Room 237_ Stanley Kubrick_s The Shining
Summary
The Shining s director, Rodney Satsang, joins us to discuss his new film, Room 237, and why he thinks it s one of the most important films of the 20th century. Plus, we talk about what it means to be a Kubrick fan, and how Stanley Kubrick s legacy lives on in Room 237.
Transcript
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The Shining, set up a lot of synchronicities that he may or may not have intended.
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So Rodney, how about you fill us in a little bit about yourself and your background?
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Well, you know, I've been, you know, a filmmaker and a teacher, you know, for 15 plus years.
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Room 237 is my first feature film and it kind of picks up a thread that I started, you know,
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maybe a year or two before with a short film, another sort of experimental documentary that
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probed people's childhood phobias of the Screen Gems logo.
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And in both cases, you know, there's sort of the stories about the way that, you know,
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mass culture has a way of getting underneath of our skins, you know, and drawing us into,
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You know, one thing I was fascinated by, you know, talking to the people I did in Room 237,
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you know, folks who spent a lot of time thinking about The Shining is that they had
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sort of a two-way relationship with it, you know, that their personal experience, you
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know, kind of colored the lens that they looked at the film through, but thinking about the
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So where are you coming from when you, when you approach the subject of symbolism or synchronicity?
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Well, synchronicity and certainly the way Andras understands it wasn't something that was at
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all on my radar, you know, when I began the film, you know, the project started when a
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friend of mine, Tim Kirk, went on to produce the film, discovered one of these deep, for
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me, mind-blowing, you know, kind of symbolic analyses of The Shining.
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And I've been a lifelong Kubrick fan, and something about that movie and the unnerving way, effect
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that it has on you, and that sort of, I don't know, kind of creepy deja vu, this eerie familiarity
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I was, I was ready to believe, you know, that there was some strange sort of magic baked
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So when people started, when it came to my attention, the way that people were exploring
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it and trying to solve it, you know, I wasn't, I lost interest in most everything else.
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The two of us spent, you know, years talking and thinking about nothing other than The Shining
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It definitely, it left me with the creeps, and I ended up having a nightmare last night
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Of course, it was a big old haunted house, and there were these rooms I didn't want to
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A lot of people have seemed to have had, you know, dreams about, if not Room 237 and The
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You know, John Phil Ryan, you know, one of our interviewees, one of our experts, you know,
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And, you know, I know I could imagine myself falling down a flight of stairs or eating some
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bad mushrooms and waking up, you know, inside of the Overlook Hotel.
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It feels like such a real place in one that, you know, is sort of eerily familiar.
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And, you know, I'm sorry if, you know, it stressed you out a little bit, but I'm thrilled to hear
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that it worked as kind of a horror movie since, you know, The Shining is a horror movie I wanted
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in as much as I could for Room 237, you know, to kind of mirror some of its qualities, some
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of its horror, some of its comedy, some of its puzzles and enigmas.
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It's, you know, if we could reflect the form or some of the feeling of The Shining as best
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we could, you know, that was sort of one of our most ambitious goals.
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Another funny note, my parents actually honeymooned in the Timberline Lodge in Oregon where the
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And one of our interviewees, his mother used to work at the Stanley Hotel, which was, you
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know, the original hotel that Stephen King stayed in that inspired the book.
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So speaking to you both, what subtextual messages jump out at you in the movie The Shining?
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I think what Room 237 does really, really well is explores this incredible paradox that Stanley
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Something that in the realm of sync film, what we look for is we find synchronicity in films
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where it's really clear that author's intent is not in play.
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But with Stanley Kubrick, and this is something that Room 237 does excellently, Stanley Kubrick
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was probably the most meticulous and successful and controlling director.
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So in a sense, there's this interesting paradox where he is so in control of his medium and
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so in control of everything that's in his shot, it's hard to, there really is a question when
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synchronicities arise in his films of whether or not they're intentional or whether or not
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So I think to me, I think that's why it's such a great sync film because it's not trying
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I think that it's in a very intelligent way exploring this film and trying to get at the
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nut of how much is Kubrick's intention, how much is the projection of the audience onto
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this, one might say, a pretty close to perfect work of art, and how much of it is just, is
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So, and, you know, and then how much of it might just be the magic of film?
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Because films, I do, you know, and this is where we come from in the sync film community,
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that there is some ritualistic magic that gets created when a lot of people pay attention
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to one image, and when that image is moving and those are real people, and in this weird
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way it's capturing time, it opens up all these interesting possibilities that Stanley Kubrick
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may or may not have been exploring subtextually in the film The Shining.
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I jump in first because I know that there's nothing I could say or think about this film
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that Rodney probably hasn't already said or thought, so you can take the rest.
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Well, I mean, one thing, you know, what you're saying, you know, makes me think about it,
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you know, I didn't come across sync film until 237 was sort of in its very late stages, but
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a revelation to me, you know, a lot of people have asked me questions about, you know, how
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important is it, you know, the figure of Stanley Kubrick, you know, this meticulous, reclusive
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genius as a behind-the-scenes character, you know, for The Shining.
