They're back and in an unprecedented episode, our hosts go full ramble, bouncing from topic to topic, free of the hefty bonds of logic or theme. They kick off with a critical drive-by of "The Tourist," exploring its use of flashback and dream sequence to hold an audience. Next, they delve into the emerging skill of crafting effective prompts for AI, offering valuable insights for lazy tech enthusiasts and creatives alike. The discussion then shifts to the speechless horror of "No One Can Save You" and the soundstage exorcism of "Late Night with the Devil." Film and dystopia intersect as the hosts revisit the timeless classic "1984," exploring the very real horror of existential deconstruction. Finally, they wrap up with an examination of superpowers and gender in fan-favorite "X-Men '97." Should all this delicious content be cut into 25 YouTube shorts? Absolutely! Is the crew of Don't Encourage Us putting in that kind of time and dedication? Ha ha ha.
They're back and in an unprecedented episode, our hosts go full ramble, bouncing from topic to topic, free of the hefty bonds of logic or theme. They kick off with a critical drive-by of "The Tourist," exploring its use of flashback and dream sequence to hold an audience. Next, they delve into the emerging skill of crafting effective prompts for AI, offering valuable insights for lazy tech enthusiasts and creatives alike. The discussion then shifts to the speechless horror of "No One Can Save You" and the soundstage exorcism of "Late Night with the Devil." Film and dystopia intersect as the hosts revisit the timeless classic "1984," exploring the very real horror of existential deconstruction. Finally, they wrap up with an examination of superpowers and gender in fan-favorite "X-Men '97." Should all this delicious content be cut into 25 YouTube shorts? Absolutely! Is the crew of Don't Encourage Us putting in that kind of time and dedication? Ha ha ha.
Welcome to Don't Encourage Us, the show where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds.
Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits.
Today, we have a special episode for you.
No main topic, all we're doing today is the list.
It's a chance for us to relax and not focus on anything that might draw in an audience.
So Steve, what's been on your list this year?
This year, a lot of these Netflix shows that I've been watching have been on the list.
I just finished, I told you in another episode, and the audience should remember because they watch all our episodes, or listen to all our episodes about the show, The Tourist.
Yeah, takes place in Australia with Jamie Dornan.
Gave it another shot.
And I was like pretty disappointed with season one and then went right into season two thinking, this is gonna be a different one.
They're gonna get their stuff together, but equally disappointing.
I think with this show, they're really into these rushed endings and using these kind of narrative tricks, like the dream sequence, the hallucination in order to kind of carry the plot or to build character.
And they did it in season one with him having a hallucination while he was on LSD.
And then in season two, they did it with his girlfriend, who was in a coma, who was in this elaborate dream sequence.
So it's just, I don't know.
I'm not a big fan of those.
And then the ending was just, it seemed like they kind of dropped the pen.
They're like, we have to end it somehow.
During the whole second season, you're kind of, there's this mystery around what's in the suitcase.
And then the reveal at the end is so abrupt.
I mean, the whole thing takes maybe 10 minutes and then the show ends, season two.
It's just really, really disappointing when I see shows like that.
Have you ever seen a show like that, that you were like, you thought had a lot of promise and then just kind of took a nosedive right at the end?
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that.
I think a lot of the Apple shows are that way for me.
So have you watched the Apple streaming channel much?
Have you seen their shows?
I haven't.
I haven't seen any of them.
I've heard of some of them.
People are telling me they're good, like Severance, but I haven't watched any of them.
Yeah, so I take advantage of the fact that they make the first episode, The Pilot, free.
So at times, I've had a subscription to Apple and I've watched a bunch of a show like Invasion.
I watched almost all of that season, that first season, but I've just been disappointed so many times that I have stopped doing that and just sort of watched The Pilot and see if it grabbed me.
So I've actually seen most of The Pilots for the Apple shows and I just did that out of curiosity.
And I think not only do the seasons sort of hit what you're saying for me, but also the pilot episode does the same thing.
It like sets up a premise that has, I think, really good promise.
And then the end just sort of lets it down.
So I've been thinking a lot about that and trying to figure out why that is because Apple's putting a lot of money into this.
They're bringing in really talented creators and actors.
So why isn't it landing with me?
And the best guess I have is it sort of ties to, again, as listeners who, of course, have heard every episode that we've released, well, no, I'm more of a concepts guy than character, right?
And I know that's weird.
Like I know most people, they watch TV or streaming shows and movies and they're interested in the characters and they're less interested in the concepts, but Apple keeps making science fiction and they shift the focus away from the concept to the people almost immediately.
And examples of this are like they did that Godzilla series, they did the Invasion series I was talking about, they recently released that one.
It's actually based on a book that I gave up on about alternate realities.
Did you know what I'm talking about, that series?
Is it altered?
Is that what it's called or is it?
Give me a second, I'll look it up.
Dark Matter.
So I watched the pilot for Dark Matter and I was like, oh, this will be interesting.
Lake Crouch's novel.
That's right.
So I was like, this will be interesting.
It's another science fiction drama from Apple.
It's a great premise.
It's got a lot of interesting elements to it, similar to Silo and some of the other stuff we talked about.
And the show introduces the situation, some characters, and then it kind of puts them in this sci-fi scenario.
And then the pilots go back to the characters and they always end with like, yeah, yeah, there's a sci-fi scenario happening, but what's really interesting is that these two people love each other or don't love each other or love someone else or mad at each other.
And I'm like, that's not really what's interesting about this situation.
You know, like the Godzilla series, I watched a bunch of those episodes and it was like, they're like, yeah, there's monsters, but that's not really what this is about.
This is about these two people who like each other or don't like each other or this person who had a secret family.
And I'm like, but there's monsters.
There's giant monsters all over the planet.
And you're gonna spend more than half of an episode on the fact that one scientist had a secret family in Japan.
I know that some people find that way more interesting, but I don't feel like these are people who generally are drawn to science fiction in the first place.
So I'm a little confused by that strategy.
But I would argue too that, I mean, we've discussed this in the past, this idea of the three-body problem really being about humanity and their ability to deal or not deal with each other in the face of a large crisis.
What do you think is different about three-body problem compared to one of these shows?
How would you describe like the big differences?
Yeah, well, so two things.
You bring up an excellent point, right?
Good science fiction is really about people, but the scale is completely different and the science fiction is used to reveal interesting things about people.
And I don't think Apple is doing that, like with Dark Matter, right?
In the pilot, you have a guy and he's a little bit like, he's never reached his potential.
Brilliant guy, but he kind of settled.
