Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate.
And I'm Mike.
What are we smoking today, Nate?
Well we are going to be smoking.
I guess I should look at it, huh?
This is a Saison by Oliva and this is the first harvest 2009.
So it is.
This is the first in a series.
We also have to say that this is a first time for the show.
Yeah, first time in two seasons.
We're actually both at Nate's place today and I've been working on my car so I had to
put engine components back under the hood so that we had enough room on the workbench
here to do our show.
There we go, we're lit.
Nice easy light.
It is, yeah.
We're enjoying a Goose Island IPA from Chicago.
Is it oil?
It is from Chicago, huh?
Yep.
I never thought about it.
I drink a lot of this stuff in the winter because the establishments that I go to regularly
to endeavor in a sporting event, they usually only have one good beer and Goose Island happens
to be the one that the distributor up north has.
I'd say the first couple puffs is pretty nice, pretty good, smooth.
It is.
I was expecting it to be good.
It's an Oliva.
It's a very reputable brand.
Most people can find them in their local cigar shops.
Is it Oliva or Oliva?
It's Oliva.
Oliva?
Yeah, I think like Boliva.
Okay.
Yeah, we've talked at length ad nauseum about how I can't pronounce things because I just
read them and make up my own pronunciations in my head.
Interestingly enough, that's going to be part of our show today.
Yes.
Is accents and whether or not accents are offensive even if they're accurate.
Yes.
For our episode today, we did a lot of homework, about an hour and a half worth each and then
some additional extra credit time because we've got a little fun activity after we're
done talking about the main topic, but we wanted to watch.
I don't think it's considered, it's not Birth of a Nation, so it's not the most racist film
ever made.
I don't know if you ever saw Birth of a Nation.
I have not, but I want to.
I've seen some of it, right?
The Ku Klux Klan definitely plays a major role as the heroes in that film.
I've seen the one scene where they come over the hill and they're like angels kind of,
but they're the Klan.
Yeah.
So, and it's not, it actually Gone with the Wind has kind of taken some heat-
Yes.
... within the past, I don't know, 10, 15 years maybe for its portrayals of the Deep
South.
Specifically Mammy and their relationship between slaves and their masters.
Yes.
So, the movie that we watched was, you can find this online.
I'm not going to tell you how or where, but it's on, I think, the internetarchive.com,
so it's definitely within public domain, I believe.
It should be, yeah.
Or, if not, this is kind of like a fan restoration where they found the 35 millimeter prints
from a theater somewhere and kind of took their time to scan it in and color grade it
and clean up some of the dust and stuff.
But this is one Disney does not want you to see.
It's called Song of the South from 1946.
Yes.
And I've been wanting to watch this since I was in college.
I've always wanted to see it.
It's always been controversial.
And it's where the song Zippity Doo Dah comes from.
Yep.
And it's Splash Mub.
That made its debut in this film.
And some of the actors are Academy Award winners, the first ever black actors to win an Academy
Award.
Both of them.
Yeah.
Yeah, both the man and the woman were in the show.
So, we're going to go through Song of the South and then our fun activity at the end
is if we were making a remake of it today, who would we cast?
And would we change things?
Because I was thinking about that too, like would we change some of the storyline or some
of that stuff?
So, we're just going to kind of go through it.
And I think let's just let's get the big elephant out of the way first.
Do you think this film was racist?
I think that it has elements that are not sensitive for the times today.
But I don't think it crosses the line into outright racist rhetoric.
I think a lot of the points that they had were nuanced, which was common in film of
that era.
And there were two things that stuck out that might be racist to me.
Okay.
I don't want to step on your...
No, well, so I just want to say I didn't really feel anything was overtly racist.
You know, it's certainly a film from the 1940s.
So, you know, you're going to get whatever from it, right?
But it's firstly, it's set in the Reconstructionist South.
So not plantation full on slavery South.
That doesn't mean that Reconstruction was great and Reconstruction had no racism or
anything like that.
It's just it's set in kind of a different period than you would think because yes, the
white people still live at the plantation and there's still the black people working
the farm and stuff.
But I think you can tell, especially with some of the dialogue between Uncle Remus and
the grandmother, that it's a working relationship, not a master slavery relationship.
So right.
And we discussed Frederick Douglass and his accounts of slavery.
And even in his account, there was only one account one time in his life where he saw
the sort of outright beating of somebody and it was over sex.
It wasn't really over work.
It was yeah, it was competition between the master and a slave over a slave woman.
Yeah.
So anyway, but yeah, there were two things that stood out to me as problematic in the
modern sense.
And that was the accent of the little boy, Uncle Remus's nephew.
Yeah, the little I don't know if that was really the oh, maybe it was actually the nephew
that Toby, the one that was showing the little white boy around.
Yes.
His accent was a little too much.
Yeah.
And then but also it was the 1940s.
So perhaps he did talk that way.
Well, that's the question is, like Uncle Remus had an accent that seemed to be authentic
to what the southern slave plantation American English would have been because that was a
very specific dialogue that did exist.
Yeah.
And was trying like the I guess the original stories of Briar Rabbit had that lingo in
there when it was written.
OK.
And because they were written in the 1880s.
And there was an active attempt to capture that.
Well, it's capturing part of what is like history capturing history.
So retelling these stories, they they came out of a racist period of time.
These stories.
Yes.
You know, but they're not necessarily racially driven stories, but they're from a subset
of people that were enslaved.
And it was their let's just say fairy tales.
The full of the slaves that lived on the plantation largely recorded in reconstruction era.
So there's going to be elements that are not comfortable for a modern audience is obviously.
Yeah.
And again, this is a Disney film.
And you know, so they're not really going to delve into the ups and downs of slavery
and things like that.
This is more we wanted to portray these stories that came out of reconstructionists south.
So let's set it in the reconstruction of south and give an uncle or an elderly black man
the lead or the role of telling these stories of his people.
Right.
So like if you would make Uncle Remus a white person, there would be outrage because how
could a white person tell stories with African background?
There's a big thing where they want the if you have a gay character, it needs to be played
by a gay actor.
Right.
You know, which I don't agree with because that's acting.
No, you don't really have.
Yeah, you don't really have, you know, like there are no sorry, Simha, but there are no
Jedi.
You know, so they're pretending to be a Jedi.
There are no and the second thing that I found and this was something that Sarah and I both
agreed on.
They had two scenes where they had the sharecroppers going in and out of the field.
Yeah.
And they were too chipper.
They should have been like obviously this is a 1946 movie made in segregationist America.
So they couldn't politically, they couldn't have the sharecroppers not want to be sure
croppers.
Yeah.
So I do understand, but they probably should have been a little bit more sour about the
sharecroppers.
Yeah.
You know, and some of it too is it's a Disney film.
It's a Disney film.
They're not going to go in into, you know, the ins and outs of sharecropping.
Right.
Like it's for kids, you know, it's not really designed to be a super heady film for us to
analyze.
And in context, you know, this is the era where I think that Frank Sinatra was blacklisted
at this exact time because he wouldn't do segregated shows in the South.
OK.
He was blacklisted for years before basically his Las Vegas show got too big and they just
couldn't shut him out of the industry anymore.
Yeah.
It's just tour de force.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's Frank.
It's Frank and, you know, Sammy Davis Jr.
Yeah.
All these guys there.
At the height of their careers.
Yeah.
So, I mean, this is a very different political time.
And yeah, and it's a Disney film.
Like, you know, nowadays like Disney, Pixar, they'll put things in their movies for adults.
But if you go watch Bambi or, you know, any of the other kind of like quintessential Disney
animated movies, Aladdin, they don't really I mean, the Genie is a slave, but they don't
really you know, he's beholden to the lamp and he has to do what the lamp holder wants
to do.
But they're not putting in all of these things for you to analyze because it's a movie for
kids.
Right.
Like Fox and the Hound and Bambi don't get into the intricacies of modern American wildlife
game fishery rules.
And Fox and the Hound, we've been rewatching that one quite a bit with our daughter.
And you know, that's kind of like maybe the subplot is, you know, having because it's
a fox and a hound and hounds hunt foxes.
