Transcript
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Speaker: Welcome to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast.
Speaker: I'm Nate.
Speaker: And I'm Chris.
Speaker: And today we have a very special episode, our first episode of 2026.
Speaker: Happy New Year, Chris.
Speaker: Happy New Year.
Speaker: Today we are discussing One Battle After Another, the film adaptation of Thomas Vineland, or what?
Speaker: Thomas Pinchon's Vineland?
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Sorry, Mr. Pinchon.
Speaker: for what it's worth, I guess you've created a very immersive text to scramble my brains a little bit.
Speaker: It really drew us in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But before we get into that, we did want to just quickly share that our Adaptation People's Choice Awards winners have been announced on Instagram.
Speaker: So be sure to check us out at adaptation underscore pod to see the winners.
Speaker: And thank you to those who voted and
Speaker: Congrats to the winners.
Speaker: There were more ties than I expected, so we might have to remedy that.
Speaker: That surprised me too.
Speaker: Like dead heat ties.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: The more love we can spread, the better.
Speaker: So maybe not.
Speaker: I really appreciated the most joke category of all, the reality TV show one.
Speaker: I knew you'd be excited about that one.
Speaker: Chris's most enthusiastic contribution won that category.
Speaker: But how has your 2026 gone so far as regarding reading?
Speaker: We're a couple days in now.
Speaker: Slower than I hoped.
Speaker: I was, unfortunately, in the middle of a few books all at once, which I had finally gotten away from.
Speaker: For years and years, I always had like eight books going at once.
Speaker: And near the end of 2025, I was finally like starting one book and finishing it.
Speaker: And then suddenly this week I looked down and I was like, why am I in the middle of five books?
Speaker: And this book is very much the culprit of that, I believe.
Speaker: Not entirely, but predominantly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I would read like 10 pages and just be sick of it.
Speaker: I've heard it's super dense.
Speaker: Yeah, so I would put it down and go back.
Speaker: And part of the problem is one of the books I'm in the middle of is similar length to Pillars of the Earth.
Speaker: It's another like thousand page grand voyage.
Speaker: So those always take a while.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I read a few in between, which is probably why they take a while.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, because you got to get those brain breaks in.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And that one's easier to, you know, read a few pages and fall asleep.
Speaker: I kept trying to read Vineland before bed and it's too...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a bad idea.
Speaker: It's like reading The Shining before bed.
Speaker: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker: You're just a little too wound too tight and a little too much in thinking mode.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So I've only actually finished one book so far, which is woefully behind for the 10th of January.
Speaker: I just finished the novella for Minority Report.
Speaker: Oh, look at that.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I think we're going to maybe cover that one later this week.
Speaker: year, as long as our schedule that we've crafted holds up the chaos of movie release dates shifting and whatnot.
Speaker: So I'm excited to talk about that one.
Speaker: And that one Philip K. Dick has a crazy number of, um, stories that have been adapted.
Speaker: Uh, but it was very interesting to go back and read, you know, being one of my favorite movies and it was super short.
Speaker: It's like 118 pages or something.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't know that before.
Speaker: Huh?
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: What have you been watching?
Speaker: Similar.
Speaker: This is kind of a slow time of year because movie studios are a little more focused on campaigning for awards than they are releasing good movies this time of year.
Speaker: Also partly because, you know, weather is bad in a lot of the country and people have
Speaker: New Year's resolutions to spend less money or just like prerogatives to do so after the holidays.
Speaker: So usually good movies don't really come out this time of year.
Speaker: January and February are known in the in the industry as dump you, Harry, because it's sort of where they release the films that like
Speaker: They're like, yeah, this didn't turn out all that good.
Speaker: So we're just going to put it right in this corridor where people aren't really watching many movies.
Speaker: But that being said, I do have a few Christmas releases that I don't know if I really covered.
Speaker: I saw Marty Supreme, which I know I've told you off mic is I'd love that movie.
Speaker: That's the Timothee Chalamet ping pong one.
Speaker: Fantastic movie.
Speaker: Song Sung Blue is the sort of biopic of the Neil Diamond cover band.
Speaker: Oh, actually really pretty good movie as well.
Speaker: I like that one a lot more than I was expecting to.
Speaker: And just yesterday, last night, watched The People We Meet on Vacation, which is actually an adaptation of an Emily Henry novel that hit Netflix recently, I guess.
Speaker: It's sort of the first new movie of the year.
Speaker: And it actually was not that bad for being like a silly little rom-com that, you know, Netflix has a habit of like scooping up the rights to this kind of book and quickly and cheaply producing a movie adaptation.
Speaker: And then it's usually like
Speaker: kind of unsatisfying, but I actually kind of liked this one.
Speaker: It was kind of cute.
Speaker: That book was huge, and I'm receiving a lot of articles about the adaptation.
Speaker: The book side of Instagram is very excited about it.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think I might be
Speaker: mixing up my services here, but I think Netflix has optioned the rights to a few other Emily Henry books.
Speaker: I think she's found a good home adaptation home at Netflix for her there.
Speaker: So good for her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Big couple, big couple of days for her big, big year so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've, I've, I've had that book recommended to me a number of times.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a good, I'm sure it's like a beach read.
Speaker: It's a good, cute, easy thing.
Speaker: But we do have a specific assignment today, a little more intense than I think people we meet on vacation is.
Speaker: A little.
Speaker: Yeah, as far as I know.
Speaker: I mean, Lord knows I didn't read the book.
Speaker: But why don't you, Chris, tell us about Thomas Pinchon's novel Vineland?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This was a crazy one to research.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I'll tell you what we do know to start.
Speaker: Thomas Ruggles Pinchon Jr. was born in Long Island in 1937, went to Cornell, and it is believed now to currently reside in the Upper West Side.
Speaker: He is considered one of the preeminent postmodern American authors.
Speaker: The book was so strange while I was reading it.
Speaker: that I went to go look for interviews because I was like, who the heck is this guy?