He met a woman, got married, started a family and he kind of settled for a lesser career, not really reaching his potential.
And another version of him from a different reality basically knocks him out and switches places with him.
So he ends up, our main character ends up in a version of reality where he's a big shot who reached his potential, started this multi-dimensional travel company or whatever, decided to test pilot the program himself and was actually using it to escape, I guess, a life where he wasn't happy.
I guess the guy lost his wife or something like that and now he wants to come and he's stealing the life of an alternate version of him or something like that.
I think they would say, yeah, that's exactly good science fiction, right?
You take human beings, you put them in extreme circumstances and it teaches you something about people.
But in my mind, it's like lower stakes.
It's not really teaching me anything about people.
Three Body Problem, on the other hand, takes individuals and groups and it puts them in extreme circumstances.
And though that science fiction is the point and it forces them to develop or make choices or things in a way that really resonate, that are really intense and revealing, this just feels like a soap opera, like the Dark Matter pilot I described.
So I don't know why that is, but to me, these Apple science fiction shows, which should be right up my alley, feel like soap operas.
And Three Body Problem and some of the other great science fiction we talk about and some of the stuff I wanna talk about today really don't feel like that at all.
They feel like much higher stakes.
And I would say that something like Three Body Problem or great science fiction in general, they're wrapping up the loose ends with the problems having to deal with the science fiction portion of the story, which I think is very important in terms of like dealing with the science, addressing it and not kind of letting it hang in the background, right?
It's like a kind of like a-
That's a good way to put it.
Like a prop almost.
You know, I think-
Like a gimmick.
Exactly.
Kind of like when you see a movie where their character appears and then disappears for no reason, and they kind of just move the plot along in some direction, but we don't know what happens to them, but we put the focus on that character for so long that you want to know what happened.
But I've seen that happen a lot in movies where someone appears and what happened to that person?
Like, why were they even there?
No one talks about them again.
Right.
As if they never existed.
Kind of feel that's what's happening with your Apple shows.
No, I think you're right.
They've lowered the science fiction concepts to the level of a gimmick.
Another great example of this, one of my favorite comedic actors from the It Crowd, what is it?
Chris O'Dowd, is that his name?
Yes.
Yeah.
So really talented, really funny, does drama really well.
I'm just a huge fan of his.
I love a lot of his projects.
I've seen, I've downloaded and watched a lot or streamed a lot of the stuff that he's done.
He got an Apple show and that Apple show started off and it was like, here's this guy and he's a little bit of a lovable loser and he's got this interesting diverse family and he lives in a small town and he's happy with his rather small, rather contained life and it's kind of sweet, right?
And then there's a device that appears in the local grocery store and whenever you use it, it spits out what your purpose in life is or what your job should be or whatever, right?
Like your direction.
And it disrupts everything.
And instead of that being a really interesting start to a complicated series of ideas about where this comes from and how it would possibly work and what it says about who we are as people or is this AI, is this aliens, is this people from the future?
Like how would they know?
Are they lying?
Is this manipulating?
The show kind of leaves it as a gimmick.
And by the end of the pilot, it's just back to focusing on his little life and his marriage and that's it.
And I think maybe that there's a big audience out there of people who are happy with these concepts being gimmicks and that's it.
They just, it's a gimmick and it resonates with them because they're thinking about cheating or they're thinking about whether or not they made the right decision to marry this person.
And so seeing two people in bed together, not sure if they belong together, if they've been together and have a kid and all that, that's really exciting for them.
The idea that there's a device that could tell us what our future, what our life path should be, or someone is using something like that, the appeal of that to manipulate an entire town, that's a nice little side gimmick, but it's not really interesting.
It's like the Invasion show drove me nuts because it was like aliens are coming and they start by sort of infiltrating and then sort of like flat or definitely head on attacking.
But the show kept pulling away from that to be like, hey, what's it like for this single mom?
What's it like for this person who doesn't want to live in a small town?
And I'm like, who cares?
So I think it's really, it's interesting to me that there's such a, I guess a desire for gimmicky sci-fi instead of the kind of sci-fi where the concepts are woven deeply into the character's development and the plot.
I don't know, maybe that's unfair.
I don't know, what do you think?
Well, I think there's maybe a tendency for some of these shows to wanna create a watered-down plot and then use the hook as sci-fi, like use a sci-fi hook as far as the show to capture the audience.
At least in the trailer, because it's a lot more fascinating when you have this device in the grocery store where it leaves all these open questions for the audience, but then at the end of the day, they can sell you a drama, or so they think.
It's like a big switch, it's a click bait.
It's a click bait show, right?
It advertises one thing, but at the end, it's something else.
Like, you know those mismatched trailers, where something looks like a comedy, and then you watch it, and you're like, this isn't a comedy at all.
It's more like a drama, you know?
Or something that's marketed more like a horror movie, but there's a horror element to it, maybe in the beginning, but then that goes away.
The rest of it's just like a typical drama.
So I think that's what might be going on there.
Yeah, American Fiction is a great example of that because the trailer marketed it as primarily a little bit of a slapstick kind of comedy with a heavy element of confronting black identity in America and racism.
But in reality, it was 80% just human drama with a guy and his relationship with his gay brother and family members and his neighbor, and that's it.
So they really, it was a bait and switch, absolutely.
I don't know why, you know, gimmick is a great word, hook is a great word, like you're on it.
It feels unfairly reductionistic, but it does capture my experience with these shows.
I wonder how those shows perform after a while, like how, what the streaming looks like in terms of engagement per episode and when it suddenly drops off.
Like, does the audience care as much as you do in terms of the bait and switch, or are they like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess that sci-fi part isn't really that important.
I'm more hooked into this drama.
Or is there like a significant drop off at some point in that show early on, where people realize like, wait a minute, I was sold a sci-fi show and now I'm getting a drama or a dramedy?
Yeah, I don't know.
That's a great question.
I would guess that Apple is doing what HBO used to do.
You know, before HBO really blew up and it had some big, massive hits where they cultivated a very niche kind of audience that was willing to pay extra money and had the income and so on.
And so they made shows that appealed to that group.
And I think Apple has now sort of taken that group, but I don't know if that's providing them with the revenue that they need to keep producing shows at this level of quality and volume with these big celebrities.
Apple has deep pockets, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're really not getting the numbers they had anticipated.
Maybe even they're wrong about why or they don't have a good idea about why, but they're just like, hey, we're just living at a time where streaming channels are at a loss, right?
That's just the way you run them.
Yeah, it would be interesting to know, but I don't think we'll ever find out.
It's just like a company secret, you know?