So it's kind of like desegregation, right?
Kind of the theme of the movie.
But that's reading into it.
Like a kid is going to be like, oh, OK, they're supposed to hunt each other, but they're friends,
you know, like, yeah, we have friends that look different than me.
That's fine.
Whatever.
It's cool.
Right.
But they're not really going into, you know, is fox hunting ethical?
Well, yes.
And Song of the South did.
I'm somebody who watches older films and so are you.
So I'm already primed to understand the subtext built into those stories.
They will not outright say in a film noir film, they're not going to show the murders
and the race usually.
Right.
They're going to insinuate that it happened.
They are not going to directly tell you.
And this is, I don't know, maybe what, 20 years later, but Psycho.
They show the knife coming up.
They show stabbing sounds and then they show like Hershey's syrup going down the drain.
But you don't actually see.
You don't see anything happening.
And that was that was graphic because of how effectively they portrayed it on film.
And this is a kid's movie, so you're not going to get really the same level.
Grandma is not going to be outright racist.
It's the context of the dialogue.
There was one scene when she was talking to Uncle Remus and it was like it was borderline.
But then they kind of like the escalated it and they were like, oh, we just kind of we
were just joking with each other because we've been around each other for that long kind
of thing.
And I was like, who that was almost like I thought that was going to push us over.
They made grandma look well in the movie, there's four bad people, I would say.
Yeah, they're all white.
Well, let's sum up.
Let's sum up the plot summary first.
OK, and then we'll go into the four bad people.
So it's a little he's got to be what, eight or ten or something like a little a little
child.
And he's riding in the carriage some really awkward scenes with his mom and dad who are
getting a divorce.
They're not getting a divorce or something.
The they're in reconstruction itself.
And his dad is getting death threats for articles that he's making in the newspaper.
Yes.
And the grandmother politically disagrees with his newspaper.
So the subcontext that I read into it is he is probably pro desegregation and pro reconstruction,
whereas his mother in law is well, the sharecropper says she's older, older, southern, you know,
and they're coming from, I think, Atlanta.
So they're city people.
They're saying by and large, city people are more progressive or liberal or what have you.
Right.
Like they're more inclusive and want to be on that cutting edge.
And the wife, the wife was clearly not a fan of this guy, be it active in whatever politics
he was doing.
And she was kind of one of the baddies, too.
So yeah, you can get the subcontext as they're talking about segregation behind the.
Yeah.
And they so they go to this plantation, which is the father such husband's mom.
No wife's mom.
Oh, the wife's mom.
Wife's mom.
I thought it wasn't because the dad kept saying, I remember growing up and hearing Uncle Remus's
stories, he said that multiple times.
So I feel like it was his family plantation.
And then that would add a little bit extra to his kind of maybe guilt about the whole
system why he would be pro reconstruction and abolishing slavery and, you know, integrating
fully.
But I think I think it was his because he was telling his son on the carriage ride about
Uncle Remus and the funny stories about Broward Rabbit and all that stuff.
So I feel like it was his mom.
But then they drop him off there and the kid gets like really upset that the dad is going
back to Atlanta.
Yes.
Like really, really upset.
And then the grandma has Toby, a boy of similar age, black boy.
Yes.
Be I can't even remember the white kid's name.
Johnny.
That's right.
Be Johnny's kind of guide to show him around the plantation and all that stuff.
So yes, the black boy was Aunt Tempe's nephew.
OK, I don't know if on Tempe was related to Uncle Remus or not.
It's hard to say how this all goes.
Yeah.
Like we said, it's a Disney movie.
They're not really spending screen time explaining how everybody's related.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just like here's the family plantation.
Here's grandma.
Here's black people.
And let's go get this done.
So but of course, the boy is is very interested in Uncle Remus and every older black man that
he sees, he asks if that's Uncle Remus.
And then he decides that he's going to sneak out and sneak back to Atlanta, which has to
be like a 500 mile walk or something ridiculous.
And then he happens upon Uncle Remus himself.
And the rest of the movie kind of continues.
And that's like the first 10, 15 minutes of the movie.
Right.
And Uncle Remus saves the day because he catches Johnny in the act of running away and he manipulates
the child back to the manor house.
Yeah.
And he's going to go with him and he goes through the motions of packing up and like,
well, it's a it's a mighty long walk.
And you know, it's going to be do you have any food?
And Johnny's like, no, I don't have any food.
And he's like, oh, well, we better go back to my place and get some food.
And then of course, there's the fire and he starts telling stories.
And then, you know, he's like, hey, let's go.
We got to get going to Atlanta.
And the little boy is like, well, maybe we can stay here.
Yeah.
So he walks back to the plantation.
Yeah.
But now you're saying there's four main bad guys.
Oh, there's four main bad guys.
So this story is Johnny's adventures on this plantation.
And there's some poor white people who are probably the overseers of the sharecroppers.
So they're baddies.
The adults are the baddies, but they're kind of behind the scenes.
There's two boys and a little girl.
And one of the pivotal moments is when the little boys were torturing some dogs and they
were threatening to drown a puppy.
Yeah, the runt runs and the little girl steals a puppy away and gives it to Johnny.
And then long story short, Johnny's mom, who's also one of the baddies, tries to force.
See what she was dressing him in?
Yeah.
Like that's baddie level right there.
Before she even opens her mouth.
Yeah, she was dressing him in like little girls clothes and all this sort of stuff.
I'm sure it was like, you know, city gentlemen, little kid wear.
But you know, back in that, I think it was a modern invention around like the 1950s where
they actually stopped putting boys and girls, babies, baby boys and baby girls in the same
clothes.
They used to just put both both genders in a dress.
It was easy to change the diaper.
It didn't matter.
Yeah, I'm going to tell them they're like three or four years old.
OK.
Yeah, there wasn't any like blue or pink associated with any gender.
And then, you know, corporations found out they can make a lot more money if they gendered
their baby clothing.
Right.
You had to double up.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think some of it's that and some of it's like, what would the aristocrats
be wearing in Atlanta be wearing?
And I mean, this is some this is some frilly stuff.
It's not not Tom Sawyer running around the riverbanks.
No, kind of.
No, but he's running around in his fancy suits around the plantation and of course, getting
mocked by it by the poor boys, the poor white boys.
Right.
I don't think any of the black boys or black characters had any issue with his outfit.
No, it was only that it was only the poor white.
The poor whites were.
Yeah.
So the poor whites are torturing animals and doing all this crazy stuff.
Like I say, it's not it's all subtext.
Right.
They're not very nice.
These poor white people.
And so anyway, John, you can like read into that stuff.
But I think it's like it's a Disney movie and just for the kids.
Right.
Like the kids are just like, oh, these are some white people that live there.
Probably the kids are just like, these are some people that live there that are kind
of nasty.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, like the daughter's nice, but the dad is gone.
The dad showed up largely.
Yeah, he showed up at the end, but he must have been on a business trip or something.
He was out with he was out in the fields overseeing.
I'm guessing.
Maybe.
Yeah.
And it's been several days.
Yes.
I believe you're very, very clear.
And so but the husband was never there and they kind of made a big whole thing like daddy's
back.
Yeah.
So I don't know where I can't remember.
Maybe he was on business and who knows?
He doesn't he's not really a master.
Yeah.
He's not even he's even when you see him on screen, he's in the back so far.
Yeah.
He's so far back.
Yeah.
So yeah, his mom's kind of a baddie.
So Uncle Remus takes the dog, which is against the wishes of the mother.
Yep.
And then he's found out and the mom freaks out and Uncle Remus and pretty much forbids
Uncle Remus from associating with Johnny at all.
Yeah.
And a very weird way.
It's subcontext, right?
Like she is not a nice lady.
Yes.
Lady at all.
And anyway, Johnny ends up getting run over by a bull and somehow survives.
And then his dad shows up.
Yeah.
Uncle Remus saves the day again.
Yeah.
And the weird thing at the end was Johnny's mom was such a complete and utter bitch.
Uncle Remus.
And at the end, like his uncle remus was packing his bags to leave his home to get away from
them.
Yeah.
And then and then like the bull thing happens and then he's just back and happy again.
