Welcome back to Your Favorite Movie, where we hang out with a loved one and talk to them about their favorite movie of all time for TWENTY-THREE YEARS.
Traveling through the wormhole this week is my sister, Brianna K***. If you've been to any music festival in the past few years, she's the chick with the big sign that implores you to come dance with her and her friends (just don't ride in any school buses with them as they cross state lines).
Her favorite movie of all time is Interstellar, the big Christopher Nolan space epic from just a few years ago. You might not understand all the science, but you understand the heart. It's a great movie. And pretty recent too!
Brianna was in a car crash earlier in the day, but she didn't let that stop her from coming over to our house and talking with me and Pam about her movie (her boyfriend Shane bailed, most likely because—let's put this on the record—he FUCKING HATES Interstellar). Below is our conversation, transcribed with Bri's permission, and edited slightly because Port Richmond is loud.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brianna: Yes.
Joe: And you can talk about that. But I also want to talk about, ya know, what that says about your movie-watching habits, that this supersedes any movie you watched growing up. Because that's usually the kind of shit that I get in these interviews. Interstellar was not a movie you saw growing up, as a child, obviously. Is that just a mark of how good of a movie it is, or does that say something about your personality?
Brianna: It probably says something about why I enjoy movies. For me, Interstellar, why it's my favorite was very much about the experience, I guess. Being in the theater, being speechless throughout the whole thing. Everyone was leaving the theater, looking at each other like, "I don't even know if I can talk about this right now. I need to process what it is." I love going to the movie theater. It's my favorite way to watch a movie. Ya know, I like sitting on the couch with a glass of wine. But going to the movies is ideal, for the movies that I want to see.
Joe: Did you see this in IMAX?
Brianna: I did not see it in IMAX, which is surprising. We were in the second row at the Movie Tavern in West Chester.
Joe: It's way more expensive to see it in IMAX, so...
Brianna: Right?
Joe: I would choose not to see it in IMAX too.
Brianna: So that was definitely a big part of it, just being there and watching it. Whereas, probably my favorite movie before I saw Interstellar would be something like Stand by Me—that's definitely up there—maybe something like Toy Story or something—which, I don't know. I guess didn't see that in theaters, it was a long time ago. But yeah, it was definitely the experience of it all.
Pam: The ending is sort of a twist. Would you consider it a twist?
Brianna: Yeah!
Pam: Do you go into it knowing anything about the ending?
Brianna: That's probably another reason why it was my favorite, especially in terms of recent movies. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it. The way they marketed Interstellar were genius. The trailers were very vague. You knew it was Matthew McConaughey, they had the scene where he's driving away from the house, heading to space, and he's crying. They had the Hans Zimmerman score. But that was it! It was like, "I know he goes to space, I know he's a farmer, but... what else is this movie about?" And I didn't know anything, and I was blown away by everything that was on screen. Whereas I feel like if it was a trailer—I don't want to say "these days," because trailers have not always been great—but I feel like a typical trailer would've shown that he was working with NASA, and that was such a shocker, like, "It's NASA, oh my god, that's crazy!"
Joe: They would've showed the wormhole, and shit like that.
Brianna: The only major thing they showed in the trailer was the planet with the waves, them going, "Oh my god!" and seeing the waves. But that was it! We didn't know why they were there, or what ultimately happened.
Pam: And it could've been Earth, because it was just water. You wouldn't get that from the trailer anyway, that that was another planet.
Brianna: Exactly.
Joe: I can imagine that would be pretty cool, seeing this in theaters. I watched it—well, me and Pam watched the first hour separately, and then met up after the wormhole section, just so we wouldn't fall asleep at night while watching it—
Brianna: It is a long movie, so I don't blame you. That's a good approach.
Joe: But I watched the first hour on my shitty little phone, so it was cool moving to the TV, and having all the space parts a little more blown up.
Brianna: Oh yeah. And the big screen at the movie theater—it was definitely one of those moments where I lost the fact that I was sitting in a movie theater. Ya know?
Joe: Who did you go with?
Brianna: Um... [laughter] My ex-boyfriend. And a couple of his friends. Is this all off the record? [laughter]
Joe: Did they all feel the same way?
Brianna: Oh yeah. We all left that like, "Okay, let's get back to West Chester first, and then we can talk about it."
Joe: So when I start the blog series about friends' and family's exes and their favorite movies of all time... would he say the same thing about this movie? Is this his favorite movie?
Brianna: ...Maybe! [laughter]
Pam: I think he would be the only one you'd be able to interview for that series.
