of ~ rewatch content for you. So we hope you will join us on that journey as well. That will do it for another Media Lit. We will see you out there in the podcasting sphere. And I hope you all have a great night. Small move, Ellie Hey, Nicole again. Did you have as much fun as I did with this podcast? I don't often get to talk about TV and movies publicly, and so I am so grateful to Randy and Kris for giving me the chance to talk not only about any film, but about one of my favorite and most formative films of all time. And I really do hope that I get to come back.~ hint, hint, nudge, nudge, Randy and Kris. And but if you love talking about TV and film as much as I do and you enjoyed this podcast, I strongly recommend you go and subscribe to Media/ Lit wherever you get your podcasts, and follow them on social media. You can often see us, meaning me and Randy and Kris ~ chatting it up about various movies and TV. on Blue Sky in particular. So until next time, Rest Rebels, remember that you are worthy of rest and watching really great films.