99: You Wanna Be Elite?

00:00SPEAKER- Hey Brad.

00:00SPEAKER- Hi.

00:01SPEAKER- I just noticed something this morning.

00:02SPEAKER- What's that?

00:03SPEAKER- Well, it's our 99th episode.

00:05SPEAKER- Whoa, that's a pretty big--

00:06SPEAKER- Well, hold on.

00:07SPEAKERIt's episode 99.

00:09SPEAKER- Okay.

00:10SPEAKERWhat is our counting methodology on this show?

00:12SPEAKER- Technically--

00:13SPEAKER- It's a bit fuzzy.

00:14SPEAKER- Because of episode zero, our 100th episode.

00:17SPEAKERSo congratulations.

00:18SPEAKER- Well, thank you.

00:19SPEAKER- 100 episodes.

00:20SPEAKER- Same to you, but I don't see the big round,

00:22SPEAKERthree digit number there.

00:23SPEAKERSo to me, I don't know that it actually counts.

00:25SPEAKER- Well, I'm celebrating today.

00:26SPEAKERYou can observe it next week on episode 101,

00:28SPEAKERif you want, I guess.

00:29SPEAKERI forgot my party hats and streamers and noise makers.

00:32SPEAKERSo I guess I'll have to wait.

00:34SPEAKERHow did that happen?

00:35SPEAKERHow did that happen?

00:37SPEAKER- Well--

00:37SPEAKER- Somewhere in my mind,

00:38SPEAKERit feels like we just started this podcast.

00:40SPEAKER- I think, look, there's a Twitch bot on my Twitch stream

00:44SPEAKERthat says, "Hey, check out Will's newish podcast."

00:48SPEAKERAnd I think I changed it from new to newish

00:51SPEAKERafter episode 52.

00:53SPEAKER'Cause somebody was like, "Yo, your podcast is a year old.

00:54SPEAKER"It's not new anymore."

00:56SPEAKER- Of course you had a rigid methodology of,

00:58SPEAKERokay, we hit the one year mark.

01:00SPEAKEROf course, the person who does this podcast

01:02SPEAKERwaited until exactly one year in.

01:04SPEAKER- Yeah, look, I don't know if it was exactly,

01:05SPEAKERbut yeah, that was the thought.

01:08SPEAKERIt's funny, we've been doing it long enough now

01:09SPEAKERthat I don't remember the stuff we talked about

01:11SPEAKERon the first few episodes anymore.

01:12SPEAKER- Yes, I am increasingly living in fear

01:15SPEAKERof repeating ourselves,

01:16SPEAKERlike doing another battery episode without realizing it.

01:19SPEAKER- I don't think I could forget the battery episode,

01:21SPEAKERbut yeah, I think like,

01:23SPEAKERhow are we, what are we gonna do for episode 100?

01:25SPEAKER- Hmm.

01:26SPEAKER- We should have watched "Hackers" or something

01:28SPEAKERreally stupid and good.

01:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that would have been great.

01:30SPEAKERThat would have been a good, fun, celebratory

01:32SPEAKERkind of mainstream idea

01:33SPEAKERfor a big hundredth episode spectacular, oh well.

01:37SPEAKER- Yeah, really bring in some new audience,

01:39SPEAKERget people excited.

01:40SPEAKER- We do have some, we have some commitments on the books.

01:44SPEAKER- Yes, we owe people something.

01:46SPEAKER- Yes, we definitely have promised some stuff.

01:49SPEAKER- We have our own scene drama if we're not careful here.

01:53SPEAKER- Yes, I think a couple of times on the Discord

01:55SPEAKERit's gotten close.

01:57SPEAKER- So the thing that's weird to me about this

01:58SPEAKERis this is the first time I've ever done a podcast

02:00SPEAKERthat we didn't do like extra episodes along the way.

02:03SPEAKERSo when we hit episode 104,

02:07SPEAKERI think we missed one episode

02:08SPEAKERwhen we were both sick one week in like the early,

02:10SPEAKERearly days.

02:11SPEAKER- Did we?

02:12SPEAKER- Yeah, like, or it was like around game of the year time

02:14SPEAKERor something like that and I was sick and you could,

02:16SPEAKERso we just were like, fuck it, we can't do it this week.

02:19SPEAKERBut like all told 104 episodes

02:22SPEAKERwill be our two year anniversary.

02:24SPEAKER- Ah, those heady days of you driving up here every week

02:27SPEAKERand sitting in my living room.

02:29SPEAKER- Look, I'm not gonna lie,

02:30SPEAKERI don't miss getting up on Saturday morning

02:32SPEAKERand trucking up to your living.

02:34SPEAKER- I don't blame you.

02:35SPEAKER- I enjoyed seeing you in person.

02:36SPEAKERWe had lovely conversations.

02:37SPEAKERIt's nice to come up and see the city,

02:39SPEAKERbut driving up the path to your house from my house

02:45SPEAKERis my least favorite road in San Francisco to drive on.

02:48SPEAKER- Really, really?

02:49SPEAKERWhat highway is that? - 819th.

02:51SPEAKER- Oh, once it turns into 19th.

02:53SPEAKER- Once it turns into 19th, it's like, it's four lanes.

02:56SPEAKERIt's not separated.

02:58SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't put two and two together

02:59SPEAKERbecause in my mind 19th Avenue is a street

03:02SPEAKERand then whatever that highway,

03:03SPEAKERonce you break out of the city

03:04SPEAKERand it's just like that coastal.

03:06SPEAKER- Oh, 280?

03:07SPEAKER- Like those are different streets in my mind,

03:09SPEAKEReven though technically they're contiguous,

03:11SPEAKERbut like 19th is a nightmare, yes.

03:12SPEAKER- 19th sucks.

03:14SPEAKERIt's undivided four lane

03:19SPEAKERand there's a butt load of stoplights

03:21SPEAKERand they're not timed

03:23SPEAKERand there's usually congestion at the end

03:25SPEAKERwhere the road goes into the park

03:26SPEAKERand it just takes forever.

03:28SPEAKERSo I would often drive the much further away

03:30SPEAKERand take an extra 10 minutes to not have to be on 19th,

03:32SPEAKERwhich was fine.

03:33SPEAKER- Also, that was back in those halcyon days

03:36SPEAKERwhen being in the same room with someone unmasked

03:40SPEAKERthat you don't already live with

03:41SPEAKERwas just a thing that people did

03:43SPEAKERand not something that raises the hackles

03:44SPEAKERon the back of your neck.

03:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it was before you could kill me by breathing.

03:48SPEAKER- You could just hang out in a room with people

03:50SPEAKERat their houses and it was cool and not nerve wracking.

03:55SPEAKERIt feels like so long ago.

03:57SPEAKER- It was so long ago, it was a year and a half ago, Brad.

03:59SPEAKER- I guess so, but wait, almost two years.

04:02SPEAKER- No, a year and a half.

04:03SPEAKERWell, no, no, the times before you started

04:05SPEAKERbeing able to kill me with your breath,

04:06SPEAKERthat started a year and a half ago, yeah.

04:08SPEAKERAlmost two years for the, yeah.

04:10SPEAKER- I guess we were doing it in person

04:11SPEAKERright up until the pandemic, weren't we?

04:13SPEAKER- Almost every week.

04:14SPEAKERI think we tried one remote before.

04:16SPEAKER- That's right.

04:16SPEAKER- There was, we also,

04:18SPEAKERI feel like we also didn't go get breakfast or something

04:20SPEAKERto talk about ideas, like my usual process on new podcasts

04:23SPEAKERis you gotta come up with 10 episode ideas

04:26SPEAKERbefore you should start recording

04:27SPEAKER'cause if you can't do that, then you're doomed.

04:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't think we did that.

04:31SPEAKER- And I feel like we sat down and had a nice breakfast

04:33SPEAKERand chatted and came up with like three really good ideas

04:35SPEAKERand then we're like, this sounds like fun, let's do it.

04:38SPEAKERYeah, it worked out.

04:39SPEAKER- It's been a long road and yet also the last 18-ish months

04:43SPEAKERmight as well not have happened.

04:44SPEAKER- Yeah, the longest March 8th ever.

04:47SPEAKER- The mental time compression that's occurred

04:49SPEAKERas we have done the majority of this podcast

04:51SPEAKERhas made it a very strange experience.

04:53SPEAKER- Does it ever feel like you just wake up

04:55SPEAKERlike there's no change in days?

04:57SPEAKER- Dude, we're in the fog months in the city here right now.

05:01SPEAKER- Oh yeah, I'm aware.

05:02SPEAKER- I should have been tracking the hours of sunlight

05:04SPEAKERwe have seen over the last three months.

05:05SPEAKERIt's minuscule.

05:07SPEAKERLike every single day you wake up

05:09SPEAKERand it is just a white fugue outside

05:11SPEAKERand it is that way 24 hours a day

05:13SPEAKERwith like three exceptions a month.

05:15SPEAKER- You all should come down

05:16SPEAKERon like a Saturday afternoon sometime.

05:17SPEAKERIt's often sunny down here in like the mid-afternoon.

05:21SPEAKER- It is purely a middle of San Francisco problem.

05:23SPEAKERIf you go like 30 minutes north or south of here,

05:26SPEAKERit's nice and sunny.

05:27SPEAKERBut yeah, like having no like no time of day awareness

05:31SPEAKERbecause of that, like it all runs together badly.

05:34SPEAKER- We used to live in the inner sunset, which was the same.

05:36SPEAKERAnd here we get the same number of days that have fog,

05:39SPEAKERbut like the thing that is different

05:41SPEAKERis from like 11 until three, there will be no fog.

05:44SPEAKER- That's all you need.

05:45SPEAKERJust let it burn off for at least a chunk

05:47SPEAKERof the midday and you're good.

05:49SPEAKER- It's perfect 'cause yeah, then at like five o'clock

05:51SPEAKERit starts getting cool again.

05:53SPEAKERAnd it's like good sleeping weather.

05:55SPEAKERIt's really nice.

05:56SPEAKERI really like it.

05:56SPEAKER- I should come to Pacifica.

05:57SPEAKER- Pacifica's great, highly recommended.

05:59SPEAKERPlus we have the best Taco Bell ever.

06:03SPEAKERStill a Taco Bell though.

06:04SPEAKER(upbeat music)

06:17SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)

06:35SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.

06:37SPEAKERI'm Will.

06:38SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

06:39SPEAKER- I should have cleared my throat before we started, Brad.

06:41SPEAKER- Oh, wait, hang on.

06:43SPEAKERI've been, I've seen, I've been to the clinic.

06:46SPEAKERThey scoped my cords.

06:47SPEAKER- Why did we not talk about this?

06:49SPEAKER- 'Cause we talked about it last week.

06:50SPEAKER- I mean, we did last week, I guess.

06:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

06:52SPEAKERI could hear you struggling not to clear your throat.

06:55SPEAKERI think you just coughed a little bit.

06:56SPEAKER- Yes, I saw.

06:58SPEAKER- So you've seen, you've seen the Giger ass car

07:01SPEAKERthat lives inside your mouth.

07:02SPEAKER- I couldn't look at it as it was happening live.

07:04SPEAKERI could not look at it.

07:05SPEAKERThey were, they, first of all, first of all,

07:07SPEAKERI did not expect the camera to go through my nose.

07:09SPEAKERI don't know why.

07:10SPEAKER- Wait, they did it through your nose?

07:11SPEAKER- Wait, did they not do that for you?

07:12SPEAKER- No, mine was a big stick that went straight in my mouth.

07:15SPEAKER- Oh, dude, it was a tie, like when I saw it,

07:16SPEAKERfirst of all, when I saw it, I was like pleasantly surprised

07:19SPEAKERat how svelte it was.

07:22SPEAKERIt's like, I'm trying to think what the diameter

07:24SPEAKERof this thing was.

07:25SPEAKERIt was like-

07:26SPEAKER- Like a thread?

07:27SPEAKER- Way thinner than a pencil, like way thinner than a pencil.

07:28SPEAKERIt was like this very tiny, tiny little flexible

07:32SPEAKERplastic cord with a camera on the end.

07:34SPEAKER- Mine was like three quarters of an inch probably.

07:36SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

07:36SPEAKER- It was a stick.

07:37SPEAKER- Okay, there have been some upgrades

07:38SPEAKERsince your time, it seems.

07:40SPEAKER- Wow, that's nice.

07:41SPEAKER- It was, I guess to put it in context,

07:45SPEAKERit was thin enough to go through my nose.

07:46SPEAKERLike it was thin enough to snake it up through the nose

07:48SPEAKERand down the throat.

07:49SPEAKER- Yeah, they didn't have to put a funnel on there

07:50SPEAKERto stretch it out or anything, I guess.

07:52SPEAKER- No, definitely not.

07:53SPEAKER- Wow, that's horrifying.

07:54SPEAKER- And they numbed, did they numb your-

07:56SPEAKER- No.

07:57SPEAKER- No?

07:57SPEAKER- She was just like, good luck,

07:58SPEAKERI'm not gonna touch yourself out, so you won't throw up.

08:00SPEAKERBut if you start feeling like you're gonna gag,

08:02SPEAKERlet me know and I'll pull the camera out.

08:03SPEAKER- We determined off camera

08:05SPEAKERthat we actually saw the same doctor, so like-

08:07SPEAKER- Yeah.

08:08SPEAKER- All the other variables were the same

08:09SPEAKERexcept for the camera and our respective experiences,

08:12SPEAKERI guess, but yeah, they squirted a little bit

08:14SPEAKERof a numbing agent up my nose.

08:16SPEAKERAnd then five minutes later,

08:17SPEAKERhere was this little snake camera going up and down.

08:20SPEAKER- Wow, that's neat.

08:21SPEAKER- And then they directed my eyes to the monitor

08:24SPEAKERand I was like, nope, just do what you need to do.

08:27SPEAKER- Oh, you didn't watch?

08:28SPEAKER- I'm gonna read these lines as you ask me to

08:30SPEAKERand do all these weird vocal sounds that you want

08:32SPEAKERand then not-

08:33SPEAKER- Oh man.

08:34SPEAKER- Intentionally not watch what's happening

08:35SPEAKER'cause I, oh my God.

08:37SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a-

08:38SPEAKER- Squeamish.

08:39SPEAKER- There's a little body horror in there.