Speaker: You cannot find a filmed interview with him anywhere.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Famously has spent the last five decades, well, started publishing in the 60s, so six decades, very deliberately not giving interviews, not showing up to appearances, does not want himself photographed, a very elusive cat.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: It's so much so that there are even like these splinter groups who claim Thomas Pynchon himself does not exist at all and have a list of potential authors that they believe he could be instead.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: It's like Shakespeare all over again.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I saw one list.
Speaker: Orson Welles, who else was on the list?
Speaker: Prince was on the list.
Speaker: Someone suggested that it was actually Prince writing all of these.
Speaker: Well, he just published another book in 2025.
Speaker: Oh, so it's probably not Prince.
Speaker: Probably not Prince.
Speaker: Damn it.
Speaker: Can't say for certain, though.
Speaker: There were two fairly particular references to photos.
Speaker: of him made public in the last five decades.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: Damn.
Speaker: This guy's effective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When you, when you go to look for a picture of him, the primary photo you will find is from his 1953 yearbook.
Speaker: He did famously record lines for two episodes of the Simpsons.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Stating that it was simply because his son liked the show.
Speaker: basically.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Good for him.
Speaker: But yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit more later on.
Speaker: I found some very interesting information.
Speaker: There was a little British, couldn't tell if it was like a mini documentary or like a sort of 60 minute style look at a particular individual.
Speaker: from 1990.
Speaker: It was aired the day before Vineland officially came out, which is very confusing because from all accounts, it was already critically acclaimed and was selling out before it was officially released.
Speaker: I do not understand book publication dates.
Speaker: They're like not well recorded and not official.
Speaker: I don't get it.
Speaker: I don't understand what's happening there.
Speaker: Very confusing, especially because
Speaker: For virtually anyone else, you would immediately look at that scenario and say, okay, so this was a PR stunt and a very effective one.
Speaker: Indeed, one of the publishing experts they had on this BBC documentary said exactly that and also specified this has been this guy's MO forever.
Speaker: It's not a publicity stunt.
Speaker: This is just what he does.
Speaker: Whether that was the intention or not, it clearly worked.
Speaker: I mean, they made a movie out of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So here's sort of an order of his big publications that came out.
Speaker: These are just books, right?
Speaker: He's written other articles, some other stuff.
Speaker: His first book, V, just uppercase V, came out in 1963.
Speaker: The Crying of Lot 49, 1966.
Speaker: Famously, you'll probably have heard of this, Gravity's Rainbow.
Speaker: Yes, I have, and I'll circle back to why a little bit later, but only recently learned about this book.
Speaker: Okay, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: This is famously, it is often called encyclopedic dense text.
Speaker: It is massive, very accurate, very factually accurate in the science.
Speaker: The entire book is kind of a discussion, rumination, philosophication,
Speaker: if that's a word, of the German development of the V2 rocket.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He won the National Book Award for it, and his publisher, knowing that he would not show up to receive the award, actually hired a comedian of that time who was famous for these satirical, pseudo-academic tirades to receive the award.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: And the best part is,
Speaker: No one there had ever seen Pinchon himself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the majority of the crowd just assumed it was actually him.
Speaker: Do you know who the comedian was?
Speaker: Yes, it is the comedian, quote unquote, Professor Erwin Corey.
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to have to look that up.
Speaker: I don't think I'm familiar with him.
Speaker: So that was part of it, too.
Speaker: He wasn't a very well-known comedian.
Speaker: I guess he must not be if everyone thought it was Pinchon.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: I mean, just incredible.
Speaker: Slow Learner was between these two.
Speaker: So Gravity's Rainbow was 73, massive success.
Speaker: Slow Learner is a collection of short stories he released in 84, and then came Vineland in 1990.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: One of the fascinating comparisons that I saw made was that Gravity's Rainbow is like this pillar of dissecting
Speaker: complex, dense literature, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And one of the, again, people that they were interviewing on this BBC piece talked about basically the critical response to Vineland was all these professors loved having this ivory tower.
Speaker: They hold the academic keys to unlock the complexity of Gravity's Rainbow.
Speaker: And then Vineland comes out.
Speaker: It is basically just this kind of like trip of drug-fueled mania.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Involving these constant pop culture references, references to TV shows, references to current artists, former artists, all of these people that essentially the interviewee posited was now a world closed off.
Speaker: to these academics.
Speaker: Yeah, wow.
Speaker: And so because now it's suddenly not something that they understand in their wheelhouse, they find it deplorable and against this massive career that this author's built for himself.
Speaker: Just a comical situation all the way around.
Speaker: Wow, yeah, that's wacky.
Speaker: There was this incredible book critic's quote about him and this mystique that he's built up around himself.
Speaker: They said, the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture, that if Pinchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet, the circumstances I admit are beyond imagining, we can agree, the resulting matter or antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.
Speaker: just an incredible comparison.
Speaker: And he himself has often talked about the problem.
Speaker: We discussed this with Frieda McFadden.
Speaker: People think they know who she is.
Speaker: Why would we disturb that?
Speaker: She's gone to such lengths.
Speaker: Who are we, the public?
Speaker: to deny her that, right?
Speaker: We like this person's work so much that we should violate what they've clearly made, you know, their desires.
Speaker: Plus, I don't want to vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.
Speaker: Well, I agree with this critic.
Speaker: I think that meeting is highly unlikely.
Speaker: Not impossible, clearly.
Speaker: Not impossible.
Speaker: But this idea of he has chosen not to be a public figure.
Speaker: One of the photos that came out was him taking his son for a walk in Manhattan that the National Enquirer found chasing him down.
Speaker: And he contacted them and asked them not to publish it.
Speaker: But where with other media figures, clearly this would boost his sales.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he has chosen, no, I've made this literature for you.
Speaker: albeit crazy literature, let that speak for itself.
Speaker: So the book, Vineland, it is a reference to a place that is now turned into, I believe, Eureka, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker: It is at the exact intersection, in my opinion, of the crazy stream of consciousness
Speaker: nearly indecipherable writing of Ulysses or Dubliners, James Joyce, which I am not the first person to compare his work to James Joyce.
Speaker: But it feels very much like that to me.
Speaker: Anna Karenina, these massive Russian epics of literature where you are spending 30 pages hearing about some guy just mowing the grass with a scythe, and you're like, where is this going?
