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[SPEAKER_00]: Oakham opens with a somewhat famous mystery writer, Ombalman, played by Adam Scott, working in the middle of the night while drinking Scotch when he begins seeing an apparition.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This apparition leads Balman to a box with his parents' ashes and some of their effects, moving the plot forward to a trip to Ireland conveniently over Halloween.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Bomba travels there to spread his parents' ashes near their fondly remembered Uniman's spot, the Bilberry Inn, encountering some eccentric Irish characters as he checks in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Bomba learns that Uniman's sweet, whereas parents stayed during their honeymoon appropriately enough, has since been closed to the public and kept behind lock and key.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Baumann is wandered into existing drama that he eventually discovers as the film unfolds, but what matters most for us today on Horror Joy is the disappearance of Fiona, the hotel bartender, who prevents Baumann after the hotel's Halloween party.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Baumann takes it upon himself to investigate the situation, breaking into the honeymoon's suite with the help of the local eccentric Jerry, who lives in a van.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As Ballman investigates the honeymoon suite, he begins to dream, and in these dreams, we begin to suspect of which.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Listener, you knew this was coming.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The witch in Hokem is perhaps less clearly outlined and presented than the witches we've discussed thus far in the series.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the context around the amorphous witch at this film center is much the same.
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[SPEAKER_01]: As Bowman gets closer to finding answers regarding Fiona's fate, the fantasy, or reality, of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite, or is it the basement of the inn.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, grab the key to the honeymoon suite and join us for our latest flight of witchcraft.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Don't open the dumbwader, and if you find yourself in the basement, don't worry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be right behind you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is Orjoy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Where are you house?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Brian O'Nici.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Jeff Stoynough, where two university professors celebrating the emotional and intellectual joys of Or.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our ins, we're back more, which is this week with Hokem, 2026 film, just recently of theaters and now available for a video on demand on most platforms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We did a lot of exposition in the cold open, so I won't take too much time there, Brian, let's just get right into it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The series we're talking about, which is where are we seeing a witch in Hokem?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, so we've got Adam Scott playing own Bellman, maybe I'm getting to Joy at the very beginning here, sorry folks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I just think he plays despair so well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In some ways, I'm just gonna start thinking of every Adam Scott role as a severance role from here on out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So every role he must take an elevator and it must take him to some new world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But he plays despair really well.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You said in the cold open, we're not going to do a lot of exposition, but he travels out to this in Ireland, and as soon as he gets there, some old man seems to be telling young children a very creepy story about a witch who steals children, who takes them down into a basement, and
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[SPEAKER_01]: The children get their flesh ripped open and their eyes torn out and all this kind of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So we have At the outset The story of a witch and I think that there's something really interesting here because as far as I know Damon McCarthy is Irish.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Damon McCarthy has given us Audity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's another one that he did recently that I don't think I saw but Audity was really good
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[SPEAKER_01]: And there are these like claustrophobic, almost single-setting kind of stories of hunting, of grief, of who is manipulating, who and all that kind of stuff and we get that here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So the witch I think is really this kind of thing that haunts the inn more than it haunts the film itself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the witch shows up, we're told there's a witch there, it's hidden, it's kept up in the honeymoon suite locked away, and I want to ask him questions about the physics of the witch, about the magic of the witch, about the mythology of the witch, but I will say that I think Damien Markerathy does a good job of giving us enough mythology and telling us an actual story.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry folks, if you've listened to the review, the fresh cut of other mommy, this is exactly what I think other mommy fails at.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In Hokem, we get the atmosphere of a witch.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We get a book slit across the desk or handed over from Fiona to um about folklore in Ireland and witches.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it really seems like McCarthy is making all this up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't, it doesn't seem like this is rooted in Irish mythology, which I kind of wish it was, but on the other hand, whatever.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so I think there's a question here about whether the witch is actually real or not, etc, etc.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, if we can manage some spoiler free time, we will try to get to the spoilers at the end.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm curious to your thoughts about the witch too, the witch here shows up, I think, as this kind of boundary.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It shows up as a place where you don't go.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we've talked about this already, the witch is maybe outside of the kind of typical understanding of what women are supposed to do, the roles that they're supposed to take up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, we have Fiona and the control that Mal wants to have over Fiona, the question I think about sexual assault.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to hear your thoughts about the witch, but I want to say I think two things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Number one, I think the real horror subtly of this film is gun violence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ohm is this grieving sad, despairing dude, and we get the picture of his home life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We get a pretty early, like we get a pretty clear understanding of what happened, but so I don't want to like say too much, but I think that there's something about gun violence here, that the one American character, their whole personality is built around the result of gun violence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when does the gun show up?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of course it shows up back in America.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the other horror I think here is also maybe sexual assault, but there's a lot of spiking of drinks and I think there's something there, manipulation of people through spiking drinks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, curious if you have thoughts about that, but I want to hear your thoughts on the witch, what's uh, what is the witch doing here in this story?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it's actually a witch story, even though the witch is somebody who drives the story forward in many ways.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I like your phrasing of which atmosphere because I think the film does get which atmosphere really right.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like you said, it's set up with this creepy old man who turns out to be the owner of the in the hotel, trying to scare the kids because of course there's going to be Halloween party that night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so the film is
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[SPEAKER_00]: really thickened ground for a witch story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're expecting something supernatural and then when you get that legend and mythology, Irish folklore book that's slid across the bar from Fiona to Elm, you're like, okay, we've got a witch and you're like the witch is not even sweet, which has to be in an even sweet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's locked.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's why you're not allowed up there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I think you're right, too, that which is almost a distraction.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of the witches' distraction in this film from all the other real evils and real ills that happen in the movie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The beginning of the film is not in Ireland.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's in America.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's Washington State, but it might be wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Homs in his house, this very brutalist design of big windows, but concrete everywhere.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he's up late, writing by lamplight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: drinking scotch which he seems to do throughout the entirety of the movie and he sees this apparition and it's not clear what it is and then you know in the beginning of the film you're like oh this is our ghost right if this is going to be what we're following throughout the movie and it turns out that's not the apparition just drives him to find the day of sex mock you know or like whatever device who want to call but then moves him to go to Ireland to take this whole thing up where he sort of uncovers
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[SPEAKER_00]: the unfortunate past of this in, the unfortunate present of this in, but also as you're saying, Brian, he relives some of the unfortunate past of his own life that has led him to where he is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is a really good point about Adam Scott playing despair really well after severance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He also was a complete left turn listeners, but the whisper man on Netflix also came out about the same time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We watched Token, my husband and I said, we watched that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Adam Scott's in that, and he also is playing a grieving, despairing, like, widow or slash son.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So Adam Scott gets these roles now, I guess, going forward.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But with the witch atmosphere, I'm going to come back to that in this film.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is used as a way to explain a way some of the evils that humans do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But, and this is where I think it's fitting to have this come after the autopsy of Jane Doe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Um, where we definitely have like a, at least a woman who becomes a witch, maybe during the autopsy or became a witch during the witch trials because of all of the accusations people hurled at her and then tortured her for.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The witch atmosphere in Hokem is,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Also, real, like there is something supernatural happening in this in, and it seems to be located in the basement, not the honeymoon suite, and the honeymoon suite, in fact, becomes another red herring in the film, where we're not allowed to go to the honeymoon suite, because the honeymoon suite is the only interior access it seems to the basement via this dumb waiter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, listeners, if you live in an old house or you've ever lived in an old house or you have access to someone else who lives in an old house, dumbwaters, I find to be terrifying.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't, because they're not really an elevator.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of small and cramped.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And they could just be like a little gremlin that pops out of them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's really nothing regulating them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They could go up and down on their own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So this this like entire film is teasing us with the premise of a witch that eventually going to appear just unveiling other horrors that are adjacent to it throughout.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So in some ways the witch is
