[00:00:09] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our into the Wild listener polls and a preview, Twelfth Night and She's the Man.
Hello and welcome back to this film is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books.
Let's just get right into it. We have our patron shoutouts.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: One new patron this week at the $2 Newbery Medal award winning level. Seven two or 72? I don't know.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Well, it's seven space two.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yes, that's why I said seven two, because there's a space between the numbers. But. But I don't know. Anyways, thank you 72 or 72 for joining and getting that early access. That's. And you get some other stuff, but you get to interact more on Patreon and that sort of thing. So thank you for signing up. And as always, we have our Academy Award winning patrons and they are.
Nicole Goble, Eric Harpo Rat, Nathan Vic Apocalypse, Mathilde Cottonwood, Steve. Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier. Gratch.
Just Gratch. Shelby says a team up between Spider Gwen and Gwenpool should be called the Agwengers.
Hate that word. That darn skag Envy. Frank. Thank you all for your continued support. I don't hate the wordplay, but I do hate saying that word. For some reason a Gwingers comes feels gross in my mouth.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I saw it in the notes and I had not seen it on Patreon and it really took me a minute to work out. I don't know why because it's not that hard. No, but it took me a minute to work out.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: It tracks. Makes perfect sense, but I don't. A Gwinger's sounds. Yeah, I just don't like the way it sounds in my mouth. Anyways, let's get to it and see what the people had to say about into the Wild.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion man. On Patreon we had four votes for the movie and three for the book. Kelly Napier said, apologies in advance for the length of this. I clearly had some thoughts. Also a disclaimer that I wrote all this before y'all released the episode so it may repeat some things that have already been discussed by the two of you.
So I picked the movie over the book. But I actually went back and read the original long form magazine article from Outside magazine and given the option of all three, I'd actually vote for the magazine article.
How did I Get here. Let's break it down.
First, my problems with the book. The book, which is marketed as the Cautionary tale of Christopher McCandless, seemed to spend a lot of time not talking about Christopher McCandless. Instead, it seemed more interested in sharing a variety of other cautionary tales, including a lengthy sojourn by the author relating his own brush with death and not even the one he's most known for. The basis of the book, Into Thin Air, a recounting of his climb of Mount Everest. But yet another time, he almost died in the wilderness. Every time we wandered away from the story of McCandless and heard about someone else, I just found myself wanting to get back to McCandless. The only story I was interested in was the one of this WASPy kid who had no business being alone in the Alaskan wilderness.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Okay, so I don't agree with that, but I understand why somebody would feel that way. Cause I had a tiny inkling of that. Like, I had a tiny hint of that feeling of like, okay, Particularly as I mentioned in the episode, I said that when Krakauer goes into the two chapters covering his own attempt to climb the Devil's Thumb, I said some people could maybe view that as a little self indulgent. And I think I was being a little tongue in cheek and that I viewed it as a little self indulgent. But I also think it's relevant and it comes back to I did. So my point is that I didn't feel that way reading the book, that these other things were like distractions, or that every time we wandered away from his story, that I kept wanting to get back to his story. I did want to get back to his story because it was interesting. But I also found these other stories interesting. And I think it comes out to maybe a discontinuity between how I viewed and saw the book versus what Kelly is saying here, where Kelly said, and I don't know how it was marketed, but you specifically said the book, which is marketed as the cautionary tale of Chris McCandless, seems to spend a lot of time not talking about Chris McCandless. I don't know how it was marketed. As I said, to me, that's not what the book is. To me, the book is an exploration of why this dude did this thing.
And part of that that can be relevant is examining other people who did similar things that maybe we know a little bit more about why they did it, and kind of using that as a lens to evaluate what Kris is doing and why. Again, I understand. I Think it makes perfect sense for none of that to be in the movie. I have no complaints with cutting all of that out of the movie. I don't think it makes sense. Would make sense narratively in the film. I think you could take one of those stories and maybe do some sort of parallel narrative thing that could be interesting, but I don't think it's necessary. I think Kris's story is interesting enough on its own in the film, but in the book as a broader exploration of this wanderlust and more of the idea behind what makes Chris McCandless and why he was the way he was. I think exploring other people doing similar things and Krakauer delving into his own background and being able to relay his very personal. Because the whole reason he talks about that in the book is, as I said in the episode, about. People speculate about Chris's mindset and, like, was he suicidal? Did he want to die? And because he does this thing that everybody views as, like, clearly dumb and basically suicidal. And Krakauer, maybe you could do it in a shorter. Maybe he didn't need to spend two entire chapters on it, but him relaying, hey, I did this same thing. I was not suicidal. I have insight into this very specific mindset, and I was not suicidal. And so maybe it's a, you know, it's at least one anecdote from personal experience kind of presenting the idea that, okay, doesn't necessarily mean that he was, like, suicidal or wanted to die or didn't care if he died or anything like that. It's just maybe. I don't know. So I think, again, I found those stories interesting and relevant.
But I also understand how if you really just want to focus on Kris's story, it feels like, because there was a little bit. There was like a 2% of me that's like, okay, let's get. And like I said, maybe Krakauer's narrative or his personal story could have been one chapter instead of two or half a chapter or something. I would take that argument, but I still think that stuff is relevant to the book and it makes sense for it to be in there.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: All right. Kelly went on to say, also of note, you spoke in the prequel episode of Krakauer being criticized for exaggerating the Truth and Into the Wild. Turns out he was accused of doing the same thing with Into Thin Air by those of. By those with which he undertook the Everest climb. So how do you trust this guy.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: So that there is truth to that? Like I said, I don't know. All the details, it's messy. From everything I've seen, as all this stuff is, everybody has bad memories on top of everything else, on top of the fact that he's clearly trying to sell books. So some things are being.
All I know is that it's not as simple as Krakauer's just a liar who lies and makes up stuff for his book. But it's also, you shouldn't take every single detail of all the books of the books that he writes as like gospel truth of what actually happened. I think if you go into the book knowing, hey, maybe not every detail and this is completely accurate so that you can kind of temper your expectations, I think that's the healthy way to approach it.
But from my understanding, this book is not like wildly inaccurate from everything I have seen. So I don't think it's fair to also just be like, well, you can't trust anything he says. I don't think that's true. But you do have to at least you know, right? Not just assume every single thing he says is true.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: All right, continuing with Kelly, now the movie. It's a really good movie. The best thing it did was just focus on McCandless's story and forget everything else the book ends up spending too much time on. The acting is superb. And I cannot believe Emile Hirsch didn't get nominated for an Oscar.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: I will chime in and say I can because I agree he's great, but I also think he's really bad sometimes. I think most of the time, 95% of the film, he's fantastic.
But I think there's enough times where I'm like, I don't think that. But that doesn't necessarily say he shouldn't have been nominated for an Oscar. Plenty of bad performance. What I would view is, like, not great performances, get nominated and even win Oscars.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: That is certainly fair.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: I'm not saying. I'm just saying that I don't think it was an Oscar worthy performance. Maybe, but it was good. Just not like perfect or great in my opinion.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: He does such a good job of portraying this kid whose confidence was so sincere. It was never confused with arrogance until it ended up costing him his life. Rainy was my favorite character, and considering that guy isn't even an actor, it was just such a pleasant surprise.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: He has a podcast, as I mentioned, if you want to listen to that guy, talk more.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Sean Penn did a great job with the directing and the cinematography was really beautiful.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Agree with that.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: My favorite part, though, was the soundtrack. I cannot imagine any voice Other than Eddie Vedders to be a companion to this story. Even my husband enjoyed the movie a lot. And historically, whenever he watches movies for the podcast with me, he ends up hating the movie.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: That's fascinating. I feel like we do a lot of good movies. I feel like, you know, this isn't good bad or bad bad. We're not, like, mainly picking terrible movies. So it's fascinating to me that he tends to dislike. Maybe he just picks the bad ones. I don't know. But I feel like we actually watch mostly good movies.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Anyway, this is interest. I think the soundtrack is very good. I know that was a recurring note from some of our audience because I like Pearl Jam. I enjoyed their music, but I'm not like a huge.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: I don't know, like, I have no opinions on Pearl Jam.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: I had, whatever that one album with the Fist in the Air, the purple one, when I was a little kid. There were slightly before my time, like, my brother was, like, my older brothers were really into Pearl Jamie, and I listened to them as a child, but it wasn't like a huge part of my childhood.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: All that being said, I didn't love some of the artistic liberties Pen took with the story. We obviously don't know what was going through Chris's head when he was out in the bus, so the imagined conversations he had with himself often seemed jarringly out of place to me.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: So why is the original article better than both of the other two properties? To sum it up in one brevity, the webpage I found to read the article amounted to just 14 standard pages of text. That's it. And because it was forced to be more limited in its scope due to the confines of what is able to be printed in a magazine, it was able to cut out all the extra stuff that didn't matter and just focus on the story of McCandless. This story didn't need the other cautionary tales, and the story didn't need Krakauer's opinion of whether or not McCandless had any business being out there. We can just read the facts and draw our own conclusions.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: I will say I think that is what the book does. It's interesting because I don't think you can tell from by the end of the book what Krakauer's opinion is, which is that he likes Kris and doesn't think he's an idiot that was suicidal, and that he sees bits of himself in Kris. But I think he does kind of ultimately leave you to kind of make your own conclusion or at least that's what he says he's attempting to do. And I felt that way because I didn't agree with his ultimate, like, entirely agree with him with where he came to. And I will say, I think.