And the mom never once apologized to him.
Right.
You know, so the mom was so unpleasant that uncle Remus thought it was better for him
to leave than to stay.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah.
There's a lot of subtext that I don't understand why they why this is supposed to be some
super racist film because the subtext is all there.
It's clear as day.
Yeah.
You can watch it critically.
Yeah.
It's all there and I feel like it shows everyone that could be offended or who you think would
be offended.
It shows everyone there in a really positive light.
Like there are no bad villains of this story that are black.
No, no.
All the all the main characters are black and they're all goodies.
Yeah.
If not outright heroic type characters who keep on saving these children from injuring
themselves on this plantation unsupervised by their parents.
Yes.
Yeah.
And they're shown to be doing things and working and being productive.
Yeah.
They're productive members of the society.
The white people aren't.
They're just kind of like dressing up their boy in little like girl dresses.
Yeah.
And being race callers.
Yeah.
Being psychotic a-holes to the people who are helping them.
Yeah.
So yeah.
I mean, I don't I don't think it's racist.
I think, you know, if you're going to try and explore this, it's a movie.
Those kind of themes in a Disney film like this is probably the movie to emulate.
Yeah.
It's a movie from a different era.
And like I say, Uncle Remus was the main character, a hero type.
He did not have a crazy accent.
Probably.
I mean, I think he was trying to be accurate to like that era.
Yeah.
It wasn't absurd by any means.
It wasn't so much an accent as it was more of a cadence.
Yes.
Yeah.
And using some of the words that one would expect an older black person of that, you
know, era to use, because by and large, the enslaved people at the time were forbidden
from learning to read or write.
So they just kind of.
Absolutely.
It was used slang more so.
Definitely banned.
So the only thing that I didn't like, I was Uncle Remus calling Johnny Honey all the time.
Yeah.
Which was weird.
But I think that's just a 1940s thing.
Southerners still do it.
Yeah, somebody I know who happens to be a black lady who's from the South and she calls
everybody honey and sugar all the time.
And she's in her 50s.
And that's just how she talks.
Yeah.
So, you know, I'm assuming that that's just like original to the story that was written
in the 1880s, for God's sakes.
You know, it's definitely a different era.
Yeah.
And so this movie kind of plays out if anyone has seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Yes, I have.
Right.
And that's like that one is still out.
You can watch it on Disney Plus and everything, but that has a theme of Nazism through there
because it's set during World War II.
Yes.
And stuff.
And so I don't see why that one could be OK.
And something with South is somehow not OK.
But the point I was trying to make was that Bedknobs and Broomsticks is largely a live
action film, but they have sequences of animated sections where the live actors are interacting
with animation.
You know, so it's like the precursor to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, yes, or, you know, any
of the Marvel movies.
Yeah, basically.
So and all of the the Briar stories are animated.
They have Uncle Remus.
Uncle Remus will sometimes walk or appear in the animation as a live actor to kind of
bookend or set us in the direction we need to go in the animated world story.
Yes.
So I'm kind of overviewed.
I want to talk about Aunt Tempe.
Yes, because Aunt Tempe was played by Hattie McDaniel and Hattie McDaniel is Mammy from
Gone with the Wind.
And that just came out a couple of years before.
And she won an Academy Award for it.
And that performance has been criticized as being stereotypical and racist.
And maybe it was.
Her Gone with the Wind.
Her Gone with the Wind role.
Just so we're clear.
Yeah.
And Hattie McDaniel herself defended it, saying that her own grandmother was a slave on a
plantation who was a domestic.
And so she was like, a lot of second here.
Yeah.
Like this is accurate to her perception.
Yeah.
But in Song of the South, Hattie McDaniel was speaking in her normal voice.
Yeah.
There was no accent at all.
I mean, she was just she sang.
Yeah.
And she did.
She was just the domestic in the household with a normal voice.
And I don't I thought for sure that was going to be the zinger.
Yeah.
And it wasn't.
It was just normal.
That was weird because like the whole film, like you told it's such a racist film.
I was waiting for the shooting drop.
And Disney is actively trying and they did, I guess, release it.
But I don't think they released it on DVD or anything.
They might have just done some.
It was never released in the States.
Some theatrical stuff or in the States.
It was never released in the States.
But I know even as old or as recent as 2010, they had a release.
But it was out.
But I think it's a terrible transfer.
Oh, OK.
And that's why this 35 millimeter restoration was such a such a good one.
But yeah, I was you know, you're being told that this movie is offensive and racist.
And I just kind of kept watching it and like on edge almost like is this is this where
they're going to like are they dropping like the N word in here or like what what makes
this movie so racist?
And I was waiting for something.
And there was it was very, very much benign, in my opinion.
It was benign.
And like I say, a critical viewing, which I was doing automatically, the subtext of
the whites being bad was there for sure throughout the whole thing.
And I I just don't know what else you can expect from a movie.
Six. Yeah, even so I did more research like I do.
Yeah. The actor that played Uncle Remus.
Now, I can't remember his name.
Of course, I got his name in my thing here.
James Bassett was 44 in 1948.
So he was in his 41.
Yeah. Playing Uncle Remus.
And he died in 48. Yeah.
But he didn't go to the premiere because it was segregated.
And he didn't go.
Yeah.
McDaniel went, but he protested it.
And then after his death, Disney was the one that put his name forward to get an Oscar
for the film.
OK, yeah.
And that's why he got an Oscar.
So this film has three Oscars or two Oscar winners.
Yeah. An Oscar winning song in the movie.
Yeah.
It's insane.
And the song is good.
It's good.
Yeah. Yeah.
They they parody it.
And this makes that bit in it's the second Fletch movie with Chevy Chase.
There's a scene where he inherits a plantation.
And so he goes down to live at this plantation.
And then there's a whole scene where he does Zippity Doo Dah.
And he's in a white, you know, the white cotton suit and the animated bluebird comes on his
shoulder, of course.
Yeah.
Like it's a huge parody of Song of the South.
Yeah.
But it doesn't hit home for our generation because none of us have been able to see Song
of the South because Disney pulled it.
Right.
You know, I also think this could easily be remade.
Yes.
Good.
Make a good remake.
And that's where our fun little activity is.
I think we're about halfway with the cigars.
Yeah, we're about there.
Halfway ish.
We can do a quick cigar check and then we're going to do kind of our if we were to remake
it today and kind of go through that.
Yeah.
I like it.
It's good.
It's smooth.
Smooth.
It's got a little bite.
Got a little bit of a bite.
I was worried about that when we first lit it up.
Yeah, it was a little apprehensive, but it's turned out to be good.
Yeah, it's good.
It's good.
So I was expecting a good cigar.
I will not tell a lie.
I don't think I've had an Oliva or Oliva.
Oliva.
Sorry.
I don't know.
The emphasis on the wrong syllable.
Yeah.
Think of Bolivar watches.
OK.
And then take the B off.
Yes.
I think.
Probably.
It's all accents.
Yeah.
Like this song with something.
It's like, well, is the accent offensive?
I don't think so.
It's not over the top.
If the accent is historically accurate, it didn't seem over the top to me.
Nothing seemed over the top.
And we just watched Murder by Death, which I think is from the 60s.
And it was kind of it's kind of like Clue, but Peter Sellers is in it.
OK.
But of course, there's a lot of famous actors in it.
And of course, like, oh, human human Truman Capote is in it and some other people.
It's not important, but Peter Sellers plays a Chinese person the entire film.
Right.
And, you know, it's like that is still out there and you can still get it.
But that to me is like that's kind of it's the movie or to Marlon Brando is a Japanese
guy.
Was it Marlon Brando or was it Mickey York?
Mickey was Marlon Brando.
I don't know.
There was there was.
Yeah, there was one.
And then there was one whole James Bond movie with Sean Connery where they're like, we're
going to make you look Asian.
And so they put like extra eyelids on him or something for one scene.
And then he's supposed and they gave him like a bowl cut.
Yeah.
And then I'm like, but that's that's more offensive to me than anything in Song of the
South.
Oh, for sure.
I mean, the Genghis Khan were John Wayne.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like really, I think the reason and this is just my opinion.