08:40SPEAKER- I haven't signed into the web portal yet

08:42SPEAKERto see if that material is available.

08:43SPEAKER- It's a miracle of evolution, your vocal cords.

08:46SPEAKER- I don't know if I wanna see it again.

08:48SPEAKERThey reviewed some of the footage with me,

08:50SPEAKERso I did see it ultimately, but boy.

08:53SPEAKER- You got nodes?

08:54SPEAKER- Nope.

08:55SPEAKER- Nice.

08:56SPEAKER- Anatomically, everything is good.

08:57SPEAKERThey said, I'm headed for the same vocal therapy course

09:01SPEAKERthat you had, it seems, so.

09:03SPEAKER- You're gonna learn a lot about yourself

09:04SPEAKERon this journey, Brad.

09:05SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, so voyage of discovery at Shelby.

09:07SPEAKER- And hopefully you'll be able to talk better.

09:09SPEAKERYou'll be able to use your mouth better afterwards.

09:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

09:12SPEAKER- Speaking of using mouths,

09:13SPEAKERwe wanted to celebrate this 99th episode spectacular today

09:18SPEAKERby watching, we found out a couple of weeks ago

09:20SPEAKERthat you have never seen

09:21SPEAKERone of the seminal works of our people.

09:23SPEAKER- Yes, on Brad's big list of movies he's never seen.

09:27SPEAKER- The Matthew Lillard, Angelina Jolie,

09:30SPEAKERseminal 1995 classic Hackers.

09:33SPEAKERYou've never seen Hackers, Brad.

09:34SPEAKER- Well, now as of, let's see,

09:37SPEAKERas of about 14 hours ago, I have.

09:40SPEAKER- Starring Johnny Lee Miller

09:41SPEAKERas Dade Murphy/Crash Override/Zero Cool.

09:45SPEAKERYou sent me, okay, so,

09:46SPEAKERI'm gonna set the stage here a little bit.

09:47SPEAKERYou sent me a message last night.

09:48SPEAKER- I was wondering if, you didn't respond to that message

09:51SPEAKERand I was wondering if you just didn't care or whatever.

09:52SPEAKER- I was doing customs, I didn't see.

09:54SPEAKERI was saving it. - No, no, no, no.

09:55SPEAKERI didn't know if you were gonna reference it

09:57SPEAKERon this episode, Brad.

09:57SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.

09:58SPEAKERYou can't send a message like that

09:59SPEAKERand have me not reference it.

10:00SPEAKERYou said at 10.02 p.m., you said,

10:04SPEAKER"I just finished the movie and frankly, I'm speechless."

10:07SPEAKERThat's all I had to say.

10:10SPEAKER- I think that's right.

10:11SPEAKERI think that is the right reaction to hackers.

10:13SPEAKER- Especially in 2021, we'll get to it.

10:16SPEAKERThere's a lot to talk about here,

10:17SPEAKERbut I definitely feel like the experience

10:21SPEAKERof watching this movie in the era

10:23SPEAKERhas to have been extremely different

10:25SPEAKERthan coming to it fresh in 2021.

10:27SPEAKER- So, okay, I didn't watch this movie in the era.

10:30SPEAKER- So that, and I just found that out

10:32SPEAKERright before we started recording

10:33SPEAKERand I was shocked to hear that

10:34SPEAKER'cause I was hoping you were coming in here

10:35SPEAKERwith the experience of like, okay, this is what it was like

10:37SPEAKERto see it as a 20-year-old in 1995.

10:40SPEAKER- No, 'cause like in 1995, the discourse on this movie

10:44SPEAKERin the circles that I was on, which would have been like,

10:47SPEAKERthis came out before Windows 95.

10:49SPEAKERSo it was before, it was like to set the stage a little bit.

10:52SPEAKER- Hang on, hang on, let me triangulate here.

10:54SPEAKERI think they were contemporary.

10:55SPEAKER- So this movie was made.

10:57SPEAKER- Oh, you're right.

10:58SPEAKERIt definitely would have been made before Windows 95.

11:00SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

11:01SPEAKERThis movie was made before people knew what the internet was.

11:03SPEAKER- Yes. - Right?

11:05SPEAKERAnd, but people definitely knew what hackers were

11:08SPEAKER'cause you'd heard about Captain Crunch,

11:10SPEAKERyou'd heard about Kevin Mitnick,

11:11SPEAKERyou'd heard about phone freakers and stuff like that.

11:13SPEAKEREven in the, like, and it was presented often

11:16SPEAKERas it is in this movie as a thing you hear about

11:19SPEAKERon the local or national news

11:21SPEAKERas a threat to the sovereignty of the nation.

11:24SPEAKER- Like shady underworld of cyber criminals.

11:26SPEAKER- Yeah, of anarchists and socialists and commies.

11:30SPEAKERAnd--

11:32SPEAKER- Hack the planet.

11:33SPEAKER- It was presented, it was presented,

11:36SPEAKERlike there's a shift in the presentation

11:38SPEAKERthat happens throughout this movie

11:39SPEAKER'cause they start out talking mostly about phone stuff

11:41SPEAKERand modems and dialing in,

11:42SPEAKERand then toward the end it becomes about the internet.

11:45SPEAKERAnd my hunch is that that's represented

11:47SPEAKERby the change in understanding of the fact

11:51SPEAKERthat the internet that happened as this movie progressed.

11:53SPEAKERLike, I wonder if, I almost feel like they got

11:55SPEAKERto the end of the shooting and were like,

11:56SPEAKER"Oh shit, we don't, this internet thing is really big.

11:58SPEAKER"We should tap into this now."

12:00SPEAKER- Hmm, okay, so there are like three movies

12:04SPEAKERfor computer hackers and nerds.

12:06SPEAKER- Oh, okay, don't, let me see if I can guess.

12:08SPEAKER- Yeah, hit me, you got 'em?

12:10SPEAKER- Oh gosh, well, you're saying ones

12:13SPEAKERthat like genuine nerd hacker types like?

12:15SPEAKER- I say that people at least--

12:17SPEAKER- Or that people associate with,

12:18SPEAKER'cause like I started to throw out the net,

12:20SPEAKERbut I don't think anybody--

12:21SPEAKER- No, that movie sucks ass.

12:22SPEAKER- Right, right, like nobody in the living the life

12:25SPEAKERhas any respect for that movie.

12:27SPEAKER- Gosh, actually, I'm not sure, is "War Games" one of them?

12:31SPEAKER- "War Games" is one of them.

12:32SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

12:33SPEAKER- "Sneakers."

12:34SPEAKER- "Sneakers," okay, sure.

12:35SPEAKER- This one.

12:36SPEAKER- Okay.

12:37SPEAKER- So here's the thing, okay, in 1995, this movie came out

12:40SPEAKERand inside the communities of people

12:42SPEAKERwho were computer nerds in 1995,

12:44SPEAKERwhich was a pretty like large subculture,

12:47SPEAKERbut small in the general populace at that point,

12:49SPEAKERpre Windows 95.

12:51SPEAKER- Yes, and also like before, I mean,

12:54SPEAKERit's not before there was any big tech money,

12:56SPEAKERbut before this more recent explosion

12:58SPEAKERof Silicon Valley social media companies had happened

13:00SPEAKERand it all got super marketified by Wall Street,

13:05SPEAKERyou know what I mean?

13:05SPEAKERLike now it is just big money,

13:07SPEAKERbut back then it was like people were doing this

13:09SPEAKERfor like liberation of information and stuff like that.

13:12SPEAKERIt was much more of a, like you said,

13:14SPEAKERalmost like this anarchist collective kind of thing.

13:17SPEAKER- Like the thing that people maybe don't realize

13:18SPEAKERabout the internet now, the early internet,

13:20SPEAKERis that there was a lot of like, yo,

13:23SPEAKERhere's a site with the anarchist cookbook on it, right?

13:25SPEAKERSo if you wanna learn how to make pipe bombs,

13:27SPEAKERhere's a place to do that.

13:28SPEAKER- I wasn't quite going straight to destructive.

13:31SPEAKER- Well, but I mean, but it was like,

13:34SPEAKERit was a lot of like forbidden information, sure,

13:37SPEAKERthat was ultimately probably relatively harmless

13:40SPEAKERfor most of the people that accessed it.

13:41SPEAKER- Yeah, or to put another spin on it,

13:43SPEAKERlike this is an era that I associate

13:45SPEAKERwith like the EFF and the well.

13:46SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's fair.

13:48SPEAKER- Like the kind of digital hippies sort of, you know.

13:51SPEAKER- There was a lot of like, this is a new culture,

13:53SPEAKERwe're forming a new culture, when in fact,

13:56SPEAKERit was really just a bunch of old white guys hanging around.

13:58SPEAKER- Well, some younger people as well, I mean.

14:02SPEAKER- I mean, in 1994, it would have been

14:03SPEAKERalmost all old white guys.

14:05SPEAKER- Yeah.

14:06SPEAKER- Or college age white guys, like an occasional woman.

14:09SPEAKER- But it was definitely more of an anti-establishment thing

14:11SPEAKERas opposed to now it's like kind of the establishment.

14:13SPEAKER- Well, it still presents itself as anti-establishment,

14:16SPEAKERbut it is 100% the establishment, yes, you are correct.

14:19SPEAKERSo in 1995, when this movie came out,

14:22SPEAKERthe discourse was such that I was like, fuck this movie,

14:24SPEAKERI'm never gonna go see this piece of shit.

14:26SPEAKER- Okay, so, but this is where I wanna insert this thought

14:29SPEAKERthen because I need to know what the discourse

14:31SPEAKERwas around this movie at the time,

14:32SPEAKERbecause we need to talk about what I thought

14:34SPEAKERthis movie was gonna be versus what it turned out to be.

14:38SPEAKER- So this movie and the net were kind of felt,

14:41SPEAKERat least in the communities I was part of,

14:42SPEAKERand I'm sure everybody's communities were different.

14:45SPEAKERLike they were both viewed a lot in much the same way.

14:49SPEAKER- Okay.

14:50SPEAKER- Like they were viewed as poor representations

14:53SPEAKERof the cultures that you were a part of,

14:54SPEAKERwhich I think is probably like anytime

14:56SPEAKERthere's a mainstream product about an emerging subculture,

14:59SPEAKERI feel like that's probably gonna be

15:01SPEAKERthe reaction inside that subculture, right?

15:06SPEAKERLike if you made a punk rock,

15:08SPEAKERa mainstream punk rock movie in 1979 or 1980,

15:12SPEAKERthe people that were actually in that scene

15:13SPEAKERare gonna think it's a complete load of horse shit.

15:15SPEAKER- Yes, unless it's like the super rare case

15:18SPEAKERwhere like you really thread the needle

15:19SPEAKERand you really get it and you actually do it right,

15:21SPEAKERbut that almost never happens.

15:22SPEAKER- Those also usually happen in retrospect,

15:24SPEAKERlike Sid and Nancy came way after the actual time, right?

15:27SPEAKER- Sure.

15:28SPEAKER- So, okay, the opening scene of this movie

15:32SPEAKERwith the kid, with the courtroom scene,

15:34SPEAKERthe courtroom scene, no, no, no, the courtroom scene.

15:37SPEAKER- Well, there's the raid on his kitchen first.

15:41SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but they do the whole thing

15:43SPEAKERand they don't, you don't know that it's a 12-year-old

15:45SPEAKERor a 14-year-old or whatever.

15:47SPEAKER- As they pan over to this child, I think he's 11.

15:49SPEAKER- Which is very much the Kevin Mitnick experience.

15:52SPEAKERLike when Kevin Mitnick was being arrested

15:54SPEAKERand put on the run for two years and put in court,

15:57SPEAKERthey didn't fucking tell you he was 16 years old.

15:59SPEAKER- Wait, was he really?

16:00SPEAKER- Yeah, he was 16, like he started hacking,

16:03SPEAKERI mean, he didn't hack, he just did like,

16:05SPEAKERhe bought a weird punch card

16:07SPEAKERso he could get free bus rides, right?

16:09SPEAKERBut like the, he started when he was 12,

16:14SPEAKERlike figuring out how to social engineer

16:15SPEAKERhis way into free bus rides

16:17SPEAKERand then was doing phone telecom stuff by the time he was 16.

16:20SPEAKERSo all of his stuff happened, I think,

16:21SPEAKERbefore he was an adult, legally.

16:24SPEAKER- Was that before this movie?

16:25SPEAKER- That was well before this movie.

16:26SPEAKER- Okay, so they had that to draw on?

16:27SPEAKER- Yeah, he was born in '63,

16:29SPEAKERso that would have been like the mid to late '80s.

16:30SPEAKER- Well, did he get the SWAT team raid on his house

16:33SPEAKERto arrest him thing?

16:34SPEAKER- He was presented as a threat to national infrastructure

16:37SPEAKERin the same way that young Zero Cool was.

16:40SPEAKER- Well, sure, but also I love in the courtroom

16:41SPEAKERlike Zero Cool's horrendous crime

16:44SPEAKERis that he crashed Wall Street for a few minutes,

16:46SPEAKERlike it's not- - 1,507 computers.

16:48SPEAKER- Like nobody died.

16:50SPEAKER- It was the biggest hack of all time, Brad.

16:51SPEAKER- Right, but like nobody died, no infrastructure was damaged,

16:54SPEAKERit was just some rich people were inconvenienced

16:56SPEAKERfor a short time and for that,

16:57SPEAKERhe was doomed to a computerless existence.

17:00SPEAKER- A massive $45,000 penalty

17:02SPEAKERand six years of no computers.

17:03SPEAKERSo here's the thing, the discourse around this movie

17:06SPEAKERwas that people were pissed that it was called hackers

17:09SPEAKER'cause in the community, hackers were viewed as a positive

17:11SPEAKERand crackers were the bad people

17:14SPEAKERwho tried to disrupt infrastructure and things like that.

17:17SPEAKER- Okay.

17:18SPEAKER- Which I think that the people that had seen the film

17:21SPEAKERfelt didn't represent accurately,

17:22SPEAKERbut I think having watched the movie multiple times

17:24SPEAKERin modern, in the modern era, as people say,

17:29SPEAKERit is, it feels like a kind of a misrepresentation.

17:34SPEAKERJust to be clear, I like this movie a lot.

17:36SPEAKERIt is a bad movie.

