Speaker 1: In a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing big down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Many
Speaker 1: nobody see, nobody else you might see what you don't
Speaker 1: need to know. Man, you don't they like you followed
Speaker 1: another story and you got back to feel like that.
Speaker 1: That's the way, Man, go back to na on the panel. Man,
Speaker 1: Now you don't think better? Man, You know.
Speaker 2: There are a few things as rewarding as finding a
Speaker 2: hidden jam. A piece of media, whether a book, a novel,
Speaker 2: a movie, TV show that no one else seems to
Speaker 2: have noticed, but has a lot of quality to it. Look,
Speaker 2: we understand it's mass media, it's never made just for you.
Speaker 2: But the movie that Andy and I are going to
Speaker 2: be discovering, it's like that. I think I saw some
Speaker 2: mutual years ago recommending this film, and without doing any
Speaker 2: research at all, I pulled it up. The Kid Detective
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty to mixed reviews and very
Speaker 2: limited box office success. Failed to make even a tenth
Speaker 2: of its three million dollar budget back. And I never
Speaker 2: understood why it's a great film. It's a very profound
Speaker 2: film at once funny and heartbreaking, and explores many of
Speaker 2: the generational issues that my guests and I have been
Speaker 2: speaking about. What is it to be a gifted kid,
Speaker 2: someone with promise, who followed the instructions of older, well
Speaker 2: meaning people, only to find your life in ruins, in shambles.
Speaker 2: You're an abject failure for following. Parents are looking at
Speaker 2: you ascants, asking you when you're going to get a
Speaker 2: real job and grow up. And this movie has a
Speaker 2: in it. It's very profound, but it's not wrote. The
Speaker 2: solutions and the dilemmas in this movie are real, they're complicated.
Speaker 2: It isn't just the trite pull yourself up by your
Speaker 2: bootstraps or shut up dad, the future is now old man.
Speaker 2: It's a real conversation, a real back and forth, and
Speaker 2: to be honest, a pretty compelling mystery as well. It's
Speaker 2: a great film. I think you should see it. When
Speaker 2: Andy and I discuss it, we get about forty minutes
Speaker 2: through before we get into spoilers. So just watch it right,
Speaker 2: Maybe listen to the first forty minutes, then you stick
Speaker 2: around for us discovered or discussing the conclusion. But I
Speaker 2: recommend it. It's ninety minutes something you can watch with
Speaker 2: the woman. She'll probably enjoy it, And yeah, I enjoyed
Speaker 2: it a ton, both when I watched it the first
Speaker 2: time and then going back through it earlier this week.
Speaker 2: I think you'd get a lot out of it. It's
Speaker 2: really interesting right to see things that are ahead of
Speaker 2: their time, and I view this movie as being ahead
Speaker 2: of its time, both in the generational discourse that we've
Speaker 2: been in for seemingly years now, but also in its structure.
Speaker 2: This movie was a small project headed up by a
Speaker 2: single auteur, not a lot of money, and it might
Speaker 2: have been too early for that, but as we've seen
Speaker 2: with the success of both Obsession and The Back Rooms Movie,
Speaker 2: this is the direction the industry is going, and so
Speaker 2: it's sort of one of these great what ifs. If
Speaker 2: this movie came out now, I think it would be
Speaker 2: a huge success. People are ready for it on multiple levels,
Speaker 2: but it remains that a what if possibility. So I
Speaker 2: highly recommend The Kid Detective. The premise is a little goofy.
Speaker 2: The main character is sort of a hearty boys Encyclopedia Brown.
Speaker 2: As the title says, Kid Detective now grown up in
Speaker 2: a depressed any town ussay, and he discovers a real mystery,
Speaker 2: a real murder connected to his own past in some
Speaker 2: way the Case that Got Away. And if that premise
Speaker 2: sounds stupid, okay, fair enough. This movie is in some
Speaker 2: ways lighthearted, but it is a real heart to it,
Speaker 2: not just that the stakes raise dramatically becomes a real
Speaker 2: serious movie, but also it deals with very real problems.
Speaker 2: What is it to grow up? What is it to
Speaker 2: lose your innocence? And what if getting it? Making it?
Speaker 2: Becoming a success? What does that do to you? What
Speaker 2: does that do to you as a man? Like I said,
Speaker 2: great film, I can't recommend it enough. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: here's the discussion with Andy Edwards before we get into it.
Speaker 2: Though I guess I shouldn't say without further ado and
Speaker 2: then distract from that. But if you want the episodes
Speaker 2: early and ad free, you can throw me a few
Speaker 2: bucks on Patreon, substack or gum road.
Speaker 1: It's what I do.
Speaker 2: It's how I support myself and how you get access
Speaker 2: to my stuff without annoying casino apps. You know, I
Speaker 2: wish I had the option to do, you know, something
Speaker 2: a little more professional, you know, sell you dog food
Speaker 2: or you know, mortgages. I guess that's what people do,
Speaker 2: maybe even raid shadow legends, but I don't have that.
Speaker 2: So it's the way I can do this in a
Speaker 2: way to support myself is by ads. And I know
Speaker 2: they're annoying, and as a way to get out of it,
Speaker 2: you might have to pay the toll. It's not a lot, right,
Speaker 2: It's about a cup of coffee, and I put out
Speaker 2: a lot of content, right you guys on the free feed,
Speaker 2: you aren't missing anything. I'm not holding out on you,
Speaker 2: but as sort of a sweetener, obviously, you get rid
Speaker 2: of the ads and you get the content a day
Speaker 2: or so early. Anyway, here's Andy Edwards. All right, Andrew Edwards,
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Jay Burden Show. How you doing, man?
Speaker 1: Good? Glad to be with you, my friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're here to review one of my favorite movies. Uh,
Speaker 2: not a movie that you know really has It's sort
Speaker 2: of an undiscovered gem in my mind, not one you
Speaker 2: hear often referenced. Kind of an interesting, very very small
Speaker 2: budget film, but one that's really struck with me since
Speaker 2: I watched it the first time, you know, five six
Speaker 2: years ago, and so I'm curious before we get into it,
Speaker 2: how do you like this film Andy.
Speaker 1: Well, there's my dog perfect timing. I gotta say, as
Speaker 1: I kind of alluded to before we hit record, this
Speaker 1: is one of the best recommendations that I remember ever receiving.
Speaker 1: And it's got to be in you know, whatever you say,
Speaker 1: top five, top ten, like of recent memory. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a I don't so I looked up a
Speaker 1: little bit. I had a little bit of time to
Speaker 1: do some research, which I think we can get into.
Speaker 1: But man, it was I mean five out of five
Speaker 1: all day, ten, ten, whatever you're going to say. You know,
Speaker 1: it falls into this very interesting genre that I hope.
Speaker 1: I think we've actually talked about it before. I know
Speaker 1: I've talked about it on at other places. It's kind
Speaker 1: of this emergent subgenre of them. It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a mashup right of like Fish out of Water
Speaker 1: with the noir detective character. But it's not entirely just
Speaker 1: tropy like that. It's it's more, it's deeper. And this
Speaker 1: is again if you want to touch on this, there's
Speaker 1: quite a bit to examined there. But overall, like you know,
Speaker 1: general big big picture impressions, I don't remember a better
Speaker 1: movie like of this budget maybe ever I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this thing is hitting so far above its weight
Speaker 1: that it's to me anyway. I know that a lot
Speaker 1: of this is personal. All movies are personal, right you.
