[BONUS] Episode G (The Final Cut) - BLADE RUNNER (1982)

"That's the hunger of being alive, bitch." Might fix me. Thank you Lucy. I'm very intense about how good the unexplained is. The Alien space jockey, the Tennhouser Gate speech, etc. I'm also tormented, in life more broadly, by longing and never being enough. This quote might do me a great service by beginning to synthesise these two positions into something less painful.

Related to my comment on the long goodbye episode: this episode's be gay solve crimes "Lucy describes [puppy girls] experience with being trans perfectly" ; when she says "you might realize you're trans and look back and find that a lot of your memories seem to be the memories of a little boy and that's okay and you can remake yourself" Insanely powerful stuff a great cudgel against the transphobes ( like my mother) who concede that trans people are real but, based on the fact that I wasn't trying on high heels when I was five, I can't be a "real" trans woman

Imagining the Tyrell building factory floor being a big textile mill spinning nerves and intestines, like in Rossum's Universal Robots

loved the discussion on world building not being fiction. I think of world building as akin to building a set for a play: only build what is necessary.

There really was a period in the 70-80s where if you were an up and coming director you would hire Harrison Ford to sexually assault a woman in your movie.

"Steven Universe, future episode?" Hear me out, though I dread to suggest adding a *sixth* podcast to Nova's plate, a Bony Island-type side-series to KJB!/BGSC where she and her two most clodpilled co-hosts do a rewatch.

Listening to this while driving to work right before sunrise in light misting rain, really in the mood for some noodles and bleaching my hair

I kind of feel like the theorizing about whether or not Deckard is a Replicant is functionally doing exactly what you were complaining about with stories having to be explained and worldbuilded. The whole point of the story is that trying to say that humans and Replicants are different is folly, and that whether or not Deckard is a Replicant is immaterial. The ambiguity is there and you shouldn't seek a definitive answer, because you won't get one and it explicitly doesn't matter. Trying to make it make sense demystifies it.

I'm pretty sure that Deckard isn't a Replicant, but the thesis of the movie is that it doesn't matter. The character arcs of Rachel and Roy prove to him that Replicants are human too, and him choosing to run away with Rachel and accepting the ambiguity of his own nature solidifies that. It doesn't matter if you were produced, it doesn't matter if your memories are "fake". They are real to you, they matter, you are human, and nobody can take that from you.

This movie for the longest time was my absolute favorite movie. It's a perfect "first favorite movie for a budding "intellectual" in their teens" kind of movie, not that I would be so arrogant to call myself that, but still. It's just beautiful and comfy. And OH BOY, is the narration not good.

Mark Kermoe: Every time Ridley Scott makes a movie, God flips a coin.

Coming at this episode quite late, but a quick reminder that Elon Musk once posted a photo of the Blade Runner gun sitting on his bedside table

Altered carbon season 1 is kind of a detective story, would love to see more cyberpunk on the pod.

I see a lot of blade runner as like, both the birth of cyberpunk but also the death of that kind of jetsons Ray gun gothic Utopia, it's a future where they have their flying cars, robot servants, cities in the clouds and space travel and it's an absolute nightmare. There's all this future technology sure but all the furniture and tableware and a lot if the clothes are from like the 20s thru 50s. Idk where I'm going with this but I think it's just largely a refutation of the future as imagined by people in the first like 60 years of the 20th century. Going "this is what we'll make if we don't radically change"

The Wiki thing is kind of an interesting conundrum. When you watch a TV show or movie and there's an unexplained mystery that tickles your brain and makes you feel present and alive because you want to know, you want the explaination, you want to find out. Even if it doesn't always seem that way it's what humans want more than anything. To scratch the itch of not knowing something. And that's why the wikis exist. Because people WANT TO KNOW. To scratch the itch. But then the itch is gone and the itch was part of what made the art good. That you were left wanting more. And because you want more you're motivated to search for more, to create more to fill in the gaps. But once you have the energy generated by the desire to know fizzles out and it becomes boring.

Something I find interesting about Cyberpunk as a genre (and aesthetic) is that all the big pillars came out completely independently of each other. William Gibson wrote Neuromancer before Blade Runner came out (he was upset after seeing it because he thought everyone would think he was ripping it off). And a couple of years later Katsuhiro Otomo started serialising Akira (neither Blade Runner or Neuromancer apparently got much traction in Japan). But they all shared similar influences. Classic sci-fi, like Alfred Bester. The work of Moebius. Plus similar socio-political concerns.

im sooooooo glad im not the only one who became just like insanely sleepy basically every time ive watched the movie. i think genuinely its just like. a combination of the insanely good music, relatively slow and gentle pacing and the visuals all just sorta combine together in a way that feels like its for the explicit purpose of making me the coziest little critter. the nights last forever, so take a little time to aura farm on the balcony with a cigarette in one hand and a shot of hard liquor in the other. let the warm glow of neon embrace you like a lover now lost before eventually even that memory begins to fade. memories washed away in the brown ichor of your glass. memories washed away like tears in rain <3

My favorite weird thing about this movie is that the two of Sebastian’s dolls that we see most often are dressed as Napoleon Bonepart and Otto von Bismarck for some reason. Is he a Victoria II player?