Speaker: And On the Road by Jack Kerouac, the beatnik sort of lucid, is this reality, is it not?
Speaker: I want to call it genre bending.
Speaker: I suppose maybe that's what they mean by postmodern.
Speaker: It's a wild book to get through.
Speaker: Wow, cool.
Speaker: There are clearly some main characters, many main characters, in fact.
Speaker: I would hesitate to call any of them the protagonist.
Speaker: What was there a clear protagonist in the film?
Speaker: There's actually a lot of argument around this because I think that there's two.
Speaker: Some people feel that there's only one and that would be Leonardo DiCaprio's character.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And that's the dad.
Speaker: He, uh, Zoid or something I think is his character in the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then his, his wife, Frenessi.
Speaker: The names in the book are just insane.
Speaker: Their daughter is Prairie.
Speaker: Frenessi's mother's name is Sasha and her dad, it's like Hub, like Hubbard or Hubbard.
Speaker: Like it's just, it is all over the place.
Speaker: They're being chased around by this FBI man or CIA or secret service of some type named Zond, Brock Zond.
Speaker: It's just wild and completely outside of chapter breaks, just suddenly one paragraph to the next, you're suddenly following this, this
Speaker: woman named DL and her path to become a master ninja.
Speaker: And then these two guys who run a tow business and impound cars called Blood and Vato.
Speaker: All of it is kind of built around the post McCarthy red scare in Hollywood of unions and scabs and strikers and the government turning people and offering them deals to narc on other people that they know.
Speaker: the student organizations in the universities, they're sort of guru, pseudo messiah, academic professors that they cling to that the professors don't know why.
Speaker: It's just this wild, wild trip.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sounds like it.
Speaker: It's been called essentially a quintessential piece of the 60s, not piece of writing of the 60s, just like a dissection, a slice of that time period.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that was essentially his goal.
Speaker: He does use it very effectively to discuss those themes, the war on drugs, a lot of references to Nixon and Reagan, the effects of television on the populace, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: the opioid of the masses.
Speaker: I don't think he ever says that specifically, but there is a gentleman who's literally addicted to it.
Speaker: What do they call them?
Speaker: Like tube heads or something.
Speaker: They just call it the tube, the entire book.
Speaker: They don't call it television much.
Speaker: And they, they kind of capture the idea of what is a plight, a cause, a battle of an entire generation.
Speaker: How do authorities respond?
Speaker: How do changes, if any, happen?
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Those are big ideas.
Speaker: It feels like a lot of the... There's so much.
Speaker: There's so, so much across so many people.
Speaker: I don't think it behooves us to get into many of them very deeply, but I wanted to give you an example of the writing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, Zoid's not yet wife yet.
Speaker: He hasn't met her yet.
Speaker: They're at this...
Speaker: like Oceanside University in California and this student group rises up and they're suddenly listening to rock and roll and doing drugs.
Speaker: And so the government decides they need to step in and quash this, right?
Speaker: Sure, yeah.
Speaker: And they form this like film co-op essentially.
Speaker: I think we can all picture it, right?
Speaker: Bunch of kids decide this is how we can make an impact.
Speaker: We'll go film each of the times
Speaker: the man comes in to put the people down and distribute it, right?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so they're talking about creating this archive of what's going on.
Speaker: And it says, they particularly believed in the ability of close-ups to reveal and devastate.
Speaker: When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face.
Speaker: Who could withstand the light?
Speaker: What viewer could believe in the war, the system, the countless lies about American freedom, looking into these mug shots of the bought and sold?
Speaker: That is masterful.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm like rereading it right now because it's also even that's dense and I'm like trying to navigate the like three sentences you just read.
Speaker: And it is only three sentences, which is a frustrating aspect of his writing.
Speaker: There would be a page and a half that's all one paragraph.
Speaker: I did a lot of rereading.
Speaker: I feel like I read 800 pages in these 400 pages.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: What a first book for the year.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Now, this one in particular, really, really now, I mean, I do not have memorized what the date is this episode will come out.
Speaker: But now, January 10th, 2026, I am immediately thinking of, which I was not because I read this paragraph before this event occurred, but I am immediately now thinking of all of the videos, the immediate body cam footage that we have all now seen of the ICE killing in Minnesota that's been happening, feels like nonstop for a long, long time.
Speaker: Nonstop in a very public way.
Speaker: since George Floyd in 2020.
Speaker: And this is no less true and poignant and powerful now than it was then.
Speaker: And now this is getting very pessimistic.
Speaker: We see the exact same thing happening here.
Speaker: This happened very, very publicly five years ago, and we were all appalled.
Speaker: It is one episode after another throughout this book, and at the end, does anything change?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And who, as an objective observer, could look at America of today and not think the exact same thing?
Speaker: So that was, it's just, this was simultaneously the most genius and brilliant part of this book
Speaker: and the most frustrating.
Speaker: He took commentary like this, applied it not just to that generation, right?
Speaker: This came out in 1990.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He was talking about things that were happening in all these people's parents' and grandparents' times.
Speaker: I mean, his time, he was born in 37, but you know what I mean.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And we are now, 36 years later, confronting the exact same thing for our generation.
Speaker: and seeing the exact same inputs and outcomes.
Speaker: Just crazy.
Speaker: I'm glad that you caught on to that.
Speaker: I'm glad that the book resonated in that way with you because I've, I rewatched the movie this morning, just a couple hours ago to, to prepare for this.
Speaker: And it was an extremely emotional, I'm going to get emotional now experience.
Speaker: Um, just to watch it, you know, while these wounds are so fresh,
Speaker: these metaphorical wounds uh obviously because of what we're we're going through you know in the last 10 days really uh of of 2026 um have been really raw and the story i think just could not be more poignant and more oh sorry just it's just really raw you know to watch this and um
Speaker: I can't believe that this movie, I feel like we've been saying this for the last, like since Donald Trump was elected the first time we talk about how these stories are so unbelievably poignant.
Speaker: Um, and you know, obviously at some point that's a little bit intentional by these publishing houses and movie studios that are creating these stories.