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[SPEAKER_00]: less wichy in the sense that we've been discussing is like witchcraft and black magic and all of these things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And more of like a sear, who is delivering truth to us by almost turning a mirror up to the characters and asking them to look at themselves and what they've done.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But we got like a little, you know, fun adventure thriller story, too, and there's some irony there, given that Oms a writer, a mystery writer, and so he's like living out a mystery novel, and so that's kind of LOL.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, the dreams, and he's facing his fears, and just there's some just foul, like a tub filled with gross water.
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[SPEAKER_00]: like we have to figure out, is there a witch or not?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is there, there seems to be something going on in that basement, Brian.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to turn it back to you and I'm curious, like if if we can maybe delve a little deeper into this witch atmosphere or what's this upstairs downstairs relationship going on with the honeymoon suite, the top of the end, that is where our tension is drawn to, but it's in fact in the basement or something is happening.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things I want to say.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's imagine that we've got the standard view of heaven and hell.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Look at basic understanding.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We imagine that heaven is above us and hell is below.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's something there where like, what's the honeymoon suite?
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[SPEAKER_01]: But heaven on earth am I right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's something about the kind of pursuing of this, this is the perfect phase.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is perfection in some way, but it's a fantasy, and so you go upstairs and maybe there's this play with the idea that the honeymoon suite is actually heaven, but it's now decrepit.
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[SPEAKER_01]: right, it's now gross and like you said, the water is disgusting, there's the bed, the four poster with a nice little sheer curtains or whatever, it's dirty, everything is run down and the basement has direct access, right, so heaven and hell are connected.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Earth is connected to neither, it seems, because we're locked out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, in some way, I think you can say that the basement is like hell, and maybe we get that, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it the case that those who descend the dumbwater, and I'm with you, dumbwaters are creepy, brother-in-law, lives in New York, has a old brownstone with a dumbwater in it, and nobody ever should ever get in there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They use it for all the plates and stuff, but do not get in there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Don't even look down.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Who knows?
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[SPEAKER_01]: What's down there?
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[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think there's something about whether or not the people that descend the dumbwater down to the basement are they being condemned?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is this some sense of judgment on the activity that they've done?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we can get to it, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because once we are in full spoiler mode, I think we can say who goes down there, why they go down there, how they get down there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And whether or not the judgment, if that's what we're calling it, is fair.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get to a little bit of the other characters here because I'm curious about you or take on this, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think you have a better grasp of historical literary figures and how they work across historical timelines and different kinds of narratives, et cetera.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say two things, and one is Jerry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's the man in the woods.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's the guy on the outside of civilization.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He
lives in a van, down by the river, maybe.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a river?
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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He lives in a van.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He drinks milk with psilocybin in it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's tripping on mushrooms all the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He makes mushrooms, but he gives us the sights.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You talked about the witches here, but in some way, Jerry is the provider of sight.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Early on, Oam goes out to the woods to find a tree where his parents, or at least his mom,
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[SPEAKER_01]: was happy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Finds Jerry out there and Jerry says, got to open your mind to see the stuff, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's maybe the way in to the reality of the actual in itself.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So we've got that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also this weird like who done it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And
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[SPEAKER_01]: and there's all these kind of players in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got Fiona, the attractive young clerk.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got Mal playing maybe the Butler.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got the beefy intakeor.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got the creepy old owner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got the foreign outsider.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got the bumbling bell hop.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in some way, we're like playing clue here, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've got all these little characters.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I think that that's what makes this movie rich.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While sometimes it's a little bit silly, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: The mythology is, I think, like you said, at the day of Smokken, it's just like here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This is what will guide you through the story and it will maybe it will save you, maybe it will condemn you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're just making this shit up, but it's fun.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like an atmosphere that's worth it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, curious if you have thoughts about the cast of characters around the inn, not only the witch itself, but also folks like Jerry and Fiona and beefcake of an innkeeper as it were, and the creepy old owner, the bellhop, all those guys, what are we doing here with the cast of characters?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think about the relationship between the basement and the
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[SPEAKER_00]: I like the idea of thinking of it as heaven and hell.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's appropriate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that they're connected and there's like an ongoing elevator.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's the most literal, the streeting of heaven and hell effort.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's beautiful in that way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, of course, this is how heaven and hell works.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, the idea that you get to have and buy an escalator, that's the same thing, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The characters in this movie are interesting and creepy and weird and low-thsome.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Jerry is,
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[SPEAKER_00]: The one guy, you're like, oh, it seems fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry seems nice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm not Jerry murdered his wife or like helped his wife and her own life, it's the way he frames it because she was tripping on the psilocybin and asked him to, because she was in pain or ill or something who had effect.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember the exact.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The exact reason why, but that's why you know Jerry gets accused of murder.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is also very much small town politics Because everyone in the end is related.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The owner is like the patriarchy of this family The desk clerk the innkeeper is his son-in-law and Vargas the beefcake guy's name is that's his actual son.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I
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[SPEAKER_00]: when Om arrives at this inn he's just slain a goat and so like you know we're coming back to the witch we got black fill up dead in the parking lot because it jumped up and scratched his BMW or something and Om asks him you know like what the hell do you have to kill it for you can just make it stop he's like no they never learn you have to shoot them and kill them
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[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, oh, great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and that feels like a red herring too, right?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You meet the goat and you're like, oh, the goats and then I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've just killed the goats.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's usually dogs that I have to stop the movie for, but I felt bad for the go, I'm not gonna lie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you're right, it is red-haring.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, oh wow, so we're killing goats now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Are there other demons?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening here?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is this black villa?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is this the Vitch part two?
