Conspiracies & Sovereign

It's conspiracies week at Bad Dads. All four dads — Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris — count down the Top Five Conspiracies before getting to Sovereign (2025), a devastating drama about a father and son in the Sovereign Citizen movement that made $63,000 at the box office and absolutely deserved better.

In the Top Five:

• JFK — Oliver Stone's four-hour masterpiece of the grassy knoll, covered in full
• All the President's Men — Woodward, Bernstein, the paper that's now owned by Bezos
• Michael Clayton — Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson going off his meds
• V for Vendetta — the graphic novel Alan Moore hated adapted by people he also hated
• The Matrix/Moon Landing — Kubrick and the simulation, one or two topics
• Zoolander — the fashion industry behind every political assassination for 200 years
• Bubba Ho-Tep — Elvis, Black JFK, Egyptian mummy. Cris's nom. Correct.
• Elvis vs Nixon — the real meeting, the badges, the conspiracy of what they said to each other
• COINTELPRO — the real FBI programme that makes the conspiracy theories look tame
• Sidey's friend's COVID/QAnon texts — read in full, genuinely extraordinary

Reegs' Conspiracy Quiz:

Real or made up? Finland, Denver Airport, Victorian tax avoidance, Tuskegee, government surveillance birds, and Wetherspoons underground tunnels.

On Sovereign:

• Nick Offerman in an unexpected dramatic turn — really big and violent
• Jacob Tremblay as Joe, the son, in what both Reegs and Dan consider career-best work
• The Sovereign Citizen movement explained, and the real incident it's based on
• Dennis Quaid as the sheriff whose son is killed
• Martha Plimpton's brief appearance as a seminar devotee
• Why Joe shoots the police: not madness, but inevitability
• The baby at the end. You'll understand when you get there.

Verdict: Strong recommend all round. Heavy. Almost nobody saw it. One of those films.

We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.
 
Until next time, we remain...
 
Bad Dads

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Welcome to Bad Dad's Film Review, the podcast that is to film criticism as a cup of polonium tea is to a business lunch. Put on your tinfoil hat and start following the birds back to their charging stations because we're here to count down the top five conspiracies, a segment that features more unsupported conclusions than the entire output of GB News and more things that don't add up than bat Dan's bar tab. We'll be questioning everything from the moon landing to the flat earth to the far more pressing mystery of why anyone continues to listen to this podcast. Our main feature this week is 2025 Sovereign, a solemn and devastating drama inspired by real events in which Nick Offerman plays a father, raising his son in the firm belief that the law doesn't apply to them, which turns out to be one of those beliefs that remains almost completely unchallenged right up until the moment it gets them both killed. Before we go completely off grid, it's important I tell you that the opin that the opinions on this podcast have not been approved by any government, intelligence agency, or shadowy global elite, though we do remain open to sponsorship opportunities. But if you are the sort of person who still trusts the official version of events, now is the time to return to your regularly scheduled programming. But for everyone else, it's time to meet this week's men who almost certainly appear at least on one government watch list, starting with Dan. He's so old he remembers when the Illuminati were just four blokes in a shed, with a dream and a triangle, and his fucks were classified, redacted, and quietly disappeared in circumstances that the coroner recorded as inconclusive. Good times, good times, yeah. And next up, beautiful Chris, a man so handsome, he's either proof that the simulation has a premium tier or evidence of a government prototype that escaped before they finished the personality. Unless there's at least one suspicious death in a cover up that goes all the way to the top, Chris dismisses it as mainstream media pro propaganda, which is either paranoid nonsense or nonsense or the most coherent film criticism we have on this podcast. That's me. Uh and doing his own research in third place, the man who told me the key to getting a source to open up is to know exactly where to apply pressure and for how long it's Sidey. Hello. And then there's me Riggs. Hello.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Hello.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Hi, Sai. Hi. Yes?

SPEAKER_04 2:23

Or is it? Oh no, not necessarily. I like a conspiracy theory. Do you? Yeah. Yeah, so do I. Do you? What what's your favourite kind of conspiracy theory?

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Uh I've got a few in a quiz later on, actually. So you can pick them from real or made up conspiracy theories. Oh, nice, I know.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

Nice one. Alright, well we'll save that one for later. Do you have any yourself, Sidey? Any particular go-tos that you just The Birds as Drones ones is a really is a really good one.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Um we know someone. Yeah. I don't know that we should really like drop names because that's just mean, but someone did actually genuinely I think that's not less of a conspiracy.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

No, I was gonna say for me that's the one. These idiots with a flat earth.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Well, there's the documentary where they they just get like it's this could be someone's nonsense, but you know, where they get completely like behind the curve.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, but for me is uh like that that was that is the standard of conspiracy theory, absolute bollocks, that there's idiots out there that they've put so much time into try like effort, money, they quit their jobs to try to do this, and then it's such an obvious thing. It's just I don't even know why anyone's even uh can you imagine I I don't get it, so I I'm not gonna get annoyed. I just think it's just funny and what are they doing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Well, should we get into the top five then? While the game's good.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

Well, I've got a joke, yeah. Well, it might not be a joke.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Uh yeah, okay. Well, I think it probably is.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Okay, well let's let's let's carry on then.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Top five conspiracies then, Riggs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:11

Is it is a conspiracy that we might be getting through this quickly because the football's on? Because people are probably wondering how they walk in football.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Uh that obviously goes without saying that we need an update on that.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

It's not the best update.

SPEAKER_04 4:24

It's not the one that we wanted to bring.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I was there to witness the game.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

It was not our best performance. Solid performance. It was it was solid enough, but we didn't get the result we wanted.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

We were playing we were joint top with this mob, but they played a game less, so we needed to beat them.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

I would say you played well until the last five minutes of the game. Well when I when I got subbed, yeah, probably. Yeah, the last five minutes of the game you could have lost the game, but you managed to draw it. You were gonna go. It was one-one, yeah. Well, in one hil down and then an equalizer from someone off the bench. Gomes. Gomes, yeah. Lionel came off the bench.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

And yeah, it wasn't the the way we wanted the.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

But we're still in it, we're still fighting for this. And I'll tell you something, I will love it. I would love it. I would love it. Love it if we beat them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:10

There's they they potentially may have had an eligible player.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Oh well, their number two didn't look like a player, so they've very easily been.