Speaker: But this text as a whole has just really drawn that through line from the beginning of modern history, modern American history through
Speaker: today and probably tomorrow and probably the next, you know, a hundred years if we're lucky enough to make it that long as a country.
Speaker: Anyway, sorry for being the first to cry on the pod, but somebody had to do it eventually.
Speaker: It happened someday.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just, it's, it's remarkable.
Speaker: And, um, I think, uh, I think the frustration for me with this book in particular, clearly such a valuable text, these, these bits are hidden.
Speaker: these absolutely essential commentaries.
Speaker: To access them, you, as the reader, must wade through this chest-deep bog of different characters' perspectives, timelines crossing, new characters being introduced, otherworldly powers.
Speaker: This woman, DL, is able to
Speaker: press on the right places in one's body and start a chain reaction where they will not die for another year.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: These crazy things.
Speaker: There's an entire cult of people who all think they're already dead called thanatoids or thanatinoids.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: These little sprinklings...
Speaker: of shockingly specific pop culture TV movie references over the course of 400 very dense pages.
Speaker: I'm on an emotional rollercoaster right now.
Speaker: I don't even know what to say.
Speaker: Honestly, I don't know.
Speaker: I am utterly unconvinced what I even think if that is part of the remarkable
Speaker: genius here, or if he has taken a very important message and hidden it away a little bit.
Speaker: Maybe, yeah, maybe buried it a little more than he intended.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, clearly his writing has stayed the same.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I believe this is the package in which he intended to deliver his message.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's just baffling.
Speaker: It was, I wanted to quit reading this book at so many points, but also absolutely could not.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's kind of the theme of this podcast is I tell you to read a book, you hate it for 95% of it, and then you get that last 5% and you're like, okay, wait a second, we can have a real discussion about this.
Speaker: Oh no, the ending was entirely unsatisfactory.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: It gets me in the movie, which I don't want to spoil for anybody, but that's too bad.
Speaker: But you have to get to it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, politically speaking, that's probably exactly what he was going for.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's why I would really be hesitant.
Speaker: I feel mostly confident in my analysis.
Speaker: And I would also feel hard pressed to suggest any of it, if I'm correct, is not exactly what he intended.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot more details, a lot more very
Speaker: very intriguing quotes that I have left out basically due to time.
Speaker: But yeah, that's the book in a weird, tiny, misshapen nutshell.
Speaker: In a weird, tiny, misshapen nutshell.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: How does that compare to the film?
Speaker: Actually, really interestingly, which I think we should maybe get into after we take a quick break.
Speaker: So we'll be right back.
Speaker: Welcome back to Adaptation, the Book to Movie podcast.
Speaker: We're discussing Thomas Pinchon's Vineland.
Speaker: Got it right that time.
Speaker: And because I took a minute to pull my shit together.
Speaker: And it's a film adaptation, One Battle After Another, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Speaker: Diving into the movie side here, as Chris alluded to, this is sort of a loose adaptation.
Speaker: I was thinking about that term this morning after rewatching it.
Speaker: I don't love loose adaptation because I think that kind of implies that it plays with the ideas that the book was putting forward.
Speaker: But it doesn't so much.
Speaker: And I think, especially after hearing you talk about sort of the
Speaker: narrative and thematic chaos that it's presented through.
Speaker: I'm seeing even more parallels to the movie and I can see how writer director, Paul Thomas Anderson, I don't want to say evolve the material because that sort of implies a superiority, but how he adapted it basically interpreted it into
Speaker: this movie.
Speaker: So I guess put loose adaptation in quotation marks.
Speaker: Yeah, I see what you mean.
Speaker: I did read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book, which is extremely brief.
Speaker: It's like three or four paragraphs long.
Speaker: I couldn't believe how short the synopsis was considering how much is in the book.
Speaker: As far as I can tell from that synopsis, the events of the movie do map on pretty well to the events of the book, at least the main thread.
Speaker: There is no cult of people that think that they're undead or DL is not trying to become a master ninja or what did you say?
Speaker: Actually, they use the term ninja.
Speaker: Ninjet.
Speaker: Okay, well, I think the character that's a comp for her is certainly not on that path in the movie.
Speaker: But in many cases, there are one-to-one comps for events and characters between the book and the movie, from what I can tell.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So really a clever reworking of the material is kind of what I'm getting at.
Speaker: Anderson was able to, oh, I didn't even realize that he shares your last name, that he was able to craft this story.
Speaker: Paul Thomas Anderson, or PTA, as he is affectionately called by cinephiles like myself, is widely known as one of the best filmmakers working right now, if not the best.
Speaker: Some of his other movies are Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread.
Speaker: They're pretty much all hailed.
Speaker: as a masterpiece, including this one, which I'll get to later.
Speaker: But he has been working on adapting this book for decades.
Speaker: He fell in love with the book shortly after it was published and
Speaker: has been trying to work out a way to put it on the screen basically since then.
Speaker: And he thought that the public love for the book as well as his own love for the book would have made it sort of impossible to adapt.
Speaker: He wasn't sure he could like tell the story fairly or accurately.
Speaker: I don't know how this man condensed the ideas into a film.
Speaker: It's also really interesting to note that this is Paul Thomas Anderson's most
Speaker: commercial and most accessible film as well.
Speaker: So the fact that he was able to turn it into something that I think can really appeal to the masses in a way that a lot of sort of awards affair that he's created before doesn't is just a stroke of brilliance.
Speaker: I just don't, I'm boggled right now after hearing everything that you said and how like one person could sit down and do this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like I said, it took him decades to do it.
Speaker: Also, of course, worth noting, spooky timing given what's happening, like you mentioned, in Minneapolis especially, which is a city that's important to the both of us.
Speaker: So just, God, I'm going to cry again.
Speaker: You know, we want to share our love with the people of that community and the people that are feeling pain right now.
Speaker: And yeah, I don't know, hopefully this movie, this story can offer
Speaker: Certainly not answers.
Speaker: I don't think it's meant to do that.
Speaker: I don't know that any book or movie could, but I don't know, maybe some solace in the fact that this has been a through line forever and ever.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: One battle after another, for the most part, follows a father and daughter who are trying to
Speaker: reunite after being separated by the military sort of acting out of legal boundaries.
