Season 7, Episode 4 (#195):

Lionel (00:06.432)
I'm making my cash patel face.

I I said to my brother, Cash Patel always looks like he just farted really loudly in public and just has that face like you

Jim Infantino (00:23.202)
Did anybody hear that?

Jim Infantino (00:28.192)
His eyes are so wide I don't know how he does it.

Lionel (00:33.375)
Ha ha ha.

Jim Infantino (00:33.826)
Hm. You might have that glandular thing where it pushes your eyeballs out. Yeah. But yeah. The effect is the effect is odd.

Lionel (00:38.28)
Yeah, yeah. I don't know, but it's just it's so funny. Always has the same look Yeah.

Okay, we're gonna have intro music or are we just gonna like Okay.

Jim Infantino (00:49.326)
Yeah, we're

Lionel (00:54.664)
You gotta coax it out. there we go.

Jim Infantino (01:26.764)
Rochester, New York. Rochester Rocks. Great town. Really enjoyed my time there. love playing those shows. Did not enjoy being the tour manager on this tour. I don't know how tour managers do it.

Lionel (01:39.626)
What what did that enta what about what comprises being a tour manager and what assaulted your sensibilities from being a tour manager?

Jim Infantino (01:50.445)
Well, as a creative, I am not all that organized, right? Being a tour manager requires that you are extremely organized. So you have to think about what vehicle are we are we taking? What will fit inside of that vehicle? And in the it said vehicle. And in this case, we're talking about five people, a giant spinning wheel.

Lionel (02:07.092)
Mm-hmm. Said vehicle.

Lionel (02:18.377)
Right.

Jim Infantino (02:18.742)
A sound system, drums, an upright bass, a double bass, which is big, my guitar, my two guitars, actually, my gear bag. Luckily, I'm not traveling with an actual amp. and then everybody's clothes and things like that. And I may have just forgotten something, right? I'm sorry. The pieces for the wheel and product. So, you know, product to sell, merch. So there's a lot of things. Do we have all those things?

Lionel (02:37.279)
Right.

Lionel (02:43.998)
Right, merge. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (02:48.45)
We have to pack I didn't mention mics. The mic cables, the microphone clips, the microphone stands. Do we have the right cables for all the different gear that we're using? Do we have the right cables to connect my, you know, pedal amp back to the luck actually we did not have the right cable for that, but we kind of cluged it using the something called the pedal out. So it was sort of like a send that we sent to the

Lionel (02:53.63)
The clips fans.

Lionel (03:16.436)
Right. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (03:17.56)
To the soundboard. Sounded fine. you know, each of the sound systems, the sound poles that we have, there's a number of cables that connect to that. How many base units are we bringing? Turns out we brought one too many. And then where are we staying? are there enough beds for everyone? What are the requirements? We had to bring our own towels in this case. Where do we park? and what is the load in like? And the the

Lionel (03:38.964)
Where do we park?

Jim Infantino (03:45.4)
Club was like, you have 15 minutes to load in and set up. So with all the things I just listed, I had to write back and say, there's no physical, actual way that we can load in all the things from all the vehicles.

Lionel (03:57.139)
If I was like a solar performer with an acoustic guitar and a harmonic on the mic, we might be able to pull it off in fifteen minutes if the wind is at our back.

Jim Infantino (04:00.332)
Yeah. Could run in.

Jim Infantino (04:06.742)
Mm-hmm. Plug in, strum a few chords, and I'm ready, right? No. No, you gotta unpack the van. We had two vehicles. We didn't, we weren't we were thinking about renting a van, but we really didn't know if we'd make any money. And I'm glad that we took two vehicles. You know, it's an eight-hour drive out there. and so in spite of all this, it all it all went well. I mean.

Lionel (04:11.198)
World tape. Yeah. That ain't happening.

Jim Infantino (04:35.586)
We had to load in and load out for each performance and like load out back to the cars. and that was a bit of a pain. It was the same the same venue. But they had no storage backstage. So we did repeat the entire process the next day. and then we had to get off stage really quickly after the second show. We did because somebody was actually loading onto the stage while we were loading off the stage. And and you helped, and I really appreciate your help there because I don't

Lionel (04:51.988)
Mm.

Jim Infantino (05:05.742)
It was a really tight turnaround. I couldn't even like talk to anyone. I couldn't like, you know, engage in conversation schmooze after the show. There was no time. All that said and done, it was nice.

Lionel (05:10.548)
Yeah. Which is unfortunate. But it was a nice venue. All that being said, it was a nice venue. I wasn't there for the first show. There were two shows. I wasn't there for the first one, but I was there for the second one. And it wasn't exactly packed to the rafters, but it was an enthusiastic audience. And I really like the format of the show. The show is really quite good. The structure of it is extraordinarily good because it's

Jim Infantino (05:29.163)
No.

It was.

Jim Infantino (05:36.77)
Thank you.

Lionel (05:40.074)
Just the right mix of engagement and non-engagement.

Jim Infantino (05:45.933)
Right. Right. Yeah. It is it is actually a really nice i it it mixes things up. So it isn't, you know, one of the things I guess if you're if you're touring a lot, you you start, I remember this feeling, you start to be like you start saying like this is another song I wrote, you know, and then you play another song and this is another song I wrote. You can't do that. You have to like

Give a good intro and interact with the audience and have conversation. But in this show, the person who's interacting is actually somebody from the audience and they have a question and they want to get an answer. And so there's back and forth between Sean and this person and the song, you know, is sort of the answer to their question. And yeah, it is a lot more interesting.

Lionel (06:16.543)
Right.

Lionel (06:34.688)
A lot more interesting because the question that the person asked becomes the frame around the song. So you're thinking about the song in terms of what the person just asked. You don't know what that's gonna be. It's gonna be a completely random thing. So it shuffles the entire deck. And it's a good mix too, because there's a bit where you know you're putting the person from the audience on the on the hot seat a bit, but not too long. And then you play a song for three minutes, which gives Sean a lot of time to think and gives the person a lot of time to.

Jim Infantino (06:40.438)
Right. Right.

Jim Infantino (06:47.853)
Yep.

Lionel (07:04.18)
think about what they're gonna say when you're done with the song. I th that's clever. It's a very, very clever, very, very clever format.

Jim Infantino (07:07.895)
Right.

Jim Infantino (07:13.782)
And we have these we have these like

Lionel (07:15.934)
And the the napkin poetry at the end is great. That's you throwing crap on the floor. That's just so it's so good.

Jim Infantino (07:19.158)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (07:23.072)
I don't know how I I think that's just practice, like the fact that I've been doing it for so many years. But I pick up a I pick up a stack of these questions that didn't get didn't get answered. The guest 'cause we only do about seven songs and these were tight shows. It was like six songs. And then we take the remaining questions and then I start like singing them and there's this groove. Yeah.

Lionel (07:27.998)
Yeah.

Lionel (07:45.921)
There's a groove. The band plays a groove and you're just like shuffling through the questions, just doing basically like napk like you said, napkin poetry, just like picking things out and just assembling things on the fly.

Jim Infantino (07:55.18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't know that all of our listeners know, all of our listener, both of our listeners know about napkin poetry, but it's kind of like soul coughing, but but more of improvisational. And I'm using other people's words, and then I'm recycling some of the hooks that come up in reading their questions, and then those questions sort of become a chorus that get repeated, kind of like Mike Doty, you know, super bon bon, super bon bon. It's the same kind of feel. And Jesse's really good with that, that upright bass thing.