Speaker 1: You know Little Mermaid is going to hit a little
Speaker 1: bit differently than Chinatown for a grown man maybe. But
Speaker 1: for whatever reason I was, I wasn't floored because I
Speaker 1: had so much flowing through my mind after I watched it,
Speaker 1: but I was ah highly, highly impressed, deeply moved. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we are talking about the twenty twenty film The
Speaker 2: Kid Detective, which, as I was telling Andy, I think
Speaker 2: I saw it somewhere on the Internet and because it
Speaker 2: was COVID time, just sort of threw it on the TV, right,
Speaker 2: very little research, had almost no expectation in it whatsoever,
Speaker 2: and is really captivated by this film. The premise is
Speaker 2: pretty simple. Our leading man, a Abe apple Bomb, is
Speaker 2: sort of an Encyclopedia Brown esque character. You know, when
Speaker 2: he was a young teenager, he was the talk of
Speaker 2: the town, given to the key to the city for
Speaker 2: solving the sort of simple small town mysteries, right, who
Speaker 2: stole the money from the fundraiser inconsequential things like that.
Speaker 2: But when we meet him, he's a thirty two year
Speaker 2: old loser right living in a rundown apartment, still running
Speaker 2: the same business. His parents are constantly getting on him
Speaker 2: to you know, hey, man, when are you going to
Speaker 2: get a real job. And what sort of incites this
Speaker 2: forward is he gets an actual case the murder, the
Speaker 2: horrific murder of a student at the local high school,
Speaker 2: and that's sort of what draws us into this film.
Speaker 2: One thing I noticed actually right off the beginning is
Speaker 2: that this movie has a real soundtrack to it, which
Speaker 2: is uncommon in especially very low budget films. But it
Speaker 2: actually has an orchestral score, which is rare in films period.
Speaker 2: And you'll hear very kind of traditional film orchestral music
Speaker 2: throughout the whole thing. And of course there's you know,
Speaker 2: pop music of course kind of relevant to whichever era
Speaker 2: we're in, but it's something you don't see a lot.
Speaker 2: And this movie has a really unique kind of potent
Speaker 2: combo of humor and like really serious drama to it,
Speaker 2: and having one does not cheapen the other. And especially
Speaker 2: for a movie that came out in twenty twenty, it's
Speaker 2: so rare to see a film that balances those well,
Speaker 2: because there are laugh out loud moments in this you know,
Speaker 2: there's moments where the dialogue is very switty and funny,
Speaker 2: and then the conclusion to it is I mean to say,
Speaker 2: it's a gut punch as an understatement, Andy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I thought about this this morning as
Speaker 1: I was preparing to talk with you, like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to touch the ending. I don't want to because,
Speaker 1: like I mean, it was Yeah, I mean, you said
Speaker 1: it pretty pretty succinctly, and I think, very well, Jay
Speaker 1: is there's this mixture of very serious action and and
Speaker 1: but this constant I want to I wanted to say
Speaker 1: as I was watching it, I kept sensing like the
Speaker 1: boomer versus guy, and I came up with this idea
Speaker 1: like it's a post boomer movie where gen X had
Speaker 1: this whole thing like, well, it's all ironic, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't really true. And then they tried to put this
Speaker 1: on the millennials or whoever comes after gen X, and
Speaker 1: that's not really true. This movie somehow is very very
Speaker 1: special in this specific way and the way that it
Speaker 1: managed the seriousness of the topic, even in the title
Speaker 1: The Kid Detective, and even when you first started talking
Speaker 1: about it, like the first few things you say about it,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a some shit I'm not really into,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of mash up little kid movie.
Speaker 1: It isn't that at all. And it reminded me along
Speaker 1: the way of something a mutual friend of ours has
Speaker 1: said that guys in our generations probably mind being oldest,
Speaker 1: and on down the line, we're not really becoming men
Speaker 1: in the classical sense. It doesn't matter how how tightly
Speaker 1: your life has woven together, how much Nietzsche you read,
Speaker 1: how much you work out, how like dialed in and
Speaker 1: focused you are. It's really a contextual issue. I think
Speaker 1: where the waters we're swimming in are are defining not
Speaker 1: just the possibilities, but but the ways that we can react.
Speaker 1: And so it's forcing something very much like the tone
Speaker 1: that like, the tonality of this film is what is
Speaker 1: so brilliant, I mean just brilliant. To me. I'm crushed
Speaker 1: by the way that this thing was a flop. Supposedly
Speaker 1: it was like three million bucks and they made less
Speaker 1: than four hundred thousand dollars on it. The guy, I
Speaker 1: forget his name, Evan somebody, the director writer a tour.
Speaker 1: He hasn't been touched, you know, for since that's been
Speaker 1: six years. Apparently he spent a lot of time building
Speaker 1: his little, you know, debut masterpiece. But it's tough because
Speaker 1: this guy, whatever he is doing, and maybe a few
Speaker 1: of these other examples are hitting on the thing. It's
Speaker 1: it's as if that specific voice is the one that's
Speaker 1: being actively crushed. And it's sort of like our our thing,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. You hear this a
Speaker 1: lot like Voice of a Generation or all this sort
Speaker 1: of kind of problem. But in this case, I have
Speaker 1: to say, man, there it's something again about the absolute
Speaker 1: seriousness of the topic which is handled at a dramatic level,
Speaker 1: at a writing level, like you were sort of suggesting
Speaker 1: about the ending, I mean, gobsmacked, like you're just not
Speaker 1: ready for. I was not ready for the depth, not
Speaker 1: just to the action and the plot, which are all superlative,
Speaker 1: the character, the dialogue, and the reveal of what's happening
Speaker 1: in the relationship between basically the main two characters. They're
Speaker 1: you know again, I don't want to get too close
Speaker 1: to and give anything away, but the nemesis, let's say,
Speaker 1: and your hero is dude, deeply profound. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: I was just I loved it. I was like man,
Speaker 1: this is so good.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think the reason that it speaks to
Speaker 2: you and I in d is that there are a
Speaker 2: couple things about it that the way that the because
Speaker 2: the past in this is year two thousand, that's when
Speaker 2: you know this this first disappearance happens. It's of Abe
Speaker 2: Appleman's quote unquote secretary right in his little play Detective Agency.
Speaker 2: She's the mayor's daughter, and she goes missing. And unlike
Speaker 2: the previous sort of you know, children's book cases, this
Speaker 2: is the one he can't actually solve. Right, he's a child.
Speaker 2: This is a real, very serious event. And when we
Speaker 2: go back and forth, it's sort of interesting that we
Speaker 2: see a stark difference in how his parents treat him.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We see this moment later in the film where his
Speaker 2: parents basically are you know, reacting to him solving all
Speaker 2: these cases, just saying like, oh, you know, we're so
Speaker 2: proud of you, you're so smart. And you contrast that
Speaker 2: to when they come over to his kind of rundown
Speaker 2: shithole apartment where he's living with some bumb and it's
Speaker 2: clear they're they're kind of disgusted with him, right, They're
Speaker 2: ready for him to move on. And I think it's
Speaker 2: so poignant because you know, I think many of us
Speaker 2: were recognized for, you know, some sort of talent early
Speaker 2: in life and told like, oh, go pursue your dreams.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's like, well, what is what is.
Speaker 2: Pursuing your dreams look like when you're thirty? Right, Well,
Speaker 2: if you did it, you know, you're basically doing the
Speaker 2: same thing. You know, you followed that advice, which okay,
Speaker 2: maybe was just kind of you know, advice given as
Speaker 2: a child, and now it's it's sort of ruined your life.
Speaker 2: And I think it's interesting the characterization of the town
Speaker 2: in and of itself, right, this kind of small town
Speaker 2: willow Brook in Canada, because there's a really sort of
Speaker 2: a repeated motif of him walking down the city center
Speaker 2: and when he's a kid, you know, he's the hero
Speaker 2: of the town. You know, all the townspeople are waving
Speaker 2: to him and smiling and shaking his hand, and it
Speaker 2: looks like a clean, nice place. And then the first
Speaker 2: time we see him walking into his office, right, he's overslept.
