Tessa  0:23  
Welcome to nanny ox book club a Discworld podcast. Join us as we read through all 41 of the fantastical and outrageous Discworld novels. I'm Tessa and I'm Nigel. This is episode 10. Moving Pictures. Moving Pictures is the 10th book in the Discworld series published in 1990. The book is the first sort of standalone novel in what is generally referred to as the industrial revolutions thread of the Discworld series, focusing on steampunk magic hybrid technology. This is our 10th episode. How does it feel to be almost a quarter of the way done with the series Nigel?

Nigel  1:06  
I can't believe I'm a decade old Alright, I

Tessa  1:14  
want you to know that I started the summary in a world gone mad. Oh, excellent, then I didn't actually know where to go from there. But anyway, in a world gone mad. Victor toogle Bend has studiously avoided being a real wizard and getting entangled with magic for years. But one night, he sees a moving picture recently created by the alchemist skilled and finds himself bound for Hollywood, the place where dreams come true. The alchemists insist that moving pictures are not magic. But Victor, along with his co star, ginger and gasp, bowed. The Wonder Dog slowly realized that holy wood is an ancient place with its own kinds of magic that threatens to tear reality apart and lead in the things of the dungeon dimensions. It's up to them to create their own reality and save the world just in the nick of time using a little movie magic with 1000 elephants. All right, Nigel, what were your first impressions of this novel? This strange strange little novel?

Nigel  2:16  
I loved this.

Tessa  2:17  
What did you love about it?

Nigel  2:19  
I think all of it well, okay. There's one thing that I didn't like, my favorite thing was the way it described Hollywood as an entity and the way it drempt on its own, you know, it feels very Lovecraftian very Shirley Jackson, you know, whatever. dreamt whatever walked the halls in Hill House walked alone.

Tessa  2:41  
There's even a part at the end where they it's referred to as cinema, but with a C T at the beginning like cinema CTHIN e x cinema, cinema. So Holy Wood is a place but it's also an idea and it's an idea that wants to be dressed like it dreams and it wants to be discovered. It wants to be acted out. Yeah. So you liked that sort of. Again, I wish there was a better word for it. And I think I'm just gonna start calling it it is generally known as Lovecraftian but I think you're just gonna start calling it Gemma Sian. Like the NK Jemisin. The city we became, oh,

Nigel  3:28  
yeah, although the city we became does fall into explicitly Lovecraftian with raelia.

Tessa  3:35  
Right, but it's it's like anti Yeah, of craft like it was written by NK Jemisin as a response to Lovecraft, who was of course, as we know, incredibly racist.

Nigel  3:45  
Yeah, and this is actually a bonus Nigel References The Mountain Goats but there is a mountain goat song off of the album heretic pride called Lovecraft in Brooklyn, which imagines like a day in his life of being just a paranoid racist. And it has some of the best just like lyrical play in it, you know? Where it's like I woke up this morning afraid of my friend about shade went headed down to the pawn shop to buy myself a switchblade. Oh, yeah, sorry, I woke up afraid of my shadow, like genuinely afraid. They don't use the word shade. There, I'm afraid with switchblade.

Tessa  4:25  
Dear listeners, if you don't know this about Lovecraft, you really should do some research on it. He was a terrible racist. He was afraid of being replaced, which is where a lot of the Lovecraftian Horror comes along. And of course, we've often heard white supremacist talk in this sort of language like you will not replace us that kind of thing. So that's where a lot of the those ideas kind of coalesce into this type of horror. But there have been authors who have done it much better than he has without sort of the racist overtones.

Nigel  4:56  
Yeah, there's also another explicit Lovecraft reference In this, it's at the end when the senior faculty when senior university are talking about the the creature from Hollywood, and they say, like, be careful that is not dead, which kind of turn a lie, which is a line directly from Lovecraft.

Tessa  5:15  
And one of them is like, it looks pretty bloody dead to me. Yeah.

Nigel  5:18  
Like the line is something like that is not dead, which kind of turn a lie but even in strange aeons death, conduct something like that. I got sent that in cathartic or whatever language it is that Lovecraft uses. I got sent that just as a message from a random person when I made a meme about how just how much of a little bit kung fu is really. I've never listened to creepy. Yeah, I've never listened to an episode of this show. So I don't know what the swearing policy is. So I don't know what you're gonna do with how much a little bitch because they live, it's,

Tessa  5:52  
I just leave it. I figured this is not a family friendly podcast. So

Nigel  5:56  
sorry to not listen to it. But it's like, I just cannot listen to my own voice. So

Tessa  6:01  
Oh, I understand. I mean, I get enough listening to my own voice with editing it. Hmm. I do want to talk about all the references because I would say that a good 75% of this book is meta references, especially to classic Hollywood cinema, and the cultural context of Hollywood of making movies, etc. So I do want to talk about that. But before that, let's talk about the characters and sort of the plot of the book. And then we can just like, go to town on all of the references that we recognize, because there are so many like we're

Nigel  6:34  
at hargus House of ribs.

Tessa  6:37  
Like we're at hargus House of ribs. So let's start with Victor. So Victor tickle bend is a character that we haven't seen before he the he is the main character of this one book. So we've seen this before and Terry Pratchett where we'll we'll just get these like, one off characters that are are important, but don't necessarily have a through line in the series. What did you think about Victor toogle bend? I just like saying his last name. Not mer Shino, which is the name he gets given. When he becomes a moving picture star?

Nigel  7:11  
I don't know. He was all right. He was kind of like the blonde every man that a Hollywood actor, especially like a character actor in the early days of cinema had to be I enjoyed his like, dedication to not doing anything. Like I can really empathize with that as someone who does too much.

Tessa  7:32  
Yeah, I like how at the beginning, he is given this legacy from his rich uncle, right, who dies, but the conditions are that he has to go to school, so unseen University, and he has to make at least an 80% on his exams. But Victor doesn't want to be a wizard because as we know, prior to this book, being a wizard is not necessarily the safest career choice. And so he doesn't want to be a wizard, but he doesn't want to leave school. He knows that the passing grade on the exams every year is an 88. So he consistently makes an 84 which I thought was quite excellent. This reminded me of like, old Kipling stories about boarding schools and like the high jinks that students would get up to the

Nigel  8:22  
sea when you said Kipling there I know you mean the road yard variety, but my brain was like, she means the Mr. Variety who makes exceedingly delicious cake.

Tessa  8:33  
See, I'm not familiar with that. I'm just familiar with the red haired kind.

Nigel  8:37  
Oh my God, come over to the UK and try some of Mr. Kipling's confectioneries

Tessa  8:43  
Yeah, I'm on a plane right now. Actually, as I am recording this podcast,

Nigel  8:47  
you're on a plane right now. What the fuck right now on a plane? Can all the other people on the plane like be a part of this episode?

Tessa  8:56  
Now this is the time when I pull out all of my voices and you realize that I don't have a lot of voices. It's just my voice. Incredible. So I think Victor is interesting, mainly from the perspective that he's clearly born to be a celebrity he doesn't really want to do anything much but he works very hard at not doing anything but he's very attractive and he has that like thin mustache that was considered like the height of attractiveness in male movie stars in especially the silent era. But also in you know, early Hollywood.

Nigel  9:30  
Yeah, like Lon Chaney, Jr. Yeah. Clark Gable,

Tessa  9:33  
or Fred Astaire, you know, there's like a lot of different people that had this look, and it's almost like that look is what draws him into Hollywood to make these moving pictures. It's almost like he had to have the look down first. And then that's how Hollywood plugs him into the stream that it's having.

Nigel  9:52  
I don't know well, cuz like, I thought that for a while, but then at the end isn't it just revealed that it's like people are drawn to Hollywood because they're testers were from there.

Tessa  10:01  
Yeah, but why is it Victor who is the star? And not somebody else? Like, I think that his ancestors did come from there. But I imagine that the reason he plays the role that he's supposed to play is because of how he looks.

Nigel  10:17  
Yeah, he comes from a line of exceptionally good looking men and women.

Tessa  10:22  
Exactly, exactly. We also get his co star ginger, because there are two main femme Patel characters. In this book. There's ginger, and there's Ruby, the troll. He has sworn that he did not intentionally named them after redheads, ginger and Ruby. A lot of people have drawn the connection to Scarlet from Gone With the Wind, which is, of course, a huge part of this book. He says that was not on purpose.

Nigel  10:49  
I thought the ginger was a reference to Fred and Ginger like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Tessa  10:54  
Yeah, I think he was going more for that. But I just think it's also interesting that both of them have names that basically mean red. So like that could be like a reference to Gone With the Wind. But she is she comes from like this little town that you have never ever heard of like, this is a classic, Hollywood Hollywood story, right? Like she comes from this like place in the middle of nowhere, she gets discovered, she, you know, becomes this movie star. And she like, Victor says she has this great ambition, but it's not for money and power. It's to be herself, right to be herself, but as big as possible.

Nigel  11:30  
I have conflicting feelings about her because on the one hand, she's meant to be this, like, she meant to be the heroine of the novel. But she fall and I think that's kind of the point that she falls into, like the very, you know, like misogynist, the tropes that women like, like their roles had for them in 50s and 60s films, you know, like, this is kind of inverted with the the bid at the end, the party of King Kong, but like, the Jane in King Kong, you know how she's like kind of the swoony, you know, and that's the role she plays in every single film, where she gets kidnapped. And Victor has to go and get her. So it's like, I'm faced with this dilemma of Is she a good character that can stand on her own or issue good character? Because she's not the character that she plays in the book, if that makes sense.

Tessa  12:27  
Yeah. And what's interesting about her too, is that although the moving pictures that are being made in the book are, they're silent films, right? They never discover how to put sound to the film. So we don't get any sound DS as they recalled when they were first created. But the way that she and Victor interact is very much similar to the patter of the the Oh, God, what are they called? The the name is slipping my mind. The like, It Happened One Night, screwball comedy, the way that they interact is very reminiscent of the screwball comedy, which is a very specific genre film that relies a lot on dialogue. And it relies a lot on sort of an enemies to lovers type of narrative, where, like, when a deathly, yeah, they don't really like each other, but they're attracted to each other. But there's a lot of back and forth between them. The woman especially is sort of, like put off by the man, but she's attracted to him. And they're, they slowly, through a series of high jinks come closer and closer together. That's kind of the relationship between them, right? She's not all that impressed by him at the beginning. But she, as as they go along. And as they go through these things, they start to slowly realize and there's this great moment, I think, at the end, where it's like the where they realize that they almost have to be together not just because they are attracted to each other. But because there's literally no one else on the disc that has been through what they have been through like no one else understands. The Celebrity like the the magic or the world bending power of celebrity. What did you think about their relationship?

Nigel  14:10  
I'm sorry, you're asking me what I thought about a romantic relationship and his affection.

Tessa  14:15  
I understand.