I think you keep using the phrase the story doesn't need the other cautionary tales. Again, I don't think, and this is. I'm nitpicking a word here, but they're not presented as cautionary tales in my opinion. Krakauer is presenting them as examples of explorations of the mindset of people who do things like this. These aren't like, cautionary tales in the sense of, like, look what they did.
Don't do a similar thing or be, you know, like, be cautious of making the same mistakes they did. I don't think that's what Krakauer is doing with those stories in any capacity. I don't think they're presented that way. I think they are literally just there for us to try to pry apart what is going on in Chris's head via these other people.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Right. So if the thesis or the question that the book is trying to answer is what was his mindset, then these other stories are like additional evidence.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Yes. Of potential. Yeah. And again, I understand people being like, I don't care about that. I'm just interested in what happened to him. And it sounds like that's Kelly thing. And I haven't read the article, so I may like the article more. I may be like, oh, actually, that does get everything I've wanted. Everything I enjoyed about the book is there. And I actually didn't really need this other stuff. I could read the article and feel that way. I don't know. Obviously I haven't read the article, but that would. And that wouldn't even necessarily surprise me, but I did not find the book overly long or, like, tedious or arduous because of the other stuff in it. I found it a very like.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: And it's not a super long book. It's not like a little over 200 pages.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's 200 pages. It's pretty small text and it's fairly dense in terms of the way it's formatted, like this copy of it, but it's still not very long. No.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: My overall thoughts on all the properties are that although it is unfortunate what ended up happening to him, Chris McCandless should not be idolized. Only people who have never had to worry about money would claim they can live without it, to the point of burning what cash they had on hand so it wouldn't corrupt them. A lot of the comments I've seen on Goodreads, Reddit, and other websites consider McCandless a privileged, entitled, selfish kid who deserved what he got. I even saw something somewhere quoting a member of law enforcement who stated that by going into the wilderness under a fake name, with inadequate supplies, no map, without informing anyone of where he was going, and with no way to summon help, Chris Summit committed suicide. Even if that wasn't his intent. After consuming all of this, it's kind of hard to argue against all that.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: So, okay, I have a lot to say about this. I would agree that kind of. That he committed suicide even if that wasn't his intent. But I would also argue that suicide requires intent. So it's not really a meaningful thing to say personally. Like, I like you can die in stupid ways at your own hand, but I would not categorize those as suicide.
I think that's a very specific thing anyways. But I do not agree with the take that he was privileged, entitled, or selfish. Unless you just disregard everything.
Unless you just don't believe what the book describes about him and what his, like, sister says about him and stuff like. Which you can say, like, maybe that's just not true or that he's selfish or titled in other ways, maybe. And I agree with the general sentiment that only people who have never had to worry about money would claim that they can live without. It is generally true for people in society. But with what Chris did, I He's not like, I don't think he thought other people could live without money. I think he had an issue with money and stuff like that. But him burning his money and stuff, he did live without. He didn't have money. He didn't have a safety net. He didn't have like, I guess he had a safety net in the sense that if he ultimately got to a point, well, no, because he went and died in the wood. Like, I don't, I don't think he was living under some illusion that like he, he was not utilizing his privilege, in my opinion, in order to live a life without money. He was walking around in the desert, not showering, hitchhiking, starving to death most of his. Like he was living a very ascetic life.
He was talking the talk and walking the walk, I guess is my point. Like, I agree that there's a truth to that idea that, you know, it's easy to say, oh, money doesn't solve problems or money isn't everything when you have plenty of Money and don't have to worry about it. But he. He didn't like money. And then also did the thing where he got rid of all of it and walked the earth. Like, Jesus. Like, you know what I mean? Or not Jesus, but, like, walked the earth, like, who's the monk? Or whatever. And so, like, I have a hard time being like, well, he's entitled and privileged because he was able to do. Anybody could do what he did. Nobody wants to. He wanted to. Like, it doesn't take privilege to do what Alex does, in my opinion, or did. It takes wanting to do that. And most people don't. Like, you can live. Anybody can live the life Alex did. It's not a privileged life. It's just nobody wants to because it sucks. But he was just happy to do that. You know what I mean? Like, he was. He was sleeping in the middle of. In the desert with no. Like, he was starving all the time. Like, never had again. He wasn't living, like, a light, a nice life that most of us would want or desire. And so I have a hard time being like, oh, so that means he was, you know, I don't know. Do you get what I'm saying?
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Like, no, I get what you're saying. And I think. I think that's something that you could easily say, like, at the very beginning of the story, like, when he first starts out, and obviously I only watched the movie, and we see him, like, abandon his car and, like, burn the cash. I think it's easy to say that at that point in the story, but then as the story goes on and he continues to live a moneyless wanderer lifestyle, I think it becomes much harder to make that argument.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: What is very much true is he definitely relies on the charity of other people.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yes, that is absolutely true.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: But I don't think he. It wasn't an expectation of charity from other people. Like, he lived a life of a floater who was just kind of bouncing from place to place. And very often his life probably was saved maybe in certain ways by people helping him, but that's not what he was seeking, and he wasn't. I don't know. I just. I really have a hard time saying that what he did was a result of, like, entitlement or selfishness. I would not remotely categorize it that way. I think, if anything, you could maybe speculate some degree of mental. Something like, going on with just, Again, the way his.
His beliefs were somewhat incoherent and some of that other stuff. I think you could maybe speculate that. And hesitate to speculate on it, but I think you could maybe conclude that there was some degree of. Yeah, like, I don't even know the word for it. He was just very strange or unique or different from like the standard population.
But I don't think it was a selfishness or an entitlement based on what we can read and have learned about him based on this book, again, there may be more that I am unaware of.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Now, I do think you could make the argument that he benefited throughout his entire journey from other types of privilege.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Being a man and a white guy.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Yes. A white man. Yes. I think it would be far harder for a woman or a person of color to do what he did without dying.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: I was talking about class or I was talking more about the money aspect of privilege. Not.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: No. And I know that. I just wanted to bring up that I think he very clearly benefited from other types of privilege.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Obviously being a relatively handsome white man.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: You know, sure. Like, yes. That. That will open up a lot of doors that he. If he had been. Not that would have made more difficult, 100%. But I also don't think he made. Well, I want to say he was not unaware of that, but he was at least aware of racial politics and stuff and seemed to be, you know, he would at least probably acknowledge that maybe. I don't know. I don't. It doesn't seem like something he thought. Spent that much time thinking about. But he, he was in a bunch of like, racial politics class in university and was a, like all gung ho about ending apartheid and stuff. He was at least cognizant of some of that stuff.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: And like I said what the cop said. I just, I don't even, Even if you want to call it suicide, I'm like, okay, well, that's sure. Like, like, I don't agree with that categorization. But even if you wanted to be like, no, actually it was basically like he committed suicide. I'm like, as I said in the episode, I'm. I don't. I'm not here to tell somebody that they can't walk into the woods and die eventually if they want. I don't know. Like, that's just weird to me.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: To me, like, like a kind of jaded perspective from somebody who probably has to deal with a lot of people who do.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: End up in harming themselves or killing themselves because they were stupid.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: And obviously, like I said, I'm not trying to completely. The other thing I want to make clear is I'm not trying to divorce the fact that there were people that cared about Chris that he is affecting by doing this stuff. And you can't just completely cut all of that off and say, well, obviously this didn't affect anybody. But part of the fact that he didn't bring a map or any way to contact anybody or to summon help, I would argue, kind of lends credence to the idea or at least maybe gives him. In my mind, I'm like, if you're going to do that, where you're going to walk into the woods and try to live off the land, doing it in a way where you're not gonna make a bunch of people come try to rescue you if you fuck up.