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Would this whole thing have, would this project not be possible with a director who has less
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And I used to think it would not be possible with anybody else that you needed, you know,
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a figure that, you know, inspires, you know, the kind of following and the kind of study
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of Stanley Kubrick to justify looking at all the little details of the film, you know, symbolically
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But it's a very different, it becomes a very different situation when, you know, sync filmmakers,
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you know, are looking at such a wide variety, you know, of popular culture, you know, much
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of which has not been made, you know, by a guru-like figure like Stanley Kubrick.
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Now, people have said a lot of things about him because of some occult symbolism that comes
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Do you guys know what he was really involved in, if any of those things?
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Well, I mean, he was a pretty private person, you know, so I wouldn't be surprised that,
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you know, hard evidence of his involvement in that kind of stuff is difficult to find.
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And he strikes me as one of the most scholarly filmmakers.
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His, everything I've read about him says his research was, and this is explored in room
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237, his research was just meticulous beyond meticulous.
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And he's a person who was very visually oriented.
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And so when you start, when you're a visually oriented person who is, you know, a deep scholar,
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you're going to come across, you know, sacred geometry pretty quick, and you're going to
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And whether or not he was, you know, just as a viewer, it seems like whether or not he was
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a, quote, practitioner or an initiate, he clearly was someone who enjoyed playing with occult
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His films are consistently about one thing, man, where man is, where man's going.
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Yeah, well, and a lot of people, you know, have looked at The Shining as sort of the flip
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If one is the evolution of mankind to a higher level, the other is a descent into savagery,
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which, you know, in some part inspired John Phil Ryan's amazing experiment of, you know,
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projecting The Shining simultaneously backwards and forwards.
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Just to me, a very great example of that, of sync, of where this film merges, of where
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Because an experiment like running The Shining backwards and forwards is pure sort of sync
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It's like repurposing this thing and just by running them, by doing something very simple,
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changing the context slightly in that way and brilliantly, something entirely new is
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revealed about the genius of the film that really does probably transcend the author's
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intention in a way that I would think that Kubrick would have to get a huge kick out of.
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Well, I was going to ask about the number 237 for Rodney.
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I mean, is this a synchronistic number for you?
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And we see it come up in Stephen King's stories.
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You know, there was, you know, an important, I was, you know, on the phone discussing some
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film business and, you know, there was a point about a year ago when that was, you know, almost
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the only thing that I was, that I'd ever be talking about, you know, and I would come
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up to a friend, a neighbor's house, which was numbered 237.
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There was an interview that we had that I was doing and it was interesting because we were
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talking about synchronicity and the weird synchronicities that occurred, you know, within
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room 237, things like one of our first screenings at Sundance was in a theater on a road named
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Sidewinder, which is the same road that leads to the Overlook Hotel, you know, and it was
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And, you know, when our film, you know, had our theatrical premiere, the movie 42, you
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know, was also opening and billboards all over town said 42 and 42 is a number that people
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talk about a lot in the course of, of, of room 237.
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So having one of those kinds of conversations, you know, I looked up at the clock radio and
00:14:12.240
But beyond that, you know, there was maybe a secret prequel to room 237, which was years
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I was getting kind of aggravated by, you know, some of those slideshows that they used to do
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the multiplex before the movies came, you know, those idiotic trivia questions and advertisements.
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So I made this mean spirited parody of it, you know, that would both be, you know, sort
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of shocking stills from horror movies or impossible puzzles or, you know, or, you know, unscramble
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phrases that, you know, were, were kind of horrible phrases when you figure them out.
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And one of them was, you know, a dissertation on the number 237 from, there was a book, Kubrick
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inside a filmmaker's maze by Thomas Allen Nelson.
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And he has about a half a page of footnotes talking about the number 237 and parsing, parsing
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And so I made a little slide that had like the blood coming out of the elevators, but
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like a FYI and a little, in like a little, you know, college graduate cap kind of tipped
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on the side and, you know, just like three paragraphs of 10 point type, you know, kind
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of the absolute opposite kind of, you know, trivia lesson that you would ever see.
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Well, I mean, because at that point, the idea that people would go into a normal movie theater
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and, and spend time thinking about the numerology of The Shining, you know, seemed patently absurd.
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And then the next thing you know, it's dominating your life.
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So what did you both think of Jay Widener's film Kubrick's Odyssey on Kubrick and Apollo?
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Do you think Kubrick had anything to do with the staging, the moon landing?
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Jay Widener's essay on that topic, you know, was certainly something very important when we
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And I had a long conversation for the film, you know, where Jay talks about it.
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But he finished the film, you know, while we were in the middle of editing 237.
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And I decided not to watch it because I didn't want it, you know, to unduly, I knew we'd be
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covering some of the same material and I didn't want to be, you know, kind of unduly influenced.
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My partner, Tim, watched it, you know, just to make sure that nothing I did, you know, would
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repeat it in a way that, I don't know, we didn't, that, that we didn't want.