Nigel  14:16  
I just I feel like I always have to ask just to see like, cuz sometimes you seem like maybe you get a little invested. And then sometimes you're like, I don't care. And so that's the least surprising answer possible isn't I did not care. And that's fair. It's very basic. But the moment at the end is a nice moment, because I think it ties into oh my god, we're going to bring it up again, this notion of identity and where you belong in the Discworld where and it's kind of like a thing which happens to people who are survivors of trauma as well where they bond because they have this one defining experience, which is so alien to a large population or a large part of the population. And you know, like, because really, they were just movie stars. But you know, as what we've seen from documentary evidence, and like with Disney Channel stars and stuff, how grueling being in the public eye can be. So it is a form of trauma to be in the public eye. That's a good quote, write that down. It is a form of trauma to be in the public eye. But then I'm also going to just follow it up with, you know, it is also a form of trauma to be terrorized by beings outside of this universe.

Tessa  15:27  
Right, yeah. It's funny how the two come together in this

Nigel  15:30  
my quote, Lovecraft again, of course, because just because I had to, like find some quotes, where I'm quoting him in my dissertation. And so this is from the start of the Call of Cthulhu. The Most Merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

Tessa  15:52  
I really like that I have read that story. But it's been a really long time. But yeah, the idea of we have so much of our brain that we just can't even. Yeah, we can't access all of it.

Nigel  16:08  
Yeah. And because it's like it would it would be actively harmful to us. If we did.

Tessa  16:15  
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Like pure knowledge of everything, we would just not even be able to handle that. So we get these two very, like, I mean, I think they're, they're good characters, but they are pretty basic in Victor and ginger, which I think like you said, is part of the point. Like they're supposed to be celebrity, like, every man, right? Or every woman like this idea that you can sort of read all of these different references onto them. Yeah. We also get one of my favorite characters of the Discworld is introduced in this book, we get Gaspard, the Wonder Dog.

Nigel  16:52  
I was uncertain about him to begin with, I have to say, because it was just like, Oh, he's another talking character in Pratchett, who speaks with a regional accent and it's like, okay. And the gimmick is then that he's just like a talking dog. I was like, Sure, that's fine. But then, like, I gradually grew more and more like, empathetic with him. I see you like, especially when he's with daddy and daddy is barking and saying, complete and utter like, just nonsense. You know, just good boy, lady, lady. Good boy. And Gustavo is actually talking and everyone ignores him. Yes. When it gets to the point where death visits them, when they're underneath the rubble of cinema pitch. I was like, I was like, oh, no, he's going to die. I cared about that didn't care about the relationship between Victor and ginger but cared about Caspar.

Tessa  17:47  
So Terry Pratchett originally, I know a lot of trivia about this book somehow. But Terry Pratchett originally meant for Gaspard, to die at the end of this book, because dogs usually die in movies about them. That's sort of like a trope with a lot of movies involving dogs

Nigel  18:03  
that reference out that maybe Hollywood has something against dogs, right.

Tessa  18:07  
Right, exactly. But his editors and beta readers loved Gaspard so much that they convinced him to actually keep Gaspard alive, which is great because we get to see him and other books and I actually think he serves really important roles and other books. Some of my favorite dog jokes in other books are around Gaspard, the Wonder Dog, although they don't call him the Wonder Dog in other books.

Nigel  18:30  
Well, that's just because Gus bought the wonder dog does. I was thinking about that and like how that makes sense, because we get the interaction where he's like, we're Gaspard says, I thought to be a black dog, you know, big this big black dog would come and collect me and that says, No, it's just me at the end, you know, very much like what he says to more there is no justice are only me. And then I was like, but then he did the old switcheroo again, where the the hourglass sets the word starts filling up again, like he did what more 20 flipped it which and so it's like, well, Gaspard, the wonder dog dies, and after that, he becomes to be like more of a dog, you know, and he he sees the monochrome world again. Right? So like he dies and is reborn, essentially. And so then it made sense in my head because I'm like, I don't know how that would work. Because again, the timeline is a bit iffy and I know this takes place before repairman right? But I feel like this is definitely one of the incidents that would make the auditors be like we need to sack death. Yeah, also, I really want a series now where this is like a thing. And then they come together to form a team. All of these people who death has like reverse flipped the hourglass on and so the more Gaspard and then I don't know a bunch of other characters will probably meet to this happen. it'd become like the Avengers of the Discworld.

Tessa  20:00  
So gas bought and more at this point I

Nigel  20:02  
think right yeah, just that but we'll probably meet a whole bunch more. That's what I want.

Tessa  20:08  
That would be really great. I we're gonna have to keep a track of that because he I think those are the only two we've seen so far that he's flipped the timer around. God spot is not the only animal to acquire talking abilities Hollywood or Hollywood has also given talking abilities to a cat and a mouse who are clearly supposed to be Tom and Jerry from the Tom Jerry cartoons. We also get a rabbit which is a Bugs Bunny reference. Most of them are animated, right, but we still we get a duck which is a Daffy Duck reference or Donald Duck either way. So yeah, I think that that's interesting. There are a lot of animated ducks in cartoons. Like, I just started realizing this as I was reading it. I'm like, is he Daffy? Or is he Donald? Like there's too many

Nigel  20:51  
of these he Daffy Donald Darkwing Scrooge Huey Louie Dewey, duck Dodgers. granted a lot of those are kind of just formations on Daffy, like duck Dodgers is just Daffy but in the future in the 24th in a one half century, but yeah. Daisy, Daisy is also a duck. Daisy is also a duck. That's true. Tina Russo. Yeah,

Tessa  21:18  
I do love that scene that you referenced, so earlier with Gaspard, where he and Laddie who is clearly supposed to be like a Lassie reference, they run from a cave classic, classic lassoo storyline, Victor and ginger find themselves stuck in a cave and Laddie and gasp, bowed, go to the nearest bar to tell the people there, what had happened and lead them back to the cave. And what's great about this is that and it's a thread throughout the entire book is that Gaspard is the Wonder Dog, he is the one who has the ability to speak. He is the one who gains like this, this consciousness that's not generally available to animals. However, he doesn't look like a dog that belongs in a movie, right? He's kind of an elderly Terrier, his teeth aren't great. He's got fleas and hard paw and he's been on the street his whole life. There's a really sad backstory in there. I don't know if you notice that. But I was like, oh, man, Gaspard. You have a terrible backstory. But he doesn't look like it. And the whole point is, is that in cinema, you have to look like the role. And Laddie even though he doesn't talk, he looks like a dog. He can do tricks, and he is beautiful. And he looks like a dog that belongs there. And so even with Gaspard, who was so nervous about revealing his ability to talk to these trolls, he just gets completely ignored in favor of Laddie who can't talk but somehow manages to take them back to the cave to rescue Victor and ginger is a great ironic scene. The small wiry moth eaten dog thought hard about the difference between looking and acting like a Wonder Dog and merely being one. It said Blucher. So yeah, like the idea of the difference between looking and acting like a Wonder Dog and merely being one. That's a big part, I think of this idea of movies, right? The movies are almost more real than reality, because of the ways in which they create and replicate these narratives that we think this is how it's supposed to happen. This is how it's supposed to look, as opposed to reality, which doesn't look that way and doesn't happen that way. But it's really real.

Nigel  23:27  
Yeah, and we get that in, we get that when they build the discount model of ONC more pork, you know, where it says it looks realer than more pork, you know, right? Before they go on burnish?

Tessa  23:39  
Yeah, let's talk about that. So obviously, there's a lot of Lovecraftian stuff going on here. But a big part of this is this idea that cinema even though it's not magic, in the technical sense, it's not unseen University magic. It's not head ology magic. But it's like it is this reality bending experience in which people while they're looking at the screen, believe that it's real in a way that perhaps they don't have that same experience in the theater or reading a book or being told a story. Like there's something about the visual aspect of moving pictures that kind of surpasses that part of your brain that tells you that this is a story.

Nigel  24:24  
Yeah, like I mean, a difference, I suppose main differences. Like there's a disconnect, like when you go and watch something in the theatre. You can see the actors on stage right there. When you go to a movie. Yeah, it's real people. And this is animated, but it's real people, providing the voices, you know, but there's a disconnect where they're not you don't have that tangible feeling. So the only feeling that there is is the shared feeling between audience members as opposed to the shared feeling between audience members and people on stage and the like experience of that trend. Because when you Watching theatre, you know, it's transformative, they do something and you imagine it, whereas films, it's just put in front of your face. And this is what it is.

Tessa  25:10  
Right? And I just keep coming back to this. It's more real than reality. Because I mean, I've had this experience. And I'm curious to know if you ever have this idea where I will realize something isn't actually real. But I sort of believed it was real based on a movie or based on like TV or something like, like TV lied to me, you know, I thought that I was going to have more friends when I was an adult, and we would all live in an apartment together or you know, something like that. I've never seen friends, I presume it's a reference to that. I was thinking more How I Met Your Mother, but also friends never seen that one, too. But you know what I mean? Like, where you think something is real? Because you've seen it in movies enough times? And then you're like, Oh, that's not actually real.

Nigel  25:54  
I have never had that experience. Really. I'm shocked. Yeah, I'm too busy dealing with like, things that my mind makes up having to like, deal with whether they're real or not. One time, I had a dream that I like, went up from my bedroom up to the sitting room in my house, and there was a ghost there and a chase us out of the sitting room. And it was a dream. But like for ages, my brain was like, yeah, that just totally happened.

Tessa  26:25  
I'm not saying like, it's real, as in like, I've consciously thought, oh, like, this is what real life looks like. It's just like, you see something like the way that you watch movies and the way that you watch television or anything that's on a screen like that. It bends the way that you view reality. And then one day you wake up and you're like, oh, actually, that's not like that. So like, I mean, the obvious parallel to make here would be beauty standards, right? Like this idea that if you see enough thin people on screen, and you're being told like this is what's beautiful, this is what a beautiful woman looks like that eventually you will start to think that that is actually what a beautiful woman looks like. And then one day, you might be like, Oh, well, actually, there's a lot of different ways that women can be beautiful. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, like the idea that it like bends reality around it through the power of like this visual discourse, where we're like, oh, this is what reality should look like. This is how it should feel. When it's not, I

Nigel  27:25  
never had that experience, either. But

Tessa  27:28  
I mean, I guess it's fair. I just I that's kind of what this reminded me of was that experience this idea that, like, when we watch a movie, it seems more real, it seems more satisfying than real life.

Nigel  27:40  
Is it a good one? Should I be jealous that you've experienced this? And I haven't.

Tessa  27:44  
No, you shouldn't be jealous. It's actually heartbreaking when you realize that, oh, like actually everything I thought, like, you feel tricked a lot of times like this idea of like, Oh, I thought that life was gonna be better, or that, that my life was gonna follow this narrative or that this was the kind of experience that people have no hope. That's not how it is at all. Incidentally, that's why representation is actually really important. People talk about it, like, it's just a token thing. But actually, it's more about tapping into the ways that movies do that to people. Like maybe if we saw different kinds of people on screen, we all treat each other better. Yeah, it's kind of the theory behind it.

Nigel  28:23  
To that, I guess, sort of, there's a another mountain goats lyric, which is not the one for Nigel Coast mountain goats. This one another bonus. Another bonus. Yes, is from the song you are cool, which is an unreleased one. But you can see them perform it live, sometimes videos on YouTube. The second verse says it's good to be young. But let's not kid ourselves. It's better to pass on through those years and come out the other side with our hearts still beating, having stared down, demons come back breathing. And I think to your point of, you know, waking up one day, and realizing that it's not, things aren't how you thought they would be or thought that they were? And like, Yeah, you made it through those times. But it's better to have gone through them and come out the other side, instead of being like, do I want to live in that space that I've just been through?

