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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out.
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My name is Ian Wilkes and I'm here with the entertaining Mr.
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Jim Bennett.
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Yes.
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Hello, Ian.
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How are you, sir?
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I'm really good, sir.
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I'm really good.
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I described you as entertaining because you are.
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You're an entertainer.
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The first day I met you in the Scotland Admission, many, many years ago, you were playing the piano.
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I think it was in Irvine.
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I think you pronounced it Irvine in America, but Irvine.
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Yeah.
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We're entertaining.
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And before I met you, I heard you were very funny and you were an actor and you played these instruments, multi instruments.
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instrumentalist and uh comedian and funny and everybody wanted to serve with you and i was disappointed because i never got to serve with you uh but yeah you are absolutely described as an entertainer and i think that's an interesting word today because today we are going to um review a movie called heretic which you have seen this week and i have seen and It was, we'll get into it.
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It's a spoiler alert.
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So if you haven't seen the movie, perhaps it's a good idea to see the movie first and then listen to this podcast.
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But we're going to be discussing this movie called Heretic, which was an extraordinary movie.
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And Jim and I are going to give our thoughts and opinions on the movie and in the context of, also in the context of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Um, just a little bit of context here.
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Um, uh, the movie, uh, impacted me, uh, as it did with you, probably in similar or different ways, Jim.
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But I think the, the, the, the first thing to get out, um, the more easy, obvious thing to say is that, um, uh, I'll give you space where you can comment each, each, you know, section of this, uh, conversation in this podcast on the movie.
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But the first thing I think I want to share is that the movie is just a great movie.
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It's a great thriller.
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If
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you're not a member of the church or you're not religious necessarily, it's just a fantastic story and far better than I was expecting.
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the actors, the storyline, the, the, the, uh, psychology, uh, behind the thriller is, is quite extraordinary.
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So just as a, just to get your comments and your, your thoughts on the movie in general, Jim, what, what do you think just as a, as a thriller slash horror?
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Oh, well, as a rule, I hate horror movies.
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I don't understand why people like to go and be terrified out of their minds.
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And, uh, There are a few exceptions to that.
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The horror movies that I like are some of my favorite movies of all time.
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Probably the top of that list would be Silence of the Lambs because not, I mean, the gore and the, you know, the jump scares, you know, somebody jumping out and yelling boo or those kinds of things.
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I just don't find them entertaining at all, but sort of the psychological horror suspense and, and the intricacies of relationships that, that heighten that sort of sense of terror.
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Uh, those I've always thought that that's really fun.
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And that's mostly where this movie went and it sort of descends into gore by the end.
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And I just, I was just sort of able to stomach that, but that, that isn't, I just don't see how that's any fun.
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But the psychological cat and mouse game that Hugh Grant...
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I mean, Hugh Grant is just absolutely perfect in this role.
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Who knew that Hugh Grant, this charming, romantic comedy guy, would be so absolutely terrifying?
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And they use that persona, the Hugh Grant, I'm just a nice guy and a charming, lovely person.
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They use that to try to get your guard down.
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And when you realize who this man is and what he's trying to do, it's all that more terrifying.
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So as a movie, it's extraordinarily well done.
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And the implications for the church, which I think we'll discuss as we get down the road, I think are really interesting and really positive.
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I think that the negative reaction From the institutional church, which has issued a statement condemning the movie, and from a lot of active members who say that this movie misrepresents them or this movie is somehow an attack on them, I think that those sentiments are largely misplaced.
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But I think that that's the next step in the conversation.
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I think we should focus now, to begin with, just on the movie in general, which you apparently adored as much or more than I did.
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I did.
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The psychology of the movie, and again, the Hugh Grant character, and if you look at his acting experience, it is a humble Englishman in a kind of foolish kind of roles that he's performed in the past.
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A little bit tight cast, actually, on some of the stuff that he's done.
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Certainly not a character to play a lead role in a psychological horror movie, which what this was.
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I'm not a huge fan of horror, a little bit of like science fiction horror, like horror.
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prometeus stuff like that i quite like but horror just for the sake of horror that doesn't do anything for me for me probably like most people is the psychology behind the horror the the creature that you can't see the the the the the the conversation even like leading up to um you know the events i find quite uh quite scary in this movie for me on that front delivered um bucket loads of psychological horror.
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And again, to your excellent point, I felt lured into a situation with Hugh Grant's acting because he's very friendly, quite humble.
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And basically, I mean, the synopsis, basically, there's two sister missions of the Monument Church, the Church of Israel and the Saints, received an inquiry or request from a Hugh Grant, who was playing the character, Mr.
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Reed.
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And I relate to this because we used to do this on our mission.
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If you remember Together Forever video that came out and the church engaged in a lot of advertising and people in the Scottish media, papers, et cetera, would advertise the Together Forever video.
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I think there was a cassette as well.
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You could play it, I think, as well, and also the video.
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And so people would read the advert and they would then contact this number, this free phone number, and Mishra's would eventually respond and they would knock on the door of the person requesting a visit with the intent of showing, discussing together forever.
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And we did that.
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You and I did that.
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And so that's...
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you know, the early stage of the movie where you've got these two Mormon sister missionaries who are responding to this request and they knock on the door and you've got this very friendly Mr.
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Reed fellow with a very It looks friendly.
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His face is very soft.
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His toad is very welcoming.
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It's pouring down with rain.
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And that really hit me.
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There were so many things that hit me on this movie, by the way, is that on a personal mystery level, but also the psychology it got to me.
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And then there's all the church stuff, which we'll get into in this conversation.
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But there they were standing at this door in the pouring rain.
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And I remember being there so many times and desperate to get in.
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And most of the time in my mission, when it was raining, I didn't care.
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This might sound a bit...
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I mean, I was a guy.
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I was not a citizen.
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It's different, I think.
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But a lot of the time, I didn't...
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I wasn't concerned about who the person was.
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I just sometimes wanted to get in, out of the freaking rain, right?
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And just somebody who would just even if they listened or not, just for some time to get out of the rain.
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I mean, that was my lack of faith.
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And so there the sister bushes are, they're knocking on the door, and they rightly say that they can't come in unless there's someone else in the house, like a woman, a woman in the house.
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And he said his wife is in the kitchen making some pie.
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And so they feel assured, and they go in, and they sit down, and he's very friendly.
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And then this psychological cat and mouse game actually begins.
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And we've got to get into the movie here.
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And so the first, again, just setting aside the fact that it's a brilliant movie and a great psychological thriller for anyone who's interested in that stuff, the first part of the movie gets into the conversations about belief and about...
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uh, the church, uh, he communicates the fact that he's, he's interested in, in learning more.
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Um, I can't remember the, you know, the exact script and you have to help them with my memory, but there's a conversation about, um, uh, the church and they want to share a message, et cetera.
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And he's talking about, um, beliefs and what are the parts of the first section of that movie.
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Do you remember, Jim, in that conversation where they sat in his front room and he tells them that his wife's making a blueberry pie in the back.
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They're reassured.
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He's starting to express interest in the church.
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They're interested in sharing the message.
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And by the way, again, this is a bit of a spoiler here.
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What's interesting was that there was a candle burning in the room.
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And can you...
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remember what was behind the candle.
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Well, the
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candle
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was a blueberry pie scented candle.
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Blueberry pie scented candle.
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And I think that was very powerful as well.
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That was giving off that scent.
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So the sister missionaries are, they feel I think they feel quite safe and secure.
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And this guy's very, very jolly.
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And then he goes back into the kitchen because he wants to find out when the pie's being made.
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What other things do you remember from that first conversation in respect to what they were talking about, about the church and about religion in general?
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Well, the thing that I found so delightful about it was how much these sister missionaries felt like real sister missionaries.
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This is one of the things, one of the reasons why I think that the Mormon distaste for the movie is somewhat misplaced.
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When the series Under the Banner of Heaven came out, I wrote a number of lengthy I reviewed every episode and my reviews were largely scathing and they weren't because I felt like the church was not being represented well.
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I thought it was just bad writing that the people didn't feel like real people, let alone real members of the church.
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And one of the things that was remarkable about this is as they were sitting there and as they were answering his questions, and even before that, their characters are established when they're having this sort of taboo conversation about pornography.
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That's the first time you meet them and they're sitting on a park bench and they're having this conversation that maybe they shouldn't be having.
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And instantly, I felt like I'm back on my mission again.
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I mean, how many times when you're taking a break, And you start to talk about something that maybe you shouldn't be talking about, but it's just you and your companion and nobody else can hear.
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And I just thought, whoever wrote this has done their research and understands what it's like to be a missionary.
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Those kinds of conversations, I thought, fit very much into my own experience.
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And then they have that experience where...
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The women ask to take a picture with them, and then they end up pulling down their skirt to see their magic underwear.
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And all that never happened to me.
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I don't think that probably happened to you either.
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But that kind of open mockery of missionaries felt very much like much of my experience.
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So initially, as you're going into it, you identify with these missionaries.
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I don't know if anybody outside the church would identify as strongly as you or I may have, but I sat there going, okay, I like these people.
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I understand these people.
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I recognize these people.
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And I claim these people as part of my tribe.
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I mean, this is an accurate depiction of what sister missionaries experience, what they're like.
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I mean, I had some problems, for instance, You know, when there's an elder that goes and looks for them when they go missing, they don't report in at the end of the day.
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And so this elder goes out to look for them.
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And the elder was played by Topher Grace, who's an actor who's in his 30s.
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So he's much too old to be a missionary.
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And he goes out and walks around without a companion.
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And I was like, oh, now, come on.
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That's...
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But...
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Those kinds of niggly kind of things didn't bother me because I was just so enamored of the characters and of the fact that, okay, Latter-day Saints are going to be treated as real people and not just real people, but they are the protagonists.
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They are the good guys.
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They are the heroes.
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They are the ones you are rooting for.
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And you do spend your entire time rooting for them, hoping that these sister missionaries can survive this.
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And again, spoiler alert, hopefully you're not listening to this, not expecting spoilers, because I think we have to discuss the spoilers.
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And when Sister Barnes dies, it's just absolutely heartbreaking.
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It's like, oh no, this is, I mean, she was my favorite of the two.
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And I thought, oh my goodness, it had so much more of an impact because the character was so well-written and was so believable and so compelling.
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And so that first discussion, it felt an awful lot like a number of discussions that I had on my mission.
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Although I can't ever remember...
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Somebody like Hugh Grant sitting you down and saying, oh yes, I'm so interested and I'm so excited because that would have been, I think, a red flag.
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It would have been a little bit of, okay, there's something else going on here.
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Nobody's this interested in hearing the first discussion.
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And where the tone shifts because he's just telling them, yes, I love your church and oh, I think it's great and isn't this wonderful and I want to learn more and they're all excited.
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Then he says, I want to ask you, I think he said an awkward question.
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I don't remember what the word was.
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But then he introduces polygamy.
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And he says, I want to talk to you about polygamy.
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And I have a problem with polygamy.
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And I have a problem with Joseph Smith having an affair with Fanny Alger.
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He pronounced her name Alger and not Alger.
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And I believe that he was using his religion in order to have sex with as many women as he could.
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And the tone of the conversation shifts and the sister missionaries give, I think, really weak answers to that, which again is consistent with the mission experience.
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Whenever anybody brought up polygamy, the goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible and get back to something that was more, get back to safe ground.
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Because talking about polygamy was very fraught.
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And so I never actually did this, but a lot of my companions or other people that I was with would talk about polygamy and say, well, geez, it was just this sort of frontier thing where there were more women than there were men and there were all these widows.
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And so it was just something they did as a stopgap measure, essentially, and it went away.
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And so we don't need to talk about it anymore.
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And I was always, even back on my mission, I knew that wasn't true and that wasn't accurate.
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And so when polygamy came up, I had a hard time shifting the subject.
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And usually the discussion would just go off the rails and we'd end up being done.
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But again, it just felt very natural.
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And he brings up polygamy and it's something that people who know about the church or anybody that, and you've said Ian many times that, In the UK, for instance, all anybody knows about the church is polygamy.
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And so it's something that the church has a reputation for and that missionaries don't really have a good answer for.
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And so you saw that sort of tension.
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You saw that sort of awkwardness.
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And that led into...
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It's really interesting because there's a guy named Taylor Petrie who's a marvelous scholar who's written several books about the Mormon LGBTQ experience.
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And he reviewed the movie.
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And he described it as a reverse temple ceremony.
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That in the temple ceremony, the ritual of the temple, there's a ritual ascent from kingdom to kingdom.
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You fall and then you go to...
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the telestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, and the celestial kingdom.
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And back when we did live endowments, which are no longer a thing, unfortunately, every time you move from room to room, there was an ascent.
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Each room was a little bit higher than the other room.
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And this is a ritual descent.
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You start there in the welcoming and cozy living room, and then you move into this sort of chapel room, where mr reed unleashes the majority of his argument about how religion is just a bunch of different iterations he brings out the monopoly board and says this was ripped off from a previous game and now there are other games that have ripped monopoly off and he plays the song by the hollies the air that i breathe and he says well this was ripped off by radiohead And then it was ripped off by Lana Del Rey.
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And so everything is just an iteration of everything that has come before.
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And that's just the same as religion.
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And then you see on his walls, all these deities from all these other religions.
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And he says, see, all these guys were born on December 25th.
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All of them were born of a virgin and all of them were resurrected.
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And so by the time Jesus comes along, there've already been so many iterations of this.
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And as he started doing that, That's when I started to roll my eyes because that was sort of warmed over Bill Maher.
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Do you know who Bill Maher is?
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Yes.
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The comedian.
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He made a movie called Religious, as in ridiculous, and he went through all of that, and that's just not true.
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I mean, the idea that they were all born on December 25th isn't true.
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I mean, it's sort of sanding off the edges of of some very big differences between all of these creation myths that he's citing.
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And I just sat there and went, okay, this is gonna be just this kind of Bill Maher, straight ahead kind of great, I mean, middle school kind of discussion about religion.
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I mean, cause I think some of those arguments, some of them are just really, really shallow and don't reflect a great deal of thinking, And then all of a sudden, Sister Barnes comes back at him and says, okay, you're wrong.
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And all this is, and there are so many differences you're not talking about.
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And I just sat there going, oh my gosh, they're really going to take religion seriously throughout this movie.
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They're really going to engage with real arguments with substance.
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And it's a little bit, implausible because most missionaries wouldn't actually be that skilled at refuting that kind of stuff.
00:22:25.699 --> 00:22:30.243
But Sister Barnes was, and look at that guy, he's got a freaking bird head.
00:22:30.263 --> 00:22:33.848
And I just was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be really fun.
00:22:34.368 --> 00:22:41.376
This is really going to engage with religious ideas in a profound and significant way.
00:22:41.537 --> 00:22:45.481
And I was not disappointed because that's exactly what it did.
00:22:46.273 --> 00:22:53.663
And it does not do so from a sort of didactic, it does not try to say religion is bad.
00:22:53.682 --> 00:22:54.903
I mean, Mr.
00:22:55.964 --> 00:22:59.769
Reid makes the case that religion is bad, but Mr.
00:22:59.869 --> 00:23:02.192
Reid is the bad guy.
00:23:02.212 --> 00:23:05.777
You're not supposed to identify with Mr.
00:23:05.856 --> 00:23:06.096
Reid.
00:23:06.136 --> 00:23:13.405
You're not supposed to accept his arguments uncritically and assume that they represent the point of view of the author.
00:23:14.273 --> 00:23:31.071
And so there's a give and take throughout the whole thing where they go through all of this, even as they also go through some standard horror movie tropes and quite a bit of gore and quite a bit of torture and murder.
00:23:31.092 --> 00:23:38.220
And, you know, those are the parts that I could have done without, but I don't know that you could have made this movie without them.
00:23:39.300 --> 00:23:43.766
But on the whole, it was just so refreshing.
00:23:44.705 --> 00:24:10.385
to see a movie that takes religion seriously, that doesn't just dismiss it out of hand, and that has protagonists who are capable of presenting the positive argument for religion in a way that I thought was compelling and that I thought was very thoughtful and interesting, even though I didn't necessarily agree with some of their arguments.
00:24:10.865 --> 00:24:20.117
I thought it was a little bit strange, for instance, too, that there seemed to be this sort of hint that Latter-day Saints believe in reincarnation, the whole thing about the butterfly.
00:24:21.078 --> 00:24:28.888
When Sister Paxton talks about, oh, jeez, when I die, I want to come back as a butterfly and land on someone's hand so they'll know it's me.
00:24:28.950 --> 00:24:38.521
And I thought, well, there really isn't room in Latter-day Saint theology for that, but it's certainly made for a lovely, albeit somewhat ambiguous ending.
00:24:39.746 --> 00:24:56.144
But anyway, so maybe I've gone too far into the religion here, but I just thought it is so rare to find such good, competent, solid writing in any movie, be it a horror movie, be it a thriller.
00:24:56.164 --> 00:25:01.790
It's usually far too easy to just sort of press the buttons and say, well, this is the formula.
00:25:01.830 --> 00:25:03.393
This is how the guy gets the girl.
00:25:03.432 --> 00:25:04.134
This is how...
00:25:04.865 --> 00:25:06.729
You know, James Bond saves the world.
00:25:06.769 --> 00:25:16.201
There are so many formulas and so many tropes, and movies don't usually demand much of us when we watch them.
00:25:16.442 --> 00:25:20.406
They're just, okay, yeah, let me escape from the world for an hour and a half.
00:25:20.487 --> 00:25:25.614
And this one demanded quite a lot from us.
00:25:26.255 --> 00:25:31.182
This one was like, no, we're going to engage with you on very...
00:25:31.905 --> 00:25:34.790
fraught and difficult questions.
00:25:35.751 --> 00:25:37.996
And we're not going to let you off the hook.
00:25:38.155 --> 00:25:42.824
You've got to go through this with us and explore these ideas with you.
00:25:42.884 --> 00:25:50.977
And you come out of the theater and you've got all of these different ideas that you're thinking about and questioning.
00:25:51.297 --> 00:25:57.126
And I thought that is the hallmark of what great art can do.
00:25:57.807 --> 00:25:58.829
So anyway.
00:26:00.738 --> 00:26:01.459
No, this is really good.
00:26:01.499 --> 00:26:03.340
I've been listening and I've been making notes.
00:26:04.363 --> 00:26:10.410
For me, the movie hit me on so many levels.
00:26:10.871 --> 00:26:23.606
The psychological horror part, which I thought was really well done, just as the main strategy, one of the main strategies that the movie intended.
00:26:24.186 --> 00:26:27.612
But on a personal level, it connected with me as well.
00:26:27.932 --> 00:26:28.952
And you've gone through...
00:26:29.761 --> 00:26:32.766
some of the key points of the movie.
00:26:32.786 --> 00:26:38.952
And I want to go back into some of those points and probably come to the point where you just left off and then take us both forward from there.
00:26:39.314 --> 00:26:47.123
So if you go back to the beginning of the movie, you know, it shows the sister mysteries before they even show up at Mr.
00:26:47.163 --> 00:26:49.766
Reed's door, you know, in the community.
00:26:50.207 --> 00:26:52.549
And it shows them sat on a park bench, actually.
00:26:52.849 --> 00:27:02.201
And they're talking about, I think before that, they're trying to meet people and people are not interested in, talking to the system issues or what I could relate to that.
00:27:02.883 --> 00:27:07.590
You know, on my mission, GQing, asking the golden question on the streets was awful.
00:27:08.172 --> 00:27:08.613
Hated it.
00:27:08.712 --> 00:27:09.614
I'd rather knock on doors.
00:27:09.673 --> 00:27:17.226
I got spat in the face once by someone in Edinburgh just by approaching them and asking them a religious question.
00:27:17.287 --> 00:27:19.108
It was an awful experience and I hated it.
00:27:19.128 --> 00:27:22.114
I remember feeling odd.
00:27:22.835 --> 00:27:28.180
You know, people looked at me like I was Like I was the strangest thing on the planet and I hated it.
00:27:28.259 --> 00:27:37.798
You know, sat on the deck, back of a, uh, the lower level of a double-decker bus where you go to the back of this seats at the side, seats at the back.
00:27:37.938 --> 00:27:43.548
And I'm sat there and everybody's looking at me and I look at them and look away like I'm some kind of, uh, plague.
00:27:43.568 --> 00:27:44.431
I just hated it.
00:27:44.471 --> 00:27:46.173
It was just awful part of my life.
00:27:46.498 --> 00:27:46.817
mission.
00:27:46.857 --> 00:27:50.362
I couldn't stand that side of the mission.
00:27:51.022 --> 00:27:57.809
And if you remember the conversation they had on the bench, the packed bench there, they were talking about sex.
00:27:57.849 --> 00:27:59.172
You've got sister sex.
00:27:59.192 --> 00:28:04.497
They were talking about the size of men's penises, actually.
00:28:04.537 --> 00:28:06.219
That I thought was quite funny.
00:28:06.278 --> 00:28:08.701
I wondered if that's what the sister mission was sometimes talking about.
00:28:09.061 --> 00:28:09.762
They probably do.
00:28:10.222 --> 00:28:13.707
As elders, I remember having a conversation.
00:28:13.747 --> 00:28:19.839
I won't mention that my companion's name, but I remember talking about We were worried.
00:28:19.859 --> 00:28:30.201
I remember this conversation in one of my companionships that we were so worried that Christ would return before we got home and got married and had sex.
00:28:31.170 --> 00:28:32.551
And it was a real worry.
00:28:32.571 --> 00:28:36.116
I remember having this conversation and I was like, no, I hope not.
00:28:36.837 --> 00:28:38.519
And we're like, surely that won't happen.
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:41.624
You know, cause two beginning of the mission, two years is like forever.
00:28:41.644 --> 00:28:45.829
And there you are two young guys and same for girls as well.
00:28:45.890 --> 00:28:51.218
You know, it's right in the peak of your, of your, you know, your hormones.
00:28:51.278 --> 00:28:51.478
Right.
00:28:52.078 --> 00:29:00.265
Um, and you're attracted to girls and you, you just, it's just how, you know, it's just the nature, right?
00:29:00.345 --> 00:29:00.664
Natural.
00:29:00.705 --> 00:29:11.518
And so, and you're at your peak and you, um, you, you know, you, you hope that the second coming won't happen before you get back and get married and you can't have sex before marriage.
00:29:11.538 --> 00:29:12.259
You've got to get married.
00:29:12.298 --> 00:29:18.045
So you look at it a year of dating and getting another person before you got three years to wait to have sex.
00:29:18.826 --> 00:29:23.791
And I remember having that conversation with at least two or three, uh, companions whose names I won't mention.
00:29:24.553 --> 00:29:31.894
Um, and, uh, I thought it was quite funny and I thought, I bet that's what sometimes the sister missions talk about.
00:29:31.913 --> 00:29:35.278
Sure, but they're not any different than the guys and they talk about that.
00:29:35.317 --> 00:29:37.141
So I thought that was fascinating.
00:29:37.181 --> 00:29:39.443
The name tags, how they looked and dressed, I thought that was great.
00:29:39.703 --> 00:29:45.332
You said earlier that they looked and it felt very much, it took you back to you serving your mission.
00:29:45.711 --> 00:29:48.896
It certainly did with me for sure.
00:29:49.998 --> 00:30:02.529
The other thing I want to highlight as well is that it becomes clear from that conversation on the back bench for me at least, and later on, that Sister Barnes is the much more streetwise sister missionary.
00:30:03.371 --> 00:30:11.941
And there's a story, you know, her background, there's more of her events that have happened in her life that have shaped who she is.
00:30:12.020 --> 00:30:19.289
And she's more streetwise, more mature compared to Sister Paxton, who at the beginning...
00:30:20.001 --> 00:30:40.730
seems, well, appears to be, well, is very inexperienced in terms of life, not streetwise, very simplistic, not stupid or unintelligent, but as you go forward into the story, towards the end, emerges as incredibly smart by the end, which we'll get into.
00:30:41.310 --> 00:30:45.115
Incredibly smart and intelligent to try to figure out what Mr.
00:30:45.175 --> 00:30:51.234
Reed's intentions are and where his plans are actually go off.
00:30:52.215 --> 00:30:52.457
Mr.
00:30:52.477 --> 00:30:55.660
Reed's plan doesn't go to plan and she kind of discovers that.
