Do We Need Yet More Films About Time Loops? A Pretty Much Pop Discussion (#80) of Groundhog Day and its Descendents

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | February 2nd, 2021

Tine loop­ing, where a char­ac­ter is doomed to repeat the same day (or hour, or longer peri­od) is a sci-fi trope dat­ing back more than a cen­tu­ry, but real­ly entered Amer­i­can con­scious­ness with the 1993 Bill Mur­ray film Ground­hog Day. Since then, and espe­cial­ly in the last five years, there have been numer­ous iter­a­tions of this idea in var­i­ous gen­res from racial police-shoot­ing dra­ma to teen sex com­e­dy. But do we need more of this? What are the philo­soph­i­cal ideas involved, and how do these change with tweaks to the sce­nario?

Mark, Eri­ca, Bri­an, and return­ing guest Ken Ger­ber dis­cuss not only the very recent and pop­u­lar for­ays into this genre with Hulu’s Palm Springs and Net­flix’s Russ­ian Doll, but also touch on Edge of Tomor­row, Repeaters, 12:01 PM, Before I Fall, The Fare, and episodes of The Twi­light Zone, Star Trek: Dis­cov­ery, The X‑Files, and Rick & Morty.

There are of course oth­er film and TV uses of this trope. For a rel­a­tive­ly full list, you can see this wiki page list­ing time loop films and this oth­er wiki page dis­cussing lit­er­ary antecedents. Also see the “Ground­hog Day” Loop page on tvtropes.org, and here’s a rel­e­vant red­dit thread.

Here are more arti­cles:

Watch the 12:01 PM 1990 short film. This bonus episode of the 11.22.63 pod­cast had a great dis­cus­sion of time loop media includ­ing the Ken Grim­wood nov­el Replay and the short sto­ry “12:01 P.M.” and its sequels. You can read the 1941 Mal­colm Jame­son sto­ry “Dou­bled and Redou­bled” online. As a fore­run­ner to the time loop idea, check out the very short 1892 chil­dren’s sto­ry “Christ­mas Every Day” by William Dean How­ells, where time does move for­ward with its con­se­quences, but it’s always Christ­mas!

We talked a lit­tle about Hap­py Death Day with its cos­tume design­er in our ep. 38 and got into time trav­el more gen­er­al­ly with Ken in ep. 22 and into “weird sit­u­a­tions” in our Twi­light Zone ep. 52. You may also enjoy Wes Alwan’s (sub)Text pod­cast dis­cussing the psy­cho­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Ground­hog Day.

Check out the time loop movie bin­go card that Bri­an put togeth­er (with ground­hog pic­ture by Ken):

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

 

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The Formula for The Coen Brothers/Noah Hawley’s Fargo – Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #79

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | January 28th, 2021

Your hosts Mark Lin­se­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Tam­ler from the Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast to con­sid­er the plau­dits and com­plaints heaped on this moral­i­ty-tale-turned-orga­nized-crime-dra­ma that began with the 1006 film and  has con­tin­ued through a 4‑season TV show. We delve into its elab­o­rate style, “tun­dra west­ern” set­ting, dry humor (includ­ing “Min­neso­ta nice”), speechi­fy­ing, gen­der issues, stunt cast­ing, and the role of chance in its plot­ting. Did the show go down­hill in its lat­er sea­sons, and is there alto­geth­er too much rehash involved? Yes, there are spoil­ers, but no, it bare­ly mat­ters.

Check out these resources for more opin­ions and back­ground infor­ma­tion:

Fol­low @tamler. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Check out his book, Why Hon­or Mat­ters.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Should You Race Back to Theaters When It’s Safe? Pretty Much Pop: Culture Podcast (#77) on the Big Screen Experience

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 14th, 2021

The pan­dem­ic has kept us out of the movie the­aters, forc­ing new stream­ing prac­tices so that films can be released at all, but as these restric­tions end in 2021, do we want things to go back just to the way they were?