17:37SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

17:38SPEAKER- But I have love for it, despite that.

17:40SPEAKER- I needed to hear you say that.

17:42SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it is, it is-

17:43SPEAKER- I needed to hear you say it's a bad movie

17:44SPEAKERbecause some of the things that you texted me

17:47SPEAKERthroughout the week made me wonder.

17:48SPEAKEROnce I started watching it, I was like, okay.

17:51SPEAKER- So, okay, it's a really incredibly well-constructed movie

17:53SPEAKERwith a few glaring problems.

17:55SPEAKER- Let me talk about, can I just talk about

17:56SPEAKERwhat I thought this movie was gonna be?

17:58SPEAKER- What did you think it was gonna be, Brad?

17:59SPEAKER- I mean, we're like past 25 years

18:01SPEAKERof cultural osmosis at this point, right?

18:04SPEAKERLike this thing has been in the public consciousness

18:07SPEAKERfor a long time.

18:08SPEAKER- Most of our lives.

18:09SPEAKER- And like, you see movie posters, you see DVD covers,

18:12SPEAKERlike you see people quoting it all the time.

18:14SPEAKERHere's what I thought this movie was gonna be.

18:15SPEAKERI expected this to be this like a slick,

18:17SPEAKERbut kind of lighthearted thriller

18:19SPEAKERabout like a secret world, like an underground world

18:21SPEAKERof like edgy young adult cyber criminals

18:23SPEAKERthat were like doing bank heists and stuff.

18:24SPEAKER- You were looking for like enemy of the state.

18:27SPEAKER- But more like, again, lighthearted, like kind of like a,

18:30SPEAKERwell, not kids, like I said, young adult.

18:32SPEAKERI'm specifically saying young adult

18:34SPEAKERbecause what I really did not expect

18:37SPEAKERwas for this to be a fucking high school teen movie.

18:40SPEAKER- It was a teen movie.

18:42SPEAKER- It wasn't, it wasn't fourteens.

18:44SPEAKER- They were, no, no, no, I don't mean it was a movie fourteens

18:47SPEAKERbut it's a high school.

18:48SPEAKERThey have like a third of this movie is set

18:50SPEAKERin a high school.

18:52SPEAKER- They go to the coolest high school ever.

18:54SPEAKER- Wait, do they?

18:55SPEAKER- I think it's a cool high school.

18:56SPEAKER- What's so cool about that high school?

18:57SPEAKER- All the hackers go there.

18:58SPEAKER- I mean, I guess.

19:00SPEAKER- They have a pool on the roof.

19:01SPEAKERI mean, they didn't really have a pool on the roof.

19:03SPEAKER- Is this the movie where the pool on the roof joke

19:05SPEAKERoriginated or has that been around forever?

19:07SPEAKER- No, that's from this movie I believe.

19:08SPEAKER- Is it really?

19:09SPEAKER- I'm pretty sure.

19:10SPEAKERI think about while I was in high school

19:11SPEAKERwhen I remember people saying,

19:13SPEAKERtalking about pool on the roof jokes

19:14SPEAKERand I didn't know if this.

19:15SPEAKER- I think that has to be this movie.

19:16SPEAKERI've never heard a pool on the roof joke.

19:18SPEAKERSo. - Interesting.

19:19SPEAKER- Here is the other thing about this movie is,

19:22SPEAKERI mean, it seems prescient now in a lot of ways

19:25SPEAKERbut that's just because it shaped the culture

19:27SPEAKERin such an insidious and low lying way, I think.

19:31SPEAKEROkay, so, okay, so the opening scene is perfect

19:35SPEAKERwith the courtroom, with the kid

19:37SPEAKERand he's sitting there and they're like,

19:39SPEAKERthe prosecutor's going on about what a horrific dirt bag

19:43SPEAKERthis child is, what a threat they are to the Republic,

19:45SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, blah.

19:46SPEAKERAnd then it cuts to this shot of this obviously

19:48SPEAKERlike pre-pubescent kid.

19:49SPEAKER- Yes.

19:50SPEAKER- Who's sitting there in a suit

19:51SPEAKERand looking really, really freaked out.

19:55SPEAKERAnd then, and then it goes to maybe the best depiction

20:00SPEAKERof social engineering that's ever been put on film.

20:03SPEAKER- Okay.

20:04SPEAKER- So when.

20:05SPEAKER- I'll go with you on this journey, I guess.

20:07SPEAKER- When old Zerocool, when old Dade calls

20:10SPEAKERinto the TV station to hack the TV station.

20:14SPEAKER- Okay, yes.

20:15SPEAKER- He gets Norm the security guard on the phone

20:17SPEAKERand it's like, Norm, this is,

20:18SPEAKERand then he drops a bunch of names that we all know

20:20SPEAKERbecause it's funny, it's like, I can't remember

20:23SPEAKERbut it's references to things.

20:24SPEAKER- This is Eddie Vedder from accounting.

20:25SPEAKER- Nerd shit.

20:26SPEAKERAnd he gets Norm to go over and give him the modem number

20:31SPEAKERwhich is all he needs to get into the system

20:32SPEAKER'cause he's a hacker.

20:34SPEAKER'Cause they know the three main passwords

20:36SPEAKERwhich actually also is not untrue for the late nineties.

20:38SPEAKERLike, really?

20:39SPEAKEROh God, if you, there were like 50 passwords

20:42SPEAKERthat if you had, you could log into like some insane number

20:45SPEAKERof people's computers.

20:46SPEAKER- It was, what is it, love?

20:48SPEAKERSex, God.

20:49SPEAKER- The ones that they use are stupid.

20:49SPEAKERLike the number one one was password

20:51SPEAKERand then it was password with some fours and zeros

20:53SPEAKERand stuff like that.

20:54SPEAKER- Secret was the other one.

20:55SPEAKER- Secret was a big one, yeah.

20:56SPEAKERYeah.

20:57SPEAKER- You know, you're not wrong actually.

20:58SPEAKERI didn't, it didn't really hit me at the time

21:00SPEAKERbut that scene of him convincing the security guard

21:02SPEAKERto give him all the info was like one of those,

21:04SPEAKERlike one of the moments where the, one of the rare moments

21:06SPEAKERwhere the movie actually seemed like fairly smart

21:08SPEAKERand got it kind of right.

21:10SPEAKER- Well, and then it does this amazing slingshot

21:13SPEAKERfrom there into one of the all time stupidest

21:17SPEAKERcomputer hacking sessions that you've ever seen on film.

21:20SPEAKERLike it has, like, look, they do the full screen UI

21:23SPEAKERwhere the people are talking to each other,

21:25SPEAKERlike in the matrix or whatever.

21:27SPEAKER- Yes.

21:28SPEAKER- So that people could see what was on the screen

21:29SPEAKERand to make it look interesting for audiences at home

21:32SPEAKERwho don't know what a command line looks like

21:33SPEAKERin 1995, right?

21:35SPEAKER- Was that the, the crash override acid burn

21:37SPEAKERkind of adversarial duel?

21:39SPEAKER- Yes.

21:39SPEAKER- Like the, what is it, what's the line?

21:41SPEAKERIs it the hack with the best, die like the rest,

21:43SPEAKERsomething like that?

21:47SPEAKERI'm looking at it now.

21:48SPEAKERYou have tread upon my domain and must now suffer.

21:51SPEAKERWho are you with like R's and U's

21:54SPEAKERinstead of full words spelled out.

21:56SPEAKER- So here is the thing.

21:58SPEAKERIf you spent some time at RAC in 1994.

22:00SPEAKER- Fair.

22:01SPEAKER- Not unlike the actual vernacular used.

22:03SPEAKER- Yes.

22:04SPEAKERNot, I mean, obviously you wouldn't have this like slick,

22:06SPEAKERreally cheesy looking like Macromedia shockwave interface

22:09SPEAKERthat you'd be typing into, but.

22:10SPEAKER- But I mean that stuff set up

22:11SPEAKERso you can see the text on the screen

22:12SPEAKERand they don't have to do extreme closeups

22:14SPEAKERand shit like that.

22:15SPEAKER- Also, he's wearing sunglasses

22:17SPEAKERthroughout this entire scene.

22:18SPEAKERIt's at night in a bedroom with the lights off

22:20SPEAKERin front of a computer.

22:21SPEAKER- The sunglasses make you look very cool.

22:23SPEAKERI don't know if you're aware of this effect.

22:24SPEAKER- Like the matrix's representation of hackers

22:27SPEAKERwas like exactly this movie except done well

22:30SPEAKERand like actually cool, at least for the time.

22:32SPEAKERLike it's maybe a little dated now, but like.

22:34SPEAKER- Brad, this movie's really fucking cool.

22:36SPEAKER- Ah, sure.

22:38SPEAKER- This movie is cool.

22:40SPEAKERHe wears, the costumes in this movie are like, imagine,

22:44SPEAKERokay, think about what you were wearing in 1995.

22:46SPEAKERI was wearing probably jeans and actually I was wearing

22:50SPEAKERexactly what I wear right now,

22:51SPEAKERwhich is like jeans and t-shirts, maybe Dockers and t-shirts

22:54SPEAKER'cause Gap khakis were very popular

22:56SPEAKERin the mid nineties where I was.

22:59SPEAKERThe like the cutoff t-shirts, the bold prints,

23:02SPEAKERthe, you know, the Joey, the kid,

23:05SPEAKERthe one that's actually a teenager?

23:06SPEAKER- Yes, the one who's smoking all the time

23:08SPEAKERbecause there's like such a weirdly large amount of smoking

23:12SPEAKERin this movie.

23:14SPEAKER- Look, that's just welcome to the nineties, man.

23:16SPEAKERBut the panel shirt that he wears when Freak is like,

23:22SPEAKERyo, you need to stop letting your mom dress you.

23:24SPEAKERI was like, fuck, I had that shirt, man.

23:27SPEAKER- Ooh, that's rough.

23:28SPEAKER- I know, it wasn't good, probably not in 1995, but yeah.

23:31SPEAKER- That scene, that same scene is one of the few I wrote

23:33SPEAKERon the, in my notes here under the things

23:36SPEAKERthat kind of gets right scene.

23:37SPEAKER- Oh, the clothes?

23:38SPEAKER- Not the clothes, but the part where I can't,

23:41SPEAKERI'm impressed that you keep all the names straight.

23:42SPEAKERJoey is the nerdy kid?

23:43SPEAKER- Joey is the kid, yeah.

23:45SPEAKER- And sorry, Freak?

23:46SPEAKER- Freak is the- - The guy with the longer hair?

23:48SPEAKER- Yeah, the-

23:49SPEAKER- The more, the wiser, like more seasoned.

23:51SPEAKER- He is the, yeah, he's like, I would put him as a,

23:55SPEAKERif you're ranking the hackers in terms of their eliteness.

23:58SPEAKER- Yes, he's like number three, maybe.

23:59SPEAKER- He is a mid tier, below acid burn.

24:02SPEAKER- Right.

24:03SPEAKER- And he's evaluating the new guy, a crash override,

24:06SPEAKERas he enters into the coolest high school in New York.

24:10SPEAKER- Thing about that scene that I found kind of amusing

24:12SPEAKERis like how desperate Joey is to come up with his handle.

24:15SPEAKER- Yes.

24:15SPEAKER- He's like, you gotta help me think of a handle.

24:16SPEAKERLike, what do you think about Dr. Doom?

24:19SPEAKERLike he throws out a bunch of terrible ones,

24:20SPEAKERbut like at the time that seemed kind of cheesy, I'm sure,

24:23SPEAKERbut like now, like that's all of Twitch, right?

24:25SPEAKERLike everybody who streams on the internet

24:27SPEAKERhas to come up with a handle.

24:28SPEAKERLike that actually happened, right?

24:29SPEAKER- Well, it was the case then too.

24:30SPEAKERLike your IRC handle was a large part of your identity.

24:33SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

24:34SPEAKER- But the thing is, it was all self, well, first off,

24:36SPEAKERit wasn't like you had, like there wasn't a registrar

24:40SPEAKERof identities where only one person could be Dr. Doom.

24:44SPEAKEREverybody had this, like there were 5,000 drizzt on IRC

24:48SPEAKERat any given moment with numbers after them or whatever.

24:51SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:52SPEAKER- But like, so there's two things

24:54SPEAKERthat happened in that first scene.

24:56SPEAKERHe establishes the first antagonist with acid burn.

25:00SPEAKERDoesn't know who it is yet, right?

25:02SPEAKERIt has that incredibly stupid pulling the tapes

25:04SPEAKERback and forth of robot arms.

25:06SPEAKERIt is such a bad, wonderful practical effect sequence.

25:09SPEAKER- A lot of the kind of montages in this movie

25:12SPEAKERare like kind of, muah, in like the worst way.

25:16SPEAKERThey are so goddamn, like the cuts,

25:19SPEAKERlike they cut back and forth to all these tapes

25:21SPEAKERbeing moved around by these robotic arms

25:22SPEAKERand also with all these like stock clips of like dinosaurs

25:26SPEAKERand jet fighters and like the outer limits intro.

25:30SPEAKER- Well, the outer limits intro is

25:31SPEAKER'cause he wants to watch the outer limits.

25:32SPEAKERSo he's like, the whole point of that scene

25:34SPEAKERis he's hacking the local TV station

25:35SPEAKERto put the outer limits on

25:36SPEAKERinstead of this fascist America first guy.

25:38SPEAKER- Oh, right, that's right.

25:39SPEAKERI forgot about the America first guy.

25:41SPEAKER- Yeah, dude.

25:41SPEAKER- That was like, that was, you know what?

25:43SPEAKERI forgot to write that on my like things that got right,

25:45SPEAKERwas like this guy is railing about like genetic stock

25:48SPEAKERand then they pull the tape out and straight up,

25:51SPEAKERit's a program called America first.

25:52SPEAKERAnd like I know about Reagan's use of that phrase as well.

25:55SPEAKERI know it's not a brand new thing, but still like they, yes.

25:58SPEAKER- Some fascist, anti-fascist iconography there.

26:03SPEAKER- Right, but I guess actually that does tie into

26:04SPEAKERthe anti-establishment ethos of like the hacker movement

26:07SPEAKERof the arrow was like very anti-fascist, right?

26:09SPEAKER- So like they get so much tone

26:13SPEAKERand like some background stuff right throughout this movie.