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, in fact, it is not.
18:31.694 --> 18:33.816
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're in Ireland and there's different mythologies.
18:34.116 --> 18:37.577
[SPEAKER_00]: And they have which is the air too, but their folklore's different.
18:37.618 --> 18:41.780
[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out that Fiona and Jerry have shared this folklore book back and forth.
18:42.300 --> 18:44.801
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where then we get the little bit of the clue.
18:44.881 --> 18:45.822
[SPEAKER_00]: I like how you are.
18:46.482 --> 18:50.352
[SPEAKER_00]: framing this as a bit of a who done it because it is you're given all these characters who are
18:51.745 --> 18:54.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than Fiona, I think equally unlikable.
18:54.466 --> 19:06.049
[SPEAKER_00]: The innkeeper is at best bumbling, and it works just that facade of bumbling to cover up some really heinous crimes, which it turns out, spoiler alert, is what, what, like, that's part of it.
19:06.189 --> 19:16.653
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll come back around to that later, but almost also kind of a bastard, like he's not friendly to these people other than Fiona, and he's really mean to the bellhop, where the bellhop's like, oh, I'm a writer too.
19:18.433 --> 19:21.955
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's like, oh, it isn't that great, so like this is what just like you do this for fun.
19:22.115 --> 19:23.296
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like the bell hop thing.
19:23.336 --> 19:26.558
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a a costume you aren't like you're you're a writer.
19:26.758 --> 19:27.058
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you?
19:27.699 --> 19:30.661
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something about um that is unlikable.
19:30.981 --> 19:35.744
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though you are I think meant to side with him.
19:35.864 --> 19:39.146
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we are kind of seeing the movie through his perspective.
19:39.206 --> 19:44.849
[SPEAKER_00]: We are going along with all mass we experience the mystery of the film.
19:45.970 --> 20:00.057
[SPEAKER_00]: and as we play out his demons, but there's really not a reason that he's an asshole other than he just isn't asshole because that's kind of the person he's developed into as a result of his trauma as a result of being a famous writer.
20:01.297 --> 20:04.501
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this McCarthy commenting on Raiders thinking they're better than everybody else?
20:04.601 --> 20:05.603
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know.
20:05.783 --> 20:10.508
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe listeners, you know that we have Raiders on all of the time, and they've all been lovely.
20:10.548 --> 20:16.876
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think any of the Raiders that we've had on would look at someone if they came up to them at StokerCon and said, hey,
20:17.857 --> 20:18.779
[SPEAKER_00]: I also am a writer.
20:19.119 --> 20:22.604
[SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't be like, oh, so you're just working at the Marriott because it's a stick.
20:23.005 --> 20:27.371
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a thing because like most of the writers we have on also have other jobs.
20:27.571 --> 20:33.019
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is why you need to support these people because unless you're Stephen King, you're not making a living on your writing alone these days.
20:33.890 --> 20:37.272
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think that I love that this is not a horror author.
20:37.372 --> 20:39.273
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like a fantasy thriller author.
20:39.313 --> 20:39.433
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
20:40.313 --> 20:43.735
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that if it were a horror author, I would not believe it.
20:43.875 --> 20:45.055
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be immediately taken out.
20:45.235 --> 20:49.117
[SPEAKER_01]: We've met enough horror authors to know that this is just not how the horror community works.
20:49.577 --> 20:52.519
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, this is actually part of my joy and maybe I'll bring this back.
20:52.559 --> 20:55.420
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I 100% agree with you on this point.
20:56.325 --> 21:10.051
[SPEAKER_00]: And like this brings back around the fact that like in part of his dreams, like he's thinking of himself with this as this character in his book, The Conquise The Door, and it's just so prestige, it's like beyond parody.
21:10.191 --> 21:14.253
[SPEAKER_00]: It's cringeworthy as the youth would say or the youth would just call it cringe.
21:14.953 --> 21:15.473
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not great.
21:15.954 --> 21:21.056
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so like these characters are they all create suspicion from the very beginning.
21:21.756 --> 21:32.363
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just feel like we're in a nive's out-type movie at points in this film because we're in a scary manner or in in Ireland and the countryside removed from things because arms and outsider.
21:32.923 --> 21:39.407
[SPEAKER_00]: There are these moments in the film where I think cast into other ways and framed in other ways.
21:40.007 --> 22:00.135
[SPEAKER_00]: it would be one of those mystery films that is wonder, like where the character is going through like really surprised by what they find out, and it all seems to be less willing to engage in wonder, and he's more just weighed down by cynicism, and I think this comes back to what you're saying with.