Tessa  29:21  
Right? I'm not saying that it's a bad realization. It's just not a pleasant one. No, it's always good to realize that when you're unconsciously absorbing something that isn't true, it's always good to realize that it's not true. But of course, because Hollywood and moving pictures are more real than real, that creates like a puncture in the walls of reality. And the danger of course, is letting the dungeon dimension

Nigel  29:47  
creatures I'm so glad they're back

Tessa  29:51  
our constant companions when it comes to wizardry and in fact, there's this great scene. Again, we're back to the really good imagery. Like I said, I couldn't really imagine the mall in Reaper man, I could imagine this and it was great. The scene where the giant ginger crawls out of the movie screen is like one of my favorite images in this. It reminded me a lot of the film the ring, or ring glue, if you're if you're looking at the Japanese original version, where she crawls out of the video screen, it's a horrific moment in the film. But it also reminded me of like that again, love crafty and like the screen is actually the portal from the dungeon dimensions into the Discworld.

Nigel  30:35  
Yeah, that's a point as well, this book is what I wish the subplot about the malls in reprimanding was like, it should have had its own book like this. You know, and you like I was saying they should have given like a relation to death plot to do with the, you know, like that window Poons on the second chance club would do where they would figure out about the buildup in excess energy and excess life energy. But it would be you know, like it would be just to do with death instead of having malls come in, you know. And so the right, right would have a book about malls, which would be like, moving pictures where I don't know, maybe, like the way that everyone starts going to Holy wood, everyone would start, like spending time in this mole that had been set up on the outskirts of Ark more pork, where, you know, where people, instead of going into a trance, in a film in a click here, they would be like pushing a trolley around, you know, mindlessly, and then you know, you'd wake them off. And they'd be like, What the fuck am I doing? I don't know. That's the type of book. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's the type of book that I wanted that plotline to be like this book, but about malls. I thought that this was an excellent use of the things from the dungeon dimensions. I like that they

Tessa  32:07  
have to obey the Hollywood rules, when they come into the Discworld reality, which as we know, Discworld reality is stretched a little thinner, because it doesn't have as much reality as, say, a real world like Earth. And so it makes it easier for the dungeon dimensions to pierce through that barrier. But once it's here, it has to follow the rules of Hollywood. Yeah,

Nigel  32:29  
I mean, this is literally the climactic moment of his chapter to where they bully it to death for some reason. You know, because you have to follow the rules of the shape you assume.

Tessa  32:43  
Exactly. And that's a pretty classic mythological trope, right? Like if you're in a certain shape, if you can catch a god or something in a certain shape, you can sort of manipulate it into doing what you want it to do. Yeah, it also is the climactic scene from King Kong. Because yes, the ginger thing from the dungeon dimensions climbs up the tower of art while holding the librarian in its hand, well read Kali and the bursar fly around it on a broom trying to hit it with a crossbow. So it's like a reversal of King Kong.

Nigel  33:19  
Yeah. Analog gender swapped King Kong.

Tessa  33:25  
I like how when they're filming it when Saul Dibbler and the handle man are trying to capture it on film, how they're like it's missing a certain something and then read Kali and the bursar show up on the broom. And it's just like, oh, yeah, like you need the planes right in that screen in that shot. Let's talk a little bit about the wizard aspect of this. So we get to see window wounds. You weren't expecting to see window wounds again, we're you know, did

Nigel  33:51  
you do this on purpose?

Tessa  33:53  
I did not actually, I've only read moving pictures once and it was when I was a teenager. I think it was because I didn't appreciate the meta references and the steampunk pneus of it as I do now. So I appreciate it a lot more now than I did then. And I had completely forgotten that Windell Poons was in this

Nigel  34:10  
Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about what they did to his character. Which is strange because it this is the opposite of how his character played out like he was in this then he was the window Poons that I liked in Reaper mount because he kind of turns into this like weirdly horned up older man which is like, is emblematic of what the wizards are. In Pratchett you know, with their the sexless upper class, the old guard of Britain. Mm hmm. And so I guess it takes death to like, free him from that, but as well I don't know. Like, I don't don't like that.

Tessa  34:49  
Yeah, we get to see him Old before he dies and comes back as a zombie. So this is before he gains that clarity of death. Yeah. So he's all like in this old box. And you know, being very much ruled by the body's impulses by the fog of old age. I do love the description of his wheelchair like the cast iron welded wheelchair with all of the like the horns and, and bells and stuff on it. I thought that was great. But yeah, he is definitely a punch line, right like the rest of the wizards are very sexless. They're very upper crusty, and he is just supposed to be like the horny old dude.

Nigel  35:28  
Yeah. Well, I thought, although we are told he's the oldest was going to say what I thought was interesting was, Victor confirms that it's the oldest wizard which then makes his passing in Reeperbahn, nearly solder the fight because like, between this book, and then no one will have gotten older than him. Because that's not how aging works. You can't age faster than someone unless, like, Roger zactly, but he's the oldest wizard on the face of the disk. And they don't care. They don't care.

Tessa  36:01  
Or I think they care. But in a like, I think that the problem with the Wizards is that they just don't see death the same way as perhaps the rest of the disc, because they're just very, like, not used to it, but they understand it. And since they can know their own deaths, I think that they just get prepared for it more easily. I guess. I don't know how to exactly put what I'm trying to say. Does that make any sense?

Nigel  36:30  
Yeah, it does. But if that were the case, why is Windows surprised when they assign his room to someone else? When he's dead? Why does he feel betrayed.

Tessa  36:38  
I think that's more of like a gut reaction of he wasn't expecting to live that long, or he wasn't expecting to come back.

Nigel  36:45  
I don't know. I'm part of the window. Poons fan club,

Tessa  36:48  
window Poons fan club right here. So we also get, of course, read Kali, and we get a little added to his backstory of how he became our chancellor. I love this. The the wizards after the events of sorcery, which remember, they can't remember very well, because of the ways in which the it was just too much magic. But obviously, there was a lot of chaos in the wake of sorcery. And they were like, we just need someone really dependable, who's not going to make a lot of fuss for a couple of months while we try to sort everything out. And so they decided to call back raid Collie who has been like away from the university, which explains why we haven't seen his character before. Did you notice they call him read Kali? The brown? Yeah. Which is a reference, of course to Lord of the Rings. Yeah. Like that's part of the joke, right, is that they are expecting someone like Rata gas, the brown from Lord of the Rings. But who shows up is Bostrom red Collie? Yeah, who is like, the most anti? Whatever it is, you would think a country wizard who's interested in like, the plants and the animals and the move like the movements of the Earth would be about

Nigel  38:04  
I thought it was very funny. The fact that he like, got to be an eighth level wizard. By the time he was like 30 and then just decided that's enough for me and left I thought that was hilarious. Because the whole thing is like, getting as high as possible, as you can, you know. And it says he's like being a wizard you need someone to look down upon and someone to aspire to take their place. Ridiculous. He got that very early, and then just left while everyone else was playing power games. Presumably, he was around at the same time that like Galder Weatherwax. And what's the guy who basically becomes hosts to the things in the demon dimensions?

Tessa  38:46  
Treiman Yeah,

Nigel  38:47  
trauma, like he would have been around when they were still like plotting against one another. He's an eighth level wizard he would have been you know, you know, he would have witnessed that because he's a high level wizard. And he just decided no, no, not for me. I like that this is his first job as our Chancellor you know, like, like not not for any like textual reason, I think it's just good for continuity that there is a definitive point because all of the other Chancellor's have been there the like in-situ Except for when Wayzgoose is about to be elected in sorcery is good for continuity reasons.

Tessa  39:26  
He's so energetic compared to the other wizards and because he's been away for so long. He doesn't have like the institutional inertia. That seems to plague a lot of the other wizards like the we've always done it this way or this is what life is supposed to be like for wizard he is very anti all of that. So when they're talking about him at the beginning, they say within 12 hours of arriving red Collie had installed a pack of hunting dragons in the butler's pantry fired his dreadful crossbow at the Ravens on the ancient tower of Drunk a dozen bottles of red wine and rolled off to bed at two in the morning singing a song with words in it that some of the older and more forgetful wizards had to look up. And then he got up at five o'clock to go duck hunting down in the marshes on the estuary, and came back complaining that there wasn't a good trout fishing river for miles, you couldn't fish in the river off, you had to jump up or down on the hooks to even make them sink. And he ordered beer with his breakfast. And he told jokes. Like this is all very like anti, the different levels of wizards playing against each other trying to gain power. Like this is someone who's very secure in who he is, is very smart. But also bulldozes everyone around him and to doing what he wants. Yeah, he's very like the patrician, I can see that they have two different styles. But the outcomes are very similar. Yeah,

Nigel  40:50  
because I'm thinking again, of the line from Reaper Mom, where, you know, you know, if someone was still trying to tell you something after a couple minutes, then he he knew it was important that way of like, basically, fielding calls, but verbally, I could see the patrician doing that. But also, I love that list of the things that Richard Kelly does, which are anathema to wizardry because it feels like a mounting list and therefore at the top the thing which is the worst, he tells jokes,

Tessa  41:22  
he tells jokes, we definitely get that part of it.

Nigel  41:26  
Mushroom red color, you are charged with crimes against wizardry most senior telling jokes,

Tessa  41:35  
telling jokes. Going back to what you were saying about the patrician though the patrician is in this in two different places. But it actually kind of goes with what you were saying because there's this great scene near the end, where he's sitting in the in the movie theater, and he's about to watch this film and he doesn't really he's not completely clear on what moving pictures are. But he doesn't care. Why are all the lamps being turned down? He said, Ah, sir is a Dibbler it's so you can see the pictures better, is it one would imagine it would make the pictures harder to see. So the patrician. It's not like that with the moving pictures, sir. So Dibbler how very fascinating. The patrician lean the other way to ginger and Victor. To his mild surprise, they were looking extremely tense. He noticed that as soon as they had walked into the ODM, the boy looked at all the ridiculous ornamentation as if it was something dreadful. And when the girl had stepped into the pit proper, he'd heard her gasp they all looked like they were in shock. Skipping down a bit. I expect this is all perfectly commonplace to you. He said. No, said Victor. Not really. We've never been in a proper picture pit before. Except once, said ginger, grimly. Yes, except once. But you make moving pictures, said the patrician kindly. Yes, but we never see them. We just see bits of them when the Handelman are gluing it all together. The only clicks I've ever seen were on old sheet outdoors, said Victor. So this is all new to you. So the patrician, not exactly said Victor gray faced. Fascinating. So the patrician and went back to not listening to Dibbler. He had not got to where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. So this is very similar to read Kali in the sense that he's like not listening. He does not care how moving pictures are made. He doesn't care about the technical parts of it. He has people who care about that for him. What he cares about is how people work, how they view the world and how they change the world around them. And that's why he's the patrician.