Feels less entitled to me than if he had done all of this and. But had a radio or something. And then, like, after four months, realized he was starving and was like, please come help me and call the helicopter. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that's like, a different level of, like, entitlement that, like, I walked into the woods and I thought I could do this, and then I fucked up, so I had to call the park rangers to come home. My, like, starving body, like, I don't know. He was being pretty committed to the bit. Like, he. You know, he starved to death in the wood, like, Right. I don't know. I. Yeah, but I appreciate the comment. I. I felt like I disagreed a lot with what. What the comment said, but it was, you know, we.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: We appreciate your thoughts, Kelly, nonetheless.
All right, our next comment was from Nathan, who said, I will start by saying that I don't particularly care why Chris McCandless went out into the Alaskan wilderness, and I don't think that Jon Kra or Sean Penn did either. If either of them did, the works they created were really bad attempts to show this.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: I'll have to get to the rest of this comment because I am stunned by this so far.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: I will give Pen more of a break because I think the movie isn't really interested in the investigation, but in making a good movie vaguely related to true events, and it does succeed at that. Because of this, I definitely vote for the movie.
Do you want to chime in or do.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: No, not yet. There's nothing, really. I don't have any meat yet to.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: I have several issues with the book, and the foremost is that the story of Chris McCandless is really fascinating, and Krakauer seems determined to tell us about so many things that are not that story.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Okay, so I've already made my feelings clear. On that.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: So at the beginning of my version, there is an author's note in which Krakauer mentions that he has attempted to minimize his authorial presence and weakly tries to justify his inclusion of his own adventure. He fails utterly in both pursuits.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: I will say he fails at minimizing his authorial presence. I agree with that. I think he does justify his inclusion of his adventure, but his authorial presence is very felt.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: For sure, his story adds nothing to the tale.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Disagree.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: The McCandless story itself does a fine job of portraying McCandless as not suicidal. So I didn't need the story to show me that. And it just seems like Krakauer was desperate to wedge himself into a story that wasn't his.
The other survivalist stories also just seem disruptive and an attempt to make a larger point that was already there in the McCandless story or to explain mysteries despite being about other people whose mysterious behavior we also don't understand.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: I guess I agree in the sense that some of the people that he does talk about, we don't necessarily have a super great idea of their motivations either, but I don't.
I would kind of agree that I think McCandless's story does a good enough job on its own. Portraying McCandless is not suicidal. But I think people still think I can at least understand Krakauer's desire to try to really give people an insight into that type of mindset via himself. Because clearly tons of people, based on what like the book Good reread. Tons of people still think he was this idiot who was suicidal and didn't like just wanted to go into the woods to die or whatever. And so that that idea about him has persisted. And so maybe you could argue that the book, if they read the book, even without Krakauer story, they would come to the conclusion that that wasn't the case just from Chris's story as relayed in the book. But I still think that Krakauer's story is useful. I will agree that it's probably too long. I think maybe part of my. The fact or part of the reason that I am not as critical of that section as maybe other people are, is that I find mountain climbing fascinating. So I thought the story itself was interesting. Like I. Because he's talking about climbing the Devil's Thumb by himself and I watch all kinds of mountain climbing documentaries and I really find mountain climbing fascinating for whatever reason. I always have. I don't know why I've never really done it other than a handful of times when I was a kid, like a state parks and stuff, but I've never like climbed a mountain, but I find it very fascinating. And so maybe that did color my reading those two chapters. I was like interested in what he was doing as well. I thought that was a whole fascinating story. So, like it didn't bother me as much that it was this two chapter diversion that isn't super related. But.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Well, I think I could definitely see the benefit in including something like that, you know, if part of his motive in writing this book is to dispel the notion that Chris McCandless was suicidal.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Which it is, because again, to the point earlier where he says, I'm trying to minimize my authorial intent, he fails at that because it's very clear that his authorial intent is trying to prove that Chris McCandless is not this suicidal.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Idiot that everybody comes out to be. If that is indeed the thesis of the book, then I can see the benefit in including his own story from the perspective of like, what he has about Chris's mindset is speculation.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: However, his own experience is not speculation.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: That was my interpretation.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: I see the benefit in that. But clearly it didn't work.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: It didn't work for people. And I think that is a common critique. So I understand it, like I said, I. It just didn't bother me because I understood what it was doing or I'm not implying other people understand what it's doing. I, for me, what it was doing worked and I was like, okay, again, cut it in half, cut it in quarter, sure, like it's like 20 pages and it could be five maybe, but like, I don't know, it didn't bother me because I found. I just thought it was kind of an interesting story on its own. So.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Nathan continued, my other main issue is that I just fundamentally don't trust Krakauer's telling of the facts. The level of detailed story and narrative he gives to Chris's time in Alaska cannot be reasonably justified by the brevity of the description from the journal, he clearly adds stuff he can't be sure of actually happening. And given his other issues, I wonder if this is a self insert to some extent. I'm also, as always, skeptical of witness accounts. So I question if all the people McCandless met on his wandering are telling a more rosy version of their interactions than reality.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Oh, I assumed that the whole time, 100%. And like I said, and it came down on that, that, like I said at the end of that, I even assumed the version of Kris that the book present that was like my whole thing in the final verdict, that even the version of Chris that this book presents, I think is probably a far more pristine version of Kris than probably existed in reality.
But it's also true that. Well, we'll get to it. But there's also some, I think maybe some other parts that I. And I don't remember if it's in this one or somebody else's. But there's other things about, like the background that the book leaves out intentionally that maybe give even more into why he may not have been the Rosiest person potentially. I don't know. But yeah, I think it's fair to be skeptical of every. As a dyed in the wool skeptic, I'm skeptical of everything I read that pretends to be a true account because I understand how faulty human memory is and how subject we all are to biases and cognitive biases and confirmation bias and all this sort of stuff. And I trust very little about anything. I do think that most of what he presents in Alaska seems fairly intuitive. From the journal, I would have to go back if there was specific things you thought that Krakauer presented that, that Chris did in Alaska that you don't think can be reasonably justified. I'd be interested to know what those were. I guess maybe the things to me that stick out would be like when he was reading certain books and when certain notes were made. And I agree with that, that that's kind of speculative. And I talked about that in the episode a little bit and kind of connecting certain, like, book liner notes he wrote to the grander narrative of him, like, wanting to like, go back and find. I can understand being like, eh. But in terms of the events that Krakauer outlines, it seemed like it's fairly straightforward. I don't know. There may be something I'm forgetting and I think the movie's more guilty of that than Chris or than the book is. So I don't know what to do with that. It doesn't make me want to pick the movie over the book because I think the movie is more guilty of that than the book even is.
I mean, the movie makes literal, obvious narrative choices that we know weren't true, whereas Krakauer maybe makes narrative choices that we aren't sure if they're true or not. You know what I mean? Like, so I. I don't know.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: I find the movie to be so much more enjoyable because it tells a movie story and it tells it well. I think it is quite likely that Pen was trying to tell an accurate story of real life Christopher McCandless, and if that is true, he failed utterly. The movie rounds many things down to fit a movie narrative to feel truly real, but the movie that it creates is really compelling and enjoyable to watch. I don't believe that Kris was a real life forest Gump wandering around the west fixing people's problems, but I still didn't still enjoyed watching that part of the movie. And I think the movie used it well to play against the knowledge of his impending doom. I cried as he said goodbye to Franz, was moved when he played with Tracy, felt exhilaration with his time with Wayne, and loved his found parent son relationship with Jan and Raini. But I never felt like this was an accurate portrayal of Chris. It was just a good fictional movie.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: And I think that's where I and maybe it's been I'm being too trusting of the portrayal in the book, even though I am skeptical of parts of it. Is that to me that feels weird to like.