22:01.075 --> 22:09.998
[SPEAKER_00]: The gun violence that has shaped his entire adult life, I mean, I think a way back to our conversation in weapons where we were trying to figure out his weapons and allegory about gun violence in the US.
22:10.018 --> 22:17.761
[SPEAKER_00]: And we never came to any real conclusions there because it seems that the film is pointing those directions, but never really goes that way.
22:18.201 --> 22:28.185
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, though, this film is very much about gun violence and very much about how this is shaped all and maybe that's why he's a fantasy writer and maybe that's why he has this character,
22:29.645 --> 22:36.373
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of that is tied neatly inside of the
pig in the blanket, that is a witch film.
22:36.794 --> 22:45.884
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we are surrounded by this puppy croissant of witchery with a hot dog of gun violence.
22:46.144 --> 22:47.666
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's a glizzy, so there we go.
22:47.706 --> 22:48.527
[SPEAKER_00]: It all makes sense, right?
22:49.220 --> 22:51.244
[SPEAKER_01]: a perfect analogy for America.
22:51.444 --> 22:52.285
[SPEAKER_01]: What is America?
22:52.586 --> 22:53.247
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hot dog.
22:53.808 --> 22:54.890
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only is it a hot dog.
22:55.231 --> 22:56.713
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hot dog of gun violence.
22:57.314 --> 22:59.017
[SPEAKER_01]: America, the hot dog of gun violence.
22:59.097 --> 22:59.818
[SPEAKER_01]: Put that on a shirt.
23:00.446 --> 23:02.307
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's the poem that America is a gun.
23:02.567 --> 23:06.070
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes around and talks about how all every country is something else, but America is a gun.
23:06.570 --> 23:08.071
[SPEAKER_00]: And I should have the title of it, but I don't.
23:08.211 --> 23:11.213
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, the witch in this film, it's like a distraction.
23:11.394 --> 23:20.320
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like almost using this witch and this investigation of the witch, the same way he uses his writing, his fantasy writing, to distract him from the reality of things.
23:20.980 --> 23:24.222
[SPEAKER_00]: And these people in this inn, very much like,
23:28.345 --> 23:37.332
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we'll get to the spoiler alert later with the basement, but they're using this legend to distract people from what's actually going on in the end.
23:37.792 --> 23:51.003
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why all is like lead on this goose chase of going up to the honeymoon suite, tripping on psilocybin to have these weird dreams into like have his vision quest and it doesn't really get him anywhere.
23:51.123 --> 23:53.805
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he keeps thinking that Fiona is calling to him and this is
23:54.405 --> 23:55.586
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry sings, too.
23:55.626 --> 24:08.351
[SPEAKER_00]: So while they're on their psychedelic mushroom trip, the Bells ringing and they think I'll let's feel and I try to communicate with us from beyond the grave and That leads us up to the hunting in sweet and eventually we get to the dumb waiter and you know what goes up?
24:08.391 --> 24:08.931
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go down.
24:09.031 --> 24:15.073
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some gravity some some Newtonian laws of physics going on here So we have to get down to that basement eventually.
24:15.674 --> 24:18.435
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a matter of a what's in the basement?
24:19.375 --> 24:27.141
[SPEAKER_00]: and be why we being kept outside of the basement because there are a few times where allm is trapped inside of the honeymoon suite at one point in the film.
24:27.922 --> 24:38.510
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these characters, they are Fiona's important and that she is the, I would say the, the center of the film in some ways because she's the person that allm is trying to protect.
24:39.070 --> 24:43.333
[SPEAKER_00]: She's the person that seems to almost remind allm if it's mother at times.
24:44.814 --> 24:47.756
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh and I want to come back around to the idea of the picture of his mom with that tree.
24:48.557 --> 24:58.483
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a thing really beautiful about the only happy memory he has of his mother is a picture that is a memory of her in Ireland outside by a tree.
24:59.183 --> 25:05.667
[SPEAKER_00]: So effectively this man has had to travel over a thousand miles to Ireland to see a tree to be happy.
25:06.207 --> 25:09.449
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's not commentary on 21st century life man, I don't know what is.
25:10.870 --> 25:14.112
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to travel to see a tree rather than like, I don't know, I'm looking out a window right now.
25:14.172 --> 25:15.674
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a wonderful tree outside my window.
25:15.794 --> 25:17.295
[SPEAKER_00]: I could just go hug that tree.
25:17.435 --> 25:18.996
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I have to go to Ireland for a tree?
25:19.076 --> 25:19.837
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
25:20.197 --> 25:21.238
[SPEAKER_00]: Listeners, I have no idea.
25:21.658 --> 25:27.023
[SPEAKER_00]: But the witchcraft here is pretty much centered around Fiona.
25:27.443 --> 25:31.687
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is, again, intentional because we're going to associate witches with women.
25:32.547 --> 25:39.591
[SPEAKER_00]: At no point in the film, we actually think Fiona is a witch, but we just did the chia somehow, succumbed to the witchcraft going on in the house.
25:39.651 --> 25:53.860
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, it's because the man have to protect the women from the witches, um, instead of the Swiss basis or forbidden, and this is why we have rules, and why we just don't ask questions, because the owner, the patriarch of the family says we don't go up there, that's why we don't go up there.
25:54.420 --> 25:55.840
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no explanation given.
25:55.940 --> 25:57.321
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't get to ask questions.
25:57.801 --> 26:08.823
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is, again, that sort of contrast or that juxtaposition budding of heads of patriarchy with other ways of knowing that this film gets into a little bit.
26:09.123 --> 26:18.085
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's very rushed at the end when we're sort of getting that other examples of stuff and there's not really an explanation either as to what in the basement or why what is in the basement is there.
26:18.525 --> 26:20.105
[SPEAKER_00]: So Brian, turn it back to you.
26:23.546 --> 26:25.808
[SPEAKER_00]: or we can talk about, which is the more.
26:26.588 --> 26:30.291
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go with Hot Dog Gun Violence for 200, please.