Lionel (08:14.141)
Right.

Lionel (08:21.118)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (08:28.514)
The first night you missed, Phil Broikos came up and grabbed my guitar and started playing vamping on electric guitar. It was really fun.

Lionel (08:33.727)
Well.

Whoa, I wish I'd seen that. That would have been a blast.

Jim Infantino (08:40.214)
I should have told you to come for both shows, but like I don't think we actually had another bed. Okay.

Lionel (08:43.944)
I w I was gonna be out there Friday night. I wasn't gonna be out there Friday night. I'm sorry. I was completely out of gas.

Jim Infantino (08:49.314)
This is a show you can absolutely see three, four times, it's always different. So

Lionel (08:52.914)
Yeah. But just that ride. It's the end of the week. It's the end of the week and you're just like, you're just not up for it.

Jim Infantino (08:56.656)
it's yeah, ninety minute. Yeah.

But it was it was nice. It was nice hanging with you there too. But the the house we were staying in was just magnificent. Really beautiful. And so that was really nice. That was Dan's sister's place. And so we didn't need to go and like get a hotel. This was so much nicer than a hotel. It's an expensive show to take on the road, I'll tell you.

Lionel (09:07.571)
Exquisite.

Lionel (09:19.174)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (09:24.822)
If we were to like if we were to stay in a hotel, do two shows out on the road, I mean it's minimum a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars per show in expenses. So it's a tough one to do. Yeah. I mean, unless you're selling two hundred tickets to a show like that, you g at you know, at least twenty bucks a pop. There's there's it's not really feasible. So we're gonna do more of those around here where it it is actually we can sleep in our own beds and

Lionel (09:36.308)
Yeah, not worth it.

Lionel (09:42.143)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (09:54.563)
I don't have to organize every little thing to like drive eight hours. yeah. I don't I'm just not a great tour manager. I it's it drove me bananas organizing all that stuff.

Lionel (09:54.676)
Right.

Lionel (10:05.482)
Yeah. Well we always welcome here in Syracuse. I mean, I don't the the s the sleeping arrangement will be a little more cramped, but

Jim Infantino (10:09.71)
I'm gonna try and come out and play solo for sure. I don't you mean like to do the to do this show? Yeah.

Lionel (10:16.084)
If you had the band. Yeah. It'd be a little more cramped, but you'd have a place to stay that costs nothing, and there's a bathroom downstairs.

Jim Infantino (10:22.967)
That's true.

Yeah, I think it'd be I'm I should look into what's in Syracuse. Of course Julietenny is the expert on all things upstate New York. but I am I have, you know

Lionel (10:33.396)
Yeah. I think there's a lot of stuff in Syracuse. But it's a long ride. It's a long drive.

Jim Infantino (10:40.32)
It is. I mean, I think solo a solo show to follow up would be good if I can hear back from cab from a couple of clubs. because the Scott Reagan radio interview went really, really well. and I I think it'd be it'd be great to be able to come up. What are you opening? I hear a lot of plastic. Sorry.

Lionel (10:56.009)
I'm sorry, I'm playing I'm peeling a label off a bottle and playing with

Does that annoy you, Jim? Where where's his shock collar? Okay, okay, okay, okay. I've stopped, I've stopped, I've stopped.

Jim Infantino (11:03.896)
It's lovely. Yeah. Where again, where's the strangle button on the riverside? I want to strangle my co-host. There should be a button. Yeah. Shock. so yeah, and I was recommending to you before we get started, we're gonna talking about two movies, American Norm American.

Dharma, completely unrelated films. American Dharma and Dark City. And it's very man, I mean they're both great and they're both kind of disturbing. American Dharma is much more so. Dark City is just iconic. And you're right, Lionel, it kind of went by and I didn't notice it.

'Cause it was coming out with along with Delicatessen and then I think afterwards was City of Lost Children and the Matrix came along and it just kinda swept all those other movies away, you know? Yeah.

Lionel (12:08.372)
Yeah. Well the Matrix obliterated everything in its path. It's like the Beatles. You know, everybody who is doing something musically in like the five years leading up to them just got completely got completely obliterated. so which one do you want to talk? I think the conversation about American Dharma is much shorter because it's fundamentally a very unsatisfying unsatisfying film. And I was glad to see that several people reviewed it said

Jim Infantino (12:16.662)
They're like, man, I was having fun. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (12:28.846)
Possibly.

Lionel (12:38.506)
W Arrow Morris WTF. Like, what are you doing here? So you wanna you wanna do the layup? You wanna explain what American Dharma's about, what the general layup is?

Jim Infantino (12:42.774)
Mm.

Jim Infantino (12:49.792)
Yeah. So Errol Morris, I mean, he actually didn't start doing these really intense interviews. And and I he's actually done fairly few of them. but the most famous ones are of Donald Rumsfeld. is it called Known Unknowns or something like that? yeah. known unknowns. And McMah what's the guy from the Vietnam War? his name

Lionel (13:09.994)
Probably unknown unknowns, yeah.

Jim Infantino (13:19.192)
I wanna say McCafferty, but it's not. It's

Lionel (13:23.851)
McNamara? You mean the Secretary of Defense? Yeah.

Jim Infantino (13:24.938)
McNamara, that's it. Yeah, Secretary of Defense in the Vietnam War. And he that's actually a stunning interview. Because McNamara, McNamara's really analytical, you know. I mean, for all the things that he did that were ultimately viewed as very wrong. he has the ability to look back and really self-reflect in a really critical way. And it's stunning to watch.

Lionel (13:38.035)
yeah.

Lionel (13:44.064)
Uh-huh.

Lionel (13:52.181)
yeah. The Pentagon Papers happened because of him. I mean that's the Yeah, he's the guy who asked for the Pentagon Papers to be produced.

Jim Infantino (13:57.089)
Right, right. He's such a complex figure.

Jim Infantino (14:03.82)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not not ingratiating himself to Richard Nixon very much there.

Lionel (14:06.596)
Lionel (14:10.076)
Well, you know, it's it's just amazing how much flows from the Pentagon Papers. Like the Watergate thing happened because of the plumbers. And why were they called the plumbers? Because they fix leaks. And what are the leaks they're fixing? Well, there's the Uber leak of all time, the Pentagon Papers, which was a massive, massive. I mean, you have to really read that to understand. Like, it's basically like

Jim Infantino (14:14.764)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (14:23.693)
Right.

Jim Infantino (14:30.05)
Right.

Lionel (14:39.712)
Yeah, I mean that's there's a movie, what, the the the paper? Or what's that that film that came out recently about the Washington Post publishing the the Pentagon Papers? What's the matter, something wrong? You're you're

Jim Infantino (14:50.772)
No, no, no, my friend Tom Keane is is is texting me. He says he's listening and I don't know what he's I don't know what he's listening. it's I see. He's he sent me something, a music thing. He and I talk about music ever music and economics every once in a while.

Lionel (15:05.98)
Okay. but anyway, the the Pentagon Papers, the the it was such a massive it was such a a huge event in American history because it was just this incontrovertible proof that, yeah, they've been lying, you know, the the the the powers that be. I mean it's not entirely unexpected. You expect your government to give you a lot of happy talk during

Jim Infantino (15:35.758)
Yeah.