SPEAKER_04 5:19

But that is just conspiracy theory at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Okay. Um, so that's that's the update. One-one, still fighting for it. Still in it, still in it.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar. You can't tell me that's just a coincidence. Very good. Thank you. Yeah, I've got one about flat bread. Conspiracy theorists. About the flat bread? Yeah, they're the non-believers. Um there we go. JFK, Kevin Carson.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

That was Ollie Stone. Yeah, Ollie Stone. It's it goes on for four days, this film, and it goes through every you know, grassy knoll and they showed it in the conspiracy, didn't they?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Showed him getting his head blown off. They did, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

I mean, there's also the conspiracy theory that one of the CIA agents or FBI agents in the in a car behind actually shot him that it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald from uh said grassy knoll. Well, he had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Doesn't JFK heavily lean into the second shooter? Is that is that the grassy knoll?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah. Obviously it's Lee Harvey Oswald, and then he was executed by I forget what. Jack Ruby. Yeah. Because, you know, he knew the truth, blah blah blah. So this isn't it's layered this one.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

It really is, isn't it? I mean, it's crazy times you think you know, a a president being shot. We could move on to Donald Dr J and his recent kind of shooting. A lot of people that one was fake. That that one it was just a uh I think Jesse Ventura is recently he did um he said that he didn't do it, but he he reckons I've seen enough of those like in wrestling. That's uh that's a blade job. A square you know, it was just a a kind of do that. Although some people did die in that shooting, didn't they? Yeah, the shooter. The shooter died, didn't they? No, and and somebody in the audience as well. No. Is that just conspiracy?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I said that from the beginning, and I'm not even a conspiracy theorist. I thought there was fake.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

I thought there was a couple of people that died. We'd have to just the shooter, I believe. Just the shooter, just the shooter. Yeah, blame shooter McGavin. Shoot McGavin.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Live on the dead guy, and that's it.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

So this was Costner in his pomp, really, and Oliver Stone probably making his most influential films. This was on his own. Self-indulgent though? It it did, you know, he I think he'd just come off maybe the doors and Apocalypse Now and no. He'd done the doors and he was, you know, sitting kind of in the But he's an anti-establishment kind of guy, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

You know, so he likes pushing all these buttons and raising.

SPEAKER_04 8:04

So it was it, I think, a little overindulgent and um it was his generation as well. It was like the defining event of it as well, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah, then my dad says, Oh, I know I was when I heard you know when I heard about that and blah blah blah. Yeah, it was big obviously big news American president getting assassinated, big deal.

SPEAKER_03 8:22

Well, that's it. I think a lot of those now it does nowadays though it does seem a bit absurd that they would be like, hi, just in this big open top car, like driving around everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

Well, a lot of those moments that you think about where were you, they are conspiracy moments. You've got Princess Diana. I don't ever remember seeing a film on Princess Diana's. I'm sure they've done documentaries and mockumentaries and dramas and things, but you remember where you were when you heard that news.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Well, you can see I saw one the other day where people they try and start them, and it was a very brief video clip of Princess Di, and it said you can see and this is this is her last ever video of her, and you can see in her eyes that she knows she's gonna be taken out. And it's it's complete misinformation. It was a video of her on one of her landmine tours speaking to a child who'd lost their legs, you know, from Daniel Landmine, and she was fucking offset because she's talking to a kid. And you know, people try and spin this into something where she knows she's about to begin like, fuck off.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

Yeah. Well, th this is how you know it can be manipulated in even more days.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

I mean, in you know, in it but in the next 18 months to two years it will be pretty much indistinguishable from I would think.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

I'll need to to s see you, feel you, touch you, smell you, and lick you before I know it's real. Okay, well you go. Well, start with licking and then we'll go Yeah, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:51

Riggs? I'll go for another real lifey one then. We watched all the president's men. Oh we reviewed it for this pod, and it was brilliant. It was a cracker. Woodward and Bernstein. What were their names? I've completely forgotten Robert Redford. Robert Redford and Dustin Dustin Hoffman. Fantastic as the two journalists who bring down the Republican Party.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

That newspaper now owned by Bezos. Yeah. Completely gutted, like got rid of everyone.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Everything's gonna go up to a billionaire eventually. Yeah. Yeah, the destruction of the free press is one of the But a great movie. Yeah. Yeah, not a lot else to say about it. We really f absolutely loved that as a character piece, as a way to convey lots of complicated plot, just in a really interesting way, and the tennis of Well, they have to drill into bookkeeping and stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:51

Well, you you do, but you know, just how things have changed now, obviously, with the age of computers and with the age of communications, security cameras and fortunately politicians just find it tougher and tougher to get away with this stuff now.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Has anyone seen this is like more like a criminal conspiracy again. Yeah. Michael Clayton? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I like that like Clundog. Yeah, Clundog is good. Tilda Swinton and what's the the actor, Tom? He's losing his marbles. There's to stay in his meds, or he won't comply with the sort of 'cause they've essentially a little bit like another one, Aaron Brockovich, they've been pumping out chemicals which has caused harm to humans, deformities and all the rest of it. And Tom Actor, I can't remember the sound for him.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Sydney Pollock.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Tom Wilkinson. He goes off his meds and sort of tries basically gives the game away. I think he might actually be the partner of the law firm and who who won't he won't stay on on track with the with the case. They didn't pay him enough. And Clooney's Clooney's the sort of he's he's never quite made it uh to partner level as a lawyer, but he's a good fixer and he's sort of there trying to pull pull all the pieces together. And in the end they do get them to certain sort of caves. Not before they've tried to off him, they've put like burn up his car and stuff. But it's not it's not like a huge action set of pieces, it's just you know, it's the careful, it's like a steady-paced kind of like not even courtroom drama, just a sort of I don't know how to how you really like a drama, just an ordinary drama for clearly doing his thing, but proper acting, well directed. I really, really I always think about nominating this, but I think it's I haven't seen it, you've talked about it a few times. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

I thought it was one of his best uh yeah for sure. Yeah, he's really good. And the the cast is really good. Yeah, it's excellent.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

I have seen it, but I don't remember it very well.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I like it, yeah, it's brilliant. And it's it's a fairly two hour, two hour and ten. It's a fairly long. I loved it, yeah. It's good. It's good. So yeah, Michael Clayton. It's almost second series for you. Yes, I know, I know. I tell you what, it's not second series, but I have nominated this song before for something else. For I can't there was something to do with the way they speak, but this is V for Vendetta, yeah. Where it depicts a conspiracy to David Ike style, isn't it? Uh Lizard people. What? V for Vendetta? No, oh sorry, no, you're Guy Fawkes one.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, Guy Forks, yeah. I was gonna say what what's the one with is it that's V, isn't it? No, the actual series V. Yeah, it's V. Okay. Oh yeah, that was Lizard people, yeah. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Is that a conspiracy as well?

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Well no, they just live. They live among us. They live amongst us.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Ah right, yeah, yeah, the lizard, like the Queen and that. Yes, yeah, yeah, the the the guy totalitarian government and he there's a conspiracy where they poisoned a school at some time, and this guy that survived some fire, he Yes, becomes V. Yeah, becomes V and he's out to kill everyone and he finds Eevee. Yeah. And I've got a graphic novel somewhere, that's pretty good. Eevee Bike. Uh so yeah, I can I can have that, right? Yeah, so you go in the movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

And he I think he talks only in alliteration, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

There's one scene where he does, yeah. Um it's yeah, him and Ashley Portman. Yeah. I I really like that. I watch it. John Hurt, I think, is the big brother character in it, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

James McTeague, but produced by the Wachowskis and has some of their sort of Matrix aesthetic to it as well. And in the tradition of Alan Moore adaptations, he fucking hates it.

