Ep. 243: cursed love

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Yesterday, Marco. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:00:06] Speaker A: I asked you what type of cold open. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:10] Speaker A: You wanted me to serve you up today. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Yep. [00:00:12] Speaker A: And your response? [00:00:14] Speaker B: My response? My response? My response were the first two words that popped into my head. Right. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Okay. I was going to ask what? Like if this just came to your brain or if there was something that brought it to mind. Because you said to me a story of cursed love. [00:00:32] Speaker B: I said cursed love. They were the first fucking things that occurred to me. To quote Kurt Cobain, no thought was put into this. Just two words off the top of my head. Cursed love, question mark. See what you can see with that, you freak. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's one for the therapist, I think. But, you know, naturally I was like, all right, challenge accepted. [00:00:57] Speaker B: So, Mark, actually, I quite like that as a challenge, actually, going forward, because. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Just asking what you're in the mood for. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just making something. Finding something that fits, even. Even, you know, tangentially. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Right. I'm really worried that you're never gonna say maritime history. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Hey, if. No, I'm probably not. Those are. Those are not two words that would ever occur to me, really. [00:01:25] Speaker A: You know, so we'll have to. But I do like this idea. Right. Marco, I would like for you to find me a maritime history story. [00:01:33] Speaker B: There's nothing about. I quit this podcast, Spooky Boats, I. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Could tell you I don't already know. Yeah, be a tarra situation all over again. But, Marco, how about a cursed, seemingly Romeo and Juliet esque romance that actually ended up butterfly affecting the events that led to World War I? [00:01:58] Speaker B: Ah, wonderful. [00:02:01] Speaker A: Perfect. Let's get into it now. In five years of Joe Agging, I think this may be the most convoluted story I have ever tried to tell. I'm not kidding you. Every single source that I read had totally different recountings of what happened in this story. And not in minor ways, just whole ass differing details of the major elements of what happened. [00:02:31] Speaker B: So why is that. Is that. I mean, is that. [00:02:34] Speaker A: We'll get into it. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Fine. I'll just let you go. Go on. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Yes. I'm presenting this one to you with caveats the size of the moon. I'll pull the best information I can, but some of it's gonna be wrong. And I won't know which because nobody else seems to. [00:02:52] Speaker B: I enjoy that. I can choose. I can choose what to believe, can't I? [00:02:55] Speaker A: Right, yeah. To choose your own adventure of a story here, however it works out, because not only is this a tale of cursed love, it also is actually a little bit of a Mystery on top of that, the details being all over the place is the result of a whole bunch of factors that people can only speculate on. Now, from simple royal cover up, which we know 100% did happen to a conspiracy theory and potential assassination. So with all that said, let me tell you about the doomed romance of Crown Prince Rudolph of the Austro Hungarian Empire and his mistress married Baroness Mary Vetsera. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Where's Walter? [00:03:40] Speaker A: He's chewing on my chair. [00:03:41] Speaker B: Okay. I'm used to seeing his little furry ass. [00:03:45] Speaker A: He's usually sitting here. He'll get there just at the moment he is. You know the little like thing on a rolly chair where you can lower and raise it. [00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:03:54] Speaker A: He's destroying that. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Sorry, I digress. Give me the names of those royals again. [00:03:59] Speaker A: Yes. Crown Prince Rudolph of the Austro Hungarian Empire and his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Nice. [00:04:08] Speaker A: So Prince Rudolph was a descendant of the Habsburg dynasty whom we've talked about before, of course, in our episode. Yes, our episode on inbreeding. The Habsburgs loved marrying each other so that they could keep the royal line 100% within the family. And while this had some devastating effects, like poor Charles II of spirit Spain, who was just so many levels of deformed and disabled, his short life was absolutely miserable and full of pain. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Is only because he's royalty, right? [00:04:38] Speaker A: Exactly. In any other situation. Not funny, but not everyone fared so obviously poorly. However, one of the side effects of generations and generations of inbreeding can be a variety of mental health issues. And Prince Rudolph's family certainly had their fair share of those. In fact, Prince Rudolph's uncle, Ludwig II of Bavaria was known as the Mad King, although his supposed madness manifested more as eccentricity. He was less interested in ruling and more interested in building himself pretty castles and obsessing over medieval fantasy to the point of being kind of financially ruinous for Bavaria. He was declared insane and put in an institution where he was found dead from drowning, an apparent suicide the next day. Although like most such stories of this kind, including the one I'm telling you, there are whisperings that perhaps it was actually murder. We're not going to get into that today, but just context to the kind of fam we're talking about here. It's a family full of inbred characters with various degrees of mental illness that contributed to their marginalization and deaths under odd circumstances. This included Prince Rudolph, who we're going to talk about. His parents were like cousins. They were very closely related to one another and like they were cousins. Within, I saw, like, a family tree of them, and they're, like the kind of cousins that are, like, almost siblings because their parents were so closely related. Like, it's just real close. [00:06:14] Speaker B: Genetically very similar. Very shallow. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Genetically extremely similar. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Royalty, man. I hate it. I hate it so much. [00:06:24] Speaker A: This is not gonna help. You're good. I'm not gonna sway you towards royalty in any way during this year. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Open in Britain. No, it isn't. I mean, I've got the. The rare treat and the rare privilege of hating not just the individuals, but also the institution. I hate it all. I hate it totally, so much. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I maintain, like, the. The healthy American fascination with it. But, you know, the thing that I've said a million times is, you know, I. I read Prince Harry's book, and I just. My favorite thing about the royal family, which I think you can relate to, is that you can't possibly hate them more than they hate themselves. They are, I mean, utterly miserable at all times. And I think that's beautiful. [00:07:14] Speaker B: I. I would hope that was the case, but I don't. I don't necessarily even believe that. I would love to read that book. [00:07:21] Speaker A: And you will see. I know you won't. Did your wife read it? [00:07:25] Speaker B: No, she did not. [00:07:26] Speaker A: No. Because she likes the royals, so she wouldn't read that book. [00:07:30] Speaker B: Ahead, I saw a headline this week on from skynews.com that was an interview with the Prince of Wales, and the headline was, Prince says 2025 was the most difficult year of his life. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Oh, was it? Oh, you poor baby. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Was it? Was it, mate? Oh, was it? [00:07:56] Speaker A: Yeah, but they're always miserable. So I just think that that's, like, the greatest thing, is that they are always unhappy. They can never be happy, and it's all of their own doing because they just refused to let themselves be human beings. But anyway, Prince Rudolph, to his credit, was interested in progressive reform, which set him deeply at odds with his family, who were very conservative and didn't like his cockamamie ideas, like having a constitutional government, environmental protection, curbing the growth of large corporations, regulating capitalism, preventing the exploitation of workers, and stopping government corruption. [00:08:37] Speaker B: They weren't on board, and he was. [00:08:39] Speaker A: He was. This was his passion when he took the throne. This was his plan. That was what he was gonna do once he got there. That he was a political black sheep directly in line for the throne was not helped by the fact that he was also a wild card in his personal life. In 1881, he married Princess Stephanie of Belgium, which was, as with most royal Marriages of the time. And if Hallmark Channel is to be believed, same now. A political move and not born out of passionate love for one another. And. [00:09:18] Speaker B: I'm just, I'm chorting at you, smiling, laughing at how much I hate the royals. Early, just earlier on this week, no, last week in fact, there's a lovely discussion on Radio 4 about the kind of monetary net gain or loss that the royals are to the uk. And because the Crown owns all of the coastline around the uk, right. The seabed, down to the seabed, they own the coastline surrounding the uk. That that land has earned them something in the region of an extra billion if not more over the last few years simply because it's been sold for wind farms, for wind energy. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [00:10:01] Speaker B: They profited. Oh, from that directly. [00:10:06] Speaker A: Charles passion for environmentalism is, you know, a passion for self dealing. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Not surprising, but yes. So political marriage. Rudolph to Princess Stephanie of Belgium. And Rudolph, who had been a womanizer before his marriage, absolutely did not give that up once he and Stephanie were married. Stephanie also is like such a weird name for someone from the 1800s. That's like a 1980s name to me. It's weird for someone to be Princess Stephanie. It's like what a little, little kid, you know, this is Princess Stephanie does with her little doll. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Alright, that didn't occur to me, but I'll go with him. [00:10:52] Speaker A: But anyways, this is obviously to be expected. If there's one thing we know about royals, it's that they be sleeping around. [00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Especially in centuries past. For every Victoria and Albert you've got a hundred Charles and Camilla's. And much like Charles and Camilla, everyone would fucking know about it. They would do very little, if anything at all to hide it. So that ol Rudy boy was stepping out. Wasn't necessarily a scandal in and of itself, but he was doing it a lot and not super carefully. In fact, he kept a color coded record of his bajillions of conquests with markings for things like nobility, status, level of experience and whether he deflowered them. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Aw, no mate. [00:11:41] Speaker A: Yeah, this like all time cad right there. [00:11:45] Speaker B: He was building up some goodwill with me gone. [00:11:50] Speaker A: He's. Yeah, he pretty much throws it out the window with his entire personal life. Whatever. Nice. I mean he's, he's like a Kennedy in that sense. Right. Like politically you're like, you're doing all these like really good things. Love it privately, like maybe you killed Marilyn Monroe. Like that's kind of the, the dude that this is. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Rat. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah, absolute rat. So while Stephanie had Given birth to one child, a daughter. According to most sources, Rudolph had sleep slept his way into a venereal disease, likely gonorrhea, which he passed on to her and made her sterile and unable to give him a male heir. This obviously goes beyond the normal royal thing of having the odd mistress. He was getting busy all over the place and his wife ended up paying the price for that. He was also a heavy drinker and on top of having given his wife the clap, it's thought that he had also contracted syphilis, which led him to develop a sweet morphine addiction as well. So you've got here a drunk, philandering drug addict with multiple STDs, incapable of producing an heir and openly flaunting his affairs, who also wants to fundamentally change the makeup of Austrian society by turning into a liberal constitutional democracy. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Popular amongst his family. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Popular, yeah, exactly. Everyone loved him. Great guy. As we push forward, all of this becomes important as to why people are really iffy around the circumstances of his later demise. Mary Vetzera's family had their own issues, starting with the fact that her father, in a move Woody Allen would later crib, was her orphaned mother's legal guardian as a child. [00:13:45] Speaker B: Just, just unsavory, isn't it? [00:13:48] Speaker A: In the extreme unsavory. And this is a dynamic that would probably contribute to the fact that at 17, Mary would end up mistress to 30 year old Rudolph. Her father was a baron, but they were new money. He didn't grow up rich, he became a baron later on. Which by the way, I. [00:14:06] Speaker B: Are they, are there pictures of him of Rudolph? Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see. [00:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah, there's plenty of pictures of him, you know, largely considered like a good looking guy. People, people did like him socially. Like he was smart, he was fun to be around, he was good looking. [00:14:24] Speaker B: I can see why he might have had, you know. [00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Some luck with the ladies. 100. Yeah, absolutely. If you didn't know he was like a sex monster with a book, you could see why you'd hook up with him. Makes sense. But. Yeah. So Mary's family, new money. I don't know anything about, like how these things like barons and stuff like work. So I always thought that they were like royal, like they were of a lineage or whatever too. But it's, it's an, it's a job. Being a baron is a job. So he became a baron and made money and so they were wealthy. But that was not like how he had grown up, nor her mother. And her mother compensated heavily for that. She was embarrassed that they were new money. Right. It's kind of a Titanic situation with, you know, everybody looking down on the unsinkable Molly Brown because, oh, she's new money, she doesn't know how to act. And she didn't want her family to be like this. So she made sure that Mary was raised in strict tradition befitting of the royals, and that she would eventually marry into a higher social and economic class and lend legitimacy to the family line of her mother. Mary once told a friend, ever since I was a little girl, she's treated me like something she means to dispose of to the best advantage. Though not the greatest relationship, like something out of a Jane Austen novel, Mary's mother threw parties specifically to parade her in front of a cadre of eligible bachelors that could aid in her social climbing goals. And while she was not allowed to attend the events of the royal court because of her status, she was nevertheless on the radar of Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth, Rudolph's parents. While nothing compared to Rudolph's wild lifestyle, Mary had once staged her own act of rebellion when on a trip to Cairo with her family, she began an affair with an English officer who could. Who could offer her absolutely no status whatsoever. Unfortunately, her father died while they were in Cairo and this made the officer's lack of prospects entirely untenable for Mary. She went back to Hungary where she met Rudolph and instantly fell in love with him. And while Mary's mother had wanted her to climb her way up the social ladder, this is not exactly what she had in mind. No, this affair could have the opposite impact on the family's reputation, potentially ruining them. So the emperor and Empress were none too pleased by this either and demanded Rudolph end all of these shenanigans. Meanwhile, poor naive Mary, apparently unaware of the fact that Rudolph was the kind of guy with so much VD he sterilized his wife, thought he was totally going to leave her for her, and she would be in line to sit at his side on the throne someday. She considered herself to be the crown princess's rival, according to one friend, which is just the most oh, honey thing. Especially cause she wasn't even his only long term side piece. He was also seeing an actress and sex worker named Mitzi Kaspar. And arguably she was his first love, the one he actually really liked. According to Mitzi, one day Rudolph approached her and asked her to enter into a suicide pact with him. And Mitzi was like, what? Absolutely not, no. And went to the police, which speaks to the wisdom of sex Workers here, like this broad knew what a relationship is and what it isn't. And she wasn't about to get tied up with some asshole just cause he was royalty and be like, yeah, sure, love you so much. Let's do it. [00:18:25] Speaker B: Wow. [00:18:26] Speaker A: Yeah. She was like, that's fucking crazy. I'm calling the police. The police of course, ignored it. And so Rudolph went to his consolation prize, naive, infatuated 17 year old Mary. And Mary was not reluctant about it. She was like, omg, he wants us to suicide together. We're just like Romeo and Juliet for real. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Oh, so his, his actress wouldn't suicide with him. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, the actress was like, he just. [00:19:01] Speaker B: Wanted to suicide back with someone. Exactly what it's feeling like here. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Yes. And Mary was like, she, she wrote, if I could give him my life, I should be glad to do it. For what does life mean for me? This is. You just want her to be older, you know, like a couple more years. And she'd be like, oh no, thank you. But she's the equivalent of a high school junior. And we're so dramatic at that age. Especially when you're rebelling against an overbearing upbringing. Right. Like this seems to her romantic. And I always say that this is one of the reasons that I love the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet so much. It's like it really shows how stupid and dramatic these children and everyone around them are. And it feels like Rudolph understood that shit too. His 24 year old mistress was like, no, I'm worldwise enough not to do that. So he was like, eh, this child is gonna be dumb enough to do it. And went to Mary at the end of the day, just like you're basically saying he was drunk, depressed and in pain all the time from syphilis and gonorrhea. He wanted to die, but he was also too much of a coward to do it himself. He wanted to take someone with him. So we reach January 29, 1889 and this is where the details start to go all, all over the map. Like there's some debate about some of this stuff that I've told you already, but none like the actual day and a half in which things really unravel here. [00:20:45] Speaker B: This is the days leading up to their death. [00:20:48] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Good, good. [00:20:51] Speaker A: So I'm gonna try to tell you the most straightforward version, if not necessarily the most correct version, because I don't know what the most correct version is, but we're gonna go easiest first and kind of examine some of the branches. So Rudolph claiming to Be ill, excused himself from a family dinner that was going on, and he headed to Mary's house to collect her and carry out their pact. But when he arrived, he found that Mary's mother had legit locked her in her bedroom to prevent her from any more tomfoolery with the Crown Prince. And listen, she was a terrible mom overall, and her reasons probably weren't exactly pure of heart, but kudos to her for this. It was the right choice. But the prince found a way around the problem. You see, he and Mary had largely been arranging their affair with the help of her friend and his cousin, Countess Larouche. Apparently, Mary's mom didn't know this, that she'd been the go between for them. So when the Countess came by and asked if Mary could come for a drive with her, she was like, all right and let her go, you know, let her go get some air, blow off some steam with her friend. Right? Again, not the best mom, but this is like a solid move, you know, like I'm punishing my daughter, but let me let her have this time with her friend, you know, solid. But of course, this was being arranged by Rudolph. So the Countess brought Mary straight to him, obviously unaware too of what he was planning to do. She had no idea that she was delivering Mary to a suicide pact. If he had said that, she clearly would have been like, oh no, absolutely. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Not, she's just got the bath. [00:22:43] Speaker A: So an hour after asking his cousin if he could talk to Mary alone for 10 minutes, he came back with her, but without her, and told her to return to Mary's mother and tell her Mary had run away. Which I imagine probably had the Countess like, what, do you want me to go back and just say she ran away? Are you crazy? But she had no other choice. He then took Mary to a Habsburg family estate called Mayerling Lodge, where he had been planning a hunting trip for the next day. As this was already on the books, his valet Johan Loescheck was already there. According To Loshek, at 6:10am the next morning, the Prince came out of his room in his hunting gear and told him to arrange the horses and carriages and make sure breakfast is served at 8:30am when his brother in law is supposed to arrive from Vienna. Then he told him he was gonna go back to bed for a little bit and that Lo Shek should wake him up at 7:30. There was no reason for the valet to suspect anything. In fact, he said Rudolph was in such a good mood, he was straight up whistling as he walked back to his bedroom, like some kind of cartoon character, which is, you know, consistent. This often happens when people are about to, you know, off themselves. They're in a super good mood. Right before. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:24:06] Speaker A: But clearly he's not going to know this in 18. Whatever. No reason to think anything was. Was going to happen. However, several minutes later, Loek said he heard two gunshots, one after another, so quick they almost ran together as one sound. He ran to the door and could go ahead. [00:24:29] Speaker B: That's interesting in and of itself, because you didn't have, like, automatics then, did you? [00:24:35] Speaker A: Right, yeah. It's not like, got an AR15 that he's firing at them. Yeah, yeah. And again, the details in here, like, this is going to contradict something else I'm going to sort of bring up later and I'll point that out. But yeah, that detail of the one after another is iffy, but we'll get there. But he ran to the door and could smell gunpowder. And initially he looked outside, which makes sense. Right? They're at a hunting lodge. So he checked to see maybe someone's outside and they just shot something, but there was nothing out there. So he attempted to open the door, but it was locked, which was apparently unusual. Rudolph usually didn't lock his door, which is funny to me, given he was always doing a bunch of stuff you definitely don't want people walking in on. [00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:24] Speaker A: But apparently unconcerned. He's just like, yolo, if people walk in, they walk in. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Fucking Prince, Rudolph. What are you gonna do? Yeah, right, gonna sack me. [00:25:38] Speaker A: Exactly. So for some reason, Loshek was just like, huh? And went back to arranging all the shit Rudolph had told him to get. Set up the breakfast, the carriages, all of that kind of stuff. Later on, as you can imagine, people would question this. Like, sure seems suspicious that he heard gunshots, smelled gunpowder, and this just went about his business and didn't do anything further to check. Almost as if he didn't go in on purpose. [00:26:10] Speaker B: Almost. Having visited a lot of National Trust properties here in the uk, Right. Are you aware of what National Trust is? Do you know what that is? [00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah, vaguely, at least, but go ahead and explain it. I realize I am not everybody here. [00:26:28] Speaker B: In the uk there's a body, a charitable organization which handles the upkeep and provides tours of buildings of historical interest, often old stately homes, not quite palaces, but, you know, country estates. And having visited Blenheim palace quite a bit, and Wattlesdon Manor, which is quite close to us, I feel like I've Got some kind of context for the kinds of houses that you're talking about here, the kind of buildings and the grounds that they're in. And it does, does add, it does add a layer of just flavor and color to what you're talking about because I can well imagine the shot ringing out through a dining hall and a flagstone floor and high ceilings. Birds, you know, flock of burns taking. [00:27:21] Speaker A: Flight on a sprawling escape. Exactly. Right. [00:27:26] Speaker B: Oh, well, the cooks carry on plucking a pheasant. [00:27:30] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're pretty much spot on. That's basically exactly what was happening here. People just went about preparing their, you know, I'm sure everyone kind of went, huh? [00:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah, back to it. [00:27:43] Speaker A: Back to it, yeah. Again, it's like, it's largely there. Yeah. Like it's a hunting lodge. So like the amount of like just random gunshots that probably people were used to hearing about there were, you know, they'd be like, okay, aside from Loshek, who like kind of seemed to know that it came from there, you know, smelling the, the gunpowder and whatnot. So things got even weirder when at 7am Imperial Huntsman Franz Vodica showed up and Rudolph's coachman told him, quote, don't bother gathering the party. There will be no hunting today. The crown Prince is dead. This is 7am, right? So Loshek went, he heard this, you know, and was like, huh, that's weird. Goes back to, to what he's doing. That's like 6:30ish or whatever. 7 o', clock, the coachman is like, crown prince is dead. We're not going hunting today. Right. But nobody has checked. Nobody has gone in there, right? Like they're carrying on their day. Everybody is making breakfast and shit. And for some reason the coachman's like, shit's off. Right? So yeah, everyone's confused. Everyone's like, is this true? What's going on here? At 7:30, Loshek goes to deliver his wake up call, but no one responds to the knocking. So he goes around to a different entrance, but that's locked too. He then uses a piece of firewood to just like pound on the door with like, as if maybe that was going to be louder for some reason. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do shit. He said that it was pretty common for the prince to drink or drug himself into the sleep of the dead. So, yeah, not being able, yeah, not being able to rouse him. Like not the first time this has happened. Right. It's just the locked door that's more. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Of the issue in a morphine induced syphilitic stupor, right? [00:29:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it was weird to him that just an hour and a half earlier he'd been bopping around whistling and saying what they should be doing with their day to get ready for the hunt. Plus he knew Mary was in there, so why wasn't she at least answering? After 20 minutes he summoned help, but he refused to knock the door down. Count Josef van Hoyos, a closest friend of a close friend of Rudolph's, was like, what the fuck dude? Just knock it down. At which point he admitted that Mary was in there and that he didn't want anyone else to know. So they waited for Rudolph's brother in law to show up going, you know what, that's his responsibility. He can figure out what went on in there. But at that point, the brother in law and Loshek finally hacked a hole in the door with an axe and then reached in to open the door. There they found Rudolph by the side of the bed, pitched over forward with blood pouring from his mouth. And on the bed was the naked body of Mary von Vetzera. Both were allegedly shot. Although at first lo shek thought that poison had been what, what killed him. And you know, this was basically because there was like a glass on the like side table and it looked like like maybe strychnine poisoning had been involved. And indeed for a while this is what the family thought as well. But there was a letter from Rudolph which I have sent to you for you to read to to us here. [00:31:25] Speaker B: Okay, here we go. I'm about to read the suicide note. [00:31:29] Speaker A: Yes, you are about to read Rudolph's suicide note. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria. Here we go. Will I do a voice note? Dear Stephanie, you are now rid of my presence and annoyance. Be happy in your own way. Take care of the poor wee one. She is all that remains of me to all acquaintances, especially Bombell, Count Carl Bombel, head of this household, Spindler Latour. Whoa, whoa. Gisela, Leopold, etc, Etc, say my last greetings. I go quietly to my death, which alone can save my good name. I embrace you affectionately, your loving Rudolph. [00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know about saving his good name. Feels like it's a little late for that. And also this is not how you do it. [00:32:19] Speaker B: No. Wonder what he did. Fuck ranking book. His fuck rating book, right? [00:32:25] Speaker A: I hope he had someone burn it. Right? [00:32:27] Speaker B: Maybe give it to. [00:32:29] Speaker A: This is I. You know, I had this arrangement with my friend Chelsea in high school. I think I mentioned it many years ago on the show, but not recently. But we called it the Burn the cabinet arrangement. And this was because Chelsea had a cabinet in her bedroom. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:49] Speaker A: This big wooden cabinet. And that was where she kept, like, private thoughts, her diaries and photos and things like that that were like, just for her. And we always, you know, had this like, saying, like, if, if one of us dies, you know, we gotta burn the cabinet. You get rid of that stuff. It's not for anyone else's, you know, intake. So we each knew where the other one's like, private shit was. So that if something tragic befell us, it would be gone. [00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. I don't have one of those. I'm pretty much an open book nowadays. Right, sure. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah. When you're a teen, everything's much more embarrassing. [00:33:26] Speaker B: Of course. Yes, of course. However, last night, Laura and I watched a documentary on the disappearance of a lady by the name of Nicola Bulley last year in the uk. Huge news story. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Oh, we. I remember. [00:33:38] Speaker B: Of course. Yes, of course. [00:33:40] Speaker A: For those of you that don't know what we're talking about, this was the one that Mark was following all the ridiculous theories on Tick Tock about. And so then I convinced him that he would go to jail for murdering his wife. [00:33:52] Speaker B: Exactly. That's exactly the one. And we watched a documentary about this case last night and it did the only thing the, the, the, the press got a hold of the husband and Tick Tock got a hold of the husband and we're pulling him to bits and we're like, ah. He moved his hand a little bit there in that press interview. That's an admission of guilty. His eyes are darting around. The guy is obviously. And it's, it's, it's my fucking history online, man. And it's this podcast. [00:34:23] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:24] Speaker B: You know, it's the stuff I Google and it's the stuff I make little videos about and it's the stuff I say online. That's the stuff that's gonna get me in trouble. [00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah. If I remember, I will link to that video of me describing all of this to Mark. All the things that. That paper trail that would lead to him being murdered. [00:34:45] Speaker B: Burnett covered anymore. [00:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't. Yeah. If people want into your computer. I was thinking about this the other night too, because I was watching Dateline and it was one of those cases. I often say this. If murderers watched Dateline, they wouldn't murder for one. And if they did, they would be better at not getting caught. But one of the things that these dudes always do is they murder their wife, but you look at their search history and it's like, how to Murder My Wife with Poison. Yeah, yeah, like, come on, buddy. [00:35:20] Speaker B: I do enjoy a little wander through my notes from time to time. Does. Does the term ghost zero mean anything to you? All one word, ghost zero. [00:35:30] Speaker A: No. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Well, on the 20th of April, I have a note simply saying, ghost zero. What the is that? I have no idea what that is. [00:35:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing that would be. Yeah, carve that into a bullet or whatever, you know. What does this mean? Sure, it's antifa something or other. But anyways, I. I don't think anyone burned his fuck book because we know about it. So I assume someone found it somewhere. I hope it's in a museum, like, you know, next to a skin book like the one that we saw that one time. [00:36:05] Speaker B: I'd love to see it if. I would love to see it. I'd like to know what he used for highlighters back in the day. [00:36:11] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, I have no idea. Because it said different colors. I don't know, is he dipping it into different color ink or. No idea. [00:36:18] Speaker B: I would love to see Crown Prince Rudolph's pamphlet. I would love it. [00:36:23] Speaker A: I'll have to look into that and see if it is somewhere. My instinct is probably not, but if they didn't destroy it, I would be curious if it's in an archive somewhere or whatever. But yeah, the royal family, of course, immediately went into cover up mode, naturally announcing that poor Rudolph had died due to an aneurysm of the heart. Meanwhile, Mary's uncles came to get her body and propped her up with broomsticks to make her look like she was alive. When they left with her, just straight Weekend at Bernie's turn. Like, oh, I'm fine. Just here visiting my friends. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:37:03] Speaker A: Yeah, very fun. And then they tried to claim that she had died on her way to Venice. Total coincidence. They didn't even know each other. It's fine. The press figured this shit out pretty quickly though, and soon it was reported that Rudolph had shot Mary as part of their suicide pact, then sat by her body for several hours, drinking himself into a stupor before taking himself out. So this is what I'm talking about. That kind of conflicts with the two quick shots theory, right? This is just how this story is. How there will be like completely different, like, ideas about what happened here. You know, when did he kill her and then, you know, did. Did he kill her hours before and then he shot himself then, like, was she already dead when he went into the kitchen and was like whistling and whatnot, you know, like, it's hard to say. The details are so all over the place and people wonder, like, why was she naked? Like, what was the deal? Certainly we can't imagine she wanted to be found naked. Like what was going on here? Dunno. Some people say, you know, that like, obviously there was this whole thing about there being like a big blowout with his father over her and so this was like, you know, suck it, dad or whatever. But a lot of people think that that whole idea was drummed up actually by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who is not a fan of Rudolph and his liberalism. And so he sort of put that idea out there as a sort of propaganda gossip situation of sorts. Others claim that this was a double murder made to look like a murder suicide. You know, obviously, as I said at the top, like he was unpopular politically because his ideas would have completely changed the landscape of this empire, which was huge in Europe at the time. Obviously, like there is no Austro Hungarian Empire now, but the scope of it at that point. I mean, it's like most of Europe is the Austro Hungarian Empire at this point. So to like, if you can imagine if he had actually ascended to the throne, what Europe would have looked like at that point. It's a completely different thing. Right. Which probably even would have had ripples into England. You might not have royals now. [00:39:32] Speaker B: Yep, yep. [00:39:33] Speaker A: He had not been. If he had not killed himself at this point or was murdered. Right. So there's a lot clearly reasons why people think that he was murdered instead. And in fact, many sources I read even claim that Mary's body was exhumed in 1959 and actually didn't have any bullet holes in it. [00:39:53] Speaker B: Shut up. I don't believe. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And showed instead that she had been bludgeoned to death, which would make it unlikely that this was part of a suicide pact. Who agrees to death by bludgeoning? That seems odd. [00:40:07] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:08] Speaker A: Right. However, many sources didn't include this. It's pretty much 50 50s on who says this did and didn't happen. So I have no idea if that's true or not, I don't know. But Mary reportedly. Again, this is very conflicting. Mary reportedly wrote several letters to her family explicitly saying she was going to commit suicide. Suicide with Rudolph. So again, that seems to indicate planning. But on the other hand, the other accounts. Hold on, let me just finish the sentence. Just. [00:40:38] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. [00:40:39] Speaker A: Get this thought the other account said that he took her from her house and they killed themselves the next day. So that timeline is hard to work out too. When did she have time to send letters to them saying she was going to kill herself? [00:40:51] Speaker B: On whose behest was she exhumed in the 50s? [00:40:55] Speaker A: I'm not sure because that's a long. [00:40:57] Speaker B: Old time after the fact. [00:40:59] Speaker A: It is a long old time. And apparently then also her body was stolen later on by someone who had like an obsession with this case and wanted to solve the mystery. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:41:10] Speaker A: And then was buried again. She was buried in a cemetery for suicides. Because you can't bury suicides in a Catholic cemetery. And Rudolph, Actually, I didn't write either of these things in here. Rudolph, basically his family, like petitioned the whole Pope to get him into a Catholic cemetery. [00:41:35] Speaker B: Is that still the case? Are they. Are there separate Catholic suicide cemeteries? [00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't be. You can't be buried on like consecrated ground or whatever if you kill yourself, because that's like a mortal sin or whatever. You don't get to go to heaven and all that jazz. So yeah, they. They get their own little throwaway cemetery for people who will never know God, which is pretty up. But the like Pope or the Vatican. I don't know if it was the Pope specifically, but the Vatican allowed for Rudolph to be buried in a Catholic cemetery because, you know, he was mentally unwell so he couldn't be held responsible for his actions, which is fucking royals. Mary, who he killed, has to be buried with the suicides, but he gets to be buried with the Catholics. [00:42:31] Speaker B: That is the kind of place I would like to visit. [00:42:34] Speaker A: A suicide cemetery. [00:42:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:42:37] Speaker A: I wonder. I mean, they must. I don't know if they've reburied anyone or if they still exist. But that would be interesting, wouldn't. [00:42:44] Speaker B: Would it? Would be fascinating. I see that there is an act in the UK passed in the 1820s which allowed suicides private burial in a churchyard, but only at night. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Interesting, isn't it? Yeah, that's fascinating. [00:43:10] Speaker B: One such cemetery is St. Sepulchre's in Oxford. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Very interesting. Because my thought is, like, I would feel like these people would have been reburied somewhere else eventually. Like, it's hard for me to imagine that, like, towns all have, like suicide cemeteries and that we wouldn't know about them. So yeah, I would think that they have. Must have done something with most of them. But we should look into that for meetup time, see if we can find one to visit and, you know, maybe. [00:43:38] Speaker B: Discuss for goddamn sure. Yes. [00:43:42] Speaker A: But yeah, so you can see again, like, how this story is so convoluted why people think, you know, there's the COVID ups. Go from just basic scandal to like they were murdered so that he would never ascend to the throne. Right. There's plenty of reasons to think that. While there seems to also have been evidence that no, he was planning a suicide pact. It was 100%. [00:44:03] Speaker B: Spell out for me please, because I'm quite dense. The impacts you mentioned on World War. [00:44:09] Speaker A: I. I am literally about to do that. [00:44:12] Speaker B: Amazing. [00:44:15] Speaker A: So whatever happened here, it ended up setting off a wildly consequential chain of events. By the way, when it comes to like your memory issues, like you're always so worried about, oh, I forget things, I forget things. But then you'll remember something that was like one line that I said at the beginning of this and, and like your brain goes right back to it. I would have forgotten I said this. So, you know, except that it's in my script obviously, but you know, in. [00:44:41] Speaker B: Things that I've forgotten today. And let me think, I can remember it now. Today I could not remember Ariana Grande. Couldn't remember. [00:44:49] Speaker A: That's for the best, to be honest. [00:44:51] Speaker B: Could see her face, knew what she was all about. Could ham a few of her songs, could not remember her name. It was gone. But I put the information request in and then after about 20 or 30 minutes it comes back. It's just there's no longer instant access to facts. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, you're. The access isn't quite there. It's like slow. You're on like a 56k router Pentium. So as I've said, Rudolph was in line to the throne in Austria, Hungary as the only son of Emperor Franz Joseph the first. Thus the line of succession passed to Franz Joseph's brother, Carl Ludvig. And Carl Ludwig was like, no thanks. So he renounced his succession rights and passed them on to his eldest son. Do you have any guesses as to who Carl Ludwig of Austria, Hungary's eldest son, might have been? [00:45:51] Speaker B: Go on. [00:45:53] Speaker A: His son was none other than one Franz Ferdinand, who on June 28, 1914, would be assassinated along with his wife by Gavrila Principe while driving through Sarajevo. And due to a tangled web of alliances and circumstances, this incident would kick off World War I. So, my dear Marco, I don't know if you can find a love more cursed than. Than one that ends in suicide and inadvertently leads to the start of a whole world war. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Perfect. Perfect. Once again you understand the assignment. Corrigan. Well done. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Thank you. And Walter's back. [00:46:41] Speaker B: Yes, I can see him. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:46:46] Speaker A: Yes, please do. [00:46:47] Speaker B: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:46:51] Speaker A: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:46:55] Speaker B: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [00:46:58] Speaker A: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:47:01] Speaker B: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm going to leg it. [00:47:08] Speaker A: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:47:10] Speaker B: I think you feel great about it. I think it's probably worth a little check in here. A little reality check. Welcome, by the way. Welcome to this week's Jack of All Graves. Lovely to have you along. But I wonder if you've all got a little bit comfortable, frankly. I wonder if you've all got a little bit nonchalant, you know, a little bit kind of carried away in your own comings and goings to ings and froings. I wonder if. I wonder if you need just a little moment right now, Listener, whatever you're doing, whether you're on the way to work or coming home from work, or just maybe relaxing in repose, maybe in the bath, or maybe you're chopping some vegetables for dinner, just. Just realize that this is all fucking temporary. And time is running out. And a week has passed since the last time. A week has passed since the last episode. And that leads you a week closer to the end of all things for you. The party is ending, crew. The party is ending. One fucking day at a time, one second at a time. I don't want you to forget that because I don't forget that. And I think it is my duty. Ah, fucking duty to remind you of that. That's what you're getting when you dare to fucking hit the play button on a new episode of Joag. For all of the whimsy, right, and for all of the little historical little gambles through the annals of dark history that Corrigan and I deliver to you on a weekly basis, underneath all of that is our fucking mission statement that it's all pointless and it's all hollow and it's all going to end. So please do keep in touch with that fact. Do please keep your finger on that button, because we might go a couple of weeks without saying it, but it's always there. That's what this podcast is, right? That's what we're all about. And I want you to Know it and remember it. Hey, of statistically. Oh, hey, this is. This might be a bit. This might be a bit dark. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:49:25] Speaker B: Do you think any of our listeners have died in the last five years? [00:49:30] Speaker A: It's a good question. [00:49:32] Speaker B: Statistically, I mean, we have a great number of them. [00:49:35] Speaker A: I love that you always put statistically. I don't know what the statistics are on that. Mark. How many people listening to a given podcast die in a five year span? [00:49:46] Speaker B: Let's. I mean, just to pick a conservative number, right. Let's just say we've got 10,000 weekly listeners. It's way more than that, obviously. But over five years, the statistics, I'm sure, would suggest that a few of them might have dropped off by now. [00:50:04] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no way of knowing. I mean, it is an interesting idea. Right. Like, you know, as is the case, often when it comes to, like, the Internet and things like that, we can. We often have no idea. Someone just disappears off our radar. If they just like deleted social media or they died. And, you know, realistically, we. Unless they're amongst the, you know, group of people who interact with us on a regular basis, we would have no idea. But we care, friends. If you die, we're sad. Even if. Even if we don't know it. I'm sure we feel like a little disturbance, like a little unexplained heartbreak. [00:50:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Like the Quickening. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:52] Speaker B: Oh, you haven't seen Highlander, have you? So you don't know what I'm talking about. [00:50:55] Speaker A: I've seen Highlander. [00:50:56] Speaker B: Have you? I'm sure I was talking to someone recently. [00:50:58] Speaker A: Highlander. Many times. It's one of my mother's favorite movies. [00:51:01] Speaker B: Ah, wonderful. But I. That also makes me concerned about the sustainability of our audience. I wonder if we're recruiting quicker than people are dying. Are we? I know, we're very popular. No, I know of all of the demographics of podcast consumers, we're especially popular with the younger. We skew young in our listeners. I've seen the data, mate. [00:51:29] Speaker A: I remember looking at, you know, I literally never look at the stats. But, you know, early on in this I would look and it was like, yeah, our listeners are all like 35 to 55. [00:51:41] Speaker B: Well, see, that just lends even more credence. [00:51:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So that someone may have kicked it by now. [00:51:48] Speaker B: How could we. All right, then how could. How can we win the Youngs? What can we do? [00:51:57] Speaker A: Benjamin Button? I don't know. I don't think there's anything. I was thinking earlier. Oh. Because in the group chat earlier, our Dear friend Richard was like, he made like just a stream of references that I had no context for. About like Fortnite and some like someone I'm assuming is an actress, maybe a singer. I have no idea. Never, never heard this name before. And then I realized, I was thinking, I was like, I don't even know where youngs learn pop culture anymore. Like I've reached the kind of old, especially being child free where like I don't even know. Like I think I'm up on pop culture because I know what olds like. If I'm watching something geared at a 40 year old, I know who all those people are. I don't even know where the youths get their pop culture from. [00:52:53] Speaker B: We've spoken a few years ago, not a clue about how new famous people seem now to just. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah, they just pop up, pop up. [00:52:59] Speaker B: Out of fucking nowhere. But I, I think it's. I think we'd do a rebrand. I think we need to start to really try to win. [00:53:08] Speaker A: We need to. How do you do, fellow kids? [00:53:10] Speaker B: Well, you know, yeah, we do. We need to feel it. We need to tap into what to what. What it is that I don't even know. [00:53:17] Speaker A: I don't want to know any young people. [00:53:20] Speaker B: I know too. [00:53:21] Speaker A: That's too much work. I don't, I don't want to have to wear real clothes and know who all these people are. [00:53:31] Speaker B: What do you wear now? [00:53:33] Speaker A: Well, you know, I dress. I dress like a millennial, you know. [00:53:37] Speaker B: You do? [00:53:38] Speaker A: I do. [00:53:39] Speaker B: In your cap that says banana on it. [00:53:43] Speaker A: You love it. [00:53:44] Speaker B: I do. [00:53:44] Speaker A: Oh, you were getting a kick out of that. I. Friends, I volunteered yesterday with the Montclair History center and the, the farm that is attached to it, you know, selling tickets to people coming to their fall festival and was periodically sending Marco updates from this thing that he was just basically laughing at me for my bright yellow bananas shirt and hat, which were conversation starters. Other people were like, I was there too and whatnot. So there's that. And me looking like just stoked holding a chicken there. It was so soft. Its name was Dragon. It was Dragon the Chicken Delight. Dragon the Chicken. It was wonderful. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Listen, I don't mean this in any way to sound offensive or please don't take it as such, but it is the most autistic you've ever looked. And I'm serious. And it's adorable. You know what I mean? I mean that in a thoroughly complimentary way. [00:54:52] Speaker A: It is true. No, you're right. [00:54:53] Speaker B: Just with a hat, same banana, just grinning like, obviously having the best Fucking time. [00:55:02] Speaker A: No, you're right. You're absolutely right. And then there were goats and sheep and they were like in a little pen. And at the end of the day we're like tearing everything down. And so I go to the people who have the goats and the sheep and they've got like three kids. It's a family, right. And these kids are definitely used to like touring around with these animals and talking to adults and whatnot. So I'm like, can I help you with anything? And then the like, the oldest is probably like 15ish. He's like, do you wanna, do you wanna walk some goats to the truck? [00:55:32] Speaker B: And I was like, yeah, you asked the right girl. [00:55:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Never wanted anything more, to be honest with you. And so they, they went and they wrangled the goats and they put little, little ropes around them, you know, and then I got to like walk with the, the goats to the trailer. Mark, it was a great day. Yeah, it was a really good time. [00:55:56] Speaker B: A day where you can absolutely just be yourself, lean in. [00:56:00] Speaker A: Well, that was exactly it. Yes. There was another like also very clearly autistic guy, but like probably around like 60ish years old, big white hair, you know, all this kind of stuff that at the end of the day, you know, I was talking to some of the people who like run the History center and I'm just now got on their list for volunteering or whatever. And so she's like, okay, so we'll look forward to like doing more volunteer stuff with you. And I was like, yeah, I told my husband that I got on your volunteer list and he was like, wow, you're going to have friends. And this guy, this you know, 56 year old guy, he's like, oh, same like, yes. Yeah, this is, this is where we come to find other people like us. [00:56:48] Speaker B: Adorable. [00:56:49] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're, if you're. Listen, if you're looking for that kind of thing, find somewhere in your town with your special interest and go volunteer. Have the best time. [00:57:01] Speaker B: It's the sort of thing that I think I would sign myself up for in haste, you know? [00:57:08] Speaker A: What do you mean? [00:57:09] Speaker B: And then regret it. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Oh, and then like, yeah, be like, oh no, what have I done? [00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Oh, fuck, now I've got to do it. [00:57:17] Speaker A: I've been building up to it because I go to History center events all the time. I'm a member. I go to their like walking tours and things like that. So it's like, I feel like I'd like built up like a. All right. Like they kind of they recognize my face, things like that. I was like, let's go. And it worked out. So, you know, whatever it takes, I recommend it. [00:57:37] Speaker B: Good, good, good, good. Very nice, very nice. [00:57:39] Speaker A: Go pet the chickens. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, you got nothing? [00:57:45] Speaker B: No. [00:57:45] Speaker A: All right. Also, I just want to say, in case anyone else didn't know this had occurred, Hades 2 is finally out after many, many moons of it being in like a Beta or whatever, and only certain people were able to play it. It's available for PC and for Switch, which meant that I had to go like, revive my switch from the dead. It is. The battery life on those things are, dude. [00:58:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so bad from what I hear. The new one is as bad. Oh, really disappointing because, yeah, I've got to locate. Well, I've got a source one for Christmas coming up. [00:58:25] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it sucks, dude. I mean, it's just the old one and I like every time because I don't play it very often. Like once every six months, I think maybe I'm going to play some Animal Crossing. So I plug it in and then I don't play it and then by the next time I go, it's got like that like degree of negative battery where it takes like an hour of charging before you can even turn it on. Like, how is this possible? This is. Where am I pulling energy from? So I had to revive my Switch and download Hades 2. But now I started playing it last night, played a couple hours of it, and then when I woke up this morning, I got up and played like an hour of it right out of bed and it's just right back in, man. So much fun. If you loved Hades, you're gonna love this as well. You're playing a girl this time, which is fun. And I just got to like the like one of the sort of second level bosses or whatever in it. And Hades is known for its like metal soundtrack and it has this great music. You're like fighting sirens and you fight a siren girl band in it. Yeah, it's so fun. Like as soon as they started, I like literally giggled. It's like, oh, this is so good. This is so goddamn good. So yeah, if you love Hades, Hades 2 is out and it is just as good as OG Hades, delighted for you. [00:59:53] Speaker B: I, I, I simply don't have the temperament. I simply don't have a roguelikes. It's not, oh man, I, I tasted it with Returnal. [01:00:02] Speaker A: Man, I, I, that is such a different thing though. Like Return, the principle is the same, but you just, I, the way that you've described Returnal sounds like much more of a. Like, you get a huge amount of, like, time passing and then are like, you die and you're thrust back to, like, having made progress. [01:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:00:28] Speaker A: With this, it's like, that's not how this works. [01:00:31] Speaker B: You don't, like, take like an hour, you know. [01:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah. If you get an hour through a run on Hades and die, like, yeah, you go back to like, the beginning or whatever, but you'll have made a ton of progress in that. You'll have gotten a whole bunch of coins and all kinds of stuff that you come back and you power up for your next run and all of that kind of stuff. So it doesn't feel feudal. And like, a lot of times it's like, when I'm doing a run, I know I'm going to die, you know, like, and I'm like, yeah, that's fine, I'm going to die, but that's going to give me a chance to go, like, power this up and, you know, buy these things and, you know, whatever. So I don't. It doesn't have that same, like, sense of futility that you described in Returnal. I have never gotten to the point where I want to smash controller playing Hades. So I don't know, you might, like, you might give it a whirl. Roguelikes just might not be your thing, but I think, you know, it's less frustrating and more fun. [01:01:26] Speaker B: There are. There are actually games out or coming out that I actually want to play and I'm looking forward to playing and with. It's the perfect season for them as well. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:36] Speaker B: And I can think of nothing better this autumn than just snuggling up in front of that. Than cozying up in front of that beautiful, immersive, kind of first player, Japanese, no pressure, go at your own pace kind of game. So, yeah, I can't wait. [01:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah. You're such an opposite game player to me. [01:01:57] Speaker B: Big time. Big time. [01:01:59] Speaker A: Go at your own pace. Slow down that run real fast, hit. [01:02:04] Speaker B: Things which is in opposition to your character. I think your gaming Persona is, I think, very difficult. Different to your irl. [01:02:12] Speaker A: I don't. I don't know if that's true because you often point out my impulsivity and things like that. You know, I'm pretty. I'm pretty. Gotta go fast, actually. [01:02:21] Speaker B: Yes, you are. Yeah. You are. Instant twitch decisions. Yeah. Yeah. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, Very much so. [01:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:31] Speaker A: So I think. Yeah. Like, when you think about it, it's actually exactly what I'm like, fascinating. Well, do we want to talk about what we watched? [01:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah, we can do, I think. [01:02:45] Speaker A: I mean, according to your letterboxd, you've watched two things and they're the same two things we've both watched. [01:02:52] Speaker B: Did we talk about Lost Boys last week or not? [01:02:54] Speaker A: No, actually I was thinking that you. You did not, I thought, get to Lost Boys. Did you end up doing like the movie night with the fam that you were going to do with that? [01:03:02] Speaker B: No, I just watched it with the boys. Laura was out last weekend and, well. [01:03:07] Speaker A: I was curious because, remember when we talked about this, I was like, I mean, I find it deeply boring. So I wondered, was it gonna hit with the boys? Did they like it? [01:03:15] Speaker B: So here's the, here's the thought process. Right. Owen has gotten right into Stranger Things of late, right? [01:03:23] Speaker A: Yes. [01:03:24] Speaker B: No, I'm certain I've said this before, but nobody can binge a show like Owen at 11 years old and just rip through a show. [01:03:31] Speaker A: Spiritual gift. [01:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And he, he went through like all four seasons of Stranger Things in a couple of weeks. Peter loves it also. And the fifth and final season is coming up. So I thought, right, why don't I. Because it just dipping in and out. [01:03:48] Speaker A: The influences. [01:03:49] Speaker B: Exactly this. Exactly this. I've seen them all, of course, but I'm just dipping in and out. As the boys were watching it, I was like, they've. They've got to know, man. They've got to see. So when the. When the Elm street box set arrives at the end of October, which, by the way, I'm so excited for, you ordered it. I did, I'm afraid, yes. [01:04:08] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. I think you did mention this a bit ago. I knew you were looking at you. [01:04:12] Speaker B: Certainly not about to let that go. So Peter and I are going to watch those at the end of October and in the meantime, I'm just giving them as much left horror 80s exposure I can. To wit, the Lost Boys landed. Peter really enjoyed it. Owen, not quite as much. I don't give a fuck. Because I had a great time. I had a fantastic time. What, what, what, what bores you about Lost Boys? It's great. [01:04:42] Speaker A: I just don't like it. There's nothing in there that interests me. I don't like vampires, for one. Yeah, I find it just like super corny. Just. Yeah. Every time I watch it, I'm like, why am I watching this? I don't like this movie. [01:04:55] Speaker B: It might be recency bias, but I can't think of a George Schumacher movie I enjoy more. [01:05:02] Speaker A: I mean, that's fair. I did just watch a really random Joel Schumacher Schumacher movie. I would imagine you haven't seen where Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a trans woman and what's His Face. Robert De Niro plays a bigot who ends up taking like, speech therapy lessons from Philip Seymour Hoffman. [01:05:25] Speaker B: No, I haven't seen that. [01:05:28] Speaker A: It's, it's a, it's an interesting movie. I actually kind of recommend it. It's. I can't. God, I wish I could remember what it's called. But if you look up Joel Schumacher movies and there's one with Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's that one. That's the one. Keough had watched it. Leave it. Wally Keo had watched it, like when he was in college or something like that. And he was like, I remember liking it, I think. And so we put it on. And the thing that I, I did not realize Joel Schumacher was gay, despite maybe many of the hints that you see in Batman and whatnot. [01:05:59] Speaker B: It is up there, right? [01:06:01] Speaker A: I'm like, in hindsight, I can see how. Hold on one second. I dropped something and he stole it, but I think it was just plastic. Anyways, I did not realize he was gay. And so I was watching this and I was like, this feels very like. Even though it's, it's the like mid to late 90s. So of course it's like problematic in many ways or whatever. But it did feel very insider where I was like, this feels like it's made by someone who at least knows a lot of gays if they're not gay themselves. And like, so there's like a really authentic layer to this movie that I was surprised by, where you're just like, yeah, this is, this feels like queer people, you know? And so, yeah, it, it was an interesting, interesting flick. But all that to say, I can't say I can think of a Joel Schumacher movie that I'm like, oh, man, that's a masterpiece. [01:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it, it's. I, again, I, I, I, I, I wouldn't, I can't think of another one of his films that I would voluntarily go back to. [01:07:07] Speaker A: Sure. [01:07:09] Speaker B: And it's iconic. It's this, it. The tightrope that it walks between, like Goonies style, you know, Gee whiz, Boyzone adventure kind of movie. And, you know, it's one of the sacred vampire texts for me. The Lost Boys. It's one of the fucking canon of vampire films. [01:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Which I also don't super love Goonies either. Like, just that I'm not into 80s. Like, I don't Know, kid coming of age journey movies or whatever. I just don't. [01:07:45] Speaker B: You're writing off a lot there. You're writing off a lot of movies. You're writing off a lot of Spielberg. [01:07:51] Speaker A: Well, that's. That like, I mean, I don't really like E. T. Like, you know, I don't like. I mean, I don't like Indiana Jones. There's definitely a bunch of Spielberg that I'm actually not into, even though some of my absolute favorite movies are Spielberg. But yeah, I think kind of I was thinking about this, like you said offhandedly when we were talking about what's that movie that they remade that I don't like? The original of Toxic Avenger. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Sure. [01:08:24] Speaker A: Right. And in talking about kind of how offensive that movie is or whatever, you would offhandedly been like, you know, it's the 80s or something like that. And it actually was something I thought about later that I was like, that sums up why I don't like 80s things. Because the 80s are a conservative reaction to the 70s for sure. Right. So like the 70s, you had all of these movies come out that were like super, super diverse and like a music scene that was super queer and like all these kinds of things that were happening in the 70s and the 80s went, oh, put that back in. And everything became super homophobic and super racist. And like, it's just, it's the exact opposite of like, you know, as much as like, I don't love all 70s movies and things like that either. Recognizing that the 80s are hard to resonate for me with because they intentionally took people like me out of them. Right. Like they took the. They're like, everything is about like suburban white boys and things like that. And you know, everybody is homophobic, everybody's racist and oh, it's the 80s, but that's really hard to get behind. And I never, like my whole life, I just never felt like I super resonated with any of that stuff. And now I can kind of put a like, name to why that is. [01:09:40] Speaker B: I didn't detect any of what you're describing in the Lost Boys, however. [01:09:45] Speaker A: Well, it's made by a gay guy. So I think that makes a difference in, in how this comes out. I'm just talking about like, why like 80s stuff, like the coming of age child stuff and things like that doesn't resonate with me the way like, you know, later or earlier things do. [01:10:03] Speaker B: Sure, yes. All perfectly understandable. I. I don't. Yeah. I mean, in Britain we wouldn't have had that lens, you know, I mean. [01:10:22] Speaker A: You still do because you're going from, like, the 70s into Thatcherism. [01:10:28] Speaker B: Like, I don't know if that was. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Transition was kind of happening. [01:10:32] Speaker B: I don't know if that was reflected as much. I mean, we couldn't. I couldn't use your cinema as a reflection of our generational kind of change. And I don't. And I couldn't point to. I'm sure it did, but I couldn't point to where that showed up in British TV and cinema. [01:10:50] Speaker A: Right, yeah, yeah, no, I see what you mean. But, yeah, like, obviously, in both of our nations, things got a lot more conservative in the 80s. And what that turn showed up as for you was video nasty. Right. Like having everything banned outright that didn't sort of conform. So it's just kind of two different, like, approaches of the same thing. [01:11:14] Speaker B: Let me see. Very. Some. Some big disappointments. I mean, hasn't everyone been recommending Knight of the Reaper? A lot of people have been saying that it's the shit that it's. [01:11:27] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, definitely. I saw a lot of posts on Blue sky and stuff like that about how great this was, which, alternatively, it only has like, a 2.9 on letterboxd for balanced, which is, you know, mid. But I was seeing a lot of, like, raves from people who. I'm like, oh, that's like a horror fan. So. [01:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, one that squandered a lot of promise. [01:11:50] Speaker A: Yes, I'd like. I think we were both in at the beginning of Night of the Reaper. [01:11:54] Speaker B: Hugely, hugely, hugely. You make. You know, it's. It's so nice to have been through the 80s and to remember how beige. [01:12:02] Speaker A: It all was, just brown and beige, completely washed out. [01:12:06] Speaker B: Beautifully observed. And it did. It did a. It did a really fun stylistic thing in the opening credits. I don't know if you remember it, where it kind of flicked in and out of the cathode ray Tube style to 4K and back to 4K. Tracking