Yeah, well, the thing is in the entertainment business, I don't know that there's a lot of real honesty about these kinds of things.
I think a lot of people talk about, like they create this perception of reality, and a lot of people try to function within it, sort of demonstrate that they're connected by using that same language and those same phrases and really advocating for the same shared perspective.
But how accurate is it?
I don't know.
You know, it's like the classic trailer that has so-and-so critic gives it five stars, five stars, five stars, and then you see the source, and it's really, really tiny, and it's like some indie blog, you know, with five people who read it a month, but they use that as the big hook, or they use parts of phrases, like riveting, incredible.
They don't use the full sentence, they're just like, it started off as something that was really riveting in the beginning, and then just really fell off, you know?
But now it just becomes riveting.
Or could have been.
Yeah, exactly, could have been riveting, done.
Almost was.
Well, so I wanted to ask you to tell me more, because you offered me some really useful information about artificial intelligence recently, and I've been using it this week.
So you suggested I alter the way I prompt ChatGPT, which I'm trying right now.
And it's been really, really helpful.
It's like made a huge difference in the quality of outputs.
So why don't you tell the audience a little bit, share with them what you shared with me?
Yeah, sure.
So ChatGPT typically works on prompting, but that prompting has to be something where you're asking ChatGPT to analyze the prompt that you're giving it.
So you're having it act as an expert in analysis of a prompt, and then it analyzes that prompt and then gives you a full-fledged prompt that you can then use for anything you want.
Yeah, that was huge.
So basically the way I understood it was, I normally write a prompt like, hey, ChatGPT, please generate a list of this thing in this way for this reason or whatever.
And you were like, look, write your prompt, but then in front of it, ask ChatGPT to act as, how did you phrase it?
Act as a top ChatGPT prompt engineer and analyze the prompt that you wrote.
Oh, and then ask any clarifying questions around the prompt.
So you're basically, it's basically analyzing your prompt and rewriting it and asking clarifying questions so that it can create an even better prompt.
So then you're using that new and improved prompt and you know it's the best possible prompt because ChatGPT basically wrote a prompt for itself.
Yeah, it's been transformative.
So now I just copy and paste, right?
I typed, you sent me a version, I kind of typed it up a little bit and altered it slightly.
And now whenever I write a prompt, I always start with this.
Act as a top ChatGPT prompt engineer and analyze and improve the following prompt, colon.
Then I say, I want you to act as an expert in, and then whatever field is relevant to what I'm doing.
I say, and this is from you, I want you to do fill in the blank because of fill in the blank, right?
So not just what I want ChatGPT to do, but I add because of why I wanted to do that.
Then I have, and you gave me this too, the sentence, I want the output to be in, and then whatever format, like bullet points or a summary.
And then I hit enter.
And ChatGPT then spits out a much improved version of my prompt.
So now it says, I want you to act as an expert in whatever field and do this and do this, and it adds details, right?
Which then I just copy and paste what it suggested, re-enter that into ChatGPT, and it has been spitting out a nice, polished, much improved product, right?
Which has been great, because I've been able to just copy that and like throw it onto a sheet.
Now there are still the occasional errors or things that are a little bit off, but much easier to spot.
Everything is better organized, it's neater.
So really, it's so great.
Like just you suggesting that I ask ChatGPT to analyze my prompt before I submit it has been huge.
And then asking ChatGPT to act as an expert in a field has been very helpful.
And then specifying the purpose, like not just what I want, but why.
So my old prompts were just basically one fourth or fifth of that, or I just said, this is what I want.
And these layers are so much better.
Oh, it's amazing.
And you can add even more nuance.
So you can even, you can dive much deeper.
Let's say you have a medical question.
I'll just use that as an example.
So you can tell it like, along with that analysis that you put in in the beginning of how to act as a top ChatGPT prompt engineer, analyze and improve this prompt, ask any clarifying questions to make this prompt better.
So let's say you use that as your initial prompt.
And then the prompt that you're giving it is let's say act as an orthopedic surgeon with 25 years of experience specifically doing surgeries on the hand.
Then you ask it your question.
And then you say, because of these, feeling these particular symptoms, what would you suggest would be a treatment plan?
I want you to give me context and your logic behind your answer.
And then you start going into a whole different level of reasoning for ChatGPT.
It explains everything.
It's logic, the treatment plan, why it would do X, Y, Z.
So basically what you're doing is you're creating your individual, each one of the prompts that you're creating is creating a new type of expert in whatever it is.
It's pretty amazing.
That is interesting.
So asking it for logic and context.
Yes.
So I've asked for references.
I've asked for summarizing advances, but asking for the logic and context for treatment recommendations is really interesting or whatever you asked it to do.
That's a really good addition.
Yeah.
I'll make a note of that.
The more detail you add in terms of, let's say, whatever question you have is like background and why you want a specific output and why you want it done in a certain way, like what the end goal is that you're trying to achieve.
Because let's say in that example that I just gave, it would be because I've been feeling pain on the left part of my wrist and I can't really bend my hand.
So that additional context gives it so much to go on and it can get so much more specific with its response.
And you can apply that same logic, a prompt logic to any prompt.
So you're getting, the outputs are probably 100 times better than you typically get by just asking a question because it doesn't know where to source and what to reference.
It doesn't know what role it's supposed to be playing when giving you the answer, which makes all the difference.
So like you can get really, really specific, way more specific than you would think and get a much, much better answer.
If you have law questions, you can specify the type of lawyer, how long they have been practicing.
You can ask, act as if you've worked at this particular law firm in this state for X amount of years.
So now it's giving, it's adding credentials to that particular type of lawyer.
So then it's speaking in that voice and accessing information around that particular topic.
So it's, and it's also answering in a way that a top expert would answer as opposed to a novice, like an entry-level lawyer, because you specified exactly the type of role they're supposed to be playing.
It's really fascinating.
It is because I think so many of us would take that for granted.
We would assume, well, it's AI, so obviously it would go for the top experts, but it's not human intelligence.
So it doesn't think, well, obviously, you know, Steve's asking me this because he wants to know what the best of the best would say, not just whatever I can find that fits the other parameters, right?
But if you don't specify that, it doesn't look for it, which is really important to know.
Yeah.
I think the easiest way to think about it when you're creating any of these prompts is how would you explain this to a five-year-old?
You'd have to, you know, create very specific context.
You'd have to go back to the beginning.
You'd have to simplify things in a way that would make a lot of sense, set the scene, and then explain every single step of what you're doing and why, and why you want a specific outcome in the first place.