Speaker 2: His disrespectful goth secretary is you know, telling him that
Speaker 2: he's late to work. And not only is this town
Speaker 2: like a complete wreck, and there's there's graffiti everywhere, all
Speaker 2: the towns are kind of or all the shopfronts are
Speaker 2: boarded up. But you see the people around him, even
Speaker 2: in that look at him as a failure. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a great sort of recurring character which is the in
Speaker 2: the ice cream shop owner, right, And we learn that
Speaker 2: he is, you know, as a kid, was given free
Speaker 2: ice cream for life, and now he's a thirty two
Speaker 2: year old man still cashing in on that, you know,
Speaker 2: something that happened, you know, over fifteen years ago. And
Speaker 2: you could just see the disgust on the guy's face, like,
Speaker 2: come on, man, you've got to grow up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that that tension between a sort of
Speaker 2: promising adolescence and a faltering adulthood is one that I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people have experienced.
Speaker 1: You hit it on the head, buddy, I mean the
Speaker 1: nail on the head. I have experienced that. I continue
Speaker 1: to sort of experience that every person, every like longtime
Speaker 1: friend that I know. You know, it doesn't really wash
Speaker 1: anymore to imagine that success in our current set of
Speaker 1: social organization is something to really be all that proud of.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that, well, I wanted to
Speaker 1: say one thing before because I'll forget it later because
Speaker 1: you touched on it right there, this issue with his parents,
Speaker 1: which is hilarious. I hope that listeners. It's very difficult
Speaker 1: for Jay and I to translate this because this is
Speaker 1: such a brilliantly like built movie. It's it's it's got
Speaker 1: like those that that masterful, delicate touch of the Coen Brothers,
Speaker 1: but it's also its own thing. It's not really derivative.
Speaker 1: So in speaking about this relationship with his parents, you think, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's kind of the stakes there are
Speaker 1: sort of low and and right, I mean, but they're not. Again,
Speaker 1: there's some very heavy stuff going on at that topical
Speaker 1: like push pull action level of the movie. But the
Speaker 1: way that that is integrated with the mentality of our
Speaker 1: main character is brilliant, and it's it's more than brilliant.
Speaker 1: It's u It's one of these things we're like, man,
Speaker 1: this is what movies were supposed to do. They were
Speaker 1: sort of supposed to make dudes like me and you
Speaker 1: maybe have a sense of some Catharsis, you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm not the only guy out here doing this
Speaker 1: because there are little moments of this movie. That that
Speaker 1: I said before we hit record, like hit quite deep,
Speaker 1: like I was surprised how how I was like man
Speaker 1: and and nothing more so than the issue with the parents.
Speaker 1: But you also touched another on another bit, Jay that
Speaker 1: this ass so the world he's in has also decayed,
Speaker 1: and I it's not a political film, like it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be saying, oh, this is about nine to
Speaker 1: eleven or some jive like that. And it's also not
Speaker 1: just some solipsistic thing where this this hero of ours
Speaker 1: who's not been able to you know, bring his his
Speaker 1: gifts to fruition. He's living in a in a decaying society,
Speaker 1: independent of whatever his accomplishments are, and that plays in
Speaker 1: I think deeply into into that revelation at the very end,
Speaker 1: which to me was a revelation, but you know, not
Speaker 1: the kind of climactic end, but the the denoment sort
Speaker 1: of end. Dan new Maw, however that you know you
Speaker 1: want to say it, but I'll hand it back to
Speaker 1: you because I think I think the stuff with the
Speaker 1: with the the way the characters situated visa the his
Speaker 1: his environment, uh it is is part of the magic
Speaker 1: of this movie.
Speaker 2: No definitely, and you see that repeatedly when you know
Speaker 2: people are asking him questions about this investigation, his initial
Speaker 2: instincts are incredibly childish, because that's the entire body of work.
Speaker 2: You know. For instance, when the plot shifts when Carolyn,
Speaker 2: this girl whose boyfriend has been murdered, comes in and says, hey,
Speaker 2: can you solve the murder of my boyfriend who has
Speaker 2: been pretty horrifically killed, stabbed fourteen times, found in a river?
Speaker 2: And we do get this sort of again kind of
Speaker 2: sense that the town has changed. When the park that
Speaker 2: he's been you know, walking through as an adult and
Speaker 2: flashing back to what it was when he was a child,
Speaker 2: well it's you know, police arm in arm looking through
Speaker 2: the water with flashlights, right, sirens and the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yes, so we get that sense that he
Speaker 2: is out of his depth, and it's a source of honestly,
Speaker 2: a lot of the comedy in this film. And there
Speaker 2: are no real jokes in this movie, per se. There
Speaker 2: are funny situations, but you know, there's never sort of
Speaker 2: a wink at the camera. And there's one which is
Speaker 2: a really horrifically grim scene where he has you know,
Speaker 2: started to unravel the mystery, and he has gone to
Speaker 2: the parents of the murdered boy, and he's laying out
Speaker 2: what he thinks is happening at this kind of intermediate stage,
Speaker 2: and then the boy's father asks him a simple question like, oh,
Speaker 2: have you considered you know, he's not actually a drug dealer,
Speaker 2: He's not a bad kid. He was framed for it
Speaker 2: that the murdered boy. And you can see on his
Speaker 2: face he clearly has not thought about that whatsoever. And
Speaker 2: he comes up with some line like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm keeping my mind open. But the kid's boy or
Speaker 2: the boy's dad knows. He says, what, you just believe
Speaker 2: the first thing that anyone tells you, You're an idiot.
Speaker 2: And it is funny because you realize at the same
Speaker 2: time he's actually did just believe whatever anyone told him.
Speaker 2: But it's also a complete gut punch because the kid's
Speaker 2: dad is obviously distraught. He storms upstairs and his child
Speaker 2: has been murdered. And that's a sort of good for
Speaker 2: the kind of balance of like there is a part
Speaker 2: of this movie that's darkly funny. Another example is, you know,
Speaker 2: he is a massive loser, and so when we see
Speaker 2: him interacting with other people, they all kind of pity him,
Speaker 2: they'll kind of want him to get over it and
Speaker 2: get a real job. But also just the fact that
Speaker 2: the way they get around in this whole movie is
Speaker 2: that the sixteen year old who hired him is driving
Speaker 2: them around and her grandma is like convertible the saber
Speaker 2: or something. She's his driver. And there's never a moment
Speaker 2: where it's really played for laughs, but it is just
Speaker 2: a funny situation, like this guy's a massive loser, and
Speaker 2: you know there he is able to redeem himself. And
Speaker 2: but it's a continually just amusing film.
Speaker 1: Speaking of like this constant sort of disappointment one of them.
Speaker 1: And I'm jumping ahead a little bit in the timeline Jay,
Speaker 1: but there's there's the investigation, if you will, moves on
Speaker 1: a little bit, and it's you know, it's pulling our
Speaker 1: hero forward. And he winds up in the cop shop
Speaker 1: talking to I guess he was black or this dark
Speaker 1: dark skin of some sort, the police chief who he
Speaker 1: has this ongoing relationship with going back to when he
Speaker 1: was a little kid, and he's talking about he has
Speaker 1: that like vulnerable moment where he he's saying, like, why
Speaker 1: didn't you why don't you call me back? You know,
Speaker 1: when I inquired about the case that I couldn't solve
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, which sort of sent me
Speaker 1: into this downward spiral that I'm still in now. I
Speaker 1: think these are the same. I might be conflating things here,
Speaker 1: but the chief says, you know, a very like basic
Speaker 1: thing like you were a kid, dude, and there was
Speaker 1: a missing you know, a missing child, and I'm not
Speaker 1: we can't depend on a twelve year old boy to
Speaker 1: solve this case, like this was some serious shit, and
Speaker 1: the police chief knows that this is basically destroyed the
Speaker 1: guy's life. You know, he we may not. There's a
Speaker 1: sense like like he's a prodigy. I mean he's he's
Speaker 1: he does have skills, like he is smarter than most
Speaker 1: people around him. If you haven't has that line. But
Speaker 1: I used to think I was so far ahead of
Speaker 1: the game, and then I woke up one day and
Speaker 1: I realized, wow, I'm not even in the game. The
Speaker 1: game has just blown me by. So to me, this
Speaker 1: is like truly genius stuff of the like of the
Speaker 1: the most important bit. And it leads to this cop
Speaker 1: at saying like, at some point in your life, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to decide, you know. The implication is
Speaker 1: to grow up or whatever. And this might be for you.