00:30:56.099 --> 00:31:04.367
So I thought it was the interesting parts of that part of the movie there to kind of set the tone and set the context of the system issues.
00:31:04.647 --> 00:31:10.653
And then fast forward, they go to the door, knock on the door, Reed lets them in, sits them down, tries to make them feel comfortable.
00:31:10.693 --> 00:31:11.974
You
00:31:12.015 --> 00:31:12.536
could tell...
00:31:12.576 --> 00:31:25.936
Before, though, they go to the door, the line that I loved, it's definitely something that The elders would say, when she says, every flight of stairs we climb, that's how much hotter our husbands will be.
00:31:25.977 --> 00:31:31.902
Didn't you have, I mean, didn't you have companions that would say things like that?
00:31:31.942 --> 00:31:35.726
That's how much hotter our wives will be, the harder our mission is.
00:31:35.925 --> 00:31:38.088
Yes, come to think of it, I did, yeah.
00:31:38.128 --> 00:31:39.730
The more righteous you are.
00:31:39.869 --> 00:31:41.551
That was it, I remember, thank you.
00:31:41.571 --> 00:31:47.458
I remember having conversations that the more obedient you were in your mission, the hotter your wife would be.
00:31:48.001 --> 00:31:48.281
Right.
00:31:48.301 --> 00:31:49.844
Oh my gosh, I remember that.
00:31:50.064 --> 00:31:50.604
Oh my goodness.
00:31:50.644 --> 00:31:52.967
Yeah, man, that brings back some interesting conversation.
00:31:53.988 --> 00:32:00.413
So again, this is another, lots of examples where this kind of really connected with me.
00:32:00.473 --> 00:32:03.916
And in the theater, you know, it was probably half full.
00:32:04.057 --> 00:32:06.920
I'm the only guy there probably who's served a mission, right?
00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:11.183
So this whole movie means something quite different to me as I was watching it.
00:32:11.443 --> 00:32:19.859
And then to get into the conversation, the first part is, seems really normal and natural, even though there's an airy look to the inside of the room.
00:32:20.221 --> 00:32:22.984
And the way the camera works, by the way, it's brilliant.
00:32:23.746 --> 00:32:24.768
It's a very old...
00:32:24.788 --> 00:32:32.558
Do you remember how many times you went into an old senior folks' home in Scotland and it was old and nothing had moved?
00:32:32.598 --> 00:32:42.292
All the ornaments had never moved and the old-fashioned wallpaper and the curtains and the old-fashioned wood...
00:32:43.329 --> 00:33:19.661
window panes you know very old i thought my goodness this is like from like an old cottage or something from scotland so that that and the colors the colors like these these different greens and just like you know 70s style um look like it never been never been decorated in like uh you know 30 40 years and how many places like that we're into i think it's brilliant um uh setting and context and then to your point they started talking about polygamy And that reminded me of the conversation we had with Michelle Brady Stone, which is our last podcast.
00:33:20.142 --> 00:33:28.431
And when he asked polygamy, when he asked about polygamy, it hit me because that was the thing that came up when I was investigating the church.
00:33:29.231 --> 00:33:31.755
You know, I'd heard, the only one thing I'd heard about the church was polygamy.
00:33:31.775 --> 00:33:32.957
You could have more than one wife.
00:33:33.678 --> 00:33:36.500
You know, being a 16-year-old, you know, I was okay with that.
00:33:36.621 --> 00:33:37.321
The more...
00:33:37.953 --> 00:33:40.978
You know, more wives, the better, as far as I was concerned, right?
00:33:42.640 --> 00:33:56.679
You know, and so, but the fact that he raised it being, even today, the most significant, recognizable issue with the church, still today, as it was when you and I were serving missions, I thought, my gosh.
00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:09.275
And then in the context of that last podcast we did with Michelle, which was brilliant, I just really enjoyed that, and the argument whether or not Joe Smith was a polygamist or not, I just thought, They've done the homework.
00:34:09.394 --> 00:34:26.831
In fact, Jim, I did a little research on the movie, and although the directors were not Mormon, Julia Glousey is married to Woods, who is a producer on the movie, and Julia went to Brigham Young University.
00:34:27.994 --> 00:34:31.197
So there is a little bit of a connection there.
00:34:31.237 --> 00:34:34.920
So the people that were advising on the movie, and I
00:34:34.980 --> 00:34:40.199
think the actresses, who played the sister missionaries, were former members of the church.
00:34:40.298 --> 00:34:41.000
Is that correct?
00:34:41.221 --> 00:34:42.202
That's what I understand.
00:34:42.242 --> 00:34:45.146
Again, looking at the research, that's my understanding as well.
00:34:45.807 --> 00:34:48.331
Other people can comment, you know, through their research, of course.
00:34:48.632 --> 00:34:50.193
But they've done their homework.
00:34:50.434 --> 00:34:54.541
I mean, a lot of this was very, you know, to what you said earlier, it kind of...
00:34:55.713 --> 00:34:59.380
it was like a throwback for me into, into, into my mission.
00:34:59.400 --> 00:35:03.166
And then the polygamy thing came up, you know, on the, um, in the conversation.
00:35:03.186 --> 00:35:13.784
And then, um, as they start getting into that, uh, you know, conversation and he's talking to them about, um, you know, beliefs, et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:13.804 --> 00:35:20.918
And, uh, you know, talking to him about, um, uh, you know, what, uh, you know, what he thinks.
00:35:21.458 --> 00:35:24.742
He makes, some of the quotes, I think, are brilliant.
00:35:24.762 --> 00:35:35.373
He's talking about, you know, if you investigate a fate or, you know, to develop a belief, he said it's a simple choice that should not be made simply.
00:35:36.313 --> 00:35:48.266
And I thought that was great because, you know, when I was talking to investigators, I thought it is, you know, this is such a, I thought at the time, a very easy religion to understand.
00:35:49.153 --> 00:35:56.603
I think I was a little bit brainwashed maybe by then.
00:35:57.164 --> 00:35:59.487
And certainly I think it was church broken, my mission.
00:36:00.009 --> 00:36:02.773
And to me, it made so much sense back then.
00:36:02.793 --> 00:36:09.362
I was in that cocoon thinking and probably forgotten or didn't understand the religion enough, actually.
00:36:09.382 --> 00:36:10.563
I think that's the situation.
00:36:10.643 --> 00:36:12.286
As a missionary...
00:36:12.641 --> 00:36:14.864
And I want to get your comment on this as well.
00:36:14.905 --> 00:36:15.806
We'll get back into the story.
00:36:16.405 --> 00:36:24.335
As a new convert to the church, relatively new convert to the church, as a missionary, I thought I knew a lot about the church and I really didn't.
00:36:24.456 --> 00:36:39.414
I knew a lot about the scriptures, but there was so much more complexity about the church that a lot of, many rather, maybe not a lot, but a lot of investigators understood about the church or had a perception of the church about its complexity, like polygamy and other things.
00:36:39.746 --> 00:36:48.155
that I didn't really fully understand or appreciate because my knowledge of the church, even as a missionary, was far from complete.
00:36:48.757 --> 00:36:58.809
And I didn't understand all the historical and actually quite dark complexities like polygamy, even as a full-time missionary.
00:36:59.268 --> 00:37:08.139
Whereas people that I was talking to who'd studied stuff about the church, there was no internet back then, you know, back in the 80s, but they'd researched it or they knew a bit about it.
00:37:08.641 --> 00:37:18.737
And there were people that, saw the complexities in, you know, about the issue around polygamy that I didn't fully say, as I say, understand or appreciate is a full-time issue.
00:37:18.797 --> 00:37:20.079
I thought here's the gospel.
00:37:20.119 --> 00:37:22.684
It's simple, you know, accept it.
00:37:22.905 --> 00:37:23.847
It's a serious decision.
00:37:23.907 --> 00:37:29.777
So it's not something to be, you know, made lightly, but it should be an easy thing to do because it makes so much sense.
00:37:29.998 --> 00:37:32.101
And, and, and that's why you should join.
00:37:32.262 --> 00:37:34.206
And it just, everything fits perfectly.
00:37:34.626 --> 00:37:37.108
That was my understanding of being a missionary to that.
00:37:37.588 --> 00:37:39.650
We've got the answers to all the questions.
00:37:40.893 --> 00:37:42.213
We have the plan of salvation.
00:37:42.253 --> 00:37:47.960
It's the fullness of the gospel, the fullness, which meant to me we had everything, Jim.
00:37:48.280 --> 00:37:48.760
We had everything.
00:37:49.322 --> 00:37:50.103
There's nothing that was missing.
00:37:50.663 --> 00:37:51.824
Everything was restored.
00:37:53.005 --> 00:37:53.286
Everything.
00:37:53.907 --> 00:37:57.230
And it's a simple decision not to be made simple.
00:37:57.251 --> 00:38:01.295
So that line there, it really hit me.
00:38:02.096 --> 00:38:03.777
What do you remember from the movie?
00:38:04.322 --> 00:38:34.572
when they're in the room having the conversation and then things start to look a little bit eerie and start to become a little bit ominous and the sisters at some point start to feel like they're trapped because right now he's been back to the kitchen to talk to his wife about the blueberry pie he's come in the first time he comes back in the ratio of the pie is being cooked his wife's back there At that point, the Sister Mistress feel okay.
00:38:35.375 --> 00:38:38.242
Then there's a conversation ensues, polygamy comes up, et cetera.
00:38:38.282 --> 00:38:42.695
She's talking to him about the beliefs.
00:38:44.099 --> 00:38:53.811
And then I think Sister Paxton says, She's reticent or reluctant to talk about it further without having Mrs.
00:38:53.891 --> 00:38:54.572
Reid in the room.
00:38:55.092 --> 00:38:57.496
And I think that she reminds Mr.
00:38:57.536 --> 00:38:59.679
Reid, could we meet your wife?
00:39:00.280 --> 00:39:02.543
And I think then he goes back again for the second time.
00:39:02.583 --> 00:39:09.092
And at that point, I think they stand up and they look around and they go to the front door.
00:39:09.132 --> 00:39:16.681
I'm trying to remember the timing of when they start to feel a little bit uneasy.
00:39:17.186 --> 00:39:21.771
Um, can you, what parts of the movie can you remember when it starts to get a little bit uncomfortable?
00:39:22.291 --> 00:39:24.034
No, I mean, that's definitely when it happens.
00:39:24.094 --> 00:39:26.757
I mean, they, they get up, they go to the door, the door won't open.
00:39:28.199 --> 00:39:35.447
And I think the moment when they realize they're in danger is when they discover the blueberry pie candle.
00:39:36.108 --> 00:39:36.289
Yeah.
00:39:36.710 --> 00:39:38.791
And they realize there isn't a pie.
00:39:38.831 --> 00:39:40.795
He's lying about the pie.
00:39:40.894 --> 00:39:46.782
So he's probably lying about the wife and the door won't open and we're in serious trouble.
00:39:47.713 --> 00:39:54.621
And one of the moments that I thought was just so interesting, because he tells them at the beginning that there's metal in the house.
00:39:55.242 --> 00:39:56.083
Yes, I remember that.
00:39:56.362 --> 00:40:01.009
Which is intentional in order to say that this is somehow going to block a cell phone signal.
00:40:01.449 --> 00:40:01.608
Yeah.
00:40:01.768 --> 00:40:09.398
I'm not sure if the technology checks out on that, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief and just sort of accept it as part of the story.
00:40:09.438 --> 00:40:17.010
And so they go in and they tell him, oh, we've just gotten a call from the Relief Society.
00:40:17.050 --> 00:40:18.211
We have to go back.
00:40:18.751 --> 00:40:19.673
We're very sorry.
00:40:19.693 --> 00:40:20.333
Yes.
00:40:20.775 --> 00:40:24.478
And he gets angry with them for lying.
00:40:24.519 --> 00:40:27.422
He's like, I told you there was metal in the house.
00:40:27.483 --> 00:40:29.264
I know you haven't gotten any kind of phone call.
00:40:29.865 --> 00:40:29.925
Yes.
00:40:29.945 --> 00:40:30.547
I mean, here you are.
00:40:30.567 --> 00:40:31.507
You're telling me a lie.
00:40:31.547 --> 00:40:36.293
And I'm sitting here going, you're upset that they're lying to you?
00:40:36.554 --> 00:40:47.972
Everything you've done has been a lie up to this point, and you're lying to them to the point of, torturing them and you're going to take their lives.
00:40:48.492 --> 00:40:57.644
You've got no moral high ground to stand on that they're telling you some kind of a fib to try to get out when you won't let them leave.
00:40:57.684 --> 00:41:20.503
So just the deliberate and slow building of tension and suspense and terror is It's just so, the movie that was called to mind for me is a movie that I made my kids watch as when they were far too young to appreciate it.
00:41:21.324 --> 00:41:24.369
And it's Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.
00:41:24.588 --> 00:41:25.791
Have you ever seen Rear Window?
00:41:26.331 --> 00:41:27.112
One of my favorite movies.
00:41:27.132 --> 00:41:28.835
I just love that movie.
00:41:28.994 --> 00:41:33.742
And it could be considered a sort of a horror movie, but there's absolutely no gore.
00:41:34.434 --> 00:41:38.378
Uh, there's absolutely, everything is just psychological.
00:41:38.418 --> 00:41:39.518
Everything is implied.
00:41:40.039 --> 00:41:43.563
And I remember watching it with my kids who were too young to appreciate it.
00:41:44.164 --> 00:41:46.565
And they kept saying, is something ever going to happen?
00:41:48.248 --> 00:41:52.753
You know, that's the movie where the guy, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair.
00:41:52.773 --> 00:41:53.713
He's broken his leg.
00:41:54.193 --> 00:41:55.396
He's bored all day long.
00:41:55.436 --> 00:41:58.759
And so it becomes sort of a peeping Tom looking at the building across from him.
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.461
And then he sort of discovers that.
00:42:01.985 --> 00:42:35.599
one of the apartments that he's spying on has somebody who looks like he's murdered his wife and you know and the tension sort of builds as he puts himself in danger by trying to uh investigate this and you know just just the very the slow patient build we are conditioned i think by Most movies today, particularly sort of Marvel movies, something has to be happening every five seconds.
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:36.822
Something has to blow up.
00:42:36.961 --> 00:42:38.583
Something has to hold our attention.
00:42:40.485 --> 00:42:55.846
It's really been interesting because as I tried to introduce films to my children, I discovered that movies prior to, I'd say, maybe the early 1990s are paced very, very differently.
00:42:56.706 --> 00:43:08.016
And modern audiences do not really have the patience for the kind of slow build that Heretic does so well and so expertly.
00:43:08.036 --> 00:43:10.518
And it isn't even all that slow.
00:43:10.679 --> 00:43:19.427
I mean, it's, you know, Weir Window takes a whole lot more time to impart information than Heretic does.
00:43:19.467 --> 00:43:26.114
Because that whole scene in the front room, it's probably no more than five minutes long, if it's even that.
00:43:26.914 --> 00:43:36.327
So, but just that sort of patient building of the tension and the here's one little lie and then here's a bigger lie.
00:43:36.867 --> 00:43:40.771
Then here's a, you know, it's like, oh no, you can leave anytime.
00:43:40.811 --> 00:43:42.355
But of course that door won't open.
00:43:43.135 --> 00:43:44.217
What do you mean the door won't open?
00:43:44.237 --> 00:43:45.057
Well, it's on a timer.
00:43:45.097 --> 00:43:47.621
It won't open until the morning, but you can leave through the back door.
00:43:48.503 --> 00:43:54.253
And by the time he says you can leave through the back door, He's already lied about the pie.
00:43:54.293 --> 00:43:55.594
He's lied about his wife.
00:43:56.034 --> 00:43:59.318
He's confronted them on their lie about getting a phone call.
00:43:59.860 --> 00:44:05.146
And so the tension has just been ratcheted up and there's no release to it.
00:44:06.427 --> 00:44:16.719
And that's what makes it so much fun is that you're just sitting there and you're just on the edge of your seat and you're just, you know, biting your fingernails, wondering how are they going to get out of this?
00:44:16.760 --> 00:44:22.695
And just slowly, methodically, Mr.
00:44:22.775 --> 00:44:32.168
Reed tightens the screws and it just makes it such an excruciatingly delightful thing to watch.
00:44:33.630 --> 00:44:38.978
When I was watching it, I was thinking of Hitchcock's movie, very simply Rear Window, a movie called Rope.
00:44:39.679 --> 00:44:41.121
Oh yeah, Rope's a great one too.
00:44:41.240 --> 00:44:43.443
Rope's brilliant and very brilliantly made.
00:44:43.503 --> 00:44:45.987
Again, the camera never leaves the room, just like Rear Window.
00:44:46.668 --> 00:44:47.990
The camera's there in the room.
00:44:48.050 --> 00:44:54.708
I mean, if you had a movie and you said, You know, for the producers, the camera's never going to be leaving this same room, that same image.
00:44:55.329 --> 00:44:56.251
You'd think they were crazy.
00:44:56.271 --> 00:44:58.456
But Hitchcock pulls it off, and he pulls it off in Rome.
00:44:58.916 --> 00:45:04.286
And the guys in this movie, I mean, the film is in the house, right?
00:45:05.027 --> 00:45:06.010
And it's brilliant.
00:45:06.070 --> 00:45:11.559
And I love the switchbacks to looking at the walls and the windows and the storm that's still.
00:45:12.141 --> 00:45:14.865
We're reminded as an audience that there's still a storm outside.
00:45:15.585 --> 00:45:19.530
And, uh, you know, the, uh, I think there's a snowy now, there's a clouds, big rain.
00:45:19.610 --> 00:45:21.512
There's a, certainly there's a storm going on right now.
00:45:22.092 --> 00:45:24.335
And there, there are these two system issues in this house.
00:45:24.635 --> 00:45:30.543
So the second time they go, it goes back to the kitchen to check on the pie or not sure if that's the second or third time.
00:45:31.143 --> 00:45:33.286
There's a, there's a, he's gone for a while.
00:45:33.306 --> 00:45:43.717
And we learned that he goes out, he goes out the house because the system issues, when they got to the house, they had, uh, they'd locked their bikes at the front gate of the house.
00:45:44.610 --> 00:45:48.454
And we learned later that he'd been out and moved the bikes.
00:45:48.514 --> 00:45:49.637
Again, spoiler alert here.
00:45:50.157 --> 00:45:56.505
But going back to what I was saying earlier, the second or third time he goes back to the kitchen, he's gone for a while.
00:45:56.525 --> 00:45:59.670
We know that time he goes outside.
00:45:59.710 --> 00:46:00.572
We'll learn that later.
00:46:00.592 --> 00:46:03.396
And then the sister ministers are there in the room.
00:46:03.416 --> 00:46:07.061
And again, to your point, the tension's building.
00:46:07.101 --> 00:46:09.023
You can feel the tension in the atmosphere.
00:46:09.063 --> 00:46:10.706
And then they...
00:46:10.978 --> 00:46:53.605
learn they can't get outside the front door so that they realize that they're locked and they start to look quite afraid rightly so and then they make their way to the back kitchen they go through the door and it's quite dark and they're walking along the corridor then towards the back of the house and they see this shape of this man's head and I jump to that point but as the camera gets closer it's a statue or a figure of an individual that's human size human shaped And you realize that it's some statue figure just positioned there in the dark.
00:46:53.744 --> 00:46:55.726
And I thought that was interesting.
00:46:56.166 --> 00:46:59.871
And then what happens is they go further into the back of the house.
00:47:01.251 --> 00:47:04.114
And it gets quite scary.
00:47:04.496 --> 00:47:07.137
They then open this door and the lights are on.
00:47:07.157 --> 00:47:10.161
And you think, oh my goodness, they're okay.
00:47:10.201 --> 00:47:12.023
They've gone to this room.
00:47:12.063 --> 00:47:16.976
And it's a room that, was quite extraordinary.
00:47:17.775 --> 00:47:20.940
If you look at, remember that room that they went into, there were two doors.
00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:24.222
You mentioned something really interesting earlier.
00:47:24.262 --> 00:47:41.862
You talked about in the temple, you ascend to different levels and you do that by physically, in most of the temples, many of the temples, now I think as well, when you go from the telestial to the terrestrial, you have to physically stand up.
00:47:43.362 --> 00:47:46.626
And you go in, on some of the ceremonies, you go into a different room.
00:47:46.826 --> 00:47:53.554
And then eventually you go from the terrestrial through the veil into the celestial.
00:47:53.974 --> 00:47:56.056
There's an ascended level into the celestial.
00:47:56.697 --> 00:48:04.246
And when those missionaries were walking through that corridor and they saw that scary statue thing, et cetera, we got past that point.
00:48:05.007 --> 00:48:08.411
They opened the door and the lights were on, remember.
00:48:08.472 --> 00:48:22.360
They went from the dark corridor And they went into this other bigger room and the lights were on and it showed the two doors and it showed what looked like an altar to me.
00:48:22.380 --> 00:48:26.085
It was like a table at the front.
00:48:26.724 --> 00:48:28.746
And there were benches both sides.
00:48:29.447 --> 00:48:35.434
Now, as a Mormon, former Mormon, as soon as I saw that, I thought of temple.
00:48:36.434 --> 00:48:39.237
We are now in the terrestrial room.
00:48:39.650 --> 00:48:40.690
I thought that.
00:48:40.871 --> 00:48:42.132
I'm not sure if anyone's thought that.
00:48:42.632 --> 00:48:44.835
And I thought, my goodness, where's this movie going?
00:48:45.775 --> 00:48:50.161
I was intrigued by where the heck is this going, right?
00:48:50.260 --> 00:48:52.202
Are we going to talk about the temple?
00:48:52.704 --> 00:49:05.036
Because you said at the beginning, you reminded me at the beginning that those girls pulled down the skirt of the sister mystery and they showed the garments of the sisters.
00:49:05.237 --> 00:49:05.898
I was...
00:49:06.465 --> 00:49:08.349
I was quite taken back by that, by the way.
00:49:08.369 --> 00:49:12.795
I don't think that happens very often, but I can see why that would happen.
00:49:12.835 --> 00:49:22.791
And I remember thinking when that happened, by the way, you know, a lot of people probably know that farmers wear secret or sacred underwear.
00:49:23.492 --> 00:49:25.193
And it's very private, very personal.
00:49:25.355 --> 00:49:28.199
It's got symbols on it, the markings, and they mean something.
00:49:29.019 --> 00:49:31.443
And they're very sacred to active members.
00:49:31.844 --> 00:49:39.931
And so going into that, when the sister went into that room, it felt like they were going into the terrestrial room.
00:49:40.152 --> 00:49:41.333
They're ascending.
00:49:42.675 --> 00:49:47.541
And because it looks so much like a temple ceremony.
00:49:47.681 --> 00:49:51.485
I mean, the thing was at the front where you could look like it looked like a bit of an altar.
00:49:51.585 --> 00:49:53.648
And I was like, wow, this is extraordinary.
00:49:54.268 --> 00:50:00.416
And then, and the other thing as well, he said at some point that I want, I don't want to forget here.
00:50:00.717 --> 00:50:01.818
So forgive me for jumping back.
00:50:02.559 --> 00:50:15.588
At some part of the conversation, And I think it was when he started getting into probably this stage where they're in this room and they come in and they want to leave now.
00:50:15.628 --> 00:50:24.380
So they're in this room, having gone through that corridor, they're very uncomfortable and they realize that Mrs.
00:50:24.460 --> 00:50:27.905
Reed isn't going to show up or doesn't exist.
00:50:29.166 --> 00:50:35.498
And I think the phone call He calls them out on the phone call or tried to make, I think that happened earlier as well.
00:50:35.518 --> 00:50:37.041
That happened before they went into that room.
00:50:37.581 --> 00:50:41.206
I'm trying to get the right pieces connected here.
00:50:42.007 --> 00:50:44.771
But clearly they're in that second room feeling very, very uncomfortable.
00:50:44.791 --> 00:50:51.960
And at some point, I think prior to this, he said that religion is a system of control, quotes.
00:50:52.900 --> 00:50:54.822
And that's an actual direct quote, I believe.
00:50:54.943 --> 00:50:55.543
I remember that.
00:50:56.284 --> 00:51:05.597
And because he was talking about, and this is what I want to highlight this as well, that religion, and that was in the conversation I had with them, I think, in the first room, it controls you.