That's why I enjoyed the book more as it felt more like a realistic and maybe I'm maybe that is the problem is that the movie is like eh, we're just gonna completely fictionalize this in a way so it kind of actually takes it into a place where it's less problematic in terms of like what it's doing. Whereas the book while pretending to portending to accurately document, you know, the events. If it makes mistakes and I believe them, that's more problematic than in the movie. Knowing that some of this stuff is narratively created. I don't know, it's an interesting idea.
Again, I would have to know.
I would have to do some more research into how much criticism there is of this book by people who know like his sister and stuff. I didn't think there was a bunch. I think that from my understanding that his sister was pretty on board with this book for the most part, other than again, some things we'll talk about later. But anyways.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: All right, final random thoughts. I found the focus of Krakar on Kris's sex life or sexuality to be a bit creepy, even if it wasn't a super extensive part. I also got an ace vibe, but there was so little actual info to base things on, mostly his rejection of sleeping with a 17 year old that it just seemed icky to spend time on it at all. Why pry into that personal area when we can't know and it isn't really relevant?
[00:34:01] Speaker A: I mean, at that point I think it's fair to say why write this at all like, if your argument is prying into this guy's life, period, feels weird, I would agree with that. But it's like a couple pages that mention, like, it's not even really speculation necessarily, that just kind of get into the fact that he didn't write much about relationships and that he didn't seem to have, like, relationships with people. And I think that's important in if you're on board with the idea of trying to figure out who Chris McCandless is. Spending a handful of pages wondering if sexual relationships were a motivator in his life. Seems relevant and interesting to me. Obviously, you don't want to go overboard speculating about that stuff, but I don't think the book. It didn't feel to me like the book went overboard speculating about that stuff. It felt like it kind of just relayed what little we knew.
And it was. He didn't sleep with this one girl who had a crush on him. Were Noah very specifically. And he didn't seem to write much at all about relationships or anything. So seems like he wasn't into relation. I don't know. That didn't strike me as particularly strange.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: The scene in the movie, which recreates the famous bus photo, gave me a major deja vu to the Jeremiah Johnson gif, where the bearded woodsman smiles at the camera as it zooms in. So much so that I checked the timeline. And while the Grizzly Addams movie obviously existed first, the GIF does seem to have been used prominently by the time it hit. By the time into the Wild hit theaters. All right. And Nathan's last thought here was, I think the most recent version of Krakauer's explanation of the death had moved past the mold and was focused on it being an amino acid poison, whatever that means. I personally think it's most reasonable that he just starved to death sans any poison. His diary after the entry about potato seeds reflects killing several animals, which doesn't seem to match the sudden increase in weakness that Krakauer seems to think the poisoning would cause.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we don't know. Like. Sure. Like I said, it's all speculation. I mean, even Krakauer, he does pretty firmly land on the.
It got confusing at the end because I couldn't. Like in the. It switches between so many different theories in the final. Like during the afterword and stuff, when he's, like, discussing all the different theories that I couldn't remember which was mold and which was whatever. I thought the mold was related to the L cannabinine but the L cannabinine is the amino acid thing. I mean, they did science, they did it. They have a published test or study saying that this stuff potentially could cause these issues. I haven't done the. Looked into the peer review to see how, you know, just because there's one published study doesn't mean it's for sure true or anything. I think just saying, oh, I think he just starved to death would require maybe some additional speculation that I think that also requires speculation of. Okay, well, why didn't he.
He didn't say anything that he didn't say that he was starving to death.
Like, he's obviously said he was very hungry and mentioned that he was running out of food and stuff like that. But it was the middle of summer and game was. Or it was fall, not the middle of summer, but it was heading towards fall. It wasn't middle of winter or anything like that. So game was fairly prominent. He was killing game still. So, like, what stopped him from being able. Like, if you say he was able to kill more animals after the potato seed entry, what, why did he starve to death then?
[00:37:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: I think there's still. Again, I'm. I'm open to the idea that we still don't really. We probably won't ever really know exactly what happened. And who knows if the, the l cannabinine poisoning thing is true or not. I don't know. But it kind of makes sense based on apparently what this study came up with. Again, I haven't looked deeply into that study to see, but I think that saying, well, I think he just starved to death without any sort of negative reaction to food he ate or anything also begs a lot of questions. So.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I feel like based on all of the kind of theories that we've discussed, even without having read the book, I feel like every theory produces more questions than answers. So I'm like, I don't know.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was what I remember thinking when I read about the. Like read the Chris McCandless Wikipedia entry, like 10 years ago or whatever, when I first came across it or whatever.
I remember thinking like, okay, they just don't know. Like, that's. And I think that's. If you want to land on we don't really know. Sure. Like, that's fine.
[00:38:34] Speaker B: I mean, there are some things we're.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: Just never going to know and we'll never know. I mean, and that one we will never know for sure. Even if we think we have A pretty good. Even if Krakauer thinks he has a pretty good idea. No. No way to confirm it. And even if you think he just starved to death, no way to confirm that either. So.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: All right, our last comment, I believe, on Patreon. Yeah, our last comment on Patreon was from Cottonwood Steve, who said I actually got to listen to the episode in a timely manner. I'm not really interested in reading the book or learning much about McCandless, mainly because for the longest time I wanted to be someone like McCandless. I wanted to get away from the world, live off the earth and get away from capitalism. Of course, I learned such expressions of wanderlust needed some safety net, as in parents that would take you back after doing something so reckless.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: They only need that safety net if you're not willing to die in a bus in the woods. I will reiterate that. Like, I agree with you that there is that. But like, also, if you starve to death in a bus in the woods, that safety net didn't matter. Like, you know, like, I don't know.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: I also wanted to do this without finishing college as well. Then of course, I learned I hated bugs. Hunting, foraging, and going to the bathroom in the forest during several camping trips. Yeah, that's where I'm at. As much as a weekend camping trip might be a change of pace, I didn't see myself doing this forever. So now I'm just a city city socialist, so to speak. Since moving to Cottonwood, Arizona, I have managed to reconnect to that dumb version of myself. Weekend treks on curated trails in the Sedona and Flagstaff wilderness during the weekends is ultimately the preferred amount of disconnect I needed in my life.
After reading into much about McCandless's life, I feel like he had no real plan and I never felt like he had a real clear and defined reason. He comes off as a trust fund kid who could escape when he wanted to. While I never considered my reasoning more altruistic, I understood it was a dumb idea after the first time I learned how much ticks really suck and how much I struggled to sleep outside on Hot Summer.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Again, dumb idea for you. I. I don't know how to describe this. If you, if you don't have any desire to ever go back and fall into that safety net or like, it's a dumb idea because you hate sleeping outside and getting bit by ticks, right? Chris didn't give a shit.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah, he clearly he did not, did not care.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: He did not mind that at all he enjoyed it, like, so it's a dumb idea if, yeah. If you want to live a life that doesn't involve a massive amount of hardship and starving and shittiness. But if you don't mind all that stuff, which he seemed not to for whatever reason.
I don't know, I have a hard time saying it's dumb.
It would be dumb for me. I would never want to live that life at all, ever. I like Internet too much. I like, you know, I like watching movies too much. I don't want to do that.
There's a part of the, you know, that deep, like you said at the beginning of, like, I just want to get away from Cat.
There's something deep. And I think in a lot of us there's a reason. Things like, you know, homesteading and like, fucking, all that kind of stuff crops up every now and then. And there's that weird, insidious right wing part of it, but there's also just the broader sense of like, man, maybe life would be better if we all just like went and lived on a farm somewhere.