Joe: I'm definitely joking about interviewing exes! Shane, I'm joking! Shane, if you're reading this, come by anytime. Brianna's ex-boyfriends, if you are reading this, you are not invited!
Pam: Bob might beat up Jenny's exes if you tried to interview them. Does Jenn have any exes?
Joe: Yeah, Matt S****.
Pam: Would Bob try to beat him up?
Joe: Maybe! Matt was in my band. We were called "The."
Pam: I thought you were in Burholme.
Joe: This predates Burholme.
Pam: Oh, okay.
Joe: Getting way off track. [laughter] It was a very "large" movie. I feel like it was trying to say a lot of things. Which is good sometimes! I guess some critics thought it was "messy," in a Christopher Nolan-type of way. I didn't necessarily agree with that. I thought it was a well-told story.
Pam: Is Christopher Nolan "messy"?
Joe: Just like, he packs a lot into his movies.
Pam: What else has he directed?
Joe: Well, I just watched The Prestige this morning. [Editor's note: Interview coming next week!] He directed the Batman trilogy.
Pam: The Dwyer Batman movies?
Brianna: Yeah, all three, and all three are phenomenal. I'm a big Christopher Nolan fan. What else did he do?
Joe: Inception. And Memento.
Pam: Okay, so those are all... those all have a lot packed into them.
Joe: Oh, and Dunkirk! This is probably the first director we've talked about in these interviews that I've seen more than fifty percent of his movies.
Pam: Me too!
Brianna: He's got a lot of really good ones.
Joe: So I guess he just has that style. These big, bombastic movies. And it was... so cool. Like you said, thinking about, ya know, "What if this was real?"
Brianna: It reminded me at some points of Black Mirror, that type of feeling. Just distant enough in the future, like, it's not here yet, but...
Pam: But if trump gets elected in 2020, it's definitely more of a possibility.
Joe: Oh god.
Pam: No food. Air is completely polluted.
Brianna: And they're talking about the moon landing like it didn't happen.
Pam: How history is being rewritten!
Brianna: How they want to worry about "here" and not space. Which I guess I get on some level, but, it was like, "Oh shit," the way truth was being manipulated like that...
Joe: Was this movie a conservative's wet dream? With all this happening. When they were like, "Your kid has to be a farmer," that's exactly what conservatives would love. Like, "You don't have to go to some highfalutin college! You can be a farmer!"
Pam: I guess it was poor people who were suffering.
Joe: Yeah, they didn't really go into what society's class structure looked like at that time.
Brianna: That would've been too much, I think. [laughter] We have just enough of an understanding of the disaster of it all, without getting too deep into it.
Joe: And we definitely don't need to speculate on that, or... we don't even have to do more than dip our toes into the political waters for this interview.
Pam: But it had to be some kind of commentary on what's happening to the earth now, right?
Joe: Climate change, yeah.
Pam: It's definitely not impossible that all that would happen.
Joe: It's not. It gives me the same sinking feeling, thinking about the condition we're leaving the earth, as thinking about... dying? Just, like, this powerless feeling, that we're just fucking Willow and her generation.
Brianna: I wasn't thinking about those levels when I recommended the movie, but then it was like... man, it definitely hits hard. Especially, I can imagine, as new parents. Being in that position. Would you go into space to save mankind?
Pam: A huge theme of the movie is about him and his kids.
Brianna: It's the center of the movie. About the love and the family.
Pam: I hope there's a kid in Willow's generation that can solve all this.
Joe: Because we're certainly not solving it. I dunno. I have a tough time recycling. Not that me recycling this beer bottle is going to do jackshit in the long run. Christ, Philadelphia won't even put it the recycling pile. I might as well just throw it in the trash.
Brianna: If there's one pizza box with grease on it in the recycling, the whole thing goes in the trash.
Pam: There's pizza boxes in the street, the recyclable collectors just throw them!
Joe: [Sigh] I guess we'll be thinking about all this when the new Dust Bowl comes.
Pam: I remember when Hannah lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, there were dust storms like that. Not that that's an apocalypse thing, but it's an example of something in the extreme.
Brianna: I like that element of the movie too. Not only visually, like when they had the big dust storm at the Yankees game—which I got a kick out of—
Joe: [laughter] Fuck the Yankees! Let's get that on the record. The dude missed an easy ground ball. Just like the 2019 Yankees!!
Brianna: Go Birds. I liked too how they're talking at the beginning, and it comes full circle with the museum at the end. How they're talking about, from a historical perspective, what the dust was like. "Remember when everything was covered in dust?" It's a neat little element.