26:15SPEAKERWe're not gonna go through the whole thing like this,

26:16SPEAKERbut like I think these first two scenes

26:18SPEAKERare the whole movie, right?

26:20SPEAKER- Sure. - Really good representation

26:21SPEAKERof like the public perception of hackers,

26:24SPEAKERthe social engineering, which was the primary way

26:27SPEAKERyou hacked stuff back in the day.

26:30SPEAKERAnd then also like the people who were good at it did that.

26:33SPEAKERAnd then on top of it, this ludicrous depiction,

26:36SPEAKERbut also like all those weird closeups

26:39SPEAKERand the snap cuts and all that are I think supposed

26:41SPEAKERto depict what's going on in his brain

26:42SPEAKERand like to show you that his brain,

26:44SPEAKERhe's just moving really fast, right?

26:45SPEAKER- Yes, he's like the smartest hacker out there.

26:47SPEAKERLike his mom says he's a genius,

26:49SPEAKERbut he would never use his knowledge to hurt people.

26:52SPEAKER- Exactly, but at the same time,

26:55SPEAKEReverything in the movie, like he types really slow.

26:59SPEAKERThey all type so fucking slow.

27:00SPEAKER- That is totally on my list of things to point out here

27:02SPEAKERis that every time you can tell the movie

27:04SPEAKERis trying to be like, look how smart and fast

27:06SPEAKERthese guys are, look how elite these hackers are.

27:09SPEAKERLike the typing is like extraordinarily slow.

27:12SPEAKERLike the things they're saying are like completely basic.

27:14SPEAKERLike it's kind of, that part is kind of embarrassing.

27:18SPEAKER- It's really funny.

27:20SPEAKER- Like you kind of sold me on those first couple scenes

27:22SPEAKERin terms of the perceptiveness of it,

27:24SPEAKERbecause I spent so much of this movie,

27:27SPEAKERA, like I said, coming to terms with what it actually is

27:29SPEAKERand not what I thought it was gonna be,

27:31SPEAKERbecause this is, I swear to God,

27:33SPEAKERone of the cheesiest movies I've ever seen.

27:35SPEAKER- Oh, just, you need, God, you gotta watch it again, okay.

27:37SPEAKER- I think I do because again, like I just was not prepared

27:41SPEAKERfor how much camp is in this movie.

27:42SPEAKERAnd I spent most of the running time

27:45SPEAKERconstantly trying to figure out how self-aware,

27:47SPEAKERif at all, it is about itself.

27:49SPEAKER- 100% self-aware, I think.

27:51SPEAKER- Are you sure?

27:51SPEAKERI still never landed on a definitive answer to that question.

27:56SPEAKER- I don't know that the performers

27:57SPEAKERare self-aware of what's happening.

27:58SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

27:59SPEAKER- But I feel like at least the person who wrote the movie

28:02SPEAKERis aware of what the movie is.

28:03SPEAKER- Okay, like I read some quotes

28:05SPEAKERfrom the director of the movie and I kind of got the sense

28:08SPEAKERthat he might take it fairly seriously, which is hilarious.

28:12SPEAKER- But I think that's the best,

28:13SPEAKERI think that's what makes it good.

28:14SPEAKERSo knowing what I know about how productions

28:17SPEAKERwith like script consultants and experts

28:18SPEAKERand stuff like that usually go,

28:21SPEAKERmy assumption is that they brought in some actual,

28:23SPEAKERlike they had some actual consultants on the film

28:26SPEAKERwho knew what they were talking about.

28:27SPEAKERAnd that's why things like that social engineering scene

28:30SPEAKERended up in the film.

28:30SPEAKERThey were like, look, computer hacking

28:32SPEAKERisn't just sitting in front of a computer and typing a lot.

28:35SPEAKERIt's also being able to call somebody on the phone

28:37SPEAKERand convince them to give you

28:38SPEAKERsome really important information.

28:40SPEAKER- The movie does a really good job

28:42SPEAKERsetting up three antagonists.

28:44SPEAKER'Cause the three antagonists are acid burn the hacker,

28:48SPEAKERKate, Angelina Jolie's character.

28:51SPEAKERAnd then, oh, four actually.

28:53SPEAKERGil, the secret service agent, the cop.

28:56SPEAKER- Oh, sure, yeah.

28:58SPEAKER- And- - End of the plague.

28:59SPEAKER- The plague. (laughs)

29:01SPEAKER- Fucking guy, man.

29:02SPEAKER- So the plague, just so you know,

29:04SPEAKERis also the guy who played the Indian guy in "Brown Face"

29:08SPEAKERin short circuit movies.

29:11SPEAKER- Short, oh wow, Fisher Stevens?

29:12SPEAKER- Fisher Stevens.

29:13SPEAKER- I was not super familiar with him.

29:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

29:16SPEAKER- I haven't seen a short circuit movie

29:17SPEAKERsince it was in the theater.

29:18SPEAKER- That is the right choice, it turns out.

29:20SPEAKERSo- - The plague.

29:22SPEAKER- The plague, like that guy,

29:25SPEAKERthat character has to be a moment

29:26SPEAKERwhere the movie absolutely knows what it's doing.

29:28SPEAKERHe is just too over the top for that to be unintentional.

29:31SPEAKER- Oh yeah, 100%.

29:33SPEAKER- Parts of this I question

29:34SPEAKERwhether they knew how fucking goofball it was,

29:37SPEAKERbut that guy- - Well, 'cause the thing is

29:39SPEAKERyou have to think about it.

29:40SPEAKERAnd for a large portion of what they presumed

29:42SPEAKERwas gonna be their mass market audience,

29:45SPEAKERGil was probably the hero.

29:47SPEAKER- Okay, yes, yes.

29:48SPEAKER- So they had to have an obvious bad guy.

29:50SPEAKERThey had to set up Kate/Acid Burn as the early antagonist

29:56SPEAKERso that he would have a hacker enemy to go against.

29:58SPEAKER- Of course.

29:59SPEAKER- And then the realization that they were in fact

30:01SPEAKERthe same person was a real turning moment for the whole film.

30:04SPEAKERWait, you're him?

30:06SPEAKER- Wait, you're him?

30:07SPEAKER- Shocking reveal. - What?

30:10SPEAKER- There's some mild sexism around some of that stuff.

30:13SPEAKER- There's a lot of fucking sexism when he's like,

30:16SPEAKER"Oh, you're pretty good for a girl."

30:17SPEAKERAll that shit is terrible. - Yeah, that arc is a pretty

30:19SPEAKERgood score for a girl.

30:20SPEAKER- Yeah, were they playing?

30:21SPEAKERWas that all Wipeout? - It was Wipeout.

30:23SPEAKERThat was Wipeout, I wrote that down.

30:25SPEAKERI had actually checked.

30:26SPEAKERI think this movie came out two weeks before Wipeout

30:29SPEAKERcame out on the PlayStation.

30:31SPEAKERThis was full on "The Wizard Super Mario Brothers 3."

30:34SPEAKERThey got footage of a new game in there before

30:36SPEAKERthe game came out, but except it was an arcade version

30:38SPEAKERof Wipeout, which I thought was really funny.

30:40SPEAKERAlso, all those kind of front-on shots of his face

30:45SPEAKERwhile he's playing the game. - I love it.

30:46SPEAKERI love those so much. - The intensity,

30:48SPEAKERlike they did it on a green screen.

30:49SPEAKERLike you can tell they just like,

30:50SPEAKERthey comped him on top of a shot of the youth center

30:53SPEAKERbehind him so they could do all this goofy, ugh.

30:55SPEAKER- Or did they just project it on behind him?

30:57SPEAKER- It might've been rear projection, actually,

30:58SPEAKERnow that you mention it, but in fact it probably was,

31:01SPEAKERbut like still it's just fucking goofy.

31:03SPEAKER- It's so good, it's so good. - Oh my God.

31:06SPEAKER- So is the stuff with the barriers in Wipeout though,

31:09SPEAKERor is that something they added?

31:10SPEAKER- What barriers, barriers.

31:11SPEAKER- The place that she dies before she gets her high score.

31:14SPEAKER- It might not all be Wipeout.

31:15SPEAKERThere could definitely be some other stuff in there.

31:17SPEAKER- I didn't remember there being like shooting

31:18SPEAKERand like stuff you had to blast or anything in Wipeout.

31:21SPEAKERMaybe there is. - I assume it's Wipeout.

31:22SPEAKERMaybe it could be fake Wipeout, but like the ship,

31:24SPEAKERI mean the kind of car-- - The ships look like Wipeout.

31:25SPEAKER- The car designs are like spot on,

31:27SPEAKERso I assumed it was the real thing.

31:29SPEAKER- I felt like there was a Sony logo in there too.

31:31SPEAKER- Oh yes, I believe you do see a PlayStation logo

31:33SPEAKERat one point.

31:35SPEAKERAlso a lot of Power Books.

31:36SPEAKERI don't know if we should talk about product placement.

31:39SPEAKER- Well, like laptops all look like a little bit

31:41SPEAKERlike Power Books.

31:41SPEAKERThere were a couple of Toshiba's in there too, I think.

31:43SPEAKER- Oh my God, so that's something I wrote under the things

31:46SPEAKERthat kind of gets right.

31:48SPEAKERFirst of all, the laptops are so chunky.

31:49SPEAKERLike, oh my God, it was crazy to see those things

31:52SPEAKERlook like they weigh 30 pounds.

31:53SPEAKERLike they're so thick.

31:55SPEAKER- Laptops were still pretty unusual in 1995.

31:57SPEAKERLike those laptops started at like three grand.

32:00SPEAKER- Right, and the screens were God awful and everything.

32:02SPEAKERLike that's kind of why I give it credit

32:03SPEAKERfor getting that right,

32:04SPEAKERis that like as cheesy as those laptops look in retrospect,

32:08SPEAKERlike anybody who would self-identify as a hacker

32:10SPEAKERor even just like pretty much all software developers

32:13SPEAKERdevelop on laptops these days, right?

32:14SPEAKERLike that's kind of, that's the way things went.

32:16SPEAKERSo they got that, like, you don't see anybody,

32:18SPEAKERwell, Lucy, I guess, Joey's confiscated computer

32:23SPEAKERthat he steals the garbage file with,

32:24SPEAKERI think was a full desktop.

32:26SPEAKER- Doesn't date have a desktop computer too in its house?

32:28SPEAKER- Maybe, maybe so.

32:30SPEAKER- The thing that's interesting,

32:31SPEAKERbut they had to have laptops

32:32SPEAKER'cause they were using pay phones.

32:34SPEAKER- You're right, you're right.

32:34SPEAKERThey had to be mobile, they had to be mobile.

32:36SPEAKERBut I mean, that was like fairly prescient, right?

32:40SPEAKER- Kind of, like if this wasn't like,

32:43SPEAKERso this is part of the place the movie's interesting

32:45SPEAKERis because it overlaps phone and internet.

32:48SPEAKERLike four or five years later, it would have been,

32:50SPEAKERhey, I need to get a bunch of hacked machines

32:53SPEAKERthat I can route my shit through

32:54SPEAKERso they can't trace me back, right?

32:56SPEAKERAnd that would have been kind of accurate.

32:58SPEAKER- I guess, I don't know.

32:59SPEAKER- I mean, that's always been kind of a fun thing

33:01SPEAKERto track in movies over time for me.

33:04SPEAKERLike Skynet in 1984 was a mainframe under a mountain,

33:09SPEAKERlike a military installation.

33:10SPEAKERIt was a central gigantic ass computer.

33:12SPEAKERI don't like Terminator 3 at all,

33:13SPEAKERbut by Terminator 3, it was a distributed network.

33:17SPEAKERIt was decentralized,

33:18SPEAKERso you couldn't just blow up the mountain

33:19SPEAKERand kill the computer.

33:20SPEAKERAnd then when Genesis came out,

33:22SPEAKERwhich like if you have not seen Terminator Genesis,

33:23SPEAKERit is a ridiculous movie.

33:26SPEAKER- Is that the one with Christian Bale?

33:27SPEAKER- No, that was salvation.

33:29SPEAKERThat was the very serious future war one, Genesis.

33:31SPEAKERGenesis is the one that does all kinds of time travel fuckery

33:34SPEAKERto just reboot the timeline

33:35SPEAKERin a really recursive self-referential way.

33:38SPEAKER- Is that the one with Linda Hamilton back?

33:40SPEAKER- No, that was Dark Fate,

33:41SPEAKERwhich is also takes itself pretty seriously.

33:43SPEAKERGenesis does not like,

33:44SPEAKERI don't think Genesis is a good movie,

33:46SPEAKERbut you should watch Genesis if you like Terminator

33:48SPEAKERbecause it's completely ridiculous.

33:50SPEAKERBut anyway, by the time of Genesis, Skynet is an app.

33:53SPEAKER- Oh God.

33:54SPEAKER- It's literally like Siri running

33:56SPEAKERon everybody's mobile devices and like it's,

33:58SPEAKERanyway, it's fun to watch like the cinematic perception

34:01SPEAKERof computers evolve over time like that.

34:03SPEAKER- I love that.

34:06SPEAKERAnd like the shots that they do,

34:08SPEAKERthere are a lot of really fucking awesome,

34:10SPEAKERstupid shots of the inside of computers

34:13SPEAKERthat were all done with model.

34:15SPEAKERThey were all model shots.

34:16SPEAKERLike the shots of the lightning

34:18SPEAKERgoing up the side of the computer of the Gibson.

34:21SPEAKER- The Gibson, we'll get to the Gibson.

34:23SPEAKER- Yeah, the shot of like the overhead shot

34:26SPEAKERwhere they're superimposing the city,

34:29SPEAKERthe New York, like shot straight down

34:31SPEAKERin the middle of a block.

34:33SPEAKER- That's from the intro, right?

34:33SPEAKERWhen he's flying into the city.

34:34SPEAKER- Well, they do it a bunch,

34:35SPEAKERbut then there's a spot where they kind of cut it back

34:37SPEAKERand forth with the computer world

34:39SPEAKERwhere the roads become circuit traces on a motherboard.

34:41SPEAKER- It's like that overhead aerial shot, right?

34:43SPEAKER- Yeah.

34:44SPEAKER- Like that was really well done.