lines on a video. Back to 4K. Really, really, really cool. [01:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:27] Speaker B: But squandered, man, Squandered. If. If it's a film that feels like it all the way along, it had somebody in its ear just saying, right, tone it down, pull it back. There's no sense of. I mean, it's a. It's an homage. It's. It's an homage to kind of Halloween and so on. And scream, weirdly, boy. [01:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah, very much, you know. Yeah, and scream. Yeah, for sure. [01:12:48] Speaker B: But with. With no bite at all. No invention or. And it doesn't push in Any direction. It's just so tepid and bland. So the goodwill that it gets in the first, you know, stylistically, it just. It just squanders when you realize that there's still an hour left. [01:13:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, certainly not. Yeah, it's interesting because we just read this book, Midnight on Beacon street, for book club. That was like a similar sort of thing. It's like an homage to like the 80s and 90s babysitter slashers and things like that. That does the same thing where you're like, oh, yeah, like, what a cool idea. And then just like fizzles out with the idea. [01:13:39] Speaker B: I'll take a sidebar super quick, if I may, and speak. And speak of books. Some two years later, and it has to be two years by now. I'm still working through my Ryan library, my Ryan Clark library. And I mean, I'm in a kind of a book year at the minute. I'm tearing through books, one of which was Max Brooks's Devolution. Right. [01:14:03] Speaker A: So did you like it? I really like that book. [01:14:05] Speaker B: Fucking loved it. [01:14:07] Speaker A: Oh, good. Yeah, that one's great. Oh, we read that for book club last year. [01:14:11] Speaker B: I loved it. This book, so much better than a description might, you know, intimate that it would be, you know, giving nothing away. It's a book about a fucking Bigfoot siege. Bigfoot's lay fucking siege to this town full of dickheads. Which doesn't sound great, but what Max Brooks is great at is snapping in and out of different voices. He's fucking so skilled at assuming the role of different sources and different personalities and different, you know, giving. Giving different contexts to an event. The majority of the book is written from a journal point of view of one of the survivors or one of the. The victims of this siege. And it, It's. It kind of fleshes out decrypted in a way that I don't. I. I don't think has been done before. You get lots. There's lots of werewolf law and lots of vampire lore, but Bigfoots are sketchy, aren't they? Sasquatches are kind of just very 2D very, very, very, very thinly sketched out in the culture, I believe. [01:15:20] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. [01:15:21] Speaker B: And it just adds layer and layer of. Almost like I was saying last week about a nature documentary. Right, about gribblies. [01:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:31] Speaker B: Devolution adds a layer of that. A layer of real biology and sense of a species to these creatures and. And is so beautifully written and so evocative. You know, it paints a beautiful picture in your head. It's a movie waiting to happen. I would love to see this. I would love to see absolutely Devolution on screen. I'd love to think it would get picked up because I would go and see that in a heartbeat. Super gory, super tense, just thrilling. So, so, so pleasurable and easy to read and just tear through. Oh, what an experience. Great book. [01:16:08] Speaker A: I'm glad you really liked that one. [01:16:09] Speaker B: I did, I did. [01:16:13] Speaker A: On another note, of things I really like, I. I've been, you know, I mentioned last week that, like, I haven't been watching a lot of things and I feel like it's because I don't want to be stressed out. And as we go into Spooky season, of course, I want to, like, pick up my, my horror watching and whatnot. [01:16:32] Speaker B: When does it start? [01:16:32] Speaker A: Is it Wednesday when spooky season starts? [01:16:36] Speaker B: October 1st, I believe is Wednesday. [01:16:38] Speaker A: Yes, sure. Yeah. I mean, listen, apparently, like, I didn't get the memo, but my whole neighborhood started decorating for Halloween three days ago. I just, I was going for my evening walk with Walter and all of a sudden all the houses were starting to get their Halloween decorations up. So we're ready. We're. We're in. But yeah, October 1st, let's say that's our official start. But I opened up Hulu the other day and Hulu or not Hulu, it was Peacock. And Peacock tends to have a lot of kind of random, like, low budget indie horror, like, kind of stuff that like, you would easily miss. But the, like, first thing on their recommendations for me was Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight. And I fucking love Demon Knight. And it was like a real. Yeah, it was like a don't mind if I do moment, you know, like, yes. You know what? Yes. [01:17:31] Speaker B: Isn't that a fucking great movie? [01:17:33] Speaker A: Mmm. It's so good and like that. I forget how stacked that cast is because you know me, I'm like Billy Zarn. That's where my, my brain is. [01:17:43] Speaker B: Sure. [01:17:44] Speaker A: But then, like that whole thing, you've got like, see CCH Pounder and William Sadler and or Kutch Pounder. [01:17:52] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [01:17:56] Speaker A: You've got what's his face from Wings. You've got Jada Pinkett Smith, you've got Roger Rabbit, you've got like this whole cast is just like every single person is super famous and it's just, just such a fun movie where Billy Zayn gets to just be his unhinged best. Like, I love when you let Billy Zayn loose. I feel like, you know, he's one of those guys, like, To a degree. He has kind of a similar thing, not in how he enacts it, but similar to Nicholas Cage in that like he has no boundaries. Right. Like he's going to go 100%, he's gonna take this to 11, whatever this calls for. And he's having so much fun in Demon Knight. And go on Peacock or I'm sure it's streaming on Tubi and all kinds of things. Whatever. Like. But if you've never seen Demon Knight, watch it. If you have seen. I don't know if we ever did it as a watch along. Did we? I don't know. I know we've talked about it several times because over the years, I know I've watched it many times. But even if you have seen it, go revisit it. It's gonna put you in a good mood, you know. [01:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:14] Speaker A: See Billy Zane punch a hole through a guy's head, then rip the head off and hit another guy with it. [01:19:19] Speaker B: I really feel as though I'm gonna have to do that. [01:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah, you're gonna be in such a good mood. Watch Demon Knight. [01:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Put it on your list for this week. [01:19:26] Speaker B: Spring in my step. [01:19:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:19:30] Speaker B: Listen, I'll get, I'll get. I'll get your view on this. So on either tomorrow or Tuesday, the Toxic Avenger remake is streaming and is available now. I'm happy to hold off if, if we want to do that as a watch along, I'll do. [01:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I, I suggested it and you were like, oh, I don't know, I'd have to wait a week or two or whatever. [01:19:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's. Is it the 10th week? Saturday is the first Saturday I can do. After that, the. Let me tickle. It's the 11th is the first one I can do. So that's a week. Saturday. [01:20:06] Speaker A: Listen, if you're willing to wait for. [01:20:07] Speaker B: It, I can wait for it. If you can. My, my, my friends, if you can hang on until the 11th of October, I'll. I'll call it right now. I'll say it's watch along. 11th of October. [01:20:20] Speaker A: All right, let's do it. I got nothing else going on. 11th of October. Let's watch the Toxic Avenger remake together. [01:20:27] Speaker B: Fantastic. Lock it in. Lock it in. [01:20:29] Speaker A: And FYI, the Toxic Avenger remake, they put together a fund where they actually, like, took care of like millions of dollars of people's medical debt. [01:20:41] Speaker B: No. [01:20:43] Speaker A: Yes. That's what they, they did with proceeds from this movie. So I highly encourage literally renting this movie. Yes. That was what they Spent like their publicity funds on. Instead of billboards and all that kind of shit. They relieved millions of dollars of medical debt from people. Isn't that rad? [01:21:02] Speaker B: That is superb. Which I, I feel is the teeter to the tartar of the slurs in the original. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Right. [01:21:11] Speaker B: They are really making up on the brand rebranding. [01:21:15] Speaker A: Toxic Avengers rebranding this big time. So, you know, when we watch it, if you can afford it instead of stealing it, rent it. [01:21:24] Speaker B: Enough said. Yeah, most certainly. Thematically kind of linked, right? Strange Harvest. Steal this fucking film. Steal this. [01:21:35] Speaker A: Steal the shit out of Strange Harvest. [01:21:38] Speaker B: Do not give Strange Harvest shudder. [01:21:40] Speaker A: I'm mad at you. [01:21:41] Speaker B: Of your hard earned cash. Oh, this is fucking irritating, right? Deeply, deeply irritating. For me personally, I can't remember what it was we were speaking about, but going back maybe six months of our episodes, I vividly remember saying the Netflix documentary format is ripe for satire. Yeah, it is. [01:22:04] Speaker A: Big time. [01:22:05] Speaker B: Perfect. There's so many of these Netflix true crime documentaries now, all with the same format, the same kind of style of opening credits, the same kind of talking heads. It is way beyond time that somebody did a mockumentary in the style of a Netflix, Netflix true crime doc. And this is what Strange Harvest is. [01:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:24] Speaker B: And I do, you know, I went the whole nine yards with this. I put the reactive lighting on and I drew the curtains and I was super into it. And after that first 10 minutes, when I realized. Because I went in cold. Completely cold. [01:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:39] Speaker B: And when I realized what this movie was, I was like, this is gonna be great. This is gonna be so good. Because I realized, hang on, I've been asking for this film. This is. [01:22:49] Speaker A: Right. [01:22:50] Speaker B: I've been asking. [01:22:51] Speaker A: This is for me. [01:22:52] Speaker B: And they did it. Yeah. [01:22:54] Speaker A: And did it in many ways very well. You know what I always say about, like a found footage, that kind of thing documentary is it lives and dies on how believable the actors are. And that way this comes through. Yes, very much so. [01:23:10] Speaker B: Gore is fantastic in this movie. Unflam, unflinching, real, what feels like anatomically correct gore, you know? [01:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:22] Speaker B: Real unflinching, close up, twisted, exsanguinated corpses and all manner of real. Real good. Right? Real good. Until. Until. Hang on. That. That. That picture looks like AI. Wait a way to. Whoa. Until the movie assaults you with what can only be still images and set dressing and production kind of, you know, bits in the background of shots which are unmistakably, unashamedly, I would say, AI generated assets. [01:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah. What a shame, right? Yeah. And once you notice it it's pretty impossible not to from that point forward. And apparently the movie was like banned from several