And then you understand, like, well, that's really difficult and all these other things and blah, blah, blah. But again, I.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: But also, like, there are people who do that.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: As well. Who like, go out and have a homestead in the middle of nowhere.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: It's incredibly difficult and it's incredibly. And, and what I do think is worth criticizing is people who glamorize that lifestyle while clearly not doing it. You know, like all of the, like the homesteader tick tockers and like people that like, push that. Like.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: A right wing version of like. Or like the stay at home wife thing who like, you know, doesn't. Doesn't do a job and she just stays at home and is pretty all day and bakes and cooks and takes care of the children. Okay. But all the people doing that aren't doing that because they're all making money on TikTok posting. Like, you're not doing the thing.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: You have a job. It's being an influencer.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Chris did the thing. I don't know how else to say he did the. Like. If you, if you say, hey, what we should do is all get rid of our money and go like, live in the woods. I agree, that's dumb. We shouldn't all do that. But if one guy says we should do that and then he does that and then dies in the woods because he starves to death because he wasn't prepared for it, like, it was dumb. Like, he got himself Killed.
But I don't know. I'm defending him more than I want to, but I just. I feel like people are a little overly critical of, like, what he was doing, because I just. I don't know how he. I guess it just comes back to the idea that he was walking the walk. He wasn't just talking the talk. I have complete sympathy for listening to. For being annoyed by people who are like, we have to return to monkey and go be with nature while they do that from their $8 million podcast studio. Or, like, you know what I mean? Fuck those people. But, like, if you wander around in the desert and sleep on the ground and. And starve to death and are always hungry and never getting food, and I don't. I. You're doing the thing. So, like, I don't. I wouldn't want to do that, but I can't come at you for being, like, hypocritical or entitled or sad. Like, you're doing the thing that you said you wanted and people should do. So I don't know.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: I know. I think that's fair.
Okay. My Gen X ennui aside, I did enjoy the movie. Sean Penn is a competent director, and I felt the film was a fine examination into man seeking some sort of freedom from life. But I felt McCandless was just too optimistic. And one note for my tastes, agree with that.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: And of course, there was the interior judgment of my mind saying, what a dumb fuck, considering I was years removed from my own thoughts of leaving society. My father even commented about this movie having known guys that disappeared, much like McCandless did in the 70s.
I will also say the soundtrack slapped. Is that how the kids say it? I don't know if the kids are still saying slapped. Probably not. I'm saying it, which is a pretty good indication that the kids are no longer saying it.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Colin songs.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Bangers are saying it Slapped.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: No, that's done. We've taken that now. So the kids are no longer saying.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: That the soundtrack slapped. And hearing Eddie Vedder's voice makes this Gen Xer giggle. Since I am a big Pearl Jam fan, so, yes, this film probably hits Gen Xers pretty hard. I think the Reagan years disillusioned the older Xers, while the exploit. While the explosion of technology and culture disillusioned many of the younger Xers like me.
Anyway, I appreciate the fact you let me speak a little about my own life. It was an okay movie, but nothing special, in my opinion. Maybe I will read the book, but Brian's description of McCandless's beliefs is puzzling.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Either way, another good review.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah. Again, not a guy I would want to be friends with, but.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: No, certainly not.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: I don't think. Well, it depends on what you mean by friends. Not close. Like friends with.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: That I like. No, like, maybe the kind of friend that you meet up with at a bar every six months.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that's the kind. Honestly, the kind of friends that most of the people he met were. Which is like he writes you a postcard every now and then. You hang out with him when you see him. Every.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Maybe he just understood what kind of friend he was.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Honestly, maybe. Maybe he had it really figured out. I don't know. He's like, man, like. I don't know. I. Yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: All right. Over on Facebook, we had one vote for the movie and four for the book.
And Andy said, I watched the film when it came out and read the book soon after. I loved both. And my vote is for the book because it's a landmark in creative nonfiction. It's rich in detail and stimulating where the movie is just a solid film and, as Katie said, a bit glowy. Sean Penn baffles me, but he can direct a film. What fascinated me at the time is exactly what you ask about at the end of the pod. When we consider how much Krakauer filled in the gaps, the obvious projection, and that McCandless was a militant campus Republican Reaganite. A third possible version of the story presents itself that is a kind of American archetype. A young right libertarian guy who has almost accidentally come to see the oppressive aspects of society and then does literally anything except take on contemporary environmentalism, critique of capitalism, or otherwise shift his worldview to the left. Revisiting this. Now, part of me flippantly imagines this as, what if Ben Shapiro walked into the jungle to find himself?
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Whoa. God, if only.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Obviously it's more nuanced than that, and I remain sympathetic, but I think having the book and film versions to compare further highlights that these are in fact versions of a story, versions of a real person, which holds as much interest as the story itself. What I am saying is that I agree with Brian's thoughts on this. I should have said that up front and saved us all a lot of time. My bad.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: Well, obviously I agree with this comment because it agrees with me, but I will say I do kind of disagree, not disagree. I think it's an interesting third possible speculative idea of him as this sort of libertarian, like, right leaning libertarian that, like I said, kind of grows disillusioned with society and his reaction is like doing the. Yeah, I'm going to go become monkey. Right?
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So rather than falling more to the left and trying to do something to improve society somewhat, he's just removes himself from it.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: I don't know. I would have to see if there's more writings that would. It's an interesting speculation.
I don't know if there's more. Right. Like if we have more, maybe some of his college writings or something, if we have more from Chris that would lend itself to that theory. I'm inclined not to think that's the case. I'm inclined to think that he just had incoherent political beliefs like most people do.
And it wasn't as grand of an idea of. Yeah, like I said. Of like. I think he definitely had like, right. Lean libertarian views, like we said, the whole like permits to go down the river thing and all sort of stuff and whatever. And I think that's fair to criticize and to point out. But at least from this book, the broader view I take home of McCandless is just that he kind of had incoherent political beliefs and he was just trying to figure out who he was. And part of that he thought because he was such a fan of like Jack London and you know, these writers that talk about like finding yourself in the wilderness, that that's what he thought he should try to do. And he was literally just trying to figure out who he was. And it was like really not so much any, like stated. I don't think it was any sort of like actual like political sort of.
I don't think it was politically motivated, I guess, is what I'm saying. At least I would think probably not, but I don't. I think it's an interesting, like I said, I think it's an interesting theory.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: I guess I'm going to go ahead and manifest that Ben Shapiro walking into the jungle thing.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: How can we raise money to get Ben Shapiro to do, to reenact into the wild?
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Ben Shapiro isn't even at the top of my list.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: No, not even close anymore. Honestly.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: He might not even be in the.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: Top 10 at this point. No, honestly, not even close. Yeah, I don't, I don't even know how. I haven't seen anything from Ben Shapiro in a long time. So I don't even know how relevant he is in the right wing mediascape anymore. But.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: All right, over on Instagram, we didn't have any comments, but we did have two votes for the movie and two for the book. And then on Goodreads, we had one listener who couldn't decide and that listener was Moo.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Oh, I thought it was gonna be a different listener.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: No, that listener was Moo. Who said while watching the movie, I was a little surprised it showed Walt's violent side since it's basically non existent in the book. I'm currently in the middle of reading the wild truth by McCandless's sister Corinne.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the other one I mentioned where. Yeah.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Some added scenes in the movie are not from Crack that are not from Krakauer's book. Seem to come from his or Sean Penn's talks with Corinne, since they also appear in her book. Though it was published after the movie.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: That's what I was. I had speculated on that in the episode that maybe the scene we see of him, like being physically abusive was something that. Yeah.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: For example, the look what he's doing. Look what she's making me do. Abuse scene plays out nearly identically.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Krakow relieving out Chris's situation at home feels like a big omission. Walt seems like a strict father who was cheating in the book, but it leaves out all the abuse. Constant fights, breaking his wife's vertebrae, choking, kicking the family cat, disciplining the kids with a belt, and so much more. I cannot feel sorry for either parent when they tell their kids if it's not visible, it isn't really abuse.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: So I didn't know the extent to what the physical abuse situation was, and I don't remember where I read this, but supposedly it was either on the Wikipedia article or somewhere. The reason that stuff is not mentioned in into the Wild is because Korine specifically asked Krakauer not to put that.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Stuff in the book. Cause the dad was still alive.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Or something like that. There was some sort of. From what I. And I'd have to go find this again and maybe she will mention it later in the book. You said you're currently reading the Wild Truth. Maybe that comes up in some way of her talking about her telling Krakauer this. But I read something somewhere she told Krakauer this stuff, but said please don't put this in the book. For whatever reason, whether it was her parents are still alive and didn't want to trudge up drama or whatever, or just wasn't ready for that story to come out yet. I don't know. But she apparently told Krakauer this stuff. So he knew this, but it's not in the book because she specifically asked him not to put it in there, so.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: And I. I think that's fair.