SPEAKER_04 14:33

He fucking hates it, yeah. Matrix. I don't think you can have a conspiracy week without mentioning that we're living in a multiverse, a simulation simulation and all the rest of it. Yeah. There was also just coupled in with this one, but not related at all, so not really coupled in with it. It's the Moonlanding film. There was a recent one with Scarlet Johansson. She was the PR. That was that was if they didn't make it, it was to spin it, wasn't it? That's right, yeah. And who was that? Was it Francis Ford? Uh yeah, Chanum Tate Tatum, but was it Coppia Coppola who was said to No, Kubrick.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Kubrick, Kubrick, who who was said to um have staged it. He was apparently the after 2001, he was approached and did film it, yeah, apparently, and then spent the rest of his career hiding references to it in his films like Danny wearing an Apollo 11 t-shirt in one of the movies and other things that if you stare at them hard enough, you can't.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I just think of all the directors to pick, I'd have to be the one that would have faked him. Like, he would have fine of billionaires. It's just no.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah, right. I know, yeah. But yeah, um imagine him like to to like Buzz Aldrin. No, on the two under Cake of him getting off the step.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

No, one small no, no, no, no. Buzz Aldrin, if you ask him about it, he gets really pissy. Chiny. Yeah. Is he still with his Buzz? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good on him.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

Yeah, so Matrix or Moonlandings. Nice. Do you want my quiz? Yes. It's it's a game where I read out a conspiracy theory and you have to tell me whether it's a real theory or that real people actually have made up and believe, or it's one that I've just made up right now. So question one Finland doesn't exist and never has. Is that a real one that people really believe, or is it made up one that Riggs believes?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

I I think it's a made up one that you think the Russians probably don't believe it, but I'm gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

This is a real one. According to believers, Finland is a fiction jointly invented by the Soviet Union and Japan in 1918 to allow Japanese fishing fleets to illegally draw the Baltic Sea. And then borders. So what we call Finland is actually just eastern Sweden, the Finnish people are actors, and Nokia is a front.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

This is a thing that people really believe.

SPEAKER_04 16:47

I think it's the it's also recently been described as the happiest place in the world. I've been there.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Yeah, I've been there as well. But the it whether it doesn't matter with the borders or who do it, it the the landmass is there. No, it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's one that people believe. Question two. Denver airport is the global headquarters of the New World Order. Do people actually believe that?

SPEAKER_04 17:12

I've been to Denver Airport and I can confirm that. Is that why you were there? Well, if that I can't confirm.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

If you've been there, Dan, you will know that there are a genuinely disturbing set of murals depicting an apocalyptic genocide. A blue horse with glowing red eyes that killed its own sculptor when it fell on him during construction, and Masonic symbols embedded across the airport. So that is a real one that people do really believe.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

Well, I know that if you wander around the airport and collect people's trolleys and put them away, you get a quarter. Or you did back in those days. That was when a quarter could buy you not a lot. Brackerjack.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Question three the Victorians invented children as a tax avoidance scheme. That is a false. Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_04 17:58

I was gonna say true, because that would have been a you know, you could see them writing off things like that and sending a few opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

How about I'll skip two? The US government ran a secret programme for decades in which they deliberately infected hundreds of black men with syphilis without their knowledge or consent and then withheld treatment to study the progression of the disease. That sadly is true. I couldn't believe that. Yeah. That is both a conspiracy theory that then turned out to be true, the Tuskegee syphilis study, which ran from 1932 to 1972. Is that what it was?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

I've heard of the Tuskegee experiment, but I didn't know that that was Is that what it was? Syphilis.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

It was ended when a whistleblower leaked it to the press and Clinton formally apologized in 1997. Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number the seven, all birds in America are government surveillance drones. This is obviously a real one that people do believe. It was made up by Peter Mackindo in 2017 as a deliberate satire of conspiracy theories and as sadly. So these are snowballed now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

It's actually the arguably the greatest ending to a story about conspiracy theories. I'm gonna say how stupid you would have.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

I actually have heard someone say this to me once, this bird conspiracy thing. So have we. The land of the and I I just couldn't believe my eyes that I heard that. Yeah, well, you wouldn't.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

I've got one more. It's every weatherspoons in Britain is connected by a network of underground tunnels built during the 80s for reasons that nobody at the company will discuss. No.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

You've you've made made that. There is, though, the weatherspoons thing that you I don't know if you post yourself on social media. Weatherspoons the game, and someone will they'll buy you a drink.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

So you've got that as well. How did I get that algorithm?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

And it had a little viral moment a little while ago, you know, a couple of years back where you've got to post a picture of yourself.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

You go and say like this weatherspin's.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

It's my birthday and I'm at Weatherspoons in fucking Wigan, and someone in like West Boratow would say sound, and they would like go, they would somehow contact that weatherspoon's and you'd get a drink center.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Basically, right, have you ever heard of FinDom? Yes. Financial domination. It's not even it's like a sex relationship. You just give your money. All you're doing is giving somebody money and that's the thing that gets you. Oh right. Yeah. It's that for being married people on Facebook. Yeah. It's that for people on Facebook, isn't it? Because if you're a chick, you just go onto this weatherspoons and you're like, oh, it's my birthday, you can send me a drink. But if you're you know a 14-year-old man.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Uh right, some other ones. I've got some secret society stuff, yeah. Eyes wide shut. We mentioned that it's a little bit sort of featured in the conspiracy uh in a way. Less sexy though.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Well, there's a bit to that as well, isn't there? Because he died just after it was Well, Kubrick. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Is his last feature.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

And then they did some editing to it and took bits out and all sorts of stuff, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

I mean, it's certainly not his best work. And the Da Vinci code, obviously. Yeah. PowerPoint the movie. Yeah, I still quite like that movie. Even though it's got Tom Hanks in it.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

I I like the book, really kind of enjoyment stuff. Holidays.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

There's a bit where they get saved by a pigeon, which is great. And then Freemasons, people like to think of those as being somehow bobbed and stuff. They're sort of talked about in the same breath as Jack the Ripper. But he was a Freemason. Yeah, possibly you're a member of the Royal Family. He was a surgeon, wasn't he? That was the Well, no, I mean, literally no one knows, but the theories, those are the theories that people put about. And that movie was uh from hell. So if you want the movie, tie in. Then I'm uh well I'll I've got a couple of others then on.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Uh John Wick. John Dick. There's a conspiracy that there's all these the high table and there's all these uh shadowy elites. Yeah, the shadowy again, shadowy elites of all that people pulling the strings. Kamora, then Drageta, the Russian mafia, the triads, the all the the the Yakuza, all the I don't know, whatever mafia families or whatever underground criminal people have ever heard. Of they are all at a table and they run the underground world from the continentals, and you have coins and I don't know, all sorts of shit happening. So I think that's a nice conspiracy. Yeah. Yeah, to to say if that's okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:17