Your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt reviewed many arti­cles where film­mak­ers fret­ted about the future of cin­e­ma. Even before the pan­dem­ic, con­cerns about falling movie house atten­dance and the increased use of stream­ing have had the indus­try wor­ried about films being viewed in the man­ner their cre­ators intend­ed, or even made at all.

For at least the first half our of this dis­cus­sion, we large­ly ignored all that in favor of mus­ing on our own past the­ater-going habits and expe­ri­ences. What has worked and has­n’t in the shift toward more spec­ta­cle and ameni­ties? What do we like and loathe about being in an audi­ence with oth­ers? Is the the­ater expe­ri­ence essen­tial just for big spe­cial effects films, or does it make any film more effec­tive? How would we improve moviego­ing and home view­ing? We con­sid­er the list of films that were sup­posed to come out this year and were either delayed or moved to stream­ing, like Tenet, Soul, In the Heights, etc.

Here are those arti­cles, in case you’re curi­ous:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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What Makes for a Beloved Bad Film? Jackey Neyman Jones (Manos: The Hands of Fate) Talks to Pretty Much Pop (ep. 73)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 17th, 2020

While there have of course been numer­ous attempts at movie mag­ic that have result­ed in some­thing less than audi­ence pleas­ing, only a few demon­strate such bold inep­ti­tude as to become “so bad that they’re good.” Such a film requires a strong sense of vision cou­pled with a com­plete inabil­i­ty to real­ize that vision in a coher­ent way, and it must dis­play real charm, as we see through the pre­sen­ta­tion to behold real human beings cap­tured in the poignan­cy of their doomed filmic endeav­or.

Some often cit­ed can­di­dates for this new kind of film canon include the clas­sic Plan 9 from Out­er Space, whose cre­ation was dra­ma­tized in Tim Bur­ton’s film Ed Wood; Tom­my Wiseau’s The Room, chron­i­cled by the book and film The Dis­as­ter Artist; Troll 2, a film that has no busi­ness or cre­ative rela­tion to the already dubi­ous film Troll that was doc­u­ment­ed in Best Worst Movie; and the an up-and-com­er Bir­d­em­ic: Shock and Ter­ror, self-financed by James Nguyen, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty great­ly increased through the treat­ment of his films by Riff­trax, one of the TV show Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000’s Inter­net suc­ces­sors.

And then there’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, laud­ed as one of the most trip­py finds of the orig­i­nal 1993 MST3K. It’s a film writ­ten, direct­ed by, and star­ring (lit­er­al) fer­til­iz­er sales­man Harold P. War­ren about a fam­i­ly (on their “first vaca­tion”) get­ting lost in West­ern Texas and end­ing up stay­ing the night at a house with a reli­gious cult. Jack­ey Ney­man Jones played the six-year-old girl in the film who even­tu­al­ly (spoil­er!) ends up tied to a stake as the cult lead­er’s sev­enth wife. Her father played the cult leader and cre­at­ed much of the art for the show, her moth­er sewed the cos­tumes, and her voice was dubbed over by a ful­ly grown woman who was not at all warned that she’d be hav­ing to imi­tate a child’s voice.

Jack­ey wrote a mem­oir about the expe­ri­ence, and here joins your Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about the ongo­ing inter­est in the film despite its ini­tial, com­plete dis­missal as well as the dynam­ics and per­ils of work­ing with a supreme­ly con­fi­dent “auteur.”

The dis­cus­sion also touch­es on oth­er bad films like Cat­woman, The Hap­pen­ing, and Bat­tle­ship. Are these con­tem­po­rary, big-bud­get flops wor­thy of such can­on­iza­tion? What about films made inten­tion­al­ly to be cheesy, whether by auteurs like Veloci­pas­tor or pumped out by a com­pa­ny like Syfy’s Shark­na­do series?