Lionel (15:35.764)
You know, to expect otherwise is a little too naive. But the extent to which they really knew that this they were and so it's funny, funnily, it sort of ties to our discussion of the men who lost America. Like everybody in the British government knew we're not gonna win this one.

Jim Infantino (15:50.638)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (15:57.845)
But what can we do?

Jim Infantino (16:00.034)
Now, was it because of the monarch? Was he the insistent? I mean, you know, they didn't want to lose all the natural resources. I mean, I imagine that just was stunningly awful to lose. Really?

Lionel (16:08.734)
No, that really wasn't it. What it really was was about empire. The British had it's really fascinating. They were very explicit about it on both sides of the Atlantic. The English had an empire. When the empire was mighty, and the empire, and everybody was proud of the empire. I mean, the the the Brits were, if even more so, they were the superpower of the of the later half of the 1700s. They could project power anywhere in the world.

Jim Infantino (16:12.749)
Huh.

Jim Infantino (16:26.711)
Yeah.

Lionel (16:38.484)
Via the Royal Navy. and so they're very proud of it. And they're very proud of the Empire. And they saw with America that this is the first domino. Ever heard that one before? If we let these people break away, then the frickin' Indians will decide that they don't want to hang with us anymore and things like that. And the problem is you're in a situation where you can't go forward and you can't go back. And you're just in this situation where,

Jim Infantino (16:50.38)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (16:57.399)
Right.

Jim Infantino (17:03.394)
Yeah.

Lionel (17:07.432)
You you just you can't yeah, the king, King George III was very much were very adamant. He was about to hold the line, hold the line. and there's some other people who are the same way, hold the line. But like the major generals, they're like, Yeah, I mean, the vast majority of generals in England tried to basically try to avoid serving North America. Like they did everything they could to say, hey, you want to post me to like the Antarctic? I'm I'm good with that because I don't want to I don't want to be involved in this Vietnam.

Jim Infantino (17:16.024)
Right.

Jim Infantino (17:32.354)
Yeah, yeah.

Lionel (17:35.787)
Which is what it literally was. I don't want to be involved in this thing. And the guys who went there said, Okay, we're gonna try to do peace overtures and shoot them to death. That doesn't work really well when the same person you're negotiating, you know. But the other thing is they didn't have a playbook. They they really didn't anyway, anyway, so going back the go on we're within a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole. So popping back up a level

Jim Infantino (17:35.82)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (17:47.03)
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (17:54.007)
Yeah, right, right.

Y right. We are we we went Errol Morris, McNamara, Gulf of Tonkin, Pen Pentagon Papers, and the American Revolution that we may never climb out if we don't if we don't just abruptly stop.

Lionel (18:02.516)
Pentagon Papers

American Revolution. So let's pop back up to McNamara. No, we will. So you pack up you you pop back up to McNamara. Yeah. I mean, it comes across in that movie I think called The Paper. I forget who I think it was like Meryl Streep was meant to be Graham, the woman who wrote the Washington and Tom Hanks was the editor. It was about ten years ago. It's okay. It's an okay film, but it's really interesting because

Jim Infantino (18:12.599)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (18:25.056)
I haven't seen it. That that sounds great. I w I should see. Okay, the paper. Huh.

Lionel (18:33.812)
I think her name was Martha Graham, the woman who won the post. She was friends with Magna Maris. She was part of the whole social scene. She confronts him and said, Why did you do this? Why did you lie to us? We're we go to the same country clubs. He's like, I you know, yeah, good question. Why did I do this?

Jim Infantino (18:51.234)
Yeah, he's a it that's the that's the thing about the interview with him is he he takes the time to reflect on each question asked to him. And I just want to stop there and contrast that with American Dharma, because what you see in Errol Morris's interview with Steve Bannon is a man who has come in with an agenda. And he's not gonna veer from the agenda that he's come in with. He's not gonna reflect America Dharma.

Lionel (19:18.72)
Which one?

Jim Infantino (19:21.164)
The Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon. Really, you feel like that Errol Morris is also sticking his feet in the ground?

Lionel (19:21.449)
I mean which which guy are we talking about? 'Cause I think it's both of them. 'Cause I think

Well, let me don't know if you read this, but let me tell you something about that movie, which is that prior to making that movie, Errol Morris and his production team at considerable expense built a replica of the set of twelve the movie Twelve O'Clock High at like an airbase in Massachusetts.

Jim Infantino (19:32.758)
Okay.

Jim Infantino (19:50.572)
Yeah. yeah, right right outside of Boston in in Concord.

Lionel (19:55.785)
It's like and then just to jump to my my fundamental question is like all there was no real discussion about why Bannon did what he did. I mean, Bannon gives explanations, but Errol Morris really doesn't really doesn't bear down on those and and pull those apart and say he doesn't press anything and it's just really distressing.

Jim Infantino (20:16.162)
He doesn't press.

Jim Infantino (20:21.996)
Well, I but it is kind of his style to let the to let the interviewee kind of come apart through their own narrative. And he does he he tends okay in other interviews, he tends to pull at a thread a little bit, but not so much like where he's really challenging. Although he does, you know, come straight out and say, What you seem what you represent is just terrifying to me. I mean, he he he he speaks from the heart. No, well, it doesn't, I think it doesn't because

Lionel (20:45.16)
Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't lean anywhere. He speaks for the heart, but it doesn't go anywhere.

Jim Infantino (20:50.924)
Bannon is just not going to give an inch. And it it's frustrating.

Lionel (20:55.154)
I don't think that's one answer. The other and the other answer I have is it's not a very tightly wrapped ideology.

Jim Infantino (21:03.544)
Well no, it isn't. No. I mean Bannon's idiology there he puts the idi in ideology. I mean it's it's it's tear everything down. Yeah.

Lionel (21:04.797)
It's not

Lionel (21:10.622)
Be a disruptor. I mean it reminds me of the Sex Pistols. I I am an an I'm the Antichrist, I'm an anarchist. I don't know what I want, but I know how to get it. And that's exactly where

Jim Infantino (21:21.102)
Well, at least they were self aware. Bannon is like, I saw a guy who who lost everything in the V I saw what was it, his his football coach lost everything in the Vietnam War. Well yeah.

Lionel (21:30.282)
Well, that's the key thing. That to me is the core. It was it was it was his I think it was like some yeah, like his coach or something like that, or even something weird, like somebody like some kind of spiritual thing, because he's he's it's a very heavily Catholic story. and the son goes and his and his the the guy that he looked up to, his son goes to Vietnam, gets killed, and then later on

Jim Infantino (21:48.642)
Yeah.

Lionel (21:58.475)
There's some kind of ceremony to honor the veterans of veterans of something, and he sees that all the the the s the regalia and paraphernalia for this exercise were made in Vietnam. And he was horrified by this. Although Errol Morris never presses him on this. Like, why exactly were you horrified? Well, but why are you horrified? Are you horrified because you think Vietnamese can't make like, you know.

Jim Infantino (22:15.469)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (22:19.69)
No, I mean he doesn't go after the core myth, yeah. He doesn't go after the core myth.