00:51:07.099 --> 00:51:09.003
It can control every aspect of your life.
00:51:09.103 --> 00:51:14.690
And I thought about that and that the church has significant control on its members.
00:51:14.771 --> 00:51:25.286
It controls what you think, controls what you wear, it controls who you marry, it controls your morality, it controls every aspect of your life.
00:51:25.447 --> 00:51:36.798
And the big premise of the movie, Jim, was the relationship between religion and control and belief and control and belief and choice.
00:51:37.900 --> 00:51:38.641
So there they are.
00:51:38.681 --> 00:51:41.666
Again, if I jump back to that second room, they're in that room.
00:51:41.706 --> 00:51:44.411
The conversation ensues.
00:51:46.673 --> 00:51:49.137
He then starts to communicate his intent.
00:51:49.878 --> 00:51:51.021
He could tell there's a problem.
00:51:51.041 --> 00:51:53.083
He says they can leave.
00:51:53.123 --> 00:51:54.846
All the time he said you can leave.
00:51:55.708 --> 00:51:57.090
You're free to leave.
00:51:57.601 --> 00:52:09.813
And you know, when you go to the temple, before you go to the temple for the first time, you take these temple preparation classes, which really don't prepare you.
00:52:09.954 --> 00:52:14.577
You go to the temple, you have the Washington's anointing, you've got the holy preacher garment on you.
00:52:14.619 --> 00:52:19.202
You then go through your own endowment for the first time.
00:52:19.804 --> 00:52:37.565
But before you go into the actual ceremony, before the ceremony begins, the officiator asks you, If there's anyone, what's the words, the specific words, who are not here under their own free agency or don't want to be here, please leave.
00:52:38.987 --> 00:52:42.391
You're invited to leave if you don't want to continue with the ceremony.
00:52:43.353 --> 00:52:43.552
Yeah.
00:52:45.114 --> 00:52:46.757
And I can't remember the words, but the words are...
00:52:46.858 --> 00:52:48.639
I had a family member, actually.
00:52:48.719 --> 00:52:52.025
I'll be very vague, but I had a family member leave at that point.
00:52:52.445 --> 00:52:52.766
Did you?
00:52:53.153 --> 00:53:02.463
They had gone through, and I think they're still active in the church, but I don't think they've been back to the temples.
00:53:03.045 --> 00:53:03.184
Right.
00:53:03.385 --> 00:53:12.494
So, I mean, when I remembered that for the first time back in 86, this is pre-1990, I had no idea how terrifying that ceremony was going to be.
00:53:12.795 --> 00:53:14.456
If I'd have known, I probably wouldn't have gone through.
00:53:14.496 --> 00:53:15.717
But there you are.
00:53:15.818 --> 00:53:22.346
I mean, how can you possibly get up and leave in front of all your fellow church members in your own ward?
00:53:22.978 --> 00:53:24.980
I mean, what a mess that would be.
00:53:25.081 --> 00:53:26.742
Just awful experience that would be.
00:53:27.163 --> 00:53:33.371
But I remembered when Hugh Grant, the actor, was reminding the sister missions in the movie that, you know, you can leave any time.
00:53:33.391 --> 00:53:36.434
And if you want to leave, you can't leave through the front door because there's no timing lock.
00:53:36.494 --> 00:53:39.798
It doesn't open until tomorrow morning, which I thought was very weird, by the way.
00:53:39.818 --> 00:53:42.101
I mean, who does that?
00:53:42.141 --> 00:53:43.222
I mean, that's so strange, right?
00:53:44.784 --> 00:53:46.666
But you can leave through the back way.
00:53:46.706 --> 00:53:48.610
And so...
00:53:48.961 --> 00:53:51.844
Could you remind us about the conversation in that second room?
00:53:52.364 --> 00:53:58.150
And then could you take us to the point about the two doors and the two words that were written on the door, if you remember those words?
00:53:58.911 --> 00:53:59.672
Right, yeah.
00:54:00.172 --> 00:54:07.360
So that's, I mean, that conversation, that's also where he introduces essentially his whole religious thesis.
00:54:07.460 --> 00:54:16.829
I mean, he talks about religion being an instrument of control, and that becomes the summation of his argument, that that's all religion is.
00:54:17.346 --> 00:54:19.409
Religion is nothing but control.
00:54:20.431 --> 00:54:45.514
And that actually ends up being where, if you think about the structure of the movie for too long, it falls apart because I'm jumping ahead here a little bit, but the prophets, you know, these women that he has caged, that he treats them like like Guinea pigs, you know, he gives them water in cages.
00:54:45.534 --> 00:54:49.077
He clips their fingernails and sometimes clips off their fingers.
00:54:50.480 --> 00:54:52.661
Uh, you have to wonder where did these women come from?
00:54:52.702 --> 00:55:09.579
And the suggestion seems to be that their previous sister missionaries that he's done this to, and you know, wouldn't, wouldn't people notice that sister missionaries are disappearing at this house?
00:55:10.280 --> 00:55:11.021
I didn't get that.
00:55:11.938 --> 00:55:12.858
You didn't get that.
00:55:13.099 --> 00:55:16.264
No, I didn't think they were sister missionaries because they would have been missed.
00:55:16.485 --> 00:55:17.286
Right, absolutely.
00:55:17.726 --> 00:55:18.909
So who did you think they were?
00:55:19.429 --> 00:55:22.594
Just women who he had lured to the house through different means.
00:55:23.597 --> 00:55:30.847
Not necessarily members or sister missionaries, but women that he'd entrapped, kidnapped, or lured to the house in some form.
00:55:30.887 --> 00:55:33.672
Maybe a realtor or something.
00:55:33.972 --> 00:55:36.277
It didn't connect with me that they were...
00:55:36.677 --> 00:55:37.599
Implacers or sister
00:55:37.619 --> 00:55:39.181
missionaries.
00:55:39.201 --> 00:55:39.581
Well, I...
00:55:40.001 --> 00:55:42.324
Well, that makes it a little bit better.
00:55:42.364 --> 00:55:56.666
But the room, the altar room, it's been described in some reviews as a chapel room, but I think you're more accurate in describing it as an altar.
00:55:56.746 --> 00:55:58.750
It's very much like a temple altar.
00:55:58.789 --> 00:56:04.478
That's where he outlines this whole idea of iterations, right?
00:56:04.961 --> 00:56:12.452
That one religion is really just another religion only with new packaging or with some new little twist.
00:56:13.072 --> 00:56:17.699
But really it's the same story that's been handed down over and over and over again.
00:56:17.739 --> 00:56:19.702
And there's nothing to it.
00:56:19.902 --> 00:56:23.387
That all it is, is a system of control.
00:56:23.427 --> 00:56:32.137
And I think with lazier writers, that would have essentially been the message of the movie.
00:56:32.179 --> 00:56:34.681
But I don't think that was the message of the movie.
00:56:35.458 --> 00:56:43.385
Because Sister Barnes pushes back there, and later on as they go on, it's Sister Paxton that pushes back.
00:56:44.788 --> 00:56:53.356
And eventually when they're near the very end of the movie, and Mr.
00:56:53.416 --> 00:56:57.280
Reed is about to die because he's been stabbed in the throat.
00:56:58.001 --> 00:56:59.322
This is also interesting.
00:56:59.342 --> 00:57:00.543
I don't know if you caught this.
00:57:00.804 --> 00:57:02.545
I didn't, but Taylor Petrie did.
00:57:03.362 --> 00:57:06.684
in his review where he talked about this is a reverse temple ceremony.
00:57:07.726 --> 00:57:18.838
It's interesting where the injuries are, that Sister Barnes dies because she has her throat slit, as does Mr.
00:57:18.918 --> 00:57:22.521
Reed, whereas Sister Paxton has her belly slit.
00:57:24.063 --> 00:57:31.422
And if you go back to the penalties that no longer exist, Oh, wow.
00:57:31.762 --> 00:57:33.306
You can see a tie in there.
00:57:33.585 --> 00:57:34.947
And I think that's deliberate.
00:57:35.949 --> 00:57:43.021
Whoever did this really did sort of match it up with Mormon liturgy and historical temple practices.
00:57:43.802 --> 00:57:44.782
Did you not catch that?
00:57:44.822 --> 00:57:47.306
Oh, it just hit me just now.
00:57:47.527 --> 00:57:51.432
As we're speaking, I had, oh my gosh, I had no idea.
00:57:51.452 --> 00:57:53.797
I didn't see, I didn't pick up on that.
00:57:54.398 --> 00:57:55.619
But you're absolutely right.
00:57:55.679 --> 00:57:56.782
That makes so much sense.
00:57:57.762 --> 00:57:59.565
I think a lot of people will miss that, Jim.
00:58:00.706 --> 00:58:05.271
Well, and most people will because most people haven't been through an endowment ceremony.
00:58:05.452 --> 00:58:10.918
But even people going to the church who've been to the church, I don't know if they will immediately pick up on that.
00:58:11.298 --> 00:58:11.838
Maybe they will.
00:58:11.858 --> 00:58:12.659
I didn't.
00:58:13.782 --> 00:58:15.543
But it makes so much sense now.
00:58:15.583 --> 00:58:16.505
That is huge.
00:58:16.885 --> 00:58:19.188
I had no idea that, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
00:58:19.347 --> 00:58:19.568
Wow.
00:58:20.068 --> 00:58:21.451
The movie's just gone off another point.
00:58:21.690 --> 00:58:22.231
My, George.
00:58:22.351 --> 00:58:22.972
Gone off another
00:58:23.012 --> 00:58:23.213
point.
00:58:24.054 --> 00:58:29.039
But I thought it was very interesting that at the end, Mr.
00:58:29.099 --> 00:58:32.704
Reed is about to die and he says to Sister Paxton, let's pray.
00:58:32.724 --> 00:58:36.690
And it's Sister Paxton who says prayer doesn't work.
00:58:38.373 --> 00:58:38.434
Yep.
00:58:38.454 --> 00:58:40.336
And I thought, oh, great.
00:58:42.559 --> 00:58:54.980
I thought, okay, we're, you know, the hand has been revealed that this really is an anti-religious movie.
00:58:55.860 --> 00:59:06.581
That we've finally broken down the sister missionary where she admits that her faith isn't true, but that's not what she does because they says prayer doesn't work.
00:59:06.601 --> 00:59:11.027
It's not that prayer is going to heal everybody because they, they've done studies.
00:59:11.086 --> 00:59:16.974
Although I don't think any such studies have been conclusive, but I'm sure somebody will hear this and say, yes, there are.
00:59:17.054 --> 00:59:20.097
And they'll point me to them, but save your time.
00:59:20.117 --> 00:59:21.599
I'll, I'll, I'll go take a look.
00:59:21.659 --> 00:59:22.079
I don't care.
00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:25.490
The point is, um, She says, prayer doesn't work.
00:59:25.510 --> 00:59:30.775
They've done studies that show that people who are sick, they'll pray for the people who are sick and they'll pray for people who are not sick.
00:59:32.918 --> 00:59:37.342
They won't pray for, there'll be a group that won't be prayed for and a group that will be prayed for.
00:59:37.382 --> 00:59:41.485
And they both have identical outcomes.
00:59:42.186 --> 00:59:43.768
The prayer doesn't make any difference.
00:59:44.528 --> 00:59:47.130
But then she goes on to say, but that's not why we pray.
00:59:48.492 --> 00:59:53.978
We pray because it's lovely that we, she talks about community.
00:59:54.306 --> 00:59:55.467
At least that's how I took it.
00:59:56.047 --> 01:00:05.478
He talks about, it's lovely that we pray for each other, that we care for each other, that we demonstrate that we are in communion with each other through prayer.
01:00:05.518 --> 01:00:09.742
And I thought that's a very sophisticated and intelligent argument.
01:00:09.822 --> 01:00:12.846
And it certainly describes why I pray.
01:00:12.865 --> 01:00:20.434
It called to mind, there's a movie, a lovely movie that has absolutely no gore whatsoever.
01:00:21.282 --> 01:00:23.744
It's called Shadowlands.
01:00:23.965 --> 01:00:25.385
It's the story of C.S.
01:00:25.425 --> 01:00:34.655
Lewis and his marriage late in life to a Jewish divorcee who dies of cancer not long into their marriage.
01:00:36.197 --> 01:00:39.581
And there's a moment there where C.S.
01:00:39.621 --> 01:00:47.588
Lewis is confronted by the other faculty members at Oxford about his predicament.
01:00:47.608 --> 01:00:48.389
And they say, oh...
01:00:49.409 --> 01:01:05.244
We're so sorry for what you're going through, and we know you're praying, and we know that God will hear your prayer because you are so righteous and you are so faithful that I'm sure he will honor your prayer.
01:01:05.284 --> 01:01:08.288
And he says, that's not why I pray.
01:01:08.307 --> 01:01:18.498
He says, I pray because the need pours out of me, waking and sleeping, because I need to have that connection.
01:01:19.362 --> 01:01:27.753
And the line I will never forget is at the end of the speech, he says, I don't pray because it changes God.
01:01:27.795 --> 01:01:30.177
I pray because it changes me.
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:35.065
And I have always taken that approach to prayer.
01:01:35.226 --> 01:01:38.791
I don't think I can change God's mind when I pray.
01:01:38.811 --> 01:02:21.893
I don't think I can alter reality when I pray, but I do think I can change and that I can more align myself with god through that connection through prayer and that's what i sort of took from her explanation for why prayer is still valuable even though it isn't magic even though it isn't going to make them not die from the wounds that they've just they've just suffered and i thought okay if nothing else this is the moment where this movie i mean there have been plenty of moments where this movie has demonstrated that it is a cut above your standard entertainment fare.
01:02:22.193 --> 01:02:35.710
But that's the moment where I think it crossed the line into great art, into something that really has significance and really is worth seeing, I think, multiple times.
01:02:35.730 --> 01:02:36.811
I'd like to see it again.
01:02:36.831 --> 01:02:41.918
I don't know if I will go to see it again in the theater, but I think when it becomes available on video...
01:02:42.657 --> 01:02:52.768
I'll probably be watching it multiple times because I think there is so much more to explore in terms of what the writers are trying to say.
01:02:52.827 --> 01:02:58.052
But any work of art exists independent of the writer's intent.
01:02:58.974 --> 01:03:04.460
You know, people, I don't know who the author was who says, I never intended any of that.
01:03:04.579 --> 01:03:10.925
And I discover so much more about what I wrote when people who read it come back to me and say, well, this is what I got out of it.
01:03:11.905 --> 01:03:17.811
Because film is such a collaborative art.
01:03:18.853 --> 01:03:22.856
Because we can talk about who's responsible for what this is.
01:03:22.936 --> 01:03:23.737
Is it the writers?
01:03:23.817 --> 01:03:24.677
Is it the director?
01:03:24.858 --> 01:03:25.759
Is it Hugh Grant?
01:03:25.898 --> 01:03:27.460
Is it the two sister missionaries?
01:03:27.501 --> 01:03:29.181
And the answer is yes.
01:03:29.242 --> 01:03:30.523
It's all of them together.
01:03:30.543 --> 01:03:41.114
And all of them are bringing something to the table that strengthens, that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
01:03:41.954 --> 01:03:55.751
And so I just really, I look forward to revisiting this movie because I think there's a whole lot more that we missed that's there to discover.
01:03:55.771 --> 01:03:55.791
I
01:03:56.271 --> 01:03:56.612
agree.
01:03:56.952 --> 01:04:00.597
I couldn't stop thinking about it and felt I needed to go back.
01:04:00.936 --> 01:04:08.065
I want to see at least those two times because there's so many things that I got and things that I missed.
01:04:08.706 --> 01:04:24.862
Like what you just shared, like the injuries and the relationship with the temple, the temple ceremony pre-1990, where it depicts disembowelment, which terrified me.
01:04:25.021 --> 01:04:33.291
And the movement you make for slitting of the throat, that was, again, that just really hit me just earlier when you were talking about that.
01:04:34.351 --> 01:04:34.831
And then just...
01:04:35.552 --> 01:04:36.393
And so forgive me for...
01:04:37.634 --> 01:04:46.025
the structure here, if I jump back and forward, but just listening to you and just remembering what they discussed about the polygamy, which I thought was amazing.
01:04:47.568 --> 01:04:58.943
Going back, if I may, just to the first part of the conversation in the first room when he brought up polygamy, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton gave reasons for polygamy.
01:04:58.963 --> 01:05:06.554
It was a spiritual mission or priority mandated by God, but it was needed to increase membership of the church.
01:05:07.297 --> 01:05:12.164
And there are multiple reasons for the practice taught in the scriptures and by Joseph Smith, etc.
01:05:13.067 --> 01:05:16.411
And, you know, the widows, men had gone off to fight in the war.
01:05:17.333 --> 01:05:24.764
There was all these women available and that the church wanted to increase its population, its members, and therefore there were more children.
01:05:24.804 --> 01:05:37.018
And we know that certainly from our research and speaking with Michelle Brady, who was on the podcast last week, and that wasn't true.
01:05:37.480 --> 01:06:44.711
And you remember on that last podcast, as I listened to Michelle and got to the point where I wasn't entirely convinced that Joe Smith wasn't a polygamist, but was open-minded to at least consider evidence in that direction, that one of the final comments I made or questions I made asked on the last podcast was, if you strip all that away, wasn't it ultimately Josie Smith's interest in having sex with women because in the movie they talk about Fanny Alger I think Alger is pronounced and I thought it was amazing that Reed in the character had done some research enough to learn about Fanny Alger who was Josie Smith's first plural wife and if you remember again going back to the podcast last week I asked Michelle Wasn't it Joseph Smith's attempt to cover up that wicked affair that Oliver Cowdery described it as a, what did he describe it as?
01:06:44.731 --> 01:06:45.253
A dirty,
01:06:45.914 --> 01:06:47.436
nasty, filthy scrape.
01:06:48.219 --> 01:06:48.639
There we go.
01:06:48.699 --> 01:06:54.469
A dirty, nasty, filthy scrape that Joseph Smith had this sexual relationship with Fanny Alger.
01:06:55.266 --> 01:06:57.487
who was 15, I think, at the time.
01:06:57.507 --> 01:06:57.548
16.
01:06:57.849 --> 01:06:59.349
She was at least 16.
01:06:59.731 --> 01:07:00.652
Sorry, at least 16.
01:07:01.512 --> 01:07:03.675
She may have been older, but not much older.
01:07:04.456 --> 01:07:06.157
Those ages are important, so thanks for correcting that.
01:07:06.679 --> 01:07:10.041
And this is without the knowledge of Emma, just so we're clear.
01:07:10.061 --> 01:07:21.795
And wasn't it the reality that he had an affair with Fanny Algert, 16, 16 plus, whatever, and he tried to cover it up and turned it into something spiritual when in actual fact it wasn't?
01:07:22.735 --> 01:07:26.500
And I think Michelle's response was, that was pretty much it or close to.
01:07:26.539 --> 01:07:27.942
Well, and so,
01:07:27.981 --> 01:07:42.818
well, well, I don't want to beat up on Michelle and absentia, but I thought when I had a conversation with Michelle, um, in a previous, you can go and look on YouTube.
01:07:42.898 --> 01:07:43.858
There's this conversation.
01:07:43.898 --> 01:07:45.981
I'm getting absolutely beaten up in the comments.
01:07:47.222 --> 01:07:50.646
Uh, so I, I can handle that, but it's just always funny.
01:07:51.827 --> 01:07:55.041
Uh, I seem to provoke, uh, Strong responses.
01:07:57.427 --> 01:07:57.487
But
01:07:58.291 --> 01:08:00.315
in
01:08:00.416 --> 01:08:04.809
that conversation, she asked me, well, what is...
01:08:05.697 --> 01:08:10.523
The one thing that you think is the best evidence for Joseph Smith being a polygamist.
01:08:10.684 --> 01:08:18.594
And in that conversation, I didn't want to answer the question because I didn't think that conversation was supposed to be about whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist.
01:08:18.654 --> 01:08:26.083
It was supposed to be about whether or not people like Michelle and people who have different ideas about the church should be welcome in the church.
01:08:26.203 --> 01:08:38.515
But I don't think Michelle could really help herself in terms of trying to get me, trying to sort of convert me to the idea that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist, and I have not been converted.
01:08:39.475 --> 01:08:49.225
But I brought it up, I think, gently in our conversation, because the answer to that question, I think, is Fannie Alger.
01:08:49.447 --> 01:08:57.895
The answer to the question, what's the best evidence, is what happened with Fannie Alger drove Oliver Cowdery out of the church.
01:08:59.197 --> 01:09:03.824
And We also know Emma was upset and kicked Fanny Alger out of the house.
01:09:05.787 --> 01:09:14.323
Whether or not it was a marriage or just an affair depends on how credibly you take some very late records.
01:09:16.567 --> 01:09:25.001
But regardless, when we brought that up, and you asked her about it as well, we brought that up with Michelle.
01:09:25.666 --> 01:09:35.796
She told this story about being at BYU and there was a married piano player and all of the freshmen were sort of flirty and it kind of got out of hand.
01:09:35.855 --> 01:09:39.038
And then the piano player's wife walked in and everybody was a little nervous.
01:09:39.078 --> 01:09:42.702
And she says, that's kind of how I see the Fannie Alger thing.
01:09:42.761 --> 01:09:45.064
And I went, well, really?
01:09:47.627 --> 01:09:50.128
Would that have driven Oliver Cowdery out of the church?
01:09:51.591 --> 01:09:54.833
I mean, there I think is...
01:09:56.801 --> 01:10:01.729
I guess we're drifting off topic here in terms of whether or not Joseph was a polygamist.
01:10:02.350 --> 01:10:10.442
But if Joseph was not a polygamist, you have to explain a lot of reactions to what Joseph would have done.
01:10:10.481 --> 01:10:16.171
You have to explain why the Nauvoo Expositor even existed.
01:10:16.211 --> 01:10:23.421
Because all of these people, the reason they left the church is because they discovered Joseph was a polygamist and were disgusted by it.
01:10:24.065 --> 01:10:25.929
And it's ultimately what led to his death.
01:10:26.090 --> 01:10:33.643
And then you also have to assume that all of the women who later testified that they were Joseph Smith's plural wives were making it up.
01:10:34.805 --> 01:10:40.074
And I just, I think that's too far a reach with all due respect to Michelle.
01:10:41.176 --> 01:10:42.458
So she did not convert me.
01:10:43.199 --> 01:10:43.461
So...
01:10:44.641 --> 01:10:48.706
But now that I'm wandering into polygamy, I'm trying to remember why we got here in the first place.
01:10:48.725 --> 01:10:49.506
Well, I can help.
01:10:49.567 --> 01:10:50.887
I think it's really good.
01:10:51.087 --> 01:10:57.835
I think it's a really good part of the conversation because the movie, certainly for members, generates all these questions and all these issues.
01:10:58.574 --> 01:11:05.242
The reason why I connected it to where you're going here is because in the movie, they talk about, you know, Reed brings up polygamy.
01:11:05.681 --> 01:11:06.863
There's a conversation about polygamy.
01:11:07.224 --> 01:11:13.649
And the sister mistress gave the, I guess, official text as to why the church practiced polygamy.
01:11:14.177 --> 01:11:17.280
And so, you know, people will have these conversations.
01:11:17.381 --> 01:11:22.987
Members will talk about this and they'll get into those tentacles, those conversations.
01:11:23.467 --> 01:11:35.541
The other thing I thought was interesting, again, just because we're probably coming out of time and there's so much to talk about in this movie, going back to that second room, let's call it the terrestrial room, the chapel, temple, ceremony room.
01:11:36.141 --> 01:11:40.145
I think at that point, the Sister Mistress realized there's a serious problem going on here.
01:11:40.185 --> 01:11:48.548
He then starts to say that he has discovered You know, he talks about those iterations of the different faiths, but all different break-offs.
01:11:49.310 --> 01:12:04.412
I thought that was really both funny and critical of the church, where he described the Book of Mormon as a watered-down, diluted, Bob the Painter-type version of Bible text, where he threw down, you know, that picture of the...
01:12:04.865 --> 01:12:06.528
Bob the Painter, I think it was.
01:12:06.587 --> 01:12:08.350
Did I remember that correctly?
01:12:08.770 --> 01:12:09.131
Yes.