Nigel  43:38  
I really like that because it reminds me of the scene in guards cards where Vimes slowly realizes that the locks are on the inside of the cell. That's how he imagines the patricians mind to be a thing of steel traps and moving cogs where he's got the requisite amount of information to do his job and nothing else. Actually, the patrician seems to fall into the like Sherlock Holmes archetype, doesn't it? Like I can imagine him with a violin and a widow's peak? You know, like the patrician would never

Tessa  44:16  
He has a very cold aspect. Like Sherlock

Nigel  44:20  
would never stoop so low as to play the violin or any instrument for that matter. But he has someone to do that for him. Exactly. But that kind of thing where he just does not want to burden himself with useless knowledge.

Tessa  44:34  
Exactly what Sherlock does, right? There's a scene. It's in the book. And I don't think they actually talked about this in any of the adaptations I've ever seen. But he gets into an argument with Watson because Watson discovers that he's never the he does not know that the earth is around planet that the moon revolves around it and it revolves around the Sun. And he says, why should it care? It doesn't affect me or my work and that just takes up knowledge in my like space in my brain that could be used for other types of knowledge. And so he's like, I'm going to try to forget it as soon as possible, basically. And it's not that he believes the earth is flat. It's just whatever happens with the Earth or the celestial beings doesn't matter to him. Because what matters to him is his craft, which is detective work. Yeah, that's kind of what the patricians like here. Like he doesn't need to know how moving pictures are made. That doesn't affect his job.

Nigel  45:29  
Yeah, I feel like the patrician is a mix between Sherlock Holmes in the book. And I don't but also I don't imagine that the the patrician does. Coke recreationally like Sherlock does? No. But a mixture between

Tessa  45:46  
dog he has. Oh, what's his face waffles? He has waffles.

Nigel  45:51  
I think waffles. gasp both would get along.

Tessa  45:55  
We will have to see. Did they meet each other?

Nigel  45:59  
Yeah, like I mean, it goes back to them this whole idea of like identity on the Discworld with the Patricia vetinary he knows exactly who he is. Rinse when he's like rent sweat. You know, we're rinse and he's the good mom where if there's someone if it's a good thing that needs to be done, he's gonna do it, whether he likes it or not. And then an airy is someone needs to rule on Cmore pork and it's going and it's going to be him. You know where like, shout out to lousy. Like, I mean, he knows who he is. And he's good at his job. And another person who knows exactly who he is coming on through Gaebler.

Tessa  46:46  
Alright, what did you think about cut me on thread? Dibbler? I know you like him. Were you expecting to be a main character?

Nigel  46:54  
No, like I mean, when I got the when I picked up the book I kind of riffled through the pages on I like the bit at the end where the elephant man shows up to to talk to Colin and Nabil where he he, he's looking for him. So I saw that where they say cmo T Dibbler. And I was like, Oh, he's in this book. But I wasn't expecting it to be like this, you know, where like when I saw it from the moment I saw him and guard skirts. I was like, I love this man, I would die for this man. And then in in Reaper man where he's selling snowglobe so he's obviously gotten into the selling snowglobes that will end the world business to try and recoup his losses from Hollywood. But before the reveal, I thought this was really good the way they did it ties back into the elder char thing. You know, where they talk about having stars in their eyes, and how they're starstruck. Like I thought that was a really good way of doing it. And also like having seen re watched the Suicide Squad recently with star of the conqueror. This is very funny to me. But like I didn't like it before that reveal because I was like, Oh, they're taking I thought they were taking him in like an overly villainous direction. And I didn't like x I was like, That's against who Dibbler is. But now like with that reveal, because they say like he's got the biggest stars of all, like it's very depressing. Because he is just as much a victim, if not more so than pretty much everyone else except for except for ginger, because like Victor can break out for. For a lot of us she can kind of shirk off the control of Hollywood.

Tessa  48:49  
So the whole narrative is that the alchemist skilled who live on a street that like blood blows up a lot because that's what alchemy is they create the moving pictures. And the head of the alchemists guild becomes this movie producer Thomas silver fish. He's directly modeled on Samuel Goldwyn, whose real name was Samuel gelt fish

Nigel  49:09  
and Galveston chairman for gold and also money. actly. Exactly.

Tessa  49:13  
So we get that and he's known for a lot of like malapropisms, like, you'll never work in this town again and include me out which is stuff that silverfish says in the book. He sees this as a way to make historical or educational films, but Dibbler under the influence of the Hollywood dreaming, if that's what we want to call it, sees this as a money making project. He sees this as a way to make a lot of money. And it really ties into the commercialization of Hollywood, which I mean, as soon as they figured out that you could make money off of these things. It became all about making money, right? That's like the main driver of cinema.

Nigel  49:54  
Like he literally tries to invent like, it's just product placement that he Did he invents

Tessa  50:01  
Yeah. hargus House of ribs. Yeah, and the subliminal messaging, like the idea of putting a frame in there that doesn't belong there. But your eyes see it, but your brain doesn't necessarily notice it, but you can't stop thinking about it, which is a real thing. Okay, there was a cult in Japan called the armed syndicate that was doing that in the 90s, where they were putting, like, little subliminal messages in between frames of like television and trying to like get people to be brainwashed by them. What did you think of cut me on throw? Dibbler and his nephew, Sol Dibbler?

Nigel  50:39  
I don't know. It's very weird that his nephew has the same name as him. Because it feels like that, like Dibbler is his own name. I don't think he can have it or it's like a first name in the same way that we refer. It doesn't feel like a surname. Yeah, yeah, like the same way that we refer to the VINCI even if that's like his, quote, unquote, last name. Now, it's very weird that like, Saul has the same name as him. It's weird.

Tessa  51:03  
Yeah. And like, I do like how they abbreviate dribblers names. C M. O. T. Dibbler. I appreciate it that cut me off. Yeah. Yeah, he's our favorite sausage makers slash entrepreneur going into the movies.

Nigel  51:19  
It's not him, he himself that's shortened it. It's just like that they've taken it from his phrase, you know, which is every like street vendor, you know, and I'm putting me on throw it here, you know, basically killing themselves to sell it that cheap. nowhere, nowhere in the book so far as he referred to himself as cut me on throat Dibbler.

Tessa  51:39  
Right. But everybody else does, to the point where they've abbreviated it.

Nigel  51:44  
Yeah, everyone looks at him and goes, Oh, that's the guy who's, who talks about putting it on throw. That's what we'll call them.

Tessa  51:52  
There's another one of your favorite characters in this book to detritus, the splatter from the mended drum. He plays more of a role in this book than he does in previous books. We've seen him in he is dribblers bodyguard slash Enforcer. Aunty falls in love. What did you think about to try this as arc?

Nigel  52:13  
I like to try this in this book. But I don't care for the lover. Because it's like,

Tessa  52:18  
I like to surprise surprise.

Nigel  52:20  
Yeah, I don't know. Cuz it's like, this relationship with Ruby. I don't know, it's very weird, because I don't I'm not a fan of romance arcs when they're in stuff. I'm even less of a fan when they're in there. And they don't serve a point. They don't have a point. You know, because it's like, what is this? This isn't saying anything. Sorry to be so cynical. Like, what is the saying? That because like, I guess you can read it as a maybe a paralleling of the eventual getting together of Viktor and ginger. But like, why does that need paralleling that it doesn't. So all that it's really saying is out the people who aren't human, or don't look like the norm can find love. But it's like, this is the Discworld No shit. But then it's also just tied up really into this weird narrative where Ruby is telling him you know that, oh, he takes, you know, like, Oh, he's practicing this barbarous and old fashioned to old fashioned form of love. And she doesn't like that, because that's not like up to the modern standards of what a girl wants or whatever. But then her characters monologue inner monologue is like, Oh, I actually want this but I don't want to tell him because that's giving into him. Yeah, I don't know. It's a very weird route that they've gone.

Tessa  53:48  
Yeah, so the only reason I can think of why she's in this Ruby is she is supposed to be this femme fatale l character. I mean, she is Marlene Dietrich, in the 1930 film Blue Angel. There's a character that she plays called Lola Lola, who's like a cabaret entertainer who sings this song Falling in love again, why am I so blue and we get a very similar song and that Ruby sings that once again, I am falling in love. Why is it that I am now a blue color? And you know, it's sort of parodying Marlene Dietrich his accent, but it's also supposed to be like she is Marlene Dietrich's, but what if Marlene Dietrich was a troll, like what if she was a fantasy? Race?

Nigel  54:30  
Yeah, but also like, I don't know. Like, they could have just had that as a throwaway reference when Victor goes into the pub to meet with rock and Maury which is far too close to Rick and Morty for my liking.

Tessa  54:44  
Although rock is like his film name, right? Yes, like ginger has heard her actual name is theta withall aka ginger aka Dolores dissin which is like her sexy click name.

Nigel  54:59  
I'd like I read that as kind of like a not because I was trying to think like, oh, what actress? Is this? A reference to? And I couldn't think of any and maybe it still is, but I read it as like a homophonous pawn where it's meant to sound like dollar Russ design, you know, like this artifice or design which is meant to cause pain and sorrow.

Tessa  55:20  
I mean, that makes sense. I mean, because it kind of fits into the whole thing with holy wood. I mean, lots of celebrities change their name to sound sexier, right? Like he wants something that sounds sexy and something that sounds that's that looks good on a poster. Yeah, yeah.

Nigel  55:37  
Michael Caine's real name is it's Maurice Mikkel wife. I did not know that. He only legally changed it in about 2013 to Maurice Mikkel. Right, because like his pot, or to Michael Caine, because his passport open to that point was still Maurice megawhite and was getting a bit confusing because everyone knew him as Michael Caine.

Tessa  55:59  
Wow, yeah, that would not look great on a poster. Do you know Nicholas Cage's real name? Nicholas Chapala. Right. Yeah, Nicholas, Kim koppla. He changed it so that way he wouldn't be he that he way he wouldn't be associated with his famous uncle. And he chose cage because he's such a fan of like Marvel Luke Cage comics.

Nigel  56:26  
I love Nicolas Cage. Like that man is so funny. He's like, Nicolas Cage is a nonsense, man. Everything he does is so ridiculous. Like news article comes out about it's just Nicolas Cage quote. I am a golf. I'm like, Yes, I'm here for this.

Tessa  56:44  
He has a cat named Merlin who he repeatedly has called his best friend in interviews.

Nigel  56:49  
Yeah, I mean, that interview says like he's got a pet CRO who mocks him. Oh, love him.

Tessa  56:55  
He named his child Kal el like after Superman. Yeah. Yep, Nicolas Cage. He's gotta love him. You gotta love him. No one's doing that. Like nobody's doing it like him. I also really love to go back to Ruby for a second how she says a rock on the head may be quite sentimental, but diamonds are a girl's best friend. That reminded me of of course, the end of Reaper man where death is. He's evaluating diamonds for their affability. But I also it's obviously a reference to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in which Marilyn Monroe sings the kiss on the hand might be quite Continental. But diamonds are a girl's best friend. So there's also that I agree with you. I think they could have made this joke or this parody with Ruby without necessarily making it all caught up in this weird gendered romantic stuff. Yeah. But to go back to to try this outside of the romance stuff. What did you think about his arc?