You can watch Jack­ey read her entire book online. See her art. Read her inter­viewed in Cracked, Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, and the AV Club. Check out her IMDB page and her short-lived Hand of Hor­ror pod­cast. Manos: The Hands of Fate is in the pub­lic domain, so watch it unriffed if you dare, or check out the clas­sic MST3K episode or the more recent Riff­trax treat­ment. See also the warped stage ver­sion with pup­pets: Manos: The Hands of Felt.

To think more gen­er­al­ly about this top­ic, we con­sult­ed some lists of bad (or “so-bad-they’re-good”) films by The Ringer,  Thril­list, Screen­rant, Yard­bark­er, and Wikipedia.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Comic Book Writer Fred Van Lente Touts “Comic Supremacy” on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #72

in Comics/Cartoons, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 10th, 2020

Fred Van Lente has writ­ten for more than 15 years for his own Evil Twin Comics, Mar­vel and oth­er out­lets. In this episode of Pret­ty Much Pop, he joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss comics as an idio­syn­crat­ic form of lit­er­a­ture.

In the realm of non-fic­tion, Ryan start­ed with the beloved Action Philoso­phers! series in 2004 with illus­tra­tor Ryan Dunlavey, and this team has gone on to cre­ate the very suc­cess­ful Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Comics, plus more recent­ly Action Pres­i­dents, Action Activists (avail­able free in asso­ci­a­tion with the NYC Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion’s Civics for All pro­gram), and have just begun releas­ing The Com­ic Book His­to­ry of Ani­ma­tion. While the non-fic­tion comics for­mat is com­mon in places like Japan, and has a sto­ried his­to­ry in Amer­i­ca, hav­ing been used to train sol­diers in World War II, this is still some­thing of a nov­el­ty in Amer­i­ca as comics still strug­gle to over­come their rep­u­ta­tion in (as Ryan puts it) “trash for morons.” Giv­en that visu­al con­tent is well known to help peo­ple learn as com­pared to text alone, the use of tools like Action Pres­i­dents in class­rooms should­n’t be sur­pris­ing.

The inter­view also gets into Ryan’s fic­tion work, from Cow­boys & Aliens, which was turned into a 2011 Jon Favreau/Steven Spiel­berg film entire­ly with­out Ryan’s involve­ment, to titles like Mar­vel Zom­bies and X‑Men Noir which use alter­nate dimen­sion ver­sions of pop­u­lar char­ac­ters to tell sto­ries too dark and/or whim­si­cal to have much pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever being trans­ferred to the screen. Despite comics’ rep­u­ta­tion as being basi­cal­ly like elab­o­rate film sto­ry-boards, their low over­head is exact­ly what dis­tin­guish­es them so strong­ly from film: Their cre­ativ­i­ty is unlim­it­ed by bud­get, and cre­ators can take tremen­dous risks. What­ev­er the main­stream palata­bil­i­ty of (alter­nate dimen­sion) Peter Park­er eat­ing Aunt May’s brain, this has been one of the most pop­u­lar things that Ryan’s been involved with among com­ic book read­ers.

Learn more about Fred’s work at fredvanlente.com. You can read there about how Fred con­structs scripts; the one Mark refers to with the mys­te­ri­ous­ly changed coat is right there high­light­ed at the top of this page, and there are also sev­er­al sam­ple scripts includ­ing the one for Action Philoso­phers: Immanuel Kant that demon­strates Fred’s meth­ods for vivid­ly explain­ing a com­plex idea.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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An Introduction to Rap Battles: Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #71

in Comedy, Music, Podcasts, Poetry, Pretty Much Pop | December 3rd, 2020

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are rejoined by our audio edi­tor and res­i­dent rap­per Tyler His­lop (rap name: “Sac­ri­fice”) to dis­cuss a form of enter­tain­ment close to his heart: Two peo­ple star­ing each oth­er in the face in front of a crowd and tak­ing lengthy turns insult­ing each oth­er in a loud voice using intri­cate rhymes, ref­er­ences, jokes and even some cul­tur­al com­men­tary and philo­soph­i­cal spit-balling.