I think the reason why those are more acceptable is because they're making fun of Asian people
and Asian people are largely integrated into the majority culture in America.
Yeah.
I mean, that doesn't mean it's not offensive.
It does not mean it's not offensive.
You know, in that era, that was kind of the thing to do in Hollywood pictures, I think,
was make fun of Asians for a bit.
Right.
It's like Native Americans and early Westerns.
Right.
Yeah.
Some of them, some of the older Westerns, I thought about this to the later John Waynes
and the Clint Eastwoods.
Yeah.
I think Native Americans are sympathetically portrayed openly.
Yeah.
Even in the earlier black and white stuff.
Well, and a lot of those like the speaking roles of the Native Americans are given to
white actors.
Yes.
But I think so one of my favorites is The Searchers with John Wayne, because that's
like John Wayne is very much like the villain throughout that whole thing.
Right.
You know, up until the end.
Yeah.
You know, but it kind of it's almost like what was that movie with Clint Eastwood, Grand
Torino, where he's like the angry guy sitting on his porch.
Yeah.
Like that's like The Searchers is John Wayne's kind of like version of that or whatever,
where he's like the angry racist guy that you're like, and he fought for the South.
Remember, he came back from the war and he never really talked about his war stuff, but
he was very clearly a Confederate soldier.
Very clearly.
Yeah.
On the racist side of the spectrum.
Openly.
So, you know, I mean, but it's a great film because there's more of a character study
and less of which race is good or bad.
I mean, there's some of that, but like it's more a character study and things.
So and like this like Sion of the South is all kind of like little morality tales.
So it's like original series Star Trek, where it's like, right.
There are little things where Briar Rabbit has to get himself out of these these troubles.
There was one scene I looked it up because it was such a silly term to me, the Tar Baby.
Yes.
They made the Tar Baby.
So apparently that's something from other cultures and they ball up some tar and then
you get stuck in it.
Right.
So.
But it has been used as a racist slur, but it didn't originate as one.
It has.
So I looked this up.
So the Tar Bear Weed story, the best version is from 1880 and it comes from Uncle Remus
and there's a long history.
There's versions of it.
They've surfaced in Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, the Philippines and the American
South.
And it has a long story based in the slave cultures of those countries.
And the subtext is the stories of how they were captured and became slaves.
Right.
So this is like a folklore tale from the slaves perspective about how they were captured and
forced into slavery.
And that's why the fox and the bear are like the baddies.
Right.
And they are dumb.
They're not the wise character.
The rabbit is the wise character.
The rabbit is supposed to be the person in the story or the being in the story you are
identifying with.
Yeah.
So he's kind of like he's almost like a bug's bunny.
He definitely is a troublemaker.
And he thinks he's too smart to get caught, but he gets caught in every story.
And then he has to be smarter than he was to get into it, to get out of it.
So right.
Exactly.
And that's kind of the whole theme of the thing is the stories.
I think that Uncle Remus in this movie picked were stories that would resonate with Johnny
to get him to be OK with his dad not being there.
Just like.
Right.
And the stories relate to whatever fiasco Johnny got himself.
Yeah.
That Uncle Remus had to go and find Johnny and save him from himself.
That's the theme over and over again.
His Uncle Remus is saving Johnny from the natural consequences of Johnny's shit as he's
running around.
Yeah, Johnny.
Unfamiliar environment.
Yeah.
Johnny gets to fuck around and Uncle Remus prevents him from finding out.
That's correct.
Yeah.
And then they're in an unfamiliar environment doing dangerous things.
Yeah.
Making enemies with the hillbilly boys.
Enemies with the psychotic hillbilly boys who want to drown dogs.
Like if they would have had a sack big enough for Johnny, I think they would have just dropped
him in the river.
Right.
Yeah.
They were like torturing the dog on screen.
It's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
It didn't have the it didn't have the PETA disclaimer at the end.
No.
This is before that.
Yeah.
I would say that the most or the least kid friendly things were the stories with the
cartoons, because they're talking about skinning the rabbit alive.
And burning him and wanted to cut his head off.
Yeah.
Bash his brains in.
Pretty explicit things they were going to do to this animated rabbit.
Yes.
And well, and again, if you look at the context of the stories, the rabbit are the slaves
and the fox and the bear represent the slave captors or the slave masters.
Yeah.
And they're the baddies.
Right.
Yeah.
This is the context of the story.
It's kind of interesting.
Okay.
Well, let's let's go through some of the casting stuff.
I've got I am to be up on the laptop here and we can do it on our phones, too, in case
we mention actors, because I tried not to go super, super, super well known with some
of the people.
Okay.
But just who I felt would do it justice.
Okay.
So I went two different routes.
Yeah.
This is going to be a treat for you guys.
Yes.
Because I did a real one that I thought and then I did one where I tried to imagine myself
in the place of modern Disney.
Yeah.
So let's go through both of our ones and then we'll do the politically correct or the modern
Disney one.
Yes.
And then we'll talk about any points.
Sounds good.
So I don't know.
Do you just want to start with Uncle Remus?
Yeah, I'll start with Uncle Remus.
I think that Uncle Remus should be Denzel Washington.
Okay.
And the reason why I think this is because if they were to remake it, they would have
to have the main actor have some gravitas and respectability and enough talent to be
able to sing and to be able to do a little dance number and to be active enough to save
Johnny in these misadventures.
And Denzel's old enough to be the grandfatherly character.
I can see that.
I don't know if Denzel sings.
Guarantee you Denzel can sing.
But you know what?
It doesn't even really matter because nowadays in movies, they just get bring in somebody
else to do the song.
Right.
So that doesn't matter.
Okay.
So for Uncle Remus, I had two picks.
The first one was Stephen McKinley Henderson or Jeffrey Wright.
I do not know who either one of those are.
Okay.
That's why we've got this up.
So I will pull this up here.
And I think this is good because I wanted to even McKinley Henderson.
He was in Benses, I think, recently and Lady Bird, Bo's Parade.
He was in Lincoln.
Okay.
But this is him.
And I just felt like he does kind of looks the part.
Yeah.
He looks a lot like the actor that played Uncle Remus in the 46 version.
Not portly, heavier set, a little bit, but not bad.
I thought he would be good because he's got just that kind of like uncle face or like
the kind older gentlemen.
And then Jeffrey Wright.
Oh, I've seen him before.
Yeah.
He's been in lots of things.
He was in the Batman shafts.
Sure.
He looks similar to the actor that played Uncle Remus as well.
Yeah.
You know.
And so I just felt like those were both they were lesser known because at first I was like,
well, they probably cast Will Smith in the remake.
No, we don't want Will Smith.
But like that would be one of the things where it's like, well, he already played the genie
in Aladdin.
And so now he can do that.
Not that Will Smith isn't a very talented actor and he could do the singing.
Yeah.
I mean, he could do the stuff.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So those are my two picks.
Yep.
That makes sense.
I would be happy with either.
I'd be happy with Denzel too.
Oh, yeah.
I went with Denzel just because I was like, oh, this is going to be controversial.
You have to have the main two main stars have to be people who are respected.
Yeah.
And who they're not going to get.
They're not going to give Denzel watching flack about a serious role.
You know?
Yeah.
So they have to be able to take the heat.
Otherwise, like, you know, like Samuel L. Jackson was like, he's kind of like the first
one that like popped into my head, but I was like, he's kind of overplayed.
He couldn't do the same.
So, you know, yeah, yeah.
He could be a background character.
He could be one of the older guys running around that they run into.
Yeah.
So let's do Sally, which is the mom.
Sally, which is the mom.
I have two people and my first two people as well.
Oh, OK.
But you why don't you go first?
They're going to know who mine are.
All right.
So Sally.
Well, I picked some known people for other stuff.
I wanted Uncle Remus like I wanted that look kind of like I wanted the actor to innately
have that look.
Sure.
Yeah.
Like the fatherly or the grandfatherly, you know, like I would totally sit down and listen
to this dude tell a story about literally any.
Right.
Not in a creepy way.
Yeah.
That's why I didn't put Joe Biden down to play on the remus.