34:45SPEAKERLike I assumed they just kind of cobbled together

34:47SPEAKERcircuit boards to exactly match the street

34:49SPEAKERand skyscraper layout,

34:50SPEAKERbut I was like shocked at how well

34:52SPEAKERthat practical effect worked.

34:53SPEAKER- My understanding is that they built a model

34:55SPEAKERthat exactly mimicked the part of the street

34:58SPEAKERthat they were in.

34:59SPEAKER- But it's a very pretty seamless dissolve there.

35:02SPEAKER- It's really, like there's a lot of really good effects.

35:05SPEAKERLike there's a lot of really good storytelling.

35:06SPEAKERLike I love, there's a bunch of really good,

35:11SPEAKERespecially early on when he like is infatuated with Kate

35:17SPEAKERbefore he realizes that she's acid burn.

35:20SPEAKERWhere like, there's a lot of just like awkward high school

35:23SPEAKERnerd, like gazes.

35:26SPEAKERThey're like a little horny, a little angry.

35:29SPEAKERAnd like-

35:29SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I meant about it being like a teen,

35:31SPEAKERlike a high school movie.

35:32SPEAKERLike there's the house party scene, you know?

35:34SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

35:35SPEAKERThe house party scene is a lot.

35:36SPEAKER- The house party scene devolves into them in a bedroom,

35:39SPEAKERlike gushing over to how slick this laptop is.

35:43SPEAKER- So that's one of the moments

35:44SPEAKERthat the whole thing turns for me.

35:45SPEAKERIs like the idea that a bunch of nerds

35:50SPEAKERbreak into this girl's bedroom

35:51SPEAKERand the thing they're looking at

35:52SPEAKERis how fucking awesome her computer is.

35:54SPEAKER- Like they're not in there doing drugs

35:55SPEAKERor like trying to score.

35:57SPEAKER- Or look up porn on the internet or even anything.

35:59SPEAKERThey're just like, "Oh God, just a fucking P6, man.

36:02SPEAKERThis is sick."

36:03SPEAKER- Peace has got a PCI bus, active matrix display.

36:06SPEAKER- It's three times faster than the Pentiums, man.

36:08SPEAKER- This is too much machine for you.

36:10SPEAKER- So good they were gonna call it a Pentium Pro.

36:12SPEAKER- Oh man.

36:15SPEAKER- Also that was a Mac with a Motorola 6800 or something.

36:20SPEAKER- I at least give them credit for that scene

36:22SPEAKERwhere they're rattling all the specs and stuff off,

36:24SPEAKERthat like they actually,

36:25SPEAKERat least the terms they were throwing out

36:27SPEAKERwere like fairly relevant to the time.

36:29SPEAKERPCI bus, like the really risk architecture

36:31SPEAKERis gonna change everything.

36:32SPEAKERAlthough like risk CPUs have been around for ages

36:34SPEAKERby that time, right?

36:35SPEAKER- But that was the dialogue at the time.

36:38SPEAKERLike Apple was going risk.

36:40SPEAKER- Oh, isn't that when Power PC

36:42SPEAKERwas becoming a big marketing term?

36:43SPEAKERLike Power PC and Pentium became the two known CPU brands

36:47SPEAKERand Power PC was the risk one.

36:49SPEAKER- Yeah, and they were like,

36:50SPEAKER"Risk is gonna change everything

36:51SPEAKER'cause you're gonna be able to go faster.

36:52SPEAKERIt's gonna be simpler computing.

36:54SPEAKERIt's gonna be easier to write code for, more powerful code."

36:56SPEAKER- Like Apple was slapping the word power

36:58SPEAKERon everything they did?

36:59SPEAKER- Uh-huh.

37:00SPEAKER- And like at the same time, they also do stuff like,

37:04SPEAKERlike Dade has this leather jacket

37:06SPEAKERthat shows up through the movie a lot.

37:07SPEAKERAnd it's very clearly like the one piece of cool clothes

37:10SPEAKERthat makes his outfits cool no matter what else he's wearing.

37:13SPEAKER- It's like the motorcycle jacket, right?

37:14SPEAKERWith the padding on it, yeah.

37:16SPEAKER- I think it's a roller blade.

37:17SPEAKERI think it's like rollerblades everywhere, man.

37:20SPEAKER- Dude, there are so much rollerblading in this movie.

37:22SPEAKERThis is like, this is,

37:23SPEAKERI wrote possibly the most '90s movie to ever exist.

37:26SPEAKER- Oh, it is far and away.

37:28SPEAKER- Is what I wrote on here.

37:29SPEAKERAnd the rollerblading is a big part of that.

37:31SPEAKER- The fact that there's a bar that is built

37:33SPEAKERfor people to rollerblade around it

37:35SPEAKERas a main scene in the movie.

37:36SPEAKER- That's like, you know, when I said a big chunk

37:39SPEAKERof this movie takes place in a high school,

37:41SPEAKERanother big chunk of this movie takes place

37:43SPEAKERin a youth center.

37:44SPEAKERLike it's literally like the teen center.

37:46SPEAKER- It's called the cyberdalia, I think.

37:47SPEAKER- Where they go to hang out and hack

37:49SPEAKERand play that white dog game.

37:50SPEAKERBut the other thing I was gonna say

37:52SPEAKERabout it being very '90s is like some of those shots

37:54SPEAKERof models, some of those practical shots,

37:56SPEAKERlike that city to circuit board fade trick are really nice.

38:01SPEAKERSome of them, some of them are like straight out

38:05SPEAKERof '90s FMV games, like the-

38:07SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

38:07SPEAKER- Like, first of all, they reuse so much of that footage.

38:10SPEAKERSo much of those effects shots,

38:11SPEAKERlike they just use over and over.

38:13SPEAKER- I'm gonna suggest that this movie influenced

38:15SPEAKERthe '90s FMV games fairly significantly.

38:17SPEAKER- Well, they were kind of contemporaneous

38:19SPEAKERin a lot of cases.

38:20SPEAKERSome of them were coming out in that,

38:21SPEAKERbut yes, more of them came out after, you're right.

38:23SPEAKERBut like the one, I think you'll know what I'm talking about.

38:26SPEAKERThe shot where it's like, they use it over and over

38:28SPEAKERas a backdrop when he like, every time he like breaks through

38:31SPEAKERlike it cracks a system or like-

38:32SPEAKER- Gets through a layer of ice, you mean?

38:34SPEAKER- You start seeing all these equations like flying around

38:37SPEAKERon this like purple background and spinning

38:38SPEAKERand flipping over themselves.

38:40SPEAKERLike it's the cheesiest shit I've ever,

38:42SPEAKERthey reuse that same first person shot

38:44SPEAKERof like flying through this tunnel of circuit boards

38:46SPEAKERlike four times.

38:48SPEAKEROh my God, it's so good and awful.

38:50SPEAKER- Think about what, like if you were going to the movies

38:55SPEAKERwith your mom in like 1995 and you were 12 years old,

39:01SPEAKERwhat would your, like, how would you sell,

39:05SPEAKERhey, some computer shit is happening now

39:06SPEAKERto a normal audience?

39:08SPEAKER- You are not wrong, you are not wrong.

39:10SPEAKER- Math, guys, there's a lot of math.

39:12SPEAKERThis math is really fucking scary.

39:14SPEAKER- It's flying all over the place.

39:17SPEAKER- The, okay, so fast forward a bit.

39:21SPEAKERWhen the two cops are sitting in the car

39:23SPEAKERand the one cop is reading the manifesto

39:25SPEAKERkind of scoffing at it.

39:26SPEAKER- What does he call it, like the Bible of the bod

39:29SPEAKERor something like that?

39:30SPEAKER- Yeah, we control the, hack the planet,

39:31SPEAKERblah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

39:33SPEAKERHe's like, and the other one's like,

39:34SPEAKERman, this is really fucking cool.

39:36SPEAKERHe's like, what the fuck do you mean?

39:37SPEAKERThis is some commie bullshit.

39:38SPEAKERHe's like, I don't know, man, it sounds cool to me.

39:40SPEAKER- Also that was Mark Anthony.

39:42SPEAKER- Wait, what?

39:43SPEAKER- That, the other agent there is Mark Anthony, the singer.

39:46SPEAKER- The young guy?

39:47SPEAKER- Yes, and one time Jennifer Lopez husband.

39:50SPEAKER- Well, okay, so you--

39:51SPEAKER- I was watching it with my girlfriend.

39:53SPEAKERI was watching with my girlfriend

39:54SPEAKERand she called that out and she was like,

39:55SPEAKERoh my God, that's Mark Anthony.

39:56SPEAKER- Did you catch the other big cameo?

39:58SPEAKER- Don't tell me.

39:59SPEAKERWell, there's, so like, that was another thing.

40:00SPEAKERI wanted to talk about the cast of this movie as well,

40:02SPEAKERbecause the range of people that are in it blew my mind.

40:05SPEAKERI knew Angelina Jolie was in it.

40:07SPEAKER- Yeah, but she was in it before she,

40:08SPEAKERthis was before she was famous.

40:09SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it was this before or after Gio,

40:11SPEAKERwhich I think was her really kind of big,

40:13SPEAKERactual serious breakout role.

40:14SPEAKER- I feel like she shot this before Gio broke out

40:17SPEAKERand then they changed the marketing.

40:19SPEAKEROh, okay, so then this was before that.

40:21SPEAKER- Way before that, this was definitely her just like,

40:23SPEAKERin fact, how old was she in this?

40:25SPEAKER- She probably would have been 20.

40:26SPEAKER- She was 20, holy crap, you're right.

40:28SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause I think she's my age.

40:30SPEAKER- How old was Johnny Lee Miller though?

40:31SPEAKERBecause that's the one I really, he was only 23.

40:34SPEAKER- Matthew Lillard is like 60 in this movie.

40:37SPEAKERMatthew Lillard seems like he has,

40:38SPEAKERhe's ready for a hip replacement

40:40SPEAKERabout halfway through this thing.

40:41SPEAKER- Matthew, ah.

40:43SPEAKER- I love Matthew Lillard, but damn.

40:45SPEAKER- I get what they were going for

40:46SPEAKERwith the Matthew Lillard character.

40:48SPEAKERI don't think they got there for me.

40:50SPEAKER- Look, he's Spicoli basically.

40:52SPEAKER- Yeah, totally, yes.

40:53SPEAKERHe is the like slightly older, wackier.

40:56SPEAKER- But also he's in the high school classes for some reason?

40:58SPEAKER- Yeah, but I don't know.

41:01SPEAKERI think he was overselling it a little much for me.

41:03SPEAKER- Oh, we should probably preface this

41:05SPEAKERby saying there's gonna be spoilers

41:06SPEAKERfor the 30-year-old movie.

41:08SPEAKER- I assume anybody listening who cares enough

41:10SPEAKERto listen to this has seen the movie already.

41:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

41:13SPEAKERThe fact--

41:14SPEAKER- Also, I don't know that you can spoil this movie.

41:16SPEAKER- Fair.

41:17SPEAKERLike it's just spectacle worth absorbing and enjoying.

41:21SPEAKERThe scene, the fight, the act to denouement

41:28SPEAKERwhen the hack is complete, he has the,

41:32SPEAKERDade has the discs, chucks it in the trash can,

41:36SPEAKERand then he's screaming on the way out to the,

41:38SPEAKERwell, first off--

41:39SPEAKER- Oh, that's at the end.

41:40SPEAKERThat's like kind of the, that's the climax

41:41SPEAKERof the whole movie.

41:42SPEAKER- That's the climax of the movie, yeah.

41:43SPEAKERHe, they set that up really well

41:46SPEAKERand I'd never caught this before I watched it last night,

41:48SPEAKERbut the scene where he's doing the quick draws

41:51SPEAKERon the floppy disks.

41:53SPEAKER- So you like that?

41:54SPEAKEROkay, maybe there's a connection I missed,

41:55SPEAKERbut at that time, at the time,

41:56SPEAKERlike the idea of like quick drawing floppy disks

41:58SPEAKERout of your belt was like the cheesiest,

42:01SPEAKERmost embarrassing shit.

42:02SPEAKER- It seems like pure cheese, right?

42:03SPEAKERBut then he has to palm a floppy disk

42:06SPEAKERand chuck it in the trash at the end.

42:08SPEAKERAnd he does this thing where he's like,

42:09SPEAKERhe's trying to fucking incept, yo,

42:12SPEAKERthe data's in the trash can to Matthew Lillard

42:15SPEAKERas he's getting hauled off screaming, hack the planet.

42:17SPEAKER- They're trashing our rights.

42:18SPEAKER- Right, they're trashing us, they're trashing our rights.

42:21SPEAKER- Sure enough, the trash can is on the right.

42:23SPEAKER- The trash can is on the right, yeah.

42:25SPEAKERIt's like, it's very stupid,

42:28SPEAKERbut it's also really, really well done.

42:30SPEAKER- It's a very movie, it's a very movie thing to do,

42:32SPEAKERvery cheesy movie thing to do.

42:33SPEAKERBut gosh, I was trying to think who else like,

42:36SPEAKERLorraine Bracco is in this movie, pre-Sopranos.

42:39SPEAKER- Yes.

42:39SPEAKER- As the blonde executive lady.

42:41SPEAKER- I feel like she was built high

42:44SPEAKER'cause she was a draw at the time.

42:45SPEAKER- Well, so she was built at the end,

42:47SPEAKERwhich might be the like,

42:48SPEAKERhere's the biggest actor we got thing.

42:49SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:51SPEAKER- God, who else was I surprised to see in this?

42:53SPEAKERI'm trying to think,

42:55SPEAKERthere might've been one or two others.

42:56SPEAKER- The cops, I mean, the security guy, the other IT guy.

42:59SPEAKER- Fucking Penn Jillette is in this movie as the IT guy.

43:02SPEAKER- What? - Yeah.

43:05SPEAKER- Johnny Lee Miller to me,

43:06SPEAKERthe first thing I ever saw Johnny Lee Miller in

43:08SPEAKERwas Trainspotting.

43:09SPEAKER- Oh Jesus, yeah, I forgot he's that guy.

43:11SPEAKER- He is sick boy in Trainspotting,

43:13SPEAKERwhich is like as different a role

43:15SPEAKERas you could possibly imagine.

43:16SPEAKER- He's very fresh-faced in this movie,

43:18SPEAKERcomparatively speaking.

43:19SPEAKER- And it's just so fucking campy.