It it's more than okay. I had also the Truman Show down there, which is actually a really good film. Right, fucking movie. It's it's I don't see ya. Just super. We mentioned They Live, which was reviewed for the pod here. Had stage 100, 200. May have been uh 300? A big a big one. Yeah. And when Rowdy Roddy Piper puts on his his sunglasses, he can see that they're being told to obey. They they live among us. My nom, I'm gonna have Elvis versus Nixon. I don't know if anybody's ever heard of the conspiracy about Elvis in a cage fight. That he's dead, he's not, obviously. And this was one about Elvis and his his interest in badges. Badges badges. Let's you know, let's not sully him. And it was he he collected badges and he went to Nixon and he said that he'd love like a diplomatic badge, you know, so he could just wander through passport control and and customs and things without a worry in the world because he was the king. Not these days, he was draft dodger. No, he went in. He went in, he did his he did his he did his service. He did it in Germany, didn't he? He was entertaining the troops and everything, and then came back at a hero, had his hair cut and all sorts, but thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Is that your norm? That's my nom. Nice. Well, just a couple before my norm, I just wanted to stop and talk about the Simpsons for a minute because they love a conspiracy theory and started a few. Obviously, they have their own version of the Freemasons, which is the Stone Cutters. The British Crown keeps who keeps uh who controls the British Crown keeps the metric system down. Who made Steve Gutenberg stuff?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

And then they stop for that and say, right, let's get drunk and have ribs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

In Brothers Little Helper, Bart on Rittlin discovers that Major League Baseball has been conducting mass surveillance on the American public in the computer war menace shoes. A shadowy cabal is spiking flu vaccines to boost Christmas shopping sales. A secret colony of superpowered elves run their influence through horse racing. Every time an Al Gore book is scanned at a bookstore, it sends a coded message directly to the Pentagon who tell him it's got a sale. All of those were in The Simpsons. But my choice is going to be Zoolander. Seen Zoolander? Yes. The ones with the models. The fashion industry has been behind every major political assassination for 200 years. John Wilkes Booth was the first actor/slash model. JFK was killed because his Cuban trade embargo blocked the import of Sansa Belt slacks. Lincoln was killed because ending slavery made cotton more expensive. It's all been related to the fashion industry.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Yeah. Wow. I I believe it.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah. Makes sense, yeah. A couple of music ones. Muse, Matt Bellamy from Muse, is really into conspiracy theories and they're almost their entire discography. They've got a new one out. The Second Law, the Resistance and Absolution are concept albums steeped in New World Order and Orwellian surveillance type. Themes, Chemtrails Over the Country Club by Lana Del Rey. Yeah. Your pal. Chemtrails is a favourite of conspiracy nuts.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

There was in that uh thing we did the midweek, the con the conspiracy. There was chemtrails in that. Did they talk about that, did they? There was everything in it. Yeah, they were they had everything in it.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

And then if you could sort of dive into the hip-hop music, Public Enemy, NWA, they would talk about this sort of stuff, having their phones tapped and all this sort of stuff. And it turns out there was a real thing, Co Intel Pro Counterintelligence Programme. It was a covert FBI programme, ran from 56 to 71, designed to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and destroy political organisations that the FBI deemed subversive. So they targeted specifically the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Socialist Workers Party, American Indian Movement, the Communist Party, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement, and various anti-Book. The Judean Liberation. The Judean People's Front. So they would they would like actually put plants, infiltrate these groups and um forge letters, tip-offs, blackmail people. Pretty fucking grim stuff.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Would you expect I don't know, the government to infiltrate, I don't know, subversive groups but do they not infiltrate the Kuk's Klan?

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Or they did also target the they did target the the Bizarrely, the K the KKK was also targeted, though not both far less aggressively than all those other ones. We watched that movie about them setting up the KKK Black Klansmen, that was quite good. But my NOM, I'm gonna get a bit off piste here, it's actually a real one that a friend of mine who I won't name because this is genuine, during so a lot of the stuff like escalated, accelerated through COVID. A lot, yeah. And a friend of mine, he really f went hard on conspiracy theories, and he would send me 10-hour long videos of stuff that may have a look at this. And I said, I go, I'm not I'm not interested anyway, but I'm not gonna watch a fucking 10-hour long video. No. Then he sent me one that was look up this guy, what's he called him? Just put the name of it. Oh anyway, XYZ blah on TikTok and let me know what you think. And I went back and went, Well, it's some guy doing the impersonation of Robin Williams, like Robin Williams was dead at this point. And he's like, Is it though? Let's use our critical. Oh my god, it's like him earlier. Let's use our critical thinking hats and go and do this, blah, blah, blah. Honestly, that's what he says. And then and I put, what is it? Like some fucking global cabal bullshit, Pizzagate. And he put, so you do know. Honestly, that's what's for.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

And then the thing about QAnon, though, you did make right Pizzagate and all that, is it turns out there was a global elite of paedophiles doing shit on a horrendous shit. And actually, if you were minded to think of things as a conspiracy, you might think that somebody making up a QAnon style thing that talks about adrenochrome and sensationalizes all that other stuff may have been trying to master the fact that there actually fucking was a paedophile really.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

And the reason that there is a name for someone who's into fucking kids is because it exists. Right. And I I just said, look, mate, I don't buy any of it. And he put, yeah, totally. It's so unbelievable. Right. Or is it? This thing extends far and wide, literally entire planet. I've seen underground dums, I don't know what he means, dums with electromagnetic trains, maglevs that do 17,000 miles per hour, taking the elites from the UK to the USA in 40 to 60 mins, seeing their geographical locations with longitudes and latitudes. They run the entire continent through Vatican, etc., and the Alliance have been taking them out there, used for nefarious purposes. When you search the global web for earthquakes around the world and congregate where hundreds have been happening weekly, they're all tracked around 10 kilometres deep, not coincidence. COVID isn't a virus pandemic, it's a bioweapon. Okay. But Alliance hijacked it and have been using this lockdown time where folk are inside safe to round up all the elites involved. That's why you see hidden comms with so many slips wearing ankle boots, claiming ankle injury, but really hiding a tag because they are under arrest, Obama, Clinton, Biden, etc. Yeah, mate, it's hard to swallow. Soon humanity won't have a choice, but to hear direct from the military, and what will help will be these people who seem to have died, but actually haven't and come out to expose things. Biggest thing ever to happen to humanity, and we're alive to witness it, but there's an amazing silver lining coming, bro, with a like prayer hands thing. I was like, I just went back and foot, I I literally don't know what to say. Yeah. There was a lot in there, wasn't there? Because there was from one to another, it's just liberation. Yeah. It's like so many of them pieced together into one thing.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

So the Vatican is a train station, then basically, is that what he was saying? For it's a amazing.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