Anyway, so for Sally, I put Jessica Chastain.
I've heard that.
We'll look it up so I can see.
And then the other one was Bryce Dallas Howard.
OK.
But she was in Bryce Dallas.
Howard was in the new Jurassic Park.
Oh, I know that is OK.
I've seen her.
I wanted someone kind of like that could do like kind of the southern bell type.
Yes.
So yes.
My first choice was a southern a well known southern musician.
Miley Cyrus.
OK.
I thought that my first of all, Miley Cyrus.
So my ideal remake, there's going to be a musical part with the grandmother and with
the mother being nasty, unpleasant people.
OK.
So I wanted the mother to have some chops.
Yes.
And Miley Cyrus, of course, can do that role.
Yes.
And she and she's got the attitude to be able to pull off kind of.
She could be the wicked mother.
Yes.
Yeah.
You need that.
You need somebody that has that kind of edge to be the mom, because when she's talking
to Uncle Remus, it's you know, you do not like her.
Yes.
Actively, she is unpleasant.
Even the child, Johnny doesn't like his own mother.
Yeah.
And the husband is kind of doesn't like his own wife.
He's like, I guess there was kind of a little subplot of that, too, where the grandmother
was like, well, Johnny needs his dad.
And so do you.
Yeah.
To the to the mom.
Yeah.
The mom's like, I'm a strong woman.
Yeah.
So the dad, who would you cast as the dad?
Well, first of all, my second choice for the mother was Scarlett Johansson.
Oh, OK.
Just because she's getting older and she's got acting chops and she could do the role
and she's well known.
Yeah.
And people would be like, oh, that's OK.
And that's kind of back in my mind.
I'm like, you have to have these people that they're not going to run away from the role.
Yeah.
My father was Chris Pine.
OK, that's a good one.
Yeah.
I picked Patrick Wilson because he just has the sideburns already.
Yeah.
Mostly, you know, and he's got, you know, like the dad's not in there a whole lot.
So you don't really have to do anything.
And Patrick Wilson is the star of the Insidious franchise, right?
Yeah, I think so.
Like he's got he's got enough acting chops to play the dad, you know, kind of aloof or,
you know, focused on his troubles at home.
Yeah.
And I just thought he looked an awful lot like the person they cast as the dad in the
original anyway.
And you know, he's not Robert Pattinson on the look, but Robert Pattinson's not an American
from the South.
Yeah.
And that to me would be important.
Yes.
You know, and like, yeah, I mean, you know, the dad isn't a huge.
No, he's only in two scenes.
Yeah.
It's basically just who would you want to see?
Right.
And you know, you could have a little bit of a twist to the beginning and to the end
of the story for the political backdrop of the film.
I mean, you could certainly and we'll talk about this part later, but you could certainly
give more scenes to the dad or have him in a few more scenes.
Yeah.
You know, just to kind of like round out the character.
He's a friction creator in the story.
So all right.
So Aunt Tempe Aunt Tempe.
No, I have the same actress for both my fantasy version and my Disney.
And that and we said it wasn't Lizzo.
Not Lizzo.
And this is important to me.
So Hattie McDaniel was the first woman to win the first black woman to win an Oscar.
Who was the second black woman?
Who would be Goldberg?
OK.
And I thought that would be Goldberg.
She's got the abilities and it's a nice tie in with the Oscar things.
Like there's a lot of politics there.
Yeah.
And I haven't seen who would be Goldberg in a film in a long time.
And I really like to see her.
Well, she's doing it.
She's doing like a new show.
She's not like a talking show.
Yeah.
It's a waste of her talent.
Yeah.
So I had Octavia Spencer.
She's got the skills to I just you know, someone with acting chops that can do it.
I feel like she's if she were given a big song and dance number, she's spry enough to
be able to do it right.
You know, I just want to see who would be Goldberg with her dreadlocks on the screen,
like doing the dance and the singing.
Yeah.
So full disclosure, I didn't cast any of the kids.
I didn't cast Johnny, Ginny or Toby because I just kind of felt in my heart that it would
just be casting some unknowns on my version.
I did not cast the kids on the Disney version.
I did.
OK, yeah.
Yeah.
So we're on the same.
So the grandmother, who would you do with the grandma?
All right.
So I had an initial jerk.
Yeah.
And then I thought about it and I picked somebody else.
I know I had an initial jerk too.
And then I picked someone else.
Yeah.
My who's your initial one?
Who?
Oh, man, I just had her name in my head.
She's the one that always wins Oscars all the time.
And she's in every three.
Yeah.
Meryl Streep.
That was like my initial.
I was like, oh, Meryl Streep.
She's she's my grandmother for the Disney vacation.
Oh, OK.
My initial jerk was Paula Dean, because she's like well known and she's publicly.
Yes.
A not nice person.
And I was like, on second thought, she's probably not going to be able to do any singing with
my Lyceus.
Yeah.
So I picked Kathy Beats.
Oh, hey, that's a good one.
Yeah.
I went a little different.
So like I tried to cast body type for most of the other ones.
For the grandmother, I picked Sigourney Weaver.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
And then we have the gravitas to be able to be a complex character.
Yeah.
Right.
Because the grandma is sometimes mean, but sometimes nice.
And like she sometimes dislikes the black people, but dislikes her daughter in law,
but also has to be nice to the daughter in law.
So like it's kind of like layers that this actress would have to portray.
Right.
And that's why I got went away from Paula Dean.
Yeah.
I don't know if she's got the abilities to do that.
Yeah.
And there's and there's such public outcry about her that it would be a very controversial
casting choice.
Right.
Just for like box office.
Yeah.
And then I did go ahead and I cast Miss Faber's, which is the mother of the three little rapscallions.
Oh, OK.
I did not.
OK.
So this is the mom.
She's got scenes.
Yes.
And dialogue.
I picked Mia Goth.
So she was in X. But I thought because she's done all these horror films, but she has
like a really, really nice kind of like presence.
So it's like, oh, OK.
Sure.
She looks like she could be a poor white lady.
But you know, like look in some of these.
Oh, sure.
Like she could totally play that.
Yeah.
And she could do it where she would be.
She could be very nice to the daughter, Ginny, which is how the mom is, and pretty nasty
to the boys, which is kind of how it is.
And so Mia Goth, if you haven't seen X or Pearl, like I highly, highly recommend those.
And she can she can flip like in a like in a heart from like, you know, zero to.
Yeah.
So those are kind of my picks.
So I did more.
Oh, OK.
I did more.
Yeah.
Did you do the voices for the animated ones?
I did.
The animated ones.
So for Briar Rabbit, who is the main protagonist, I thought Tracy Morgan would be a great voice
actor.
And then I looked at the original script and James Beckett, he or Baskett, he voiced the
Fox.
Yeah.
And then I would do the voice of Washington, voice Briar Rabbit and just do a little turn.
Yeah.
And that would be acceptable.
But I thought Tracy Morgan would be great because he's kind of a goofy character.
He was fun loving.
Yeah.
I'm like, oh, Tracy Morgan, that's good.
I can do that.
Chris Rock would be OK.
Chris Rock can do it.
Oh, for sure.
You know, it's just a distinct voice.
You don't have to like Chris Rock to, you know, to support him in this because it's
just a voice, right?
It's just a voice.
So I also did the Fox.
OK.
And that to me, that screamed Eddie Murphy.
Yeah.
And he's a real voice actor and the Fox talks a lot.
Yes.
And and there's a lot of the fast talking that Eddie Murphy is well known for.
Yeah.
Eddie Murphy would be great.
The bear.
I only had one idea for the bear and that would be Larry the Cable Guy.
OK, because he's kind of the dumb southern accent stereotype.
Yeah.
And he's done.
He's done voice acting in Cars.
Right.
And Larry the Cable Guy has that down.
He's got that shtick down.
I would want so Larry the Cable Guy in Cars, I think, was kind of the height of the blue
color comedy tour.
So he was doing a lot of his Larry the Cable Guy ism's in the movie Cars.
So I would want Larry the Cable Guy to not be just doing no.
The Larry the Cable Guy shtick.