Speaker: Again, ironic.
Speaker: They were acting on the personal interest of one man in the military because he was sort of scorned in the past by the daughters, both of the daughters' parents.
Speaker: who were part of a revolutionary group, sort of Antifa-like.
Speaker: I think it's meant to do that.
Speaker: I don't know that any book or movie could, but I don't know, maybe some solace in the fact that this has been a through line forever and ever.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: One battle after another, for the most part, follows a father and daughter who are trying to
Speaker: reunite after being separated by the military sort of acting out of legal boundaries.
Speaker: Again, ironic.
Speaker: They were acting on the personal interest of one man in the military because he was sort of scorned in the past by the daughters, both of the daughters' parents.
Speaker: who were part of a revolutionary group, sort of Antifa-like.
Speaker: That's sort of how they're framed in the movie, called the French 75, which very much puts a target on everybody's back.
Speaker: You know, the father and daughter go into witness protection because the baby mama...
Speaker: gets arrested when she sort of gets in over her head and gives up names and locations of some of her fellow revolutionaries.
Speaker: So that sets the story on its course.
Speaker: All of that's pretty, pretty true.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I mean, change names, change time period.
Speaker: Is the movie set to be like fairly modern timeline wise?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I don't think they ever state exactly what year anything happens in.
Speaker: But the opening sequence of the movie, which is essentially a prologue, follows the French 75, this revolutionary group, breaking people out of a immigration internment camp along the Mexico border.
Speaker: So it's a very 2025-2026 version of the story.
Speaker: And in fact, a huge sort of B storyline throughout the rest of the movie is, I guess, smuggling immigrants into the country.
Speaker: They refer to it as a Latino Harriet Tubman situation is the actual line of dialogue in the movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's just extremely potent in its politics.
Speaker: You can't watch it and ignore what's going on.
Speaker: One of my favorite reviews on Letterboxd.
Speaker: This movie, I think it's like the most liked one on there says if the president sees this movie, he will either ban cinema or kill himself because it's just so left leaning, let's say.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: and frighteningly accurate yeah exactly too too reflective but of course this administration thrives off of that so the antagonists in this movie in addition to the american military and the police force are the members of a group called the christmas adventurers club which is a white nationalist organization that is very well connected and tied to a great many resources it's supposed to be sort of a uh
Speaker: take on the KKK probably, right?
Speaker: A very organized group.
Speaker: Or the CIA.
Speaker: No kidding.
Speaker: Any of those three letter acronyms probably.
Speaker: I think it's very interesting too that specifically, you mentioned that there's kind of some shots of Reagan and his politics in the book because there are some literal shots, film shots, of Ronald Reagan's former Sacramento mansion
Speaker: in the movie, and that's used as the exterior of the headquarters for this Christmas Adventurers Club.
Speaker: So it's really not pulling any punches in the way it's again, sort of modernized and reinterpreted Pinchot's text.
Speaker: As I said earlier, the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, I think, as the Zoid character, as far as I can tell.
Speaker: His daughter is played by Chase Infinity.
Speaker: This is her first film role.
Speaker: Teyana Taylor, the R&B star, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and our boy Benicio del Toro.
Speaker: Chris and I are big fans of Benicio del Toro.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: The movie was a huge success, especially critically widely considered one of the best and important movies of the decade, certainly considered the best of 2025.
Speaker: Very competitive for many Oscars, including best picture director, screenplay, and even actor Leo's very much in the conversation there.
Speaker: And it even picked up a lot of precursors in the weeks leading up to
Speaker: This episode's release at one of the Critics' Choice Awards.
Speaker: It will probably win at the Golden Globes tomorrow.
Speaker: Basically has a lot of Oscars on lock, but again, we'll get to that in a later episode.
Speaker: It is technically the most financially successful of PTA's films.
Speaker: It's not saying much because most of his movies, like I said, are that kind of inaccessible awards fair, so they kind of
Speaker: like technically bomb.
Speaker: They're not really made to make money, so I don't know if studios really think of him that way.
Speaker: But it's worth noting that this one did perform the best of his handful of films, which is a strong indicator of how it's resonating with audiences, despite the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson is probably not a name that most
Speaker: non-cinephiles are, he's not like a household name.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Had you ever heard of Paul Thomas Anderson before?
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Before this, I never had.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So just very interesting to check my bias here.
Speaker: I did put down the numbers, a $130 million budget, and it's only made 200 million worldwide.
Speaker: So, you know, it hasn't, it hasn't turned a profit yet.
Speaker: Remember we've talked about a movie needs to make at least two and a half times its budget to turn a profit.
Speaker: But I think it's the first of Paul Thomas Anderson's to cross like 100 million worldwide.
Speaker: So to blow that number out of the water is like definitely a boon for the movie.
Speaker: And, you know, you've got to keep in mind that some of that budget, Leo has a standard fee of $25 million.
Speaker: So that's not, you know, so you can get to 130 million pretty quick when you've got salaries like that.
Speaker: Also just going to throw out there, it has a 95 out of 100 on Metacritic, which we've talked about is sort of a better way to determine the actual quality of a movie.
Speaker: Whereas Rotten Tomatoes is a better way to determine consensus.
Speaker: But pretty similar numbers over there, 94% critic rating and 85% audience score.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And have we talked about cinema score on the mic yet?
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's basically spot polling.
Speaker: Spot polling, you mean literally like as people leave the theater?
Speaker: Yeah, actually, when you walk in, you're given a little card.
Speaker: Basically, you just mark down the answers to a handful of questions that has you fold down pieces of the card based on like, what grade you would give it, why you showed up to the movie.
Speaker: Was it for the stars for the director, because you saw a good trailer, it asks a few very general questions to spot poll random people as they're going in and coming out of the movies.
Speaker: And then you hand it in to the same representative when you leave, and eventually they generate
Speaker: a cinema score which is a letter grade for the movie and this has an a which obviously very strong uh-huh wow wow so people people are digging this people are digging this and it's like i said i mean it's just widely hailed as a masterpiece you don't see movies like this that often yeah we're lucky to be alive in a time that paul thomas anderson is making movies like this one
Speaker: Why is, I mean, it feels, based on your description, well, I guess you also kind of answered it as well, it feels I had never heard this man's name until today.