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Certainly, I'm very familiar with, you know, Jay's ideas, you know, about Kubrick's involvement
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And, you know, one of the things I always go back to is he was, Kubrick was first rumored
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to have been involved with it, you know, in the early 70s, you know, well before The Shining
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I don't think anyone pegged The Shining as his confession before Jay, but people had
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talked about possible involvement and knowing Kubrick's, you know, reputation for research
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And that he also had sort of an interest in conspiracy theory, according to an interview
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You know, I have to believe he was very aware of it.
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And that being the case, you know, when he framed that close-up of the Apollo rocket on
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Danny's sweater, he had to have known that that was a very loaded image that he was playing
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You know, so I can't see that as purely accidental.
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Well, one speaker in the film said, Kubrick plays on ignorance of your visual information.
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He leaves clues in the corner, but people miss them.
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So do you think that there's other films or a lot of movies that are using this tactic
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or that it just synchronistically happens on its own?
00:18:05.760
Well, you know, I just read an interview with Paul Schrader, you know, and he did that
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new movie with Brady Snellis and Lindsay Lohan, The Canyons.
00:18:16.720
And he talks about ending a scene in a psychiatrist's office by panning over to a painting of, oh, I
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There's no caption, you know, labeling his name.
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And most people wouldn't recognize him by the face.
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But he's still sort of subliminally trying to cast, you know, an aura over the film by
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You know, so as recently as The Canyons, you know, which, you know, just came out a couple
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of months ago, people are putting little things in the frame to help color the way, you know,
00:19:05.580
Well, and I mean, it seems that film is, I mean, I think in that way, film is the most
00:19:13.020
Not to say that there's not a lot of accidental stuff that sneaks through and a lot of laziness
00:19:19.680
that has things just going on their own inertia.
00:19:22.980
But what's in the frame is definitely in the frame for a reason in most cases.
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You know, there's a reason that the bookshelf is where it is and that the books and someone
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picks out the books that are on that bookshelf.
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Unless you're, you know, you're filming in somebody's house and then that's a different
00:19:42.420
But that's, I think, the thing that's really interesting about Kubrick is that he's an artist
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who, because he was very successful, because he was able to be a successful marketer and
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businessman as well, and that he had a great eye, he was able to be one of the most intentional
00:20:00.720
filmmakers in the most, one of the most intentional mediums.
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I think every filmmaker tries to sneak in something in the, you know, somewhere into the backgrounds
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of their films or into their scripts or into the, you know, secretly in their casting.
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You know, and again, unless they're incredibly lazy, and there are certainly examples of that.
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And I think, you know, we haven't really talked about it, but the sync film stuff that, like
00:20:30.480
the films that Will Morgan's been doing, exploring the very, you know, I worked as an
00:20:35.680
actor, I've mostly been in very bad films by people who were pretty, made by people who
00:20:40.020
were either lazy or under the gun, because finances didn't allow for the same kind of
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And I think there's something really, you know, that's the other side of this sync conversation
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that, you know, even if it's not intentional, the camera captures everything.
00:20:56.840
And so sometimes the, the laziness of filmmakers or the, you know, the under the gunness of
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filmmakers allows for these other strange magical things to creep through.
00:21:08.840
And then today you also have a lot of political, psychological warfare going on TV.
00:21:13.760
It's a, it's an onslaught, you know, there's the hammer and the sickle and there it is folks,
00:21:18.360
Well, yeah, there's also the, there's also very clearly, there are some things that are
00:21:22.720
big budget enough, uh, that, that the quite, that there, they really are more of a, they
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can be, it's easy to see where the propaganda aspect comes in.
00:21:33.600
Um, I don't want to take us too far away from room two, three, seven, but recently someone
00:21:39.260
was, I was just having a conversation with someone about, um, zero dark 30 and a film like
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that, like, is it a film or is that, is that just pure propaganda?
00:21:52.160
You know, cause I like, you were talking about how we all, we both like the director, Catherine
00:21:57.080
Um, but is that a Catherine Bigelow film or, you know, at that point when you're making
00:22:00.440
that movie zero dark 30, are you, do you get to make your own movie?
00:22:05.440
You know, that, and, and I, you know, in some ways maybe that's, that's a more interesting
00:22:10.900
and a more current conversation about like the manipulation of film and images.
00:22:14.380
Is, you know, from a conspiracy standpoint, then whether or not Kubrick was involved
00:22:19.140
with the, with faking the moon landing, although that's still an interesting conversation.
00:22:25.920
Um, it's sort of like Kubrick was the first, if he was that, then he was the first of many
00:22:34.320
Well, Andrus, if we move on to you, I watched the two videos Will Morgan created exploring
00:22:40.420
You've been in 14 movies, according to IMDb, is that right?
00:22:47.060
Now, why is there a gap from, in your career from 2001 to 2011?
00:22:53.160
Um, I, uh, I guess I, you know, I guess I hit a wall.
00:22:57.760
I just personally, I, uh, that was right before, uh, some things happened in my life personally.
00:23:04.620
And I, uh, I was like mid thirties, early mid thirties.
00:23:08.980
And I'd been touring as a musician for a decade and making films.