[00:52:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as the author, what are you going to do?
[00:52:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I mean, I think there's. I definitely understand the kind of frustration with, like, well, we're not getting the whole story, but also when you're dealing with real people, like, I. I think that's.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: It's hard. Yeah. That's a hard place to be put in as an art if you're writing like a. Nonfiction, you know.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Particularly when you're at least attempting to be factual and accurate.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And there are allusions to the fact that, like, I think you can read into the Wild and come to the conclusion that maybe he. Like, you come to the conclusion that Walt was an asshole and that he was not nice to his son and that there was obviously tension and stuff there that caused problems.
It doesn't give any specifics, but you can kind of read around the lines and read between the lines and I think, you know, go like, okay, there's probably something going on there, but it definitely would have been helped to know, okay, like, this is what the situation actually was.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And I do think that that is something that would inform Chris's mindset.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Like I said. And that's why I kind of don't know if I agree with the idea that, like, from the previous comment about it being like, a politically motivated, like, libertarian ideological thing. I think it was just. I am escaping this horrible home situation and not even escape. Not even just escaping that home situation because he was out of that home, so he was in college. He could have moved. You know, he could have. But I think that. I think the fact that his home life was so turbulent and abusive is part of the reason, at least I would speculate. Part of the reason why he is not easily kind of categorized as a person. I think he lived such a. His childhood seemingly was so difficult. It resulted in an adult whose beliefs and way of interacting with the world was one that was not formed in a healthy environment.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: I guess.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: So he doesn't deal with problems in the way that, like, people from. Maybe a healthy, normal. I say normal is not the right word, but from a loving, healthy household maybe navigates through the world in a very different way than Chris. And I think the environment he grew up in has a lot to do with the fact that he was this kind of loner, this. This person of contradictions. I think the fact that he. Yeah. If that makes sense.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: No, I think that's reasonable.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Trying to figure out how to Word that without like trying to like, psychoanalyze. I'm not a sign, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I don't know. But I just. Based on what we know, it sounds like that would obviously do things and make it, you know.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:38] Speaker A: Or could. Obviously Corinne turned out differently, so.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Because a lot of its nature too, like you're just whatever, but you get what I'm saying.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: All right, so Miko summed up his thoughts here with, I can't pick one over the other. This week, the book cuts out basically the whole reason for Chris to leave his family behind and the whole context of the family camping trips were the only peaceful times since no one had to keep up appearances. I liked the movie as a piece of fiction, but it paints a real person as this wise wanderer. I think trying to rank a non fiction book in a fictionalized movie just won't mean much.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: That's the thing I was trying to express early on in the episode when I was talking about saying something is better in the movie felt really weird.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: So I was thinking about that after we recorded the main episode because we have not done very much nonfiction on this, but we have done a couple other pieces of nonfiction. So we did.
Hang on, let me pull up Goodreads so I can. I can look at our nonfiction shelf.
So we have done blackkklansman, Hidden Figures.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: And Wise Guy slash Goodfellas.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: Those were the other three pieces of nonfiction that we have done now, I think to me, and again, I didn't read the book, so maybe you might feel differently. I think that part of the difference here that we're feeling might be one, that none of those other three books were like the tragic tale of how someone's life tragically ended.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: Right. That's true. That's part of it. Yeah.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: And two, I'm pretty sure that the subjects of all of those other books had input in the movie.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I also think part of it maybe is that that's a big part of it. And I was thinking specifically when you mentioned blackkklansman, it's been a long time since we watched that movie, but that movie is very stylized and that maybe is also a thing. Whereas if it feels like a much more fictionalized version, that makes it feel less weird.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: To like comment on changes. You know what I mean? If it's like, oh, we're clearly like, this is inspired by these true events, but we're doing like a whole different thing here and making it like, you Know, I don't know. I think. And. And when you mentioned Hidden Figures, I actually think we did talk a little bit about.
[00:58:10] Speaker B: We probably does be like, that was a long time ago, and I really don't remember what all we talked about in that episode. But I also think there's a difference there in that, like, with both blackkklansman and Wise Guy. Those are both autobiographies, right? Yeah. Yes. Which. So they were written by the people who experienced the events, which is not the case with Hidden Figures. But Hidden Figures is also the story of, like, a more broad historical event and not just the story of, like.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: One single person, which does famously have a lot of changes that are.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: That are kind of controversial in the sense of, like, you know, they weren't stopped from using the bathroom at NASA and stuff. Like, there are. Well, they were, but kind of like, it's complicated, you know, like, the movie very much massages details into a grander narrative for the. The sake of the film, which is, you know. But I do. When you mentioned. Like I said, I do feel like we at least talked a little bit about that.
[00:59:09] Speaker B: I think we did. Yeah.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: It's just been a long time. So I don't remember.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: We didn't have a vote on YouTube, but we did get a comment on YouTube this time. We don't normally get YouTube Sense, or.
[00:59:22] Speaker A: If we do, they're normally.
[00:59:23] Speaker B: If we do. Yeah, they're. They're normally like, far after we've recorded the prequels.
But we got a comment From Half Sour Lizard 9319.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: All right.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: Who said I went on a similar journey when I was McCandless's age and stupidity level, the difference being that I survived and that was in the jungle. Because being cold is silly. If his motivations were anything like mine, which from what I've read about him, they were, he was not any sort of hero or sage. Rather, he was a young person who was compelled to undertake a journey. Joseph Campbell. Loss of innocence, blah, blah, blah. And to do it according to rules that made sense to the way that the world occurred for him. I am glad to have survived my youth, but even if someone had told me that I would for absolute certain die, starved and impossibly alone, I would have faced the proverbial room of a thousand demons. Matter what.
[01:00:21] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree with that. Like I said, it's not. Not some hero, not some sage. He was just a guy, a young dude trying to figure out. And the way he thought he could do that was wandering the desert. Oh, going Going to Alaska.
[01:00:35] Speaker B: Going to the woods to live deliberately.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: All right, so it was pretty close this week, but our polls listener.
But our poll winner was ultimately the book with nine votes to the movie's seven, plus our one listener who couldn't decide.
[01:00:53] Speaker A: It's close, though.
[01:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:55] Speaker A: Which is interesting, actually. I guess it doesn't surprise me. The movie was fairly popular, so I'm sure quite a few people saw the movie without ever having read the book. So have like, you know, stronger feelings for the movie, but interesting. All right, that is it for our listener feedback. Again, despite the fact that I argued with a lot of you all on this podcast, I hope you all took that in. It's a conversation. It's not an argument. I love arguing with people.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: I think know you do.
[01:01:19] Speaker A: I find it really enjoyable.
To me, it's not. It's not an exercise in aggression or even disagreement. It's an exercise in exchanging ideas and like, learning about each other. So I. I find it fascinating and I hope you all engaged with that argument or with me in the same spirit.
[01:01:37] Speaker B: That's a very rhetorical definition of argument.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, but I do, like I said, I hope that everybody appreciates that when I am, you know, disagreeing with your comments. It's not like that I think you're dumb or anything. It's that I just. I find it so fascinating to see what other people. How different, like, perspectives on stuff like this can be and then figuring out. A lot of times it's me, like, seeing if I testing myself to see if I agree with what the comments say. Anyways, let's move on. Thank you all for your comments. It's time to learn a little bit. Previewing. Sorry, no learning things segment this week because we knew I would talk a lot in the listener feedback section. But we do have our preview of Twelfth Night Ladies.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: Today we're going to go over the guidelines for a graceful, ladylike entree into society.