Speaker: Paul Thomas Anderson?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's largely because a lot of his movies are, I don't know that they're inaccessible.
Speaker: They're just not appealing to a massive audience.
Speaker: You know, if what you're looking for when you scroll through Netflix is minority report, you're probably not going to click on Phantom Thread, which is a movie about a dressmaker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And his wife who like psychologically torture one another.
Speaker: Actually, that's kind of closer to Minority Report than maybe some of his other.
Speaker: In the movie, but not in the book.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker: We'll talk about it in a couple of weeks, a couple of months.
Speaker: But his movies are just of a flavor that don't always appeal to the masses.
Speaker: I mean, they make critics happy and they generally earn a lot of awards and awards nominations, but they don't make a lot of money.
Speaker: So, you know, there's an interesting, you know, flip side to this coin where James Cameron obviously right now is a
Speaker: in the in the news a lot because avatar 3 is doing very very well and he's said in some interviews like screw awards I don't really care about that my movies are the ones that people want to see you know he's the only director to have made four narrative films in a row that have all earned over a billion dollars so so he's certainly on to something you know granted it's three avatar movies in Titanic so like what uh you know
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, but yeah, Paul Thomas Anderson is sort of the flip side of that coin.
Speaker: And they both make fantastic movies.
Speaker: So interesting way to look at the industry for sure.
Speaker: So really, maybe we can view this and tell me if this is overreaching, but maybe we can view this as a win, you know, a story that is talking about a repeating and very problematic aspect of human history.
Speaker: is not just being swept away as a niche documentary for a select few to enjoy.
Speaker: Oh, 100%.
Speaker: You know, and you pair that with the fact that like Sinners did so incredibly well financially and, you know, had sort of a similar track, I suppose, mental track as far as
Speaker: this is an issue that doesn't really go away.
Speaker: We're talking about it in a different context to highlight that.
Speaker: That seems to be a theme that's really resonating with people right now, which like, no duh, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: As I said it, I'm like, yeah, but also like, is this, but I don't know.
Speaker: We, but we also have to do something right.
Speaker: And so if this can be something, I don't know, take care of yourselves folks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: Discussion questions.
Speaker: What are you, what do you got for me?
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm very curious.
Speaker: I was really under the impression that the, I think you put it well, I won't repeat you, the loosely adapted and what that would mean, clearly really stayed true to the bedrock ideals of the text.
Speaker: I'm curious if you think, was this a choice on Anderson's part to modernize, to make it more accessible?
Speaker: Do you think it would have, because I'm picturing
Speaker: this exact same cast without changing the timeline at all.
Speaker: The book opens in 1984, talking about things happening in the sixties.
Speaker: To me, that also would have been a fun film.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But would we, I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker: This idea of changing the timeline, is it a stylistic choice?
Speaker: Is it to make meaning clearer?
Speaker: Well, I think that partly goes back to what I mentioned about Anderson's nerves to adapt this.
Speaker: He wasn't sure that between his own affection for the book and the public's affection that he could tell like a real version of the story.
Speaker: So I think he maybe intentionally wanted to take a step away to give himself a little bit of breathing room and make what he's known for, which is a masterpiece.
Speaker: I don't, it still boggles my mind a little bit because like I said, he's been working on it for decades and not that these problems are new, these problems that are depicted in the movie, but it's just so of today, it's kind of incredible that he,
Speaker: pulled this off.
Speaker: He said in interviews that he took the approach he did, like I said, because he was nervous about adapting it, but that he decided to tell this as a story through a car chase action movie and about a woman revolutionary.
Speaker: I think he might have four daughters.
Speaker: Well, he's got four kids.
Speaker: At least two of them are girls.
Speaker: So this is a very personal way for him to get into the story as well.
Speaker: And yeah, I don't really have a nice bow to put on all of these ideas, unfortunately.
Speaker: I mean, I'm asking you for conjecture.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess my guess is that this was what he felt was his best way in and also audiences.
Speaker: And that's what, you know, kind of makes this such a goldmine is that he he figured that out and it works so well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: What else do you have for me?
Speaker: Yeah, the this is more of a film question broadly.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Do you think there is any part of the casting that is along these lines of the actors and actresses' personal feelings, or is it you would do well in this role exclusively?
Speaker: That's a good question, in part because
Speaker: Well, because it is.
Speaker: I have to imagine that you could not feel attacked.
Speaker: Like if you got the script in your inbox and decided I want to do this, I have to imagine that a part of you has to align politically with what this is saying.
Speaker: That being said, Leonardo DiCaprio missed a huge award ceremony a few days ago because he was stuck on Jeff Bezos' yacht and, you know, God knows what ocean.
Speaker: I believe it was Jeff Bezos' yacht.
Speaker: I mean, any yacht.
Speaker: If you're stuck on a yacht, big fucking whoop.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: He attended the Bezos wedding last year in Venice and has made some business decisions that sort of align with this idea that there is no such thing as a good celebrity or a good rich person, right?
Speaker: But I think it's also very interesting for Paul Thomas Anderson to choose somebody like Regina Hall to be in this movie, who is primarily known for comedy.
Speaker: you know this is an extremely serious movie she's in an extremely serious role
Speaker: that's not funny at all.
Speaker: And I have to wonder if some of that comes from the fact they're actually they've talked about they're actually next door neighbors as well, Regina Hall and.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: So I wonder if he knows her on a closer level and has said you as a person can embody this revolutionary, this extremely left leaning revolutionary better than anybody else in Hollywood, regardless of the public perception of you, which is
Speaker: Funny lady, right?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And then, of course, Benicio del Toro has Puerto Rican citizenship.
Speaker: So to, you know, to make him a part of this storyline that is assisting immigrants, you know, it's all very poignant.
Speaker: I don't know that it's operating at the level that some movies operate when we talk about casting as an art.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: So this is a very long winded way of saying I think that there is some of both.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He probably never would have gotten 130 million dollar budget to make this movie if he did not have the biggest movie star in the world agree to star in it.