Speaker 1: He's saying this as the new case that you're on,
Speaker 1: this might be the moment where you need to do that.
Speaker 1: And the cop is not saying, hey, but you need
Speaker 1: to give up this bullshit about you know, you're some
Speaker 1: like detective, you're a kid still in you know, in
Speaker 1: a man's body. The cop doesn't actually say that to him,
Speaker 1: whereas the nemesis later does allude to this, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's easier to just give up, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: easier to just give up. And I didn't catch it
Speaker 1: as it flowed by, but then right after the movie,
Speaker 1: I realized these are little polar voices. This is the
Speaker 1: evil and this is the good, and the good is
Speaker 1: not saying to you this condescending sort of shit that
Speaker 1: he gets from his aunt, which is like, well, you
Speaker 1: know you're following your dreams and there's nothing more you
Speaker 1: can do, then that's just great. You know, eventually it'll
Speaker 1: all come together. No, it won't just come together just
Speaker 1: because you follow your dreams. You're going to make some
Speaker 1: sort of internal transformation born out of the pain that
Speaker 1: you're going through and you're going to define yourself? Are
Speaker 1: you this dude, no matter what anybody he tells you,
Speaker 1: or are you not? And to me that was the
Speaker 1: crux of the whole movie because in the end, it
Speaker 1: isn't as if he has some rocky like you know,
Speaker 1: some rock like dig deep. He just simply will not
Speaker 1: let go. You know. That's to me when he kind
Speaker 1: of he's just hanging on to these bits, these clues.
Speaker 1: And eventually, even though all of this stuff has come
Speaker 1: down the line, you know, he turns that corner and
Speaker 1: it isn't like spectacular, but it is again happening all
Speaker 1: within the plot of this very serious stuff, which does
Speaker 1: wind him back to where he ends up in the film.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to touch on that thing out the
Speaker 1: cop alone seemed the warrior sort of archetype presents to
Speaker 1: him in a very neutral like, sort of well detached,
Speaker 1: a non invested way. He just simply says, maybe this
Speaker 1: is the thing that's going to determine for you whether
Speaker 1: you grow up or not. But what growing up is
Speaker 1: isn't quite what it what I think most people would imply.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the interesting thing about the several things
Speaker 2: there which one and ought to speak carefully about this
Speaker 2: to avoid spoilers, but that conversation at the very end
Speaker 2: of the film or the climax of the film is
Speaker 2: echoed earlier. They have a conversation about the school where
Speaker 2: this happened, and the same character says, some days you
Speaker 2: just want to give up, right, sort of at least
Speaker 2: planting that idea in your head earlier. There's a couple
Speaker 2: things in this that I want to mention because if
Speaker 2: you look at the end of the film and Andy
Speaker 2: and I are dancing around how this film has resolved,
Speaker 2: not because of it's a real, you know, m Night
Speaker 2: Shyamalan style head scratcher, like, oh, you won't like once
Speaker 2: you know the secret, the movie doesn't have any value.
Speaker 2: But this movie is genuinely, very very good and you
Speaker 2: should watch it. And I don't want to rob you
Speaker 2: of that, you know, coming into everything dropping into place,
Speaker 2: because I have watched this film two or three times
Speaker 2: now and it holds up remarkably well. But I don't
Speaker 2: want to take that from you. So that's why we are,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of dancing around it. But there's one
Speaker 2: thing that I want to mention that is sort of
Speaker 2: a source of a lot of the levity in the movie,
Speaker 2: which is the sort of gap between his methods and
Speaker 2: the situation he is involved in. You know, we've said
Speaker 2: he is a kid detective, and so one of the
Speaker 2: things he talks about, there's sort of monologue talking about
Speaker 2: his career. You know, he's like and then there's the
Speaker 2: moment where you know you're sneaking into the house. You
Speaker 2: realize you know they're coming in, so you hide in
Speaker 2: the closet, hold your breath, and then you sneak right
Speaker 2: the classic moment you've seen from any film. And what
Speaker 2: makes it so funny is that that moment happens twice
Speaker 2: in the film. Yeah, and every time it goes about
Speaker 2: as horribly as you can imagine. There's never a moment
Speaker 2: where it works. And there's this great contrast between you know,
Speaker 2: that this flashback where he's sneaking into some old lady's
Speaker 2: house as an impetuous twelve year old and she opens
Speaker 2: the door and she goes, oh, you rascal, and then
Speaker 2: the moment which ends him up, you know, which which
Speaker 2: leads to him in police custody, which is he's sneaking
Speaker 2: into one of the murder victim's friends hopes and so
Speaker 2: first he's in his closet and he realizes is a
Speaker 2: fat kid. He just sits on the computer all day.
Speaker 2: So he spends like three hours watching this guy on
Speaker 2: the computer, tries to sneak out, ends up in his
Speaker 2: sister's room. Yeah, and then of course what he's discovered
Speaker 2: in you know, a nine year old's bedroom. He gets
Speaker 2: arrested for you know, being a pedophile, and there's this
Speaker 2: hilarious moment where and he sort of hits rock bottom
Speaker 2: after this, you know, he goes on a bender and
Speaker 2: he's talking to his secretary, who is honestly a very
Speaker 2: funny character in this you know, this kind of like
Speaker 2: diner goth like very very to put it, wildly unsupportive.
Speaker 2: Secretary calls him and she goes, well, the good news
Speaker 2: is you're in the paper. So he goes, oh, like,
Speaker 2: what did it say? And he says, it says you
Speaker 2: were found in the bedroom of a nine year old
Speaker 2: girl masturbating, And his response is probably the funniest line
Speaker 2: in the movie. He just goes, I wasn't masturbating, and
Speaker 2: then the scene changes again. It's incredibly funny, but there's
Speaker 2: like the character is not laughing with you. It's not
Speaker 2: presented as a joke. It's just the situation is absurd.
Speaker 2: And it's such a tonal masterpiece to hold both of
Speaker 2: these at once, because this is the moment where he
Speaker 2: is closest to giving up, where he's embarrassed himself even
Speaker 2: more if possible. You know, we see him sort of
Speaker 2: you know, hit rock bottom. But to your point, he
Speaker 2: can't let himself give up. He can't let this sixteen
Speaker 2: year old girl down. And one of the repeat things
Speaker 2: that happens is that people are asking him, oh, what
Speaker 2: case are you want because the implication is you just
Speaker 2: find missing cats and you know, you find out if
Speaker 2: someone's gay, which is another joke sort of repeated a
Speaker 2: couple times in the movie. That's very funny. That was it.
Speaker 2: But there's this there's this letdown where he says, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I've been tracked, I've been tapped to be
Speaker 2: part of this murder investigation. And then when he's asked
Speaker 2: for more details, he admits that, oh, it isn't the police,
Speaker 2: it's you know, the sixteen year old girlfriend. And every
Speaker 2: time someone tells him, like, you know, you can't accept
Speaker 2: money for this right, you can't just take advantage of
Speaker 2: this you know teenager, right, who's put our faith in you?
Speaker 2: And again, I think that that's such a kind of
Speaker 2: master l one because even then he he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, I can't. I can't do that. So he
Speaker 2: isn't interested in this financially, like it's part of this
Speaker 2: sort of event.
Speaker 1: Sorry, what's that, Andy, Nothing? No, I was just I
Speaker 1: was hitting again. Great, that's crucial because you find out
Speaker 1: in the end that he is like he's a true
Speaker 1: sorry for the you know the pun here, but he's
Speaker 1: a true detective. He's in it for the game. He
Speaker 1: is in it for the love of the game. And
Speaker 1: the fact that the sixteen year old girl has quote
Speaker 1: hired him and is using her grandmother's car to drive
Speaker 1: him around. She has no money herself, she didn't get hired.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, he's an absolute loser in this
Speaker 1: in this movie, but the love of the game, that
Speaker 1: very thing that the adults and the boomers are saying,
Speaker 1: and his parents specifically are just like, you know, beside themselves, like,
Speaker 1: bro give it up. You're not this thing, this fantasy
Speaker 1: joke that we supported when you were a little kid.