00:23:13.340
And, um, and I just, I ran out of steam, uh, sometime in 2002, 2003, started working more
00:23:24.420
promoting other artists and then got very involved in Radio 8 Ball.
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It's funny what Rodney was saying about how, like, this room 237 started out as this sort
00:23:34.880
of absurd joke that sort of, that was part of another project.
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Radio 8 Ball was sort of my late night escape from being the leader of a, of a band and acting
00:23:48.220
and being on output about Andros Jones, Andros Jones, Andros Jones.
00:23:53.080
Um, and so Radio 8 Ball would became, but when I ran out of steam on those things, Radio
00:23:59.080
8 Ball became a really great and fulfilling project.
00:24:04.320
It's the, the musical divination show where we answer questions by picking songs at random
00:24:09.060
and interpreting them like musical tarot cards.
00:24:11.660
And that's a lot, in a lot of ways, what led me to the sync community.
00:24:14.920
Um, and in a way, the interesting thing is that my interaction with the sync community
00:24:20.180
has really sort of drawn me back into the realm of being a creative artist rather than
00:24:33.320
Now, these videos that Will Morgan created, I know it's just better if someone goes and
00:24:37.000
watches them, which we'll link them up so people can see.
00:24:39.140
But the first video explores your syncs was titled The Sacred Kind.
00:24:45.920
It's about, you get into redheads, a little bit of sexuality, and how it ties into your
00:24:51.900
Well, it's just, uh, what Will did, and this is something that people do in the realm of
00:24:57.360
sync film a lot, is they'll follow an actor and look for certain archetypes that show up
00:25:03.820
And mostly what this has been focused on is big name, you know, real stars.
00:25:08.800
Uh, the Jim Carrey's of the world, the, uh, Uma Thurman's of the world.
00:25:13.760
Sometimes, you know, certain, uh, certain sync filmmakers like Jake Kotsa noticed interesting
00:25:21.580
syncs around the actress Robin Tunney, who's maybe not as big a star as some of those other
00:25:25.660
ones, but still someone who's been in a lot of major Hollywood films.
00:25:29.380
Um, then Will and I met and Will started finding interesting syncs in my films, and I'm well
00:25:39.780
below that bar in terms of my relationship with mainstream Hollywood.
00:25:44.400
Most of the films I've been in, uh, other than Nightmare on Elm Street, which was, you
00:25:49.200
know, very low on the big budget in the big budget world, although it made a lot of money.
00:25:55.660
And it's a classic in its own way, but it's still at the time was considered ghetto.
00:25:59.780
And most of my work has been, as an actor has been in the Hollywood ghetto, which is
00:26:05.540
still, you know, it's, it's a nice, it's a nice neighborhood to be in, but it's not where
00:26:11.200
Stanley Kubrick or the great intentional filmmakers live.
00:26:15.460
It's, you know, a lot of exploitative films, um, that are using their imagery is more geared
00:26:22.400
to being salacious and titillating than, uh, you know, than revealing the nature of humanity.
00:26:32.180
Um, so, but Will started going through all of these films and finding sync threads like
00:26:40.600
these archetypes that were showing up that were kind of overwhelming.
00:26:44.820
And when he pointed them out to me, there were things that I wasn't aware of.
00:26:51.960
One is called the sacred kind in which he finds that there are constantly redheads around me
00:26:58.560
Uh, and then he all in his next one, what's wrong with the mirror?
00:27:08.720
He's doing kind of what Rodney does with a great film like the shining and looking for
00:27:14.820
these strange connections that we have to wonder if Kubrick intended, except that he's looking
00:27:25.460
He's looking at one actor who's bouncing around from production to production based upon who's
00:27:31.640
I'm there's, I'm not a producer on any of these projects.
00:27:38.220
Um, although Will has done an amazing thing and that he, like, he made those films interesting
00:27:49.640
No, I was just wondering what it was like for you after, after, you know, being watching
00:27:55.020
so many sync films, being confronted with one about yourself.
00:28:00.260
Um, it was, it's been really, because I love sync, it's really excellent.
00:28:11.080
But, you know, I am a bit of a psychedelic war.
00:28:17.000
Like I described it to, to Will, it was like, it's sort of like having your brain operated
00:28:23.780
Um, and luckily Will and I have become really good friends and are working creatively on
00:28:30.600
we've, during this process, we've worked creating these sync films about other actors.
00:28:36.700
And so there's a part of me that is doing the operating.
00:28:42.680
Um, and you know, it's like a great, it is a great friendship.
00:28:46.780
You know, when you, when you have a friendship with someone and you are constantly stumbling
00:28:52.340
I don't think anyone ever got that before, or maybe even, you know, to something that
00:28:58.020
So it's been, uh, actually it's been really great.
00:29:07.340
Um, when you start to really focus in on what's really going on with film, it gets very
00:29:17.220
And especially if you're in it or you're part of the process, it gets even more so.
00:29:27.220
Well, it's interesting during the process of this, a, uh, a redhead did come into my life.
00:29:36.300
Um, and this will tie this all together in a nice way.