01:12:09.511 --> 01:12:26.668
The Book of Mormon is another watered, watered down version of another iteration and another regurgitated version of Christianity, which I thought, whether you agree with it or not, it did it in a brilliant way.
01:12:26.689 --> 01:12:43.152
And it kind of showed the Book of Mormon to be just like a comic book, almost, of a a previously written novel, which I thought was, I think members of the church would find that quite insulting.
01:12:43.612 --> 01:12:49.762
And then in that room, he says, look, there's nothing that, all these are different iterations, they're false.
01:12:50.344 --> 01:12:51.265
A lot of it didn't happen.
01:12:51.425 --> 01:12:55.471
All these different deities were born on the 25th, and I didn't buy that, by the way.
01:12:56.092 --> 01:12:59.328
And then you know, the intensity of the movie increases.
01:12:59.509 --> 01:13:03.854
And then there's these two doors and they ask, you know, they'd like to leave.
01:13:03.934 --> 01:13:05.296
They would like to leave the house.
01:13:05.817 --> 01:13:07.259
And he said, you can leave at any time.
01:13:07.899 --> 01:13:09.702
You can't get through the front door.
01:13:10.042 --> 01:13:13.405
The only way to do it is to go out the back door and you have two doors.
01:13:14.106 --> 01:13:16.168
And then he wrote two words on the two doors there.
01:13:16.430 --> 01:13:18.131
One was belief and disbelief.
01:13:18.912 --> 01:13:22.037
And I thought that was brilliant because you've got these two choices.
01:13:22.957 --> 01:13:26.242
And it turns out in the movie that they lead to the same place.
01:13:27.426 --> 01:13:30.750
And sometimes two choices can lead to the same place.
01:13:30.930 --> 01:13:32.912
I mean, they didn't know what was behind.
01:13:32.953 --> 01:13:42.805
If you remember the movie, the sister ministers have that conversation between each other, and they're discussing what's behind the belief door, what's behind the disbelief door.
01:13:43.527 --> 01:13:46.189
And Sister Barnes is on the left, Sister Pax is on the right.
01:13:46.210 --> 01:13:49.154
I can't remember which door Sister Barnes is at.
01:13:49.234 --> 01:13:51.296
Is that the disbelief door or the belief door?
01:13:51.317 --> 01:13:52.198
I think it was the belief door.
01:13:52.962 --> 01:13:55.787
And I think Sister Barnes wanted to believe.
01:13:55.886 --> 01:14:02.356
And I think in that conversation, the way it ensued was, I think Sister Barnes persuaded Sister Paxson to go through the belief door.
01:14:03.498 --> 01:14:16.960
And I think in that conversation, they talked about the terrifying prospect of, you know, what's more terrifying, knowing the truth or not knowing the truth?
01:14:18.082 --> 01:14:23.189
Is it better to be in disbelief You know, can you live in disbelief?
01:14:23.911 --> 01:14:28.841
And I thought about that and I thought, well, is that why the church members don't want to hear about all the issues?
01:14:29.603 --> 01:14:37.498
And I know that because I spoke to somebody that I'm really close to, a friend who's a close family member, like almost like a family member who's very active.
01:14:38.360 --> 01:14:40.865
And when I talk about issues of the church, they don't want to know.
01:14:40.907 --> 01:14:42.369
They know that there are issues.
01:14:42.978 --> 01:14:46.561
They know that they're real problems, but they said, Ian, I don't want to know.
01:14:46.601 --> 01:14:53.189
I'm quite happy living the way I am in the church, in the community of the church, without knowing the issues.
01:14:54.009 --> 01:14:55.871
And I was blown away by that.
01:14:55.911 --> 01:14:59.335
But that was who they are, and that's what they want, and that's how they think, and that's how they feel.
01:14:59.354 --> 01:15:03.498
And you have a lot of members, I think, in the church like that.
01:15:03.779 --> 01:15:05.621
And belief is a choice.
01:15:07.222 --> 01:15:09.505
Okay, belief is a choice, notwithstanding all the issues.
01:15:10.274 --> 01:15:17.101
And then the other side is to ask the questions and to test belief with empirical evidence.
01:15:17.181 --> 01:15:20.045
I think, you know, Mr.
01:15:20.064 --> 01:15:23.710
Reid, Hugh Grant talks about, you know, what evidence is there behind prayer.
01:15:24.029 --> 01:15:28.295
And Sister Paxton talks, well, you know, clinical prayer doesn't work.
01:15:29.136 --> 01:15:31.257
You know, we pray to uplift and inspire each other.
01:15:31.679 --> 01:15:37.725
But going back to the point I was saying earlier, you've got this room, there are two doors, right?
01:15:38.305 --> 01:15:44.975
Hugh Grant says, I wish you'd read the character, says you can lead through these two doors and basically have to make a choice.
01:15:45.895 --> 01:15:47.057
And I thought that was brilliant.
01:15:47.217 --> 01:15:49.721
You've got the belief door, I think, on the left, disbelief on the door.
01:15:50.242 --> 01:15:51.904
That conversation happened between the Sister Mishras.
01:15:52.225 --> 01:16:01.738
They then move to the left in the movie, in that room, and they then open that door and they enter, I think, into the belief door, through the belief door.
01:16:02.238 --> 01:16:05.182
And they go down these dark steps.
01:16:06.144 --> 01:16:07.386
There's no light down there.
01:16:07.713 --> 01:16:15.990
They turn on the cell phone and they look up and there's Reed smiling at them or looking at them and does the awful thing and just shuts the door on them.
01:16:16.270 --> 01:16:24.448
I mean, that was just, and there they are just with the lights of their cell phone.
01:16:24.689 --> 01:16:30.966
So they go down there and there's a table And I'm probably getting into too much detail.
01:16:30.987 --> 01:16:32.128
I don't want to spoil this for people.
01:16:33.872 --> 01:16:35.774
Spoiled the whole movie, haven't we?
01:16:35.795 --> 01:16:36.756
Spoiled the entire movie.
01:16:37.457 --> 01:16:38.338
We're probably running out of time.
01:16:38.359 --> 01:16:39.220
We should probably do a second one.
01:16:39.461 --> 01:16:46.793
But the thing I found interesting, without going into the details of what happened in that room and Mr.
01:16:46.854 --> 01:16:56.666
Reid's efforts to prove that he told them that he discovered the one and only true religion.
01:16:56.706 --> 01:16:59.229
All these other iterations are false.
01:16:59.829 --> 01:17:10.622
And that he had hard evidence, physical evidence, that he wanted them to witness down there in that dungeon, that awful room.
01:17:10.662 --> 01:17:16.989
And that this experience, this miracle that they would see, would prove...
01:17:17.409 --> 01:17:21.373
that he's discovered the one and only true religion.
01:17:21.413 --> 01:17:25.037
And that came through to me quite strongly as well.
01:17:25.978 --> 01:17:33.685
There's a lot of details there that I remember that happened in that room.
01:17:34.867 --> 01:17:39.212
But for the interest of time, maybe we could probably wrap this up and kind of summarize it.
01:17:39.252 --> 01:17:41.694
We probably, we have destroyed the entire movie for people.
01:17:42.255 --> 01:17:43.256
But I think the one last thing.
01:17:43.456 --> 01:17:45.557
As long as the movie now at this point.
01:17:46.082 --> 01:17:52.649
Yes, but one last thing I want to mention, jumping right to the end, and I know we've been all over the place on this review.
01:17:53.650 --> 01:17:57.015
I'm not a professional movie reviewer, as you can tell.
01:17:57.475 --> 01:18:05.265
But I thought it was interesting at the end when Sister Paxton had been stabbed and Reed was crawling.
01:18:05.524 --> 01:18:06.546
You know, Reed had been injured.
01:18:06.846 --> 01:18:10.551
He'd been stabbed by Sister Pans and was bleeding.
01:18:10.650 --> 01:18:12.332
I think both of them were bleeding out, actually.
01:18:13.025 --> 01:18:27.724
And, uh, Reed crawls towards sister Paxson was laying there in the, um, in that room and is about to kill sister Paxson, uh, by, uh, pushing the knife, you know, in towards the neck.
01:18:28.484 --> 01:18:35.935
And then, and then, uh, Reed gets hit, struck by this piece of wood with nails in it.
01:18:36.775 --> 01:18:43.104
And that hit me really hard because Paxton who had been injured, um, earlier been stabbed.
01:18:43.865 --> 01:18:45.028
Barnes, I think you mean.
01:18:45.347 --> 01:18:46.489
Sorry, Barnes had been stabbed.
01:18:46.529 --> 01:18:46.990
I apologize.
01:18:47.953 --> 01:18:49.194
Was seemingly dead.
01:18:49.234 --> 01:18:58.811
Now had come back to life and saved Sister Paxson's life by killing Mr.
01:18:59.872 --> 01:19:00.333
Reed.
01:19:01.055 --> 01:19:01.877
And that really hit me.
01:19:01.917 --> 01:19:06.945
To me, that was like God had actually...
01:19:07.362 --> 01:19:17.335
seen the situation and brought Sister Barnes back to life in order to save Sister Paxton.
01:19:17.416 --> 01:19:19.198
That just struck me big time.
01:19:19.217 --> 01:19:27.970
And I thought that was very powerful and very spiritual and proved actually that God lived.
01:19:28.481 --> 01:19:33.469
that had the power to bring people back from the life, to save other people.
01:19:33.949 --> 01:19:36.895
And I thought that was a positive thing towards the church.
01:19:36.954 --> 01:19:47.890
I know the church's members have criticized the movie, but I thought, for me at least, that was quite faith-promoting that Barnes had been brought back to life to kill Reed in order to save Sister Paxton.
01:19:48.311 --> 01:19:50.755
That to me was the miracle of the movie.
01:19:51.917 --> 01:20:00.261
The whole movie, that was for me the most extraordinary miracle that I think the movie is trying to depict.
01:20:00.320 --> 01:20:01.842
And if there wasn't, that's what I got from that.
01:20:02.444 --> 01:20:05.768
I know we've been talking about this for quite some time.
01:20:05.807 --> 01:20:07.010
We've been all over the place here.
01:20:07.050 --> 01:20:11.936
But any other comments or thoughts on what happened in that last room before we...
01:20:11.976 --> 01:20:17.704
Well, no, I think you've summarized what happened in that room pretty nicely.
01:20:17.725 --> 01:20:19.507
There's something I...
01:20:20.469 --> 01:20:26.356
Maybe this is too long to conclude on, but I want to touch on it very quickly because...
01:20:27.394 --> 01:20:34.527
When I was, you know, my goal as a young man was to be a world famous actor.
01:20:35.769 --> 01:20:38.554
And I was a theater major at the University of Southern California.
01:20:39.855 --> 01:20:48.431
And I went on my mission and then I wondered, could I be an actor and still be a good and active member of the church?
01:20:50.335 --> 01:20:51.578
And part of it was.
01:20:52.514 --> 01:20:57.721
That members of the church, and this has kind of been de-emphasized now, but culturally it's still there.
01:20:58.403 --> 01:21:02.829
Members of the church were told explicitly, don't go see R-rated movies.
01:21:03.890 --> 01:21:08.377
That an R rating disqualifies a movie from having the spirit of the Lord in it.
01:21:09.238 --> 01:21:11.442
And Heretic is very much an R-rated movie.
01:21:12.304 --> 01:21:19.073
And I had a conversation, it was probably, it was my last interview actually with President Banks when he was my mission president.
01:21:19.905 --> 01:21:31.457
So President Banks said to me, this is our final interview, and so rather than talk about missions, I want to talk about what you want to do when you go home, because I'm not going to have a chance to interview you as you're going home.
01:21:32.358 --> 01:21:34.720
And I said, well, you know, I've always wanted to be an actor.
01:21:35.140 --> 01:21:37.063
And he said, well, let me tell you a story, Elder Bennett.
01:21:38.144 --> 01:21:47.051
He talked about a time when he was home with one of his sons and said, hey, it's just us tonight, so let's just go do dinner and a movie.
01:21:47.112 --> 01:21:48.613
I'll pick the restaurant, you pick the movie.
01:21:49.826 --> 01:22:00.202
And they went to a movie, and President Banks was offended because they took the Lord's name in vain a bunch of times.
01:22:00.622 --> 01:22:10.155
Turns out the movie was Terms of Endearment, which was a big Oscar-winning movie, and it's certainly not...
01:22:11.018 --> 01:22:11.518
I don't think...
01:22:11.559 --> 01:22:12.680
Maybe it was R-rated.
01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:13.100
I don't know.
01:22:13.400 --> 01:22:14.042
I don't think it was.
01:22:14.963 --> 01:22:19.069
Anyway, afterwards, he said, okay, well...
01:22:19.938 --> 01:22:21.180
What did you think of that movie?
01:22:21.359 --> 01:22:23.623
And he said, oh, it wasn't half good, wasn't half bad.
01:22:23.644 --> 01:22:25.126
He said, really?
01:22:25.145 --> 01:22:26.307
Well, I thought it was terrible.
01:22:26.408 --> 01:22:29.152
I thought it was offensive and there was so much swearing and there was so much.
01:22:30.052 --> 01:22:34.560
And he says, well, geez, compared to the other stuff you see out there, Pop, it's not that bad.
01:22:34.600 --> 01:22:37.704
And he said, well, would you take a date to see that movie?
01:22:39.027 --> 01:22:42.311
And his son said, well, yeah, I would.
01:22:42.351 --> 01:22:45.917
Well, would you take the Savior to see that movie?
01:22:46.689 --> 01:22:50.635
And I stopped him there and I said, I wouldn't take the Savior to see any movie.
01:22:51.877 --> 01:22:56.582
To which he replied, well, Elder Bennett, that's why I don't go see movies.
01:22:58.185 --> 01:23:05.293
And he had just said, you know, movies, and I just was like, oh, no, I need to find something else to do with my life.
01:23:06.796 --> 01:23:14.153
Although, as I thought about it, the reason I wouldn't take the Savior to see a movie is that if The Son of God appears at my doorstep.
01:23:14.233 --> 01:23:15.774
I'm not going to say, well, there's a matinee.
01:23:15.854 --> 01:23:16.716
We can just catch it.
01:23:16.756 --> 01:23:19.198
I mean, I would have a whole lot of other.
01:23:19.559 --> 01:23:22.382
I wouldn't take the Savior to see a BYU football game either.
01:23:22.403 --> 01:23:25.827
It's not that it's an inherently evil activity.
01:23:25.867 --> 01:23:37.942
But I came home from my mission with that sort of weight of, jeez, entertainment is evil just by its nature.
01:23:38.913 --> 01:24:07.533
And I sort of had to deconstruct that fairly early and realize that the squeamishness we have about Latter-day Saints seeing movies with certain ratings and certain things that are supposed to offend us, certain words that we're not allowed to listen to, gives sort of a mandate of heaven to the ratings board, which I don't think they deserved.
01:24:08.449 --> 01:24:27.270
And it's cut us off, I think, from examining difficult questions and steered us into just, okay, we're only going to watch entertainment that doesn't threaten us, that doesn't challenge us, that's easy and simple and goes down smooth on the way down.
01:24:28.171 --> 01:24:29.873
And Heretic is none of those things.
01:24:30.996 --> 01:24:54.002
And so I really think Latter-day Saints that aren't willing— to see this just because it's R-rated and just because they have a cultural expectation that nothing good can come from an R-rated movie are really missing out on an opportunity to, I think, strengthen their faith.
01:24:54.844 --> 01:24:57.146
I think this was a faith-affirming movie.
01:24:57.186 --> 01:24:58.368
It certainly was for me.
01:24:58.408 --> 01:25:08.814
It certainly helped me better understand why I believe what I believe and what lengths I would be willing to go to to defend what I believe.
01:25:09.555 --> 01:25:20.310
So I would heartily recommend it to anyone, in or out of the church, because I think that there is value there, and I'm grateful.
01:25:21.431 --> 01:25:29.962
Certainly it seems you've seen the value in it, and I've seen the value in it, and I would hope that others would take the opportunity to do the same.
01:25:30.543 --> 01:25:32.487
So that's my summation.
01:25:33.148 --> 01:25:34.309
Yeah, Jim, thank you so much.
01:25:35.489 --> 01:25:36.551
I've really enjoyed this.
01:25:36.591 --> 01:25:40.878
There's so much more to this movie that we haven't discussed or we haven't had time to get into.
01:25:41.500 --> 01:25:44.024
I want to go back and see it again, maybe even a third time.
01:25:44.043 --> 01:25:48.170
There are things in there which I probably missed, so I want to go back.
01:25:49.653 --> 01:25:59.127
We want to thank our listeners for being part of this podcast, for listening, their patience in terms of us going back and forward in terms of how we review the movie.
01:26:00.449 --> 01:26:05.738
Again, if you haven't seen the movie, it's best to see it for this before you listen to this podcast.
01:26:06.340 --> 01:26:07.542
There's so much more to it.
01:26:07.601 --> 01:26:10.386
For me, it was also uplifting.
01:26:10.447 --> 01:26:22.006
I think that moment where Sister Barnes came back to life and saved Sister Paxson's life was the miracle, I think, for the movie.
01:26:22.146 --> 01:26:23.128
And I still...
01:26:24.130 --> 01:26:25.992
in touch with my spiritual feelings.
01:26:26.032 --> 01:26:31.779
So, you know, this dark psychological horror, parts of it, for me at least, were quite uplifting.
01:26:32.198 --> 01:26:43.171
And of course, there were quotes to God be Hinkley about, you know, he quoted the prophet in there as well, and lots of extraordinary references about the church.
01:26:43.412 --> 01:26:51.988
But ultimately, as it was said to me when I was leaving the church, where no one had ever asked me, you know, why I'd left.
01:26:52.208 --> 01:26:58.096
Someone did say to me, Brother Wilkes, ultimately, your faith is a choice.
01:26:58.938 --> 01:27:00.380
You know, belief is a choice.
01:27:01.341 --> 01:27:02.381
And I remember that.
01:27:02.983 --> 01:27:07.729
And it is, it is a choice ultimately, you know, to choose what to believe.
01:27:08.529 --> 01:27:12.375
And like most of the people, I like to get the facts, get the truth.
01:27:13.055 --> 01:27:15.698
Yes, I like to test things, you know, scientifically.
01:27:15.738 --> 01:27:17.480
There's a big part of that in the movie.
01:27:18.082 --> 01:27:22.068
and is a big part of whether you can trust your feelings in the movie.
01:27:22.708 --> 01:27:26.595
Can you actually believe something based on feelings, or do you actually need hard evidence?
01:27:27.355 --> 01:27:31.502
That also came through very strongly, for me at least, in the movie.
01:27:32.203 --> 01:27:41.117
For me, it's a combination of physical evidence, empirical evidence, evidence you can measure and check, and feelings and spirituals.
01:27:41.438 --> 01:27:42.099
It's all of it.
01:27:43.820 --> 01:28:12.670
So, thank you jim for being part of this conversation i thought the movie was great uh folks if you haven't seen it go see it i don't think it's offensive to the church um at all i don't think so you might feel differently but uh again thank you for being with us and uh we look forward to joining you uh next week uh which when jim and i will do the next one on uh in uh hopefully the um Mormon musical, the Book of Mormon musical.
01:28:13.011 --> 01:28:22.841
So on the Friday night, Jim, before we saw the Book of Mormon musical on the Saturday, we went to see the movie Heretic and we watched it in the town where the movie Heretic was filmed.
01:28:23.778 --> 01:28:45.630
in and around the Squamish area and I think it was filmed in and around near Pit Meadows as well and we watched it in that which we only learned about the movie where it was filmed after we watched the movie anyway thank you very much for listening and we look forward to you joining us on the next episode of Inside Out early next week thank you Jim thank you music
00:00:01.217 --> 00:00:17.817
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out.
00:00:18.036 --> 00:00:22.842
My name is Ian Wilkes and I'm here with the entertaining Mr.
00:00:23.042 --> 00:00:23.984
Jim Bennett.
00:00:24.684 --> 00:00:25.125
Yes.
00:00:26.306 --> 00:00:27.067
Hello, Ian.
00:00:27.146 --> 00:00:27.867
How are you, sir?
00:00:28.288 --> 00:00:29.129
I'm really good, sir.
00:00:29.149 --> 00:00:29.649
I'm really good.
00:00:30.571 --> 00:00:32.493
I described you as entertaining because you are.
00:00:32.512 --> 00:00:33.334
You're an entertainer.
00:00:34.615 --> 00:00:40.682
The first day I met you in the Scotland Admission, many, many years ago, you were playing the piano.
00:00:40.741 --> 00:00:42.503
I think it was in Irvine.
00:00:43.084 --> 00:00:45.506
I think you pronounced it Irvine in America, but Irvine.
00:00:45.948 --> 00:00:46.328
Yeah.
00:00:46.548 --> 00:00:47.429
We're entertaining.
00:00:47.529 --> 00:00:55.518
And before I met you, I heard you were very funny and you were an actor and you played these instruments, multi instruments.
00:00:55.905 --> 00:01:21.525
instrumentalist and uh comedian and funny and everybody wanted to serve with you and i was disappointed because i never got to serve with you uh but yeah you are absolutely described as an entertainer and i think that's an interesting word today because today we are going to um review a movie called heretic which you have seen this week and i have seen and It was, we'll get into it.
00:01:21.564 --> 00:01:22.686
It's a spoiler alert.
00:01:22.706 --> 00:01:28.655
So if you haven't seen the movie, perhaps it's a good idea to see the movie first and then listen to this podcast.
00:01:29.135 --> 00:01:35.125
But we're going to be discussing this movie called Heretic, which was an extraordinary movie.
00:01:36.486 --> 00:01:46.162
And Jim and I are going to give our thoughts and opinions on the movie and in the context of, also in the context of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
00:01:47.138 --> 00:01:50.162
Um, just a little bit of context here.
00:01:50.183 --> 00:01:59.117
Um, uh, the movie, uh, impacted me, uh, as it did with you, probably in similar or different ways, Jim.
00:01:59.878 --> 00:02:15.140
But I think the, the, the, the first thing to get out, um, the more easy, obvious thing to say is that, um, uh, I'll give you space where you can comment each, each, you know, section of this, uh, conversation in this podcast on the movie.
00:02:16.022 --> 00:02:20.048
But the first thing I think I want to share is that the movie is just a great movie.
00:02:20.087 --> 00:02:21.030
It's a great thriller.
00:02:21.590 --> 00:02:22.891
If
00:02:23.112 --> 00:02:32.325
you're not a member of the church or you're not religious necessarily, it's just a fantastic story and far better than I was expecting.
00:02:32.961 --> 00:02:42.275
the actors, the storyline, the, the, the, uh, psychology, uh, behind the thriller is, is quite extraordinary.
00:02:42.314 --> 00:02:50.746
So just as a, just to get your comments and your, your thoughts on the movie in general, Jim, what, what do you think just as a, as a thriller slash horror?
00:02:51.768 --> 00:02:55.271
Oh, well, as a rule, I hate horror movies.
00:02:55.292 --> 00:03:00.539
I don't understand why people like to go and be terrified out of their minds.
00:03:01.621 --> 00:03:04.360
And, uh, There are a few exceptions to that.
00:03:04.801 --> 00:03:08.888
The horror movies that I like are some of my favorite movies of all time.
00:03:08.948 --> 00:03:25.133
Probably the top of that list would be Silence of the Lambs because not, I mean, the gore and the, you know, the jump scares, you know, somebody jumping out and yelling boo or those kinds of things.
00:03:25.153 --> 00:03:39.632
I just don't find them entertaining at all, but sort of the psychological horror suspense and, and the intricacies of relationships that, that heighten that sort of sense of terror.
00:03:40.652 --> 00:03:43.236
Uh, those I've always thought that that's really fun.
00:03:43.576 --> 00:03:51.669
And that's mostly where this movie went and it sort of descends into gore by the end.
00:03:51.710 --> 00:04:02.467
And I just, I was just sort of able to stomach that, but that, that isn't, I just don't see how that's any fun.
00:04:02.508 --> 00:04:07.492
But the psychological cat and mouse game that Hugh Grant...
00:04:07.612 --> 00:04:12.138
I mean, Hugh Grant is just absolutely perfect in this role.
00:04:12.177 --> 00:04:20.185
Who knew that Hugh Grant, this charming, romantic comedy guy, would be so absolutely terrifying?