Speaker 1: And he hit. To his credit, he's saying, yeah, I am,
Speaker 1: I am actually that thing, that's who I really am.
Speaker 1: And to balance all of those things the interior of
Speaker 1: this character against such a delicate comedy, I guess that's
Speaker 1: part of the magic the way this movie works. But
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I just wanted to throw that in there
Speaker 1: before the sorry to derail you if I owed it up.
Speaker 2: Not at all. There's there's a very kind of repeated
Speaker 2: motif where he goes around to you know, continue investigating,
Speaker 2: and again nobody takes him seriously. And we see in
Speaker 2: this also to your point earlier, that this town has
Speaker 2: degraded and sort of passed him by, because you know,
Speaker 2: when he's talking to this girl trying to find out,
Speaker 2: you know, where should we go? Where should we look,
Speaker 2: he's constantly asking her about, oh, you know, the the
Speaker 2: Red Shoe gang and the kids on the stoop. This
Speaker 2: sort of like Americana small town.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I guess you would say, like, you know, mischievous kids stuff, right,
Speaker 2: not on the level of you know, drug trafficking and
Speaker 2: murder that we see, you know, throughout the film. And
Speaker 2: there's a really it's both a funny and an interesting
Speaker 2: moment where he goes up to the quote unquote the
Speaker 2: kids on the stoop, which are basically where the you know,
Speaker 2: the druggy kids hang out and listen to hip hop music.
Speaker 2: And at this point they have found in the jacket
Speaker 2: of the murdered boy a little a little container, a
Speaker 2: little pill bottle full of illicit drugs. And what it
Speaker 2: is revealed that basically the local biker gang is running
Speaker 2: drugs into schools through nerves that effectively this school is
Speaker 2: on lockdown. The principal has uh access to everyone's locker
Speaker 2: because of this drug problem, and so the idea was, well,
Speaker 2: we'll have the kids who are beyond reproach hand out
Speaker 2: the drugs, and so he goes to of course the
Speaker 2: kids who use drugs, goes up, asks what's in the bottle?
Speaker 2: They tell him, and then he's like, all right, who's
Speaker 2: you know, who's your dealer? Right? Where'd you get this from?
Speaker 2: And they give him a false trail, so they go,
Speaker 2: you know, they ask for drugs. It's sort of an
Speaker 2: embarrassing situation because they were told to blow it off.
Speaker 2: And when he comes back and we've seen him being
Speaker 2: this sort of bumbling, ineffectual loser like one of the
Speaker 2: opening scenes of the film is one of the kids
Speaker 2: he got in trouble, who he got suspended from school
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, beats him up behind a bar. You know,
Speaker 2: he's still mad about it. Everyone just uws him as
Speaker 2: this kind of loser. But he goes back to this
Speaker 2: kid who's like fourteen, and he starts making one of him,
Speaker 2: and he just runs up in cold cox him, which
Speaker 2: is a surprise to everyone, including the girl with him.
Speaker 1: But it's just.
Speaker 2: A really really funny shot that you know, you saw
Speaker 2: it happen the first time, where he goes up and
Speaker 2: he's kind of awkward talking to kids, and then the
Speaker 2: next time he just comes in and smashes kid and
Speaker 2: then just sort of, you know, beats the real story
Speaker 2: out of him. But uh, that's one of my one
Speaker 2: of the scenes in the film I thought is just
Speaker 2: kind of particularly funny and also balances that kind of
Speaker 2: serious and comedic tone because you do get the idea
Speaker 2: that this tone is in a bad way. It's not
Speaker 2: nearly as cohesive. The kids who were getting up to
Speaker 2: mischief are now getting up to hard drugs, getting involved
Speaker 2: with hardened criminals. So it blends that tone as well
Speaker 2: with a payoff that's genuinely hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the speaking of this tone and setting thing, I
Speaker 1: kept you know, there's like leafy trees, there's deciduous trees
Speaker 1: throughout the throughout the film, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so this isn't on the West Coast. And I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is in you know, the mid
Speaker 1: Atlantic or or the Midwest or something. And then of
Speaker 1: course I found out later that he's Canadian. It was
Speaker 1: probably filmed in Canada, and it's this it's just this
Speaker 1: nether place. It's neither. It's it's totally recognizable in terms
Speaker 1: of the suburban layout and the predominantly kind of you know,
Speaker 1: American vibe to it. But the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 1: locate itself, if you will, like in Los Angeles or
Speaker 1: in Ohio or whatever, it ends up being really really
Speaker 1: useful because it's it stands in for I mean, all
Speaker 1: of North America, I guess where, Like it's we're in
Speaker 1: the k and we've been in de Kay at least
Speaker 1: since two thousand and two thousand and one. Are like
Speaker 1: obvious decay, like very very undeniable decay.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a there's a moment in this, uh that
Speaker 2: kind of proves that where when he's talking to you know,
Speaker 2: the girl that kind of insides the action. They're looking
Speaker 2: around his office and it's it's covered with all of
Speaker 2: these trophies of you know, his his bright youth, you know,
Speaker 2: the photos of him in the local newspaper. And he mentions,
Speaker 2: you know, the mayor of the town. It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know he he gave me the key of the
Speaker 2: city and yeah, the girl funds, Oh, he's the guy
Speaker 2: that hung himself. Yeah, and he you know, he's sort
Speaker 2: of crestfalled, understandableeding, but was well. He also started the
Speaker 2: Potato Festival, you know. And it's this sort of idea
Speaker 2: of you know, this once vibrant anywhere USA or anywhere
Speaker 2: Canada community that feels like a you know, a two
Speaker 2: street town anywhere. Yeah, over the twenty years has gone
Speaker 2: from being a sort of place where there's a vibrant
Speaker 2: civic life to a place where you know, the mayor
Speaker 2: hangs himself in his office and yeah, I mean it
Speaker 2: is it's sort of this kind of atmosphere through the
Speaker 2: whole thing that makes it incredibly, incredibly compelling, because you
Speaker 2: do have this feeling that like yet, sure it probably
Speaker 2: was filmed in you know, Ontario or whatever, but it
Speaker 2: feels like it feels like my town or oh, that
Speaker 2: feels like your town. And again, it's what And I
Speaker 2: hate the term relatable because it's so often used to
Speaker 2: just excuse horrible characters. But part of what's so compelling
Speaker 2: about this film is I think we all kind of
Speaker 2: look at Am and you're like, yeah, that's yeah, that's me,
Speaker 2: you know, at least a little bit, and yeah, it's
Speaker 2: It's a film I genuinely love and I, like I said,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it in a couple of years, and
Speaker 2: I was really pleased at how well it held up.
Speaker 2: You know, my memory of it was just as good.
Speaker 2: One of the other things that I want to mention
Speaker 2: in this is the this sort of repeated kind of
Speaker 2: motif of sort of harsh reality crushing, the kind of
Speaker 2: childish interpretation, you know. So for instance, right, we see
Speaker 2: you know him as a child, you know, taking on
Speaker 2: these store taking on these cases with like a sense
Speaker 2: of wonderment. Right, I'm going to find out who did it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to solve the issue. And then contrast that
Speaker 2: to the other small time cases we see him getting,
Speaker 2: you know, as an adult, and when a woman comes in,
Speaker 2: you know, looking for a cat, his first response is,
Speaker 2: you know, don't you think it's dead. So, at least
Speaker 2: before this case, we see that he has been kind
Speaker 2: of fully he's become fully cynical. You know, there's no
Speaker 2: part of him that believes the truth is actually out there.