00:29:41.180
I, uh, had a very strange synchronicity with her around watching a TV.
00:29:48.420
So Will's thing about me is he's, he finds redheads, TVs and movie screens and mirrors.
00:29:53.700
And, uh, the, the, uh, the next film is about him finding about the magician, the role of
00:30:00.680
the magician and the magic book and Matt and show magic versus, you know, sort of showman
00:30:09.380
Um, but anyway, at any rate, so I'm with the redhead and we're watching, and I want to
00:30:15.780
show her eyes wide shut, uh, which is, you know, Kubrick's last film.
00:30:20.460
And I think one of the great, I think it's, yeah, I think it's great in every possible
00:30:26.500
And, uh, so we're, we're watching it and I, you know, I get into films ritualistically
00:30:34.940
when people smoke pot in a movie, I like to smoke pot with them and especially in a movie
00:30:41.760
So when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman go to smoke their joint and have their conversation,
00:30:45.800
uh, that, that sets the whole film in motion in a big way, uh, I did.
00:30:51.500
And, and we started watching this and, uh, and when Nicole Kidman was sort of having her
00:30:57.700
sort of, she's having this wonderful, wonderfully rational, irrational argument with Tom Cruise's
00:31:05.320
rational, irrational defense systems, whatever is going on there that anyone who's ever been
00:31:09.960
in a relationship can recognize, um, is going that that's just engaging.
00:31:15.940
She gets up to go to the bathroom and I paused the film.
00:31:18.200
And when she came back, the pausing was misinterpreted and what ended up happening is all of a sudden
00:31:23.020
that scene emerged right there in like in the room.
00:31:27.400
And there I was in my, this is pretty much the same black underwear that Tom Cruise is
00:31:31.280
wearing in that film on the bed, finding myself in the same posture, her having the same art
00:31:36.900
And, uh, and it, it's, it is this, and I'm here and then there's a part of me in my head
00:31:42.360
and will name checks eyes wide shut in the film he made about me.
00:31:46.760
And so here I am like multiple, multiple, multiple levels deep in the psychedelic trip
00:31:54.240
of cinema as a participant, as a viewer, as someone who's feels caught up in the strange
00:32:05.500
Um, and so, you know, when you ask like what, what the experience is like, it's lots of experiences
00:32:14.960
That was pretty intense, but, uh, but yeah, the redheads, the redhead energy has come on
00:32:22.140
It, there is a predictive power to sync film when it's done correctly, I guess.
00:32:30.120
Henrik and I have been noticing a lot of redheads in TV these days are the, the feisty journalist.
00:32:40.120
Oh, well that's, well, who are some of the examples?
00:32:42.180
Well, and the latest one would be under the dome.
00:32:46.440
I know there's some other ones I'll have to comb through my little film.
00:32:49.280
Isn't the new, isn't the new Lois Lane a redhead?
00:32:52.560
So there, I mean, I guess it might be, it, it could also be that, that, that is a theme
00:33:00.460
I mean, the, the interesting thing about Will's films is that these are, you know, most, as
00:33:08.380
Actually, I think almost everything was shot pre 9-11.
00:33:14.300
Like it's all, which, you know, from the standpoint of sync film and Jake Coates' work is the opening
00:33:18.960
of the Stargate that, uh, at the very least, because Jake Coates says it does usher in the
00:33:26.940
realm of, you know, the world of sync film, uh, at least in this current incarnation.
00:33:31.900
I can't imagine that a lot of other people haven't also viewed sync film, viewed cinema
00:33:39.700
Uh, Rodney, you're a bit more of a scholar than that, than, than I am in this regard.
00:33:44.100
Are you, do you, like when you see the stuff that we're working with in the realm of sync
00:33:49.620
film, is there a part of you that's like, ah, French impressionism, it's coming back or,
00:33:55.360
you know, well, a little bit though, I may be hard pressed to, um, you know, to, to come
00:34:06.180
Um, you know, but I know, but I mean, I also associate, you know, sync film with sort of
00:34:10.760
a history of collage films, you know, and people making visual connections of recurring
00:34:15.020
iconic images, um, you know, to, to, to, to wildly different ends, you know, which goes
00:34:24.040
Um, and actually I was just struck, I'm reading a book called the dungeon master, which is
00:34:30.600
a, um, a true detective book about a detective written, this is written in the eighties, you
00:34:39.020
And, you know, it's not exactly sync film, but at one point he's called by a psychic who
00:34:44.580
tells him that the answer to his mystery is in an episode of Starsky and Hutch.
00:34:51.040
And, uh, and I said, well, that's an important predecessor.
00:34:58.420
Well, you know, I, I, I, I had, uh, have you seen the movie chapter 27 about, uh, uh, Mark
00:35:08.860
Um, he's the, wait, I'm again, he's the one who shot John Lennon, right?
00:35:15.680
Uh, it's, it's about, I mean, it's very scary in terms of, well, what it's about, but it's
00:35:22.200
about a guy who is doing sync with, uh, catcher in the rye and John Lennon.