43:21SPEAKERAnd then like Trainspotting,

43:22SPEAKERhe is like a really rough living heroin addict,

43:25SPEAKERand like to go backwards and see him in this

43:28SPEAKERwas like such a hard thing to adjust to.

43:30SPEAKERIt's so weird, also like what was anybody thinking

43:33SPEAKERwhen they took these roles?

43:34SPEAKERLike, I really wanna know what was going through their minds

43:37SPEAKERbecause I always assume, like you tell me,

43:38SPEAKERI've never been a famous actor,

43:40SPEAKERit might surprise you to hear.

43:41SPEAKER- This has shocked me.

43:43SPEAKER- But I have always assumed that like 60%

43:46SPEAKERof what's going through any actor's mind

43:47SPEAKERwhen they take a role

43:48SPEAKERis how is this going to advance my future career, right?

43:50SPEAKERBecause like taking an embarrassing role in a flop

43:53SPEAKERis like death for an actor, right?

43:54SPEAKERSo like, what was anybody thinking

43:57SPEAKERwhen they took a role in this movie

43:58SPEAKERin terms of what it would do for their careers?

44:00SPEAKER- I feel like some actors do that.

44:03SPEAKERI feel like other,

44:04SPEAKERlike the place where most of the people in this movie

44:07SPEAKERwere like Johnny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie

44:08SPEAKERprobably was like,

44:09SPEAKER"Hey, it's a feature film and they wanna pay me."

44:12SPEAKERIt's actually not by a studio.

44:13SPEAKER- You're totally right.

44:14SPEAKERLike the thought process I'm describing,

44:16SPEAKERI think is what you have when you're at the top,

44:17SPEAKERlike when you've climbed all the way up.

44:19SPEAKERThen you're in a...

44:20SPEAKER- Or when you've had your break, I think.

44:22SPEAKER- Then you're, yes.

44:23SPEAKERThen you're doing a balancing act of wanting to stay on top,

44:25SPEAKERbut you're totally right.

44:26SPEAKERIf like, I think I might be assigning

44:29SPEAKERa little more importance and prominence

44:31SPEAKERto this movie than it had at the time.

44:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, this was a flop, just to be clear.

44:35SPEAKERThis would be bombed.

44:35SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't even think to look at the...

44:37SPEAKEROh, wow, you're not kidding.

44:38SPEAKER- Yeah, no, it was an unbelievable stinker.

44:41SPEAKER- 7.5 million at the box office

44:44SPEAKERagainst a budget of 20 million.

44:46SPEAKERSo yeah, you're not wrong.

44:47SPEAKER- And I think it's original.

44:48SPEAKERI think it's like reviews.

44:50SPEAKERI think if you look up on Rotten Tomatoes,

44:51SPEAKERI think that's probably pretty bad too.

44:54SPEAKER- Yes, it's like, yeah, it's in the 20s, 30s, 35%.

44:58SPEAKER- Like nobody got it at the time.

45:00SPEAKER- Like I looked it up, it's not the Wikipedia page.

45:03SPEAKERIt might've been IMDb.

45:04SPEAKERSomewhere I was reading about the movie described it as like,

45:07SPEAKERthey sort of lumped it in with the room.

45:09SPEAKERLike I don't think it's that bad.

45:11SPEAKER- Well, this was way before the room.

45:13SPEAKER- No, no, no.

45:14SPEAKERI mean, like in terms of the way people regard it,

45:15SPEAKERlike people look at it as this like unbelievably cheesy,

45:19SPEAKERcampy cult classic, like this, you know,

45:22SPEAKERit's a thing people bond over

45:24SPEAKERfor how goofy and bad it is, right?

45:25SPEAKERLike that's the way they were portraying it.

45:27SPEAKERAnd like, that made more sense when I read that.

45:29SPEAKERI was like, okay, now I understand this movie's place

45:32SPEAKERin cinematic history.

45:33SPEAKER- Can I read the Owen Gleiberman,

45:34SPEAKERa quote from the Owen Gleiberman review

45:36SPEAKERfrom " Entertainment Weekly"?

45:37SPEAKER- Sure.

45:38SPEAKER- What's most grating about "Hackers," however,

45:41SPEAKERis the guileless way the movie buys into the computer kid

45:44SPEAKERas elite rebel mystique currently being peddled

45:47SPEAKERby magazines like "Wired."

45:49SPEAKER- That stuff, that hits a little close to home, I think.

45:54SPEAKERThis is the moment for me to throw out my favorite line

45:56SPEAKERin the movie, which I wrote down.

45:58SPEAKER- Okay.

45:59SPEAKER- You wanna be elite?

46:00SPEAKERYou gotta do a righteous hack.

46:02SPEAKER- Oh, oh, can we talk about the elite thing?

46:04SPEAKERBecause like, I know exactly how this happened.

46:07SPEAKERPeople would type "leet."

46:09SPEAKERLike this was around the time that leetspeak was developing

46:12SPEAKERand people were doing that shit all the time in IRC

46:14SPEAKERand Newsnet and stuff like that.

46:15SPEAKER- So yeah, so I wrote down a list of things

46:17SPEAKERthat A, I had heard for years and years

46:19SPEAKERoutside of this movie, and B, one of those is elite.

46:21SPEAKERAnd I wanted to ask off the back of that,

46:23SPEAKERis this where the term elite picked up its usage,

46:26SPEAKERor was it already happening?

46:27SPEAKER- So I'm not a linguist.

46:31SPEAKERI have not done any research at all into this topic.

46:34SPEAKERI'm doing this entirely from memory.

46:36SPEAKERI remember leetspeak starting pre-'95 on IRC

46:42SPEAKERand stuff like that.

46:43SPEAKERI'm not entirely certain that that is correct.

46:45SPEAKERI would welcome corrections.

46:47SPEAKERHowever, my feeling is that,

46:49SPEAKERand I kind of don't want to know if this is wrong,

46:51SPEAKERbut my feeling is that, you know that scene,

46:56SPEAKERyou know the bit in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

46:59SPEAKERwhere they infiltrate the sheriff's convention in Vegas

47:03SPEAKERand the sheriffs are talking about the hierarchy

47:05SPEAKERof weed users, of the marijuana fiends.

47:09SPEAKERAnd it's like, if you do this, then you're a dope fiend.

47:12SPEAKERAnd if you do this, you're cool.

47:15SPEAKERAnd they know the words,

47:17SPEAKERbut they don't understand the context

47:18SPEAKERand the fact that they're not representative

47:20SPEAKERof any kind of hierarchy.

47:22SPEAKERThis feels like exactly the same thing,

47:24SPEAKERwhere only the most elite.

47:27SPEAKERYou have to do a righteous hack against a Gibson

47:29SPEAKERor a mainframe in order to become one of the elite.

47:31SPEAKER- Becoming elite requires some ceremonial practice.

47:34SPEAKER- So my other theory is that this movie was so stupid

47:38SPEAKERthat people started mocking it by saying L337 everywhere.

47:41SPEAKERAnd then that became part of the mainline vernacular.

47:45SPEAKERThat was absolutely my assumption,

47:46SPEAKERwas that people ironically took the word elite

47:49SPEAKERfrom this movie and started using it earnestly.

47:51SPEAKER- The other, the thing is though,

47:53SPEAKERlike the, a lot of this, like they got a lot of stuff right.

47:56SPEAKERLike the fashion stuff ended up being prescient,

47:58SPEAKERI think in a lot of cases.

47:59SPEAKER- It's definitely very like accurate to the period, right?

48:02SPEAKERLike who's, you know, 90s fashion is pretty embarrassing,

48:05SPEAKERbut like it got a lot of that stuff pretty right, right?

48:07SPEAKER- I don't see, it's difficult for me to say,

48:10SPEAKER'cause I live in a small town in Tennessee or Knoxville,

48:12SPEAKERwhich is a mid-sized town in Tennessee.

48:14SPEAKER- Well, you still saw like, you know, mass media,

48:16SPEAKERlike you saw what was on MTV and stuff like that at the time

48:18SPEAKERlike I think it's.

48:19SPEAKER- Yeah, it was definitely like nerdcore punk rock aesthetic

48:24SPEAKERfiltered through a slightly futuristic lens, right?

48:27SPEAKER- Right, and like a decent amount of neon color

48:29SPEAKERand stuff like that.

48:31SPEAKER- Yeah, the thing about language,

48:35SPEAKERlike I really do think a lot of like,

48:37SPEAKERobviously a lot of like the lightning

48:38SPEAKERrunning up the side of the computer

48:40SPEAKERshowing it as the giant tower

48:42SPEAKERrepresenting a computer is stupid, yeah.

48:45SPEAKERAnd I feel like they got a lot of heat for that in '95.

48:48SPEAKERBut like, I think the thing that hurt them

48:51SPEAKERwith the community, A, is that it wasn't a community full

48:54SPEAKERof people that understood nuance or anything

48:56SPEAKERother than a straight literal or interpretation

48:58SPEAKERof the medium.

49:02SPEAKERBut I think it was the crackers hackers thing,

49:04SPEAKERlike the idea that they were presenting hackers

49:05SPEAKERas bad people really upset people back then.

49:08SPEAKERLike we got, if we called up, if we wrote a story

49:10SPEAKEReven 10 years later in Maximum PC,

49:12SPEAKERif we wrote a story and described someone as a hacker

49:15SPEAKERwhen they broke into a network or something,

49:18SPEAKERwe would get angry letters from people.

49:19SPEAKER- No kidding. - Yeah.

49:20SPEAKER- Wow, I didn't know people still cared about that late.

49:23SPEAKER- It's funny 'cause it's completely gone now.

49:24SPEAKERNobody even, I haven't heard anybody say cracker

49:27SPEAKERin 10 years probably.

49:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I do still see like perfectly,

49:32SPEAKERyou know, lawful software developer types

49:35SPEAKERoccasionally talk about like hacking on code,

49:38SPEAKERnot hacking into systems, but like just noodling around

49:41SPEAKERwith their own development, referring to that as hacking.

49:43SPEAKERI still see people say that.

49:44SPEAKER- I mean, the idea of hacking as it was then

49:47SPEAKERwas that it was an additive experience

49:48SPEAKERwhere you take different things that work

49:50SPEAKERand make them work together in an interesting way.

49:52SPEAKER- Exactly, totally.

49:53SPEAKER- It's always weird.

49:54SPEAKERIt was very much a 90s high school movie thing

49:56SPEAKERto put a bunch of like 28 year olds in

49:58SPEAKERand make them look like high schoolers.

49:59SPEAKER- Granted, you would have seen this in the theater

50:01SPEAKERon 35 millimeter, but not on like VHS for a long time.

50:04SPEAKERBut now watching a 1080p version, it is again very clear

50:07SPEAKERthat like Johnny Lee Miller's five o'clock shadow

50:10SPEAKERand chest hair really do not make him look

50:12SPEAKERlike a high school student.

50:13SPEAKERLike he definitely looks like a...

50:15SPEAKER- Well, he looks young compared to the rest of them.

50:17SPEAKERCompared to Matthew Lillard, who was like 38

50:20SPEAKERat that point probably.

50:21SPEAKER- But yes, definitely does not look

50:22SPEAKERlike a high school student at all.

50:24SPEAKERLike I guess like Angelina Jolie kind of can pass

50:27SPEAKERfor a high school student there.

50:29SPEAKERAnd that Joey definitely rates as a kid, as a teenager.

50:33SPEAKER- I think he actually was a kid,

50:34SPEAKERbut I didn't bother to look him up.

50:36SPEAKERJesse Bradford is his name.

50:38SPEAKERThere's another review quote here that's really good.

50:42SPEAKERThe Washington Post, Joe Brown says,

50:43SPEAKER"How do you make typing look exciting?"

50:46SPEAKER(laughing)

50:47SPEAKER- Maybe do it a little faster to start.

50:49SPEAKER- Los Angeles Times, David Kronke says,

50:51SPEAKER"It gives you more insight into the minds of Hollywood hacks

50:54SPEAKERthan of computer hackers."

50:55SPEAKER- I swear to God, like some of the shots of him typing

50:57SPEAKERis like barely more than hunting and pecking, I feel like.

51:00SPEAKERLike they really could have just sped it up or something.

51:05SPEAKER- The Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert gave one

51:07SPEAKERof the rare thumbs up reviews.

51:09SPEAKER- Really?

51:10SPEAKER- And said, "This movie is well-directed, written and acted.

51:12SPEAKERAnd while it is no doubt true that in real life,

51:14SPEAKERno hacker could do what the characters in this movie do,

51:17SPEAKERit is no doubt equally true that what hackers can do

51:19SPEAKERwould not make a very entertaining movie."

51:21SPEAKER- Ebert had a lot of unconventional opinions,

51:25SPEAKERa lot of surprising opinions, like that's-

51:27SPEAKER- He was also a nerd.

51:28SPEAKER- Well, that's, yeah, for sure, for sure.

51:29SPEAKERThat was also one of the ways you knew

51:30SPEAKERthat Ebert was truly authentic,

51:32SPEAKERwas that like is how many divergent opinions he had

51:34SPEAKERon big movies, like specifically a lot of ones

51:38SPEAKERthat are identified by the mainstream as bad movies,

51:41SPEAKERand then you go look and see that he gave it

51:42SPEAKERa four-star review.

51:43SPEAKERLike he did not give a shit about mass opinion.

51:46SPEAKER- And like the thing, I mean, okay,

51:48SPEAKERso there's a bad continuity error where they reuse footage

51:52SPEAKERof the press conference of Joey's arrest

51:55SPEAKERin the scene immediately preceding Joey's arrest-

51:58SPEAKER- Before it actually happened.

51:59SPEAKER- Before it actually happens.

52:00SPEAKER- Ah, you know, I'm not so worried about continuity errors

52:02SPEAKERin this movie. (laughs)

52:04SPEAKER- And to me, that's them, like my feeling

52:08SPEAKERis that they were using that as stand-in

52:10SPEAKER'cause they don't actually show Joey really in that,

52:12SPEAKERlike you can see it if you look, but if you look at it,

52:14SPEAKERlike the thing you see is the cop talking to the camera

52:16SPEAKERabout what a threat hackers are and then making fun of that.

52:19SPEAKEROh God, we haven't talked about razor and blade at all,

52:21SPEAKERbut Jesus, what a, what a, the, you know, the TV guys.