So that gives you all of the pieces that it would need, in this case, the AI, in order to give you the answer that you're looking for.
So then when you ask clarifying questions, you've set the stage already.
So even the clarifying questions that you ask are a lot more specific and detailed and expert-oriented.
Because you've basically created a persona, like an AI persona for yourself, like an AI lawyer, an AI doctor, and AI therapist in a specific type of therapy, treating specific types of patients, for instance.
It's really fascinating that you can actually do that and get those types of outputs, kind of mind-blowing.
Yeah, it's surprising how much detail you need to add to a prompt to make it worthwhile.
And on top of that, what is that detail, right?
So this is really great direction, because it simplifies that.
It tells you, yes, you need to add more context, but instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every time, there are just a few key pieces of context that you can give it consistently that will get better results, which is great.
It's hugely helpful.
Yeah, for sure.
And now that you can also upload images, that's really interesting too.
Like I was just playing around with that feature the other day, and I was watching a show, and they showed a major city in its bay, and I didn't know what it was.
I took a picture of the screen on my television and uploaded it into ChatGPT.
I said, what is this?
And it's like Hong Kong, the building on the right is XYZ Skyscraper.
The building on the left is, I mean, it's amazing.
It's so practical.
Interesting.
Yeah, there's a lot you can do to improve.
The writing, you can ask it to analyze style, voice, tone, word count of a document to see how something is written.
So once you've trained it on a specific document or several documents, then when you ask it to write anything else, it's going to understand that voice, style and tone.
And if you add the word count parameter, it's going to give you its output in a specific word count, which is incredible.
Yeah, I'm sure there's so many uses for that stuff.
And data analysis as well can do for you, which is really useful.
It's still very limited though, in a lot of ways.
I experimented with using ChatGPT to help prompt Canva.
So I was trying to do some very simple graphics to make a worksheet.
And I tried prompting Canva, and I was shocked that the very simple graphic I was looking for, just basically a line, more or less with an arrow on the top and some lines on the side to add some notes, it really couldn't do it.
It was creating zigzagging lines that had nothing in common with what I asked for.
So I went to ChatGPT and I tried to use the formula we've discussed to have it write the right prompt that I could copy and paste into Canva.
And it was just chaos.
I mean, ChatGPT cranked out something that I thought was very descriptive and very good, and Canva just ignored it and did whatever it wanted.
So I guess generating images is still a challenge.
There is an alternative though, which is Mid Journey.
I don't know if you've heard of that.
That's really the image generation tool that the top designers use in order to generate AI images.
Like major brands use it to generate their images for advertisements, et cetera.
It's so precise what it can do and the types of images it can generate.
It just beats anything that Dali can do by leaps and bounds.
I mean, you can tell it to generate an image that is photorealistic and taken with this specific type of lens.
That's how specific you can get with the prompts and it understands those prompts.
It's really incredible.
I also tried to do some AI headshots just out of curiosity and it was not great.
I mean, they weren't bad, but I wouldn't use any of them.
There were too many ways in which it took my...
They asked for sample photos, so it started with a bunch of good photos of me that where I was very clear.
And even given that, it changed things about my appearance that really made it not look right, like the image just didn't look human fully.
So, I haven't tried every single one out there, but definitely not great.
So, maybe people are getting mixed results or maybe it's not working, but people are charging for it.
I just don't think it's quite on par.
And the same thing with Canva, they're not charging necessarily for this kind of thing, but in my experience, it just hasn't been able to generate very simple graphics for you to use in your designs, which is weird.
I think if you're asking for a cube, it ought to be able to crank out a cube without too much trouble.
They really should.
And you shouldn't have to use these other AI generators, like I mentioned Mid Journey, in order to do it.
You would think they would have figured out the basics, but they haven't really.
That's why a lot of people, when it comes to image generation, they don't even consider Dali at all or Canva, because it's just going to give you these outputs, especially they're really bad at writing.
Like anytime you have a generic, anything with a word in it, the word is always like, has like hieroglyphics in it, whenever you try to do it.
Right, or extra letters.
Exactly.
But that's changing so rapidly, but I don't think they're focused in on that.
I think they're really just focused in on the ChatGPT part of the OpenAI platform.
So I think Dali is kind of like second to that, in terms of image generation, or else I think these other companies wouldn't be beating them at this game.
Well, it still feels like we're in a phase where companies are trying to cram AI down our throats.
It still pops up a lot when I don't need it.
I don't want it.
It doesn't add anything.
And what it does say or whatever it spits out is superfluous in so many ways.
I don't know.
I don't understand their motivation for trying to cram it down our throats.
I guess they think we want it or else there's some hidden motivation there.
I don't know.
I guess it depends in what context you're using it.
But I think a lot of the AI that's being integrated into a lot of, let's say, SaaS platforms is just not there yet.
It's set in 75% or 80% and they're just integrating it.
I think there's a meme about it where it shows a bunch of random Legos being stacked on each other.
It's like the integration of AI into software, like what that looks like.
They're just trying to throw stuff together to like a Frankenstein to say that it's AI powered because that's the jargon that people really love.
Whatever software is now AI powered, even if it could be just like it's using ChatGPT to help you write something within the platform, like an email or something.
It's like AI powered now.
A lot of business, a lot of investors get caught up in the same artificial reality that I was talking about earlier when Hollywood, you know?
So maybe that's the problem.
Maybe investors now and the money is all about like, well, AI is the future.
And if you're not incorporating AI, you're falling behind and losing the race, even if it's only 60% of the way there and most people don't want it.
So they're forced to integrate it or at least appear to be in order to quote unquote keep up or more accurately keep their stock price up.
And I was just talking to a friend and he was talking about how a lot of these big consulting companies, like the really, really big ones, they've like set up these AI divisions to coach these companies on how to integrate AI, even though they're not really sure how to do it, in charging these exorbitant fees, because these companies are like, how do we take advantage of it?
You know, so they get these high-end consultants that are charging like $1,600 an hour or something to show them to come up with a game plan, but not the execution piece.
They just have like an AI strategy for the company, and then someone else is gonna have to like, actually roll it out, whether it's doable or not.
Just kind of where we are.
And that's like the wild west.
Like the early days of the internet, people didn't know what to do with it.
Like how would it actually end up functioning and being a part of our lives?
So it's just like random software that they were putting, or websites that they were putting out there.
I remember there was one called Mr.
Alarm Clock.
There was another one, which you would just basically log in to this site, put in what time you wanted to wake up, and it would call you at that time.
It was literally a site, mralarmclock.com.
And there was another one called Comet Cursor.