Speaker 2: It's simply the kind of most easy, simple to hand
Speaker 2: kind of explanation, which I think is what makes that
Speaker 2: scene with the murdered boy's father so interesting is that
Speaker 2: this man, who obviously is not particularly supportive, he doesn't
Speaker 2: like Abe, but he just asked him, like, oh, so
Speaker 2: you just believe the first thing you hear, You believe
Speaker 2: the kind of you know, most probable explanation. Okham's razor.
Speaker 2: It's probably the least exciting, least interesting thing. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I think that's an interesting moment because in this horrible
Speaker 2: condemnation of his character, we see that, wait, there's actually
Speaker 2: an insight there, and there's actually something that will prove
Speaker 2: pivotal to the plot another way in which right this
Speaker 2: film is just masterfully written.
Speaker 1: I love the fact that he was Asian, you know,
Speaker 1: there was there was one other kind of funny not
Speaker 1: quite anti dei bit, but where where the the girlfriend
Speaker 1: who has hired the detective has realized that Rigami is
Speaker 1: not Chinese happen. She's like, Man, I'm such racist for
Speaker 1: making this assumption. So there's there's some awareness on the
Speaker 1: director's part of this. But it's a.
Speaker 2: Very funny moment, to be fair, because it has been
Speaker 2: a pivotal block point at this point, like to this,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of section of the film that everyone
Speaker 2: just assumed that he did it because he was Asian.
Speaker 2: And again, the film is not beating your head over
Speaker 2: with that, but it's funny because you sort of have
Speaker 2: the realization that, like, wait a minute, I also thought
Speaker 2: that just because he was Asian.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And with the father, I mean he he just
Speaker 1: asks a series of very basic questions and our detective,
Speaker 1: our hero is, as you say, like he's just leveled.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's still operating basically at kid level in
Speaker 1: terms of his his detective prowess, you know. And but
Speaker 1: I'll just I mean, there's something really great about that
Speaker 1: scene that you already mentioned, but I'll mention it again
Speaker 1: where the father's lost his child who we never really meet,
Speaker 1: so we as the viewers aren't totally attached to this
Speaker 1: dead kid, but I mean I was. I was able
Speaker 1: to empathize with the father enough. While the father too
Speaker 1: is also not a just outright dismissive of our total
Speaker 1: loser hero because I mean he's a he's in a
Speaker 1: the worst spot that you could probably be in as
Speaker 1: as a living human being. I mean, your kid's gone,
Speaker 1: the cops aren't doing shit, and now there's this you know,
Speaker 1: once bright shine kid detective who showed up at your
Speaker 1: house and he's an out joke, and the father just
Speaker 1: poses these few utterly logical and basic questions that I mean,
Speaker 1: you and I would ask, anybody would ask, but have
Speaker 1: completely evaded our hero Abe. And then the father just quietly,
Speaker 1: like with this weird dignity, almost just stoic. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. He just gets up and kind
Speaker 1: of walks up the stairs, and you see him walk
Speaker 1: up those stairs. I thought that was just incredibly well done.
Speaker 1: It was fun once again, it's funny, it's deep, it's confusing,
Speaker 1: it's all these things.
Speaker 2: So at this point, Andy, I think we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to rip the band aid off and talk about the
Speaker 2: conclusion of this film.
Speaker 1: Let's give you forty minutes, yeap.
Speaker 2: Watch the movie. It's horrible podcasting to tell you to
Speaker 2: leave the episode early, but you should. You can find
Speaker 2: this film anywhere. It's like ninety minutes, right. It's it's
Speaker 2: a bit grim, but you know what, your your wife
Speaker 2: will probably like it. But we have this kind of
Speaker 2: slow build up realizing that there's much more to this murder,
Speaker 2: and in fact, it is connected to the disappearance of
Speaker 2: what's her name, Gracie Gullis right, the mayor's daughter, and
Speaker 2: we obviously find and here repeatedly these kind of origami roses.
Speaker 2: You know, we mentioned the joke that everyone thinks it's
Speaker 2: the Asian kid, who, to be fair, was dating Caroline,
Speaker 2: the kind of female lead in this and there's a
Speaker 2: supporting character. I mentioned the kind of fat you know,
Speaker 2: gamer kid earlier. And what we find out after a
Speaker 2: breaks into his house and goes through his things ultimately
Speaker 2: to be found and important to the beliefs as a
Speaker 2: pedophile was that he had an unrecreited, unrequited love for Caroline,
Speaker 2: sort of a love triangle, right, And he mentioned in
Speaker 2: his first interview that he thought that the murdered kid
Speaker 2: was up to no good. Yeah, it's sort of funny.
Speaker 2: There's this mix of you know, this kid trying to
Speaker 2: explain adult sexual situations to an adult in like the
Speaker 2: most clinical language possible. You know, he like, he leans in,
Speaker 2: he goes she put his hand on his penis, and it's,
Speaker 2: of course, it's a funny scene. But when he breaks in,
Speaker 2: he finds out of course that you know, this boy
Speaker 2: is in love with Carolyn. And he also finds that
Speaker 2: he's been going through her locker and taking things from him,
Speaker 2: specifically taking some of the roses. And when he finds
Speaker 2: this rose, he realizes, wait a minute, this is connected
Speaker 2: to the disappearance of the girl from twenty years ago. Right,
Speaker 2: it's the same paper. He unravels it and realizes, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, I've seen this before, goes back to her
Speaker 2: mother's house, where it's been undisturbed since the disappearance of
Speaker 2: her child, and finds an identical rose, starting to realize,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, there's a connection here. And there's an
Speaker 2: interesting moment earlier in the film where as he's hit
Speaker 2: rock bottom, we see him in a bar at like
Speaker 2: three pm, Right, there's light streaming through the window and
Speaker 2: the bartender you know, asks him, hey, you know what
Speaker 2: happened with you and that kid that were the grown
Speaker 2: man now And he says, well, you know, he took
Speaker 2: me out behind the bar and beat me up. And
Speaker 2: he basically says, he's like, well, you know, you never
Speaker 2: apologize to him. He didn't do it, and we realize
Speaker 2: he was wrong, he didn't have that case correct. Well,
Speaker 2: when you combine that with, of course, the fact that
Speaker 2: the principle of the school has everyone's locker code, he
Speaker 2: starts to wait a minute, I have to check out
Speaker 2: the principle of the school. So he breaks into his
Speaker 2: house again. A very funny scene because in every other
Speaker 2: instance we've seen him as part of his trade craft,
Speaker 2: you know, jimmy ing opening windows or leaving something cracked
Speaker 2: so he can come back later, and he just throws
Speaker 2: a rock through the glass window. Again kind of a
Speaker 2: comedic beat. But when he gets there, he goes through
Speaker 2: his effects and he finds the same roses, realizing of
Speaker 2: course that these are all connected. I mentioned, of course,
Speaker 2: the Fat Kid, and one of the things the Fat
Speaker 2: Kid mentioned is that the the Chinese kid whose name
Speaker 2: I can't remember, it's not particularly important, had a photo
Speaker 2: of a nude girl at a tiger mask in his locker, saying, oh,
Speaker 2: this is some other girl he's cheating on you, and
Speaker 2: sill reinformation until well Abe tracks her down again. This
Speaker 2: sort of tragic case of this woman or this girl
Speaker 2: with a single mom. She's clearly degrading herself for money.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We see her when they're talking and she has the
Speaker 2: word Paul written on her forehead, and she sort of
Speaker 2: just glibly says, like, he paid me fifty bucks to
Speaker 2: write his name on my forehead. Kind of both dark
Speaker 2: in comic at the same time, but she confirms you know, yes,
Speaker 2: you know they had a relationship.
Speaker 1: That is her.