Pam: And there was the baseball game that's going on, out the hospital window. That's when he realized it was fixed. The sky was clear.
Joe: I think a lot of those Dust Bowl clips were actually from a Ken Burns documentary about the actual Dust Bowl? He consulted with Ken Burns, and got his permission.
Brianna: Great, I love it even more now! [laughter]
Joe: Pam was watching the country documentary, but I was like, "Ahh... it's a little too much."
Brianna: I saw a billboard for that, and was like, "Oh Ken, you cover it all." Country music, civil war, whatever.
Joe: So, I guess "it's happened before, it could happen again," that type of thing.
Brianna: On a much larger scale!
Joe: Have you looked into the science behind any of this? Were you interested in that aspect of it?
Brianna: A little bit. Not this most recent time I watched it, but at one point, at our house, we had a big "Interstellar Night," because there were some people there that hadn't seen it yet. Our one friend—who's an engineer, so he's into all that stuff more than the rest of us—but he had read the book based on this...
Joe: The Science of Interstellar.
Brianna: And a lot of it went over my head.
Joe: It was written by Kip Thorne, who was the scientific consultant for the movie.
Pam: Was this the science behind the space stuff, or the earth stuff, or both?
Brianna: I think a little bit of both? The space stuff, for sure. Like, the relativity stuff, the wormhole.
Joe: He's an astrophysicist. We'll talk about an astrobiologist later. But what was your friend saying?
Brianna: Just that it was all very legitimate, the way they did everything in the movie, and how he respected how—just like in The Martian—how they made sure everything was based in science. To a point.
Pam: He didn't see that one.
Joe: I saw bits and pieces.
Pam: You did?
Joe: Don't call me out during the interview with that shit!
Pam: That was Matt Damon too, right?
Brianna: Aw man, I have a note in my phone about this movie that just says, "Fuck Matt Damon."
Pam: Right?
Brianna: His whole part in this makes me so mad.
Pam: He was barely in it, but he was such a dick. He was horrible.
Joe: Yeah, the ice planet he was on kind of reminded me of Boston. [laughter] Cold and lifeless.
Pam: Where was Ben Affleck?
Joe: Okay, so... Kip Thorne—you were saying, about how real it was—he had two rules when they were writing the script. Nothing could violate established physical laws, and any wild speculation that came about in writing it had to be from a scientific perspective. It couldn't be from a screenwriting perspective.
Brianna: Okay.
Joe: And he said only one thing violated those rules. When they bumped the ice clouds? When they entered Matt Damon's planet.
Pam: That's it?
Joe: Yeah, apparently those clouds would've been too heavy to stay in the air. But other than that! At least based in science. Or if it wasn't known, then based in theoretical science that exists.
Pam: That's really cool, because there was a lot of shit in this movie that was like, "This is way over my head."
Joe: A lot of jargon.
Brianna: That's one reason I took notes, I was like, "I need to make sure I get this all in order," because it is a lot.
Pam: Just wrapping my mind around this movie, it was so much.
Joe: Even the one scientist who tried to explain wormholes, and "explain it like I'm five."
Brianna: With the sphere, right? I was like, "I still don't get how it's a sphere, but..."
Joe: Yeah, it's like... I get that there is a theory that time would speed up or slow down depending on where you are or how fast your going, but I'll never get how.
Brianna: The gravity thing... yeah. I get that that's legit, but... not really. It did a number on my brain. "It's been twenty-three years" and I was like "WHAT?!"
Joe: And how he's in the library because the five-dimensional beings created a three-dimensional world, to do... something...? To allow him to help himself?
Brianna: To help him... the idea being it's them in the future, humans actually helping them down the line... it's a lot. But! Very cool to watch. [laughter]
Joe: I don't necessarily even think that realism is that important to movies? Does the realism in this movie play against the idea of "film magic" at all?
Brianna: See, that's something too, when we were watching it before and had this conversation. There was the scene in the beginning where they had the flat tire, and they see the drone thing, and they go through the corn field, and Shane and Pooney were busting my balls, like, [obnoxious voice] "Oh, you're telling me this is legit? That someone would be able to do this?" It's like, you can't think like that when you're watching this!
Joe: If it was more fantastical, if it was, like, a flying demon with wings who spoke Spanish or something, it might be more believable when you're watching the movie... not more "believable," but more accepted, as a movie thing. People are more accepting of fantasy than near-realism.
Brianna: Exactly. But because it's a drone, they were like, "Oh he just used a screwdriver to open it up? That's crazy." I was like, "Yeah he did. It's whatever. It's what happens." Let's not think too deep.
Pam: That's what they thought stretched believability?