And this guy had a huge company around it.
And his whole idea was to get brands to actually show up on your cursor.
So instead of your cursor, it would be like a time bottle that you'd be moving around your screen.
All kinds of just nonsense.
And I think that's where we're at right now with AI.
People aren't really sure what it's gonna be at all.
And we're coming up with the most ridiculous uses for it.
That's gonna be laughable in the future.
It's like websites with like dancing gerbils, you know?
It's just a gif of a gerbil spinning around, singing a song over and over.
And then again, we went through that with apps, right?
There was an app for all these random things.
Just like there was an app that made lightsaber noises if you move your phone around.
That was a big hit briefly.
The beer one.
There was one where you would tip the phone and see you drinking beer, like everything and anything.
But who knows where it'll end up?
Yeah.
That's funny.
So I saw a movie that I've wanted to see for a while, and I'm excited to talk about it because it was really, really good.
So I've suggested that we cover this, and your response has always been, shut up, that's stupid, I don't care what you think.
Or you know, some version of that.
It doesn't sound like me, but go ahead.
No, actually, so the movie is No One Can Save You.
And every time I suggest it, you say, where is that streaming?
And I say, I think it's on Hulu, and you go, well, there's no way I can watch that.
So we have not covered it.
That's the only streamer that I don't have access to, because it's not my contract to have access to it.
Once they give me the big paycheck, to mention them, more often than I'm gonna be on there.
If you're listening Hulu, you know where to write the check.
Well, when you do, when they finally write that check and it arrives and you cash it, I recommend you see No One Can Save You.
It came out last year written and directed by Brian Duffield, I believe is his name.
He was a scream writer.
This was his baby, he wrote it and his first, I think premier of his directing ability.
And really solid, right?
He's obviously a great writer.
So the plot, the writing is very good, but the direction was very good too.
A lot of really great shots in it.
So I'll give you a brief summary.
Have you, do you know much about this movie?
I know nothing about it.
Okay, all right, great.
Nothing.
So basically it's a horror film.
It's the story of a woman who is isolated by her town.
She screwed up when she was younger.
Everybody hates her.
So now she lives alone and it's a small town.
So she lives outside of the city in a pretty nice sized house.
She works as a seamstress.
I guess she mails things to people and she's so alone that she's sort of recreating the town in miniature in her home, right, that she sort of lives in this imaginary version of the town.
Anyway, the horror element is there's an alien that lands on her property and they end up playing like a cat and mouse game, right?
So she's in the house and this alien is chasing her around and it's a little bit like Friday the 13th or something like that where you have, you know, a monster or a killer who's chasing you around the house.
And what makes this so good is that right there at the end of act one is a big twist, right?
So she's being chased by the alien.
She's running around the house.
You're getting more, you need to see the alien more and more clearly.
It's really well done.
It's scary.
And then boom, pretty big twist, right?
Then there's an act two, you get sort of the bigger world where she's in the town a little bit.
I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm going to be vague.
And then, boom, another surprise twist, right?
Another turn, another twist.
And then some more stuff happens.
And then, boom, another twist, another turn.
So it's full of surprises, really, really, really well written.
It's super fun.
It's a fun ride.
Every time you start to settle in and you think, okay, I got this, they throw something at you that mixes it up.
It's really good.
And as you go through the acts, act one settles into something and there is a twist at the end of act one.
Act two, you think you're settling into the next phase and there's a twist and then there's another twist or another turn.
And then act three, it's like, boom, like major twists and turns just on the regular.
So really, really enjoyable.
I highly recommend it.
Also, there's almost no dialogue in the whole movie.
Is it a long film or is it relatively short?
Full length film, not short by any means.
It doesn't feel long because of what I was saying, a lot of action and a lot of twists and turns, but almost no dialogue.
There's just a couple scenes where somebody is talking briefly, which puts a lot of pressure on the lead actress's performance.
She really has to emote and convey a lot of information.
And also, as an audience member, you have to be okay not really knowing everything, not being told specifically why everything is the whole time.
So it's all show and pretty much no tell, which is really interesting.
And it works really well too because it doesn't force the aliens to speak English, which so many of these movies do, right?
Because you need that dialogue, especially if you just have one human, and then the aliens have to communicate telepathically in English or whatever during the film.
So you don't have any of that.
So that really made it, I think, better.
It made the aliens a little bit more creepy and more threatening.
And also in conjunction with what we're saying earlier, it's a really thematically interesting idea.
And again, I'm gonna try to dance around, not spoiling, but I think the concept here is really perfect for this time.
So it's not really about aliens.
The theme of the story is about the kind of isolation and resentment that so many people feel right now towards everybody else.
You know what I'm talking about?
Like, when you go online, you're like, what do you call a group of humans?
A no thank you or whatever, right?
Like everybody's just sort of like hostile a little bit, resentful of everyone else, or suspicious, right?
So that's the world the main character lives in, right?
She's isolated and ostracized by the town.
And the end of the film really works well with that.
Like initially, I was like, I don't know how I feel about this end.
Again, it's another twist, it's another turn right there at the end.
And I was like, oh, I don't know.
I'm gonna think about this for a second.
But very quickly I realized, oh, this is perfectly on point for the theme.
And it's so timely, right?
So many people would watch what is not a classic ending for this kind of movie.
And I think, you know, maybe some people who were share in this isolation and resentment, right?
Even if they spend a lot of time around other people, they don't feel connected to them.
I think they would appreciate this ending.
I'm not really sure.
I'm really curious, you know, anyone listening, I'd love to hear what you thought of the ending.
If initially you were a little bit put off by it and then you came around, or if you loved it, just the instant you realized what the ending was.
But I think it does a great job of reflecting the way many people feel about others.
Sounds like a great movie.
I might have to get that network and not, or that streaming service and not wait for my sponsorship, unfortunately.
You don't want to piss off Netflix.
Right?
Because I do have that Netflix deal going still, going strong.
It's minus five dollars.
So anyway, I'm looking forward to more from this writer director.
Hopefully he keeps cranking stuff out and presumably, this is a successful film.
It's done quite well for Hulu.
So I imagine what he does next will have a larger budget and more attention on it.
And I honestly hope that doesn't lower the quality.
We have to hope not.
Seems to be a trend.
Oh my God, yeah.
I think there's something to be said for having to struggle a little bit.
The original Star Wars trilogy or some of Spielberg's early work.
Not that Spielberg hasn't done some great things since he became really well known, but I just think there's something about having to deal with limitations, having to compromise or rethink things, maybe is a better way to put it, that can work really well.