Speaker 2: And finally he confronts the murderer. Right, he confronts the
Speaker 2: school principle and the school principle in the kind of
Speaker 2: climactic moments of the movie, he reveals it all. He says, basically, yeah,
Speaker 2: I kidnapped this girl, Grace. I put out the story
Speaker 2: of this lock box disappearing. I faked it because I
Speaker 2: wanted to see, you know, were you really as good
Speaker 2: as everyone said? Would you have gotten me if I
Speaker 2: kidnapped this girl, which, of course, like narratively, is massively
Speaker 2: important to the film. He did fail or even as
Speaker 2: a child. He was not smart enough to catch it.
Speaker 2: And what we find out is that the principal is
Speaker 2: abducted Grace, and this is really the gut punch of
Speaker 2: the movie, is that he's abducted her. It kept her
Speaker 2: in a shed behind his house, had his way with her.
Speaker 2: And Carolyne, the girl who's been pushing the story forward,
Speaker 2: is their daughter. She's not you know, the children of
Speaker 2: two you know alpinists killed, you know, skiing. She's the
Speaker 2: product of this relationship between the principal and the teacher,
Speaker 2: or the principal and the student. And of course Abe
Speaker 2: is just absolutely gutted by this on multiple levels. It's
Speaker 2: revealed that the the Chinese kid was stabbed to death
Speaker 2: because the principal went through his locker, found the photo
Speaker 2: and assumed that he had done that to his daughter.
Speaker 2: You know, that this sexually provocative image was and so
Speaker 2: he murdered him for it. And when Abe confronts him says,
Speaker 2: you know, I know what you did, and also that
Speaker 2: you you know, murdered this kid for no reason. It's
Speaker 2: actually an interesting moment because the principal seemingly recognizes that
Speaker 2: he's done something horrible, but what he says is he
Speaker 2: has this sort of perverse sense of karmic justice where
Speaker 2: he says, you know, I took something beautiful out of
Speaker 2: the world by abducting this girl, but I brought something
Speaker 2: good into it. You know, he sort of netted out.
Speaker 2: You know, this is his daughter. And when Abe reveals
Speaker 2: to him that, no weight, you have a karmic debt,
Speaker 2: right you killed this you know this kid. It's an
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful moment and I'll just continue summarizing through this
Speaker 2: because it's important and then we can go back and
Speaker 2: talk about it Andy. But there's this moment of tension
Speaker 2: where Abe sort of looks across from the across the
Speaker 2: table at him and says, you know what, Now he
Speaker 2: pulls out this giant buck knife. The film is sort
Speaker 2: of leading you to assume like he's going to go
Speaker 2: for him, and the principal stabs himself. Yeah, right in
Speaker 2: the hearts. It is really the only moment of violence
Speaker 2: in the movie.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Not supremely graphic, but it's you know, emotionally poignant, and
Speaker 2: it's an absolute gut punch because we see Abe reeling
Speaker 2: from it after the guy dies. You know, you could
Speaker 2: he's completely unready for this. He knew that there was
Speaker 2: something going on, but didn't necessarily know to what degree.
Speaker 2: And we see him, and it should be said, if
Speaker 2: we haven't already, he is an alcoholic. He's constantly drinking
Speaker 2: through the whole thing. That he goes into his fridge
Speaker 2: to grab beer and he realizes, wait a minute, there's
Speaker 2: grape soda in there, the same grape soda that this
Speaker 2: girl who disappeared used to drink. And so there's this
Speaker 2: horrific moment where he goes out to the shed and
Speaker 2: he sees this woman who's been trapped. I've been there
Speaker 2: for twenty years and her mind is gone completely. She's
Speaker 2: basically feral, and you know, the police come. He solved
Speaker 2: the murder. But that's sort of the climax of the film.
Speaker 2: I know we covered a lot of ground there, but Andy,
Speaker 2: I'm curious to get your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: Well, Jay, the guy just started lawnmowing out here, so
Speaker 1: we may have to edit this. I don't know how
Speaker 1: bad it. I'll get my apologies, but can you hear it?
Speaker 1: Is it bad? Not too bad? Okay? So oh good,
Speaker 1: he's not going to We could probably squeak through here.
Speaker 1: But dude, I the ending of a film you know,
Speaker 1: is critical theoretically you can get away with other things
Speaker 1: these days, but the way that everything fits from like
Speaker 1: the logician, the the screenwriter, you know, this this point
Speaker 1: of view and then is in viewed with as you
Speaker 1: as you know you you suggest like these very poignant
Speaker 1: emotional moments and reveals, uh, just like one after another.
Speaker 1: I mean you're in about a five minute like cauldron
Speaker 1: as the viewer, where so much is happening, and then
Speaker 1: boom another this this revelation that there's a shed out
Speaker 1: back where this this gets worse you know, for the
Speaker 1: for the overall story and the individuals involved, and more
Speaker 1: intense as you as you're watching it. To me, though,
Speaker 1: the real master stroke of the whole movie is at
Speaker 1: the last, the very last scene. And that's since we've
Speaker 1: given it all the way, let's give this away too,
Speaker 1: because this is where that's when I said, I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't cry myself, but dude, I have been in
Speaker 1: that exact situation where my boomer parents, you know, they're
Speaker 1: not going to listen to this, thank god, but I
Speaker 1: mean he's he's undergone this, you know, very harrowing, transformative,
Speaker 1: you know, heroic journey and he's redeemed himself. Uh and
Speaker 1: and it's a big deal, you know, his national news
Speaker 1: and so he's probably going to make some money. His
Speaker 1: parents come over and they have this discussion, and his
Speaker 1: parents are immediately like, well, well they're they're they're transformed themselves,
Speaker 1: where they're so proud of him. You know, everything is good.
Speaker 1: He's cleaned his room and all this sort but he's
Speaker 1: you can see that this didn't it didn't it changed him.
Speaker 1: But it's the love of the game that remained. And
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't you know, glory in the sense
Speaker 1: of money or accolades that's doing it for him. It
Speaker 1: was the act that he never let go of that case,
Speaker 1: and thereby by never letting go, not only beats his
Speaker 1: nemesis and wins and solves the case, solves multiple massive cases.
Speaker 1: But he's done that very thing that the cop asked him.
Speaker 1: You know, situations like this. Again, I'm sort of bastard,
Speaker 1: you know, bastardizing the quote here, but it's like, this
Speaker 1: may be that situation where you as an individual are
Speaker 1: going to decide who you really are, and he does,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really decide. It's not again, Rocky like, no
Speaker 1: I'm not going to let myself be beaten. It's just
Speaker 1: simply that he does not ever let go, and he
Speaker 1: just keeps doggedly after it, which you know, that's pretty realistic.
Speaker 1: That's actually so much more realistic than the rocky version
Speaker 1: of things that it's almost like subversive as for the viewer,
Speaker 1: because you're for guys like you and I and I
Speaker 1: think most of us, like that's how reality works if
Speaker 1: you just never give up. Well, you know, you you
Speaker 1: may not get everything you want, but you will at
Speaker 1: least have that like dignity. But the Boomers, right, So
Speaker 1: his parents are sitting there, they have absolutely no idea,
Speaker 1: they have no capacity to have an understanding, and he
Speaker 1: begins to weep, and that's how the movie ends, almost
Speaker 1: like this graduate sort of ambiguity, but honestly better than
Speaker 1: the Graduate. Everyone says, oh, the Graduate is such a masterpiece,
Speaker 1: like it's an okay movie. This is a better movie
Speaker 1: than the Graduate. This is a better movie than a
Speaker 1: boomer movie. I mean this. You know, we talked about
Speaker 1: the Boomer Killer in some of our recent talks. Dude,
Speaker 1: this movie is the Boomer Killer like I've never seen,
Speaker 1: and for me, that is why that's the where the character.
Speaker 1: You always hear this, oh, the platinue character development, all
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's all just kind of jive to if
Speaker 1: you have some experience with it, until you realize that
Speaker 1: it's not like that character construction.
Speaker 2: Is.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not surprising, honestly that we spent three
Speaker 1: million dollars on the movie and it made three hundred. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because it's basically too good for this world. I
Speaker 1: mean that.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also, to be fair, almost impossible to market.