Whenever I hear that theatrical release voiceover I immediately think of "If there's anything a werewolf hates, it's a collar - especially Avacyn's Collar, the symbol of her church."

Great episode, ça va sans dire, but it also made me feel very smart and cool because I said out loud "HRT Lovecraft" .5 seconds before November did.

Hard agree on that Lovecraft take. Been thinking it for years, ever since learning more about her life.

One more small detail I adore: great camera effects when Leon confronts Deckard after Zhora's murder. Deckard is able to quickly draw on him. A heartbeat later without changing posture, Leon effortlessly slaps the pistol out of his hand and down the alley (where Rachel finds it). It's a really shocking scene about the difference in physical capabilities.

There was a period, when I was like 13, when every day when I got home from school, I'd watch one of three movies: Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, or Pink Floyd's The Wall. This may not have been good for my mental health. Edward James Olmes put a lot of work into Gaff. He got really actory with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oru3YwzoniM Did November seriously call The Netherland's greatest export: Rutger Hauer, German? Oh and one more thing, Bryant is played by Guy I Love To See M. Emmet Walsh. When you needed a sweaty creep, you could not find better.

What are we but the lessons we awaken in others? Finite mortal beings we attain The mystery by reaching forward to clear the ash from others eyes, & by grasping back to be kissed by the ancestors. How beautiful if the Tanhauser gate is nothing but the ideosyncratic secret name for something he feels in his heart Who, one yearns, woke him to the truth in his heart? As to wikis: if you do do some Borges, a detour on On the Exactitude of Sciences What the hammer What the chain What the planisphere at life size scale

Crying over never being seen as a woman and i get hit instantly with THAT intro 😭

I wish it was not the case, but I'm a little older, and MOST people I have met interpreted Decker as 'the good guy'. Several of them even argued with me about the SA scene being "not a big deal". It's astonishing. It's so lovely listening to people who watched it and saw the same things I did!

Fans of Rutger Hauer and progressive metal music check out Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Lost in the New Real, where he plays the narrator, the not so subtly named Professor Voight-Kampff

Apologies for doing like two responses, the first was a weird bored-on-the-train nerdsquee when I heard it was going to be Columbo. This is the 'now I have a keyboard ho ho ho' Blade Runner nonsense. Had never considered the 'Deckard was dropped off at the corner from the Replicant Factory then picked up and taken to work' thesis. This film is beautiful for what it allows to exist in the empty spaces, you were so right about the power of leaving gaps for the imagination. I thought you were harsh on Sebastian, his bioengineered toys didn't seem to be full-blown sentient beings. Lonely dude made himself some pals. In a world where real animals are prohibitively expensive and fake animals are the norm, making your own fake animal, and it's a talking fairy tale character instead of an owl or whatever? I don't think that's necessarily bad. The Pris fight as well, I don't think it's necessarily (although a bit of a coin flip with this director) a male-gazey sex thing that the fight with Deckard plays out how it does. I think Pris literally, physically, does not compute how to fight. She's a comfort woman, Tyrell Corp is not going to give her the ability to fight back, imagine the complaints they'd get. It's why I think she can't kill Deckard despite gaining the upper hand, despite how much she wants to. I get the sense her reaction to getting shot is anger, she feels useless, she feels frustrated, she couldn't fight, she couldn't save herself, and that hurts even more than the bullet. She is absolutely livid about getting killed.

Can't wait, I love Columbo so much. Everything about it. The execution, the format, how much fun and how wholesome its creation all seems. Peter Falk writing episodes under the name of one of the writers so he still qualified for his medical coverage for example. Also him being friends with Patrick McGoohan and just having him show up a bunch of times. I choose to imagine McGoohan playing the same gifted serial killer who is like "FFS this guy again" when Columbo shows up, but Columbo never recognises him because of his eyesight (I know it's not just McGoohan with the multiple appearances, but I'm a nerd for The Prisoner so he's the man I love to see the most).

I've heard podcasts you people wouldn't believe...

it's a small missed detail, but one I love: during the opening Voight-Kampff test the detective gently unholsters his gun underneath the table after the tortoise question. The gesture looks like he leans back to relax, but you can later see his gun in his hand when he's shot.

The bit about Ridley Scott being misogynist (especially with the very second wave-ist bit about scantly clad women) had me in fucking tears, good shit. I wish we had blockbusters willing to be horny again.

Ough I'm so excited for Columbo next time. I wonder which episode you'll pick.

https://gizmodo.com/when-a-newspaper-gave-blade-runners-replicant-test-to-m-1687558534 The Newsom interview Mia referenced lmao. Mia was not, in fact, fucking Lucy's face.