00:04:20.446 --> 00:04:27.333
And they use that persona, the Hugh Grant, I'm just a nice guy and a charming, lovely person.
00:04:27.432 --> 00:04:31.259
They use that to try to get your guard down.
00:04:31.461 --> 00:04:37.668
And when you realize who this man is and what he's trying to do, it's all that more terrifying.
00:04:37.747 --> 00:04:44.615
So as a movie, it's extraordinarily well done.
00:04:44.656 --> 00:04:53.867
And the implications for the church, which I think we'll discuss as we get down the road, I think are really interesting and really positive.
00:04:54.088 --> 00:05:13.033
I think that the negative reaction From the institutional church, which has issued a statement condemning the movie, and from a lot of active members who say that this movie misrepresents them or this movie is somehow an attack on them, I think that those sentiments are largely misplaced.
00:05:13.134 --> 00:05:17.658
But I think that that's the next step in the conversation.
00:05:17.718 --> 00:05:25.586
I think we should focus now, to begin with, just on the movie in general, which you apparently adored as much or more than I did.
00:05:25.954 --> 00:05:26.735
I did.
00:05:27.495 --> 00:05:46.040
The psychology of the movie, and again, the Hugh Grant character, and if you look at his acting experience, it is a humble Englishman in a kind of foolish kind of roles that he's performed in the past.
00:05:46.141 --> 00:05:49.245
A little bit tight cast, actually, on some of the stuff that he's done.
00:05:49.826 --> 00:05:58.101
Certainly not a character to play a lead role in a psychological horror movie, which what this was.
00:05:59.846 --> 00:06:06.077
I'm not a huge fan of horror, a little bit of like science fiction horror, like horror.
00:06:06.305 --> 00:06:32.464
prometeus stuff like that i quite like but horror just for the sake of horror that doesn't do anything for me for me probably like most people is the psychology behind the horror the the creature that you can't see the the the the the the conversation even like leading up to um you know the events i find quite uh quite scary in this movie for me on that front delivered um bucket loads of psychological horror.
00:06:33.105 --> 00:06:44.880
And again, to your excellent point, I felt lured into a situation with Hugh Grant's acting because he's very friendly, quite humble.
00:06:44.901 --> 00:07:00.324
And basically, I mean, the synopsis, basically, there's two sister missions of the Monument Church, the Church of Israel and the Saints, received an inquiry or request from a Hugh Grant, who was playing the character, Mr.
00:07:00.365 --> 00:07:00.644
Reed.
00:07:01.565 --> 00:07:03.988
And I relate to this because we used to do this on our mission.
00:07:04.009 --> 00:07:23.430
If you remember Together Forever video that came out and the church engaged in a lot of advertising and people in the Scottish media, papers, et cetera, would advertise the Together Forever video.
00:07:24.065 --> 00:07:25.466
I think there was a cassette as well.
00:07:25.487 --> 00:07:27.488
You could play it, I think, as well, and also the video.
00:07:28.470 --> 00:07:48.348
And so people would read the advert and they would then contact this number, this free phone number, and Mishra's would eventually respond and they would knock on the door of the person requesting a visit with the intent of showing, discussing together forever.
00:07:48.869 --> 00:07:49.670
And we did that.
00:07:49.829 --> 00:07:50.531
You and I did that.
00:07:51.552 --> 00:07:53.694
And so that's...
00:07:53.922 --> 00:08:03.949
you know, the early stage of the movie where you've got these two Mormon sister missionaries who are responding to this request and they knock on the door and you've got this very friendly Mr.
00:08:04.009 --> 00:08:06.975
Reed fellow with a very It looks friendly.
00:08:07.014 --> 00:08:08.276
His face is very soft.
00:08:08.336 --> 00:08:09.838
His toad is very welcoming.
00:08:10.358 --> 00:08:11.699
It's pouring down with rain.
00:08:11.918 --> 00:08:13.321
And that really hit me.
00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:20.927
There were so many things that hit me on this movie, by the way, is that on a personal mystery level, but also the psychology it got to me.
00:08:21.326 --> 00:08:24.870
And then there's all the church stuff, which we'll get into in this conversation.
00:08:25.310 --> 00:08:27.793
But there they were standing at this door in the pouring rain.
00:08:27.932 --> 00:08:30.815
And I remember being there so many times and desperate to get in.
00:08:31.336 --> 00:08:35.759
And most of the time in my mission, when it was raining, I didn't care.
00:08:35.759 --> 00:08:37.523
This might sound a bit...
00:08:37.702 --> 00:08:38.784
I mean, I was a guy.
00:08:38.846 --> 00:08:39.866
I was not a citizen.
00:08:40.187 --> 00:08:40.889
It's different, I think.
00:08:41.389 --> 00:08:43.793
But a lot of the time, I didn't...
00:08:44.755 --> 00:08:46.840
I wasn't concerned about who the person was.
00:08:46.860 --> 00:08:51.167
I just sometimes wanted to get in, out of the freaking rain, right?
00:08:52.129 --> 00:08:57.440
And just somebody who would just even if they listened or not, just for some time to get out of the rain.
00:08:57.460 --> 00:08:59.442
I mean, that was my lack of faith.
00:08:59.942 --> 00:09:09.952
And so there the sister bushes are, they're knocking on the door, and they rightly say that they can't come in unless there's someone else in the house, like a woman, a woman in the house.
00:09:10.452 --> 00:09:13.816
And he said his wife is in the kitchen making some pie.
00:09:13.855 --> 00:09:18.681
And so they feel assured, and they go in, and they sit down, and he's very friendly.
00:09:19.241 --> 00:09:23.365
And then this psychological cat and mouse game actually begins.
00:09:24.066 --> 00:09:27.850
And we've got to get into the movie here.
00:09:28.390 --> 00:09:49.754
And so the first, again, just setting aside the fact that it's a brilliant movie and a great psychological thriller for anyone who's interested in that stuff, the first part of the movie gets into the conversations about belief and about...
00:09:50.114 --> 00:09:56.346
uh, the church, uh, he communicates the fact that he's, he's interested in, in learning more.
00:09:56.826 --> 00:10:06.725
Um, I can't remember the, you know, the exact script and you have to help them with my memory, but there's a conversation about, um, uh, the church and they want to share a message, et cetera.
00:10:06.765 --> 00:10:15.253
And he's talking about, um, beliefs and what are the parts of the first section of that movie.
00:10:15.273 --> 00:10:25.628
Do you remember, Jim, in that conversation where they sat in his front room and he tells them that his wife's making a blueberry pie in the back.
00:10:25.788 --> 00:10:26.669
They're reassured.
00:10:27.551 --> 00:10:29.514
He's starting to express interest in the church.
00:10:29.533 --> 00:10:31.056
They're interested in sharing the message.
00:10:32.197 --> 00:10:34.822
And by the way, again, this is a bit of a spoiler here.
00:10:34.981 --> 00:10:40.671
What's interesting was that there was a candle burning in the room.
00:10:40.691 --> 00:10:42.673
And can you...
00:10:43.265 --> 00:10:45.230
remember what was behind the candle.
00:10:45.250 --> 00:10:46.471
Well, the
00:10:46.491 --> 00:10:46.893
candle
00:10:46.913 --> 00:10:49.256
was a blueberry pie scented candle.
00:10:49.597 --> 00:10:50.860
Blueberry pie scented candle.
00:10:51.019 --> 00:10:53.364
And I think that was very powerful as well.
00:10:53.403 --> 00:10:54.505
That was giving off that scent.
00:10:54.927 --> 00:11:01.158
So the sister missionaries are, they feel I think they feel quite safe and secure.
00:11:01.278 --> 00:11:04.001
And this guy's very, very jolly.
00:11:04.503 --> 00:11:10.131
And then he goes back into the kitchen because he wants to find out when the pie's being made.
00:11:10.613 --> 00:11:18.905
What other things do you remember from that first conversation in respect to what they were talking about, about the church and about religion in general?
00:11:20.087 --> 00:11:33.398
Well, the thing that I found so delightful about it was how much these sister missionaries felt like real sister missionaries.
00:11:34.460 --> 00:11:43.913
This is one of the things, one of the reasons why I think that the Mormon distaste for the movie is somewhat misplaced.
00:11:45.173 --> 00:12:07.438
When the series Under the Banner of Heaven came out, I wrote a number of lengthy I reviewed every episode and my reviews were largely scathing and they weren't because I felt like the church was not being represented well.
00:12:07.658 --> 00:12:16.597
I thought it was just bad writing that the people didn't feel like real people, let alone real members of the church.
00:12:17.282 --> 00:12:30.759
And one of the things that was remarkable about this is as they were sitting there and as they were answering his questions, and even before that, their characters are established when they're having this sort of taboo conversation about pornography.
00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:37.269
That's the first time you meet them and they're sitting on a park bench and they're having this conversation that maybe they shouldn't be having.
00:12:37.308 --> 00:12:43.376
And instantly, I felt like I'm back on my mission again.
00:12:43.417 --> 00:12:52.727
I mean, how many times when you're taking a break, And you start to talk about something that maybe you shouldn't be talking about, but it's just you and your companion and nobody else can hear.
00:12:52.807 --> 00:13:03.318
And I just thought, whoever wrote this has done their research and understands what it's like to be a missionary.
00:13:03.359 --> 00:13:10.626
Those kinds of conversations, I thought, fit very much into my own experience.
00:13:10.687 --> 00:13:12.268
And then they have that experience where...
00:13:14.881 --> 00:13:20.948
The women ask to take a picture with them, and then they end up pulling down their skirt to see their magic underwear.
00:13:20.969 --> 00:13:24.072
And all that never happened to me.
00:13:24.091 --> 00:13:26.195
I don't think that probably happened to you either.
00:13:26.235 --> 00:13:35.905
But that kind of open mockery of missionaries felt very much like much of my experience.
00:13:35.946 --> 00:13:42.714
So initially, as you're going into it, you identify with these missionaries.
00:13:43.553 --> 00:13:53.006
I don't know if anybody outside the church would identify as strongly as you or I may have, but I sat there going, okay, I like these people.
00:13:53.027 --> 00:13:54.448
I understand these people.
00:13:54.610 --> 00:13:56.131
I recognize these people.
00:13:56.172 --> 00:14:00.136
And I claim these people as part of my tribe.
00:14:00.898 --> 00:14:08.629
I mean, this is an accurate depiction of what sister missionaries experience, what they're like.
00:14:09.429 --> 00:14:19.784
I mean, I had some problems, for instance, You know, when there's an elder that goes and looks for them when they go missing, they don't report in at the end of the day.
00:14:19.845 --> 00:14:21.847
And so this elder goes out to look for them.
00:14:22.668 --> 00:14:26.794
And the elder was played by Topher Grace, who's an actor who's in his 30s.
00:14:27.535 --> 00:14:29.339
So he's much too old to be a missionary.
00:14:29.479 --> 00:14:33.205
And he goes out and walks around without a companion.
00:14:34.307 --> 00:14:36.570
And I was like, oh, now, come on.
00:14:36.610 --> 00:14:36.910
That's...
00:14:38.472 --> 00:14:38.633
But...
00:14:39.490 --> 00:15:00.778
Those kinds of niggly kind of things didn't bother me because I was just so enamored of the characters and of the fact that, okay, Latter-day Saints are going to be treated as real people and not just real people, but they are the protagonists.
00:15:01.178 --> 00:15:02.301
They are the good guys.
00:15:02.421 --> 00:15:03.402
They are the heroes.
00:15:04.082 --> 00:15:05.826
They are the ones you are rooting for.
00:15:06.562 --> 00:15:12.890
And you do spend your entire time rooting for them, hoping that these sister missionaries can survive this.
00:15:13.792 --> 00:15:20.361
And again, spoiler alert, hopefully you're not listening to this, not expecting spoilers, because I think we have to discuss the spoilers.
00:15:21.964 --> 00:15:28.173
And when Sister Barnes dies, it's just absolutely heartbreaking.
00:15:28.913 --> 00:15:34.542
It's like, oh no, this is, I mean, she was my favorite of the two.
00:15:35.490 --> 00:15:47.965
And I thought, oh my goodness, it had so much more of an impact because the character was so well-written and was so believable and so compelling.
00:15:48.946 --> 00:15:58.116
And so that first discussion, it felt an awful lot like a number of discussions that I had on my mission.
00:15:59.719 --> 00:16:01.621
Although I can't ever remember...
00:16:02.498 --> 00:16:10.826
Somebody like Hugh Grant sitting you down and saying, oh yes, I'm so interested and I'm so excited because that would have been, I think, a red flag.
00:16:10.865 --> 00:16:15.149
It would have been a little bit of, okay, there's something else going on here.
00:16:15.210 --> 00:16:19.293
Nobody's this interested in hearing the first discussion.
00:16:19.313 --> 00:16:31.666
And where the tone shifts because he's just telling them, yes, I love your church and oh, I think it's great and isn't this wonderful and I want to learn more and they're all excited.
00:16:32.354 --> 00:16:36.940
Then he says, I want to ask you, I think he said an awkward question.
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:39.364
I don't remember what the word was.
00:16:40.225 --> 00:16:41.746
But then he introduces polygamy.
00:16:42.488 --> 00:16:44.450
And he says, I want to talk to you about polygamy.
00:16:46.092 --> 00:16:48.054
And I have a problem with polygamy.
00:16:48.115 --> 00:16:51.559
And I have a problem with Joseph Smith having an affair with Fanny Alger.
00:16:51.580 --> 00:16:54.644
He pronounced her name Alger and not Alger.
00:16:54.663 --> 00:17:01.494
And I believe that he was using his religion in order to have sex with as many women as he could.
00:17:02.562 --> 00:17:15.156
And the tone of the conversation shifts and the sister missionaries give, I think, really weak answers to that, which again is consistent with the mission experience.
00:17:15.196 --> 00:17:29.394
Whenever anybody brought up polygamy, the goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible and get back to something that was more, get back to safe ground.
00:17:30.115 --> 00:17:32.278
Because talking about polygamy was very fraught.
00:17:32.897 --> 00:17:49.741
And so I never actually did this, but a lot of my companions or other people that I was with would talk about polygamy and say, well, geez, it was just this sort of frontier thing where there were more women than there were men and there were all these widows.
00:17:49.842 --> 00:17:56.311
And so it was just something they did as a stopgap measure, essentially, and it went away.
00:17:56.372 --> 00:17:57.894
And so we don't need to talk about it anymore.
00:17:58.498 --> 00:18:03.244
And I was always, even back on my mission, I knew that wasn't true and that wasn't accurate.
00:18:03.925 --> 00:18:08.913
And so when polygamy came up, I had a hard time shifting the subject.
00:18:09.233 --> 00:18:14.582
And usually the discussion would just go off the rails and we'd end up being done.
00:18:15.763 --> 00:18:19.729
But again, it just felt very natural.
00:18:19.809 --> 00:18:33.190
And he brings up polygamy and it's something that people who know about the church or anybody that, and you've said Ian many times that, In the UK, for instance, all anybody knows about the church is polygamy.
00:18:34.291 --> 00:18:42.085
And so it's something that the church has a reputation for and that missionaries don't really have a good answer for.
00:18:43.326 --> 00:18:45.892
And so you saw that sort of tension.
00:18:45.971 --> 00:18:47.974
You saw that sort of awkwardness.
00:18:49.218 --> 00:18:51.340
And that led into...
00:18:52.642 --> 00:19:03.498
It's really interesting because there's a guy named Taylor Petrie who's a marvelous scholar who's written several books about the Mormon LGBTQ experience.
00:19:03.538 --> 00:19:04.700
And he reviewed the movie.
00:19:05.922 --> 00:19:10.107
And he described it as a reverse temple ceremony.
00:19:11.549 --> 00:19:19.201
That in the temple ceremony, the ritual of the temple, there's a ritual ascent from kingdom to kingdom.
00:19:19.300 --> 00:19:22.085
You fall and then you go to...
00:19:23.266 --> 00:19:27.711
the telestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, and the celestial kingdom.
00:19:28.230 --> 00:19:36.780
And back when we did live endowments, which are no longer a thing, unfortunately, every time you move from room to room, there was an ascent.
00:19:37.622 --> 00:19:40.003
Each room was a little bit higher than the other room.
00:19:40.204 --> 00:19:42.287
And this is a ritual descent.
00:19:43.347 --> 00:20:21.076
You start there in the welcoming and cozy living room, and then you move into this sort of chapel room, where mr reed unleashes the majority of his argument about how religion is just a bunch of different iterations he brings out the monopoly board and says this was ripped off from a previous game and now there are other games that have ripped monopoly off and he plays the song by the hollies the air that i breathe and he says well this was ripped off by radiohead And then it was ripped off by Lana Del Rey.
00:20:21.737 --> 00:20:25.559
And so everything is just an iteration of everything that has come before.
00:20:25.740 --> 00:20:27.362
And that's just the same as religion.
00:20:27.422 --> 00:20:32.906
And then you see on his walls, all these deities from all these other religions.
00:20:33.007 --> 00:20:37.151
And he says, see, all these guys were born on December 25th.
00:20:37.270 --> 00:20:41.714
All of them were born of a virgin and all of them were resurrected.
00:20:41.755 --> 00:20:46.799
And so by the time Jesus comes along, there've already been so many iterations of this.
00:20:47.480 --> 00:20:55.680
And as he started doing that, That's when I started to roll my eyes because that was sort of warmed over Bill Maher.
00:20:55.700 --> 00:20:57.161
Do you know who Bill Maher is?
00:20:57.201 --> 00:20:58.001
Yes.
00:20:58.542 --> 00:20:59.083
The comedian.
00:20:59.123 --> 00:21:08.011
He made a movie called Religious, as in ridiculous, and he went through all of that, and that's just not true.
00:21:08.291 --> 00:21:11.776
I mean, the idea that they were all born on December 25th isn't true.
00:21:11.796 --> 00:21:23.503
I mean, it's sort of sanding off the edges of of some very big differences between all of these creation myths that he's citing.
00:21:23.523 --> 00:21:39.324
And I just sat there and went, okay, this is gonna be just this kind of Bill Maher, straight ahead kind of great, I mean, middle school kind of discussion about religion.
00:21:39.743 --> 00:21:55.809
I mean, cause I think some of those arguments, some of them are just really, really shallow and don't reflect a great deal of thinking, And then all of a sudden, Sister Barnes comes back at him and says, okay, you're wrong.
00:21:55.970 --> 00:22:00.114
And all this is, and there are so many differences you're not talking about.
00:22:00.153 --> 00:22:08.682
And I just sat there going, oh my gosh, they're really going to take religion seriously throughout this movie.
00:22:08.721 --> 00:22:13.326
They're really going to engage with real arguments with substance.
00:22:14.387 --> 00:22:25.138
And it's a little bit, implausible because most missionaries wouldn't actually be that skilled at refuting that kind of stuff.
00:22:25.699 --> 00:22:30.243
But Sister Barnes was, and look at that guy, he's got a freaking bird head.
00:22:30.263 --> 00:22:33.848
And I just was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be really fun.
00:22:34.368 --> 00:22:41.376
This is really going to engage with religious ideas in a profound and significant way.
00:22:41.537 --> 00:22:45.481
And I was not disappointed because that's exactly what it did.
00:22:46.273 --> 00:22:53.663
And it does not do so from a sort of didactic, it does not try to say religion is bad.
00:22:53.682 --> 00:22:54.903
I mean, Mr.
00:22:55.964 --> 00:22:59.769
Reid makes the case that religion is bad, but Mr.
00:22:59.869 --> 00:23:02.192
Reid is the bad guy.
00:23:02.212 --> 00:23:05.777
You're not supposed to identify with Mr.
00:23:05.856 --> 00:23:06.096
Reid.
00:23:06.136 --> 00:23:13.405
You're not supposed to accept his arguments uncritically and assume that they represent the point of view of the author.
00:23:14.273 --> 00:23:31.071
And so there's a give and take throughout the whole thing where they go through all of this, even as they also go through some standard horror movie tropes and quite a bit of gore and quite a bit of torture and murder.
00:23:31.092 --> 00:23:38.220
And, you know, those are the parts that I could have done without, but I don't know that you could have made this movie without them.
00:23:39.300 --> 00:23:43.766
But on the whole, it was just so refreshing.
00:23:44.705 --> 00:24:10.385
to see a movie that takes religion seriously, that doesn't just dismiss it out of hand, and that has protagonists who are capable of presenting the positive argument for religion in a way that I thought was compelling and that I thought was very thoughtful and interesting, even though I didn't necessarily agree with some of their arguments.
00:24:10.865 --> 00:24:20.117
I thought it was a little bit strange, for instance, too, that there seemed to be this sort of hint that Latter-day Saints believe in reincarnation, the whole thing about the butterfly.
00:24:21.078 --> 00:24:28.888
When Sister Paxton talks about, oh, jeez, when I die, I want to come back as a butterfly and land on someone's hand so they'll know it's me.
00:24:28.950 --> 00:24:38.521
And I thought, well, there really isn't room in Latter-day Saint theology for that, but it's certainly made for a lovely, albeit somewhat ambiguous ending.
00:24:39.746 --> 00:24:56.144
But anyway, so maybe I've gone too far into the religion here, but I just thought it is so rare to find such good, competent, solid writing in any movie, be it a horror movie, be it a thriller.
00:24:56.164 --> 00:25:01.790
It's usually far too easy to just sort of press the buttons and say, well, this is the formula.
00:25:01.830 --> 00:25:03.393
This is how the guy gets the girl.
00:25:03.432 --> 00:25:04.134
This is how...
00:25:04.865 --> 00:25:06.729
You know, James Bond saves the world.
00:25:06.769 --> 00:25:16.201
There are so many formulas and so many tropes, and movies don't usually demand much of us when we watch them.
00:25:16.442 --> 00:25:20.406
They're just, okay, yeah, let me escape from the world for an hour and a half.
00:25:20.487 --> 00:25:25.614
And this one demanded quite a lot from us.
00:25:26.255 --> 00:25:31.182
This one was like, no, we're going to engage with you on very...
00:25:31.905 --> 00:25:34.790
fraught and difficult questions.
00:25:35.751 --> 00:25:37.996
And we're not going to let you off the hook.
00:25:38.155 --> 00:25:42.824
You've got to go through this with us and explore these ideas with you.
00:25:42.884 --> 00:25:50.977
And you come out of the theater and you've got all of these different ideas that you're thinking about and questioning.
00:25:51.297 --> 00:25:57.126
And I thought that is the hallmark of what great art can do.
00:25:57.807 --> 00:25:58.829
So anyway.
00:26:00.738 --> 00:26:01.459
No, this is really good.
00:26:01.499 --> 00:26:03.340
I've been listening and I've been making notes.
00:26:04.363 --> 00:26:10.410
For me, the movie hit me on so many levels.
00:26:10.871 --> 00:26:23.606
The psychological horror part, which I thought was really well done, just as the main strategy, one of the main strategies that the movie intended.
00:26:24.186 --> 00:26:27.612
But on a personal level, it connected with me as well.
00:26:27.932 --> 00:26:28.952
And you've gone through...
00:26:29.761 --> 00:26:32.766
some of the key points of the movie.
00:26:32.786 --> 00:26:38.952
And I want to go back into some of those points and probably come to the point where you just left off and then take us both forward from there.
00:26:39.314 --> 00:26:47.123
So if you go back to the beginning of the movie, you know, it shows the sister mysteries before they even show up at Mr.
00:26:47.163 --> 00:26:49.766
Reed's door, you know, in the community.
00:26:50.207 --> 00:26:52.549
And it shows them sat on a park bench, actually.
00:26:52.849 --> 00:27:02.201
And they're talking about, I think before that, they're trying to meet people and people are not interested in, talking to the system issues or what I could relate to that.
00:27:02.883 --> 00:27:07.590
You know, on my mission, GQing, asking the golden question on the streets was awful.
00:27:08.172 --> 00:27:08.613
Hated it.
00:27:08.712 --> 00:27:09.614
I'd rather knock on doors.
00:27:09.673 --> 00:27:17.226
I got spat in the face once by someone in Edinburgh just by approaching them and asking them a religious question.
00:27:17.287 --> 00:27:19.108
It was an awful experience and I hated it.
00:27:19.128 --> 00:27:22.114
I remember feeling odd.