And when you have more resources, it doesn't always translate into better.
Especially with something like this, which feels quite intimate in a lot of moments.
And I don't think you would get that if you had the budget to put aliens in every scene.
You know what I mean?
I think films like this really benefit from having quiet moments with the main character, where you're setting context and mood and giving a glimpse at the broader world that they live in.
And maybe that is intended to fill time a little bit if you don't have the budget for explosions in every scene.
So hopefully this writer director understands pacing as well as he seems to based on this scene.
I think this is a great podcast film, but really, really good.
I highly recommend No One Can Save You.
It's not the greatest movie ever, but given what it is, it's excellent.
And it does a great job of doing the opposite of what I feel like the Apple science fiction shows do.
Well, you just mentioned Robert Rodriguez calls spraying something with the money hose, spraying things down with the money hose.
And you don't have that.
Yeah.
And you're on such a limited budget.
So you have to think very creatively outside of the box.
It was in that book, Rebel Without a Crew.
So I highly recommend.
It was a really, really great book about filmmaking and filmmaking on a budget, like ultra low budget.
No, I think there's definitely something to say for that.
I think on one hand, it's helpful when somebody has a lot of resources and access to things that can elevate their work and make it seem more professional.
But I also, like I was saying, I think there's a lot of value in needing to make do.
There's a lot of innovation.
There's a stimulating spark that keeps you engaged and keeps your brain firing on all cylinders.
And I think people don't really understand how to capture that or activate that in themselves.
So sometimes it's just by chance.
Yeah, and I think a lot of these, what makes a really great director now is being able to have an unlimited budget, but not necessarily like use all of that budget to make their film, if that makes sense.
Like having access to resources, but being so careful with them that they end up making a great product because they know that they have access to more resources.
Do you see what I mean?
Like it's like they have the budget, but they know what to do with it.
Like what comes to mind is dune.
For me, I just watched dune part two and it was just a phenomenal movie.
And you know, it's a big budget spectacle, but there's some things very intimate about it at the same time.
So it's like the money was put in all the great, like the greatest points, you know?
Yeah.
Well, that's been a real criticism.
We talked about Godzilla minus one in a recent episode.
And I think it really illustrates one reason for what you're talking about.
So if you take a look at Godzilla minus one and you take a look at Avengers, or actually let's use Ant-Man, the most recent Quantumania.
So Quantumania had a much larger budget than Godzilla minus one.
And I think one reason why you get so much better quality when you spend less sometimes is because people charge based on what they think the value of the thing is instead of what it actually costs for the service.
You know, so I imagine when you make a bigger budget movie, like if this director goes on from No One Can Save You, maybe No One Can Save You 2, or maybe he moves on to some other project, and he has this big budget, it's like it attracts these, I don't know how to put it, these professionals who sort of sap the money, you know, they kind of, they consume more because they know it's there.
And I don't think they necessarily contribute proportionally to the same degree.
And that's a really good point.
And I would think that you'd feel this pressure to use those additional resources, whether or not you want to use them, or they're necessary.
So if you have a, let's say your movie doesn't have that many visual effects, but you have the budget, you know, for like unlimited visual effects, might as well use them.
When your decisions are based on something that's not authentic, because you weren't planning on using it, but now you're going to add that additional shot or that additional monster that you wouldn't be able to see normally, that would make them scarier if you couldn't really see them, but now you can see them so clearly because you want to use the budget from the visual effects house.
Or maybe you're getting pressure from the studio to use that visual effects house, or use more visual effects in the movie because we think it's going to draw more of an audience.
So I think there's a lot to say around that.
Various arrangements and relationships, and you are told they're the best, and what do you know, and so on and so forth, right?
But in reality, are you really getting the same bang for your buck as you do when you're making a leaner, smaller project?
Yeah, and I don't think it's really yours anymore in the way it was.
Let's say you're a writer-director, and now basically you're offshoring your creativity.
Right, right.
To third parties, like.
Yeah, it's out of your hands.
Visual effects, sound design, all these things that you might normally keep in house.
Now you have somebody else working on it, then it becomes a normal human pressure of saying, I don't really like that, the way the score is going, but you feel the pressure to say, oh yeah, this is pretty good, or this is good enough.
It's not what I was thinking, but it'll work.
And that could really end up ruining your movie or your vision if you get caught up in that.
Absolutely.
It's almost like it's somebody else's movie.
I mean, I guess that's probably true.
It probably, in a lot of ways, at least components of it are more about that other organization or some other creative vision than your own.
And whether or not that all works together or not, I don't know.
Maybe some of these directors who've made that transition from smaller to larger budgets have done that in part because they have found the professionals that they can work with.
The executive producer who knows your particular style as a director and can find and help you form relationships with people who will consistently execute in a way that's consistent with your vision and do it for a reasonable budget.
Or not, I don't know.
Who knows?
I've heard that a lot of these big budget directors, they always work with the same crew over and over and over again.
The same editor, the same cinematographer, typically the same producer, set designer, et cetera.
So it almost becomes a group vision.
But to your point, it's probably a group vision aligned with that director's vision in a much stronger way than if they constantly rotated through those key jobs in a film set.
I'll bet that's right.
I also watched Late Night with the Devil.
I'm not familiar with that one either.
Oh, another one you missed.
Okay, Late Night with the Devil is a relatively, it's like a mid-budget horror film.
It's about a late night talk show in the 1970s, I believe.
It's sort of a competitor to The Tonight Show.
And the host of the show is a star.
The show has always been number two.
It's not really number one in the ratings, so they're always challenged by the possibility of being canceled.
Do you know, I don't know how to pronounce his name, David Dastmalchian, this Malchian.
He's been a supporting actor in a lot of stuff.
You know what?
I am familiar with this movie because it popped up on Amazon Prime and there was like a trailer for it or something.
And yeah, he's got a very unique look.
He's got dark hair, very like angular features.
That guy, he's coming to mind, yeah.
Okay, so anyway, the story is on Halloween, they filmed what ended up being the final episode of this particular late night show and the master tape was never released or the episode was never released or something because of what happened.
And now it's found footage, right?
Basically, that's the conceit.
We get to see that footage of what really happened on this fateful final Halloween episode.
And in it, our host reveals that he had potentially, or there's rumors, he doesn't reveal this, but there are rumors that he had connections to the occult, right?
He lost his wife to cancer, I think a couple of years earlier, and that was very tragic.
So he's come back for a year, maybe earlier, he's come back from that tragedy.
And his guests on the show are like people involved in mysticism and possession and things like that.
And so as you watch it, it gets increasingly out of control.