Brianna: They were mostly just busting my balls at that point, because they knew I was taking it seriously. [laughter]
Joe: Is that why Shane skipped on this interview?
Brianna: I'm sure he wished that was the reason. But he's moving furniture right now.
Joe: So, there was another... I just want to bring this guy up. David Grinspoon, who was the only scientist who had issues with the science in this movie. Because, like you [Pam] were saying, about space versus earth science. He is an astrobiologist, so he was more concerned about the reality of the earth dying for whatever reason. They explain in the movie that it was the oxygen being eaten up by the nitrogen or something?
Brianna: Yeah. The blights, I guess, were destroying the plants, and released nitrogen, or ate oxygen? It was something like that.
Joe: I read an interview with him, and he was like, "A blight would take millions of years for the oxygen to be depleted to that level"—
Pam: Well that's good to know.
Joe: —"So I know I sound like a snob, and I enjoyed the movie..."
Pam: It makes me feel a little bit better. [laughter]
Joe: He was talking about a blight, specifically. Temperatures are still rising!
Brianna: Climate change is very real!
Joe: I wonder if in our lifetimes we'll see any significant shit from climate change. Right now, it's like, "Oh, they had to pump more sand onto Wildwood's beach." But, are we going to have to do something crazy in our lifetime? I don't know. I selfishly hope not.
Pam: There are ecosystems that are being destroyed. Climate change is already affecting that.
Brianna: Yeah, and there's a part of Africa that have been flooding for a month, and like thousands of people are missing.
Joe: Do we agree that the movie that we are just irrevocably fucked, and we have to find somewhere else?
Brianna: I don't know. I saw a quote the other day—it's not the most uplifting thing—but it was a scientist, like, "If we can't take care of this perfect planet, if we can't handle this, do we really think we can go and design something for ourselves?" We were literally given the perfect place on a platter, and we're fucking it up. What makes us think we can go somewhere else and not do the same thing?
Joe: True!
Brianna: So I dunno. I guess that's ultimately where the leaders in the world in Interstellar ultimately got to. That's why they disbanned NASA, because they were like, "We need to worry about this planet." And the farmers. Why waste time trying to figure anything else out when we have very real issues here? I get that on some level, but it's a little extreme.
Joe: How does this movie's dystopian future compare with other movies with near-future dystopias?
Pam: The one I was thinking of—when we were talking about changes we might see in our lifetime—this is scary—is The Handmaid's Tale.
Joe: What's scarier, Interstellar or Handmaid's Tale?
Brianna: I feel like Interstellar is scarier because there's not a "bad guy," per se, that you can point the finger at.
Pam: It's just, "We're all going to die."
Joe: There's no "resistance movement" that can resist the dust.
Brianna: Exactly. Handmaid's Tale is like, "Let's get a revolution going, maybe we can overthrow!" Interstellar is just like, "Shit... here we go."
Pam: That's why climate change is so scary!
Joe: The one I was thinking of was WALL-E.
Pam: I've never seen that one.
Joe: Basically, there are robots, like WALL-E, that are left on earth to "clean it up." And eventually they end up on the ship where all the humans escaped to, and they got all fat. By the end of the movie, the humans go back to earth themselves, and start cleaning it up, and start a whole new world.
Brianna: WALL-E has convinced them by showing them that it's possible.
Joe: So I guess that was—in true, kids movie, Pixar form—it was very optimistic. Like, yeah, you can fuck up the earth, but we can always fix it! I don't know if I'm that optimistic.
Pam: I mean, we can fix it now. It's still fixable. It's not "fucked no matter what," at this point.
Joe: But that would require the humans in charge of that to actually want to take action, like in WALL-E. And I don't think they do. They're too worried about their own bank accounts.
Pam: I think there are people who do care, and are trying to make positive changes.
Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, that sixteen-year-old girl from Sweden, right?
Brianna: Greta Thunburg.
Pam: Is that why Woody Harrelson had a T-shirt on with a picture of her at the end of SNL? He was thanking everyone, and was like, "And of course, Greta!" And I was like, "Who's that? Is that his daughter or something?"
Brianna: Yeah, she's a big a big activist. She went in front of the U.N., and was like, "Fuck you guys! You're looking to me to be hopeful?! You're here, do something about it! I'm just a kid! I can't do shit! It's up to you!"
Joe: All the conservatives who are fragile snowflakes were very offended by this sixteen-year-old girl yelling at them.
Pam: In Big Little Lies—I know you didn't watch the second season—
Joe: "In the dystopian future of Big Little Lies"?