Make sure she's in the back for the group photo.
[01:02:27] Speaker A: Viola was facing a fate worse than death.
[01:02:30] Speaker B: Sorry, Mom. I have a strict no Ruffles policy.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: Until her twin brother Sebastian.
[01:02:36] Speaker B: Where are you going? London.
[01:02:37] Speaker A: For a couple of weeks. What are you going to do about school?
[01:02:39] Speaker B: I was kind of hoping you could help me with that.
[01:02:41] Speaker A: Sure showed her a way out. Could you just, like, pretend to be me? You want me to turn you into your brother? Nobody in Illyria has even met Sebastian.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: They wouldn't know the difference.
[01:02:50] Speaker A: Now she's headed to Illyria Academy. Let's go kick kill where the men have game and the women have attitude.
[01:02:59] Speaker B: Twelfth Night.
Twelfth A word that I hate. Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy by English playwright William Shakespeare.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: Or was it.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Maybe I'm just.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: I'm not.
[01:03:13] Speaker B: Who's to say it was.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: Right?
[01:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: I mean, pretty much like a conspiracy theory. The whole. I'm.
[01:03:20] Speaker B: I'm not a Shakespearean scholar, but I'm not. I do think that that is like, mostly.
[01:03:25] Speaker A: Mostly considered like a fringe. Like, not accepted by general academia.
[01:03:29] Speaker B: Okay. But Twelfth Night was believed to have been written around 1601-1602. Its first documented public performance was on February 2nd of 1602. But the play was not published officially until its inclusion in the 1623 First Folio.
The full title of the play is Twelfth Night or what you will.
Subtitles for plays were very fashionable in the Elizabethan era. Although this is one of the few Shakespeare plays that the subtitle has kind of survived into modern publication for whatever reason.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: Is that a subtitle? Because it's Twelfth Night, comma.
[01:04:13] Speaker B: Yes, it's a subtitle. Yeah.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: So they didn't use colons back then?
[01:04:16] Speaker B: I guess not.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:04:18] Speaker B: Punctuation was different, man.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: Yeah, No, I know. That's why I was asking. Yeah.
[01:04:23] Speaker B: The play is believed to have drawn on the Italian production word I never have a chance to pronounce. But the translation is the deceived one.
[01:04:34] Speaker A: It looks like Glenganati. Is that an L?
[01:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. It's a lot of concepts and smashed together.
[01:04:40] Speaker A: Glenn Gennady.
[01:04:42] Speaker B: Another possible.
Another possible source story is of Apollonius and Scylla or Sia, I'm not sure which appeared in Barnaby Rich's collection. Rich. His farewell to military profession. Containing very pleasant discourses fit for a peaceable time from 1581.
[01:05:04] Speaker A: Whatever. Motherfucker invented brevity. Really?
[01:05:07] Speaker B: No, we don't title things like we used to.
[01:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that. It always cracks me up when you see those. Like every now. And like, when we're watching like, town, there's a YouTube channel we watch called Townsends that does, like 18th century cooking videos and stuff. And every now and then they'll. They'll, like.
The titles of the cookbook are just unbelievable. And sometimes there's at least one. I can't remember what it is, but there's at least one that has a really long, ridiculous name that they use pretty often.
[01:05:33] Speaker B: So Twelfth Night is a reference to the Twelfth Night after Christmas Day.
[01:05:39] Speaker A: I did not know this.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: Which is also the. Of the Feast of Epiphany and Epiphany, as I tell you over here, I know what epiphany is, is when the Christmas season is over. After the 12 days of Christmas. Yes, because that's the only Catholic thing I'm hanging on to. But this was originally a Catholic holiday, possibly based on the ancient Roman feast of Saturnalia. In Saturnalia, masters became servants for a day and vice versa.
So Twelfth Night in the Elizabethan era was maybe a little bit different than we might think. It was a festival led by the Lord of Misrule.
And entertainment included songs, mummery or folk plays and a general atmosphere of ordained disorder, resulting in a kind of opposite day vibe that expanded on the servant master role reversal to other roles, including gender roles.
So because both the title and the plot of the play fit in line with the Elizabethan feast of Twelfth Night, many scholars believe that the play was originally written as Twelfth Night. Entertainment would make sense, although there isn't. There isn't any recorded evidence of it being initially staged at that specific time. But it is possible that it was commissioned and performed privately for Queen Elizabeth's court.
[01:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, the Doctor who Christmas Special of its era. Yeah, we get it. We understand.
[01:07:13] Speaker B: So the play's themes comment on gender, gender roles and same sex attraction. Themes that get an extra layer added to them when you consider that the female character in disguise as a man was in Shakespeare's time played by a young man who was already cross dressing in order to play a woman.
[01:07:32] Speaker A: Watch my brain turned inside out trying to parse that.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: A man playing a woman playing a man. Yeah.
It's also far from Shakespeare's only play to utilize cross dressing and gender as a theme. As yous like it and the Merchant of Venice are two other examples. 12th Night also has some meta elements with several lines in the play referencing actors, plays and being on stage. That kind of meta winking at the audience was also a common element in Shakespeare's plays. Twelfth Night has been pretty consistently popular over the years. I looked at a source claiming to have ranked his plays by number of productions and it had Twelfth Night at number five. I couldn't find a direct reference to when they started counting from, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. I also looked at a few other sources that ranked his plays more vaguely by popularity, which was defined differently per each source, but all of them also ranked Twelfth Night within the top 10. So maybe not the most scientific data collection, but interesting nonetheless.
[01:08:41] Speaker A: I mean, that tracks with my knowledge of Shakespeare. If you asked me to write every the name of every Shakespeare play I knew Twelfth Night would be one of them and there wouldn't be that many. Like, you know, I might get to 10, maybe, and 12th Night would be one of them.
[01:08:54] Speaker B: So I think I could get pretty many. I've actually read quite a bit of Shakespeare. I took a couple Shakespeare classes in college. I have read quite a bit of it.
[01:09:04] Speaker A: I have not. So.
[01:09:06] Speaker B: Moving into the 20th and 21st centuries, Twelfth Night has continued to be a popular choice for theaters of all sizes. And a few of the characters are also considered to be plum roles for actors as well. The character Malvolio has been played by many prominent actors over the years, including Laurence Olivier, Stephen Fry and Patrick Stewart. The female lead, Viola, has been played by actresses such as Vivien Leigh, Judi Dench, and Anne Hathaway.
Google Anne Hathaway Twelfth Night right now and go to images.
[01:09:41] Speaker A: I think I've seen this. She's just really hot, right?
[01:09:44] Speaker B: I mean, she is.
If you, if you're listening, go ahead and Google that. And if you're into the same things I'm into, you'll like what you see.
[01:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I've seen, I've seen this photo before. Yeah, yeah.
[01:09:58] Speaker B: Unfortunately, I believe there is no recording of that particular performance.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: Nobody. We don't have a phone.
[01:10:05] Speaker B: I don't, I don't. It was in 2009, I believe.
I don't think so.
[01:10:11] Speaker A: Somebody should have recorded it.
[01:10:13] Speaker B: So Twelfth Night, the play has been adapted and reimagined many times over the years as all of Shakespeare's most popular plays have been.
So we've got straight plays, musicals, straight plays. Straight. Okay. It's just the opposite of a musical.
[01:10:30] Speaker A: I know. I was making a joke. Based on the tyrant.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: Musicals, movies, television adaptations, radio adaptations, books, you name it, it probably exists. Its themes, particularly its commentary on gender and same sex attraction, have made it a tantalizing, jumping off point for basically every kind of artist throughout the centuries.
[01:10:52] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:10:53] Speaker B: And finally, because it's Shakespeare and his works are responsible for so much more of the English language than a lot of people realize, here is a short list of the phrases and idioms that first appeared in Twelfth Night. So these are things that did not exist in our lexicon prior to this play being written.
[01:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Or at least not known, like written. We don't have written records of them. Yes.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: If music be the food of love, play on.
[01:11:23] Speaker A: Never heard that one.