Speaker: So there's also some industry politicking going on and
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know exactly.
Speaker: But that's my conjecture is that people probably to make this and to understand what it is to make this movie with Paul Thomas Anderson, they probably have to be mostly politically aligned.
Speaker: But that might also just be kind of wishful thinking because I like everybody in this movie.
Speaker: I'll take wishful thinking at this point.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: No kidding.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: My question for you.
Speaker: I was sort of stunned.
Speaker: This book is like a really big deal and I had not heard of it before this movie, which as somebody who's not a reader isn't hugely shocking, but it's been made to feel like that was like a
Speaker: bizarre blind spot for me like how could i have not have heard of this book or thomas pinchon and that's partly because i see this book and bringing it back to um what was it called gravity rainbow gravity every time i walk into a bookstore which is more often than you would think for a non-reader and i i'm just like baffled i don't know if that's because this movie has raised my awareness of this text or if you know it's resulted in a surge of people
Speaker: interested in this text and Pinchon.
Speaker: I guess I just want to know from your perspective, had you heard of Pinchon before and it was a blind spot for me or was this sort of new for you?
Speaker: No, this was new for me.
Speaker: So if you'll recall, and I know we've discussed it, but our friends here on the other side of the microphone listening device,
Speaker: Whoever happens to decide to listen to this have not heard us discuss it.
Speaker: You had this on the list, and I had never heard of it and kind of said, I don't think I'm interested in that.
Speaker: And then a gentleman I worked at
Speaker: at that summer school last July in Boston, I was telling him about the podcast and he said, you guys have to do this.
Speaker: And so I looked into it more.
Speaker: I had never heard of Vineland until he said it to me.
Speaker: So John, if you hear this, thank you.
Speaker: Gravity's Rainbow had always been on my radar as, in my experience, so if you disagree,
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: In my experience, Gravity's Rainbow has always been portrayed in the ilk of David Foster Wallace.
Speaker: These books that more often than not, if you see someone carrying it in public, it is performative.
Speaker: They want people to know that they are reading it, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do not personally know anyone else who has read Vineland.
Speaker: I knew I would read Gravity's Rainbow at some point, and I still know that I will at some point.
Speaker: But there is this ethos, and this has come up for me a lot mentally as we've had this discussion of, you know, there's the sort of knee-jerk school portrayed, oh, if you read books, you're smart.
Speaker: Clearly not the case, right?
Speaker: And the inverse of that, if you don't read books, you're not smart.
Speaker: Absolutely not a correct ideology to subscribe to.
Speaker: And these books are like the far end of it, you know?
Speaker: People who really want you to know that they've read The Silmarillion are probably people you don't want to hang out with.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And so that was, that was what, what pushed me away from it.
Speaker: Pinchon is absolutely known for this type of writing.
Speaker: And that was a battle.
Speaker: That was an absolute fight to finish the book.
Speaker: And I love reading books.
Speaker: Some might say it was one battle after another.
Speaker: Don't roll your eyes.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I hate that.
Speaker: I hate it here.
Speaker: Well, I've been thinking about that a lot throughout this because as we've referenced, it's not just a good book, a good movie.
Speaker: It is important.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And now, first and foremost, as I just said, I don't think you are dumb or a bad person if you don't enjoy reading books.
Speaker: Along those same lines,
Speaker: Who is to judge what type of books you're reading?
Speaker: We talked about beach reads earlier.
Speaker: I think they're great.
Speaker: Even if that's all you read, I think that's great.
Speaker: Even if you never read one, I think that's great.
Speaker: And so I think the separation of, oh, hard books are hard, read hard books, that can be important.
Speaker: I'm glad that I read this.
Speaker: I'm not surprised I had never heard of it.
Speaker: I'm not surprised none of my friends who also love reading books had ever said, hey, you got to read this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it falls at an odd place for me because this idea of required reading, this comes up a lot with books of the hundred classics that you have to read.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: And then the equally inflammatory response of, you shouldn't tell people what they have to read.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They should enjoy reading.
Speaker: There's nothing I enjoy more than a student who says they hate reading and we find like that comic book or that graphic novel that they enjoy.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: I'm glad.
Speaker: So it's one, no, you are not behind the curve.
Speaker: I had not heard of this.
Speaker: Had I found it on my own and we were not doing it for the podcast, I mean, for so much of this book, I was like, I'm going to break my own rule.
Speaker: This book's getting two stars on Goodreads.
Speaker: It will not.
Speaker: I have enjoyed it tremendously.
Speaker: Once again, a lot of my context is based on why it exists, what the author's purposes were and what it stands for.
Speaker: But that's kind of what I was saying earlier, what's a little unfortunate about it.
Speaker: It is almost too bad that it's such a dense text that nobody seemingly really wants to read except Paul Thomas Anderson, I guess.
Speaker: Because it does have such a cool message.
Speaker: But would it take away from that message were it written in a different way?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: We'll never know.
Speaker: Or maybe we will because the movie is sort of written in a different way, you know?
Speaker: And he's still alive.
Speaker: I mean, historically, we shouldn't expect this, but I would be very, very curious at this point to hear Pinchon's thoughts of the movie.
Speaker: What you described, this, you know, the cause that the movie kind of turned into
Speaker: It feels like that's along the lines, remember all of the books that were becoming very popular again in 2020, the response to George Floyd's death.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the same thing happened, right?
Speaker: That's virtually the story that American Dirt describes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: People trying to cross the U.S. border.
Speaker: And I won't say it's less serious.
Speaker: Obviously, the subject matter is still quite hefty.
Speaker: But it essentially became quickly another performative gesture of, oh, someone walking around in public with a copy of American Dirt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And I wonder if it had this weightiness, if it had all of these
Speaker: Well, the last book published by him, we have entire college curricula built around.
Speaker: I've seen a thousand opinions online from why he is the most brilliant American author on these topics to destroying other American modern authors and why no one wants to read him.
Speaker: That'll happen with anybody.
Speaker: I've answered your question a thousand times.
Speaker: I had never heard of it myself.
Speaker: And I've heard a lot about Gravity's Rainbow, which has come up for us with other authors too, right?