Lionel (22:28.788)
gowns and tassels or what I I it's just like this is the core. I mean this is the emotional core of what Bayonan's talking about. And they never examine it. And it really drives me absolutely nuts. It's like, what are you pissed off about? The fact that what would what would have made you happier? That the outfits were made in Ohio? Is it a trade issue? Is it do you think the Vietnamese are evil?

Jim Infantino (22:30.615)
Right.

Jim Infantino (22:37.1)
Right.

Lionel (22:58.048)
I mean we never get that. We never get any explanation for any of that. Go ahead.

Jim Infantino (22:58.966)
No, right. No, you're right. And it might be that Morris missed it, and it might have been that that Bannon shut it down. They couldn't use any of the footage. We don't know. But it do you know, his his core mythology seems to be this guy's sons fought in in Vietnam, and now his business is being shipped over to Vietnam because peace. And therefore

We should tear everything in America down and start again, right? Like as if with no plan to start again, right? But but first we've got to rip everything down. We gotta pull out the foundation, dig it all up, level the ground, and start over. Because some jobs went to Vietnam and we fought a war there and we lost some of our sons, quite a few.

I, you know, my sense after watching it, and I think I said this because you and I are actually one of the rare moments where we could actually watch a movie together in the same room. You happen to be visiting me. My sense was that underpinning everything is white supremacy in what he's in what he's talking about. What he won't say, why he's really angry, is that non-white people benefited in some way.

Lionel (24:09.215)
Mm.

Lionel (24:27.296)
I didn't I didn't get that. I didn't get this racial thing. What I got was the American exceptionalism thing. We are he was much more obsessed with war and 12 o'clock high and all these films about America when America was strong and tough guys ran the world. I didn't hear a lot from him about race. I heard a lot from him.

Jim Infantino (24:34.52)
But not all Americans, right?

Jim Infantino (24:50.243)
Right.

Jim Infantino (24:54.212)
he didn't say it. I I just sensed it underneath everything that he was saying. I'm

Lionel (24:58.432)
I don't know. I don't I didn't. I didn't feel I didn't sense it, but may maybe I'm just insensitive to that kind of crap. But I don't know. But he never said it outright. But he definitely was like, he's definitely in love with the old films of a s of you know you know, 12 o'clock high. It's it's about war. and it's about tough people making tough decisions, and you have to you have to consider that you're dead already.

Jim Infantino (25:05.499)
I I could be tripping too. I could be tripping, but that's that certainly not.

Jim Infantino (25:18.508)
Yeah.

Lionel (25:26.644)
So stop whining about the fact that you have to go and risk your life. And it's like, yeah, I'm like I'm not a big fan of that stuff because that's when you start getting like, you know, the cult of of death. and you get really nihilistic at that point.

Jim Infantino (25:35.682)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (25:41.166)
Well that's

Jim Infantino (25:44.771)
And he's using, you know, they're using the term dharma in in t it's like calling, which is very Hindu rather than Buddhist. Dar you do your dharma. Arjuna has to do his dharma, and he's gonna have to go to war with members of his family because that's his fate. His fate, in a sense. His calling, his duty is to sacrifice what he thinks, you know, is right in the short term for right in the long term.

Lionel (26:04.896)
Right.

Jim Infantino (26:15.142)
And or in the in the grand scheme of things is what is what Krishna teaches him. But so so Bannon is is kind of tied up in this. I'm on a like spiritual mission, and I and my mission is tear down the United States of America. So the deep state, yeah, that it's all corrupt and it's and it's you can't fix it.

Lionel (26:35.828)
The deep state, yeah.

Jim Infantino (26:41.528)
And you've gotta you've gotta rip it all down. And who's the perfect guy? Of course, they land on, you know, he finds the perfect candidate to help him do that. and then he gets kicked out. so he's not like a hundred percent aligned with Republicans, he's kind of his own thing. It's not a good thing. I somebody described him as Trotsky, Trotskyite, which is I think probably the closest thing you could come to, right? You need to.

Lionel (26:59.648)
Mm.

Lionel (27:05.482)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (27:10.786)
Get on a train and go out there, and anybody who doesn't fall in line, you shoot him dead. you know, out in Siberia or wherever. It's it's it's and you know, and that's his duty, and he's gonna go out and do it, right or wrong. It it's I don't know. I mean, I I sort of can recommend this film, and I sort of can't, because it's so grim. But it is yeah, it's useful to see what is kind of

Lionel (27:34.368)
I don't think it delivers yeah.

Jim Infantino (27:39.338)
It it's unintelligible in some ways, but that that's what's on his mind. You know, that's what's behind a guy like that. If he's being honest. And I'm not sure he's entirely being honest.

Lionel (27:50.795)
I just didn't find much meat there. I really there wasn't a lot of specifics. There's a lot of discussion of films. Of what was the other one? The John Wayne film. They had a John Wayne film that they took about a lot. I mean, eighty percent of the movie was talking about other movies that he liked.

Jim Infantino (27:53.868)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (27:59.48)
Right.

Jim Infantino (28:03.267)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (28:08.75)
Well, they're all nineteen fifties war and cowboy films. And that's kind of where I got the inkling that it there was a little bit of a white supremacy thing behind behind him, you know. You go out and conquer, you know, and you do your thing because you're you're America, you know, but it really means like 1950s white America and to him. It it like, whoa, we got tangled up with this foreign country, you know. What was that about? A lot of us were wondering that, of course.

Lionel (28:11.712)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (28:18.728)
I think it's just yeah, maybe it's yeah.

Jim Infantino (28:37.774)
you know, including McNamara. But who got us into it? but the idea that you then can't trade with the people that you've finished fighting with.

Lionel (28:52.564)
Well, the interesting thing, I think I mentioned before on this show that one time I never considered I I guess, you know, the thing about Divo is that Divo's very you know, Divo's an interesting thing because I never saw Divo's being terribly subversive. I saw them more sort of like jokey. Like it's a big joke, the entire thing.

Jim Infantino (29:12.012)
Hmm.

Huh. Yeah, I d I didn't actually I it to me it always seemed a little a little subversive.

Lionel (29:21.752)
It y and you're more right than I am. because I was once listening to this interview with Mark Motherspaw, and he said at one point, he said, Yeah, he said, I grew up in a time when a lot of my friends were going off to fight in Vietnam to defend capitalism, while at the same time the capitalists were trying to figure out how to export their jobs to Vietnam. Because they grew up in Akron, which was the tire capital of America.

Jim Infantino (29:30.094)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (29:45.91)
Interesting. Same thing then.

Lionel (29:50.079)
And he said these capitalists were trying to figure out how to move their move their factories to Vietnam, move their factories to Asia and export the jobs of the people that they were encouraging to go to die in the jungles of Vietnam for them. Now, you know, you can either agree or disagree with the whole thing. What I thought was interesting is that this is coming from Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, you know, and so it's like,

Jim Infantino (30:09.57)
Brian. Yeah.

Lionel (30:13.768)
Okay, this is kind of interesting. This is not coming from McNamara or Steve Bannon. This is coming from Mark Mothersball Divo.

Jim Infantino (30:20.738)
Yeah, I got freedom from choice is what you want, you know. yeah, no that's a that's you gotta whip it whip it good, of course. That's one everybody knows.