[01:11:25] Speaker B: In Stitches, as in Laughing Jaws of Death.
And some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: I didn't know that was from this.
[01:11:38] Speaker B: So it is.
[01:11:39] Speaker A: Look at that.
All right, that is it for our preview of Twelfth Night. It's time now to preview and learn a little bit about she's the Man. Hey there, pretty lady. Ew.
[01:11:54] Speaker B: Girls with butts like mine do not talk to boys with faces like yours.
What up? We're gonna be tight, bro.
[01:12:03] Speaker A: Seriously, how old are you?
[01:12:05] Speaker B: Skipped a couple grades.
There is something odd about that new boy.
[01:12:10] Speaker A: You are so busted.
But at this school, everyone's got a secret.
Duke wants Olivia. Do you like cheese? Who wants Sebastian?
[01:12:20] Speaker B: Isn't he cute? How you doing, babe?
[01:12:23] Speaker A: Who is really Viola, whose brother is dating Monique, so she hates Olivia, who's dating Duke, to make Sebastian jealous. What does your heart tell you, huh?
[01:12:34] Speaker B: Which one would you rather see naked?
[01:12:36] Speaker A: She's the man is a 2006 film directed by Andy Fickman, who did Race to Witch Mountain, Paul blart, Mall Cop 2, and Heather's the Musical. The movie. It's a pro shot of Heather's the Musical, and he directed it, apparently. The film was written by Karen McCullough and Kirsten Smith. Long time a fan of the show Karen McCullough. I remember Kirsten Smith.
[01:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Kirsten Smith follows us on Instagram.
[01:13:05] Speaker A: So a fan of the show Kirsten Smith, who follows us on Instagram. But they wrote 10 things I hate about yout, which we did as a bonus episode. The Ugly Truth, the House Bunny, Ella Enchanted, which we've done as a main episode. And Legally Blonde, which we've done as a main episode. And then the story credit for the producer, Ewan Leslie also had a story credit on it. But, yeah, Kieran McCullen. Kirsten Smith wrote it, which are. I think it's Kirsten, right? Yeah, yeah.
Which I'm very excited. I did not realize that. And then I was like, wait a second, it might be good. I thought, this movie's gonna be bad. And then I saw who wrote it, and I was like, this might be secretly good, because 10 things I hate about you and Legally Blonde are both great. So we'll see. The film stars Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey, Vinnie Jones, Julie Haggery, David Cross, Robert Hoffman, and Alex Breckenridge, among others. It has a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 45% on Metacritic, and a 6.4 out of 10 on IMDb. It made 57.2 million against a budget of 20 million and won the Teen Choice Award for Best Comedy and Best Male Breakout Actor for CH Tatum. Speaking of Channing Tatum, apparently his casting was at Amanda Bynes insistence, she said, quote, I totally fought for Channing to get cast in the movie because he wasn't famous yet. He'd done a Mountain Dew commercial. And I was like, this guy's a star. Every girl will love him. But the producers were like, he's so much older than you. And I was like, it doesn't matter. Trust me. End quote. I looked it up. He's not that much older than her. Like, he is older than her and probably enough that. I mean, enough that it would be noticeable. But, like, yeah, I guess movies don't generally care.
[01:14:42] Speaker B: I don't know. I haven't. I've seen this movie. I have not seen it for a long time. So I would have to watch it again to see if I'm notably bothered by his age versus, Is it set.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: In high school or college? I don't know how old man Bynes was at the time.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: I think.
I think high school, but I think they're at, like, a prep school.
[01:15:01] Speaker A: Okay, so it's possible that he was old enough that the producers like, well, he's too old to play a high school kid.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: But again, I feel like that would stop. That would be the first time that's ever bothered Hollywood movie makers.
[01:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
So on Amanda Bynes side, she did. She said. Has said that the role was kind of a mixed bag for her, saying, quote, it was hard, but I did it. And I did something that was not easy for me. So it was a cathartic experience and I felt really good getting it out of me, end quote. However, later on in an interview with paper, she would go on to say that her role in the film had a negative effect on her mental health, saying, quote, when the movie came out and I saw it, I went into a deep depression for four to six months because I didn't like how I looked when I was a boy. Bynes said seeing herself on screen with short hair, thick eyebrows and sideburns was, quote, a strange and out of body experience, end quote.
So getting into. There's, like, all I have. There was nothing interesting in the IMDb trivia, like, literally nothing interesting. There was 20 facts, but they're all boring and nothing. There was very little background information in the production stuff. So. So we're just gonna get to some reviews, starting for the San Francisco Chronicle. Critic Ruth Stein said, quote, bynes displays a fair flair for comedy, especially when viola studies guys. Viola or viola? Do you know? I think viola, especially when viola studies guys walking down the street and mimics their gait and mannerisms. Bynes uses her elastic face to show Viola's every Viola's every thought I'm gonna say I don't know. Yeah, every thought. Making the transition and doing her darndest to pull it off. She's not going to win an Oscar for playing a boy as Hilary Swank did in Boys Don't Cry, but Bynes makes a far more convincing one than Barbara Streis in Yentl.
[01:16:46] Speaker B: I've never seen Yentl.
[01:16:47] Speaker A: Me either.
[01:16:48] Speaker B: I've also never seen Boys Don't Cry, so me either.
[01:16:53] Speaker A: A movie that I'm sure has aged perfectly. I don't know. I literally know nothing about it. It maybe has. I know nothing about it. Refinery29 also wrote a review praising both Bynes in the film as both Viola and Sebastian, saying, quote, as Viola, Bynes is confident and charming, the kind of Jennifer Lawrence, like, cool girl who would gladly hand you a tampon in the bathroom as long as she's not already using it to stop a nosebleed. And as Sebastian, she oozes an inexplicable form of awkward charisma, spitting out perfect line delivery after perfect line delivery, her facial expressions working overtime to nail the laugh. It remains one of her best, most challenging performances. End quote. And finally, Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun Times gave it three stars, which is a good It's a positive review because they do out of four For Chicago Sun Times Times. And he wrote, quote, amanda Bynes, let us say that she is sunny and plucky and somehow finds a way to play her impossible role without clearing her throat more than six or eight times. More importantly, we like her in this role. As Shakespeare might say, she achieves greatness or maybe she has it thrust upon her. The movie is good natured and silly.
He had some other negative things to say about different parts, but overall he liked the film and gave it three out of four stars and liked her performance. Them as always. You can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Goodreads, Blue sky, any of those places. We would love for you to send us comments so that I can disagree with you on the prequel episodes. That's fun. You can also do us a favor by heading over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, any of those places where you listen to us, drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review. That always helps and it's appreciated. And you can Support
[email protected] ThisFilmIsLit you get access to all kinds of different fun stuff there, including at the $15 a month level priority patron requests. And this one is a patron request from.
[01:18:44] Speaker B: This was a request from Nathan.
[01:18:46] Speaker A: There you go. Thank you, Nathan. Even though I just argued with you for the last hour in the beginning of this episode, maybe I'll be completely on board with you for this episode. Who knows? Anyways, Katie, where can people watch she's the Man?
[01:19:00] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or a local video rental store if you still have one of those. Otherwise you can stream this with a subscription to Paramount plus or Hoopla. Or you can rent it for around $4 from Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube, Fandango at Home or Plex.
[01:19:21] Speaker A: Sweet. What are your thoughts on this?
[01:19:24] Speaker B: It's been a long time since I've seen it. I remember liking it. I remember thinking it was funny. So I'm and I also like a lot of the, the McCullough Smith team's work.
[01:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, the writing partner.
[01:19:37] Speaker B: So I, I'm excited to rewatch it. I have also read Twelfth Night before.
It was about 15 years ago in college.
So I, and, and I remember like not super duper liking it at the time. Like I didn't hate it like I did all of the history, but I remember like not liking it as much as I thought I was going to. So I'm interested also to revisit that as an older person and see if I feel differently about it.
[01:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. All right, well, in one week's time come back. We're breaking down all of the fun gender bending chaos that is that is Twelfth Night slash she the Man. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
[01:20:28] Speaker B: Pals and everybody else keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.