He didn't say where it left from, but he did say that it went to the room. All rolls lead to Rome, right? 17,000 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_04 29:56

Does this mean Harry Potter's real? That that that kind of I mean, anything's possible. Well he is. He definitely is real. Yeah, you can as as we showed in our midweek, you know, uh patterns can be seen anywhere if you look long enough at uh a wall and some newspaper articles and shape and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

That's my number, but it's also quite sad because his guy's clearly like mosquito a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 30:20

Let's hope that they can they can scrape scrape people.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

I've got one that I wanted to say Sanchez is commonly known as Carlos the Jackal, and he is an actual person who has can do conducted a series of assassinations and terrorist bombings between 1973 and 1985.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

He's on the cover of Black Great's debut album, It's Great When You're Straight, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

There you go. That and he has been portrayed in a few movies. Obviously, all of it is a conspiracy as to who made him do all that and was he working for the government, was he working for the government of Venezuela? He's a Venezuelan citizen. Was he working for Chile? Was he working for the Americans? Was he working for the Russians? All that. And he's been even Bruce Willis. We watched something and Bruce Willis portrayed him. There was another one. There was Eddie Redbane did a series, I think. The series, there was another one for the 70s or 80s, yeah. That is D D the Jackal. And but my norm is I'm gonna copy Dan. I'm gonna come very close to it's a movie that we done for the pod, and we loved it. We put it on a pedestal, it's it lives in my heart. It's another movie about Elvis, and it's called Baba Hotep. Oh yeah. And the conspiracy is that he was gyrating so hard that he passed out, and then he woke up in an asylum, and uh we we've seen this movie, right?

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah, with JFK, who is now black. Exactly. Yeah. So and they have to fight an Egyptian mummy. So that is my nom. Thank you very much, Greatfield. Yeah. And then we just need one more conspiracy theory. Or do we?

SPEAKER_04 32:03

There's uh a wild array of munchies, um It's a real smorgasboard, isn't it? Special toffee chewy stuff, belters, munchies, gone. Tango belt, cream eggs, backlavers. There's even a glass of red wine. Well, that leads us effortlessly into this week's movie. Sovereign. Yeah. Yeah. A bit sovere it's all about rings, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Yeah. Had you heard about the sovereign citizen movement?

SPEAKER_04 32:40

I hadn't, actually. I was this was kind of new to me, although I was aware of I didn't know it had a name called the Sovereign City Citizen Movement, but I had heard of people who obviously believe I knew someone, we knew someone that briefly was a member of this.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

World Citizen.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

And and so uh tell us a little more about it, Reese, for those that don't know. What about the movement or this film?

SPEAKER_03 33:09

The the movement. It basically comes down to it doesn't can it doesn't recognise law in any sort of form, essentially, and that they consider themselves above the law, right? Exempt from government, and that there is essentially a sort of they call it straw man in this, but a kind of a corporate entity of an individual who is liable for things in the eyes of the like a bank is a separate entity.

SPEAKER_04 33:39

Yeah. If if the bank is going to prison to court, then nobody's actually going to prison. It would just be the bank is fined.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

It's essentially a whole bunch of pseudo-legal mumbo jumbo that paranoid and desperate and desperate people employ. But it has had a more sort of it's it's gaining traction as a as a movement. I mean, this film is is based on a real life incident involving a follower of this.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

It does say at the beginning, right, that this is based on a true event.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Yeah, and only this week in Australia, this is what had me thinking about it. There was an Australian guy called Do you see this, Desi Freeman? Oh yeah, Seven Months on the Run. Yeah, Seven Months on the Run. He did a similar sort of thing. Yeah, and was shot and killed yesterday or the day before, I think. And in Queensland in 2022, there was another similar incident, so it's a troubling phenomenon.

SPEAKER_04 34:36

Well, who's the famous Australian who Raoul Moat? No. The famous Australian who wore the iron kind of um crocodile dundee. The iron cross. No, going back, back, back, back in the day. Ned Flanders. Kelly. Kelly. You know, people like that would have not recognised not recognised the law in in various ways, you know, decided to be a few.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

By the Meinhof gang, the RAF, they said that in court and said we don't recognise this court. How can you apply your laws to us and we don't fucking recognise anything? Exactly. That's the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

I think the Nazis said that in Nuremberg as well. So I believe that. This one opens then with a sort of flash forward into the movie. Uh uh, it's a desperate call to the emergency services, a member of the public reporting that two police officers police officers have been gunned down. He's saying there's brains everywhere or something like that. And it felt to me like that was probably real recordings. I'm not sure of the of the genuine incident. The audio, yeah, probably. And then we cut to the Kane household where Joe, he was Jacob Tremblay in the room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

We watched that old room, I think it was called. The young lad. He was at home with a dog. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

He's good in this and liked him. He's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Yeah, he's a great actor.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

He's home alone in their kind of quite run-down looking house. The house is actually not that bad, but the It just hasn't been looked after.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

You see how it look outside, and it's just it just looks like it's abandoned, really.

SPEAKER_03 36:10

It's unkempt, isn't it? It's pretty clear that he's there. I mean, straight away it's pretty clear that he's there for long periods on his own. Yeah. When he's about sixteen. Anyway, the sheriff and the bailiff turn up at the door knocking for trying to find his dad, and they're gonna serve him a notice of eviction in 30 days unless he pays the minimum. And it's all a bit sad and desperate, isn't it? He looks at his neighbour. He's a girl.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

And he's a good k he's a good kid cross. You know, you see him tidying the yard, he he can't get the the law mole working, but he he like tidies best he can and stacks some some metal behind a shed, and he hears a car coming and it's his dad, and you can see the smile on his face, and you realise these guys have got a good relationship.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Yeah, and it's a sort of bit jovial at first. He comes in and he the dad just dismisses it. Don't worry about it, the bank has no legal authority over me.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

Yeah, around the bank, but uh and that part, but I was it was more the the initial reaction of him here in his dad's home. It was a smile, he was pleased, he helps him with the the shopping that he goes, Con, have you done this? Oh good lad, you know, and his dad's really nice to him, and you just think this isn't like a you know, an abusive relationship in those first kind of No, it's the scene is quite warm. Quite warm that he's i in a loving, kind of understanding parent child relationship. And have you done your homework? Have you test you know, done this good lad, good lad.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Yeah, well it becomes clear that he's homeschooled and his dad is helping him do that, and at first, you know, you see him being very conscientious, looking through all his work and talking to him about it and discussing it sort of philosophically with him.

SPEAKER_04 37:53

But th there is little kind of interactions and things where you see him looking at the neighbour who's come back from school with a little sister or something, and he he kind of checks her out a bit and you think how interaction how how much interaction have you got? Yeah, how much how much more.