festivals because of the use of AI in it. And for his part, the director is like, whoa, no, we took all the AI out of it. I don't know how. [01:24:46] Speaker B: I don't believe that for a fucking second. And you're quite. [01:24:49] Speaker A: Although now that I. [01:24:50] Speaker B: The very first, very first thing I did after seeing it was just check myself a little bit. Hang on. Let's just give it a benefit of the doubt, Marco. Maybe it's just rendered in a certain way. Maybe it's just got a sheen over it, maybe, right? [01:25:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:05] Speaker B: And a month back, Stuart Ortiz, the director, did an AMA on Reddit and the question is posed to him, you know, how do you account for. I'll quote, I'll fucking read directly from Reddit. There's been some backlash to the use of generative AI in this film during previous screenings. Were any of these sequences replaced in the final version? Stuart Ortiz, two months ago. There is no AI in the film and hasn't been for about a year. We used AI for about 30 seconds of material just to make the deadlines, which the intention of replacing everything before release, which we have 100% AI free. Bullshit. [01:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Unless you somehow ended up with the film festival version, which, from what it sounds like, that would have been even more blatant than what was in this. [01:25:58] Speaker B: This was by no means. This was not a film festival version. It had distributed logos at the start. [01:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [01:26:05] Speaker B: Interestingly, Saban Films. Does that name ring a bell? [01:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. [01:26:10] Speaker B: Power Rangers. [01:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:12] Speaker B: Okay. [01:26:13] Speaker A: Didn't like, didn't that guy just die? [01:26:16] Speaker B: Oh, maybe. [01:26:18] Speaker A: I'm not sure. Maybe I'm confusing him with someone else. But yes, I'm very familiar with Saban. It's the logo of childhood. [01:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, very much so. Very much so. [01:26:29] Speaker A: But yeah, the whole. I mean, and on top of that, because you start noticing the AI into it, there's a few other sort of visual issues with this that I noted as well that are things that, like, maybe you could say for this being the festival run, and then I'm having deadlines or whatever, but doesn't make sense in a final cut. For example, some of the Photoshop is very bad for. There's like a guy that you see who's like, been bitten up by leeches and it is like cartoonish. The Photoshop that they did on that, you know, it looks so rushed. It also is full of stock footage. [01:27:05] Speaker B: Yes. [01:27:06] Speaker A: Like, if you have. If any of you are like film editors or things like that. You're probably familiar with story blocks. And there's so many scenes in this movie that I was like, I swear I have seen that clip on Storyblocks. And then indeed when it got to the. The acknowledgments at the end, you know, in the credits, like the list of stock images and footage they had was huge. They use so much in this. [01:27:33] Speaker B: I can be. [01:27:33] Speaker A: Which feels like, you know, it's just like you notice it. It's obvious in the movie that they're using stock footage for an indie, for. [01:27:41] Speaker B: A small scale film like that. I can be charitable towards it for using stock assets. Right. I can, I can make peace with that because of the creativity involved and because for. For a while there at the start, this looked like it might be something really, really quite special. [01:27:59] Speaker A: Right. [01:28:01] Speaker B: But you know what? I. What I can't forgive even more so, in fact of a smaller picture like this is using Gen AI for visual assets. I. I can't. [01:28:12] Speaker A: Well, that's exactly why like on its own, the bad Photoshop, the, the footage, the stock footage, I would be like, yeah, it's fine. It's low budge is what it is. It's that they also did the AI that makes the other things more egregious to me because then it feels like they deliberately. I, I showed you, I took a screenshot from IMDb that their VFX department is two people. [01:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:35] Speaker A: And there are a lot of VFX. [01:28:37] Speaker B: Yes. [01:28:37] Speaker A: In this movie. And so, you know, both of these guys had worked on other films including It's a Wonderful Knife. And I took a screenshot of that that had like six people on vfx. Like they had been on Influencer that had, you know, like four or five and like a specific person who did like just the deep fakes in the movie, you know, so they, they had multiple people for that. There was another movie that one of them had worked on that was like just some dumb flick about like it's like a barber shop or something, like a slasher about a barber shop or something stupid like that that had like 20 VFX people. So the fact that they only paid for two and then took all of these shortcuts to me is really galling for an independent. [01:29:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:24] Speaker A: You know, like you should be. Whatever budget you have should be going towards paying people to do these things instead of cutting corners. Like it's not important. [01:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I. With a little bit of time since the last time we spoke about, about AI in Late night with the devil. This simply isn't. This simply isn't any way of me. Of me squaring away using it in place of. Of human endeavor. There's none. [01:29:57] Speaker A: Right. [01:29:58] Speaker B: While I. While I see, you know, and have seen through my work that AI can help in kind of interpreting data sets and showing trends in fucking figures. That's something. All right. I'm happy to farm out to AI that we're already paying work to do, but if you're using it in place of fucking human endeavor, creative endeavor, I can't square that away. It's. It's. It's horrid. [01:30:22] Speaker A: And even if you're using it for the other thing, you're still destroying the planet to do what you could be doing. [01:30:26] Speaker B: Sure. [01:30:26] Speaker A: So there's really, you know, it's just a mix of all of these terrible things about it. And then on top of it. Yeah. In this case, literally, they have a tiny VFX department in a movie with tons of effects. That is the definition of why we don't want people using this. They made sure they did not pay people by cutting this very much. [01:30:50] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's as bad. The examples of it in set design are as bad, if not worse than that. That episode of True Detective that everybody descended on just. [01:31:02] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:31:03] Speaker B: You know, posters and generic posters. Terrible AI. [01:31:07] Speaker A: Like, you're allowed to use real posters to these. You don't have to make a weird. Like, the girl's bedroom in this movie is the weirdest. Like, it's almost uncanny Valley. It is so bland and characterless because of the AI used for it. It's like. It's bizarre. It's a bizarre choice. Just put a Nirvana poster up or whatever. You don't have to make up. [01:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [01:31:33] Speaker A: Bands and whatever on that. [01:31:36] Speaker B: I was. We was. [01:31:37] Speaker A: Leave it. When you talking to the dog. Sorry. [01:31:40] Speaker B: When you see it, when you see if not X, but Y. Yeah. [01:31:46] Speaker A: Everywhere. Right. And the triples. [01:31:48] Speaker B: Everywhere, listeners. Right. All right, fair enough. I've been spamming the Joag Facey group with if not X's, but Y's. [01:31:56] Speaker A: And the group text. [01:31:57] Speaker B: And the group text. Yeah. [01:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:59] Speaker B: Forever. [01:31:59] Speaker A: You're alternating. [01:32:00] Speaker B: For every one I've posted, there are four that I haven't. Right. [01:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:32:05] Speaker B: Honestly, it's. What's that Jim Carrey film where he's all about numerology and he keeps seeing numbers everywhere. [01:32:09] Speaker A: And there's number 23. [01:32:11] Speaker B: That's the one. It's like that. When you start noticing it, you can't not. It is absolutely everywhere. You look. [01:32:19] Speaker A: And yeah, I was telling you this morning that, like, you know, on some student papers, they'll have it like three, four times in like a paragraph. It's like, whoa, are you not. Well, they're not rereading the work they're turning in, but I'm like, read the. Doesn't this look crazy to you? [01:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just, I. I think I'm developing a personal rule of thumb that states that any. I cannot award more than two stars to any fucking movie that tries to pull a fucking fugazi on us with that shit. [01:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially this guy, like, trying to pull one over on us by saying, like, don't trust the evidence of your eyes. It's not there. And then as a couple people on. On. On letterboxd pointed out, like, go look at his Instagram. It's like, all AI. And sure enough, just a slope all over his Instagram. He loves AI, so he needs to be told like, we're not. This is. We're not taking that, buddy, get out of here with that. [01:33:22] Speaker B: Such a shame. Such a shame. Yeah, because, man, you could have had something there, my friend. [01:33:28] Speaker A: You really know, right? So if you do watch Strange Harvest, steal it. Don't. Don't give it views on Shutter or Reddit or any of that nonsense. He deserves none of your money. He's lying to you, not us. No, we tell you all the truths. The hard ones, the soft ones. Like a chicken. [01:33:52] Speaker B: Is there a soft truth? Is there such a thing as a soft truth? [01:33:56] Speaker A: A soft truth. I like the cut of your jib. [01:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. Okay. Nice shoe. [01:34:01] Speaker A: It's a soft truth. [01:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. [01:34:02] Speaker A: Nice shoes. Exactly. Oh, I'm off. Yeah. Friends. My friend Melanie, bless her, you know, trying to, by the way, I know two days in a row what even is. It's a Sunday. This is like, shower and, you know, get all cozy in my clean sheets night normally. You know, you're in your friend era. [01:34:26] Speaker B: You're in your people era. [01:34:27] Speaker A: I'm in my friend era, apparently. Apparently my friend Melanie was like, I'm going to like this outdoor film screening at someone's house. And, you know, these people seem to like movies, so maybe you'd have things in common with them. And so I was like, yeah, you know what? I'll see if Marco and Joag a little earlier and let's. Let's try it out. So I'm gonna go meet some strangers and watch the mummy. [01:34:53] Speaker B: Beautiful. Absolutely. [01:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah. It should be a fun time. We'll see how it goes. Maybe you'll have friends. [01:34:59] Speaker B: Well, you should, you should. You should tell them all about this podcast in detail. Tell them about some of the stories. [01:35:06] Speaker A: It's a really good conversation starter. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Pick some of the nastiest stories that we've done and use those as your opener. Right. Go in on those. [01:35:14] Speaker A: My entree. Yeah, definitely. [01:35:16] Speaker B: And listen, we'll see you next week on the official first weekend of October. The nights are darker, the wind is cooler, and the very breeze through the trees whispers Jack of all grapes. [01:35:33] Speaker A: Stay spooky.