00:35:30.100
And there's even a point in the film where he goes off on this, he's outside of the Dakota
00:35:34.600
and he goes off on getting on, like having his mind blown by the idea that Rosemary's
00:35:44.480
And it's a movie by the director whose wife got killed by Charles Manson, which was inspired
00:35:50.640
And he's going off on this thing that I've heard sink heads go off on many times.
00:35:55.140
And to watch this character sort of rattle that way, um, and, you know, obviously winding
00:36:02.900
himself up to kill John Lennon as the, you know, in, at least in the portrayal in the
00:36:08.300
And, uh, Jared Leto is pretty incredible as the character.
00:36:14.280
Um, but I mean, I, there's something about sync that is the madness that film and media
00:36:20.840
create, um, and it's sort of being able, uh, working with it.
00:36:26.240
I think the game is like being able to surf it and have, and have fun with it, but it
00:36:30.660
It is, it can be a road to a kind of madness that, you know, we, we hope doesn't lead people
00:36:36.340
to do stupid things like kill one of the best songwriters, you know, songwriters ever.
00:36:42.700
But, uh, but there is something about the nature of film that eventually leads to this
00:36:47.540
kind of pleasant madness for most people, you know?
00:36:55.000
No, well, I, I guess, you know, thinking about Manson and the Beatles, you know, and
00:36:59.820
inspiring, you know, what it did, you know, that there could be a related danger to, you
00:37:05.220
know, if you've seen those videos, those YouTube videos where people, you know, talk about,
00:37:09.440
you know, sort of pop stars as being members of the Illuminati.
00:37:11.940
And, and we can feel a lot of tension, you know, and fear and even anger in some of those
00:37:18.380
videos, you know, which, um, you know, not that, you know, Beyonce or Nicki Minaj, you
00:37:23.700
know, needs me fretting over them, but, um, it makes, it does make me pause.
00:37:32.060
Well, I think the, the, that's one of the things that I love about the sort of what are
00:37:38.220
the best of sync film, you know, and say Jake Cotsay being a really great example, uh, that
00:37:44.500
there is a sense of, that our attention is part of the authorship of sync film.
00:37:52.520
Um, that, you know, these stars that they're, they are, we are projecting onto them.
00:38:01.600
And when you step into that particular light there, you're going to resonate with some
00:38:08.680
And then someone who is an artist around you is going to fill the screen with things that
00:38:16.820
You know, and those, those, I'll just say this, those archetypes exist for a reason.
00:38:20.560
They're not, you don't need someone to sneak them in because they will emerge if you just
00:38:29.020
Do you think new ones will be emerging or are we stuck to the, the ones that are already
00:38:36.480
I think there's something that's, there are some things that are universal.
00:38:40.300
We, you know, as long as we live in these bodies, we're going to be, you know, to some
00:38:44.280
degree binary, but then as I don't think we got it in the recording, but I said, I'm someone
00:38:49.480
who loves the gray, you know, like, uh, that you, any actor knows that you can play any
00:38:56.240
archetype and you run it through who you are, your specificness, and there's a new ring on
00:39:05.100
Um, and so, yeah, there, you know, there, I don't think any, there's not going to be a
00:39:10.900
new, any new cards in the deck, but there's going to be certainly new players playing those
00:39:16.660
cards and it'll be new and interesting every time.
00:39:22.300
Um, unless, you know, unless we're that exceptional, but I don't think we're that exceptional a
00:39:26.820
generation of artists that we're going to create a new archetype that far greater artists,
00:39:35.260
I mean, are there any new Stanley Kubrick's emerging?
00:39:39.500
Well, I mean, I think the thing about Stanley Kubrick is that, you know, he was firing on
00:39:44.320
every cylinder that his films are visually beautiful.
00:39:53.380
Um, you know, it's, they, they work on level after level after level.
00:39:57.220
And it's, I can easily, you know, think of some filmmakers whose movies might be visually
00:40:05.000
Or no, I don't know of anyone who brings the whole, that, that, that whole arsenal together
00:40:19.840
So that's going to be the most powerful theme of them all.
00:40:24.180
There's a few out there that I think that I'm, I don't know, like who, it's hard to
00:40:29.160
compare anyone, you know, anyone to a master while they're still working.
00:40:35.580
Anderson is doing, is, is keeping a, like, is honoring a certain level of quality and
00:40:44.260
intention that, uh, that Kubrick would appreciate.
00:40:49.220
Anderson is, you know, one of the, one of my very favorite filmmakers working today, though,
00:40:54.920
when I think of his films, these striking, just iconic images don't pop out at me the
00:41:03.660
I think of characters or moments or scenes or, um, I come, I come at them differently,
00:41:12.680
He also gives a space and a room to breathe in his films, which I really like.
00:41:16.940
A lot of movies today, it's just constant noise and chatter and movement and sound effects.
00:41:27.280
I know, you know, I saw the master and I didn't quite get it.
00:41:29.760
And I, and I sort of compare this experience to a lot of people's, you know, viewings of
00:41:33.540
the shining, you know, where even new people who we talked to in the film didn't necessarily
00:41:37.600
like it or get it their first go round, but they get lured back.