Speaker: They've got this one thing that they're most known for.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very curious.
Speaker: I've thought about that a lot as well.
Speaker: I'm glad that you asked about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it just sort of blew my mind.
Speaker: when I checked out this bookstore around the corner here and front and center, middle table, right when you walk in, was a Thomas Pinchon book.
Speaker: I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
Speaker: I've never heard of this guy.
Speaker: And now he's everywhere.
Speaker: I found it at the Barnes and Noble three blocks away.
Speaker: Yeah, weird.
Speaker: Okay, well, good for him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sounds like a good segue.
Speaker: You said you did not give it two stars on Goodreads.
Speaker: What did you?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it definitely won't be a five.
Speaker: I have no desire to ever read this again.
Speaker: And so that makes it a tough battle.
Speaker: It certainly was not, you know, just another book that was like, oh, this is fun.
Speaker: This is such important information.
Speaker: And I'm really struggling with why was this very important information tucked away in this weird style?
Speaker: And part of that is I'm just not a fan of that style.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think it's probably going to end up a four, four out of five.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I don't think anyone will be surprised that I've given it five stars.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It is, like I said, the best movie of 2025, possibly the best movie of the decade so far.
Speaker: I was just absolutely levitating in my seat the first time I saw it and have done so every time I've watched it since, which has been several times.
Speaker: And, you know, I don't do like a ton of rewatches.
Speaker: So I think that sort of says a lot in and of itself.
Speaker: It's truly perfect.
Speaker: I give a lot of...
Speaker: movies.
Speaker: If you follow me on letterbox, I'll give a lot of movies four and a half or five stars, even though I can acknowledge that there are some real flaws that maybe should knock that down a little bit.
Speaker: I just, I'm kind of so excited about the medium and the things that I loved about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't have a bad thing to say about this.
Speaker: This is a true five out of five.
Speaker: I would give it more stars if I could.
Speaker: Everything, everything in this movie from the camera work,
Speaker: to the performances.
Speaker: The score is fantastic.
Speaker: There's Paul Thomas Anderson is sort of known for kind of a weird sense of humor that gets injected into pieces of this at just the perfect time.
Speaker: I just can't say enough good things about it.
Speaker: And that's not my signature exaggeration kicking in there.
Speaker: That's genuine.
Speaker: You know, that's how I genuinely feel.
Speaker: So yeah, it's a big one for me.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: I mean, you've convinced me, I feel like I have to go watch it immediately.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Like I said, it's a little tough to watch now.
Speaker: It's been a tough, dark 10 days, but, uh, you know, I, I, I wouldn't turn you away from it.
Speaker: In fact, I'll just jump into my recommendation here.
Speaker: And I, I wouldn't turn anybody away from it in part because it has something for everybody.
Speaker: There is small bits of comedy.
Speaker: There is action.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: There's obviously political relevance.
Speaker: There's just so much to love.
Speaker: But the flip side of that coin is that I think that people who are connected to the idea of making a better world for the people around them, whether it's because you're a parent, whether it's because
Speaker: you're a political activist, whether it's because you work in social services, I think that they're gonna really, really connect to this story.
Speaker: We've said a hundred times now that it's important, right?
Speaker: And I don't want anybody to be turned off by the fact that I've said a thousand times that it's gonna win.
Speaker: Oscars, because I think that can sometimes almost be a negative to some people when a movie is so a word forward.
Speaker: But I promise you that this was made to be accessible.
Speaker: It's made to be enjoyable, despite being such a heavy subject.
Speaker: And that's why it's a 10 out of 10 movie.
Speaker: You know, it's more important now than it ever has been to consume stories like this, to tell stories like this.
Speaker: And so for those who are interested, it's currently on HBO Max, or you can rent it or buy it, including from Leo's buddy Jeff Bezos on Amazon.
Speaker: So check it out.
Speaker: Just a quick dig.
Speaker: Yeah, got to needle them when you can.
Speaker: No, fair, fair, fair.
Speaker: Who would you?
Speaker: I assume I'm way off the recommendation radar for the book Vineland by Thomas Pinchon.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very difficult.
Speaker: I don't know that I know a lot of people that would get through this whole book in its entirety, even if I did recommend it, which is not to say I wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker: I think
Speaker: I think this would be a great candidate for a, with a book club or a group of people, two sections.
Speaker: Because, I mean, one, first and foremost, it is incredible writing.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: You know, I don't want to take away from that aspect at all.
Speaker: I do want to be clear.
Speaker: It's a style that turns me off.
Speaker: I did enjoy the book on the road, but it is a fraction of the length.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I, and I think there are easily removable sections that tell an important and powerful story that does affect every one of our lives.
Speaker: And it makes a good illustration of that.
Speaker: Um, but yes, unfortunately, simply due to the sheer density, I can think of few people that I would say, Hey, I bought a copy of this for you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would be tough.
Speaker: And it's, yeah, part of that's what makes it fantastic.
Speaker: And part of that's what makes it a tough recommendation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, your own experience.
Speaker: I told you, let's do this one.
Speaker: And you said, eh, I don't know.
Speaker: It took like another bibliophile to tell you, no, this is worth the read.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And even at that from John, I got, you know, we worked together for a month and lived in the same dormitory up at Tufts.
Speaker: So I got an intimate view.
Speaker: was consuming and vice versa.
Speaker: I think there are honestly other people even potentially that could have recommended this that I would have gotten 30 pages in and thought, what did they see and put it down?
Speaker: I put a lot of trust in his opinion there, which is tough.
Speaker: I think I would maybe say just watch the movie.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Well, thank you all for joining us today for our conversation.
Speaker: Please take care of yourself in these harrowing times and in others.
Speaker: We appreciate that you have stuck around in the new year to enjoy more adaptations with us.
Speaker: And we're looking forward to our next discussion, which will be about Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet and its film adaptation written and directed by Chloe Zhao.
Speaker: And I believe we'll have a special guest on that episode, right, Chris?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Very excited.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Thank you again, and we look forward to that next discussion.
Speaker: Bye!
Speaker: That's the show for today.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker: Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover.
Speaker: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation.