Nigel  57:52  
I really liked it. It feels like a natural progression when you look at like bouncers in today's age, because they're like, they're like a private, Li contracted secure. Like, I mean, they are a security firm, because they're meant to protect you. But you know, like one that will mess you up if you get in the way. And like detritus, is that like, he's not a bouncer, he's a splatter. This isn't this type of thing. So like, now you really have a threat to life and limb.

Tessa  58:21  
Yeah. And I love the scene where he's, like, confused by Victor and Ginger's dismissal of him like he's trying to intimidate them into getting back onto the set. And both of them are just like, not now. Like, we can't be bothered with this right now. And it says it's because he's used to people either being scared of him or having like the suicidal bravado. He's not actually used to people having this reaction where they're like, Yeah, you're scary. But you're not the scariest thing in our lives right now, which goes to show how horrifying Hollywood really is. So let's talk a little bit about the trolls and dwarves and there's even like they say a few elves who are the most elusive of the Discworld races. We're gonna be talking about elves soon enough that that's a whole thing in this world. But I do like that there's a shout out there. So we get like you said, Brock and Maury are these trolls who are sort of typecast right as trolls. And so there's a little bit of an interrogation about what it means to be typecast if you're a certain race, or you're a certain ethnicity. So we get that with the trolls, but we also get the dwarves who this struck this hit me a little different because at one point, there's this ongoing joke about how they're often being asked to perform Dwarvish stereotypes. And one of the Dwarvish stereotypes that they're asked to perform is singing the song Heigh Ho Heigh Ho, which you all know from Snow White, right, the 1937 Disney animated series and of course, Snow White is getting rebooted by Disney and this has come under fire recently by actor Peter Dinklage, who is a small person who He basically said, Why is Disney remaking this fairy tale that dehumanizes and stereotypes dwarves, or small people? I wanted to make sure I had this right, because he accused them of hypocrisy. He was on Mark Marin's podcast and he said, they were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White. But you're still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. You're progressive in one way, but you're making that backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave. What are you doing, man? Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It's one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice, you can say no, you cannot be the object of ridicule. And at one point in the interview, he even says Have I not done enough in terms of rep representation? Like what more do I need to do? Basically, in order to convince people that this is not an acceptable way of showing dwarves or small people in these roles? Are you familiar with this controversy?

Nigel  1:01:00  
I saw that on like the the news section of Twitter. And so I looked, I looked into it a bit, but I was busy. So I didn't get to do like enough research. But like it really is, you know, because it's kind of this holdover from I really hate to use the term freak shows because it's a it's a deeply wrong, deeply offensive term. But that's what they were called back in the day, you know, where you would go and point and laugh at people whose bodies were different. You know, I think this is like in a series of unfortunate events. It's kind of like, satirize where the people in the quote unquote freak show is like someone who's ambidextrous, someone who has a slight hunch, you know, but yeah, so like, it's a holdover from that and like Peter Dinklage is saying it's the last accepted form of this kind of discrimination. Because it's not really it's not really as like a campaign for activism wise.

Tessa  1:02:00  
Well, it is it's just the it's not disability, which a lot of people would would say that like this falls under disability issue. It is campaign for there are a lot of disability D activists and coalition's but the problem is, is that if disability is seen under a medical model, which says disability is something that needs to be fixed, or the if you are disabled, you have like this tragic life, then people don't actually see it as a diversity issue. They see it as like a medical issue. And so,

Nigel  1:02:33  
yeah, I think that Discworld has an answer to this in the form of the librarian, where his being an ape is not something that needs to be fixed. So it's purely like, and for him, it's not a disability. So I'm not going to claim this as like a one to one disability wrap. But it is something that all of that like especially like wizards and stuff, were like, don't you want to be changed back? Even? Oh, what's the what's the actual Sorcerer's name? Coin? Yeah, even coin asks the librarian? Don't you want to be fixed? He doesn't. There's nothing wrong with the way he is. He likes how he is. He's proud of that.

Tessa  1:03:16  
Right? Yeah. And unfortunately, Fantasy has a really long fantasy and movies, which is kind of like the point of this has a really long history of othering small people by making them a separate species from humans. And so Terry Pratchett is obviously following in like that specific tradition, but he's also sort of turning on its head by having these dwarves act in ways that we wouldn't normally see them act in a fantasy setting, which is why Game of Thrones was such a huge deal because Peter Dinklage is scary character. Tyrian is a dwarf, but he is human. Right? Like he is actually a small person like he is playing not a separate species. And of course, that show also interrogates a lot of those attitudes around small people and disability.

Nigel  1:04:06  
Yeah, cuz I was like looking at replies to this and stuff. And it made a good point, where like, some people were just not getting the point where they would be like, Oh, well, they don't live in a cave. They work in a cave. That's not the point that Peter Dinklage is making. But the the form of dwarves that are in Snow White is this weird kind of like, kitschy fairy tale version of doors which is arisen from Germanic folk tales. And this is in relation to the point of like, well, what about doors and talk incense, but they're like, specifically, a separate thing. And they're their own distinct culture, whereas this is just like, the way these dwarves in modern fantasy to do it. The other thing of small people, you know, it's just like, What if people were small?

Tessa  1:04:57  
And hold on? Let me find this exactly. Rebecca Coakley, who is also a small person retweeted this to talk about the importance of it. And I'm trying to find her exact tweet so I can quote her correctly. Sometimes I love it when people tweet a lot, because I'm like, you know, you're you're great at this. I'm really glad that you have a lot of content. But then when I have to find a specific tweet, it's like, why do you tweet so much?

Nigel  1:05:20  
Oh, update the Twitter app. There's a new function in the new update, where if you go into someone's profile, there's a magnifying glass up at the top and you can search their tweet.

Tessa  1:05:30  
That's awesome. She is a good follow on Twitter, I would highly recommend. Oh, here it is. Okay, so she retweeted this and said she quoted him as saying you're still making that fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? What the fuck are you doing man? And then she said he's not wrong. Believe me averages you haven't lived until you leave your office to frat boys, drunkenly imitating your walk at a bar as you walk by chanting Hi, Ho. Hi, Ho. So for her, this movie, this representation of dwarves it's not just the representation, it's not actually just what's on screen. It's the way that it's used against small people that it has like cultural connotations that exist even outside the film itself. That's like a big part of this as well. But yeah, I thought that was interesting that this film was trying to explore some of those stereotypes by having like the trolls be like, Wait, why are we acting this way on film? Or the dwarves being like, Wait, why are we acting this way? on film?

Nigel  1:06:33  
Yeah, cuz then the dwarf at the end is like, when they're mining, not one more high Whoa, out of us. It's double head pick today, or whatever it is. Right? And

Tessa  1:06:45  
we get, and we get a throwback to the ONC. More pork is on low, not rock, because they're talking about mining. And there's like, this is what a mine looks like. And the dwarves are like, this is not what a mine looks like. And you can't have a mining on pork more pork anyway, it's on loan.

Nigel  1:07:02  
I'm so glad. Like, I'm really glad that it brought back up or favorite fact, for the Discworld, that is built on loan. It's built on low. I don't even remember what it was what that was in relation to. But it's an enduring fact that more pork is built on loan.

Tessa  1:07:22  
Encore port built on loan something to remember. All right, before we start just talking about the references in the cameos, there's one other fact or plot point that we have to talk about. And that is how they defeat the thing from the dungeon dimension that comes through the screen in response to the holy wood dreams. And that is through moving picture magic through the power of narrative and through a Giants night that guards the door between this realm and the Hollywood dreams. That looks somewhat like my uncle Oswald. Which is obviously supposed to be a reference to the Academy Awards Oscar, like the Knights that has the the sword.

Nigel  1:08:06  
I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. So I like the anything which is kind of like oh, meta about how stories work to return briefly to Rick and Morty. They have an episode in their season four. Yeah, it's the first one after the season break. So it must be episode six, where it's the one that sat on a train. And it's the whole thing. The whole thing is like about narrative devices and how they work. It's so good. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

Tessa  1:08:38  
Yeah. And we're Victors like, No, I will get there in the nick of time, because that is how movies work. That's how everyone saw me do it. Right. Everybody has seen me. They there's 1000s of people who have seen me do it on film. And so they believe that it must happen. So it will happen that way.

Nigel  1:08:55  
Yeah, it's an implicit like this, this implicit belief. And I like that, like, specifically in something as culturally current as the movie industry is, and we're seeing this now, especially with like, everything being bought up by media conglomerates. You know, like Disney has bought all of these studios. In the games world. Microsoft has just bought out Activision and all these things are $70 billion. Let that sink in. Seven if you had $1 A year $70 billion would be just before the dinosaurs went extinct. Think about that until you don't want to just walk into the ocean. Um, yeah, real depressing stuff. Yeah, but that kind of thing where it's placed on this cultural belief that this is what happens in films. And this idea of realer than real. I think it's a really interesting cultural notion. And like the credence we give these films

Tessa  1:10:00  
like religion, that's the parallel that Victor makes right? He says like, the gods wouldn't exist without belief in them. And this is the same thing, right? It's all these people seeing something on a screen and all believing that it happens that way. And that's what gives him the ability to bend the narrative to his advantage, right? He is like I, you know, I have a horse, I have a sword. You know, I'm going to get there just in the nick of time, because that's how it happens on screen. I love when he's running up the stairs of the tower of art, which by the way, I had to look this back up, but the ruin inside of the tower of Ark is what happened after sorcery. But remember, they don't remember the events of sorcery anymore. So they just assume that it's always been that way. Yeah, I

Nigel  1:10:44  
thought that was weird for a second. I was like, how's it always? Like, no, no, no, that God because yeah, yeah. Because Rincewind also goes up the tower of hours to get to try mom.

Tessa  1:10:54  
Right, exactly. And so he's running up the stairs. And I love how like halfway up, he's like running out of breath. And he's like, maybe, like if the nick of time thing is true that maybe if I just sat down and took a rest for a while, I'd still make it in the nick of time. And he's like, no, like, that's not actually how it works. You have to play fair, right? Like you have to, you can't just take advantage of it, you still have to play by the rules.

Nigel  1:11:17  
Yeah, the concept of having to play by the rules is a very precious thing. But it's also very gaming, and especially the whole, like, the gods need belief, because it's a very American Gods thing about the faded gods that live in the orchard, the bone orchard underneath the world. And the reason why the new gods and old gods are going to war is really interesting, because we've talked so much about was in good omens, we can now pick up as Pratchett seems to have written this is as opposed to gaming, because like a lot of the stuff in desk work kind of seems to exist in spite of belief, or lack thereof. Like because death exists, there is just him. There's, you know, no real concept of justice, there's just him. But then we also have blind I Oh, with the scales

Tessa  1:12:08  
game and explores this in the Sandman universe, and like you said, in American Gods, so I think I think both of them are interested in the ways in which beliefs can bend reality and like create things. If enough people believe it, then that can change the way that things are perceived. And we're gonna see that this idea will play a huge role in later books, especially books like small gods, which is specifically about religion. So yeah, we do get that.

Nigel  1:12:37  
And the gods that in pyramids,

Tessa  1:12:40  
right, the gods are in conflict. Yeah.