00:41:41.800
And I didn't, you know, quite understand the last act of the master, but I've got faith
00:41:47.300
enough in PT Anderson that I assume it's my problem as a viewer.
00:41:53.360
And I'm, and I'm very interested in revisiting it and taking, and taking another try.
00:41:59.640
And I don't have that confidence with other filmmakers, I may hold up my hand and say,
00:42:05.160
I don't think there's anything here if I didn't get it or, or it's not for me, but he's someone
00:42:13.960
Is there anyone else that like, cause I'm, this is an interesting, I don't know, this
00:42:17.160
is an interesting rabbit hole to go down, but I, I don't, I actually, Lonnie take control
00:42:26.760
I didn't really plan too much because I know how it is with you, Anders.
00:42:32.060
So how has the film been received by mainstream people?
00:42:37.900
Well, I'd say we've probably, if you, if you look at, you know, that if you look at the Amazon
00:42:42.560
reviews versus the Rotten Tomato reviews, we've done a lot better, you know, with critics
00:42:50.300
Um, but you know, the fact that this movie played for more than 50 people in folding metal
00:42:54.880
chairs, um, you know, makes everything else great gravy for me.
00:42:59.580
Um, I think maybe the other advantage that maybe some of the critics had that, um, the
00:43:04.800
general population didn't is that they saw projected screenings, you know?
00:43:09.560
Um, and you know, any movie works better in a theater where you've got immersive sound
00:43:16.140
and you were, and the, and the image can really take over your entire visual line of sight.
00:43:22.840
But, you know, I noticed in particular people who see it in screenings tend to appreciate
00:43:28.040
it more than, um, you know, folks who clicked on it on iTunes.
00:43:34.460
And I, I, you know, just to chime in, maybe, uh, sometimes you can't see your, the impact
00:43:43.520
Um, the, the film has got some pretty great press.
00:43:47.420
It's been, it got a big spread in Entertainment Weekly that a lot of people read.
00:43:51.960
It got a big, I think it got a really nice thing in the New York Times.
00:43:54.960
Um, it has, and from the standpoint of someone who is out in the world, uh, sort of hawking
00:44:03.360
synchronicity through Radio 8 Ball and trying to get that show to forward that show, there
00:44:08.540
has been a, there's a huge change in being able to say, oh, sync film?
00:44:17.460
And now people kind of get that, which makes it also an interesting sync that, uh, that it
00:44:23.680
came out in, you know, in sync with the film 42 because just sort of as, as Jackie Robinson
00:44:31.420
broke the color barrier, uh, Room 237 is sort of breaking the sync barrier in a mainstream
00:44:37.760
way and making it a lot easier for those of us who are working below the radar to have
00:44:42.880
something to connect what we do to in a way that people can get it because people do know
00:44:48.760
Kubrick and do know The Shining and are very, and actually are very aware, most people who are
00:44:54.440
even vaguely hip about film are getting, are pretty aware of Room 237 now. And it's,
00:45:00.620
when it comes out on video, I think that's only gonna, that's only gonna multiply hugely.
00:45:06.540
Well, the other good thing about that is you're introducing an idea of veiled messages,
00:45:11.720
veiled stories, something that's lurking subliminally. So maybe now people will pay attention
00:45:17.120
more, watch movies a little differently or read the news a little differently.
00:45:21.240
Well, yeah. One of my favorite, um, comments I see on Twitter now and again is, you know,
00:45:26.480
let's do a 237 about blank. Um, which, which, you know, is, is incredibly gratifying to me that,
00:45:34.700
you know, if, if, if the, if the title would become a verb of some sort, um, in, in interesting
00:45:40.280
sync is, you know, the DVD Blu-ray came out yesterday and it was the same day that Stephen King's
00:45:45.900
Dr. Sleep, his 36th year in the making sequel to The Shining was released.
00:45:51.880
So we're not the only, we're not the only people thinking about The Shining right now.
00:45:59.920
I have a funny, I have a funny question for you, Rodney.
00:46:02.920
When I was watching Room 237, I saw there was footage, I don't know if it was from My Fair Lady,
00:46:09.940
There was a footage of a dancing llama costume with two heads because I have a thing with
00:46:17.660
Yeah. Well, that's from Dr. Doolittle. It's a moment where Jay Widener is actually talking
00:46:21.400
about, you know, how many, what, what the landscape of film was like when 2001 came out.
00:46:28.920
But in that, in that moment plays a pretty strong counterpoint to 2001.
00:46:37.180
I just thought it was funny. Why, why choose a llama of all the things in that footage? It
00:46:43.800
I don't know if I could articulate it, but scanning, scanning, scanning through footage,
00:46:48.260
that one just kind of leapt out as, as hitting exactly the right tone.