I'd want him to be doing the voice right as as a whole new character.
Yeah.
I would want him to do it with his like cadence and stuff, but I don't need the you know,
like he's got to be brutish and violent.
I don't want to be like, that's funny right there.
Yeah.
You know, I don't need that shtick from him.
Yeah, he could do it.
He's the dumb violent animal.
Yeah, now I think in the in the original 1946 version, all of the animated characters were
voiced by black actors.
Yes, yes, they were.
So I was trying to I was going to do the voices and I kind of got stuck because I'm like,
I don't you know, I don't really know who I mean, like James Earl Jones would be awesome.
James Earl Jones is the bear of the frog.
That's who I had to know for the frog.
Yeah, because he had that real deep gremlin voice.
I'm like, he was kind of a narrator and not directly involved.
Yeah, that's perfect for James.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty much our recasting.
But now I have I have the new and improved casting.
All right, let's see the one you're sending to Bob Iger's desk.
All right.
So the grandmother who is evil, she's got to be evil and she has to be Meryl Streep.
Yeah, she's she's an evil character.
She can do it.
Yeah.
The mother, RuPaul.
OK, RuPaul RuPaul, you know, is very flamboyant.
Yeah.
And the mother can be it's got to be the father, Chaz Bono.
OK, yeah.
Chaz is going to have to maybe lose some weight, you know, to fit in the carriage with all
the other characters.
Yeah, see Chaz Bono all the way.
The little boy, I can't remember his name now, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby.
It's going to be a girl now.
We're recasting Toby.
Yeah.
Any black girl will work.
Yeah.
The little girl, Jenny, she's now going to be indigenous.
She's not going to be white.
Yeah.
OK, Remus, Uncle Remus is now Uncle Remus again, but it's going to be played by Leslie Jones.
OK, and not a Leslie Jones in drag, just Leslie Jones.
And they're going to ignore everything and just say, my name is Uncle Remus and I am Leslie
Jones.
Yeah.
And it's going to be looking over again because, yeah, it makes sense.
It actually does make sense.
It's too much.
Rabbit, Melissa McCarty.
Yeah.
Because Melissa McCarty does that fast talk and she's entertaining in that way.
The fox, because the fox is nasty and unpleasant and smart, it's going to be Ellen DeGeneres.
OK, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The bear is going to be Selma Hayek.
OK, yeah, because you got to get some diversity in this casting.
I had to get at least one Hispanic person as a main character.
Yep.
Now, Jenny is going to be any trans person of color child.
It doesn't matter, but it's got to be diversity.
The brothers, the two evil brothers are going to be white boys.
So got to be.
Yeah.
You know, because they're evil and all that.
And then the frog, who again, very small role, more narration to be Dylan Mulvey.
OK.
Now, did you notice what I did with those?
Yes, I did.
So would you still set it in reconstruction as some?
You almost you could do it.
You could recast it in the storytime setting like the old Walt Disney stories where he'd
open it up in like a library library setting.
Uncle Remus could be there reading to Johnny and Toby.
You know what I mean?
And introduce it through this lens.
And then they could go into a fantasy of reconstruction itself.
But you'd have to have the sharecroppers more openly not like their job.
Yeah, I was thinking about taking it and setting it in some kind of like like urban setting.
You know, like maybe like downtown Atlanta.
But I was thinking maybe not modern times, but set it in like the desegregation era.
Oh, like the 50s or whatever.
Right.
And just kind of update it.
It has some sort of more right spots, a little bit more modern.
Yeah.
Get away from some of that.
You know, the plantation kind of stuff since it's obviously offensive to people.
It is offensive to people, but it's it's that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I'm just saying, like if you want to make this film today, you still call the song in
the South, set it in the South, set it in Atlanta or somewhere, and then have it be
more about the integration or desegregation.
Right.
And then you could.
And then a lot of the stuff will still work.
You know, the tension between the mom and uncle Remus.
Yes.
You know, and some of that other stuff.
So yeah, I think that there should be more tension between the mother and the grandmother
and uncle Remus.
Yeah.
There's subtext in the original that they couldn't fully explore.
Yeah.
And it was a brisk like hour 20 minutes.
Yeah.
And not a long hour and a half long movie.
What's hour and thirty four minutes, including the intro in the outro.
So yeah.
Yeah.
What other changes would you make to it?
You said you had added scenes or oh, yeah, the added scenes would be the mother and the
grandmother have to do a musical number where they're naughty and bad.
Yes.
Right.
That's the thing.
And then the sharecroppers, you could have the two scenes of the sharecroppers that they
had going to and from the fields.
Yeah.
But they have to be like miserable and possibly, you know, more politically active.
Yeah.
And then the end scene where they're all hovering around the manor house when Johnny was hurt,
that cut that.
Yeah.
We don't need that.
No, no.
I think the song that the grandmother and mom would do would have to be something where
they're not overtly singing about supporting racism and slavery, but it would be something
along the lines of like the daughter in law would be like, oh, you had it so much easier
when you were my age to the grandmother.
It's kind of like pining for the old days without actually explicitly saying like we
want slavery back.
Yes.
Something like, yeah, you know, where you could take it in one way and all the kids
would take it as like, hey, change is good and look forward and stuff.
I think everyone else would be like they want to.
If they were going to do a remake, I think they'd have to do a PG 13 or have a little
more edge to it.
Like it would be a teenager movie, like informational kind of with folklore tales.
Yep.
Because you could totally make the Johnny character in the Toby character older.
Yeah.
You could.
And even even as it is now, it's not a G movie.
No, not with the level of violence in it.
Yeah.
It's even though they don't show a lot of the violence, but when they cut the bear's
tail off, when the bear says yes, when the bear says he wants to knock his head off and
then proceeds to try to knock his head off.
Yeah.
And the fox tries to roast him on the spit and then does roast him.
Yeah.
It's definitely not G rated.
No.
It's probably PG 13, you know.
So but Disney's such a bunch of wussies.
I don't get why they don't release us with this disclaimer.
It is no worse than Gomuwin.
Yeah.
And it's no worse than like Aristocats.
They've got like the Siamese cats that are, you know, Asian stereotypes.
It's nowhere near as bad as Peter Pan.
Yeah.
That makes the red man red.
Yeah.
That is over the top.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, over the top.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't understand why they wouldn't.
I feel like this is a movie that is exactly what you need that disclaimer for.
Right.
There's still good stuff in this movie and it's showing us how times were.
We don't endorse the way things were or whatever their disclaimer is.
Right.
This is about a specific time period in American history.
This would be a perfect one to release with a documentary with it, like an hour long documentary
about the actors and about times and about the context of the releases and the segregation
that was going on and.
Yeah.
Like the backstories.
Yeah.
There was a famous black actor or actress that was calling for the release of this film.
They wanted Disney to release it.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I just don't think that Disney thinks it's worth the effort.
Yeah.
You would think, though, that it would be such an easy like cash grab them because that's
what they're interested in now is they make they make like dumbed down versions of their
animated films.
Right.
Which weren't like cerebral to begin with.
Right.
In the most part.
And they dumb them down and make them live action and terrible just so they can extend
the copyright on their initial property.
Exactly.
And make some money because everybody's going to go see.
Yeah.
I legit think that if they made a documentary explaining the context of everything and put
a disclaimer on the movie.
Yeah.
Get some historians, get some.
Right.
You know, a family of the actors that are still living, perhaps, and say like, this
is what this movie meant to my dad or.
The actors themselves do interviews about the film.
Yeah.
Defending their roles because it was controversial.
There were elements of the NAACP and things like that that found the movie controversial
when it was released.
Yeah.
And there was a lot of the segregation and other factors in their society that were bullshit.
Yeah.
And I think that the World War Two generation caught onto that pretty quick because of their
efforts in the wars.
Yeah.
There's background context to this stuff.
I was expecting it to be bad.
I know.
I thought it was.
I mean, I don't know that I would go so far as to say like it's a good movie.
I mean, it's not a bad movie.
Right.
It's not up there with like, I wouldn't say it's up there with Lion King or.
It's not as good as Snow White.
The classics, you know.
Yeah.
The Disney classics.