26:30.932 --> 26:35.575
[SPEAKER_01]: So why don't we just go ahead and say full spoiler mode?
26:36.316 --> 26:42.141
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, folks, if you haven't seen this movie, I
think we've kept most of the spoilers clear.
26:42.601 --> 26:46.484
[SPEAKER_01]: But for now, if you have not seen this movie and you don't want it to be spoiled, turn it off.
26:46.924 --> 26:48.526
[SPEAKER_01]: Go watch this movie and come back.
26:49.546 --> 26:51.428
[SPEAKER_01]: So Fiona is pregnant.
26:52.368 --> 27:02.931
[SPEAKER_01]: We find out that Fiona is pregnant with Mal's baby, and this is why Mal decides to spike her drink and kill Fiona.
27:03.671 --> 27:08.833
[SPEAKER_01]: It's unclear if he actually wants to kill Fiona or just to send her down into the basement.
27:09.413 --> 27:19.596
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, is this judgment on her as she gets sent to hell in our story, because she was pregnant, she had sex outside of marriage.
27:20.536 --> 27:22.679
[SPEAKER_01]: The men are not punished, right?
27:22.719 --> 27:23.319
[SPEAKER_01]: At least not here.
27:23.680 --> 27:24.521
[SPEAKER_01]: But the women can be.
27:24.661 --> 27:25.262
[SPEAKER_01]: She sent a hell.
27:26.223 --> 27:32.029
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's where I think there is some clever, narrative things going on here.
27:32.690 --> 27:38.136
[SPEAKER_01]: When we first start to see the flashbacks to Om's childhood,
27:38.977 --> 27:47.706
[SPEAKER_01]: He has to break into a box and he breaks into a box and grabs a gun, and the gun goes off and shoots his mom.
27:48.327 --> 27:50.089
[SPEAKER_01]: And his mom hunts him the whole time.
27:50.109 --> 27:54.834
[SPEAKER_01]: I think rewatching the movie you see the mom everywhere.
27:55.254 --> 27:58.197
[SPEAKER_01]: The mom is helping and protecting and doing all these things.
27:59.478 --> 28:10.442
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that there's at least a connection between the box that Om has to break into and the honeymoon sweet as box that he's also breaking into.
28:11.123 --> 28:16.305
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's breaking into the box and both of them involved the death of a mother.
28:17.265 --> 28:24.988
[SPEAKER_01]: So Fiona's a mother, she's pregnant or she's going to be a mother, and she dies in the box.
28:25.608 --> 28:30.450
[SPEAKER_01]: Ohm's mom, also a mother, dies in the box.
28:30.890 --> 28:40.333
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we get from that period of when Ohm broken to the box, took the gun out, killed his mom, and this is where I think the horror is in part, gun violence.
28:41.213 --> 28:44.215
[SPEAKER_01]: What drives Om towards his despair?
28:45.236 --> 28:49.419
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that he killed his mom, his dad couldn't handle life after that.
28:50.039 --> 28:56.824
[SPEAKER_01]: Which, good Lord, that's a lot to handle, but Om feels like he was in many ways abandoned.
28:58.024 --> 29:02.007
[SPEAKER_01]: and goes to Ireland and sort of a trip to what?
29:02.067 --> 29:02.808
[SPEAKER_01]: Find happiness?
29:03.708 --> 29:04.649
[SPEAKER_01]: What does he find inside?
29:04.749 --> 29:06.130
[SPEAKER_01]: He tries to unalive himself.
29:06.490 --> 29:08.412
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in the spoiler mode,
full spoiler mode.
29:08.472 --> 29:09.693
[SPEAKER_01]: He tries to unalive himself.
29:09.773 --> 29:14.736
[SPEAKER_01]: He hangs himself, Fiona finds him, and he wakes up and realizes that Fiona is now missing.
29:15.877 --> 29:29.729
[SPEAKER_01]: But the thing that I also want to say is that, again, the narrative is doing some interesting work here, because the concluisador himself, the very opening scene that we get, the concluisador is ready to kill this child.
29:31.050 --> 29:43.120
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get the full plan for this story where the concluisador is out in the desert, looking for this treasure, can't open the bottle, and is going to smash it over the child head.
29:44.770 --> 29:48.012
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're, if we're doing some kind of psychoanalysis, right?
29:48.172 --> 29:59.698
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't this just om saying, I would sacrifice myself, the child, for this sake of my parents happiness, or even this is what it was like.
29:59.718 --> 30:04.060
[SPEAKER_01]: I was sacrificed by my father in the desert of despair.
30:04.880 --> 30:05.921
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I've landed.
30:06.581 --> 30:09.242
[SPEAKER_01]: So fast forward all the way to the end, and what happens?
30:09.603 --> 30:12.044
[SPEAKER_01]: We get a kind of happy ish ending.
30:12.064 --> 30:13.985
[SPEAKER_01]: That's unclear, right?
30:14.565 --> 30:21.453
[SPEAKER_01]: The father turned and says no son or I don't know if it's actually a father son, maybe it's just like a father and slave boy.
30:21.553 --> 30:23.335
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't actually know what's who's out in the desert.
30:24.496 --> 30:27.779
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, but let's imagine it's a father and son kind of situation.
30:28.600 --> 30:31.684
[SPEAKER_01]: The father says you should take the treasure.
30:32.284 --> 30:33.745
[SPEAKER_01]: I sacrifice myself for you.
30:33.765 --> 30:39.390
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm saying, like, I wish there was this sense of sacrifice.
30:39.870 --> 30:43.332
[SPEAKER_01]: But the boy is also saying, no, let's do this together.
30:43.813 --> 30:46.395
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe we can imagine a happy ending because of that.
30:46.935 --> 30:55.822
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe this is the development of Ohm across the film is that he's coming to terms not only with the death of his mother at his own hands,
30:57.023 --> 31:07.790
[SPEAKER_01]: The decline of his father, because of his actions, he is wrapped up and despair because of all of these things and it shows in his stories.