Lionel (30:28.628)
And well, not yeah, but but but Whippin was actually much more sort of anarchic and surrealistic. But yeah, freedom of choice, that's a good thing. and it got progress, you know, the Devo corporate anthem, it got progress, and of course, Jock O'Homa, Are We Not Men, We Are Devo. and then when you go look back on it, when I look back on it, it's like, yeah, they were a lot more hard-edged. But then they have songs like, you know, Irresistible Urge, and

Jim Infantino (30:34.221)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (30:38.082)
Yes.

Jim Infantino (30:46.113)
Right.

Lionel (30:58.962)
gut feeling, which are just sort of more general rock and roll stuff. But yeah. and so there seems to be this whole feeling, which I understand, which is that, you know, we fought a war and then we sent all these jobs overseas to these places. And what about me? That's sort of

Jim Infantino (31:00.498)
Mm.

Jim Infantino (31:18.742)
You know, but so that's one realization, though. It seems like Mothers Ba's Mothers Ba's understanding of it was a little bit more refined in that it was like, this was not a war for America's best interest. This was a war for capitalism, so we could start making things cheaply overseas. So we so that because what we what we didn't want to have happen was self-rule, right? Because if self-rule happened and Ho Chi Men took over.

Then we it they would basically have chosen a communist way of life. And they wouldn't be trading with us, they'd be trading with Russia. We wanted them to keep trading with us, right? And before they were like kind of an underclass to France, and we kind of wanted to keep a little bit of that relationship going, but with the global capitalist bent. And so I can understand Bannon being anti-glob globalist, which is such a horrible term. But I

He's never anti capitalist, right? I mean he's not he's not saying yeah. Big business, yeah.

Lionel (32:21.992)
Yeah, he's coming out against the deep state. But he's not coming out against American industrial the the the Dow Jones, you know, the Fortune one hundred. You don't hear that coming from you don't hear that coming from any of their mouths. What they come up by is they're coming about the deep state and how the deep state is hurting us.

Jim Infantino (32:35.864)
Yeah. What

Jim Infantino (32:41.89)
I think Morris at one point says, Why didn't you know, with all of these things you've said, why didn't you campaign for Bernie Sanders? More in line with what you with with your core beliefs. And I don't remember Bannon's response. I think it was evasive.

Lionel (32:52.416)
What?

Jim Infantino (33:00.078)
and it might have just been yeah, I don't I think he's an incoherent human being. I I I th I I think he craves significance and he found a way to be significant, but he doesn't really care what he has to do.

Lionel (33:00.72)
'cause doesn't make sense. It's not coherent. It's not coherent.

Lionel (33:11.328)
It's really interesting because I was listening to the I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell, like many things in my life. I listened to like the first two episodes and that was it. But I really should finish it. And Malcolm Gladwell did this like nine episodes series on the what is it, the nineteen thirty six Olympics in Berlin.

Jim Infantino (33:28.724)
Mm-hmm. yeah, that was great. Great series you did.

Lionel (33:31.677)
and he talks about the woman reporter from America, who was like one of the top writers, columnists, journalists in the world at that time, who really sussed out what Nazism was all about. and she actually went over and met with Hitler and wrote this really scathing review of him and the whole thing. And she basically said Nazism is completely incoherent, except for one thing.

Jim Infantino (33:46.158)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (33:49.582)
Mm.

Lionel (34:00.767)
Hatred of the Jews. That's the only thing that holds it all together. You take that out, and the whole house of cards falls apart because the rest of it makes absolutely no sense. It's just this hodgepodge of meaningless crap. and what it is, is that it's my personal feeling is that it's just a pretext for theft in many cases. you just you want to take shit.

Jim Infantino (34:03.651)
Right.

Jim Infantino (34:14.349)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (34:23.534)
This is sounding so familiar. I'm sorry. This I'm like, man. Yeah. Yeah, look over here. Look at the trans people and the immigrants. And we're by the w while you're looking over there, we're gonna be

Lionel (34:29.938)
It's just theft. And so you have this yeah.

Lionel (34:38.16)
Gonna take we're gonna imprison these people over here, and we're gonna take all this stuff, Empire of Grift. And so she saw what it was about. And I think some and that's the way you feel many times when you hear these guys. It's like well, whole thing. If that's your logic, then you should be against this. Well, dah da, you know, hand wave, hand wave, smok it's the deep state. And it's like, what? What are you talking about? Seriously.

Jim Infantino (34:40.951)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (34:56.487)
Right, right. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (35:03.038)
Ugh Ugh. Yeah, I was yeah.

Lionel (35:06.196)
The what I see is that you guys are against anybody who can put a check on you. Because you just want to clear the shelves off of the candy store. So what you want to do is you want to eviscerate anybody who can stop you from doing that, like the judiciary, the press, and the government. The deep state. Yeah. Well, there's a reason why we have deep states, because sometimes you need you need a state to keep other people in line.

Jim Infantino (35:14.872)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (35:19.969)
Right.

Jim Infantino (35:24.748)
The deep state. Right.

Jim Infantino (35:34.85)
Well, sounds better than the than saying I'm against the cops, right? I mean, basically that

Lionel (35:39.58)
Or I'm against the Fortune 500. I'm against capitalism. That ain't gonna fly.

Jim Infantino (35:43.316)
Well, which he's he's clearly he's clearly not too in.

Lionel (35:48.885)
Well, it doesn't matter whether he is or he's not, you can't say that because that's a that's a game ender. It's like saying, I'm against social security. Yeah, okay. Have fun. They're burning your house down right now. By the way, you might want to get a taxi and go home really quickly because they're burning your

Jim Infantino (35:58.369)
Yeah. Well yeah, no against

Lionel (36:06.858)
So you have to you have to create this inchoate for an adversary, the deep state, which is everywhere and nowhere, like Pascal's God.

Jim Infantino (36:13.43)
Mm-hmm.

Right. It's it's what was the the gang, the the it wasn't a Venezuela was it a Venezuelan gang, Trende Aragua? Somebody Yeah, somebody looked into it and they're like, There's like sixteen members. You know, it's like they're not they're they're y you know, you're make you're basically taking it is a real gang, but like they're nowhere and then that way you can say everybody's trendy Aragua that we don't like, you know.

Lionel (36:27.486)
Yeah, or T R six or whatever, T three or blah blah. Yeah, it's just

Lionel (36:45.994)
Yeah. Like nineteen eighty-four, what's the guy's name? Who's the villain? They always show his face, Goldberg, or Goldsteiner Goldberg or something like that. Yeah. So all that being said, this is sort of an orgy of self-indulgence here, you and I. But the fascinating thing is that there is none of this. There's none of this in American Dharma. It was more about, okay, this is this is, you know, whoever was the the was who's a Clark Gable? Or who's the guy who's playing in twelve o'clock high, whatever.

Jim Infantino (36:50.273)
g the Goldstein or yeah, yeah.

Jim Infantino (37:14.888)
you know, one of the one of the chiseled jaw dudes that that was in everything back then. Yeah, yeah.

Lionel (37:16.384)
You know?

Lionel (37:20.52)
Yeah. Yeah, he was actually British. Yeah. It was either Clark Gable or not Clark Gable, but as a s or somebody else. But

Jim Infantino (37:28.568)
Probably a flamer, you know. I mean, you know, it's They all all those Hollywood types, man, they were all sleeping with each other. Don't you know? It's the deep Hollywood

Lionel (37:30.408)
No please, Jim, please.