But it's a it's a refreshing tale because it's all legit stories from that era.
Right.
It's as good as the movies that they released in the 80s.
Yeah.
We just watched.
Oh, no, I can't remember.
It was a sci fi movie from the 80s.
That was a Disney.
Oh, yeah.
The Black Cauldron.
Oh, Black Cauldron.
That movie stank.
Yeah.
That was wretched.
This was better than the Black Cauldron.
You can still see the Black Cauldron.
It's just garbage.
Yeah.
It's not very good.
It's not like it would ever become kind of like an instant classic.
I mean, it's not.
But now it kind of is because one is hard to find, hard to watch unless you can get
it from the Internet Archive.
We did the I can't remember the guy's name, but it was the version two restoration.
Yeah.
So if you just Google Song of the South B2 restoration, it'll pop right up.
You can download it.
You can watch it right in your browser.
It's either in it's either fully in public domain or with a lot of these like fan edits
and things, you can put them out for people to watch because it's for education purposes.
And this is like preserving a piece of film history.
So it's kind of like education.
It's Oscar winner.
There's a way.
Yeah.
So I mean, and it's an Oscar winner.
And yeah, you can go back to like the 40s and stuff.
And every Oscar winning film is not necessarily a good.
No, you know, but it was a good film for the time.
Right.
But there's so much, I think, surrounding this film that it would either become instant
classic or like a cult classic or it would make a ball of money.
Have you?
Especially if you release it the right way and said, you know, the first time in 4K,
you know, see the first African-American Oscar winners and finding performance or career
defining performance or, you know, whatever.
What have you celebrate the good things about it?
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah, there's ways that they could do it.
It's just not Disney's so lazy right now.
Maybe they won't be in another 10 years.
Well, that's the weird thing is that, you know, they want to race swap and gender swap
a lot of these characters to be more inclusive.
And you've got this whole movie you made that is basically telling stories of people of
color.
Yeah.
Traditional American folklore.
And it doesn't get more inclusive.
No, you know.
And then you've got these other films that are written and directed by, you know, foreign
people of color, like non-American people of color.
And they usually reside or resound with the audiences soaringly well because it's not
the same Marvel template.
It's not the same Disney remake template.
It's not.
You're not taking a voice that was never in the original film and forcing this voice onto
a film that people have already come to love.
Tell new stories with new characters that have new backgrounds.
Right.
We don't need a rehash of the Godfather with like mumble rappers or something.
Right.
Like, we don't need to we don't need to recast that movie.
We don't need to reshoot that movie.
We don't need to have another version of the Godfather, you know, like tell something new.
People don't want the old stuff rehashed.
That's why that's why like this writer's strike.
They're all out there with signs like, well, AI didn't write the Godfather.
And so neither did you.
You're writing the Little Mermaid remake.
Right.
You're not writing the Godfather yourself.
You're not writing some of these great films.
You know, they make a great point, too, because when you're going to rewrite, let's say, Little
Mermaid.
Yeah.
Easily.
Oh, yeah.
It's kind of like a pharmacist.
Yeah.
A computer is better than your pharmacist.
It's just the way it is.
Yeah.
A computer is probably going to be better than your general practitioner doctor at your
local doctor place.
Yeah.
They're going to be better than the typical defense lawyer.
Yeah.
It's just the way that the modern world is going to be changing radically.
We're entering into a very interesting time and it's going to be.
Yeah.
A lot of people are going to lose their jobs.
And hopefully, our society just like we have in the past.
Yeah.
And we're going to have to make some changes to the way we do things.
Well, you know, all these software programs and things, they're going to need to be updated.
Right.
And updated.
And so there's still going to be jobs out there.
Yeah.
You're going to be a maintainer.
And AI is trained off of everything that's already been created.
So it's not going to come out with a completely new thing, I don't think.
Like, I don't know that it has imagination.
I think that R&D is going to be bigger than ever.
Yeah.
Maybe I'll get the writers to feed it prompts that generate interesting stories.
Right.
Or whatever.
But did you see this thing where the news media is writing articles now trying to convince
people that they need to cancel their streaming services in solidarity with the writer's strike?
No, I haven't seen that.
And the headlines are like, should you cancel your streaming services in solidarity of the
writer's strike?
And I'd never click on the article because I think it's just a dumb thing to even be
mentioning.
But if they were turning out good stuff, I'd have no problem supporting the writer's strike.
I don't really care.
Like, now what?
We get a couple months where we don't have to watch absolute trash being made.
Right.
Yeah, sign me up for that.
It's hard for me to want to...
It's hard for me to have solidarity with the writer's strike.
It's going to be bad.
I want to...
And then people that made Hocus Pocus too.
And the last three Terminators or whatever it was.
Right?
Yeah, and all of the Star Wars stuff.
Yeah.
And the Rings of Power, which I haven't watched.
I haven't watched that either.
But why would I show solidarity with poor writers, poor craftsmanship?
Right.
Exactly.
Can AI do what you do?
Yes.
Because you're turning out remakes of remakes of crap.
The worst version possible of this thing.
Taking Little Mermaid or Aladdin.
Or Beating the Beast.
We made it like, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes into Aladdin, the live action before we shut
it off because it was...
The problem wasn't so much that they were shitting all over Robin Williams.
Because how can you have anybody compete with Robin Williams?
I mean, he already did it.
He did the role.
But the filmmaking wasn't even good filmmaking.
When Aladdin was running through the alleyways, the shots and the editing was so bad.
Never knew which way he was actually moving or where he was or what he was doing.
There was closeups on him.
And then one time he's going this way, left to right across screen, then he's going right
to left across screen.
And like any filmmaker knows, that's kind of basic, like orienting your audience in
your film is that the character's running one way.
You always keep them running that way so you know he's always running away from something.
Of course he can take turns through the alleyway, but your camera movement needs to be...
Orient the viewer.
Yeah, orient the viewer.
And this was none of it.
And it was just like, what, you just ran out one day and had him run around and then you
just slapped it together and said, hey, that's good enough.
Have you seen The Witcher, the new season of The Witcher?
No, I haven't seen any season of The Witcher and now I probably won't because I know the
first couple of seasons were really good.
And then I heard that Henry is not in season three and they recast The Witcher.
Is in season three.
Or season four or whatever.
Season four he's not going to be in.
Season three, the first four episodes were horrible.
Disjointed, no spatial awareness where anybody is.
They're not supposed to be near each other, but yet they are and they're supposed to be
in different continents and yet they're there and it's very difficult to even follow what
they're trying to do.
And there's characters that show up that you have no context to who they are or what they're
doing and there's a lot of talk explaining instead of showing.
And then the last four episodes were back to form, even though I don't know if it was
as good as the first two seasons, but it was at least back to something that was more watchable.
And that's, again, it was not good, not great, not great.
That's why I usually have my rule where I don't enjoy watching TV shows that are still
currently in production.
Because I think the first one that kind of burned me was Lost.
And I never finished watching Lost because they started doing like, they would do like
flashbacks and then they started doing like flash forwards and then they started doing
like flash sideways or something.
And then I was like, I don't know that these people know what they're doing.
And now there's so many different like flash forwards and backwards and stuff, but I'm
just confused and I don't know what's going on.
And I mean, maybe if it was streaming days, you could just sit and watch all of them.
You could binge them and then you would keep everything in your mind.
But it got so complicated with all the different characters on the island.
And were they on an island?
Were they not on an island?
And then I heard terrible things about the finale for Lost.
And so I just never watched it.
Sure.
I just didn't care.
Like, why would I subject myself to that just to watch a bad now?
And I by and large, like Star Trek Enterprise was OK.
Like, I know a lot of people don't like it.
You know, it was frustrating because they didn't have all the technology that they had
even in the original series.
You know, it's like with the Steel Shields.
Oh, we don't.
We have armor plating, hull plating, whatever.
But the season finale of that was terrible because it was an episode of Next Generation.
Riker was there and they were going through that polity.
And it's like they didn't even give the actors of the show their own finale.
They made it a Next Generation episode because they thought some reason they thought people
would enjoy seeing Riker again.
Right.