Nigel  1:12:44  
Yeah. Because like I mentioned, pyramids, where it's like, there's too much belief all at once of, right. Yeah, with themselves because of how different people believe. And also, that's just a thing as well, myth, mythology, there is no established canon because there's a whole bunch of different people saying, and this is a symptom of especially modern films, because we've seen it happen with like this idea that there's one set Canon for Greek or Norse mythology from films, and like how we perceive Thor and Loki as because of Marvel Comics. And Disney has done this to folk stories, where we talk about oh, and in the original Cinderella, there is no original Cinderella.

Tessa  1:13:30  
And if you read like any, like a collection, like Andrew Lane's, you know, folk collection of folktales that he collected them from around the world. And we can talk about some of the colonialist aspects of that. But if you actually read through like the different kinds of folktales, you'll start to notice that some folktales are come from like an unconsciousness of humanity, like you have tales that are kind of similar to each other, all over the world. And, yeah, it's fascinating. There isn't just like one version of it. It's like a bunch of different versions of the same story.

Nigel  1:14:06  
I like that I thought it was a very touching moment where it's revealed that Victor has been reading the pictographs the wrong way. And that the the chanting and praying was to remember Hollywood and all its glory, this kind of like idealization of a golden age, which is funny on the outset, because then you like, you're sitting on top of a movie theater where everyone died in it. And I think it's like a fundamental example of the fact that there is no real place that you're nostalgic from that you know, like the rose the rose tinted glasses, if you take them off, you're looking at a nuclear wasteland. If you've heard everybody's free to wear sunscreen, the Basel German class of whatever it is 85 speech, you know.

Tessa  1:14:57  
Yeah, I it reminds of the beginning of Peter Pan by JM Barrie, it's all happened before and it probably will happen again. Like this idea of is there's a cyclical nature to these types of stories too, right? It's not just like Hollywood has happened before it was in the city that sunk under the sea. It's a real Atlantis myth. Right? And then, but but Victor says it's happened again, but it's also probably probably happened in almost every universe that has ever existed. It the where it gets its power is from the cyclical, repetitive nature of its performance.

Nigel  1:15:36  
Yeah, because I mean, as well, when you look at modern Hollywood forwards reboot remake prequel sequel.

Tessa  1:15:43  
Right? Exactly. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It's anti utopian, but it's a powerful thing.

Nigel  1:15:49  
Hmm, this again, I mentioned this when we were talking about Reaper man, like, I really wish Terry Pratchett were alive just because like I'd like him to not be dead. But I'd really love to see what a Discworld novel would tackle in today's day and age.

Tessa  1:16:04  
Yeah, like what's the what would be the things that he wanted to talk about? Like what are the things that he would notice?

Nigel  1:16:13  
Like this whole fanaticism towards Hollywood where they're literally in like a few state where they don't know what's happening like Victor when he's confronted by rock and Moray be like, you know, why did you attack us with the sword? He's like, I have no I don't remember that. I have no memory of that is a weird link back to the death of the mind that happens in this cult who was like Death to all magic users in the light. Fantastic.

Tessa  1:16:42  
Cuz Yeah, he had ginger both experienced this and ginger sleepwalks, right. Although, like he pointed out, he should have known that the thing that she was trying to wake up wasn't malevolent when it like cared about her and him right, like, she ties him up instead of killing him. She puts tacks around her bed to wake herself up, but she like picks them up in her sleep.

Nigel  1:17:02  
Yeah, it's a nice detail they don't really like go into in possession media.

Tessa  1:17:09  
Alright, let's talk about all the references. What were the references that you picked up on to film and classic cinema and Hollywood.

Nigel  1:17:19  
So the whole like, okay, obviously the posters are kind of like that era of posters, you know, like in a world gone mad this like, you imagine them they've got the yellow background and the font is like, poofy and wife. And right. It's got like a, there'll be like a woman lounging backwards or like fainting at something like the Hammer Horror type posters.

Tessa  1:17:43  
Oh, I was thinking Errol Flynn, like the action adventure swashbuckling films. But yeah, very similar. Very lurid.

Nigel  1:17:51  
Yeah, very Lord. And then as well, the you've got the whole blown away is a reference to Gone With the Wind. And the setup for the burning of more pork in like a city. riven by war is just that's just the plot to Casablanca. so

Tessa  1:18:10  
blown away. Yeah, but the burning of the city of Moorpark is supposed to be the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. I did enjoy the whole explanation about the ONC Civil War, how nobody really knows how it started.

Nigel  1:18:26  
We've got the frankly, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. You know, but I liked how that was in relation to what should we say for the line, and then they go like, frankly, I wouldn't care. I don't give a damn. And they're like, oh, that sounds good. What else? There's a singing in the rain reference.

Tessa  1:18:44  
Yeah, it caught me under a Dibbler reenact singing in the rain. And Colin sees him.

Nigel  1:18:49  
I felt they weren't going to make explicit reference. So but then, like, literally at the end of the paragraph. Colin says, oh, what's he got to be singing in the rain like that for? And it's like, okay, you don't need to you don't need to hit us over the head with it.

Tessa  1:19:03  
There's a lot in here that tries to hit you over the head.

Nigel  1:19:05  
Yeah. Obviously the King Kong want to touch briefly on the one thing I didn't like was this plot with the elephants. I don't understand why it was but then also like, the fact that kept referring to him as the elephant ma makes it very, you know, because it's like a David ledge. John Hurt film, but also, I don't know, when that came out in relation to this. So it could just be my brain using the familiar for. I hate saying the familiar phrase the elephant mob.

Tessa  1:19:38  
But, right. Yeah, I didn't really like it either. It didn't make a lot of sense to me. It seemed to kind of distracting and it didn't really have as much of a point. I mean, I did like Dibbler saying and 1000 Elephants after every idea that he pitched because I think that that's a very like Hollywood, Hollywood type of thing to say, but I don't know why we actually had to go into the 1000 Elephants like how to transport them across the Discworld. That didn't make sense to me.

Nigel  1:20:07  
What I thought was very funny in relation to that was their reasoning that yeah, you have to go up a mountain, but you have to go down the side of the the other side of the mountain, so therefore, on average, it's flat the whole way.

Tessa  1:20:18  
Yeah. Yeah, there was some good jokes in there. It just didn't. I don't know. It just didn't really seem to fit. I was just like, bored. I want to let go back to Hollywood. Like I don't. I don't need this. But yeah, I liked some of the ones that I I thought I'd noticed were at one point somebody says, That's all folks. I can't do a Porky Pig voice but that's all. Yeah, it's the end of the Looney Tunes cartoon, which obviously gets referenced by the talking animals. We get the popcorn which they call bang to grains.

Nigel  1:20:50  
Isn't there a Bugs Bunny reference as well?

Tessa  1:20:54  
Oh, yeah. I mean, the rabbit is supposed to be bugs. The Talking rabbit.

Nigel  1:20:57  
He does say like what's up doc at some stage the snake? He

Tessa  1:21:01  
does say that there's a reference to the seven year itch when Ginger has the dream about the hot air from the great blowing up her dress?

Nigel  1:21:09  
No, but just as well, the whole like, what's up doc? We're Bugs Bunny leant on the post and ate the thing is a reference to Clark Gable. So it's another reference to classic. Yeah, like it's the thing which would have been familiar to audiences of the time, but now it's become entirely devoid, or like, separate from its original context where this is now a Bugs Bunny thing. But when Bugs Bunny originally did it, it was a Clark Gable thing.

Tessa  1:21:33  
Yeah. So yeah, it's a reference winner. I mean, I'm not even like scratching the surface, probably on all of the meta references in here. For sure, because like they're all like stacked on top of each other the way that Terry Pratchett says universes are all stacked on top of each other. But you get the librarian who's obsessed with cinema comes up with a screenplay that sounds like a reverse Tarzan, where it's like an ape that gets adopted by humans in the city and like grows up with the humans. You also get a lot of references to the different studios in Hollywood. So untied Alchemist is supposed to be like United, United Artists. Yeah. Yeah, United Artists I already mentioned century of the fruit bat is 20th Century Fox. There's also ginger dreams about a bunch of different logos. So there's the Paramount logo, the Columbia logo, and then the MGM logo with the lion roar. She dreams about all those logos. She describes them, but you wouldn't necessarily know what they were if you hadn't seen those logos. Well,

Nigel  1:22:34  
there's explicit reference to Paramount. One Center The Guardian is is the protector of the power mountain,

Tessa  1:22:40  
right? Yeah, the Para mountain. Yeah. So there's that references. Well, the chariot references or references to Ben Hur. Yeah. And there's also a Jaws reference when Tipler says we need a shark. Yeah, one point. Why

Nigel  1:22:54  
would there be shark Yeah, that would have gotten trampled by the elephants. I suppose you're right.

Tessa  1:22:59  
Yeah, exactly. So there's there's that references. Well, there's a this is not cinema, but there's like that meta tech that meta Narrator Oscar Wilde joke in a footnote where they're like, they this is as close to Oscar Wilde as trolls would get. So again, Oscar Wilde does not exist on the Discworld, but the narrator knows who not Oscar Wilde is. Hmm. Let's see, I talked about the ring reference as well.

Nigel  1:23:24  
There's also some pop. I'm pretty sure it's like a pop punk music video, or a music No, I'm not sure whether it's the same one. But there's a music video with like a giant character comes out of a film screen. And then there's also an alien app firm music video where they go through a screen into different films like karate kid.

Tessa  1:23:43  
Yeah, I mean, like this is not a new concept. It was just the fact that it was like horrific reminded me of the ring. Yeah, the fact that it was like a someone coming out of a screen in a terrifying way. Huh? Yeah, so those are the ones that I kind of noticed. I'm sure there's a lot more there was a lot of references to Lord of the Rings as well because he fights like what is a Balrog but they call it something else. Oh, girl Grog. Right? Rock the troll is supposed to be a reference to rock Hutson. Yeah, he's

Nigel  1:24:14  
a bowl grog a d&d monster.

Tessa  1:24:18  
Maybe I think I'm pretty sure if you've played enough traditional d&d,

Nigel  1:24:22  
I'm pretty sure I've heard that mentioned in like an episode of Critical roll or something. So I feel like it could be a thing you know, like, which is a reference to Tolkien but I think like, follow grog might be a thing which is also in d&d

Tessa  1:24:34  
question. I had to look this up. This was not a movie or a cinema reference, but it is a British slang but I had to look up the what is the health of your parents?

Nigel  1:24:45  
Oh, yeah. How was your Yeah, bit of how was your father?