All these horrific events start to happen and you're basically, it's kind of like Amityville, right?
But it's filmed in front of a live studio audience.
Oh, wow.
What a cool concept.
Did you like it?
So I did not like it, but it was very popular.
A lot of people really liked it.
So I think it's a matter of opinion.
It was just as a side note, it was directed by two brothers, Colin and Cameron Cairns, I believe, which I don't think they've done a lot.
Here's what I would point out as unusual or significant about this movie.
First of all, it opens with almost nine minutes of narrative exposition, just a nine minute voiceover, which I haven't seen anything like that since like Lord of the Rings.
Right.
And it was done by Michael Ironsides.
Oh, I know that guy.
Yeah, yeah.
He's got that very deep, crably voice.
That's right.
And he did a great job, but he's not in the film at all.
So that was weird.
Yeah.
And it just went on and on and on, just telling us stuff to set it up that we really didn't need to know in an info dump in the beginning.
So I thought that was strange.
The next thing that stood out to me is it's very slow.
It's extremely second screen.
So if you're one of these people who you like to have your phone out when you're watching a movie and you don't want to feel like you're missing stuff, then this is the perfect film for you.
Because it is, if you're just sitting there watching it and you have nothing else to do, it is quite slow.
It's also not very creepy.
That seems like the last thing we'll hear someone say about a movie that's called Late Night with the Devil.
The setup is not conducive to creepiness and tension building, which is particularly a problem because the demon doesn't show up until 55 minutes in.
There's actually really nothing that would be that scary, I think, at least by my standards, until almost an hour into the movie.
And remember, the first eight or nine minutes was just someone talking.
I thought that was a really odd choice and I was very mindful that a lot of people really liked this.
So that surprised me.
That is surprising.
Let's check it out.
I haven't even seen the trailer.
Yeah, don't watch the trailers.
Yeah, I watched the trailer for No One Will Save You, or is it No One Can Help?
What's the name of that?
No One Can Save You, maybe?
I think that's right.
Yeah, No One Can Save You.
So I watched the trailer after I watched the movie.
It gives away a lot.
So a friend of mine was over here and he was like, I was like, oh, I'm almost done with this movie.
But it's good, I recommend it.
And he's like, well, let me see the trailer.
And I played it and I was shocked how much was in it that gives away the twists and turns from the film.
So please, if you're at all interested based on the description, don't watch the trailer for either one.
I think it's a lot better to go in as blind as possible.
And just maybe my bad description in your mind.
Yeah, I'll check it out.
I think that one I can see on Amazon and the other one, I'll find on Hulu.
Have you seen this movie that a lot of people seem to be talking about, Longlegs?
Have you seen this trailer?
No.
It was pretty scary.
They say it's like the new Silence of the Lambs, but I don't know if that's true or not.
The plot is FBI agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn, revealing evidence of the occult.
Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.
But the trailer is really good for this movie.
Yeah, well, maybe we should cover it.
Yeah, Oz Perkins directed it.
I think he's directed something else that's famous.
Oh, he's the son of Anthony Perkins.
Fun fact.
Yeah, the trailer was really good.
So I'm wondering if it's gonna live up to the hype.
Okay, well, maybe we should give it a shot.
Yep, that's a good idea.
Well, just in brief, there were a couple other things that I've been thinking about lately.
I finally saw 1984.
Have you heard about this, have you seen this?
I've heard of the book, I've never read it.
I've never read the book, but there was a 1984 version of the film 1984, released in 1984, which gets a lot of press, right?
People talk about it as a classic.
It stars John Hurt and Susanna Hamilton.
It's one of those films that if you are a real film fan, you should probably watch it, right?
There's a lot about it that's referenced and it's just considered a classic for a lot of great reasons.
Here's the thing, before you watch it, it might be helpful to know it's a heavy tragedy, right?
It's basically the story of the destruction of identity and love through torture.
And it was very hard to watch.
It basically, you watch this character be taken apart psychologically and almost physically as well.
And the torturer pitted our main character's survival instinct against his attachment to the woman he loved.
And in doing so, the survival instinct wins and it generates so much guilt in the main character that he ultimately becomes apathetic to the woman he loved.
God, sounds like a real tragedy there.
Yeah, exactly.
So I hated watching that, which, you know, hey, from a certain perspective, that's a sign of a quality story there, I guess.
There's some good storytelling, but it's so heavy and so unpleasant.
And it says what are probably true things about who we are and our depravity in a lot of ways, like what we're capable of and what love is and what it isn't, that are probably true, but it's like depressing, you know?
And it's a great use of science fiction to put humans in extreme circumstances in order to reveal interesting things about who we are.
It's all, all the science fiction is integral to the plot.
There's a lot of other stuff that people talk a lot about.
I mean, sort of the original story is a lot about how if you control information in society, like the implications of that are extreme.
And I think that probably makes the book worth reading.
So I'll maybe circle back and do that.
But the film definitely says a lot about love that isn't particularly uplifting.
So I also don't love torture, just it's a little too real.
I know people actually do that kind of thing.
So it's not fun, I guess, or not entertaining to me, but it's a very, very heavy, very deep kind of concept and I don't know, I mean, if somebody's in a really happy place in their life, it's probably fine, right?
But much like we talked about the original Japanese version of Pulse, if you're not in a good place, it's probably not a good film for you to watch.
If you're not in a good place about love and relationships and attachments and that aspect of humanity, I don't know.
I will say though, on a brighter note, the Eurythmics were contracted to write a song for the film.
And it was used basically just in the trailer, from what I could tell.
The song is called Sex Crimes.
Yeah, and it's a great song.
I didn't remember it.
I don't think I've ever heard it before.
But it's a really great 80s song.
It works really well on the trailer.
So this is a film where you can watch the trailer.
It's not really gonna ruin the film for you.
So enjoy that Sex Crimes song.
I'll probably add it to our growing playlist.
Yeah, it's a good idea.
So people will have a little something to take with them when they're not listening to our podcast and are waiting for an upcoming episode.
Speaking of, we are planning to do an episode here when it comes out on the new Deadpool movie.
So hopefully that will work out.
We're gonna bring back Matt Bachman for that, I think.
And we're gonna talk about the current state of the MCU, which has been collapsing, I think is a fair way to put it, under the weight of itself, or is maybe some questionable choices that they've made.
I don't know, depends on your opinion.
But I will say I watched X-Men 97, which I'm guessing you don't know anything about either.
Is that true?
Your guess would be correct, sir.
Okay, another cultural phenomenon that has missed my co-host.