Pam: They teach climate change, and all the kids get very upset. I guess that's something Willow is going to be learning about.
Brianna: I talk about it all the time to my class. "It's real!"
Joe: It's truth.
Pam: Definitely something to keep you up at night.
Joe: Here's a more optimistic thing I saw in this movie. I was kind of... I was surprised and glad that the robot characters in this movie didn't turn out to be turncoats, or evil or something? I feel like that's pretty rare, in movies that feature robots that are this intelligent. Normally, it's like, "These robots are too intelligent, and they are going to take over the humans!" These guys were programmed to be loyal.
Brianna: TARS is one of my favorite characters. He's funny.
Joe: It kinda reminded me of an album that came out this year. I listened to it, and I fucking hated it. It's called PROTO. It's by this chick Holly Herndon. She trained a robot to sing with her on this album?
Brianna: That... sounds like it could go horribly wrong.
Joe: It did. [laughter] It was shit. I mean, as someone who listens to music, it was shit. As someone who is interested in—not that I'm this person—but if you're interested in that kinda shit, it was cool hearing Holly Herndon talk about it. Her big thing about this album was, ya know, that robots get a bad rap in pop culture as these things that are going to take over the world, and should be mistrusted. Her point was that it was the people who control the robots who should be mistrusted. The first people who are going to get the robots are, like, fucking GE and GM. They're going to be the ones using the robots for nefarious purposes. But... robots in general don't have to be feared.
Brianna: As seen in TARS and CASE!
Joe: That was so funny, all the bits about raising and lowering their humor levels.
Brianna: [laughter] And their honesty levels. "Too much! Too much! Turn it down!"
Joe: Apparently the dude who voiced TARS also did the puppetry—I guess they called it "puppetry," but he probably controlled it with a switchboard or something? And he guy doing this had to be digitally erased from each scene. Bill Irvin.
Brianna: Very interesting.
Joe: Um, I... am going to get a beer real quick at this point. A couple, probably? Or should I drink this wine on the table here?
Pam: I don't care. Whatever you want.
Brianna: Can you bring a glass? After I'm done this beer, I'll have a little bit of wine.
Pam: Do you want ice?
Brianna: [laughter] No.
Pam: I dunno, you're a K***.
Joe: Not for red! Jeez!
Brianna: C'mon, we have a little bit of class!
Pam: Tell your dad that! He drinks wine with ice!
[break to get more alcohol]
Joe: Speaking of Dad...
[laughter]
Joe: What are your thoughts about the father-daughter relationship in this movie? And how powerful it was? Speak to that a little bit.
Brianna: It made me cry a lot. [laughter] I thought it was very... it was real. Not that I'm... well, no, I'm on the other side of that. I'm not a dad, but I'm a daughter. Jesus Christ.
Joe: Right, that's what I'm curious about.
Brianna: Yeah! At the center of the movie—yeah, it's all science, it's all realistic and stuff—but the Murph/Cooper relationship, that's the center of what it's all about. It's literally what saves humanity. That bond. I love the part—and I'm not a huge Anne Hathaway fan, but I like her in this movie—
Pam: She's polarizing.
Brianna: I know! But I'm not going to make that a point—
Joe: We'll come back to that. I want everyone who doesn't like Anne Hathaway on record as to why. Because you won't be able to explain it sufficiently. You have no fucking reason!
Brianna: I know, I won't be able to. But anyway... I loved her monologue, when she was trying to get them to Wolf's planet. She was like, "Love—it's not quantifiable, but we know it exists, and maybe that means something." And it eventually does, in terms of saving the planet.
Pam: It was the only other force that can travel through dimensions, right?
Brianna: I really appreciated the relationship throughout. The one scene, when he's watching all the tapes, and she comes on. "I'm the age you were when you left." It's like, holy shit, I can't imagine.
Joe: So when Matthew McConaughey was reacting to those videos... is that how dad reacted this morning when you called him about your car accident? [laughter]
Brianna: He held it together very well. [laughter] But he kept saying, "Everything's okay! Everything's okay!"
Joe: Is there anything about your and dad's relationship that you would compare to Murph and Cooper's relationship?
Brianna: I dunno. I feel like it just resonates the length that any father would go for his kids. It is zeroed in on Murph, but it's about everyone. He was willing to go into a black hole, without knowing what was going to happen, to save his kid. Like... dad left work today to help me with my car! [laughter] He didn't have to! But just the commitment to that relationship, I respect, and feel.
Joe: How about how Murph took after Cooper? His profession, specifically, but also his general demeanor. Especially when she was a kid, acting like her dad.