Tessa  1:24:47  
Right which I had no idea what that was. But apparently it's also like a reference to carry on, which is a series of films Yeah, I don't know. I just I had to look it up cuz I was like, I have no idea what that

Nigel  1:24:58  
mean. Yeah, the carry on, things are out. Fake series and sometimes like ITV will show a whole bunch of them back to back and is like a load that's that's kind of like the big last hurrah for character actors is to carry on films is over here anyway. But yeah a bit of how is their father is also just a reference to having sex so

Tessa  1:25:19  
and then of course the last line that ginger says to Victor when they're about to get together is cheer up a tomorrow is another day which is the final line have gone with the wind. So that's this there's just references all over the place here and if you dear listeners have noticed any references that we missed, we'd love to hear about them like tweet at us like it's it's definitely something that we both enjoy. Let's talk a bit about cameos before we move on to the end of this because there are also a lot of cameos of characters from other Discworld books. There's the patrician which we mentioned before. There's also the librarian who does have more of a role in this but he's obsessed with moving pictures. He also figures out what's going on because he goes in he reads the Niekro Telekom Nikon, which is a reference to the Knepper Comicon, from HP Lovecraft but also, I think, from the Evil Dead, which is a film. So yeah, he's got this going on. There was some really funny bits with the library and I loved how the bursar explains to red Collie what happened to the library at the beginning and it takes word coli a while to wrap his brain around it, but he eventually gets there. And I also really loved how ginger kept calling him off monkey but didn't realize what she was doing until the librarian hears it and then like take he and you're expecting him to like lose his shit. Like he has like other books, but then he just takes her hand and like she apologizes which I just thought that was great. I thought that was a really fun reversal of that joke, huh? Let's see who else was in this. We got Mrs. Whitlock who discovers the Reggio graph. So we've seen Mrs. Whitlock before the housekeeper of unseen university or the head housekeeper. Yeah. We get ponder Stephens is introduced in this book. I didn't think he was introduced until later. But ponder Stebbins is a student at the unseen University and the exam. Now he's a post grad. So we are going to see him in future books. I believe the next book we see him in, I believe, is the Hogfather. But he also has another book that is he's sort of the main character of so I'm excited to see that. Let's see, we also get Mrs. Cosmo polites, who is the landlady of ginger and also the costume designer of a lot of these films. That is someone that is going to be referenced late in later books as well. Who else is in this there is a fun reference to the color of magic in this where they're talking about how the city of encore Park has burned down a lot of times and once it was even for the insurance money.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:55  
That was really fun. Yeah, the ensue arounds

Tessa  1:28:01  
Oh my god. I love the part where the bursar is talking is explaining the library and separating only and how he's like, Well, he didn't say all that. Exactly. He just said, UHC and vertical. He's like, You got all that from UHC? Well, you just kind of figure out how to understand him after a while.

Nigel  1:28:17  
But then there's that exact same moment with Victor and ginger later on where it's she doesn't understand him and it's like, oh, just you got that from just one nuke? Well, he said it like, like, from a couple different books.

Tessa  1:28:32  
Right for a couple different books. We also get a reference to nerd it's not called that but when they're talking about aka med the I get these headaches, I just get these headaches. He talks about how he drank coffee and coffee and went out the other side of sobriety. So that's the opposite of drunk which is nerd

Nigel  1:28:48  
Yeah. This is a fun as a fun recurring thing. The opposite of things. Yeah.

Tessa  1:28:55  
The opposite of staples in any book club podcast, of course. And then we also get Colin and knobs, especially both of them at the end. Especially knob Nabil being like, can I tell him that all these elephants have shown up for him? I thought that was that was very fun. All right. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we start our our stats? Yes,

Nigel  1:29:21  
now it is time for Nigel to quit the mountain goats. Oh, yay. Oh, I don't even know whether the second bonus one was was caught the you were cool on Oh, well, anyway. There's one potentially two bonus ones before this. So this one made me think of there's a lot of sounds on the album, we should all be healed, which kind of like, deal with the concept of Hollywood in an indirect sense. You know, there's like one which the name is escaping me at the minute but if they're talking about like, oh, it's letter from Belgium, that's what it is where they're talking About like Susan and her notebook, freehand drawings of long Cheney blueprints for geodesic domes. All this like weird things that addicts draw on their notebooks. But it made me think of poem quarter Yana, which is a song which I don't really know what it's about other than being about addicts, but the narrator of the song is constantly dreaming of a camera like, as if their lives were being watched in a paranoid sense, but also like, if this were like the narrative lens of something. But it is paired with his desperation at like the other destitution of their their situation. Yeah, so send, send somebody out for soda come through the carpet for clues, reflective tape on our sweatpants, big holes in our shoes. Every couple of minutes. Someone stead says he can't stand it anymore. laugh lines in our faces scale maps at the ocean floor. And I dreamt of a camera pointing out from inside the television and the aperture yawning and blinking very much like the Hollywood dreams. And the headstones climbed up the hills, which you could read as the Hollywood Hills, I guess. And then it goes into the last verse. If anybody comes to see me tell them they just missed me by a minute. If anybody comes into our room while we're asleep, I hope they incinerate everybody. And

Tessa  1:31:25  
yeah, I could see a lot of parallels between that and this book in terms of talking about Hollywood and sort of the warping effect it has on reality. All right, there are four death sightings in this book. The first one happens very early on in the first couple of pages when death shows up to take the last remaining priest or guardian or whatever you want to call him of the gateway in Hollywood. And so the idea is that he's been the one keeping Hollywood at bay from spreading it streams all over the disk and death comes to take him we also get death in the bar in Hollywood when detritus silverfish and gas boat are all sort of drinking away their solid sorrows and the bartender is serving someone that he can't quite see but he knows that he's serving them and he's not sure even if he's hearing his voice I really love the bit at the end where he comes back to the door and said I'm sorry I also need a packet of nuts his famine with him yeah, maybe famine is with him who knows it's hard to it's hard to go on that then death also shows up as the ginger thing from the dungeon dimensions is falling off of the tower of art and he takes the the things life and he says you belong dead, which is actually a reference to Boris Karloff spinal words in the 1935 movie Bride of Frankenstein we belong dead. So another movie reference that that death makes there and then we see death like you said at the end coming for gas Bode but then he turns over the time the time turner so gas boat gets a little bit more life. So those are the four death sightings in this book sort is mentioned when the The Alchemist is trying to remember what some bugger over sort way said he was in his bath. And he had this idea for something he ran out down the street yelling so he's trying to remember that he said you rica which means I found it, which is the story of Archimedes in the bath discovering I don't even remember what he discovered. But displacement. Yeah, displacement. So that that's the that's that story. And so the whole point is that Archimedes the Archimedes, the Discworld, Archimedes parallel lives in sort. And then the Great Pyramid of sort is mentioned. Hold on, let me find it.

Nigel  1:33:51  
They build a giant, like plaster replica, that first set like

Tessa  1:33:56  
a model. Yeah, they make like a model of sorts. So there's a lot of model work references,

Nigel  1:34:02  
because that's how a lot of stuff was done. You know, they'd make miniatures of it to make things seem big or whatever, or for like backing shots. But I think it's really funny to see the Discworld equivalent of Archimedes a Greek lives in sort boat, in, in pyramids when we meet all of the Greek analogues there in FEV.

Tessa  1:34:26  
Yeah, so it is interesting that there's like a difference, or maybe the person's getting it wrong. Maybe they're like, sort way, but it's somebody who doesn't really think a lot about the boundaries of countries. I don't know,

Nigel  1:34:37  
because sort is what it's separated from a TV just by Jelly Baby.

Tessa  1:34:42  
Just by Jelly Baby. Yep. The first footnote is on page six of my copy. So let me find it. It's about Ogmore porque. Citizens hate living there and if they have to move away on business or adventure or more, usually until some statute of limitations runs out. Can't wait to get back so they can enjoy hating living there some more. They put stickers on the backs of their carts saying Akbar porque lo that or leave it. They call it the big wha Huni after the fruit footnote, this is the one that grows only in certain parts of heathen Juanda land. It is 20 feet long covered in spikes the color of earwax and smells like an ant eater that is eaten a very bad ant. So in case you're wondering what the big, well Hooni looks like or what what Hooni looks like, what was your favorite footnote?

Nigel  1:35:33  
Okay, I think it's a tie for there's two that are fairly close together where there was Dibbler there was DeVos nephew, there was the handlebar. There were the extras there were assorted there were the assorted vice presidents and other people who were apparently called into existence by the mere presence of moving picture creation foot now. Some of them have clipboards. I think it was funny, just like the fact that they appear and the weird nepotism that Dibbler gets into where everyone is a vice president of something. Yeah, yeah, that or a how to

Tessa  1:36:06  
try this always has like a different title. Like he's always the vice president of something else. Yeah.

Nigel  1:36:11  
In the heartland of the Great Dark Continent of klatch, the air was heavy and pregnant with the promise of the coming monsoon. Bullfrogs croaked in the rushes, footnote, but were edited out was finished production.

Tessa  1:36:27  
Yeah, I love that this book calls. It calls such attention to the craft of filmmaking, the ways in which the things we see on screen appear more real than they actually are. Not only on a philosophical way, but in an actual way. Like even buildings don't actually look like that, like the front looks much better than the back, or like the Bullfrogs are edited out for sound quality like all of that stuff. My favorite footnote is very short and it happens on page 310. So fairly late in the book, and it involves the librarian. The librarian crouched on the dome of the library watching the crowds scurrying through the streets as the monstrous figure lurch nearer, he was slightly surprised to see it followed by some sort of spectral horse who's who have spayed no sound on the cobbles. And that was followed by a three wheeled bath chair that took the corner on only two of them, sparks streaming away behind it, it was loaded down with wizards all shouting at the tops of their voices. Occasionally, one of them would lose his grip and have to run behind until he could get up enough speed to leap on it again. Three of them hadn't made it that is one of them had made it sufficiently to get a grip on the trailing left leather cover. And the other two had made it just enough to grab the robe of the one in front. So now every time it took a bend, A Tale of Three wizards going wow, snapped wildly across the road behind it. There was also a number of civilians, but if anything, they were shouting louder than the wizards. The librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but this was undoubtedly the 57th strangest footnote, he had a tidy mind. I don't know why that footnote made me laugh very hard. But like the idea that this was only the 57th strangest thing that librarian had ever seen. And that he is aware enough of them in order to catalog it log it that just made this footnote for me. Sometimes footnotes don't have to be long to become

Nigel  1:38:17  
Yeah, like the I don't know, that has a particular resonance with me. When I was in fifth class, I would have been 11. Our teacher had the saying empty desk or untidy desk on tidy mind, empty desk empty mind, which is I don't know a rather strange piece of educational dogma, but it's one that has always stuck with me. Because if you look at any of the places that I live, they're fucking mess.

Tessa  1:38:44  
Seems a little ableist to me, like, not everybody. minds work the same way.

Nigel  1:38:49  
Yeah. Okay. But though, I think it was more so just like, like divorce. Like, I don't think it was an ableist thing on how people's minds work. It's just like, did if you have a bunch of stuff on your desk, it shows you're working, I guess. Yeah. Yes. Which is the interpretation I have taken through the years which is you know, you look at wherever I live, and you can just tell it is a circus inside of my

Tessa  1:39:15  
head. Ah, you'd have too many things going. Yeah, exactly.

Nigel  1:39:19  
So there's things everywhere. Look, leave, leave pop Mirta alone. He is he's not an ableist okay. Okay, I

Tessa  1:39:27  
don't know this person. I just I am I am sensitive to people saying if you're if you don't have a tidy workspace, then you're not organized or whatever. Like I've been tortured. I have ADHD I've been tortured by people telling me that I should move a certain way my whole life is so I'm sensitive

Nigel  1:39:42  
tidiness is not a thing in this on tidy desk untidy mind, but empty desk empty might if you have nothing on your desk, no work.