31:08.531 --> 31:12.873
[SPEAKER_01]: And now he's writing this out and maybe at the end we get this sense in which he is developing.
31:13.254 --> 31:14.214
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he a nice guy?
31:14.555 --> 31:21.079
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'll be comes in and says, hey, can I show you my manuscript and he goes, I'll be having I been through enough.
31:22.680 --> 31:28.644
[SPEAKER_01]: And Albee is the one likable character, annoying, but a likable outside of Fiona.
31:29.144 --> 31:33.767
[SPEAKER_01]: And he just says, I'll give it a look through and I'll bring it back later tonight.
31:34.307 --> 31:39.170
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, I love the interaction there because we're given a little bit of his development.
31:40.111 --> 31:45.814
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, development as a character, but it's not like he's like immediately a nice loving guy.
31:46.374 --> 31:49.837
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think in some way, he's on the path of forgiving himself through this whole thing.
31:50.797 --> 32:17.712
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I want to ask you a little bit about, yeah, how the witch works here is the witch also a kind of mothering character or anti-mothering character in some way, going along with both ohms, mom and Fiona as potential mother, but too, unlike the autopsy of Jane Doe, the witch that we're getting here is very prone like, not attractive.
32:18.953 --> 32:21.175
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't see her very clearly very often.
32:21.635 --> 32:25.837
[SPEAKER_01]: She collects some trinkets and maybe I'll throw this to you.
32:25.878 --> 32:28.960
[SPEAKER_01]: You can kind of lead us to what happens to Mal.
32:29.980 --> 32:33.843
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, in terms of maybe judgment for the sins that he committed.
32:34.783 --> 32:36.524
[SPEAKER_01]: But what do we get with the witch?
32:36.704 --> 32:38.926
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a kind of mothering, anti-mothering character?
32:39.146 --> 32:39.967
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's none of those.
32:41.067 --> 32:44.189
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it why do we have the witch as kind of
32:48.732 --> 32:53.136
[SPEAKER_01]: the other thing that I want to know about the witch is, where does she get her magic?
32:54.137 --> 33:03.646
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm reading a book by Heather Green on the history of witches in cinema and the United States, and one of the questions becomes like, where do you get your magic?
33:04.447 --> 33:08.190
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this pagan, we just assume that some kind of pagan religion?
33:09.431 --> 33:10.972
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a pack with a devil?
33:11.893 --> 33:12.894
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it something else?
33:13.915 --> 33:18.357
[SPEAKER_01]: But not only does she interact physically with the room, she's also climbing up the walls.
33:19.097 --> 33:19.697
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this?
33:20.817 --> 33:23.018
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it's maybe it's nothing, right?
33:23.038 --> 33:24.359
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just a hallucination.
33:24.839 --> 33:36.963
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll throw it back to you with some of the questions about the witch, about Fiona, as potential mother, about ohm, and his mother, about the two locked boxes, about judgment, all of those things.
33:37.043 --> 33:41.264
[SPEAKER_01]: Jeff, I've given you a complicated messy maze.
33:41.784 --> 33:43.085
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you can find your way out.
33:43.865 --> 33:50.931
[SPEAKER_01]: Just make sure to set up the little bellboy alarm clock so you can get out of the basement, please.
33:51.852 --> 33:57.056
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm going to use a very faulty clock to make sure that that's going to be my way out of the basement.
33:57.136 --> 34:02.781
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the one of the things in the mirror, like, all this, and they didn't actually play on it as much as you expected.
34:02.801 --> 34:05.884
[SPEAKER_00]: It could have ended so much more poorly for all that didn't do response.
34:05.924 --> 34:08.066
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, okay, I guess it actually works.
34:08.086 --> 34:09.787
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess we're using a clock now.
34:11.108 --> 34:36.787
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the question of motherhood here with which is is interesting and as you were talking about the witch in this movie as the Crohn figure and Fiona with her pregnancy and the opening scene of the conquistador with the young boy initially it looks like he's going to bring him with a bottle in order to survive and get what he needs to do to complete the map or whatever it is
34:38.315 --> 34:55.142
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if there's some commentary on reproductive rights with this movie, and I wonder if this might also answer your question about where the witch gets her power, because it seems that for that dumb waiter to be connected with the honeymoon suite, what's much frequently going to happen in the honeymoon suite?
34:55.582 --> 34:59.924
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would a wealthy old man keep a honeymoon suite locked down just to himself?
35:00.424 --> 35:02.565
[SPEAKER_00]: Pooce using the honeymoon suite and what are they using it for?
35:03.822 --> 35:13.450
[SPEAKER_00]: If the problem with Fiona, the reason that she has to die is because she is carrying the bastard child of male.
35:15.895 --> 35:33.779
[SPEAKER_00]: that would seem to be direct commentary on the, especially Irish, and this is, you know, this is also, I guess in the United States, and I'll do it if they've ever turned reverse as way, but the, you know, anti-abortion crowd that doesn't want women to have autonomy over their own bodies.
35:33.939 --> 35:39.540
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the trick gets that the witch is collecting, that the witch is gathering in this basement, and
35:40.380 --> 36:03.093
[SPEAKER_00]: perhaps are just momentos or souvenirs of years upon years of women not being given a choice about autonomy over their own bodies and to have been either murdered or forced to come to turn with a child they don't want or have died in childbirth like that's the witch in the
36:05.995 --> 36:20.549
[SPEAKER_00]: and I, you know, I'm not saying that I think this is the only way to look at this film, but I think it's compelling that Fiona was pregnant and the reason Fiona had to die was because she was pregnant and there was no discussion of just how to get an abortion or something.
36:20.929 --> 36:24.432
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the child alone, the pregnancy alone was proven off to dam mal.
36:25.693 --> 36:30.775
[SPEAKER_00]: He is not afraid of his wife as much as he's afraid of his brother-in-law and
his father-in-law.