Brianna: Absolutely, very stubborn.
Joe: I know Pam often speculates that you more take after Dad, and Jenny more takes after Mom. I don't know if you see that as accurate.
Brianna: I could see that. In terms of interests, music... I've been on a real big Stephen King kick over the past year, and that's been fun, talking to Dad about it, and having that to relate to.
Joe: So when the government comes and tries to edit the Stephen King books, Dad will give you the stuff you can bring into school to prove them wrong.
Brianna: [laughter] Exactly. "The original version of It! With the kid orgy scene in it! The government doesn't want it there, but it's there!"
Joe: "I can't believe schools are cutting that!" Is that in the new movie? The kid orgy scene?
Brianna: No! I just saw it on Saturday...
[It discussion. I'm cutting it, but I'll take full responsibility for it happening in the first place.]
Brianna: So anyway! Interstellar!
Joe: We touched on how good McConaughey was in that one scene. I thought he did a great job overall. There was a lot of good acting in this. I liked how Timothee Chalamet showed up for a little bit.
Pam: There's a lot of big actors in this movie!
Joe: Me and Pam were saying that we didn't know who was in it besides Matthew McConaughey, so when people were popping up, it was like—
Brianna: "Jessica Chastain! Matt Damon!"
Pam: I didn't know Michael Caine was in it.
Joe: He's in like every Christopher Nolan movie.
Brianna: He really is.
Joe: And you said you liked Anne Hathaway's acting in this.
Brianna: Yeah, I liked her story, I like her character.
Joe: Explain, put it on the record. Why don't you like Anne Hathaway?
Brianna: I don't know! There's something about... it's the same thing with Katy Perry, and the way she acts? Though Anne Hathaway, for a while now, I've been coming to terms with that I'm cool with her, maybe since Interstellar? But there were times, maybe her personality just wasn't one that... maybe I couldn't relate to?
Joe: This discussion used to be a lot more heated back in the day, probably around Les Mis, when she won that Oscar?
Brianna: Oh, I thought she was phenomenal in that too. I give a lot of credit to her, I feel like she's a great actor.
Joe: But I feel like I had this argument more so around that time then I have recently. I think that was mainly... Anne Hathaway kind of felt the heat, and stepped away from the limelight for a little bit, because of that. But I'll say my theory from back in the day—this is like digging into the archives—I always used to say that it was just girl-on-girl crime when it came to hatred of Hathaway. It was always women who didn't like Anne Hathaway, and they were never able to satisfactorily explain why they didn't like her, they just didn't like her.
Pam: It was just... I mean, I don't mind her. I don't love her.
Brianna: I respect her very much as an actress. I think she's proven that. It's just her personality otherwise that, at times, I just don't get. It's a little too... I dunno.
Joe: She definitely comes off as someone that would be in the Masque, and be really fucking into it.
Pam: Weren't her parents in the Masque?
Joe: Her parents were in the Masque. Maybe that's why I'm saying it. But also, I knew people in the Masque that—probably people who I no longer hang out with for the most part, unfortunately—who were very in-your-face, and energetic, and very into acting and theater, and... whereas my theater friends wanted to just hang around and drink, and acting was secondary. Just a clashing of personalities, I guess? But I didn't mind any of that? I dunno. These are all things I used to say back in 2014, when this was a big discussion point among my friends, like, "Why do you fucking hate Anne Hathaway?!" Because she's a good actress, and I can't see that she's done anything wrong.
Brianna: Yes. On the record—loved her in this movie. Generally like her as an actress.
Joe: She did a great job in this!
Brianna: Really good.
Joe: I would say something if she slipped up at all. I'm hard on actors.
Pam: She's very professional. She's won an Oscar.
Joe: So she was planting humans, I guess, when she landed on her dead ex-lover's planet?
Brianna: Yes! I guess so.
Joe: I know Cooper was going out to find her or whatever. So he'll be crash landing onto a planet with 900 fetuses or whatever?
Pam: Wait, how did they do that again?
Joe: They just had a big box full of fetuses that they could plant on a planet.
Brianna: Fertilized eggs.
Joe: This was "Plan B."
Brianna: They explained it very briefly, like at first it was going to be an incubator deal, and eventually they would be human.
Pam: So McConaughey wasn't going out there to procreate with her? Or maybe he was.
Joe: I guess he could.
Brianna: So, at this point, the humans are in all these different space stations. Is that just their life now? Just chilling out there? Or are they going to Anne Hathaway's planet? I wasn't sure about that.
Joe: I mean, Cooper stole only one of a few space crafts, so they were probably doing a little more exploring from that base.