52:26SPEAKER- Oh yeah, totally, yes.

52:27SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, I don't, like you said,

52:31SPEAKERI don't worry about continuity too much

52:32SPEAKERin a movie like this, but it's a really well put together

52:34SPEAKERmovie, like the whole thing is foreshadowed.

52:36SPEAKERThey set up everything, they established the entire arc

52:40SPEAKERof the movie in the first like 15 minutes

52:43SPEAKERand then it pulls through, it is a, like the practical

52:48SPEAKEReffects, the special effects are all really good,

52:50SPEAKEReven when they're stupid, it conveys the thing

52:53SPEAKERthat it means to convey to an audience,

52:56SPEAKERwhich if you think about, like I said,

52:58SPEAKERif you think about the context of computers in 1994

53:00SPEAKERwhen this movie was being made, people didn't have computers.

53:04SPEAKER- Yeah, you're not wrong.

53:05SPEAKER- Like it was unusual if you went to somebody's house

53:07SPEAKERand they're like, oh yeah, you want to check out my PC?

53:09SPEAKER- Yeah, you're not wrong.

53:11SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a lovely artifact, I like this movie a lot.

53:15SPEAKER- I, let's see, we've gotten through most of the stuff

53:18SPEAKERI wrote down, a couple things we haven't touched on.

53:22SPEAKERSo I mentioned I couldn't decide if this movie

53:24SPEAKERknew how fucking cheesy it is or not,

53:26SPEAKERbut there were two, I wrote down there are two,

53:28SPEAKERthere are two camp moments in this thing

53:30SPEAKERthat truly worked for me.

53:31SPEAKER- Okay.

53:33SPEAKER- The first one is the nighttime handoff where,

53:35SPEAKERI never know if I should call him zero cool

53:37SPEAKERor crash over ride, I'm not sure where he ended up there.

53:40SPEAKERI always felt like deep down he was always zero cool.

53:42SPEAKER- We all contain multitudes, Brad.

53:45SPEAKER- The nighttime handoff where Jonny Lee Miller

53:46SPEAKERgoes to hand the garbage disc to the plague.

53:49SPEAKER- Oh.

53:50SPEAKER- And he fucking shows up sketching on the side

53:53SPEAKERof like a taxi cab on a skateboard,

53:55SPEAKERand he literally drives by on the skateboard

53:57SPEAKERand like snatches it out of his fingers

53:59SPEAKERand doesn't even stop and they just keep going.

54:01SPEAKERLike that was the moment where I was like,

54:03SPEAKERokay, I think maybe this movie actually does know what it is.

54:05SPEAKER- Oh God, yeah, the directing, yeah, okay.

54:09SPEAKER- And then the other one was the,

54:11SPEAKERand this is like Razor and Blade kind of play into this,

54:14SPEAKERwhere they kind of popped to the hack the planet,

54:17SPEAKERhackers around the world montage moment at the end,

54:19SPEAKERlike practically like snapped his fingers.

54:21SPEAKERIt's like, all right, hackers of the world

54:22SPEAKERhave to mobilize to our defense, like we need you.

54:25SPEAKERAnd it's like, it's like three shots, what is it?

54:27SPEAKERIt's like, I think it's a shot, there's a shot in Japan,

54:30SPEAKERthere's a shot in maybe Russia.

54:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

54:33SPEAKER- And there was one other, where else did they go?

54:35SPEAKER- They just do establishing shots

54:37SPEAKERand then do closeups of somebody in a studio, but yeah.

54:39SPEAKER- They do a couple of closeups of like,

54:41SPEAKERoh, these people are clearly in Japan,

54:42SPEAKERthese people are clearly in Russia,

54:43SPEAKERthey're all speaking their local language,

54:45SPEAKERbut it was just such a like stereotypical,

54:47SPEAKERlike hackers are everywhere, they're all around us,

54:49SPEAKERthey're in every country.

54:50SPEAKER- But that was this thing, that was the,

54:52SPEAKERlike if you were a buzz cut military guy,

54:55SPEAKERlike this army of anarchist computer hackers.

55:00SPEAKER- Internationalists.

55:00SPEAKER- Yeah, was this, globalists?

55:03SPEAKER- This was the fifth international.

55:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, that was the threat, man.

55:08SPEAKER- Totally, I get it, like I, but again, that worked for me,

55:11SPEAKERlike that, but in a very, but in an incredibly cheesy way,

55:14SPEAKERit was just like, wow, this is as cliched as it could be,

55:16SPEAKERbut also it is really getting the point across.

55:18SPEAKER- The sequence when they go meet Razor and Blade

55:20SPEAKERand are like, hey, we need help.

55:22SPEAKERAnd like, what a prescient view of social media,

55:27SPEAKERlike, hey, we have all this ridiculous shit,

55:31SPEAKERwe need your help.

55:32SPEAKERAnd they're like, well, we have this TV deal going,

55:34SPEAKERso I don't know, man.

55:35SPEAKERAnd then they're like, oh, what the fuck,

55:37SPEAKERlet's do it anyway.

55:38SPEAKERLike it is, the only thing they got wrong

55:40SPEAKERis that like the TikTok house people would not come on board

55:44SPEAKERto help save the planet in case of an ecological collapse

55:48SPEAKERfor less than like five figures an hour.

55:51SPEAKER- Also, also, yeah, the idea that,

55:53SPEAKERthe idea that the threat here,

55:56SPEAKERwe didn't even talk about the main plot,

55:58SPEAKERwhich is the guy who wanted money is going to--

56:02SPEAKER- He's going to capsize a bunch of oil tankers.

56:04SPEAKER- A bunch of oil tankers on purpose

56:06SPEAKERand then pin it on these kids

56:08SPEAKERbecause that's believable in 1995,

56:10SPEAKERwhich it actually probably was.

56:12SPEAKER- Yeah, you're not wrong.

56:13SPEAKER- Yeah, it captures fear of computers,

56:15SPEAKERlike the idea that they can't control manually

56:17SPEAKERthe ballast and the, like, they're just,

56:20SPEAKERthey're just at the mercy of these kids

56:22SPEAKERbecause the computers have taken over everything

56:25SPEAKERis such a fantastic idea.

56:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:28SPEAKER- And then the other thing I love about that final montage

56:31SPEAKERis he's like, he's like, it's like being,

56:32SPEAKERit's kind of when Matthew Lourd's just kind of like

56:34SPEAKERbeing God, man.

56:35SPEAKER(laughing)

56:37SPEAKERAnd--

56:38SPEAKER- And it's got the most 90s Max Headroom thing

56:40SPEAKERof like a bunch of TVs behind him broadcasting him,

56:43SPEAKERlike the same footage as being sent out

56:44SPEAKERis also on the TVs behind him, like it's God.

56:47SPEAKER- Well, but then they show Skylab,

56:49SPEAKERlike the satellite that they show is Skylab.

56:51SPEAKER- Huh, okay.

56:52SPEAKER- Which literally like, you know,

56:54SPEAKERburned up over Australia in 1978 or 79 or something, anyway.

56:58SPEAKER- It's a weird, it's a weird, it's such a weird, good movie.

57:01SPEAKER- It's, man, it's something.

57:03SPEAKERThe only other thing I think that we haven't touched on

57:05SPEAKERthat I wrote down here is I love slash roll my eyes

57:09SPEAKERat the fact that basically all of the hacking in this movie

57:12SPEAKERis done on Mac OS in the GUI.

57:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

57:16SPEAKER- But for the moments where they are hacking in some,

57:18SPEAKERlike I said, some ridiculous looking like Shockwave

57:21SPEAKERor HyperCard looking UI.

57:22SPEAKER- It has to be HyperCard, I think,

57:24SPEAKER'cause it would have been before Shockwave, wouldn't it?

57:25SPEAKER- Shockwave came out the same year, so,

57:27SPEAKERor no, it wasn't, actually I looked it up for the,

57:29SPEAKERMacromedia bought Shockwave that year, so it did--

57:31SPEAKER- Oh, it existed before.

57:33SPEAKER- Technically exists, but probably wasn't in wide use,

57:35SPEAKERbut yeah, maybe it was HyperCard.

57:35SPEAKER- Maybe they were using it for titles or something on TV.

57:38SPEAKER- But when they weren't doing the ridiculous,

57:39SPEAKERlike gigantic text, like neon looking glowing everything

57:42SPEAKERthat was clearly fake, it was all Mac OS in the GUI,

57:45SPEAKERlike when he copies the garbage disc,

57:47SPEAKERhe literally drags the floppy disc icon onto a thing.

57:50SPEAKERThere is nary an actual command line in this movie.

57:53SPEAKERLike the idea of hacking in the,

57:55SPEAKERand this was like system seven era Mac OS.

57:58SPEAKERYou know, like the stereotype is like everybody

57:59SPEAKERin Hollywood, especially in the nineties,

58:01SPEAKERthe stereotype was creatives all use Macs.

58:03SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

58:04SPEAKER- In publishing, in video production,

58:05SPEAKERlike anybody in creative digital fields was using a Mac,

58:09SPEAKERlike I wondered if that just trickled down from there.

58:10SPEAKER- I think probably, I think they used laptops

58:13SPEAKERbecause they didn't have to deal with refresh rates

58:14SPEAKERand scan lines.

58:15SPEAKER- Okay.

58:16SPEAKER- Instead of CRTs.

58:17SPEAKER- Yeah, and there were no desktop LCDs back then.

58:18SPEAKER- No desktop LCDs then.

58:21SPEAKERI love, like there's some stuff like,

58:23SPEAKERI think Nikon has a Supreme sticker on his laptop.

58:27SPEAKER- Lord Nikon is the best hacker name in that whole movie.

58:30SPEAKER- It's so fucking good.

58:30SPEAKER- Lord Nikon.

58:32SPEAKER- Also like that movie had kind of shocking representation

58:36SPEAKERfor 1995.

58:37SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

58:38SPEAKERLike I felt like that kind of tied into the hacker ethos

58:40SPEAKERa little bit.

58:41SPEAKERI mean, again, like they were pretty sexist

58:42SPEAKERtoward Angelina Jolie on occasion, but.

58:44SPEAKER- I think that also is representative of the time,

58:46SPEAKERunfortunately.

58:47SPEAKER- That's, you know, fair, fair.

58:49SPEAKER- I like that they let her hold her own.

58:51SPEAKERI wish, I really wish.

58:53SPEAKER- That's, yeah, fair.

58:54SPEAKERLike they do portray her as elite.

58:56SPEAKER- Yeah, as the most elite.

58:57SPEAKER- She is, she is pretty elite, yeah.

58:58SPEAKERLike she is, she is kind of the end boss

59:00SPEAKERthat he has to take down to prove that he's the best, right?

59:02SPEAKER- I mean, so that's the interesting thing is,

59:04SPEAKERthe reason this movie works is they unroll the heat,

59:06SPEAKERthey introduced the antagonist in a really specific order.

59:08SPEAKERSo it's Crash, acid burn, Kate, Gil.

59:14SPEAKERPlague, and then they take them down in the reverse order.

59:17SPEAKERExcept for Gil never really gets his comeuppance

59:19SPEAKERbecause, you know.

59:20SPEAKER- Well, he is just the kind of amoral arm of the law, right?

59:24SPEAKERLike he is just there to serve the government.

59:26SPEAKERHe's the arm of the state, like that's all he is.

59:28SPEAKER- He's lawful neutral.

59:29SPEAKER- Right, he is not there to serve his agenda.

59:32SPEAKERHe's serving the state's agenda.

59:34SPEAKERAnd so like, whoever is the baddest hacker is his enemy.

59:37SPEAKERAnd once he realizes it's not zero cool, it's the plague.

59:40SPEAKER- Yeah, all enmity shifts.

59:42SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

59:43SPEAKER- Elite, like I wrote down a list of terms

59:47SPEAKERthat I have heard for years and years.

59:49SPEAKERCrash Override, Acid Burn, Zero Cool, Hack the Gibson, Elite.

59:53SPEAKERLike there were so many things I heard in this movie

59:55SPEAKERthat I was like, oh my God, okay, that's what that means.

59:57SPEAKERThat's where that came from.

59:58SPEAKER- Oh, Brad, I had the same experience.

1:00:00SPEAKERLike four years ago, my friend Frank was like,

1:00:03SPEAKERyou gotta watch this movie.

1:00:03SPEAKERYou've never seen Hackers, you gotta watch this movie.

1:00:05SPEAKERAnd then I got the flu and I was like, oh God,

1:00:07SPEAKERit's on Hulu, I'll watch it.

1:00:09SPEAKER- What a fever dream.

1:00:10SPEAKER- And I'm gonna go ahead and tell you weird movie to watch

1:00:12SPEAKERwith like 102 degree fever.

1:00:14SPEAKER- I bet.

1:00:15SPEAKER- I absolutely love it.

1:00:16SPEAKERI'm so glad we got to share this moment together, Brad.

1:00:18SPEAKER- I am very glad to know what this movie is now.

1:00:20SPEAKER- I think if you rewatch it, you're going to like it.

1:00:22SPEAKER- I might, I can see how repeat viewings

1:00:25SPEAKERmight bring one to appreciate it.

1:00:27SPEAKER- It's a delight.

1:00:28SPEAKER- I don't know that I'll get back to it anytime soon.

1:00:31SPEAKERMaybe someday.

1:00:32SPEAKER- Oh God, we didn't even talk about the music.

1:00:33SPEAKERThe music is incredible.

1:00:34SPEAKER- Oh, you know, I meant to look up the soundtrack for this

1:00:36SPEAKER'cause it was like kind of not terrible.

1:00:38SPEAKERLet's see, you're right in front of me.

1:00:39SPEAKER- Kind of not terrible, Jesus, Brad.

1:00:41SPEAKER- Yeah, like, like, you know, looking, yes, okay.

1:00:44SPEAKERI thought I recognized a lot of the stuff and sure enough,

1:00:46SPEAKERit's like underworld, "Prodigy," "Orbital," "Sterium Seas."

1:00:49SPEAKERLike it was a lot of, a lot of like pretty trendy

1:00:53SPEAKERor about to be trendy music of the era, right?

1:00:55SPEAKER- I would describe it as probably about to be trendy music

1:00:58SPEAKERof the area.