SPEAKER_03 38:21

So Dad, he occasionally goes on an internet show, a bit like this podcast, where he talks about debt elimination with other kooks, and he treat he goes on a series of seminars across the country which are almost evangelical in their presentation. They've got these white suits and red ties, and they sometimes even perform in churches. And preaching to the converted. Yeah, well, they're preaching to the desperate, people who've got no money, people on disability, people who've been who who can't afford payments on all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

But he basically misleads these people.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

He tells them that basically he can tie them the pe the system up with knots and get, you know, for a thousand dollars a night.

SPEAKER_04 39:02

And these people have big beards and cowboy hats, and they're, you know, land at a free kind of people, and they don't understand how they're being shafted by a system they don't understand. They're being asked for bigger taxes, they're being asked to bail out banks for instance, and all these kind of things that he puts into his speech, and it's very easy to get them on board because they want to believe.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

The crowd is very receptive and he's really charismatic, and his son's watching him with a kind of quiet awe, really, at like what he's gonna do and video, yeah, exactly. I mean it all seems like fairly not idyllic, but a bit strange, but also quite wholesome in a way.

SPEAKER_04 39:45

Yeah, and you also at this stage the views have become you don't know the situation, how unfair it is, what contracts they do have. Because he talks about, you know, I don't have a contract, they don't know my contract, and you think he's okay, like I'll give the film a enough at this stage, because I I don't know. But as it goes on, it the the bit that really ticked it for me was the driving licence part when he's so a little bit further down, he's been to a few and more of these evangelical type meetings.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Really, the only thing of interest that happens before that incident is that Joe says, Well, why can't they earn a bit of money? And he's like, Well, we should we can pay back the bank now. And he's like, It's to your point, oh they don't have a car they don't owe me, why should I share? They loaned my money out at nine times the fractionalization of the debt, and I don't get back on that, so they can't have any of mine. And he's like, Oh, it's all fifty-fifty, and that's important later because it doesn't go 50-50.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

Yeah, and and obviously at some stage he's he's borrowed the money from the bank to buy the house or whatever whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

But Well, there were happier times, right? He had a wife and a Was there another child as well?

SPEAKER_00 40:58

We're pretty sure there was another there was another child, a daughter, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 41:01

Yeah, it's not completely clear what happened to them, but they're no longer around.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

No. And this incident where he's driving along and he gets pulled over by the police at uh Well, he's not driving Dan, he's travelling. Yeah. Well, this is it. And you realise, wait a minute, he goes, No, I'm this is my car, and he's saying driver's you know, license and registration, and he's saying, Well, this is what you're gonna have, and he brings it.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

Well, he escalates this situation in about 30 seconds from just completely normal to think like, oh my god, what the fuck are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 41:34

You need to have a measurement of are you safe and able to drive this vehicle on a road with other people? That's what you're being asked to to prove.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

A traffic cost for licence and registration is seems to be a fairly normal thing, at least in American movies, anyway.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Yeah, but he he argues the point that there's some kind of old law that a traveller, you know, it's like he's got a horse and carrying it. You know, this is it. It would have come from like, you know, back in the day of the Wild West and you know, uh a horse and car.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Or stuff he's like not really understood properly because he's trying to define his car as not a car and all sorts of vehicle is not a car, it's not a lot of cool.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

Well, it this it gets worse when he gets into into court, of course, but right there he he escalates it and he goes.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

No, because he's the first thing he says, Is this your car? And he says, No, this isn't a car, it's a vehicle. It's like, oh my god, what are you doing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

So then basically they he goes to stay the night in jail.

SPEAKER_03 42:33

Yeah. Jerry is taken away, he escalates this situation, and the cops quite rightly take him off, and Joe is sent off to a detention centre. And we meet Randy Quaid. Yes, yeah. And Randy just presses him gently on this whole sovereign idea, because he's like, Oh, so there's this fictional entity that's responsible for all this shit, you know, that's happening to you, is there? Why isn't he here? Because he it looks to me like you're here and not him. And I it j Joe has already been questioning, like we said, a few times.

SPEAKER_04 43:02

Yeah, he he's looked at.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

And he's looking at which is the opposite, sorry to interrupt you, but it's the opposite to I was saying to Kira, because we watched it together, and I was like, This kid is the opposite to any other kid in history, where generally parents tell you to go to school, he's actively looking to go to school. Yeah. And his old man's like, No, don't go. They're gonna grab you by the balls, they're gonna have all the information on you, and all that. And this kid's like, But I want to go to school.

SPEAKER_04 43:30

And he ends up through this detention centre social you know, services type situation in a school, he's playing a bit of basketball, they're clapping, they're encouraging, you see him smiling, you think.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Well, don't forget he's been homeschooled for six years, between the ages 10 and 16. He's participating in a classroom environment where they're having a discussion. It's like alien to him, but he likes it.

SPEAKER_04 43:51

And he he enjoys it, and you think he's a smart kid. He he's he's kind of encouraging to the other kids by clapping when they score basket.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Or something, and you just think that's the kind of environment, you know, around his own peers and and sort out your own way in life and and m make it but but all along the music is reminding you of those first 30 seconds of the fucking the the call, the phone call at the beginning of the death and destruction that we know awaits what's happening.

SPEAKER_04 44:19

And and Dad's on his way back, and this time he's got the girl from the Goonies. Martha Plimpton. Yeah, yes. She was in Pekka as well, wasn't she? Yeah. And she has bailed him out. Yeah, she's bailed him out. She's been part of the podcast followers and May Bad Film Review or something. Yeah, that's it. And you know, is bankrolled the next few days of their lives and they go to little Reno Atlanta or wherever they're going gambling.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

And they've got a room. He's mentioned before just that he's been 18 years sober, hasn't he? And then suddenly you see him drinking and gambling. He's principally gambling the money that Joe had in this scene.

SPEAKER_04 45:01

Yeah, but that's it. He's he's gambling any money he can get. He gets her money as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Yeah, she goes to the ATM and hands him some cash and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:10

And needless say, he's he's not on a lucky streak. He loses that money and they part their ways after a little while, but all on good terms and But it's pretty clear he's got like this fucked eye that he's come back with that looks fucked straight away after this.

SPEAKER_03 45:27

He's flipped after being inside. As something's gone complete drastically wrong with him because when they start the seminars up again, he's much more violent in his language, talks openly about his desire to or not his desire for violence. But yeah, desire for violence, basically, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 45:43

He won't quit he won't quit. They go then to a gun range. And they're talking to people that love guns about guns and buy guns and Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

But he goes to with the kids, with Joe to the drive to the shooting range and gives him a machine gun to shoot.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

And he's like aiming more for the head.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah, that you would normally wear a vest, and you're like, only the police wears a vest. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 46:06

And at about this point, Chris, it's a good the it's a good thing to say that the parallel story starts, which is Dennis Quaid and his son. Yes. A police, a young police officer in training, he's learning the job. You see him, he's it's still in the training phase, and he's got a young family. He's had a f an argument with his father about gentle parenting, essentially, about whether or not you should pick up a a child.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

And Quaid is is very firm in don't do that. You'll just soften them up. You never pick up a a a crying baby, you're too soft whenever he does.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

And it's part of a pattern of him being hard on his son, which his mother does.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

And you see him going through the training regime of a a state trooper being tasered, being taken down and armed behind the back and slammed into the face, and you know, being part of this kind of workshop saying, Look, you're practicing now, and one day you're gonna be in an unpredictable situation and this can happen. So he's some part of the training crew, maybe he's retired state troop or whatever it is, Dennis Quaid. But he's the sheriff, I think. He's the sheriff. He's got a rusty sheriff's badge. Yeah. And yeah, well, he's that story uh, you know, they don't really go too much into it, but they give us enough to know that. It's going on in the background behind these characters.