00:27:22.835 --> 00:27:28.180
You know, people looked at me like I was Like I was the strangest thing on the planet and I hated it.
00:27:28.259 --> 00:27:37.798
You know, sat on the deck, back of a, uh, the lower level of a double-decker bus where you go to the back of this seats at the side, seats at the back.
00:27:37.938 --> 00:27:43.548
And I'm sat there and everybody's looking at me and I look at them and look away like I'm some kind of, uh, plague.
00:27:43.568 --> 00:27:44.431
I just hated it.
00:27:44.471 --> 00:27:46.173
It was just awful part of my life.
00:27:46.498 --> 00:27:46.817
mission.
00:27:46.857 --> 00:27:50.362
I couldn't stand that side of the mission.
00:27:51.022 --> 00:27:57.809
And if you remember the conversation they had on the bench, the packed bench there, they were talking about sex.
00:27:57.849 --> 00:27:59.172
You've got sister sex.
00:27:59.192 --> 00:28:04.497
They were talking about the size of men's penises, actually.
00:28:04.537 --> 00:28:06.219
That I thought was quite funny.
00:28:06.278 --> 00:28:08.701
I wondered if that's what the sister mission was sometimes talking about.
00:28:09.061 --> 00:28:09.762
They probably do.
00:28:10.222 --> 00:28:13.707
As elders, I remember having a conversation.
00:28:13.747 --> 00:28:19.839
I won't mention that my companion's name, but I remember talking about We were worried.
00:28:19.859 --> 00:28:30.201
I remember this conversation in one of my companionships that we were so worried that Christ would return before we got home and got married and had sex.
00:28:31.170 --> 00:28:32.551
And it was a real worry.
00:28:32.571 --> 00:28:36.116
I remember having this conversation and I was like, no, I hope not.
00:28:36.837 --> 00:28:38.519
And we're like, surely that won't happen.
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:41.624
You know, cause two beginning of the mission, two years is like forever.
00:28:41.644 --> 00:28:45.829
And there you are two young guys and same for girls as well.
00:28:45.890 --> 00:28:51.218
You know, it's right in the peak of your, of your, you know, your hormones.
00:28:51.278 --> 00:28:51.478
Right.
00:28:52.078 --> 00:29:00.265
Um, and you're attracted to girls and you, you just, it's just how, you know, it's just the nature, right?
00:29:00.345 --> 00:29:00.664
Natural.
00:29:00.705 --> 00:29:11.518
And so, and you're at your peak and you, um, you, you know, you, you hope that the second coming won't happen before you get back and get married and you can't have sex before marriage.
00:29:11.538 --> 00:29:12.259
You've got to get married.
00:29:12.298 --> 00:29:18.045
So you look at it a year of dating and getting another person before you got three years to wait to have sex.
00:29:18.826 --> 00:29:23.791
And I remember having that conversation with at least two or three, uh, companions whose names I won't mention.
00:29:24.553 --> 00:29:31.894
Um, and, uh, I thought it was quite funny and I thought, I bet that's what sometimes the sister missions talk about.
00:29:31.913 --> 00:29:35.278
Sure, but they're not any different than the guys and they talk about that.
00:29:35.317 --> 00:29:37.141
So I thought that was fascinating.
00:29:37.181 --> 00:29:39.443
The name tags, how they looked and dressed, I thought that was great.
00:29:39.703 --> 00:29:45.332
You said earlier that they looked and it felt very much, it took you back to you serving your mission.
00:29:45.711 --> 00:29:48.896
It certainly did with me for sure.
00:29:49.998 --> 00:30:02.529
The other thing I want to highlight as well is that it becomes clear from that conversation on the back bench for me at least, and later on, that Sister Barnes is the much more streetwise sister missionary.
00:30:03.371 --> 00:30:11.941
And there's a story, you know, her background, there's more of her events that have happened in her life that have shaped who she is.
00:30:12.020 --> 00:30:19.289
And she's more streetwise, more mature compared to Sister Paxton, who at the beginning...
00:30:20.001 --> 00:30:40.730
seems, well, appears to be, well, is very inexperienced in terms of life, not streetwise, very simplistic, not stupid or unintelligent, but as you go forward into the story, towards the end, emerges as incredibly smart by the end, which we'll get into.
00:30:41.310 --> 00:30:45.115
Incredibly smart and intelligent to try to figure out what Mr.
00:30:45.175 --> 00:30:51.234
Reed's intentions are and where his plans are actually go off.
00:30:52.215 --> 00:30:52.457
Mr.
00:30:52.477 --> 00:30:55.660
Reed's plan doesn't go to plan and she kind of discovers that.
00:30:56.099 --> 00:31:04.367
So I thought it was the interesting parts of that part of the movie there to kind of set the tone and set the context of the system issues.
00:31:04.647 --> 00:31:10.653
And then fast forward, they go to the door, knock on the door, Reed lets them in, sits them down, tries to make them feel comfortable.
00:31:10.693 --> 00:31:11.974
You
00:31:12.015 --> 00:31:12.536
could tell...
00:31:12.576 --> 00:31:25.936
Before, though, they go to the door, the line that I loved, it's definitely something that The elders would say, when she says, every flight of stairs we climb, that's how much hotter our husbands will be.
00:31:25.977 --> 00:31:31.902
Didn't you have, I mean, didn't you have companions that would say things like that?
00:31:31.942 --> 00:31:35.726
That's how much hotter our wives will be, the harder our mission is.
00:31:35.925 --> 00:31:38.088
Yes, come to think of it, I did, yeah.
00:31:38.128 --> 00:31:39.730
The more righteous you are.
00:31:39.869 --> 00:31:41.551
That was it, I remember, thank you.
00:31:41.571 --> 00:31:47.458
I remember having conversations that the more obedient you were in your mission, the hotter your wife would be.
00:31:48.001 --> 00:31:48.281
Right.
00:31:48.301 --> 00:31:49.844
Oh my gosh, I remember that.
00:31:50.064 --> 00:31:50.604
Oh my goodness.
00:31:50.644 --> 00:31:52.967
Yeah, man, that brings back some interesting conversation.
00:31:53.988 --> 00:32:00.413
So again, this is another, lots of examples where this kind of really connected with me.
00:32:00.473 --> 00:32:03.916
And in the theater, you know, it was probably half full.
00:32:04.057 --> 00:32:06.920
I'm the only guy there probably who's served a mission, right?
00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:11.183
So this whole movie means something quite different to me as I was watching it.
00:32:11.443 --> 00:32:19.859
And then to get into the conversation, the first part is, seems really normal and natural, even though there's an airy look to the inside of the room.
00:32:20.221 --> 00:32:22.984
And the way the camera works, by the way, it's brilliant.
00:32:23.746 --> 00:32:24.768
It's a very old...
00:32:24.788 --> 00:32:32.558
Do you remember how many times you went into an old senior folks' home in Scotland and it was old and nothing had moved?
00:32:32.598 --> 00:32:42.292
All the ornaments had never moved and the old-fashioned wallpaper and the curtains and the old-fashioned wood...
00:32:43.329 --> 00:33:19.661
window panes you know very old i thought my goodness this is like from like an old cottage or something from scotland so that that and the colors the colors like these these different greens and just like you know 70s style um look like it never been never been decorated in like uh you know 30 40 years and how many places like that we're into i think it's brilliant um uh setting and context and then to your point they started talking about polygamy And that reminded me of the conversation we had with Michelle Brady Stone, which is our last podcast.
00:33:20.142 --> 00:33:28.431
And when he asked polygamy, when he asked about polygamy, it hit me because that was the thing that came up when I was investigating the church.
00:33:29.231 --> 00:33:31.755
You know, I'd heard, the only one thing I'd heard about the church was polygamy.
00:33:31.775 --> 00:33:32.957
You could have more than one wife.
00:33:33.678 --> 00:33:36.500
You know, being a 16-year-old, you know, I was okay with that.
00:33:36.621 --> 00:33:37.321
The more...
00:33:37.953 --> 00:33:40.978
You know, more wives, the better, as far as I was concerned, right?
00:33:42.640 --> 00:33:56.679
You know, and so, but the fact that he raised it being, even today, the most significant, recognizable issue with the church, still today, as it was when you and I were serving missions, I thought, my gosh.
00:33:57.160 --> 00:34:09.275
And then in the context of that last podcast we did with Michelle, which was brilliant, I just really enjoyed that, and the argument whether or not Joe Smith was a polygamist or not, I just thought, They've done the homework.
00:34:09.394 --> 00:34:26.831
In fact, Jim, I did a little research on the movie, and although the directors were not Mormon, Julia Glousey is married to Woods, who is a producer on the movie, and Julia went to Brigham Young University.
00:34:27.994 --> 00:34:31.197
So there is a little bit of a connection there.
00:34:31.237 --> 00:34:34.920
So the people that were advising on the movie, and I
00:34:34.980 --> 00:34:40.199
think the actresses, who played the sister missionaries, were former members of the church.
00:34:40.298 --> 00:34:41.000
Is that correct?
00:34:41.221 --> 00:34:42.202
That's what I understand.
00:34:42.242 --> 00:34:45.146
Again, looking at the research, that's my understanding as well.
00:34:45.807 --> 00:34:48.331
Other people can comment, you know, through their research, of course.
00:34:48.632 --> 00:34:50.193
But they've done their homework.
00:34:50.434 --> 00:34:54.541
I mean, a lot of this was very, you know, to what you said earlier, it kind of...
00:34:55.713 --> 00:34:59.380
it was like a throwback for me into, into, into my mission.
00:34:59.400 --> 00:35:03.166
And then the polygamy thing came up, you know, on the, um, in the conversation.
00:35:03.186 --> 00:35:13.784
And then, um, as they start getting into that, uh, you know, conversation and he's talking to them about, um, you know, beliefs, et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:13.804 --> 00:35:20.918
And, uh, you know, talking to him about, um, uh, you know, what, uh, you know, what he thinks.
00:35:21.458 --> 00:35:24.742
He makes, some of the quotes, I think, are brilliant.
00:35:24.762 --> 00:35:35.373
He's talking about, you know, if you investigate a fate or, you know, to develop a belief, he said it's a simple choice that should not be made simply.
00:35:36.313 --> 00:35:48.266
And I thought that was great because, you know, when I was talking to investigators, I thought it is, you know, this is such a, I thought at the time, a very easy religion to understand.
00:35:49.153 --> 00:35:56.603
I think I was a little bit brainwashed maybe by then.
00:35:57.164 --> 00:35:59.487
And certainly I think it was church broken, my mission.
00:36:00.009 --> 00:36:02.773
And to me, it made so much sense back then.
00:36:02.793 --> 00:36:09.362
I was in that cocoon thinking and probably forgotten or didn't understand the religion enough, actually.
00:36:09.382 --> 00:36:10.563
I think that's the situation.
00:36:10.643 --> 00:36:12.286
As a missionary...
00:36:12.641 --> 00:36:14.864
And I want to get your comment on this as well.
00:36:14.905 --> 00:36:15.806
We'll get back into the story.
00:36:16.405 --> 00:36:24.335
As a new convert to the church, relatively new convert to the church, as a missionary, I thought I knew a lot about the church and I really didn't.
00:36:24.456 --> 00:36:39.414
I knew a lot about the scriptures, but there was so much more complexity about the church that a lot of, many rather, maybe not a lot, but a lot of investigators understood about the church or had a perception of the church about its complexity, like polygamy and other things.
00:36:39.746 --> 00:36:48.155
that I didn't really fully understand or appreciate because my knowledge of the church, even as a missionary, was far from complete.
00:36:48.757 --> 00:36:58.809
And I didn't understand all the historical and actually quite dark complexities like polygamy, even as a full-time missionary.
00:36:59.268 --> 00:37:08.139
Whereas people that I was talking to who'd studied stuff about the church, there was no internet back then, you know, back in the 80s, but they'd researched it or they knew a bit about it.
00:37:08.641 --> 00:37:18.737
And there were people that, saw the complexities in, you know, about the issue around polygamy that I didn't fully say, as I say, understand or appreciate is a full-time issue.
00:37:18.797 --> 00:37:20.079
I thought here's the gospel.
00:37:20.119 --> 00:37:22.684
It's simple, you know, accept it.
00:37:22.905 --> 00:37:23.847
It's a serious decision.
00:37:23.907 --> 00:37:29.777
So it's not something to be, you know, made lightly, but it should be an easy thing to do because it makes so much sense.
00:37:29.998 --> 00:37:32.101
And, and, and that's why you should join.
00:37:32.262 --> 00:37:34.206
And it just, everything fits perfectly.
00:37:34.626 --> 00:37:37.108
That was my understanding of being a missionary to that.
00:37:37.588 --> 00:37:39.650
We've got the answers to all the questions.
00:37:40.893 --> 00:37:42.213
We have the plan of salvation.
00:37:42.253 --> 00:37:47.960
It's the fullness of the gospel, the fullness, which meant to me we had everything, Jim.
00:37:48.280 --> 00:37:48.760
We had everything.
00:37:49.322 --> 00:37:50.103
There's nothing that was missing.
00:37:50.663 --> 00:37:51.824
Everything was restored.
00:37:53.005 --> 00:37:53.286
Everything.
00:37:53.907 --> 00:37:57.230
And it's a simple decision not to be made simple.
00:37:57.251 --> 00:38:01.295
So that line there, it really hit me.
00:38:02.096 --> 00:38:03.777
What do you remember from the movie?
00:38:04.322 --> 00:38:34.572
when they're in the room having the conversation and then things start to look a little bit eerie and start to become a little bit ominous and the sisters at some point start to feel like they're trapped because right now he's been back to the kitchen to talk to his wife about the blueberry pie he's come in the first time he comes back in the ratio of the pie is being cooked his wife's back there At that point, the Sister Mistress feel okay.
00:38:35.375 --> 00:38:38.242
Then there's a conversation ensues, polygamy comes up, et cetera.
00:38:38.282 --> 00:38:42.695
She's talking to him about the beliefs.
00:38:44.099 --> 00:38:53.811
And then I think Sister Paxton says, She's reticent or reluctant to talk about it further without having Mrs.
00:38:53.891 --> 00:38:54.572
Reid in the room.
00:38:55.092 --> 00:38:57.496
And I think that she reminds Mr.
00:38:57.536 --> 00:38:59.679
Reid, could we meet your wife?
00:39:00.280 --> 00:39:02.543
And I think then he goes back again for the second time.
00:39:02.583 --> 00:39:09.092
And at that point, I think they stand up and they look around and they go to the front door.
00:39:09.132 --> 00:39:16.681
I'm trying to remember the timing of when they start to feel a little bit uneasy.
00:39:17.186 --> 00:39:21.771
Um, can you, what parts of the movie can you remember when it starts to get a little bit uncomfortable?
00:39:22.291 --> 00:39:24.034
No, I mean, that's definitely when it happens.
00:39:24.094 --> 00:39:26.757
I mean, they, they get up, they go to the door, the door won't open.
00:39:28.199 --> 00:39:35.447
And I think the moment when they realize they're in danger is when they discover the blueberry pie candle.
00:39:36.108 --> 00:39:36.289
Yeah.
00:39:36.710 --> 00:39:38.791
And they realize there isn't a pie.
00:39:38.831 --> 00:39:40.795
He's lying about the pie.
00:39:40.894 --> 00:39:46.782
So he's probably lying about the wife and the door won't open and we're in serious trouble.
00:39:47.713 --> 00:39:54.621
And one of the moments that I thought was just so interesting, because he tells them at the beginning that there's metal in the house.
00:39:55.242 --> 00:39:56.083
Yes, I remember that.
00:39:56.362 --> 00:40:01.009
Which is intentional in order to say that this is somehow going to block a cell phone signal.
00:40:01.449 --> 00:40:01.608
Yeah.
00:40:01.768 --> 00:40:09.398
I'm not sure if the technology checks out on that, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief and just sort of accept it as part of the story.
00:40:09.438 --> 00:40:17.010
And so they go in and they tell him, oh, we've just gotten a call from the Relief Society.
00:40:17.050 --> 00:40:18.211
We have to go back.
00:40:18.751 --> 00:40:19.673
We're very sorry.
00:40:19.693 --> 00:40:20.333
Yes.
00:40:20.775 --> 00:40:24.478
And he gets angry with them for lying.
00:40:24.519 --> 00:40:27.422
He's like, I told you there was metal in the house.
00:40:27.483 --> 00:40:29.264
I know you haven't gotten any kind of phone call.
00:40:29.865 --> 00:40:29.925
Yes.
00:40:29.945 --> 00:40:30.547
I mean, here you are.
00:40:30.567 --> 00:40:31.507
You're telling me a lie.
00:40:31.547 --> 00:40:36.293
And I'm sitting here going, you're upset that they're lying to you?
00:40:36.554 --> 00:40:47.972
Everything you've done has been a lie up to this point, and you're lying to them to the point of, torturing them and you're going to take their lives.
00:40:48.492 --> 00:40:57.644
You've got no moral high ground to stand on that they're telling you some kind of a fib to try to get out when you won't let them leave.
00:40:57.684 --> 00:41:20.503
So just the deliberate and slow building of tension and suspense and terror is It's just so, the movie that was called to mind for me is a movie that I made my kids watch as when they were far too young to appreciate it.
00:41:21.324 --> 00:41:24.369
And it's Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.
00:41:24.588 --> 00:41:25.791
Have you ever seen Rear Window?
00:41:26.331 --> 00:41:27.112
One of my favorite movies.
00:41:27.132 --> 00:41:28.835
I just love that movie.
00:41:28.994 --> 00:41:33.742
And it could be considered a sort of a horror movie, but there's absolutely no gore.
00:41:34.434 --> 00:41:38.378
Uh, there's absolutely, everything is just psychological.
00:41:38.418 --> 00:41:39.518
Everything is implied.
00:41:40.039 --> 00:41:43.563
And I remember watching it with my kids who were too young to appreciate it.
00:41:44.164 --> 00:41:46.565
And they kept saying, is something ever going to happen?
00:41:48.248 --> 00:41:52.753
You know, that's the movie where the guy, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair.
00:41:52.773 --> 00:41:53.713
He's broken his leg.
00:41:54.193 --> 00:41:55.396
He's bored all day long.
00:41:55.436 --> 00:41:58.759
And so it becomes sort of a peeping Tom looking at the building across from him.
00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:01.461
And then he sort of discovers that.
00:42:01.985 --> 00:42:35.599
one of the apartments that he's spying on has somebody who looks like he's murdered his wife and you know and the tension sort of builds as he puts himself in danger by trying to uh investigate this and you know just just the very the slow patient build we are conditioned i think by Most movies today, particularly sort of Marvel movies, something has to be happening every five seconds.
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:36.822
Something has to blow up.
00:42:36.961 --> 00:42:38.583
Something has to hold our attention.
00:42:40.485 --> 00:42:55.846
It's really been interesting because as I tried to introduce films to my children, I discovered that movies prior to, I'd say, maybe the early 1990s are paced very, very differently.
00:42:56.706 --> 00:43:08.016
And modern audiences do not really have the patience for the kind of slow build that Heretic does so well and so expertly.
00:43:08.036 --> 00:43:10.518
And it isn't even all that slow.
00:43:10.679 --> 00:43:19.427
I mean, it's, you know, Weir Window takes a whole lot more time to impart information than Heretic does.
00:43:19.467 --> 00:43:26.114
Because that whole scene in the front room, it's probably no more than five minutes long, if it's even that.
00:43:26.914 --> 00:43:36.327
So, but just that sort of patient building of the tension and the here's one little lie and then here's a bigger lie.
00:43:36.867 --> 00:43:40.771
Then here's a, you know, it's like, oh no, you can leave anytime.
00:43:40.811 --> 00:43:42.355
But of course that door won't open.
00:43:43.135 --> 00:43:44.217
What do you mean the door won't open?
00:43:44.237 --> 00:43:45.057
Well, it's on a timer.
00:43:45.097 --> 00:43:47.621
It won't open until the morning, but you can leave through the back door.
00:43:48.503 --> 00:43:54.253
And by the time he says you can leave through the back door, He's already lied about the pie.
00:43:54.293 --> 00:43:55.594
He's lied about his wife.
00:43:56.034 --> 00:43:59.318
He's confronted them on their lie about getting a phone call.
00:43:59.860 --> 00:44:05.146
And so the tension has just been ratcheted up and there's no release to it.
00:44:06.427 --> 00:44:16.719
And that's what makes it so much fun is that you're just sitting there and you're just on the edge of your seat and you're just, you know, biting your fingernails, wondering how are they going to get out of this?
00:44:16.760 --> 00:44:22.695
And just slowly, methodically, Mr.
00:44:22.775 --> 00:44:32.168
Reed tightens the screws and it just makes it such an excruciatingly delightful thing to watch.
00:44:33.630 --> 00:44:38.978
When I was watching it, I was thinking of Hitchcock's movie, very simply Rear Window, a movie called Rope.
00:44:39.679 --> 00:44:41.121
Oh yeah, Rope's a great one too.
00:44:41.240 --> 00:44:43.443
Rope's brilliant and very brilliantly made.
00:44:43.503 --> 00:44:45.987
Again, the camera never leaves the room, just like Rear Window.
00:44:46.668 --> 00:44:47.990
The camera's there in the room.
00:44:48.050 --> 00:44:54.708
I mean, if you had a movie and you said, You know, for the producers, the camera's never going to be leaving this same room, that same image.
00:44:55.329 --> 00:44:56.251
You'd think they were crazy.
00:44:56.271 --> 00:44:58.456
But Hitchcock pulls it off, and he pulls it off in Rome.
00:44:58.916 --> 00:45:04.286
And the guys in this movie, I mean, the film is in the house, right?
00:45:05.027 --> 00:45:06.010
And it's brilliant.
00:45:06.070 --> 00:45:11.559
And I love the switchbacks to looking at the walls and the windows and the storm that's still.
00:45:12.141 --> 00:45:14.865
We're reminded as an audience that there's still a storm outside.
00:45:15.585 --> 00:45:19.530
And, uh, you know, the, uh, I think there's a snowy now, there's a clouds, big rain.
00:45:19.610 --> 00:45:21.512
There's a, certainly there's a storm going on right now.
00:45:22.092 --> 00:45:24.335
And there, there are these two system issues in this house.
00:45:24.635 --> 00:45:30.543
So the second time they go, it goes back to the kitchen to check on the pie or not sure if that's the second or third time.
00:45:31.143 --> 00:45:33.286
There's a, there's a, he's gone for a while.
00:45:33.306 --> 00:45:43.717
And we learned that he goes out, he goes out the house because the system issues, when they got to the house, they had, uh, they'd locked their bikes at the front gate of the house.
00:45:44.610 --> 00:45:48.454
And we learned later that he'd been out and moved the bikes.
00:45:48.514 --> 00:45:49.637
Again, spoiler alert here.
00:45:50.157 --> 00:45:56.505
But going back to what I was saying earlier, the second or third time he goes back to the kitchen, he's gone for a while.
00:45:56.525 --> 00:45:59.670
We know that time he goes outside.
00:45:59.710 --> 00:46:00.572
We'll learn that later.
00:46:00.592 --> 00:46:03.396
And then the sister ministers are there in the room.
00:46:03.416 --> 00:46:07.061
And again, to your point, the tension's building.
00:46:07.101 --> 00:46:09.023
You can feel the tension in the atmosphere.
00:46:09.063 --> 00:46:10.706
And then they...
00:46:10.978 --> 00:46:53.605
learn they can't get outside the front door so that they realize that they're locked and they start to look quite afraid rightly so and then they make their way to the back kitchen they go through the door and it's quite dark and they're walking along the corridor then towards the back of the house and they see this shape of this man's head and I jump to that point but as the camera gets closer it's a statue or a figure of an individual that's human size human shaped And you realize that it's some statue figure just positioned there in the dark.
00:46:53.744 --> 00:46:55.726
And I thought that was interesting.
00:46:56.166 --> 00:46:59.871
And then what happens is they go further into the back of the house.
00:47:01.251 --> 00:47:04.114
And it gets quite scary.
00:47:04.496 --> 00:47:07.137
They then open this door and the lights are on.
00:47:07.157 --> 00:47:10.161
And you think, oh my goodness, they're okay.
00:47:10.201 --> 00:47:12.023
They've gone to this room.