36:31.055 --> 36:42.439
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they'll do to him, because he probably raped Fiona, at worst, at best he got her drunk and had extramarital sex with her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, just some food for thought, I wonder if the witch here is a way of us away for us to consider reproductive rights and the lack of reproductive rights, and then when you pair that with gun violence, I mean, we have the 21st century in a nutshell, and the way in which women often get caught up in these things, where we talk a lot about in the United States, especially the pro-life movement, the people that are at the March for
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[SPEAKER_00]: whenever that occurs, I think it's in the fall, are often the same people that are very pro-second amendment.
37:18.237 --> 37:29.591
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is this strange bedfellows, the strange marriage, especially in the United States of people who are a quote-unquote pro-life, which really means anti-bortion, and who are also
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[SPEAKER_00]: pro-gun.
37:32.273 --> 37:39.340
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, are there people who are pro-life who are also, who are authentically pro-life, like where they don't believe the death penalty, they don't believe in abortion and all of these things?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, those people do exist.
37:41.182 --> 37:51.171
[SPEAKER_00]: But the majority are people who like to perform pro-life, the idea that women need to be controlled, women need to have their bodies controlled, and if they get pregnant it's their fault, and if it's
37:52.072 --> 37:54.573
[SPEAKER_00]: The Cornell 7 case, again, we talked about last episode.
37:55.233 --> 37:57.294
[SPEAKER_00]: If they get raped, it's what was she wearing.
37:57.314 --> 38:03.836
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking of what the Secretary of Defense PTXF wants to live stream an execution.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the same group of people that is pro-life are going to be watching this and we know that.
38:08.937 --> 38:32.925
[SPEAKER_00]: And this film brings these two issues together sublimitally, if not directly, to make us parse what does it mean, to take a life, how does that affect your life, and then what happens to these people, to these women whose lives are taken, and is this why all gets to escape, because he accidentally kills his mother.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't intentionally kill her.
38:35.306 --> 38:35.666
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why
38:36.846 --> 38:45.468
[SPEAKER_00]: faces the fake he does, which was the question you asked, because he is the father of a child out of wedlock, and he is effectively the reason.
38:45.488 --> 38:49.088
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he kills Fiona, like we know that he kills Fiona and he hides her.
38:49.668 --> 38:59.490
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe similar to how we saw on the autopsy of Jane Doe with the the house itself almost takes on the possession of Jane Doe's body.
39:00.130 --> 39:03.191
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, the end seems to be just
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[SPEAKER_00]: record the material space, the landmark of where all of these hills have happened and therefore this figure of the witch, whether she's always been there in the basement or she has just become she's manifested in the basement because of it seems that we have some really questionable people because again the old man at the start, he's super creepy and I'll even assess this much.
39:28.974 --> 39:31.937
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like trying to get the kids away from him because he seems like
39:32.797 --> 39:35.459
[SPEAKER_00]: He might as well be driving around in a white band that says free candy.
39:35.979 --> 39:40.002
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a good feeling and there's something that seems off throughout.
39:40.122 --> 39:45.626
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you said, the beef cake in keeper, he's the muscle that just keeps the silence.
39:45.986 --> 39:49.348
[SPEAKER_00]: Has a crossbow, as one does, you know, just out and about.
39:49.829 --> 39:51.730
[SPEAKER_00]: So no guns in Ireland, but crossbows.
39:51.770 --> 39:53.591
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess that's the thing we can look at.
39:53.671 --> 39:55.593
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know, Brian, am I crazy?
39:55.653 --> 39:58.895
[SPEAKER_00]: Have I been drinking too much of the sillish side in milk?
39:58.955 --> 40:00.456
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I in my own vision quest now?
40:00.516 --> 40:01.617
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is there something here?
40:02.841 --> 40:10.566
[SPEAKER_01]: I like what you're saying, and at one point Jerry says, somebody, maybe his wife said, you know, you never ignore a feeling that's off.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that when we think about things like sexual assault, when we think about the violence of sexual assault, that happens through the spiking of drinks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is some danger here, not only is the inkeeper, spiking a drink, alby ends up spiking, ohm's drink, and that's why we know that he's been on the mushroom high the whole time.
40:36.219 --> 40:42.122
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think you're pointing out something really important, having a room that's locked up.
40:43.703 --> 40:54.773
[SPEAKER_01]: is something that should be worrying for people, that the beefy and keeper, the owner, mal, anybody who has access to it, could take anybody up there.
40:55.534 --> 41:05.063
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is something that would probably show up as dangerous to some communities more than others, probably women more than men.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think just to make a connection with what you were saying, it made me imagine that feted water in the bathtub as like a molding old womb, we're back there.
41:16.999 --> 41:17.639
[SPEAKER_01]: We're back there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Jeff, don't.
41:19.040 --> 41:23.002
[SPEAKER_01]: You're shaking your head, but we're back at Crystal Lake.
41:23.823 -->
41:26.184
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever room we're talking about then, anyways.
41:26.824 --> 41:36.770
[SPEAKER_01]: But the idea that women are no longer useful if they can't be productive, but they can only be productive in the certain boundaries in which they're given.
41:37.051 --> 41:49.518
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the whole kind of witch character that we've been talking about so far that if you don't act inside of the standards of normalcy set about by men, then you're going to be thrown out or treated like a witch.
41:50.039 --> 41:53.781
[SPEAKER_01]: And that historically has shown up in the witch character.
41:54.201 --> 41:56.102
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's something about the uncanny here.
41:56.582 --> 42:05.065
[SPEAKER_01]: If a woman is acting outside of her nature, then men are going to see her as uncanny, men are going to see her as the old crown witch.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So, no, you haven't been drinking the silessive and you haven't been spiked.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're onto something here.
42:12.107 --> 42:29.299
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, y'all, we've spent a lot of time with the despair of Adam Scott playing Ome, the conquistator, all the kind of gross characters except for maybe Jerry, but Jerry's got a history to, and I'll be, I'll be spike in drinks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's awful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's find some joy.
42:32.481 --> 42:39.303
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wanted to mention the fact that number one, this is not a horror author and I absolutely loved it.
42:39.423 --> 42:41.524
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw this in theaters and that was one of my first thoughts.