Brianna: Is the wormhole still open?
Joe: I think it's similar to Inception's spinning top. "Are they still in the inception still, or are they not?" Unanswered questions.
Brianna: Which are good to have!
Joe: Are the English going to win the war in Dunkirk? You just don't know.
Brianna: What's going to happen to Tom Hardy when he was captured? Is he going to be killed by the Nazis?
Joe: There ya go, yes. You saved a bad joke. You really don't know what's going to happen with that character. What's some other stuff you liked from this movie? You said you had a list there.
Brianna: All the artistic stuff I thought was fantastic, just how it all looked. Particularly the scene before they go into the wormhole, and they see Saturn and all that... it just blew me away. The score, Hans Zimmerman—
Pam: The score was pretty ominous, I thought.
Brianna: Very dramatic.
Joe: All these things got nominated for Oscars, that you're talking about.
Brianna: Yeah, and those were the only big nominations. McConaughey didn't get nominated, nothing from acting. It was all about the visual, the sound.
Joe: Which was kind of surprising, the McConaughey snub.
Pam: Yeah, I was surprised he wasn't nominated.
Brianna: I was very shocked too, but maybe it was a big year? There were some other big contenders.
Joe: That was the year Birdman won.
Pam: Did Michael Keaton win for Best Actor?
Joe: No, and we'll get to that in a second. It lost to Budapest for Original Score. It lost to Budapest for Production Design. It lost to American Sniper in Sound Editing. It lost to Whiplash in Sound Mixing, which...
Pam: Can't argue with that.
Joe: They mixed those drum sounds pretty well. But it won in Visual Effects. So it went one for five. It wasn't nominated in anything else, like, any of the heavy hitter awards.
[The conversation continues here with Brianna reading the list for the 2014 Oscars, which is the year that Interstellar came out, but not the year it was eligible. That would be the 2015 Oscars. This also means that I am cutting two subsequent mentions by Pam of 12 Years a Slave, because that has nothing to do with this, and she was misinformed. Wrong year! Let's continue.]
Joe: Here is a funny anecdote that I put together, regarding who won that year for Best Actor. So, Kip Thorne, who we already talked about, was friends with Stephen Hawking. And they, back in the day, made a bet about black holes. They disagreed about the science behind it. It was a very scientific bet with a very juvenile outcome—whoever lost was going to be subscribed to Penthouse for a year. So, after a decade or so, Stephen Hawking realized that he was wrong in this bet, regarding the science behind black holes. So he read Penthouse for a year. And this whole anecdote that Stephen Hawking had described in his book was portrayed in the movie The Theory of Everything, for which Eddie Redmayne won, this year, the Oscar for Best Actor. So while Stephen Hawking lost the battle, he won the war.
Pam: Because Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for portraying him?
Joe: Yeah, he won an Oscar for portraying him losing the bet.
Pam: ...Is that what he won it for?
Joe: Not specifically, but... [laughter]
Brianna: It was that scene that won him the award!
Joe: Well it's a general rule with the Academy that if you're shown reading a pornographic magazine, that you win the Oscar.
Pam: Is that right?
Joe: Yeah. Watch any Oscar-nominated movie.
Pam: ...You can stop recording now. [laughter]
Joe: Okay, we can start wrapping it up a little bit. If I were to guess why I thought this was your favorite movie of all time, I would probably guess it was because George R. R. Martin also wrote on his blog that this was his favorite movie that year. He said that it was "the most ambitious and challenging sci-fi film since 2001."
Pam: What was in 2001?
Joe: The movie 2001.
Pam: Oh.
Joe: So you [Brianna] clearly agree with George R. R. Martin.
Brianna: Yes.
Joe: I don't know if you agree with the fact that he clearly had time to write on his blog instead of writing the books...
Brianna: He can take a few hours off to watch Interstellar, I'm fine with that. Worth it.
Pam: Yeah, who blogs when they could be doing other things? Like work?!
[laughter]
Brianna: Burn!
Joe: Did you feel those same feelings when you watched it most recently that you did when you watched it the first time?
Brianna: Definitely. Just because there is so much in it, and it's such a large epic, that you forget some of the stuff. And then every time I watch it, it still hits me. Maybe not as hard. This might have been the first time... I definitely teared up at the end, but I didn't cry during the "23 years later" tape scene, because that used to get me really bad. So it definitely... yeah, I thought it was just as good.
Joe: And hopefully it doesn't come true, or else it'll start to feel like a Ken Burns documentary.
Pam: Well hopefully, if it does come true, we can get some tips from the movie. About wormholes and planets...