SPEAKER_03 47:27

It's like a portrait of different fathers and their sons. In some ways, like Dennis Quaid's relationship is much colder with his son than the relationship we saw modelled at the beginning, but this is now going completely off the rails, really, because the bank's deadline arrives and they take the house, the father just completely abdicates all kinds of responsibility to the kid to like answer the door to these people. And then he's like, And then why did you do a load of shit for him when they're kicked out? And he's like, Why did you let them in? And then in an astonishing moment, he pulls two guns out the back of the car and tries to enforce a duel with him, like to shoot with a kid, yeah. He's screaming, Mendacity, mendacity, and holding. I think he takes a shot, does he?

SPEAKER_00 48:09

He shoots, obviously not at the child, but he does shoot the shot. He does shoot the gun and just almost simulates the duel and Fucking hell.

SPEAKER_04 48:16

It's it's a kind of another moment.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

And this is when they go to court. Yeah. And he refuses to get a lawyer. Yeah. And he represents himself.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

He tries all that mumbo jumbo shit in front of the judge. Actual judge. Just like he's like, it's over in about 30 seconds, and he's like, right, that's it, done. Bailiff, take him out of here, and it's like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

He's like, What do you mean? No, I have this, and and he just kind of he can't take his words out, and he just yells almost like he did with Mendacity. He just yells the I've got rights, I've got this. And the judge's like, Yeah, I I just told you who won the foreclosure, they're taking the house. You've got Mr.

SPEAKER_04 48:54

Bank there who's just saying we try to like looking at the judge, going, We try to torture him, and the judge just throws it out and he goes, I don't accept this. You're you're running away from your duties here. Make it be known. The judge is running away from his duties. The judge has just packed it. He's just gone to lunch or whatever. And then he picks up his bag and goes, We won that case. Like, you know, he's just absolutely blinkered in his view.

SPEAKER_03 49:20

He's really lost it now, really, by this point. And it's inevitable where it goes to next because there is another traffic stop, and we know they've got a lot of weapons in the car now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

And uh this one But this one is where I sorry to interrupt, this is where I found it really strange because I don't have a driving license, and uh my limited knowledge You shouldn't be driving. I I don't. I I I would never do it. But to my limited knowledge, in America, you can get out of the car in Romania where I'm from, and you can get out of the car in England where I've seen people when you're Yeah, but in America you get out of the car and soft. That is exactly. And and he unarmed initially.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Well, but yeah, it's because it's the two cadets, it's the cadets that we've seen.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yes, but Johnny Quake's and uh the other guy shift, and they just stop this guy, and he walks out of the car like oh, what's going on, officers? I can't go I didn't do anything wrong, I'm just travelling the same kind of sentence. And they're like, Oh no, it's it's the first car. Yeah. The cadets come the second time, and the guy's like, and he waves that piece of paper that is like his legal document made by himself.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

He's super, super aggressive, and yeah, he gives them this bullshit documentation and then goes, they they're like really puzzled because they're just cadets who start to phone it in, and he goes back to his car and just gets the machine gun out the back and just lies there, and the kid is looking at him like, What the fuck are you doing, Dad? Then he goes back out and they another copper turns up and he gets out without the machine gun and they start to arrest him again. It's just a recurrence of the first one, and then the kid leaps out the side of the car with a machine gun and then just guns down the coppers.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Fucking hell.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

Because he's obviously had it drilled into him, he's seen his father, he's seen this go wrong, he's had all this message of violence at him.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

He's agitated already, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

So he's gunned down Dennis Quaid's son and his partner, and then they're off on a little sort of temporary manhunt basically.

SPEAKER_04 51:15

Yeah, they they go to a shop and buy a new shirt and Yeah, he washes off the gunpowder and all that and the petals.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

I mean they buy more bullets.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

Obviously gonna end in one way and they get to a parking lot.

SPEAKER_03 51:31

Just before that, he sees the girl from next door and she waves at him across the and he doesn't he can't by this point he's so broken he can't even there's been a thing of him trying to get in contact of the ad friend on Facebook and all that.

SPEAKER_04 51:45

I thought the dad might be I mean, this based on a true story, so you know, obviously not, but you you think the dad might try and, you know, shuttle the kid off to safety or something. Exactly, you know, but no, they're they're they're going down in an absolute blaze of glory here, and as soon as he gets into this car park and there's a car that pulls in front of him, he starts shooting first and and they don't stop shooting until everybody's dead.

SPEAKER_03 52:11

It kicks off like but it's quite it's Nick Offerman. Yeah. Normally known for his comedic roles, really, and it's so but he's quite big and violent in this, and it kicks off like a fairly good actually in the 10 or 15 minute battle scene, like lots of gunfire, so many people eventually. I mean, it's the van is just turned into Swiss cheese. Yeah, Quaid comes in and he he sets the the final few bullets.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Does he know does he know at this point that his son is?

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Yeah, yeah, he comes he hears it on the radio and they go to the crime scene as it's happened, basically.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

His wife's in the car, his wife's in the car, she sees it. They were meant to go fishing or something, and because there was the first day of the sun, and they were like, Oh, we're gonna celebrate, we're going to the lake or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 52:55

The w the wife is giving him a bit of stick for being, you know, riding the kid pretty hard and he's he's a good kid, like, you know, and he says, Well, why don't you tell him that every now and again, you know, that he's you're proud of him and stuff. It it ends with all the funerals of you know, uh two st star spangled banner coffins in a in a church with the the girl that he's been looking at.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

The young girl, yeah, the neighbour.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

She's part of the choir. And there's a few, like a a few candles and homemade posters around four candles around around a a small kind of stand where they would have held a virgin uh vigil for for the other two because they did have their followers and things. But then it breaks to to Quaid at home. The wife of his son is is kind of breaking down, or his sister, I'm not sure if it's his daughter in his sister. She's breaking down doing the dishes, he takes over, and he hears the kid crying after a while, and you know, you just think, well, he's the kind of guy who's not going to pick up, you know, yeah, it's a strange, it's a strange thing. But it's changed him, obviously, and he does go and pick up the kid and he he takes him outside and he's trying to, you know, change himself a little soothing and he gives him a little kiss and it ends on that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 54:16