Lionel (37:42.217)
My favorite scene. I'm only gonna say this once. My favorites did you ever see Hail Caesar, the Cohen Brothers movie? you have to watch Hail Caesar. Like many Cohen Brothers movies, there it's it's an hour and twenty minutes of moderately fun, interesting film, and then ten minutes of sheer absolute brilliance. And there's one scene where they it's basically

Jim Infantino (37:45.569)
Okay.

Jim Infantino (37:49.322)
No No What's that?

Okay.

Lionel (38:11.932)
It's taking place in like a movie studio in like 1948. The height of the Hollywood system, the height of Hollywood. And so what they have is they're making all these movies, and one is one is the the big spectacular musical with with Scarlett Johansson, which is moderately funny. There's another one spot. Then they have the one that's supposed to be like Sure Leave, where like all the sailors, you know, it's like what what's that? my god. my god. It's

Jim Infantino (38:18.286)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (38:29.144)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (38:33.707)
Uh-huh.

I feel like I've seen it. I feel like I've seen it now when you're describing it to me.

Lionel (38:41.428)
The most magnificent it's the most magnificent scene I've ever seen in my you've just who's the guy it's like Channing Channing Tatum or something like that. He's but it's it's like all the guys on Shorelave from New York you know during the war and the you know it's like on the town, right? Is that the famous movie about all the guys that's like the Bernstein Bernstein thing on the town? You've gotta watch that. But anyway, we we digress. American Dharma.

Jim Infantino (38:50.488)
Okay.

Jim Infantino (38:57.24)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (39:01.366)
I I

Jim Infantino (39:05.76)
Okay. Yeah, we're we need to get to Dark City before before it's too late. So how we can hop, we can hop. I it sorry, but I have to mention Barton Fink. You've seen Barton Fink, right? yeah, I mean it this b Hail Caesar sounds like a follow up to their own movie Barton Fink, which is a masterpiece.

Lionel (39:20.639)
Dow.

Jim Infantino (39:32.194)
Yeah, absolutely. I'll watch Hail Caesar. You watch Barton Fink. You're gonna love it. We can maybe do a little bit of talk on on on the Cohen brothers. Yeah.

Lionel (39:38.593)
Let's do that. That'd be fun. The Cohen Brothers kind of annoy me in general. I they're a thing, unfortunately. by the way, going back to what you're saying about Vietnam, I disagree. I disagree. I think the reason why American women was fighting in Vietnam was very obvious and was telegraphed very clearly, which is the policy of containment.

Jim Infantino (39:43.008)
Yeah, but they are a thing. They're like a real th yeah.

Jim Infantino (39:52.554)
Yeah. Okay.

Lionel (40:08.436)
There's the famous article where they say contain well the the issue is this is here's Lionel Cassid's personal philosophy. You know, the defeat of the Japanese Empire in 1944 was really set a really bad precedent because in at that point, in everybody's mind was crystallized the image of victory.

Jim Infantino (40:36.951)
Yeah.

Lionel (40:36.968)
It's you got the guys with the top hats and the tuxedos on the deck of the USS Missouri or the USS New Jersey or whatever the hell the ship was, and everybody gets out their pens and they all sign a treaty and the war's over. It's horse shit. That happens so rarely. Most wars are fought just to tire the other, just to keep the other guy busy. You're just trying to stall something. You're just trying to keep the other guy tangled up just enough.

You're not looking for victory. You're not really looking to win because victory in the battlefield is not really what you're searching for. What you're looking for is you're working on something, and these guys are coming up and they're coming after you. And what you need to do is you just need to jam their gears. And that's what containment was about. Containment was, and it was a very, it's a very it's a specific article that was written by, my God, it flew out of my head, but he's very famous. A very famous article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Jim Infantino (41:10.862)
Hmm.

Lionel (41:36.897)
where the guy wrote containment and it overnight became the policy of the US government, which is we we can't fight, we we you know, we can't go to war with them, but what we can do is we can contain them. We can we can do things around the peripheries and just jam their gears and keep them where they're at right now. We can't we can't hydrogen bomb them into the into oblivion. that's off the table. we can't do this, we can't do it, but what we can do is just keep.

Jim Infantino (41:42.68)
Right.

Lionel (42:06.484)
maintain the boundary. And that's what containment was. That's what Vietnam was. It was a classic containment war, which is you're just there to keep the other guy spending time and money and and men and materials and and slowing them down. You're slowing down their progress. And the thing is, I'm not saying that's a great idea. I'm not advocating that.

Jim Infantino (42:28.326)
Yeah. But where was the threat? Where was where was the terrible threat? Of Vietn it just it it's Vietnam. I mean, for crying out loud. It might as well be part of China for all America's concerned. It was part of China at one point. I know, but that's but I know. And and what, we wanted to keep China from like taking it back? Like

Lionel (42:34.156)
well that's that's a whole that's a whole different discussion. That's a

Lionel (42:42.132)
Well it was. It was a part of China f as far as America was concerned.

Lionel (42:49.31)
Yes, no, we want to keep China from from surpassing us because China was a communist power. So we're just like, okay, fine. We we can't we can't invade you because we couldn't pull that off in North Korea. but what we can do is we can bleed you. And we can we can keep fighting at the periphery and keep bleeding you and try to build a stable government in Vietnam, a stable American aligned government in Vietnam, which never happened. It never happened. and it never took off.

Jim Infantino (43:04.993)
Mm.

Lionel (43:18.696)
And it never took place. It happened in Japan, it happened in South Korea, it happened in Taiwan, but it didn't happen in Vietnam. but you know, the problem is that everybody everybody wants to see people signing the documents on the deck of the USS Missouri. It doesn't happen that way. And people don't like that. They don't like to think that their son died in a war that nobody really expected to win.

Jim Infantino (43:34.734)
Mm.

Lionel (43:46.431)
Because, well, they did expect to win, but their idea of winning is not your idea of winning. If they manage to get the adversary to spend 20% of their productive output on this war, which slows down their their their arc of growth by 5% over the next 30 years, that's victory. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that their son died for that.

Jim Infantino (44:11.85)
My my understanding of why we went to war in Vietnam was is more that the French were really making noises that if we didn't come back them up, that they were gonna consider trading with the Russians and Russians instead. And that NATO would fall apart. So, you know, I I you know, I d and and that's I got that from the Ken Burns documentary, but but there may have been multiple reasons. And it may have also been, you know, that we overattribute coherent chains of thought to people who are running things.

Lionel (44:27.381)
Maybe.

Lionel (44:40.328)
Yes. Yes. Or that they have a clear idea of what's going again. That's why it's so valuable to read the Middle Lost America because they're like, Yeah, we're not gonna win this one. But what am I gonna do? What's the alternative? We just say, Yep, okay, you get to keep it. Our bad. Not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. You don't know what's gonna happen, so you just blunder through. You just muddle through and hope 'cause nobody has a playbook and

Jim Infantino (44:41.39)
You know.

Jim Infantino (44:44.91)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (44:53.367)
Right.

Jim Infantino (44:58.1)
Right, right, right. Can't do that, yeah. There goes the Empire, yeah.

Jim Infantino (45:07.213)
Yeah.

Lionel (45:09.396)
The key thing about the British in 1776 is they did not have a playbook at all as to how this was going to play out. Because this was a truly the only playbook, the only comparable playbook was the hot the 80 years' war that the Dutch waged against the Spanish Habsburgs to gain independence. That was the only thing that was even vaguely close to what was happening here. But it wasn't really the same thing because in this because in that case.