So what are the rules? How does mod­ern bat­tle rap com­pare to free-styling, the beefs aired on rap albums, and clas­sic insult com­e­dy? What’s the appeal of this art form? Is it because of or despite the aggres­sion involved? Bat­tle rap is regard­ed as a free speech zone, where any­thing’s fair game, but does that real­ly make sense?

A few rel­e­vant films came up in the dis­cus­sion:

  • Bod­ied (2017), a film writ­ten by Alex Larsen (aka Kid Twist) and pro­duced by Eminem, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al cur­rent bat­tle rap­pers doing their thing along with dis­cus­sion by the char­ac­ters of the eth­i­cal issues involved
  • 8 Mile (2002), a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film star­ring Eminem, which dis­plays the old­er, free-styling over a beat type of bat­tle rap­ping
  • Rox­anne Rox­anne (2017) a biopic about Rox­anne Shante depict­ing hip-hop rival­ries of the 1980s.

Here are some match­es Tyler rec­om­mend­ed that also get men­tioned:

More resources:

Hear Tyler talk about his many rap albums on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #24.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Kevin Allison (The State, RISK!) Discusses Confessional Comedy on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #70

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 25th, 2020

Kevin was in the infa­mous, NYU-based sketch com­e­dy group The State which had a show for a sea­son on MTV and seemed like it was going to get picked up by CBS, but no. After sev­er­al years get­ting over this dis­ap­point­ment, Kevin dis­cov­ered a new out­let for his ener­gies: He deliv­ers, curates, and coach­es per­son­al sto­ries (bor­der­ing on too per­son­al, thus the “risk”) for his stage show and pod­cast RISK!

Kevin joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss this idio­syn­crat­ic form: Do the sto­ries have to be fun­ny? Can you change things? What’s the rela­tion to auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, humor­ous essays a la David Sedaris? What might be too per­son­al or actu­al­ly indi­cat­ing trau­ma to actu­al­ly share on RISK? This seems like some­thing any­one can do, so what’s the role of craft and sto­ry-telling his­to­ry?

Lis­ten to RISK at risk-show.com, and watch many sto­ries on the RISK! YouTube chan­nel. Also: kevinallison.net, thestorystudio.org, and @thekevinallison. Kev­in’s sto­ry about pros­ti­tut­ing him­self is about 14 min­utes into this episode. Hear Kevin on Marc Maron’s WTF! Lis­ten to that audio guide Kevin men­tions, “What Every RISK! Sto­ry­teller Should Know.” Read about the four lies of sto­ry­telling.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, the hosts tell (or at least out­line) their own RISK!-like sto­ries, and the result is pre­dictably too per­son­al for our pub­lic feed.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Pop Songs with Narrative: Pretty Much Pop (#69) Discusses Tunes Ranging from Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” to “The Pina Colada Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 18th, 2020

Plen­ty of songs pur­port to tell sto­ries, and the nar­ra­tive bal­lad of course has a long enough his­to­ry that the two forms cer­tain­ly aren’t alien. But how do our lis­ten­ing prac­tices con­di­tioned by pop music jibe with rec­og­niz­ing and under­stand­ing nar­ra­tive?

Singer/songwriter and short sto­ry author Rod Picott joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about clas­sics by writ­ers like Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash, for­ma­tive night­mares like “Leader of the Pack” and “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song), bor­der­line cas­es like “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and more. We also con­sid­er how this form relates to musi­cal the­ater, music videos, sound­tracks, and com­mer­cials.

We tried to stick to pop­u­lar songs, but most of us are pret­ty old. You can lis­ten and read the lyrics if you’re not fol­low­ing:

Why these songs? Well, we found a few lists online:

Hear Mark inter­view Rod on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Learn more at rodpicott.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, an update on Rod’s music plus polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and more.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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