Brianna: We'll send McConaughey, for sure.
Joe: "McConaughey lives behind my bookcase! I swear!"
Pam: That was so cool, that bookcase stuff. I knew that was going to come back somehow, when they were talking about the "ghost."
Brianna: I loved when he finally—with the dust storm, and you see the lines in it, and how he's like, "wait a second," and wrote it down. And then the watch.
Pam: That was something that came back too. She was like, "I'm learning morse code," and he's like, "Why?"
Brianna: As far as scenes that I really loved, there's the scene when he's driving away from Murph, and heading to his mission, how they juxtaposed that with the take-off scene. As he was driving away, leaving, it was really heavy.
Joe: In any other movie, that would've been it's own climatic scene. Like, "taking off from earth on this dramatic mission."
Brianna: They didn't even really have a big scene where the rocket was taking off. It was Cooper driving away, and then a cut to him in the ship. The big visual was him in his car.
Joe: To Cooper, that was the more traumatic experience.
Brianna: For sure. Then, of course Shane's sitting there saying sarcastically, "It's a Lincoln commercial!" [laughter] I was like, "Goddamn it. Shut up, you're ruining it!" The docking scene, as well, after McConaughey blows up the part of the ship, and it's spinning, and they still have to dock it.
Joe: We had to pause that, Pam was like—
Pam: I said, "Wait a minute, what just happened? Why is he doing that? Please explain this to me." [laughter]
Joe: "Matt Damon was an asshole."
Brianna: The most frustrating part about that is that the dude could've just gone into cybersleep forever. Just like, turn himself off, and say, "Okay, maybe one day humans will come get me." Why did he have to do all of that?
Pam: So if they got to his planet, if they figured out that it was not a viable planet, they just have to stay there? They couldn't leave?
Brianna: I mean, they did leave. That's the stupid part! He could've just came with them, and they could've gone to Wolf's planet or whatever.
Joe: Right, that would've been the plan, had Cooper not said, "We're not going to that other planet, because I have to get home." That's why Damon took drastic measures.
Pam: "We're doing this for humanity, not for your family."
Brianna: I felt like the repetitive use of the poem, the one that Michael Caine kept saying, I thought was very powerful. "Don't go gently into that good night." Which I thought summed up the movie's message pretty well.
Joe: I feel like I read that one in freshman English.
Brianna: I've definitely heard it before too, but I just like the way they used it. Again, cinematography-wise, the way he was reading the poem while the characters were fighting to keep going. It was really cool. And I liked how there were a lot of gray-area characters. Like with Coop, it was, "Okay, then why did you leave your daughter, then?" Ya know? I get what you're doing, but you as the audience are questioning everyone's motives too. It wasn't like, "Oh, he's the hero, he's saving the planet." Even when he was in other dimension, he was trying to tell himself to stay. Like, screw all this, just stay with your daughter.
Joe: Would you consider that... selfish?
Brianna: No, and I think that's what I like about these characters. You get it. There is a level of selfishness to that, but that makes them more relatable. In a movie that is so crazy and big and epic, it just makes them more relatable.
Joe: I mean, we could give an example on a somewhat smaller scale. I could probably better serve Earth by moving to a pipeline, to protest by chaining myself to a pipeline or something. But I don't do that because my wife and kid are here. And I don't think that's selfish. I hope it's not! It's what's important to me. Family.
Brianna: You're saying you don't just care about yourself, you still care about other people.
Joe: Yeah, I mean... if this was Cooper's situation here, and it was a little more critical, if I needed to save humanity by forgoing the relationship with my child... I dunno. I hope I'm never put in that position. Because I'm... such a good space pilot... [laughter]
Pam: He had a certain set of skills that made him right for the job.
Joe: "NASA needs an unpaid music blogger to save the universe!!"
Brianna: But yeah, I loved every part of this movie. The story itself is really good, but it's everything else about it too that elevates it to my favorite movie. The whole picture.
Joe: Do you think there's going to be a movie in the future that could supplant this as your favorite movie of all time? And I've never asked that question before, because I've never talked to someone whose favorite movie was from the past five years.
Brianna: Um... I don't know!
Joe: What would a movie have to do to supplant this movie, in your mind, as your favorite?
Brianna: It would have to surprise. It would have to tell a new story... not a lot of those out there anymore. Lots of remakes. Which is probably another reason I appreciated Interstellar—that it was so original, in the midst of a lot of remakes. It would have to be a new story, that is relatable, and yet epic, and looks good, and sounds good.
Joe: What about Interstellar 2?!
Brianna: No.
No comments:
Post a Comment