The the the Dutch were Protestant and the Spanish Habs were capital were Catholic and they spoke completely different language, they had completely different cultures. But in America, they're all British and they all want to be British. And people in America are like, yeah, we're part of the British Empire. This is great, and stuff like that. And then overnight, and so it's not a colony. It's not it's not an extractive colony where the the native inhabitants are are completely different from you. They're Englishmen. It's like

Jim Infantino (45:53.87)
Mm.

Jim Infantino (46:04.173)
Yeah.

Lionel (46:06.29)
Okay, what's the playbook here? It's like I guess s Irel it's not Ireland because Brits don't consider Irish, you know. Let's not talk about that guy, Garrett. God, I'm still laughing for that one.

Jim Infantino (46:15.074)
Hmm. yeah, Garin is yeah, Garen Music on YouTube and TikT and yeah, TikTok and Instagram. Very funny guy.

Lionel (46:20.093)
Yeah.

Hilarious. But maybe like the Scottish. You know, how do you deal with the Scottish? You know? Yeah.

Jim Infantino (46:28.718)
Well, if you can't beat build a big friggin' wall from coast to coast, is what I always say.

Lionel (46:31.86)
Big but you can't but they're right there. But th then there's this whole thing. so they had no playbook and they didn't really know what was going on. So you can sort of cut some slack. The poor Brits really, and they were fighting like three other wars at the same time. So but with I'm sorry, I'm I'm rattling on and on. But the Fine, Dark City, nineteen ninety eight, directed by Alex Proyas. It stars Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, great.

Jim Infantino (46:48.716)
We need to get to Dark City.

Lionel (47:01.546)
Performance from William Heard, Kiefer Sutherland, fabulous performance from Kiefer S Kiefer Sutherland. I think did Rufus Sewell become go to Sun become Ober Sturmfuhr, John Smith in The Man in the High Tower? Is he? I I think that is him.

Jim Infantino (47:02.176)
Wonderful William Heard performance. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jim Infantino (47:16.162)
you're right. That's him. Yes. It looks like him. I d yeah. Ruf let that was it was an actor that I just didn't recognize from anything else. But but now that you say that, it it r definitely reminds me. It seems like that was him. He has a kind of very striking coloring, dark, dark hair, but kind of bright eyes. And yeah, the eyes really do it. And then I

Lionel (47:23.06)
Well let's find out.

Lionel (47:29.824)
Yeah, it's that's definitely him.

Lionel (47:40.6)
Eyes. It's the eyes that really do it. Yeah, man in the high castle. Marvelous what?

Jim Infantino (47:46.893)
Who's his counterpart? well, in in Dark City, I forget who plays his love interest. The young lady, she was beautiful. His wife, yeah. Well, or maybe his wife, you know, his wife of the moment. Jennifer Connolly, of course it was. Yes. A very young Jennifer Connolly. Yeah, who is amazing, by the way, in a TV show that I'm watching right now. And the name, the name escapes me. It's on Apple TV.

Lionel (47:53.908)
The young lady, his wife, his ex wife.

Lionel (48:00.561)
Jennifer Connolly, I guess is

Jim Infantino (48:16.986)
and it'll it'll come back to me. but yeah, I'm I've I've always really loved I've really I've always loved her presence on stage. and I anyway, Jennifer Connolly is fantastic in it. so Rufus Sewell, huh?

Lionel (48:19.838)
Yeah, it'll come in a second.

Lionel (48:34.26)
Yeah, and I watched when it came out. I probably saw it shortly after it came out. And my my recollection of it is this is a cool movie, reminded me a lot of City City of Lost Children. It has a lot of similarities to City of Lost Children. And but it's kind of hokey and it's kind of kind of simplistic and silly and goofy. It's more like Beetlejuice. And I wrote it off. And then I watched it again, you know, a couple of months ago. I was like, this is really good.

Jim Infantino (48:43.608)
Yes.

Jim Infantino (48:55.822)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (49:02.198)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lionel (49:03.112)
Like this movie is really like when you get another 30 years under your belt, you start to see you start to see new things. First off the bat, it's it's a huge homage to German Expressionism and Noir. and it's really got the Fritz Long thing. It's got the complete Fritz Long thing. It's got the complete Noir thing. I love the guy who's the other cop, Walensky, the one who's going mad and drawing things on his walls.

Jim Infantino (49:17.57)
Yep. Yep. And Fritz Fritz Lang, yeah. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (49:31.82)
Yes. Yeah, that was fantastic.

Lionel (49:33.182)
See? It's all just a great big joke, and he's doing this and everybody is doing their impersonation of somebody from nineteen thirties and nineteen forties cinema. I think Kiefer Solomon is doing the impersonation of Peter Lurie from the Maltese Falcon with this kind of voice where he's always hitting the wrong accents. yeah, it's

Jim Infantino (49:36.781)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (49:42.19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (49:52.621)
He's always out of breath. Yeah. He well, he also it's like he it's like he's out of breath. his breathless performance would be the best. But he does a great job with it. Like it's not a caricature. He's there's there's something there. He's been driven kind of past past his breaking point. And so, but he's somehow managed to keep it together. the as a character. I don't mean as an actor. and

Lionel (49:59.893)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (50:21.932)
Yeah, I mean it's a great it's a really nice complex William Hurt does the exact right thing for the character he's playing, the detective, you know, who always manages to solve the crime, except that he can't quite figure out what happened yesterday or the last time it was daylight.

Lionel (50:35.358)
Right.

Where was Shell? Where's Shell? How do I get to Shell Beach? And I love his whole thing playing the accordion. it's such a great, great, it's such a wonderful, fun film to watch. It really is. It has humor. it has love and redemption and a little bit of violence and some action. It's it's got something for everybody, something for the missus, something for the kids, and

Jim Infantino (50:40.43)
Yeah, yeah, how do we get to Shell Beach? Yeah.

Lionel (51:07.976)
It's a really good film. I really enjoyed it. and I could probably watch it again. and there's that whole thing from the from the 80s and the 90s, like that whole thing, Peewee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Darkseid, that whole kind of and the Batman movies, the first rev of Batman, like this whole cartoonist, the mask, like this sort of intersection between

Jim Infantino (51:10.017)
No.

Lionel (51:37.249)
Cartoons and film, where the films were very cartoon like, like Pee-wee's Big Adventure or The Mask, or even more obvious, who framed Roger Rabbit, and people are wearing like cartoonish clothes. Joe versus the volcano. Did you ever see that one with Tom Hanks?

Jim Infantino (51:45.934)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Infantino (51:58.888)
I think I did, yeah, yeah, at one point I did, yeah.

Lionel (52:02.496)
Tremendous movie. Tremendous movie. And but they're all really surrealistic movies where people are wearing like really weird outfits that are slightly too big for them and much too colorful. yeah.

Jim Infantino (52:13.484)
Well, Sarah Ilkins has been commenting all along. And unfortunately, Sarah, I can't I can't read all your comments because it goes back and I don't want to re-trigger our discussion of the Vietnam War. But the heavens, heavens no. But you know, it also reminded me of the Truman show in in a strange way. that it very stylistic and everything is contained within a certain system, and it you have a you know, how how how are we we maintaining it's like a it's a bottle up, it's like a

Lionel (52:17.288)
Okay.