42:41.924 --> 42:47.086
[SPEAKER_01]: If this were a horror author, I would not have even been able to follow because it just doesn't make sense.
42:47.166 --> 42:52.708
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're saying, maybe there's some folks that are out there that are too big for their bridges as my grandma would say.
42:53.288 --> 43:04.911
[SPEAKER_01]: but I think that it only makes sense because he has this terrible tragic past, but the fact that he's not a horror author that brings me joy.
43:04.931 --> 43:12.073
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the silliness of this movie and the fact that it doesn't take me out of it brings me joy too.
43:12.133 --> 43:13.434
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't talk about the chalk.
43:14.374 --> 43:19.196
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't even talk about Holmes' mother that much, but all of these things are like a little bit silly.
43:19.657 --> 43:24.919
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many jump scares that were with his mother kind of in the background, looking over him.
43:25.320 --> 43:33.604
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seems at one point even, there's a fire going on outside of the elevator, and it's Holmes' mother, allegedly that calls out to Furgle.
43:35.084 --> 43:42.727
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something silly about it, but the chalk, there's nothing about the chalk, that's not like a thing in mythology, it just shows up here.
43:43.247 --> 43:53.610
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there's some joy about the silliness, and at the very last scene in the basement, the witch just walks through the circle chalk, it's not like she's actually expelled by it.
43:54.050 --> 44:02.056
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the silliness and the fact that this is not a horror author being depicted as a grumpy old despairing person.
44:02.757 --> 44:06.060
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are my two joys, Jeff Altair, too, for joy, and you can wrap it up here.
44:06.720 --> 44:11.104
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of joy to be had with the silliness for sure.
44:11.124 --> 44:15.627
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a good who done it, so that's a joyful experience to get to go through the film.
44:15.647 --> 44:20.151
[SPEAKER_00]: And this way, this is like a really minor, like a half note of joy, but the
44:21.167 --> 44:26.788
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in Ireland, and in parts of the UK, they don't carve pumpkins, they carve turn-ups.
44:27.368 --> 44:45.973
[SPEAKER_00]: And the opening scene here, we've these little turn-ups that have been carved for Halloween, and that always really just makes me laugh, because I, I think of like, how rare it is to find to turn up in the United States unless you grow them yourself or you're specifically looking for them at the grocery store, but also to carve them.
44:47.367 --> 44:51.318
[SPEAKER_00]: The turnip is not like a pumpkin, you know, it's pretty solid.
44:51.339 --> 44:52.763
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna have to get in there and scoop.
44:53.608 --> 45:08.491
[SPEAKER_00]: The character of Jerry, it's just weird and joyful in this sense that it becomes strangely a buddy comedy somewhere around Act 2 of the film where all in Jerry are trying to solve this mystery.
45:08.511 --> 45:19.053
[SPEAKER_00]: The two outsiders of the film are trying to scale the walls of the castle of the Bill Berry and which is now closed for the season conveniently to hide the murder that Mal committed.
45:19.873 --> 45:25.918
[SPEAKER_00]: And, like, they're thwarted, and they make it through, and Jerry does a barrel roll out of a car at some point.
45:26.419 --> 45:27.820
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so silly.
45:27.900 --> 45:28.701
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, I agree.
45:28.721 --> 45:30.902
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of joy to be had in those silly moments.
45:31.503 --> 45:32.584
[SPEAKER_00]: The chalk thing, sure.
45:32.644 --> 45:35.146
[SPEAKER_00]: The witch itself, I think this witch is a great depiction of a witch.
45:35.666 --> 45:37.208
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though, like, it doesn't get a lot of screen time.
45:37.228 --> 45:41.491
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't play a huge role in the first two parts of the film.
45:41.511 --> 45:43.072
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes to the play in the third part of the film.
45:43.493 --> 45:44.073
[SPEAKER_00]: That's joyful.
45:44.414 --> 45:45.514
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some vengeance rot.
45:45.955 --> 45:47.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we shouldn't take joy in others.
45:48.938 --> 45:52.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorrow and others pain, but Mel deserved it.
45:52.846 --> 45:53.427
[SPEAKER_00]: That's be honest.
45:53.667 --> 45:54.569
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll take joy there.
45:55.250 --> 45:58.397
[SPEAKER_00]: Brian any final thoughts or we good to fly on out of here
45:59.235 --> 46:01.016
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like what you're saying about all of that.
46:01.797 --> 46:04.479
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jerry, there's this line where I think is really funny.
46:05.100 --> 46:11.185
[SPEAKER_01]: Jerry looks at Om at the end and goes, and you know, Om is like, oh, are you gonna be okay?
46:11.205 --> 46:11.685
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you all right?
46:11.705 --> 46:15.088
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says, I'll live and then immediately he gets a crossbow right in the head.
46:15.628 --> 46:17.009
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something kind of funny about that.
46:17.130 --> 46:18.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I'm sad Jerry's gone.
46:19.051 --> 46:22.254
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you go, Jeff, I want to tell you about one of my favorite places here in Holidaysburg.
46:22.274 --> 46:24.515
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to shout out Burrow Coffee.
46:24.535 --> 46:37.145
[SPEAKER_01]: If you haven't been to Burrow Coffee, if you're in the area in Blair County and you're looking for a good cup of coffee, looking for a little bit of food, Burrow, it's in the same building as the US hotel tavern right on Blair Street.
46:37.205 --> 46:44.010
[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you are in town and you want a good cup of coffee, I highly recommend going to Burrow and having a nice
46:48.713 --> 46:55.164
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise Jeff, we'll sign off, folks, remember, seek joy, even in horror.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This has been an episode of Warjoy.
46:59.470 --> 47:01.631
[SPEAKER_01]: Produced in conjunction with Axis Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We want to hear from you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can find us at warjoypod on Instagram or at horrorjoypod on YouTube.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can also email us at horrorjoypod at gmail.com all one word and you can of course find us wherever you get your podcasts.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Give us a like, subscribe, leave a review.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, remember,