1:00:59SPEAKER- 95, in my mind, 95 is like definitely before "Prodigy"

1:01:03SPEAKERlike really broke on MTV, right?

1:01:04SPEAKERLike when did?

1:01:05SPEAKER- I didn't know about "Prodigy" probably

1:01:07SPEAKERfor another two years.

1:01:08SPEAKER- When did "Firestarter" come out?

1:01:09SPEAKER- "Firestarter" was like a year after this.

1:01:11SPEAKERSo like that was, that was the moment for me

1:01:13SPEAKERwhen like once the "Firestarter" video was all over MTV

1:01:16SPEAKERwas like, okay, techno is happening now.

1:01:18SPEAKERAlso the term techno sounds so archaic now.

1:01:21SPEAKER- I mean.

1:01:22SPEAKER- But you know, you're not wrong.

1:01:24SPEAKERLike pretty, pretty good and more to the point,

1:01:26SPEAKERvery appropriate soundtrack.

1:01:28SPEAKER- No crystal method though.

1:01:29SPEAKERIt needed some crystal method.

1:01:31SPEAKER- No chemical brothers.

1:01:32SPEAKERYeah, but you know, it did a pretty good job.

1:01:35SPEAKERI mean, it's pretty telling that there are

1:01:37SPEAKERtwo additional volumes of hackers and soundtracks.

1:01:40SPEAKERI mean, music inspired by

1:01:42SPEAKERthe original motion picture hackers, of course.

1:01:44SPEAKERLike volume two and volume three,

1:01:45SPEAKERthey put out more albums that have like Moby.

1:01:48SPEAKER- So you think you can hack?

1:01:50SPEAKERI was surprised there wasn't any "Fat Boy Slim" in here.

1:01:52SPEAKERIt feels like there's some "Fat Boy Slim" beats in here,

1:01:54SPEAKERbut not sure.

1:01:54SPEAKERAnyway, it was a weird time for music.

1:01:56SPEAKERIt's also the pre-industrial stuff.

1:01:59SPEAKER'Cause like five years, four years later

1:02:00SPEAKERwhen they were making "The Matrix,"

1:02:02SPEAKERthree years later when they were making "The Matrix"

1:02:03SPEAKERand that came out, that was all like-

1:02:04SPEAKER- Way heavier.

1:02:05SPEAKER- Chemical brothers or Dust brothers,

1:02:08SPEAKERI think, I can't remember.

1:02:09SPEAKER- Rob Zombie, like that's probably some ministry on there

1:02:12SPEAKERor something, I don't know.

1:02:13SPEAKER- I just realized a few weeks ago

1:02:15SPEAKERthat the beat from the club in "The Matrix"

1:02:18SPEAKERis the Dragula beat.

1:02:20SPEAKER- It sure is.

1:02:20SPEAKER- I had no idea.

1:02:21SPEAKER- It sure is.

1:02:22SPEAKER- Anyway.

1:02:23SPEAKER- Hackers, man.

1:02:25SPEAKER- What a treat.

1:02:26SPEAKER- What an experience that was.

1:02:28SPEAKER- Yeah, what a fun thing.

1:02:30SPEAKERI hope everybody enjoyed this episode.

1:02:31SPEAKERIf you did, let us know.

1:02:32SPEAKERIf you didn't, let us know too.

1:02:33SPEAKERI mean, we don't do these very often,

1:02:35SPEAKERbut it's fun to kind of dip into the pop culture

1:02:37SPEAKERon a moment to moment.

1:02:39SPEAKERI think this is an important one.

1:02:40SPEAKER- Yes, for sure, I really enjoyed this.

1:02:42SPEAKERI mean, it's always a little bit of an ask for people

1:02:44SPEAKERif they haven't seen the movie.

1:02:45SPEAKERThey have to go watch a movie

1:02:46SPEAKERbefore they can listen to this.

1:02:47SPEAKERBut then again, I bet a lot of our audience

1:02:49SPEAKERhas seen this movie already.

1:02:50SPEAKER- The reaction when I posted on the Discord a few days ago

1:02:53SPEAKERthat we were thinking about watching "Hackers" this week.

1:02:55SPEAKER- It was strong.

1:02:56SPEAKER- Overwhelmingly positive.

1:02:58SPEAKER- It was strong.

1:02:58SPEAKERSo wrong.

1:02:59SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:00SPEAKER- Yeah, if you like this,

1:03:01SPEAKERif you wanna see us do this again,

1:03:03SPEAKERI'm totally down, and also if you do,

1:03:06SPEAKERmovie suggestions would be great.

1:03:07SPEAKERI still, on your list of important movies,

1:03:10SPEAKERI haven't seen "War Games."

1:03:11SPEAKER- What?

1:03:12SPEAKER- We should probably do "War Games."

1:03:13SPEAKEREven if people don't like this episode,

1:03:15SPEAKERI'm gonna commit to doing "War Games"

1:03:16SPEAKERjust because we should. - "War Games," okay.

1:03:18SPEAKERGod, oh yeah, "War Games" is a...

1:03:20SPEAKER- You know what?

1:03:20SPEAKERI've probably seen the first "Tron,"

1:03:22SPEAKERbut if I have, it's been so long,

1:03:25SPEAKERI've forgotten everything about it.

1:03:26SPEAKER- I don't like the first "Tron."

1:03:28SPEAKER- Well, that's still valid.

1:03:30SPEAKER- I've never seen "The Net."

1:03:32SPEAKER- I haven't seen "The Net" either.

1:03:33SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:03:34SPEAKER- Maybe, okay, I hope people like this,

1:03:36SPEAKER'cause now I want to do all of these.

1:03:38SPEAKER- I know you're a "Sneakers" aficionado.

1:03:39SPEAKER- I have not seen "Sneakers."

1:03:41SPEAKER- Oh, really?

1:03:41SPEAKER- I haven't seen any of these movies.

1:03:43SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, "Sneakers," and "Sneakers" is probably where,

1:03:45SPEAKERwow, do you like Dan Aykroyd when he's really unhinged?

1:03:48SPEAKER- Oh, I don't know, I met him one time,

1:03:50SPEAKERand he was pretty unhinged.

1:03:52SPEAKER- Yeah. - At the time, so, sure.

1:03:55SPEAKER- Ah, "Sneakers," this is real good.

1:03:57SPEAKER- What's, Robert Redford?

1:03:59SPEAKER- Yeah, Robert Redford and Dan Aykroyd are the two leads.

1:04:02SPEAKER- Is it a quote-unquote hacking movie?

1:04:04SPEAKER- It's so fucking good.

1:04:05SPEAKER- I've always, is it, wait, is it camp as well?

1:04:09SPEAKEROr is it pretty, is it more so?

1:04:09SPEAKER- I mean, look, all hacking movies

1:04:11SPEAKERfrom that time period are camp at this point, but-

1:04:12SPEAKER- I've always gotten the sense that "Sneakers"

1:04:14SPEAKERis the one people kind of respect more.

1:04:16SPEAKER- "Sneakers" and "War Games" are both very serious movies

1:04:19SPEAKERabout this subject, whereas "Hackers" is less serious.

1:04:23SPEAKERSo, okay, "Hackers" like the core.

1:04:25SPEAKERLike, you've seen the core, right?

1:04:27SPEAKER- I don't think so.

1:04:28SPEAKER- Okay, the core is the movie where Hilary Swank

1:04:29SPEAKERis a disgraced space shuttle pilot

1:04:31SPEAKERwho has to pilot an unobtainium-powered Earth ship

1:04:34SPEAKERto the center of the Earth to save the planet

1:04:36SPEAKERand get the core, the Earth's core, re-spinning.

1:04:39SPEAKER- I think I might need to see that too.

1:04:41SPEAKER- So the, okay, so the thing about the core,

1:04:42SPEAKERthe thing you should know is that John Rogers wrote it,

1:04:44SPEAKERand John Rogers is a fantastic screenwriter

1:04:49SPEAKERwho knew exactly what he was doing,

1:04:50SPEAKERand that every person down the line

1:04:52SPEAKERthought it was a serious science fiction movie.

1:04:54SPEAKER- Okay.

1:04:55SPEAKER- Like, Hilary Swank came off of "Million Dollar Baby"

1:04:57SPEAKERonto the fucking core.

1:04:58SPEAKER- Yikes.

1:04:59SPEAKER- And is like, and brings all of the gravitas of,

1:05:04SPEAKERoh, no, no, no, "Boys Don't Cry," not "Million Dollar Baby."

1:05:08SPEAKER"Million Dollar Baby" would have been much later.

1:05:09SPEAKER- Yes.

1:05:10SPEAKER- But yeah, it brings all the gravitas

1:05:11SPEAKERof an Academy Award-winning role

1:05:13SPEAKERto disgraced space shuttle pilot saving the world

1:05:18SPEAKERby going to the center of the Earth

1:05:20SPEAKERand blowing up nuclear bombs

1:05:22SPEAKERto get the Earth's core re-spinning.

1:05:24SPEAKERIt is a very good movie.

1:05:26SPEAKER- We should maybe make this a thing.

1:05:28SPEAKERI enjoyed this.

1:05:29SPEAKERIt's nice to go back and fill in all these little gaps

1:05:31SPEAKERin your cultural knowledge.

1:05:32SPEAKER- We introduce you to the culture, Brent.

1:05:34SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so.

1:05:35SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:05:36SPEAKER- You gotta do a righteous hack.

1:05:37SPEAKER- Man.

1:05:38SPEAKER- You gotta do a righteous hack.

1:05:39SPEAKER- You can never have too many, you know, feel the burn.

1:05:43SPEAKER- All any of us can ever aspire to

1:05:45SPEAKERis to do one righteous hack in our lives.

1:05:47SPEAKER- What I wanna know is what happened.

1:05:48SPEAKERDo you think Crash and Burn ended up getting married?

1:05:50SPEAKERLike, they went off and had a picket fences,

1:05:52SPEAKERopened a security consulting company?

1:05:54SPEAKER- God, that last scene actually is just like so-

1:05:57SPEAKER- So cringy.

1:05:58SPEAKER- Oh my God, let's just get half naked in this pool

1:06:01SPEAKERand make out while our names flash on these skyscrapers.

1:06:03SPEAKERLike, it was just so...

1:06:05SPEAKER- Look, they went to MIT,

1:06:06SPEAKERthey opened a security consulting company,

1:06:09SPEAKERprobably made a bunch of money in the .com 1.0 boom.

1:06:12SPEAKER- Well, yeah, you're probably right.

1:06:13SPEAKERI like to think they stayed underground

1:06:14SPEAKERand stayed true to their roots,

1:06:15SPEAKERbut so many people have not done that.

1:06:17SPEAKERI don't know.

1:06:18SPEAKER- Literally none of them do, it turns out.

1:06:20SPEAKER- They all make a ton of money and become the establishment.

1:06:22SPEAKER- Yep.

1:06:23SPEAKER- Well, on that depressing note, let's go on into this.

1:06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, this is, as always,

1:06:28SPEAKERthis is a 100% listener-supported podcast,

1:06:30SPEAKERso thank you so much to all of our patrons for their support.

1:06:34SPEAKERWe really appreciate it.

1:06:37SPEAKERBut a special thanks to our executive producer

1:06:40SPEAKERto your patrons, Andrew Slosky, The Bunny Fiend,

1:06:43SPEAKERJacob Chappell, Jill Krauska, Twinkle Twinkie,

1:06:45SPEAKERDavid Allen, and James Kamik.

1:06:47SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you for making this possible.

1:06:49SPEAKER- If you wanna join them and another, let's see, hold on,

1:06:54SPEAKER2,646 patrons of the podcast.

1:06:58SPEAKERYou can, on our Discord, by going to patreon.com/techpod,

1:07:03SPEAKERthat's patreon.com/techpod,

1:07:05SPEAKERand signing up for as little as two bucks a month

1:07:08SPEAKERwhere you get access to the fabulous TechPod Patreon

1:07:11SPEAKERor monthly, our monthly patron-only episodes last month.

1:07:15SPEAKERLast month, we kind of did a potpourri.

1:07:17SPEAKER- Yeah.

1:07:17SPEAKER- What did we talk about?

1:07:18SPEAKERWe talked, we answered some more Qs,

1:07:20SPEAKERwe turned more Qs into As.

1:07:21SPEAKER- Talked a little bit about stuff we're hacking on.

1:07:24SPEAKER- Ooh.

1:07:25SPEAKER- Ongoing projects.

1:07:26SPEAKER- Yes, there's some planning.

1:07:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so some glimpses in the future,

1:07:29SPEAKERlittle bit of extra Qs into As.

1:07:33SPEAKERBut yeah, the Patreon is a fabulous, fabulous place

1:07:36SPEAKERjust to hang out and you spend time with nerds

1:07:40SPEAKERwho like the same things as you, probably.

1:07:42SPEAKERIf you wanna have an extended conversation about hackers,

1:07:44SPEAKERyou can have that right now.

1:07:45SPEAKER- I assume it'll be bubbling up throughout the week.

1:07:47SPEAKER- Did you see the game that people were playing yesterday

1:07:49SPEAKERin the main channel?

1:07:50SPEAKER- No.

1:07:51SPEAKER- Maybe it was in this week, no, the main channel.

1:07:52SPEAKERSo there's this web thing that was going around

1:07:55SPEAKERon Twitter yesterday that's like,

1:07:57SPEAKERfind a set of 10 words that are the least related.

1:08:00SPEAKER- Oh, I did see that.

1:08:01SPEAKER- Linguistically.

1:08:02SPEAKER- Yes, I did that.

1:08:03SPEAKER- Yesterday.

1:08:04SPEAKERHow'd you do?

1:08:06SPEAKER- I think it was in the 98th percentile-ish,

1:08:08SPEAKERlike it was a pretty good score.

1:08:10SPEAKERI took issue with, I mean, I looked at their methodology.

1:08:12SPEAKEROf course I took issue 'cause I didn't make 99, but.

1:08:15SPEAKER- Wow.

1:08:15SPEAKER- I'm trying to think, oh, I wish I had saved a screenshot.

1:08:18SPEAKERThe words that they said were too close together on mine

1:08:21SPEAKERwere words that really did not seem

1:08:22SPEAKERlike they should be related.

1:08:23SPEAKER- I had kelp and stamen, it said were too related.

1:08:29SPEAKERAnd I mean, I guess they are both plant related.