00:47:12.063 --> 00:47:16.976
And it's a room that, was quite extraordinary.
00:47:17.775 --> 00:47:20.940
If you look at, remember that room that they went into, there were two doors.
00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:24.222
You mentioned something really interesting earlier.
00:47:24.262 --> 00:47:41.862
You talked about in the temple, you ascend to different levels and you do that by physically, in most of the temples, many of the temples, now I think as well, when you go from the telestial to the terrestrial, you have to physically stand up.
00:47:43.362 --> 00:47:46.626
And you go in, on some of the ceremonies, you go into a different room.
00:47:46.826 --> 00:47:53.554
And then eventually you go from the terrestrial through the veil into the celestial.
00:47:53.974 --> 00:47:56.056
There's an ascended level into the celestial.
00:47:56.697 --> 00:48:04.246
And when those missionaries were walking through that corridor and they saw that scary statue thing, et cetera, we got past that point.
00:48:05.007 --> 00:48:08.411
They opened the door and the lights were on, remember.
00:48:08.472 --> 00:48:22.360
They went from the dark corridor And they went into this other bigger room and the lights were on and it showed the two doors and it showed what looked like an altar to me.
00:48:22.380 --> 00:48:26.085
It was like a table at the front.
00:48:26.724 --> 00:48:28.746
And there were benches both sides.
00:48:29.447 --> 00:48:35.434
Now, as a Mormon, former Mormon, as soon as I saw that, I thought of temple.
00:48:36.434 --> 00:48:39.237
We are now in the terrestrial room.
00:48:39.650 --> 00:48:40.690
I thought that.
00:48:40.871 --> 00:48:42.132
I'm not sure if anyone's thought that.
00:48:42.632 --> 00:48:44.835
And I thought, my goodness, where's this movie going?
00:48:45.775 --> 00:48:50.161
I was intrigued by where the heck is this going, right?
00:48:50.260 --> 00:48:52.202
Are we going to talk about the temple?
00:48:52.704 --> 00:49:05.036
Because you said at the beginning, you reminded me at the beginning that those girls pulled down the skirt of the sister mystery and they showed the garments of the sisters.
00:49:05.237 --> 00:49:05.898
I was...
00:49:06.465 --> 00:49:08.349
I was quite taken back by that, by the way.
00:49:08.369 --> 00:49:12.795
I don't think that happens very often, but I can see why that would happen.
00:49:12.835 --> 00:49:22.791
And I remember thinking when that happened, by the way, you know, a lot of people probably know that farmers wear secret or sacred underwear.
00:49:23.492 --> 00:49:25.193
And it's very private, very personal.
00:49:25.355 --> 00:49:28.199
It's got symbols on it, the markings, and they mean something.
00:49:29.019 --> 00:49:31.443
And they're very sacred to active members.
00:49:31.844 --> 00:49:39.931
And so going into that, when the sister went into that room, it felt like they were going into the terrestrial room.
00:49:40.152 --> 00:49:41.333
They're ascending.
00:49:42.675 --> 00:49:47.541
And because it looks so much like a temple ceremony.
00:49:47.681 --> 00:49:51.485
I mean, the thing was at the front where you could look like it looked like a bit of an altar.
00:49:51.585 --> 00:49:53.648
And I was like, wow, this is extraordinary.
00:49:54.268 --> 00:50:00.416
And then, and the other thing as well, he said at some point that I want, I don't want to forget here.
00:50:00.717 --> 00:50:01.818
So forgive me for jumping back.
00:50:02.559 --> 00:50:15.588
At some part of the conversation, And I think it was when he started getting into probably this stage where they're in this room and they come in and they want to leave now.
00:50:15.628 --> 00:50:24.380
So they're in this room, having gone through that corridor, they're very uncomfortable and they realize that Mrs.
00:50:24.460 --> 00:50:27.905
Reed isn't going to show up or doesn't exist.
00:50:29.166 --> 00:50:35.498
And I think the phone call He calls them out on the phone call or tried to make, I think that happened earlier as well.
00:50:35.518 --> 00:50:37.041
That happened before they went into that room.
00:50:37.581 --> 00:50:41.206
I'm trying to get the right pieces connected here.
00:50:42.007 --> 00:50:44.771
But clearly they're in that second room feeling very, very uncomfortable.
00:50:44.791 --> 00:50:51.960
And at some point, I think prior to this, he said that religion is a system of control, quotes.
00:50:52.900 --> 00:50:54.822
And that's an actual direct quote, I believe.
00:50:54.943 --> 00:50:55.543
I remember that.
00:50:56.284 --> 00:51:05.597
And because he was talking about, and this is what I want to highlight this as well, that religion, and that was in the conversation I had with them, I think, in the first room, it controls you.
00:51:07.099 --> 00:51:09.003
It can control every aspect of your life.
00:51:09.103 --> 00:51:14.690
And I thought about that and that the church has significant control on its members.
00:51:14.771 --> 00:51:25.286
It controls what you think, controls what you wear, it controls who you marry, it controls your morality, it controls every aspect of your life.
00:51:25.447 --> 00:51:36.798
And the big premise of the movie, Jim, was the relationship between religion and control and belief and control and belief and choice.
00:51:37.900 --> 00:51:38.641
So there they are.
00:51:38.681 --> 00:51:41.666
Again, if I jump back to that second room, they're in that room.
00:51:41.706 --> 00:51:44.411
The conversation ensues.
00:51:46.673 --> 00:51:49.137
He then starts to communicate his intent.
00:51:49.878 --> 00:51:51.021
He could tell there's a problem.
00:51:51.041 --> 00:51:53.083
He says they can leave.
00:51:53.123 --> 00:51:54.846
All the time he said you can leave.
00:51:55.708 --> 00:51:57.090
You're free to leave.
00:51:57.601 --> 00:52:09.813
And you know, when you go to the temple, before you go to the temple for the first time, you take these temple preparation classes, which really don't prepare you.
00:52:09.954 --> 00:52:14.577
You go to the temple, you have the Washington's anointing, you've got the holy preacher garment on you.
00:52:14.619 --> 00:52:19.202
You then go through your own endowment for the first time.
00:52:19.804 --> 00:52:37.565
But before you go into the actual ceremony, before the ceremony begins, the officiator asks you, If there's anyone, what's the words, the specific words, who are not here under their own free agency or don't want to be here, please leave.
00:52:38.987 --> 00:52:42.391
You're invited to leave if you don't want to continue with the ceremony.
00:52:43.353 --> 00:52:43.552
Yeah.
00:52:45.114 --> 00:52:46.757
And I can't remember the words, but the words are...
00:52:46.858 --> 00:52:48.639
I had a family member, actually.
00:52:48.719 --> 00:52:52.025
I'll be very vague, but I had a family member leave at that point.
00:52:52.445 --> 00:52:52.766
Did you?
00:52:53.153 --> 00:53:02.463
They had gone through, and I think they're still active in the church, but I don't think they've been back to the temples.
00:53:03.045 --> 00:53:03.184
Right.
00:53:03.385 --> 00:53:12.494
So, I mean, when I remembered that for the first time back in 86, this is pre-1990, I had no idea how terrifying that ceremony was going to be.
00:53:12.795 --> 00:53:14.456
If I'd have known, I probably wouldn't have gone through.
00:53:14.496 --> 00:53:15.717
But there you are.
00:53:15.818 --> 00:53:22.346
I mean, how can you possibly get up and leave in front of all your fellow church members in your own ward?
00:53:22.978 --> 00:53:24.980
I mean, what a mess that would be.
00:53:25.081 --> 00:53:26.742
Just awful experience that would be.
00:53:27.163 --> 00:53:33.371
But I remembered when Hugh Grant, the actor, was reminding the sister missions in the movie that, you know, you can leave any time.
00:53:33.391 --> 00:53:36.434
And if you want to leave, you can't leave through the front door because there's no timing lock.
00:53:36.494 --> 00:53:39.798
It doesn't open until tomorrow morning, which I thought was very weird, by the way.
00:53:39.818 --> 00:53:42.101
I mean, who does that?
00:53:42.141 --> 00:53:43.222
I mean, that's so strange, right?
00:53:44.784 --> 00:53:46.666
But you can leave through the back way.
00:53:46.706 --> 00:53:48.610
And so...
00:53:48.961 --> 00:53:51.844
Could you remind us about the conversation in that second room?
00:53:52.364 --> 00:53:58.150
And then could you take us to the point about the two doors and the two words that were written on the door, if you remember those words?
00:53:58.911 --> 00:53:59.672
Right, yeah.
00:54:00.172 --> 00:54:07.360
So that's, I mean, that conversation, that's also where he introduces essentially his whole religious thesis.
00:54:07.460 --> 00:54:16.829
I mean, he talks about religion being an instrument of control, and that becomes the summation of his argument, that that's all religion is.
00:54:17.346 --> 00:54:19.409
Religion is nothing but control.
00:54:20.431 --> 00:54:45.514
And that actually ends up being where, if you think about the structure of the movie for too long, it falls apart because I'm jumping ahead here a little bit, but the prophets, you know, these women that he has caged, that he treats them like like Guinea pigs, you know, he gives them water in cages.
00:54:45.534 --> 00:54:49.077
He clips their fingernails and sometimes clips off their fingers.
00:54:50.480 --> 00:54:52.661
Uh, you have to wonder where did these women come from?
00:54:52.702 --> 00:55:09.579
And the suggestion seems to be that their previous sister missionaries that he's done this to, and you know, wouldn't, wouldn't people notice that sister missionaries are disappearing at this house?
00:55:10.280 --> 00:55:11.021
I didn't get that.
00:55:11.938 --> 00:55:12.858
You didn't get that.
00:55:13.099 --> 00:55:16.264
No, I didn't think they were sister missionaries because they would have been missed.
00:55:16.485 --> 00:55:17.286
Right, absolutely.
00:55:17.726 --> 00:55:18.909
So who did you think they were?
00:55:19.429 --> 00:55:22.594
Just women who he had lured to the house through different means.
00:55:23.597 --> 00:55:30.847
Not necessarily members or sister missionaries, but women that he'd entrapped, kidnapped, or lured to the house in some form.
00:55:30.887 --> 00:55:33.672
Maybe a realtor or something.
00:55:33.972 --> 00:55:36.277
It didn't connect with me that they were...
00:55:36.677 --> 00:55:37.599
Implacers or sister
00:55:37.619 --> 00:55:39.181
missionaries.
00:55:39.201 --> 00:55:39.581
Well, I...
00:55:40.001 --> 00:55:42.324
Well, that makes it a little bit better.
00:55:42.364 --> 00:55:56.666
But the room, the altar room, it's been described in some reviews as a chapel room, but I think you're more accurate in describing it as an altar.
00:55:56.746 --> 00:55:58.750
It's very much like a temple altar.
00:55:58.789 --> 00:56:04.478
That's where he outlines this whole idea of iterations, right?
00:56:04.961 --> 00:56:12.452
That one religion is really just another religion only with new packaging or with some new little twist.
00:56:13.072 --> 00:56:17.699
But really it's the same story that's been handed down over and over and over again.
00:56:17.739 --> 00:56:19.702
And there's nothing to it.
00:56:19.902 --> 00:56:23.387
That all it is, is a system of control.
00:56:23.427 --> 00:56:32.137
And I think with lazier writers, that would have essentially been the message of the movie.
00:56:32.179 --> 00:56:34.681
But I don't think that was the message of the movie.
00:56:35.458 --> 00:56:43.385
Because Sister Barnes pushes back there, and later on as they go on, it's Sister Paxton that pushes back.
00:56:44.788 --> 00:56:53.356
And eventually when they're near the very end of the movie, and Mr.
00:56:53.416 --> 00:56:57.280
Reed is about to die because he's been stabbed in the throat.
00:56:58.001 --> 00:56:59.322
This is also interesting.
00:56:59.342 --> 00:57:00.543
I don't know if you caught this.
00:57:00.804 --> 00:57:02.545
I didn't, but Taylor Petrie did.
00:57:03.362 --> 00:57:06.684
in his review where he talked about this is a reverse temple ceremony.
00:57:07.726 --> 00:57:18.838
It's interesting where the injuries are, that Sister Barnes dies because she has her throat slit, as does Mr.
00:57:18.918 --> 00:57:22.521
Reed, whereas Sister Paxton has her belly slit.
00:57:24.063 --> 00:57:31.422
And if you go back to the penalties that no longer exist, Oh, wow.
00:57:31.762 --> 00:57:33.306
You can see a tie in there.
00:57:33.585 --> 00:57:34.947
And I think that's deliberate.
00:57:35.949 --> 00:57:43.021
Whoever did this really did sort of match it up with Mormon liturgy and historical temple practices.
00:57:43.802 --> 00:57:44.782
Did you not catch that?
00:57:44.822 --> 00:57:47.306
Oh, it just hit me just now.
00:57:47.527 --> 00:57:51.432
As we're speaking, I had, oh my gosh, I had no idea.
00:57:51.452 --> 00:57:53.797
I didn't see, I didn't pick up on that.
00:57:54.398 --> 00:57:55.619
But you're absolutely right.
00:57:55.679 --> 00:57:56.782
That makes so much sense.
00:57:57.762 --> 00:57:59.565
I think a lot of people will miss that, Jim.
00:58:00.706 --> 00:58:05.271
Well, and most people will because most people haven't been through an endowment ceremony.
00:58:05.452 --> 00:58:10.918
But even people going to the church who've been to the church, I don't know if they will immediately pick up on that.
00:58:11.298 --> 00:58:11.838
Maybe they will.
00:58:11.858 --> 00:58:12.659
I didn't.
00:58:13.782 --> 00:58:15.543
But it makes so much sense now.
00:58:15.583 --> 00:58:16.505
That is huge.
00:58:16.885 --> 00:58:19.188
I had no idea that, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
00:58:19.347 --> 00:58:19.568
Wow.
00:58:20.068 --> 00:58:21.451
The movie's just gone off another point.
00:58:21.690 --> 00:58:22.231
My, George.
00:58:22.351 --> 00:58:22.972
Gone off another
00:58:23.012 --> 00:58:23.213
point.
00:58:24.054 --> 00:58:29.039
But I thought it was very interesting that at the end, Mr.
00:58:29.099 --> 00:58:32.704
Reed is about to die and he says to Sister Paxton, let's pray.
00:58:32.724 --> 00:58:36.690
And it's Sister Paxton who says prayer doesn't work.
00:58:38.373 --> 00:58:38.434
Yep.
00:58:38.454 --> 00:58:40.336
And I thought, oh, great.
00:58:42.559 --> 00:58:54.980
I thought, okay, we're, you know, the hand has been revealed that this really is an anti-religious movie.
00:58:55.860 --> 00:59:06.581
That we've finally broken down the sister missionary where she admits that her faith isn't true, but that's not what she does because they says prayer doesn't work.
00:59:06.601 --> 00:59:11.027
It's not that prayer is going to heal everybody because they, they've done studies.
00:59:11.086 --> 00:59:16.974
Although I don't think any such studies have been conclusive, but I'm sure somebody will hear this and say, yes, there are.
00:59:17.054 --> 00:59:20.097
And they'll point me to them, but save your time.
00:59:20.117 --> 00:59:21.599
I'll, I'll, I'll go take a look.
00:59:21.659 --> 00:59:22.079
I don't care.
00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:25.490
The point is, um, She says, prayer doesn't work.
00:59:25.510 --> 00:59:30.775
They've done studies that show that people who are sick, they'll pray for the people who are sick and they'll pray for people who are not sick.
00:59:32.918 --> 00:59:37.342
They won't pray for, there'll be a group that won't be prayed for and a group that will be prayed for.
00:59:37.382 --> 00:59:41.485
And they both have identical outcomes.
00:59:42.186 --> 00:59:43.768
The prayer doesn't make any difference.
00:59:44.528 --> 00:59:47.130
But then she goes on to say, but that's not why we pray.
00:59:48.492 --> 00:59:53.978
We pray because it's lovely that we, she talks about community.
00:59:54.306 --> 00:59:55.467
At least that's how I took it.
00:59:56.047 --> 01:00:05.478
He talks about, it's lovely that we pray for each other, that we care for each other, that we demonstrate that we are in communion with each other through prayer.
01:00:05.518 --> 01:00:09.742
And I thought that's a very sophisticated and intelligent argument.
01:00:09.822 --> 01:00:12.846
And it certainly describes why I pray.
01:00:12.865 --> 01:00:20.434
It called to mind, there's a movie, a lovely movie that has absolutely no gore whatsoever.
01:00:21.282 --> 01:00:23.744
It's called Shadowlands.
01:00:23.965 --> 01:00:25.385
It's the story of C.S.
01:00:25.425 --> 01:00:34.655
Lewis and his marriage late in life to a Jewish divorcee who dies of cancer not long into their marriage.
01:00:36.197 --> 01:00:39.581
And there's a moment there where C.S.
01:00:39.621 --> 01:00:47.588
Lewis is confronted by the other faculty members at Oxford about his predicament.
01:00:47.608 --> 01:00:48.389
And they say, oh...
01:00:49.409 --> 01:01:05.244
We're so sorry for what you're going through, and we know you're praying, and we know that God will hear your prayer because you are so righteous and you are so faithful that I'm sure he will honor your prayer.
01:01:05.284 --> 01:01:08.288
And he says, that's not why I pray.
01:01:08.307 --> 01:01:18.498
He says, I pray because the need pours out of me, waking and sleeping, because I need to have that connection.
01:01:19.362 --> 01:01:27.753
And the line I will never forget is at the end of the speech, he says, I don't pray because it changes God.
01:01:27.795 --> 01:01:30.177
I pray because it changes me.
01:01:32.440 --> 01:01:35.065
And I have always taken that approach to prayer.
01:01:35.226 --> 01:01:38.791
I don't think I can change God's mind when I pray.
01:01:38.811 --> 01:02:21.893
I don't think I can alter reality when I pray, but I do think I can change and that I can more align myself with god through that connection through prayer and that's what i sort of took from her explanation for why prayer is still valuable even though it isn't magic even though it isn't going to make them not die from the wounds that they've just they've just suffered and i thought okay if nothing else this is the moment where this movie i mean there have been plenty of moments where this movie has demonstrated that it is a cut above your standard entertainment fare.
01:02:22.193 --> 01:02:35.710
But that's the moment where I think it crossed the line into great art, into something that really has significance and really is worth seeing, I think, multiple times.
01:02:35.730 --> 01:02:36.811
I'd like to see it again.
01:02:36.831 --> 01:02:41.918
I don't know if I will go to see it again in the theater, but I think when it becomes available on video...
01:02:42.657 --> 01:02:52.768
I'll probably be watching it multiple times because I think there is so much more to explore in terms of what the writers are trying to say.
01:02:52.827 --> 01:02:58.052
But any work of art exists independent of the writer's intent.
01:02:58.974 --> 01:03:04.460
You know, people, I don't know who the author was who says, I never intended any of that.
01:03:04.579 --> 01:03:10.925
And I discover so much more about what I wrote when people who read it come back to me and say, well, this is what I got out of it.
01:03:11.905 --> 01:03:17.811
Because film is such a collaborative art.
01:03:18.853 --> 01:03:22.856
Because we can talk about who's responsible for what this is.
01:03:22.936 --> 01:03:23.737
Is it the writers?
01:03:23.817 --> 01:03:24.677
Is it the director?
01:03:24.858 --> 01:03:25.759
Is it Hugh Grant?
01:03:25.898 --> 01:03:27.460
Is it the two sister missionaries?
01:03:27.501 --> 01:03:29.181
And the answer is yes.
01:03:29.242 --> 01:03:30.523
It's all of them together.
01:03:30.543 --> 01:03:41.114
And all of them are bringing something to the table that strengthens, that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
01:03:41.954 --> 01:03:55.751
And so I just really, I look forward to revisiting this movie because I think there's a whole lot more that we missed that's there to discover.
01:03:55.771 --> 01:03:55.791
I
01:03:56.271 --> 01:03:56.612
agree.
01:03:56.952 --> 01:04:00.597
I couldn't stop thinking about it and felt I needed to go back.
01:04:00.936 --> 01:04:08.065
I want to see at least those two times because there's so many things that I got and things that I missed.
01:04:08.706 --> 01:04:24.862
Like what you just shared, like the injuries and the relationship with the temple, the temple ceremony pre-1990, where it depicts disembowelment, which terrified me.
01:04:25.021 --> 01:04:33.291
And the movement you make for slitting of the throat, that was, again, that just really hit me just earlier when you were talking about that.
01:04:34.351 --> 01:04:34.831
And then just...
01:04:35.552 --> 01:04:36.393
And so forgive me for...
01:04:37.634 --> 01:04:46.025
the structure here, if I jump back and forward, but just listening to you and just remembering what they discussed about the polygamy, which I thought was amazing.
01:04:47.568 --> 01:04:58.943
Going back, if I may, just to the first part of the conversation in the first room when he brought up polygamy, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton gave reasons for polygamy.
01:04:58.963 --> 01:05:06.554
It was a spiritual mission or priority mandated by God, but it was needed to increase membership of the church.
01:05:07.297 --> 01:05:12.164
And there are multiple reasons for the practice taught in the scriptures and by Joseph Smith, etc.
01:05:13.067 --> 01:05:16.411
And, you know, the widows, men had gone off to fight in the war.
01:05:17.333 --> 01:05:24.764
There was all these women available and that the church wanted to increase its population, its members, and therefore there were more children.
01:05:24.804 --> 01:05:37.018
And we know that certainly from our research and speaking with Michelle Brady, who was on the podcast last week, and that wasn't true.
01:05:37.480 --> 01:06:44.711
And you remember on that last podcast, as I listened to Michelle and got to the point where I wasn't entirely convinced that Joe Smith wasn't a polygamist, but was open-minded to at least consider evidence in that direction, that one of the final comments I made or questions I made asked on the last podcast was, if you strip all that away, wasn't it ultimately Josie Smith's interest in having sex with women because in the movie they talk about Fanny Alger I think Alger is pronounced and I thought it was amazing that Reed in the character had done some research enough to learn about Fanny Alger who was Josie Smith's first plural wife and if you remember again going back to the podcast last week I asked Michelle Wasn't it Joseph Smith's attempt to cover up that wicked affair that Oliver Cowdery described it as a, what did he describe it as?
01:06:44.731 --> 01:06:45.253
A dirty,
01:06:45.914 --> 01:06:47.436
nasty, filthy scrape.
01:06:48.219 --> 01:06:48.639
There we go.
01:06:48.699 --> 01:06:54.469
A dirty, nasty, filthy scrape that Joseph Smith had this sexual relationship with Fanny Alger.
01:06:55.266 --> 01:06:57.487
who was 15, I think, at the time.
01:06:57.507 --> 01:06:57.548
16.
01:06:57.849 --> 01:06:59.349
She was at least 16.
01:06:59.731 --> 01:07:00.652
Sorry, at least 16.
01:07:01.512 --> 01:07:03.675
She may have been older, but not much older.
01:07:04.456 --> 01:07:06.157
Those ages are important, so thanks for correcting that.
01:07:06.679 --> 01:07:10.041
And this is without the knowledge of Emma, just so we're clear.
01:07:10.061 --> 01:07:21.795
And wasn't it the reality that he had an affair with Fanny Algert, 16, 16 plus, whatever, and he tried to cover it up and turned it into something spiritual when in actual fact it wasn't?
01:07:22.735 --> 01:07:26.500
And I think Michelle's response was, that was pretty much it or close to.
01:07:26.539 --> 01:07:27.942
Well, and so,
01:07:27.981 --> 01:07:42.818
well, well, I don't want to beat up on Michelle and absentia, but I thought when I had a conversation with Michelle, um, in a previous, you can go and look on YouTube.
01:07:42.898 --> 01:07:43.858
There's this conversation.
01:07:43.898 --> 01:07:45.981
I'm getting absolutely beaten up in the comments.
01:07:47.222 --> 01:07:50.646
Uh, so I, I can handle that, but it's just always funny.
01:07:51.827 --> 01:07:55.041
Uh, I seem to provoke, uh, Strong responses.
01:07:57.427 --> 01:07:57.487
But
01:07:58.291 --> 01:08:00.315
in
01:08:00.416 --> 01:08:04.809
that conversation, she asked me, well, what is...