Speaker 2: Like even when I was describing this movie to you,
Speaker 2: I don't think I said anything wrong, but it's really
Speaker 2: hard to communicate what it's actually about. And you know
Speaker 2: that that moment is so profound because we see that
Speaker 2: from the perspective of his parents, all the problems have
Speaker 2: been solved. His apartment is clean, he was up on time,
Speaker 2: he had his teeth brushed. He's got you know, media,
Speaker 2: which you know is something mentioned multiple times, but you
Speaker 2: know the media is asking his parents for comment. And
Speaker 2: yet right, he did at one on one hand, he
Speaker 2: did it. He got this sort of monkey off his back,
Speaker 2: He solved a case, he established it. He was the
Speaker 2: real deal adult detective. But the realization that you know,
Speaker 2: his one of his childhood friends had been you know,
Speaker 2: a mile away in a shed somewhere in this you know,
Speaker 2: kind of horrific life that you know, he himself had
Speaker 2: failed at even at an early age, but hadn't been
Speaker 2: able to rise to the occasion. He wasn't as smart
Speaker 2: as he thought he was, Like it's to say, weighing
Speaker 2: on him as an understatement. And there's a scene sandwich
Speaker 2: between these two where we see him in the office. Right,
Speaker 2: he's back in, his secretary is being slightly nicer to him, right,
Speaker 2: you know, graded on a curve. Of course, the office
Speaker 2: is full of people, and Carolyn's come back, and so
Speaker 2: he's asking her, you know, how are you doing. She
Speaker 2: remarks that, you know, all of his old trophies, you know,
Speaker 2: all of the old photos and newspaper clippings are off
Speaker 2: the wall. And he says something that I think is
Speaker 2: interesting where he says, you know what, it just didn't
Speaker 2: seem serious. And it's clear that like he has fully
Speaker 2: become a serious person. And some part of that is positive, right,
Speaker 2: he's no longer living in the past, he's no longer
Speaker 2: a failure. But also the serious realization was horrific.
Speaker 1: It was so much.
Speaker 2: Worse than he ever would have guessed at any intermediate stage. Right,
Speaker 2: incredibly broken situation. And I think it's interesting how dramatically
Speaker 2: different Carolyn looks, because when we're introduced to her, she
Speaker 2: looks the way she's dressed very similar to the children
Speaker 2: back in the year two thousand, you know, the kind
Speaker 2: of united colors of Bennington, kind of hometown Americana, you know,
Speaker 2: bows in their hair. And when she comes back, she
Speaker 2: looks like the kids at the stoop. You know, she's
Speaker 2: wearing all blacks. She's growing up. She's sort of become
Speaker 2: a part of this depressed world. You know, that innocence
Speaker 2: is well and truly gone. She knows the history of
Speaker 2: her parentage. It's not that she is the product, you know,
Speaker 2: as she said in Pardon the Sacrilege of you know,
Speaker 2: Jesus giving me to my grandparents, it was a you know,
Speaker 2: a murderous pedophile, which she says very flatly, and it is,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a certain amount which is funny, but
Speaker 2: it's also another gut punch. Right, We're seeing both of
Speaker 2: these characters, even at different ages, sort of have to
Speaker 2: make peace with the depravity of the world a really powerful.
Speaker 1: Scene, incredibly powerful. Yeah, it's and I think you're right
Speaker 1: to say it's almost impossible to describe this movie because
Speaker 1: as you and it's no no matter how what your
Speaker 1: powers of description would be, yours and mine put together
Speaker 1: and add some other people. I don't think you can
Speaker 1: do it justice because well a few of the points
Speaker 1: that you already make it. But it's just so masterfully
Speaker 1: handled at every at every moment, whether it's like how
Speaker 1: the characters are dressed and how the setting is kind
Speaker 1: of reflecting or you know, inner realities and what all
Speaker 1: of that stuff is in hand, like pretty very high
Speaker 1: level cinema is in hand. And and he's the director
Speaker 1: I forget his name again, Evan. Something is just constantly
Speaker 1: resisting the urge to like take an easy way out,
Speaker 1: you know, to to manage and resolve these these various conflicts,
Speaker 1: and you just end up with something very true, which
Speaker 1: is and again it's universal in the sense that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a hero's journey. The hero's journey always has this
Speaker 1: dark experience and then comes out on the other side
Speaker 1: with something like painfully earned treasure or wisdom or what
Speaker 1: have you. But the way that he breaks down and
Speaker 1: that very last bit as his parents are just utterly clueless,
Speaker 1: is is some I think I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, you know, in biblical times. But I
Speaker 1: feel like that that sort of detected that's alienation didn't
Speaker 1: really happen. And that is why I think this is
Speaker 1: a very gen X millennial I guess Z and whoever
Speaker 1: comes after that. Hopefully by that time, you know, we've
Speaker 1: taken the reins and can kind of because that's where
Speaker 1: my wife and I went when we were we were done,
Speaker 1: Like we had our big conversation about it, and it
Speaker 1: was like that abandonment for nothing, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word, of the child into this world that they
Speaker 1: sorry to shit on the Boomer so much, but I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: it's it hasn't I don't think it's happened before, and
Speaker 1: I don't want it to happen in the next generations.
Speaker 1: But it's quick essentially Boomer therefore, And so that that
Speaker 1: was a very moving scene for me when I saw
Speaker 1: him cry at the realization like not only did I
Speaker 1: make it through all this shit? And yeah, it's bitter
Speaker 1: and it's dark and it's light, and that was he
Speaker 1: knows that, you know, he has all these like little
Speaker 1: pretentious sorts of adages up his sleeve, just like I do,
Speaker 1: you know, and then reality really comes and you get
Speaker 1: what you thought you needed and it's like holy fuck,
Speaker 1: like you know, and the ironic distance between me and
Speaker 1: you and God is like now removed. Yeah, man, brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant pick Jay, I got to hand it to you.
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, the pressure's on now. How am
Speaker 1: I going to top this? How am I going to
Speaker 1: even come close to I'm gonna have to dig deep
Speaker 1: into the into the bag to find something good, you know.
Speaker 1: On par well, I.
Speaker 2: Will say, Andy, I've been sending around a redacted list
Speaker 2: of the films you recommended to me. You know, I
Speaker 2: obviously just kind of copy it or gave you the attribution.
Speaker 1: And it's been.
Speaker 2: Doing well with my at least my IRL friend social group.
Speaker 2: The movies have been like I think I told you,
Speaker 2: I got Red Rock West from you, and yeah, that
Speaker 2: was really popular. You know, half dozen guys I know
Speaker 2: have all said like, I can't believe I haven't picked
Speaker 2: this out, and so, you know what, I figured, I
Speaker 2: only have a few kind of hidden gems, you know,
Speaker 2: movies like this, but this one is so good I
Speaker 2: wanted to share it. And I'm glad you liked it, man,
Speaker 2: because this is one of those movies. I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm sort of the lone voice in the wilderness on
Speaker 2: you know, like no one has seen or talks about it,
Speaker 2: and it's it's such a great film. But Andy, this
Speaker 2: has been a ton of fun.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: If people are interested in you and your your work,
Speaker 2: where can they find you?
Speaker 1: I'm on X you know that's there's a link tree
Speaker 1: up there. You can find all the books. I will
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I'm not the greatest shiller, but
Speaker 1: I will mention that the latest book, Abstract Operator, just
Speaker 1: so happens to deal with some of this like deep
Speaker 1: interior detective noir sort of stuff. So if any of
Speaker 1: that is actually of interest to people, it's in Abstract Operator.
Speaker 1: Maybe not in the forum that that that you want,
Speaker 1: but it's in there. Yeah. That's about it. I I
Speaker 1: I enjoyed this a lot, And yeah, thanks for the recommendation. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be thinking about this this movie for quite
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: Everyone at home, keep your head up. Why can't last forever?
Speaker 1: Good Night?