So from 1992 to 1997, there was a landmark animated series, X-Men, which was very popular.
It was a Saturday morning thing, and a lot of people loved it because back then in the 90s, there wasn't a lot of high quality superhero content.
A lot of the films and the TV shows either weren't particularly true to the comics, or they weren't very good, or their scope was shrunk down, probably for budgetary reasons in a lot of cases.
But the X-Men animated series really embraced the comic characters, the X-Men, which were hugely popular, and created the full X-Men world.
So you had not just the main characters, but you had a lot of the side characters and references, and they were in the background, and they just really embraced the comic book world.
And then they canceled it.
And then earlier this year, they basically relaunched the series, but they retooled it a little bit so that it was aimed more at, I guess, the same people who are now 20 years older or so.
And it was really good.
It was basically a classic Marvel MCU kind of style.
Like it was a return, felt like a lot to the original show, but also more of in kin with what we got in like phase two, which was really fun.
But the one piece that I wanted to get your thoughts on is there are a couple characters in the show who are shape-shifters, right?
Meaning their mutant ability is they can change their appearance.
And one of them, they made non-binary, right?
So their gender identity.
So in the original 1990s, the character was a he and was created for the show.
And now with the relaunch, they've changed that.
So the character is now they, them, and they're sort of hinting that that character has developed an affection for a male character, Wolverine, actually, who most people have heard of, but you probably don't know who that is.
Who's that?
And there's another character in the show who's not really featured in this reboot as much, Mystique, who is also a shapeshifter, and as far as I know, has stayed with sort of a feminine gender.
So anyway, I just thought that was an interesting idea, psychologically speaking, because if somebody has the ability to completely change their identity, it probably would become fluid, right?
You would think, yeah.
Yeah, so that would make sense, right?
I think so, doesn't it?
I don't know.
I think a lot of people, or some people were vocally upset about it.
I'm sure other people thought it was really awesome, but just that aside, right, the broader cultural war over that issue, it kind of hit me like that's what that, I mean, I think, if you had 10 people who, let's say relatively early in their lives, like around puberty or something, acquired the ability to completely change to be different people, like men and women and whatever, right?
They probably would be, their identity would be impacted by that.
Don't you think?
I think so, yeah, of course.
You can switch between any gender, right?
Or be genderless.
Right, all the time.
And you did that as part of your superpower, so it wasn't like you had to not do it, right?
Like, you know, this character doesn't live in a world where he or they have to pretend to be something, right?
They're part of the X-Men, so they use their power all the time.
So yeah, I would think eventually gender would seem like not such a big part of your identity.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Maybe that's what the creators were thinking too.
Like this character can be anything, so it doesn't even matter.
Right, and it wouldn't matter to the character, I don't think, unless there was a specific reason it did.
Like Mystique, the other character who has similar abilities, has a kid, like has been or is a mom, I guess.
So maybe that would play a role, like having children in that way might anchor your gender role.
I don't know.
Or maybe relationships would to some extent, like anchor that part of your identity.
Yeah, that's possible, but it doesn't seem like they have any of those.
They're just shifting between genders anyway.
Yeah.
Makes perfect sense that they wouldn't be locked in.
Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting.
The other thing interesting about this show to me is, the show runner who they brought to kind of relaunch it, was fired right before it was released, and now it's a big hit.
So what are you gonna do there?
I don't know what happened there.
I don't know, there's rumors that this person, who the show runner was, the words that coworkers have used is difficult and unsavory characteristics.
It's probably 100 times worse than those two words, but yeah.
I mean, whenever they call someone unsavory or difficult, you know it means there's a lot more going on than meets the eye, you know what I mean?
He's probably headed for a felony if he doesn't have one already.
Yes, but on the other hand, he apparently delivered a hit when the MCU really needed it, right?
Everything was getting panned.
The audience scores were low.
People weren't loving it.
And here comes a relaunch, an animated series that people are really loving.
Like the audience score is through the roof.
I don't know anyone who doesn't like it.
If you like comics, this is definitely for you.
So I'll be curious to see if there isn't some sort of arc of redemption here.
Are we gonna hear the classic rehab or taking a break tale or burnt out?
There's gonna be a spin masters at work right now.
Oh yeah.
What can it be, ooh yes, exhaustion.
The classic exhaustion.
I wasn't myself because of exhaustion, not a personality problem.
Just I was very tired.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a feeling.
I have a feeling.
Well, very good.
All right, so anything else you wanted to cover today?
No, I think that was it.
I think we covered a lot of really interesting topics.
I'm glad that we did this episode.
I think we should do these more often.
What do you think, audience?
It's a good question for the audience, right?
Do you want more of episodes that are just the list where we just sort of quickly bounce around instead of going to great detail, going in depth around a particular project?
I enjoy it too.
There's a lot that piles up that's worth touching on, but maybe not worth dedicating an entire episode to.
Although I will say, I recommend that you watch both of those movies and then tell me what you think.
Maybe you can do that before our next recording.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I will get Hulu and I will get on that.
Even though they're not sponsoring me, of course.
You could just drop the four bucks or whatever it is to rent the movies.
Or you could wait until they're on the streaming service for your local library.
Download Canopy, that's Canopy with a K.
And that's actually how I watched quite a few things.
I have Amazon Prime Plus streaming channel, but I hate the commercials and I'm not gonna give them more money.
So I watched Outlaws on Canopy because free library card, no commercials.
I didn't know that.
I hadn't thought of that app for a really long time.
I should check it out again.
Yeah, definitely worth a download.
They put a lot of good stuff on there.
Some of the Oscar movies popped up there.
A lot of anime for some reason.
I don't know why, but I'm sure it varies from library to library.
So it depends on what's available in your area, how big the library catalog is as to what you have access to.
But a lot of good stuff, a lot of classics, a lot of new stuff, a lot of BBC stuff is on there.
So I highly recommend it.
And again, it's free and no commercials.
Sounds great.
I'll check it out.
Well, as always, thank you to the people who made the projects we discussed today.
And thank you to the listeners.
If you want to reach us and tell us your thoughts, you can do that on social media.
Just look for Don't Encourage Us anywhere where finer social media posts are found.
You can send us an email directly to our account at don'tencourage at gmail.com.
Check out the show notes for links to some of the stuff we talked about and our playlist, which I have now on YouTube and Spotify.
And I'm not really sure what's going to come up next.
Do you think we're going to do the Deadpool one or is there time to squeeze something in before then?
Maybe Dead Heat.
You never know.
All right, you heard it first.
Next week, Dead Heat.
Take care, everybody.