Yeah, and it it ends on that, but it's it's a really sad, sad story because it's even worse as well, because one of the things we forgot to mention. Well, it's true, and one of the other things we didn't mention was Nick Offerman tells this desperately sad story about essentially what pushed him over the edge into this sovereign movement, which was that his young daughter ha uh died of SIDS, and the government wanted to do an autopsy and he didn't want them to. Yeah. And they did it anyway. Yeah. Oh Sakurai. Desperate yeah, I know you might have found that a bit tricky. It was desperately, desperately sad.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

And uh yeah. He also has a story about him and his dad. At the beginning, when he tells the story to to the kid, there is a story about him and his dad that what he pushed him away from school. And I can't remember exactly what what the story was, but it was a a thing that triggered him in in that way with his dad and against school, yeah. And then the the the autopsy of the of the daughter.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Yeah. Homeschooling's a weird kind of thing, isn't it? Because I get like there's uh There's quite a few people do it over here. Yeah, it's quite big. There's a lady at work and her daughter just wasn't getting on at school. So she's been to school and she's now just at the time GCC's decided that you know that wasn't working for her, and so she's but she's still still been around other kids and stuff. I just find that if I don't know, being almost isolated away from all these different other relationships and stuff is a bit odd. Yeah. But I know that the system isn't for everyone.

SPEAKER_03 55:44

I think it can work well, but there is a thing with the social side that you've got to get right for the kids.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

I wouldn't personally be able to do it because I didn't know how to so Pete and I were having a coffee in in your cafe, and he's like, I'm not gonna obviously say that the guy's name, but it's like, oh because the kids were there, this was you know during turn time.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Yeah, he homeschools that.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

And I was like, why why what's going on? He's like, Oh, do you not know about this? And I was like, No, because they're homeschooling, okay, well, fine. Because it I think the the requirement is that you have to give me something crazy, like an hour and a half a month of like structured learning, that's all they have to have. Okay. By law, you have to provide an education, that is it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

And then there's tests that you have to hit a standard of EGM.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

And I'm like, okay, but what's the end game then? It's like, so it's got a son and a daughter, the son will be a professional footballer, and the daughter will be a professional dancer. That's it. That's the plan. There's no there's no longer there's no like fallback or anything.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

Well, that's probably foolproof, that plan, I would think, because pretty much everybody who wants to be a professional footballer.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

It's gonna make it no professional dancer, does it?

SPEAKER_01 56:47

Yeah, yeah. Sounds like the movie's almost like also maybe saying something about gun violence and yeah, almost certainly.

SPEAKER_03 56:54

I mean, there's a lot of doubt about how easy it is for these fucking nut jobs to and then the fact that he's able to buy ammunition like hours after like After he's just gunned down some police officer.

SPEAKER_00 57:05

But it's also the fact that he when he gets arrested the first time, that's what Dennis Quaid says to the kid. He's like, he's not he's not allowed to carry you do know he's not allowed to carry to carry a firearm.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

A firearm.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

And there was quite a few of them.

SPEAKER_03 57:19

He's got quite a long list of crimes as well. Really very sad this story.

SPEAKER_04 57:26

I think it also talks about a a particular sort of community of people, probably very much alive in America today, who who do are frustrated at the laws and how they're being, you know, eked out of the way of living that they want, that freedom and everything.

SPEAKER_03 57:48

Well, a lot of these people as well were sold that they couldn't really afford because the banks wanted them to have it, and then it all fell apart, as we all know. The American dream, yeah. And and this is it.

SPEAKER_04 58:02

They bought houses that they couldn't afford, basically. Not that that was a particularly aff affluent house or whatever, but he he did mention I was a roofer, but there's not a lot of you know, work.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

Well, his full-time job became avoiding paying his mortgage.

SPEAKER_04 58:17

Yeah. And and teaching other people how to do that as well. But that was because he kind of fell into that rather than that was what he was doing, if there'd have been enough. And and so, you know, this does speak to maybe a a MAGA movement kind of uh community of people that are frustrated with you know how Trump got in. He tapped into people like this that, you know, it's all against the system against it is, of course it is. It's all against his systems or the g vote for uh vote for me and I'll change it all, and you see right now it's worse than it's ever been. Well, I mean I'm not in America. Maybe our American listeners will feed into that, but it it doesn't sound like it's going particularly well from what we get.

SPEAKER_03 59:01

Yeah, but this sovereign citizen thing seems to transcend geographical boundaries. Yeah, it's not you're right. I mean, this was based in America Knows Someone, like I say, but this one but it all has a link back to violence.

SPEAKER_04 59:14

And people are frustrated by corporate systems as well. And you know, around at one point he says, you know, what is you know I'm I'm here. He's talking about why they put your name in capitals on a birth certificate and stuff, isn't it? That he was talking about. But I think when he was in the diner at one point, he was sort of I'm here eating this burger, you're here eating this burger. Where's the bank? Where's the bank? Yeah, you know, but if we go to court, we're against the bank, you know, and then no there's just faceless people that don't have any kind of responsibility.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

Is that the extreme edge of what we all feel, which is a bit of a mistrust of big institutions and fucked over by the systems and like you know, but it's for just right at the fucking extreme edge of that. Strong recommend for this film that barely anybody has ever seen. I think it made sixty-three thousand dollars. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:07

But I'll have to say the two actors, like the the the kid and the dad, Quaid is is quite good in it as well. That the his son, with with the way he he kind of portrays the the more shy son as well, I think it's got the the acting is really good, but it's a bleak, sad film. It is. But and and again, the fact that it's based on a true thing, it was it was quite there's no it's heavy by the end, I was like, and to be fair, it was also the fact that really everyone isn't no one's really very clever. Everyone's the best America. Well yeah, look, I don't want to offend anyone.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

Well Joe was, that's the tragic thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

Yeah, that's he's probably the only one that you could kind of see the potential for him to actually at 16 to be the one that sees beyond all this kind of fog of words, basically. But everything else, and to be fair, until they start shooting at the end, which is the last 15 minutes of the film, it's quite monotone and just quite one pace, just everything just kind of goes like that, and you're a bit like fuck out. Come on, a bit of light in this. And I think obviously the the score and the the way it's shot, there's not a sunny day in the whole film.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:20

Yeah, yeah. It's not a happy film.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

I don't know where it's based in, I can't remember the the Arkansas. Yeah. I don't know if they have sunny days in Arkansas, but in this film, zero. Yeah, it's all dark clouds and grey skies. Yeah. But strong recommend. Strong recommend, yeah. Enjoy it outside. Strong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Another wonderful week, or was it? It's gonna be sort of out of order.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

Yeah. In in a sense. I don't know how much time I'll have to prep for a proper episode this week as well. Well we can do an abbreviated because conspiracy will be next week's. Yeah. Well, there's all kind of reasons we might have done that. Yeah, exactly. So we'll figure out whose norms it is. All that remains is to say sidey signing out. Reeg's is gone.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:11

No, I don't say that, do I?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

Dan's gone. Yeah. You say whatever you want.