01:08:05.697 --> 01:08:10.523
The one thing that you think is the best evidence for Joseph Smith being a polygamist.
01:08:10.684 --> 01:08:18.594
And in that conversation, I didn't want to answer the question because I didn't think that conversation was supposed to be about whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist.
01:08:18.654 --> 01:08:26.083
It was supposed to be about whether or not people like Michelle and people who have different ideas about the church should be welcome in the church.
01:08:26.203 --> 01:08:38.515
But I don't think Michelle could really help herself in terms of trying to get me, trying to sort of convert me to the idea that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist, and I have not been converted.
01:08:39.475 --> 01:08:49.225
But I brought it up, I think, gently in our conversation, because the answer to that question, I think, is Fannie Alger.
01:08:49.447 --> 01:08:57.895
The answer to the question, what's the best evidence, is what happened with Fannie Alger drove Oliver Cowdery out of the church.
01:08:59.197 --> 01:09:03.824
And We also know Emma was upset and kicked Fanny Alger out of the house.
01:09:05.787 --> 01:09:14.323
Whether or not it was a marriage or just an affair depends on how credibly you take some very late records.
01:09:16.567 --> 01:09:25.001
But regardless, when we brought that up, and you asked her about it as well, we brought that up with Michelle.
01:09:25.666 --> 01:09:35.796
She told this story about being at BYU and there was a married piano player and all of the freshmen were sort of flirty and it kind of got out of hand.
01:09:35.855 --> 01:09:39.038
And then the piano player's wife walked in and everybody was a little nervous.
01:09:39.078 --> 01:09:42.702
And she says, that's kind of how I see the Fannie Alger thing.
01:09:42.761 --> 01:09:45.064
And I went, well, really?
01:09:47.627 --> 01:09:50.128
Would that have driven Oliver Cowdery out of the church?
01:09:51.591 --> 01:09:54.833
I mean, there I think is...
01:09:56.801 --> 01:10:01.729
I guess we're drifting off topic here in terms of whether or not Joseph was a polygamist.
01:10:02.350 --> 01:10:10.442
But if Joseph was not a polygamist, you have to explain a lot of reactions to what Joseph would have done.
01:10:10.481 --> 01:10:16.171
You have to explain why the Nauvoo Expositor even existed.
01:10:16.211 --> 01:10:23.421
Because all of these people, the reason they left the church is because they discovered Joseph was a polygamist and were disgusted by it.
01:10:24.065 --> 01:10:25.929
And it's ultimately what led to his death.
01:10:26.090 --> 01:10:33.643
And then you also have to assume that all of the women who later testified that they were Joseph Smith's plural wives were making it up.
01:10:34.805 --> 01:10:40.074
And I just, I think that's too far a reach with all due respect to Michelle.
01:10:41.176 --> 01:10:42.458
So she did not convert me.
01:10:43.199 --> 01:10:43.461
So...
01:10:44.641 --> 01:10:48.706
But now that I'm wandering into polygamy, I'm trying to remember why we got here in the first place.
01:10:48.725 --> 01:10:49.506
Well, I can help.
01:10:49.567 --> 01:10:50.887
I think it's really good.
01:10:51.087 --> 01:10:57.835
I think it's a really good part of the conversation because the movie, certainly for members, generates all these questions and all these issues.
01:10:58.574 --> 01:11:05.242
The reason why I connected it to where you're going here is because in the movie, they talk about, you know, Reed brings up polygamy.
01:11:05.681 --> 01:11:06.863
There's a conversation about polygamy.
01:11:07.224 --> 01:11:13.649
And the sister mistress gave the, I guess, official text as to why the church practiced polygamy.
01:11:14.177 --> 01:11:17.280
And so, you know, people will have these conversations.
01:11:17.381 --> 01:11:22.987
Members will talk about this and they'll get into those tentacles, those conversations.
01:11:23.467 --> 01:11:35.541
The other thing I thought was interesting, again, just because we're probably coming out of time and there's so much to talk about in this movie, going back to that second room, let's call it the terrestrial room, the chapel, temple, ceremony room.
01:11:36.141 --> 01:11:40.145
I think at that point, the Sister Mistress realized there's a serious problem going on here.
01:11:40.185 --> 01:11:48.548
He then starts to say that he has discovered You know, he talks about those iterations of the different faiths, but all different break-offs.
01:11:49.310 --> 01:12:04.412
I thought that was really both funny and critical of the church, where he described the Book of Mormon as a watered-down, diluted, Bob the Painter-type version of Bible text, where he threw down, you know, that picture of the...
01:12:04.865 --> 01:12:06.528
Bob the Painter, I think it was.
01:12:06.587 --> 01:12:08.350
Did I remember that correctly?
01:12:08.770 --> 01:12:09.131
Yes.
01:12:09.511 --> 01:12:26.668
The Book of Mormon is another watered, watered down version of another iteration and another regurgitated version of Christianity, which I thought, whether you agree with it or not, it did it in a brilliant way.
01:12:26.689 --> 01:12:43.152
And it kind of showed the Book of Mormon to be just like a comic book, almost, of a a previously written novel, which I thought was, I think members of the church would find that quite insulting.
01:12:43.612 --> 01:12:49.762
And then in that room, he says, look, there's nothing that, all these are different iterations, they're false.
01:12:50.344 --> 01:12:51.265
A lot of it didn't happen.
01:12:51.425 --> 01:12:55.471
All these different deities were born on the 25th, and I didn't buy that, by the way.
01:12:56.092 --> 01:12:59.328
And then you know, the intensity of the movie increases.
01:12:59.509 --> 01:13:03.854
And then there's these two doors and they ask, you know, they'd like to leave.
01:13:03.934 --> 01:13:05.296
They would like to leave the house.
01:13:05.817 --> 01:13:07.259
And he said, you can leave at any time.
01:13:07.899 --> 01:13:09.702
You can't get through the front door.
01:13:10.042 --> 01:13:13.405
The only way to do it is to go out the back door and you have two doors.
01:13:14.106 --> 01:13:16.168
And then he wrote two words on the two doors there.
01:13:16.430 --> 01:13:18.131
One was belief and disbelief.
01:13:18.912 --> 01:13:22.037
And I thought that was brilliant because you've got these two choices.
01:13:22.957 --> 01:13:26.242
And it turns out in the movie that they lead to the same place.
01:13:27.426 --> 01:13:30.750
And sometimes two choices can lead to the same place.
01:13:30.930 --> 01:13:32.912
I mean, they didn't know what was behind.
01:13:32.953 --> 01:13:42.805
If you remember the movie, the sister ministers have that conversation between each other, and they're discussing what's behind the belief door, what's behind the disbelief door.
01:13:43.527 --> 01:13:46.189
And Sister Barnes is on the left, Sister Pax is on the right.
01:13:46.210 --> 01:13:49.154
I can't remember which door Sister Barnes is at.
01:13:49.234 --> 01:13:51.296
Is that the disbelief door or the belief door?
01:13:51.317 --> 01:13:52.198
I think it was the belief door.
01:13:52.962 --> 01:13:55.787
And I think Sister Barnes wanted to believe.
01:13:55.886 --> 01:14:02.356
And I think in that conversation, the way it ensued was, I think Sister Barnes persuaded Sister Paxson to go through the belief door.
01:14:03.498 --> 01:14:16.960
And I think in that conversation, they talked about the terrifying prospect of, you know, what's more terrifying, knowing the truth or not knowing the truth?
01:14:18.082 --> 01:14:23.189
Is it better to be in disbelief You know, can you live in disbelief?
01:14:23.911 --> 01:14:28.841
And I thought about that and I thought, well, is that why the church members don't want to hear about all the issues?
01:14:29.603 --> 01:14:37.498
And I know that because I spoke to somebody that I'm really close to, a friend who's a close family member, like almost like a family member who's very active.
01:14:38.360 --> 01:14:40.865
And when I talk about issues of the church, they don't want to know.
01:14:40.907 --> 01:14:42.369
They know that there are issues.
01:14:42.978 --> 01:14:46.561
They know that they're real problems, but they said, Ian, I don't want to know.
01:14:46.601 --> 01:14:53.189
I'm quite happy living the way I am in the church, in the community of the church, without knowing the issues.
01:14:54.009 --> 01:14:55.871
And I was blown away by that.
01:14:55.911 --> 01:14:59.335
But that was who they are, and that's what they want, and that's how they think, and that's how they feel.
01:14:59.354 --> 01:15:03.498
And you have a lot of members, I think, in the church like that.
01:15:03.779 --> 01:15:05.621
And belief is a choice.
01:15:07.222 --> 01:15:09.505
Okay, belief is a choice, notwithstanding all the issues.
01:15:10.274 --> 01:15:17.101
And then the other side is to ask the questions and to test belief with empirical evidence.
01:15:17.181 --> 01:15:20.045
I think, you know, Mr.
01:15:20.064 --> 01:15:23.710
Reid, Hugh Grant talks about, you know, what evidence is there behind prayer.
01:15:24.029 --> 01:15:28.295
And Sister Paxton talks, well, you know, clinical prayer doesn't work.
01:15:29.136 --> 01:15:31.257
You know, we pray to uplift and inspire each other.
01:15:31.679 --> 01:15:37.725
But going back to the point I was saying earlier, you've got this room, there are two doors, right?
01:15:38.305 --> 01:15:44.975
Hugh Grant says, I wish you'd read the character, says you can lead through these two doors and basically have to make a choice.
01:15:45.895 --> 01:15:47.057
And I thought that was brilliant.
01:15:47.217 --> 01:15:49.721
You've got the belief door, I think, on the left, disbelief on the door.
01:15:50.242 --> 01:15:51.904
That conversation happened between the Sister Mishras.
01:15:52.225 --> 01:16:01.738
They then move to the left in the movie, in that room, and they then open that door and they enter, I think, into the belief door, through the belief door.
01:16:02.238 --> 01:16:05.182
And they go down these dark steps.
01:16:06.144 --> 01:16:07.386
There's no light down there.
01:16:07.713 --> 01:16:15.990
They turn on the cell phone and they look up and there's Reed smiling at them or looking at them and does the awful thing and just shuts the door on them.
01:16:16.270 --> 01:16:24.448
I mean, that was just, and there they are just with the lights of their cell phone.
01:16:24.689 --> 01:16:30.966
So they go down there and there's a table And I'm probably getting into too much detail.
01:16:30.987 --> 01:16:32.128
I don't want to spoil this for people.
01:16:33.872 --> 01:16:35.774
Spoiled the whole movie, haven't we?
01:16:35.795 --> 01:16:36.756
Spoiled the entire movie.
01:16:37.457 --> 01:16:38.338
We're probably running out of time.
01:16:38.359 --> 01:16:39.220
We should probably do a second one.
01:16:39.461 --> 01:16:46.793
But the thing I found interesting, without going into the details of what happened in that room and Mr.
01:16:46.854 --> 01:16:56.666
Reid's efforts to prove that he told them that he discovered the one and only true religion.
01:16:56.706 --> 01:16:59.229
All these other iterations are false.
01:16:59.829 --> 01:17:10.622
And that he had hard evidence, physical evidence, that he wanted them to witness down there in that dungeon, that awful room.
01:17:10.662 --> 01:17:16.989
And that this experience, this miracle that they would see, would prove...
01:17:17.409 --> 01:17:21.373
that he's discovered the one and only true religion.
01:17:21.413 --> 01:17:25.037
And that came through to me quite strongly as well.
01:17:25.978 --> 01:17:33.685
There's a lot of details there that I remember that happened in that room.
01:17:34.867 --> 01:17:39.212
But for the interest of time, maybe we could probably wrap this up and kind of summarize it.
01:17:39.252 --> 01:17:41.694
We probably, we have destroyed the entire movie for people.
01:17:42.255 --> 01:17:43.256
But I think the one last thing.
01:17:43.456 --> 01:17:45.557
As long as the movie now at this point.
01:17:46.082 --> 01:17:52.649
Yes, but one last thing I want to mention, jumping right to the end, and I know we've been all over the place on this review.
01:17:53.650 --> 01:17:57.015
I'm not a professional movie reviewer, as you can tell.
01:17:57.475 --> 01:18:05.265
But I thought it was interesting at the end when Sister Paxton had been stabbed and Reed was crawling.
01:18:05.524 --> 01:18:06.546
You know, Reed had been injured.
01:18:06.846 --> 01:18:10.551
He'd been stabbed by Sister Pans and was bleeding.
01:18:10.650 --> 01:18:12.332
I think both of them were bleeding out, actually.
01:18:13.025 --> 01:18:27.724
And, uh, Reed crawls towards sister Paxson was laying there in the, um, in that room and is about to kill sister Paxson, uh, by, uh, pushing the knife, you know, in towards the neck.
01:18:28.484 --> 01:18:35.935
And then, and then, uh, Reed gets hit, struck by this piece of wood with nails in it.
01:18:36.775 --> 01:18:43.104
And that hit me really hard because Paxton who had been injured, um, earlier been stabbed.
01:18:43.865 --> 01:18:45.028
Barnes, I think you mean.
01:18:45.347 --> 01:18:46.489
Sorry, Barnes had been stabbed.
01:18:46.529 --> 01:18:46.990
I apologize.
01:18:47.953 --> 01:18:49.194
Was seemingly dead.
01:18:49.234 --> 01:18:58.811
Now had come back to life and saved Sister Paxson's life by killing Mr.
01:18:59.872 --> 01:19:00.333
Reed.
01:19:01.055 --> 01:19:01.877
And that really hit me.
01:19:01.917 --> 01:19:06.945
To me, that was like God had actually...
01:19:07.362 --> 01:19:17.335
seen the situation and brought Sister Barnes back to life in order to save Sister Paxton.
01:19:17.416 --> 01:19:19.198
That just struck me big time.
01:19:19.217 --> 01:19:27.970
And I thought that was very powerful and very spiritual and proved actually that God lived.
01:19:28.481 --> 01:19:33.469
that had the power to bring people back from the life, to save other people.
01:19:33.949 --> 01:19:36.895
And I thought that was a positive thing towards the church.
01:19:36.954 --> 01:19:47.890
I know the church's members have criticized the movie, but I thought, for me at least, that was quite faith-promoting that Barnes had been brought back to life to kill Reed in order to save Sister Paxton.
01:19:48.311 --> 01:19:50.755
That to me was the miracle of the movie.
01:19:51.917 --> 01:20:00.261
The whole movie, that was for me the most extraordinary miracle that I think the movie is trying to depict.
01:20:00.320 --> 01:20:01.842
And if there wasn't, that's what I got from that.
01:20:02.444 --> 01:20:05.768
I know we've been talking about this for quite some time.
01:20:05.807 --> 01:20:07.010
We've been all over the place here.
01:20:07.050 --> 01:20:11.936
But any other comments or thoughts on what happened in that last room before we...
01:20:11.976 --> 01:20:17.704
Well, no, I think you've summarized what happened in that room pretty nicely.
01:20:17.725 --> 01:20:19.507
There's something I...
01:20:20.469 --> 01:20:26.356
Maybe this is too long to conclude on, but I want to touch on it very quickly because...
01:20:27.394 --> 01:20:34.527
When I was, you know, my goal as a young man was to be a world famous actor.
01:20:35.769 --> 01:20:38.554
And I was a theater major at the University of Southern California.
01:20:39.855 --> 01:20:48.431
And I went on my mission and then I wondered, could I be an actor and still be a good and active member of the church?
01:20:50.335 --> 01:20:51.578
And part of it was.
01:20:52.514 --> 01:20:57.721
That members of the church, and this has kind of been de-emphasized now, but culturally it's still there.
01:20:58.403 --> 01:21:02.829
Members of the church were told explicitly, don't go see R-rated movies.
01:21:03.890 --> 01:21:08.377
That an R rating disqualifies a movie from having the spirit of the Lord in it.
01:21:09.238 --> 01:21:11.442
And Heretic is very much an R-rated movie.
01:21:12.304 --> 01:21:19.073
And I had a conversation, it was probably, it was my last interview actually with President Banks when he was my mission president.
01:21:19.905 --> 01:21:31.457
So President Banks said to me, this is our final interview, and so rather than talk about missions, I want to talk about what you want to do when you go home, because I'm not going to have a chance to interview you as you're going home.
01:21:32.358 --> 01:21:34.720
And I said, well, you know, I've always wanted to be an actor.
01:21:35.140 --> 01:21:37.063
And he said, well, let me tell you a story, Elder Bennett.
01:21:38.144 --> 01:21:47.051
He talked about a time when he was home with one of his sons and said, hey, it's just us tonight, so let's just go do dinner and a movie.
01:21:47.112 --> 01:21:48.613
I'll pick the restaurant, you pick the movie.
01:21:49.826 --> 01:22:00.202
And they went to a movie, and President Banks was offended because they took the Lord's name in vain a bunch of times.
01:22:00.622 --> 01:22:10.155
Turns out the movie was Terms of Endearment, which was a big Oscar-winning movie, and it's certainly not...
01:22:11.018 --> 01:22:11.518
I don't think...
01:22:11.559 --> 01:22:12.680
Maybe it was R-rated.
01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:13.100
I don't know.
01:22:13.400 --> 01:22:14.042
I don't think it was.
01:22:14.963 --> 01:22:19.069
Anyway, afterwards, he said, okay, well...
01:22:19.938 --> 01:22:21.180
What did you think of that movie?
01:22:21.359 --> 01:22:23.623
And he said, oh, it wasn't half good, wasn't half bad.
01:22:23.644 --> 01:22:25.126
He said, really?
01:22:25.145 --> 01:22:26.307
Well, I thought it was terrible.
01:22:26.408 --> 01:22:29.152
I thought it was offensive and there was so much swearing and there was so much.
01:22:30.052 --> 01:22:34.560
And he says, well, geez, compared to the other stuff you see out there, Pop, it's not that bad.
01:22:34.600 --> 01:22:37.704
And he said, well, would you take a date to see that movie?
01:22:39.027 --> 01:22:42.311
And his son said, well, yeah, I would.
01:22:42.351 --> 01:22:45.917
Well, would you take the Savior to see that movie?
01:22:46.689 --> 01:22:50.635
And I stopped him there and I said, I wouldn't take the Savior to see any movie.
01:22:51.877 --> 01:22:56.582
To which he replied, well, Elder Bennett, that's why I don't go see movies.
01:22:58.185 --> 01:23:05.293
And he had just said, you know, movies, and I just was like, oh, no, I need to find something else to do with my life.
01:23:06.796 --> 01:23:14.153
Although, as I thought about it, the reason I wouldn't take the Savior to see a movie is that if The Son of God appears at my doorstep.
01:23:14.233 --> 01:23:15.774
I'm not going to say, well, there's a matinee.
01:23:15.854 --> 01:23:16.716
We can just catch it.
01:23:16.756 --> 01:23:19.198
I mean, I would have a whole lot of other.
01:23:19.559 --> 01:23:22.382
I wouldn't take the Savior to see a BYU football game either.
01:23:22.403 --> 01:23:25.827
It's not that it's an inherently evil activity.
01:23:25.867 --> 01:23:37.942
But I came home from my mission with that sort of weight of, jeez, entertainment is evil just by its nature.
01:23:38.913 --> 01:24:07.533
And I sort of had to deconstruct that fairly early and realize that the squeamishness we have about Latter-day Saints seeing movies with certain ratings and certain things that are supposed to offend us, certain words that we're not allowed to listen to, gives sort of a mandate of heaven to the ratings board, which I don't think they deserved.
01:24:08.449 --> 01:24:27.270
And it's cut us off, I think, from examining difficult questions and steered us into just, okay, we're only going to watch entertainment that doesn't threaten us, that doesn't challenge us, that's easy and simple and goes down smooth on the way down.
01:24:28.171 --> 01:24:29.873
And Heretic is none of those things.
01:24:30.996 --> 01:24:54.002
And so I really think Latter-day Saints that aren't willing— to see this just because it's R-rated and just because they have a cultural expectation that nothing good can come from an R-rated movie are really missing out on an opportunity to, I think, strengthen their faith.
01:24:54.844 --> 01:24:57.146
I think this was a faith-affirming movie.
01:24:57.186 --> 01:24:58.368
It certainly was for me.
01:24:58.408 --> 01:25:08.814
It certainly helped me better understand why I believe what I believe and what lengths I would be willing to go to to defend what I believe.
01:25:09.555 --> 01:25:20.310
So I would heartily recommend it to anyone, in or out of the church, because I think that there is value there, and I'm grateful.
01:25:21.431 --> 01:25:29.962
Certainly it seems you've seen the value in it, and I've seen the value in it, and I would hope that others would take the opportunity to do the same.
01:25:30.543 --> 01:25:32.487
So that's my summation.
01:25:33.148 --> 01:25:34.309
Yeah, Jim, thank you so much.
01:25:35.489 --> 01:25:36.551
I've really enjoyed this.
01:25:36.591 --> 01:25:40.878
There's so much more to this movie that we haven't discussed or we haven't had time to get into.
01:25:41.500 --> 01:25:44.024
I want to go back and see it again, maybe even a third time.
01:25:44.043 --> 01:25:48.170
There are things in there which I probably missed, so I want to go back.
01:25:49.653 --> 01:25:59.127
We want to thank our listeners for being part of this podcast, for listening, their patience in terms of us going back and forward in terms of how we review the movie.
01:26:00.449 --> 01:26:05.738
Again, if you haven't seen the movie, it's best to see it for this before you listen to this podcast.
01:26:06.340 --> 01:26:07.542
There's so much more to it.
01:26:07.601 --> 01:26:10.386
For me, it was also uplifting.
01:26:10.447 --> 01:26:22.006
I think that moment where Sister Barnes came back to life and saved Sister Paxson's life was the miracle, I think, for the movie.
01:26:22.146 --> 01:26:23.128
And I still...
01:26:24.130 --> 01:26:25.992
in touch with my spiritual feelings.
01:26:26.032 --> 01:26:31.779
So, you know, this dark psychological horror, parts of it, for me at least, were quite uplifting.
01:26:32.198 --> 01:26:43.171
And of course, there were quotes to God be Hinkley about, you know, he quoted the prophet in there as well, and lots of extraordinary references about the church.
01:26:43.412 --> 01:26:51.988
But ultimately, as it was said to me when I was leaving the church, where no one had ever asked me, you know, why I'd left.
01:26:52.208 --> 01:26:58.096
Someone did say to me, Brother Wilkes, ultimately, your faith is a choice.
01:26:58.938 --> 01:27:00.380
You know, belief is a choice.
01:27:01.341 --> 01:27:02.381
And I remember that.
01:27:02.983 --> 01:27:07.729
And it is, it is a choice ultimately, you know, to choose what to believe.
01:27:08.529 --> 01:27:12.375
And like most of the people, I like to get the facts, get the truth.
01:27:13.055 --> 01:27:15.698
Yes, I like to test things, you know, scientifically.
01:27:15.738 --> 01:27:17.480
There's a big part of that in the movie.
01:27:18.082 --> 01:27:22.068
and is a big part of whether you can trust your feelings in the movie.
01:27:22.708 --> 01:27:26.595
Can you actually believe something based on feelings, or do you actually need hard evidence?
01:27:27.355 --> 01:27:31.502
That also came through very strongly, for me at least, in the movie.
01:27:32.203 --> 01:27:41.117
For me, it's a combination of physical evidence, empirical evidence, evidence you can measure and check, and feelings and spirituals.
01:27:41.438 --> 01:27:42.099
It's all of it.
01:27:43.820 --> 01:28:12.670
So, thank you jim for being part of this conversation i thought the movie was great uh folks if you haven't seen it go see it i don't think it's offensive to the church um at all i don't think so you might feel differently but uh again thank you for being with us and uh we look forward to joining you uh next week uh which when jim and i will do the next one on uh in uh hopefully the um Mormon musical, the Book of Mormon musical.
01:28:13.011 --> 01:28:22.841
So on the Friday night, Jim, before we saw the Book of Mormon musical on the Saturday, we went to see the movie Heretic and we watched it in the town where the movie Heretic was filmed.
01:28:23.778 --> 01:28:45.630
in and around the Squamish area and I think it was filmed in and around near Pit Meadows as well and we watched it in that which we only learned about the movie where it was filmed after we watched the movie anyway thank you very much for listening and we look forward to you joining us on the next episode of Inside Out early next week thank you Jim thank you music