00:46:51.660
Mm-hmm. And Andres, last time you were on with me, remember we did Radio 8 Ball and
00:46:59.340
I got several emails. It was actually startling with other people who had that same question
00:47:06.060
Oh, that's great. Well, see, that, that is the thing. That is one of the wonderful things
00:47:10.120
about where you learn from working with Radio 8 Ball is that almost always one person's
00:47:16.220
question spoken to a large group of people. There's going to be a lot of other people who
00:47:19.960
are like, wow, who you end up being an oracle for because there's, you know, because we
00:47:27.220
are, the nature of reality is sync. So if you're having a question, there's going to be people
00:47:33.480
out there and especially you create a spell with your show. So there's going to be even
00:47:38.080
more people sort of resonating with the similar kind of questions that are percolating with
00:47:43.680
Yeah. And it was Jay Weiner brought up in room 237. I mean, he's the guy who talks about
00:47:47.620
Archons a lot, but he was speaking about basically the idea in the film that demons are attracted
00:47:52.220
to humans and are feeding off of them, which is basically what I was getting at before with
00:47:56.540
Well, I, I, I feel like a, you know, I got a lot to give so I can, the demons take just
00:48:04.900
as long as they don't take too much, you know, leave it, leave enough for me and for the,
00:48:09.560
for the good, for the goods, for the good ones. I'm, you know, I don't want to make waves.
00:48:16.700
You know, I have to ask you both thinking back to Kubrick again in his film, 2001, a
00:48:20.960
space odyssey, which the story traces the development of man from man ape to what we
00:48:25.800
might undergo in the future. Where do you think humankind is heading?
00:48:32.680
Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I can see is, you know, if I look at my life over the
00:48:38.920
past, you know, 20 years, I sure spent an awful lot more of it in front of the computer
00:48:44.120
and plugged into the internet than I used to. And, you know, it doesn't exactly feel like
00:48:49.380
a William Gibson novel where I'm floating, you know, in a sensory deprivation tank, you
00:48:53.560
know, jacked into cyberspace, but the sort of instant connectivity between people, you know,
00:49:00.160
something that's only increasing. And, you know, you can look at Google Glass and imagining
00:49:03.680
those and imagining a very quick leap to, you know, contact lenses that you're wearing
00:49:09.260
around the clock, you know, sort of a continuous connection to almost everybody is certainly
00:49:15.640
going to, you know, change the way we live, you know, in ways that are kind of hard to
00:49:21.360
You know, I tend to see, I mean, you can't help but see that on some level, things are
00:49:38.060
getting worse and worse. And I somehow think that on like, on a weird experiential level,
00:49:49.280
when things get worse, people get better. Even though I think people also probably on
00:49:53.800
some level, people get worse too. So I could be wrong there. But I feel like the worst things
00:49:59.100
get, the better I get. And that's all I have to go with. So, you know, I just, I try, it's
00:50:11.620
like watching a car wreck go in slow motion, you know, and I've just, you know, I'm just trying
00:50:15.540
to paint it and sing about it and laugh about it and, you know, make it as, you know, make,
00:50:20.060
make that trip as, as pleasant and as, you know, thought provoking in a fun way as you
00:50:25.940
can make it, you know, it's a, the re I think the reason to be an artist is because you're
00:50:30.940
trying to somehow make the best of an impossible situation. And I think that the times we're
00:50:38.940
All righty guys, anything else you'd like to get off your chest?
00:50:45.280
Check out Room 237, people. It's a great, it's a, it's a great film about a great film.
00:50:53.000
And, and if you have time, go check out my IMDB page where I'm, I think I'm the only
00:50:59.540
semi-legitimate Hollywood actor who is displaying sync films as his demo reel. And as my new manager
00:51:08.380
says, uh, potentially melting the brains of people who might otherwise hire me, but don't
00:51:14.900
forget accidental initiations. Oh yes. My book, accidental initiations. Thank you. Uh, Rodney.
00:51:21.060
Uh, I appreciate that from sync book press. Oh, and we should re we, uh, make sure that in
00:51:25.720
the liner and in the podcast, we put a link to the sync books video page because that has
00:51:31.700
a really great, uh, compendium of, uh, Joe Alexander's work, Jake Coates's work, Will
00:51:38.180
Morgan's work and on and, uh, and on and on and really in a great collection of, um, what's
00:51:44.320
happening in sync film for those people who are interested in delving even a little bit
00:51:51.060
Rodney, anything you want to say? Your website?
00:51:53.960
Um, RodneyAsher.com. Nothing, um, no fires burning over here. The only, the, the, uh, you
00:52:04.120
know, the only other thing that might be interesting to check out is, um, this record that I finished
00:52:08.600
with, uh, Vernon Chapman, where we went through 80 some hours of, um, of recordings that Andy
00:52:16.120
Kaufman made secretly in the seventies and, um, cut the comedy album that he never got around
00:52:21.520
to finishing from it. Oh my God, Rodney, you're, we're going to, I got to talk with you as soon
00:52:26.300
as you get off of this. I'm on, I'm totally on an Andy Kaufman sync right now. I've been
00:52:30.300
watching all of taxi. Of course you are. This is insane. Okay. Wonderful. Alrighty guys. Thank
00:52:37.520
you both. It's been fun. Alrighty, everyone. I'll leave you with a song from the shining soundtrack.
00:54:06.720
When crickets call, my heart is forever yearning