Tessa  1:39:53  
No work has been done. That makes sense. What's the thing that made you laugh out loud in this book?

Nigel  1:40:00  
You've mentioned that though I always feel bad for having a moment that you've picked or that you bring up at a different time. But it's the minute it's the moment where Victor is like, Well, can I just take a rest when I'm running up this? And then they're like, No, I have to play fair, fine.

Tessa  1:40:15  
That's such a good one. The one that I picked, I love how caspo keeps referring to ginger as the cat person, because he like can't get over the fact that she likes cats more than she likes dogs. But as someone who has owned a dog, I felt very close to this particular paragraph. The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of a mob breaking down the front door. The Scream of fire engines are the realization that today's the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A Dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness With quiet, which kind of sores of the ghastly, and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver lovingly pressed against you. I laughed and then made Sam Listen to me read that out loud because I've had a dog. I know you have. being woken up by a very cold dog's nose pressed up against you is rather horrifying. It's almost as horrifying as when you touch a dog and you realize that they're wet. Oh, and you're like, why are you wet?

Nigel  1:41:23  
Yeah, well see, I live mainly in the countryside where it's normally wet. So usual excuses. They've just been outside. So there's no recourse to mystery wetness. But

Tessa  1:41:36  
I see Well, for me, it's not necessarily like when you know why they're wet, like, Oh, you've just been outside then it's not as horrifying. But it's when like, there's no possible explanation for the wetness.

Nigel  1:41:47  
That's what I'm saying. We never have a moment where it's unacceptable when I'm up here in Dublin in the city, and I pet a dog and it's wet. I'm like, how? How are

Tessa  1:41:55  
you wet? What is this wetness? Yeah. Yeah, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. And I like that. That's the only thing that can snap Victor out of the trance that he falls into when they're showing blown away is the wet dog smells. And gasp vote is like Do you want me to bite you? And he's like, No, this is good enough. All right. What's the thing that made you think

Nigel  1:42:17  
it's always best to know your own mindset Victor diplomatically, you know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world. So ginger, not paying the least attention. It's all the people who never find out what it is they're really wanting to do, or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons that become blacksmiths, because their fathers were blacksmiths, it's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing the musical instrument, so they become bad Plowman instead, it's all to people with talents, who are never, who never even find out. Maybe they're never even born at a time when it's possible to find out. I like that's so profound as someone who's experiencing a current existential crisis about what she wants to do.

Tessa  1:42:57  
Yeah, and this idea of like, being born in the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time. I mean, I think about that a lot when it comes to like, thinking about the flow of history and all the people who've ever

Nigel  1:43:09  
lived and, like as well, the the whole like, like, it goes back to like, they want to be actors, and that's what they think they should be. And then there's a line, a couple pages on where they say, I don't know where you're meant to be. But Holly, Hollywood is where you're ought to be. Yeah. This whole like, this whole thing of like, Oh, I'm sure that's a very big thing in Ireland. And I know, it's like a thing everywhere, obviously, because like people have expectations of you. But there's a lot of like societally enforced ideas of what is and is not acceptable. Are you aware of notions?

Tessa  1:43:53  
Yeah, I think you've told me about this before, but go ahead and explain it.

Nigel  1:43:57  
Yeah, maybe I did. But like this whole concept of notions is short for notions of grander, which we don't say the full thing because, well, self explanatory. But this whole idea that maybe I have, but also maybe people will take these podcasts in a different order in the same way that we're doing the books, that's maybe they're listening to, maybe they're listening to the show and publication order, who knows. But yeah, this whole idea of like, if you go and do something, like, this is really weird. I was having a meal with my friend for reaching final year when we went to Eddie rockets. And we're like, Oh, we'll get something nice. It'd be a treat. And I had a burger with truffle oil on it. And I mentioned it to my mother and my mother said, Oh, it's far from truffle oil. You were rare. Sorry, can I not have a moment?

Tessa  1:44:50  
Right? Yeah.

Nigel  1:44:53  
Yeah, like, I'm not I'm not saying my mother is a bad person, but it's this cultural thing where, you know, it was fire I'm sure following that I was read, but it's not where I ought to be.

Tessa  1:45:03  
Yeah, I think that I think that that's true in a lot of places when it comes to different signifiers of class. Like, there's a lot of different ways in which people in different classes define themselves by material things and material like sick signifiers. And so there's these ways in which people who are of a higher class like look down on material signifiers from a lower class and the people from a lower class, look down on signifiers from an upper class, because they're like, Oh, well, you think you're better than me? Like, that's kind of the, the attitude. Yeah, I could definitely see that. Yeah,

Nigel  1:45:35  
but the thing you just have to understand about notions is about it's not necessarily material things. Sometimes it's literally just an idea. Or, you know, someone could go to college, and they could end up getting into like, a good college, you know? Nope, notions, that notion.

Tessa  1:45:52  
Ah, yeah, you see it, but it is connected to that idea of like, you think you're better than me? You think that you're? Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So mine has to do a little bit with yours. It's, it is a different place, but it does kind of link with yours in a really interesting way. So it's the scene where the audience in the blown away theater is arguing with Victor because they're all looking to Him to save the day because they've seen him save the day in so many films. We've talked about this before. But ginger says they think we're real, no one's doing anything because they think you're a hero for God's sake. And we can't do anything. This thing is bigger than both of us. Victor stared down at the damn cobblestones. I can probably remember the magic, he thought but ordinary magics no good against the dungeon dimensions. And I'm pretty sure real heroes don't hang around in the middle of cheering crowds. They get on with the job. real heroes are like pork old gasp bowed. No one ever notices them until afterwards. That's the reality. And then of course, he has this revelation of well, what is reality when it comes to narrative, but the thing that struck me about what she said, like, oh, they think we're real was this idea about celebrity. And the ways in which when we see people on a screen we often miss identify who they're playing with who they are, or we miss identify their public persona that they play on talk shows or in interviews or whatever with who they actually are. And we think they're real, right? Like the idea of like a parasocial relationship with someone who we don't actually know at all. Like, like, we can joke about Nicolas Cage and say, like, Oh, he's a nonsense, man. And he's delightful or whatever. But we don't actually know Nicolas Cage, like neither one of us have ever met him as far as I can tell, or like, have hung out with him or talked with him at all.

Unknown Speaker  1:47:34  
But we say nothing. Yeah,

Tessa  1:47:37  
you have met Nicolas Cage. I'm saying nothing. Okay. Do you want to tell the story of how you met Nicolas Cage? No. Okay. But like the idea that, like, we think we know who these people are. And they seem real to us, sometimes they seem more real than people we actually know. But they're not real. They're there. We've never met these people. Right? It's why people got mad at John Mulvaney for leaving his wife. Okay, but like, know anything about that situation? Okay, but like that was a dick move. I mean, I agree with you. But the point is, is that I actually don't know anything about their relationship. We just No,

Nigel  1:48:20  
neither do I. But the whole, like the whole, I'm not going to get into just the whole situation around it was like, that's a very, yeah. Nothing to do with his character. Yeah, right.

Tessa  1:48:31  
That's not really my point. Like, I don't want to get into litigating these things. But it's interesting that we treat these people like they're real people. That and the stuff we know about them that we think is real is not tied to who they are as people at all. It's tied to performance, either in film or in, like a public performance sort of way. So I thought that was interesting.

Nigel  1:48:51  
Cause misery by Stephen King cough cough. Yeah,

Tessa  1:48:55  
yeah, there's definitely people who have written about that before as well. Yeah. All right. Next episode. Granny, Weatherwax Nanny Ogg and Malgrat. Go on a fairytale holiday in witches abroad. The gangs back together. Whoo. I'm excited. Where can people find you online and on their headphones, Nigel.

Nigel  1:49:17  
They can find me mainly on Twitter at spicy Nigel where recently I have been tweeting about how I totally wouldn't kill Jordan Peterson. Not at all. I don't know whether you don't know whether you saw that one. But yeah, if I ever saw Jordan Peterson in person, I would take him aside and you'd hear a loud bang like a gunshot but I tell you that it was unrelated and related at all. Yeah. Ali, my co host from hyper fixations just responded I believe you. vatha at and I found a Korean MMO massive multiplayer online game and the map is literally just Ireland. It's so funny to me. Like My friend Glen Shattuck when Hello showed me the thing out because they were like, how would you pronounce this because these seem like Irish words and it was literally like she the shanaka which is like mounds of snow. And I was like, What the fuck is this? And so then they they showed me the map and it's just got like places that are direct like Tara like the hill of Tara just direct names from they've got the Irish name for like, an Irish name, which is traditionally associated with Donegal tear Hornell like was it's so bizarre. And then you can find my shows archive admirers on hyper fixations ever the podcast sir,

Tessa  1:50:40  
you can find me on Twitter at Swehla Tessa Swehla spelled SW e HLA you can also find me on my other podcast monkey off my backlog at monkey backlog. We have also recently restarted Tessa watches last which is our second monkey off my backlog episode every week so we have our main episode and then the watches series where Sam and I make each other watch different television shows. So I am currently releasing episodes about me watching season three have lost so you can you can find that also on the monkey off my backlog feed. You can also find me on a recently I was on in episode of wild pretty things where I helped them compile a top 10 list for 2021 I believe that is through their Patreon. But it is a good episode where me and a lot of other people from different podcasts got together to hash out the best films of 2021

Nigel  1:51:40  
I'm so jealous.

Tessa  1:51:42  
You can find wild pretty things on Twitter at Wild pretty pod.

Nigel  1:51:46  
Wild pretty things is such a good show you should definitely listen to oh my god it is

Tessa  1:51:51  
very very good. Melissa and Jared are excellent. I've also been on to talk about alien I think that's also a Patreon only episode, but it's good. Highly recommend. You can find this podcast on Twitter at nannies bookclub. You can find us on Instagram at nanny ox book club. Please rate review and subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon podcast, Google podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Read us out Nigel

Nigel  1:52:21  
about 30 miles turn wise of encore pork. The surface wound on the windblown seagrass waving sand dune covered spit of land with a circle C met the remotion see swallows dipped low over the waves, the dried hands of sea poppies clattered and the perpetual breeze which scoured the sky of clouds and move the sand around and curious patterns. The hill itself was visible for miles. It wasn't very high but lay amongst the dunes like an upturned boat or a very unlucky whale and was covered in scrub trees. No rain fell here if it could possibly avoid it. But the wind blew and piled the dunes high against the dried out bleached wood of the Hollywood town. It held its auditions on the desert of backlog. It tumbled scraps of paper through the crumbling plaster wonders of the world. It rattled the boards until they fell into the sand and were covered to click the wind side around the skeleton of a picture throwing box leaning drunkenly on its abandoned tripod. It called a trailing scrap of film and wound up the Last Picture Show sneaking the crumbling, glistening coils across the sand. In the picture throwers glass eye tiny fingers dance jerkily alive for just a moment. The film broke free and world away before the dunes click. The handle swung backwards and forwards for a moment and then stopped. Click Hollywood dreams. The End

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