Lionel (52:24.789)
go ahead. Come.

Lionel (52:31.316)
Yeah. Yep.

Jim Infantino (52:43.298)
bottle episode for a TV show because it's a whole movie. And it's all yeah, stylized in this wild way. And, you know, we don't get it, you know, it doesn't answer all the questions. It but it it is art. You know, I I think if you just look at it as art rather than through the lens of kind of like Hollywood movies, then it makes a lot more sense. It's just a it's a just a beautiful work of art. Yeah.

Lionel (52:45.012)
And it's retro. It is s self consciously retro.

Lionel (53:11.232)
It's a great mashup. It's a great unific like a lot of great works of art. It's a you take something from over here and you take something from two miles away and you collide them together and you get something new. And so you take noir and German expression. Noir is an outgrowth of German expressionism, and then you collide it with like science fiction, some crazy science fiction story the some Phil K. Dick thing. So it's like, by the way, there's another one.

Jim Infantino (53:21.016)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (53:31.374)
Mm-hmm.

Lionel (53:38.229)
There's another thing where they collided noir with Phil K. Dick. It's called Blade Runner. which is a different vibe. It's a completely different vibe of the same element, but the thing that sort of obliterated all this, and I think I thought I read one time that the guys involved in these two movies actually knew each other. And they know the Matrix. The Matrix in Dark City. Because because

Jim Infantino (53:42.388)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (53:58.649)
Children a City of Lost Children and and and Dark City? the Mate the Wolkowski brothers, yeah.

Lionel (54:05.128)
Part of the Matrix was filmed in the exact same sound sets that Dark City was in Australia. And I think, you know, the the plots are strikingly similar in some ways. I mean, it's very much sort of a simulationist fantasy. There's no aliens in Matrix. But there is this idea that there's the chosen one who's going to break the dream. There's a Neo. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (54:08.846)
interesting.

Jim Infantino (54:30.006)
Yeah, that's right. It's gonna bust us out. It's gonna bust us out of the illusion that we're all trapped in. Yeah.

Lionel (54:35.922)
Right. And there's somebody, there's some magic person who's helping him all along, like Kefer Suther Sutherland or whatever his name is, Morpheus. so

Jim Infantino (54:44.632)
Yeah.

Right, exactly. Keefer Kiefer yeah, Kiefer Sutherland is is a kind of well, a very flawed and fragile Morpheus. now I really I really dug him in that. He is a collaborator, right? Yeah.

Lionel (54:57.182)
Right. He's a collaborator. He's a collaborator. He's an inside man. but a great movie. What are you reading there? You is is is Sarah's hopping up and down on one hopping up and down now saying

Jim Infantino (55:07.48)
Sara Sarah is saying that w Sara Sarah is eager to watch re watch Dark City. I I agree, Sarah. I think it's a I think it's a good it's a it was I'm glad that I revisited it. I think I saw it and it kind of just went by me years ago years ago. Yeah.

Lionel (55:24.01)
Same here. Cause I think it was one of many films that looked very much the same, like City of Lost Children and and Delicatessen and and all this stuff. And after a while, just like, yeah, okay, here's another funny film with people with funny sets. And and it's all sort of vaguely, sort of retro and vaguely sort of like Gotham City. You know, it's all Batman in to a certain degree. It's like variations on Batman.

Jim Infantino (55:30.742)
And delicatessen. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (55:51.679)
Did Batman come out after this or before this? Because it would it does seem to kind of borrow the same style. Well, the first one with with Michael Keaton. but that but yeah, but there's an explanation for that because well, yeah, I wonder if the direct famous director. okay.

Lionel (55:56.885)
Well, there's so many Batmans. Which Batman are we talking about?

Lionel (56:04.392)
Okay, Batman movie, Michael.

Lionel (56:10.878)
Eighty nine. So that's ten years. The initial Batman, the nineteen eighty nines, directed by Tim Burton. that was ten years earlier. That's Batman eighty nine. Jack Nicholson, Michael Kitten, Kim Basinger or Bassinger, whatever. Yeah, I didn't like that at all. And it's got Danny Elfman.

Jim Infantino (56:18.807)
Yeah, Tim Burton.

Jim Infantino (56:23.99)
I tried to rewatch that with my kids. We couldn't get into it. Yeah.

No, I didn't think it was very good. I mean, and and I'm I'm kind of alone in that. I mean, a lot of people really loved it, but I didn't think it was very good at all. yeah. Well, I'm you know, I'm glad I'm glad to have rewatched that.

so yeah, so that's that was a that was an improbable combination of American Dharma and look Dark City.

Lionel (56:55.636)
Yeah, there's I can I can see with absolute conf confidence there is no bridge you can make between those two films at all. There is just no way you can bridge the ca the chasm between the two of them.

Jim Infantino (57:02.894)
Hmm. Yeah. Well something nefarious maybe. That's the only thing that yeah.

Lionel (57:12.006)
Yeah, they're on the they involve celluloid. that's a it's like when people kept asking J.R. Tolkien about how much Wagner's Ring Cycle was an inspiration for the Lord of the Rings, and he said Wagner's ring and my ring are both round, and that's where the similarity ends. You go John, fuck you

Jim Infantino (57:27.011)
Yeah.

Jim Infantino (57:31.318)
Hmm. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Lionel (57:41.012)
Go J R R goodman. Okay, that enough for tonight. You wanna roll you wanna

Jim Infantino (57:42.956)
Yeah, that's good.

Jim Infantino (57:47.779)
yeah, so the is it it's dark matter. Dark matter is the show that I was mentioning before about that that includes Jennifer Connolly. that would be another recommendation for our list, our both of our listeners. my my brother and I have been watching it. We like it a lot. I'm not sure that you will dig it, but Dark Matter has really captivated me. It it's

Lionel (58:04.96)
Okay, let's write this down. What are we doing for next episode?

Lionel (58:12.756)
Why would I not take it?

Jim Infantino (58:16.054)
Okay, it has a common premise of it is not joyless. It's very sweet and very beautiful, not always. I would say the important thing is the acting, the important thing is the script writing. The science fiction part of it is a device. but I the more I get into it, the more I really like it. It pulls on your heartstrings a lot. but the

Lionel (58:18.739)
Is it joyless?

Okay, good.

Lionel (58:32.958)
Okay.

Jim Infantino (58:42.54)
The episode, I think it was episode season two, episode four or five. Might have been, yeah, five, is magnificent. So the show goes along and it follows the plot and all that. I'm just saying that particular episode stands alone. Like you could, I would say, just watch that episode and then watch the whole show. It's it's a gorgeous episode.

Lionel (58:54.676)
Don't don't tell me, 'cause I'm just gonna watch it.

Lionel (59:09.524)
Yeah. It's amazing how sometimes people really get it together. Like there's some episodes. but I'm gonna watch Barton Fink. You're gonna watch what? You're gonna watch you're gonna watch Hail Caesar. Hail Caesar. Yeah.

Jim Infantino (59:19.014)
yeah.

What is it? Hello Caesar? No, what is it? Hello. Hail Caesar. Yeah. And then and then if you want to watch Little Dark Matter, that'd be cool. I th I think it's yeah, I think it's worth it. and that and that's it. Cue the outro.

Lionel (59:35.07)
Okay.

That's it.