Which, you know, people do.
But this is their own show and it should kind of stand alone and you should give the actors
who worked so hard on it.
Right. Even if you don't like it, but you should give the actors who worked on it their
own finale.
Right.
Like that's kind of like stealing the, you know, crossing the finish line before them
and taking the trophy.
They ran the whole race and you just kind of like hopping at the end.
So I don't know.
I don't like things that are actually in development by and large, because all it takes is like
they change a showrunner, they change a writer.
They just want to take it in a different direction.
And then you've got like terrible season and like the whole thing's almost ruined for you.
Or like I can only watch, you know, this many seasons of it.
Right.
It's like Doctor Who.
Another one is Trailer Park Boys.
Oh, so they are watching the newer stuff.
So they did.
Well, they have the original run and then they have, I think, one or two seasons that
was a revival.
And then I think they still have newer stuff now.
Right.
I think so.
I think because it was all in the full frame, the four three.
Yeah.
And then the first season that they went to 16 nine was the new season.
And so but they wrapped it up the first like four or five seasons, whatever it was of the
original run of the show.
And it was great.
And then like the next season was fine, but it was so kind of like it was missing something
because maybe the production quality was too high.
And they were focused more on that and less on the actual comedy.
Yeah, it's supposed to be gritty.
Characters and stuff.
Yeah, it's supposed to be Trailer Park Boys.
And you know, and then like the last season was kind of like they had some weird like
that it was all the same people doing it, you know, but it's like sometimes an idea
only lasts for so long.
Right.
And then it's like maybe try something new.
Yeah, they threw money at something that needed not have money.
Yeah.
Potentially.
I haven't seen it.
Yeah.
I've seen it, but otherwise I think all of them.
I tried to get Sarah into it and she didn't like it.
So I don't get a lot of alone TV time.
Yeah.
So if it's something that I want to watch that Sarah does and it's like, well, that'll
happen ever.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
I'm busy with life.
So yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I you know, I try not to do the act stuff.
The things that kind of made combinations for would be Mandalorian.
Right.
You know, I'll do the same for I think Ahsoka is only getting is only a limited run.
I think it's only going to be like eight or ten episodes.
Unfortunately, it's not going to be that.
But I think she's going to be in Bologna's Star Wars movie that's still greenlit.
I think it's going to wrap up like Bad Batch, Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka and Mandalorian.
I haven't finished the last season.
I don't know if it's going to wrap it up, wrap up every storyline, but it's going to
tie them all together in a nice neat package.
I mean, we you and I already know how some of these things are intertwined.
Yes.
Right.
Mandalorian and going and seeing characters from Rebels.
Yep.
Just even in the background, you know, he had one line of dialogue at that bar.
Yes.
You know, and it was just in passing.
But we were both like, hey, it's him from Rebels.
And you're like, holy cow.
And you know, with the space, the hyperspace whales in the Mandalorian, you saw them, but
they didn't explain what they were.
But the last time we saw those was when Ezra left with them to find his own way to the
force.
So we know that all of these stories are intertwined some way, shape, form.
Right.
Yeah.
We don't know how it's going to happen, but you know, I think that's all.
That's one of the weaknesses of the new Star Wars stuff is that when Cad Bane made an appearance,
my Sarah didn't really get that excited about it.
Yeah, but it's still a neat character.
So for sure.
But I mean, that's what I'm saying.
Like people who have watched or consumed.
Well, especially a lot of the Filoni, Favreau, Star Wars stuff, because they've been operating
in kind of the gray spaces or the empty pages between the trilogy movies, like the original
trilogy and the prequel trilogy.
They've been kind of existing in that space where they can take characters and give them
fully fleshed out backstories and make them way more interesting.
So when you see them in the live action movies and stuff, you're like, oh, you know, it just
adds like it's an additive.
It's not a subtractive thing where a lot of the remakes, remakes and stuff are subtractive.
Like they make you gate franchise more.
Like the way they all the stuff with Han Solo and Luke in the sequel trilogy.
Right.
Like, I mean, I didn't hate the characters, but I hate what they didn't.
You know, so but by and large, in the last season of Mandalorian, I wasn't super.
It was OK.
It was a little disjointed.
They could have taken half of it and threw it in the garbage can.
I wish they would have done that with the the weird like mind erase doctor guy.
Like, just put that in the trash bin.
I don't understand where that was going.
Not that it was bad.
This cinematography was interesting.
I just don't like where they did it because they put it right smack dab in the middle
of like a super exciting dog.
Yes.
And then they like cut to, I don't know, like a slice of life radio drop or something.
Right.
And it's like we were just doing a dog fight.
Like I want more sweet aerial combat on the planet surface where you can actually see
the ground and like your firefighters are chasing you and you've got all these like
high speed chases and like you can do all this like crazy stuff now at the CGI.
And then you give us like a melodrama.
Right.
Melodrama.
And then you get anywhere and then you go back to the dog fight at the end and you're
like, well, I just wanted the dog.
If they tie this in next season, I think it's too late.
I think it's too late.
They needed to have had something more tied in.
And I think they were hoping that the whole cloning thing was going to be the tie in because
that's what that guy did.
Right.
But they didn't, they needed to put a button on it or something and be like, now that we
don't have that guy out there, we can do whatever we want with his tech.
And then that would have been enough for me to be like, okay, fine.
That should have happened in that same episode.
Yes.
Problem.
Or the next episode or somewhere near it.
They were somewhere very close and now it's too late.
Yeah.
It's timing.
They ruined their opportunity.
Unless he comes back.
But even then.
Right.
You know, it's almost too long.
He can't come back.
Didn't they kill him off?
They melted his brain.
Right.
But I don't know that they explicitly killed him.
I think they just made him like that.
Sure.
Or I don't know if that's offensive to vegans.
I don't know.
Is it veganism?
They wiped his mind, I guess.
So he's probably not all there anymore.
Yeah, exactly.
And they didn't really develop that female character out like I thought they should have.
Yeah, she's just a baddie.
Yeah.
Just for no reason, the sake of being bad, I guess.
Yeah.
So maybe she's still in contact with Moff Gideon or something.
Well, I think she was at the last episode.
But again, it was too many episodes in between.
Right.
Where it was kind of one of those things where even though I was watching them, like I got
through the season in like a week watching episode a night or a couple of episodes a
night, it's still too much time in between because so much other stuff was happening
and it was so disjointed to begin with.
So you're already kind of like off balance.
And then, you know, which can work in a film if you really know what you're doing.
Like momentum is a really great example of that because, you know, you're believing the
main character and then you find out, you know, that he's an unreliable narrator.
You know, and that's a common common writing trope, you know, very difficult to do.
Yes.
To do well.
Yes.
So I am getting towards the end here.
I have an inch left, I'd say.
Yeah.
And I'm about the same.
I'm not even an inch, but I think we're probably going to save you all from listening to more
Star Wars stuff or Dune stuff, probably.
I am done.
Some final thoughts.
And it was very pleasant all the way through until about a year.
It's starting to get tasteless.
Yeah.
It's just bland.
I'm a little a little bit behind Mike on this, but it's getting to that point where, you
know, you'd probably think about putting this one down and just grabbing a fresh, fresh stick.
Yeah.
You know, that's where I'm at.
Where it's it's not bad.
It was pretty good smoke all the way through.
Yeah, it was good.
I don't know.
I don't know that is one I'm going to, you know, rush out and always have in stock.
No, I mean, no, but it's it's good.
It's good.
Yeah, it's good.
So this was the Oldovar Saison 2009.
Yes.
And yeah, it was good.
It was way better than either of the undercrowns.
That is so the first to the first harvest, that must be the first tobacco leaves they
harvest off plant them.
I don't know what it means.
OK.
Well, that is your homework to listener.
You can find out what that means.
And I know we've got another another year one, right?
Yeah, we have at least one.
But I wonder if we have I wonder if that's a first harvest or if that's maybe like a
second harvest or last harvest.
I think we have a first harvest 2011.
And there's another one.
I would be curious if they did like a last harvest.
Maybe so.
I mean, that would be neat.
Anyway, thanks for listening.
Be safe.