Beyond the Big Screen

Title: Gettysburg in Literature, Film and History: The Battle Heats Up on Day 1Description: Today Sean, James and I continue our discussion of the real events and background of the Battle of Gettysburg as portrayed through the 1993 film Gettysburg. The action really begins to heat up in early July in southern Pennsylvania. We look at some of the big players and the early strategies they used to try and get the upper hand.Learn More About our Guests:James Early and Sean McIverKey Battles of American History PodcastKeybattlesofamericanhistory.comYou can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10571243Begin Transcript:, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Welcome back to beyond the big screen. We have another installment of Hollywood hates history today. This is the second part of a four-part conversation on the incredible 1993. Classic in Gettysburg. We are joined by two civil war fanatics and podcasters.Sean MacGyver of the common take a Texas history pod. And professor James early, a frequent contributor to beyond the big screen, the history of the papacy, along with Scott ranks, history unplugged podcast. Today, we will progress through the battle, including the first day of fighting. We will also discuss the major source of the movie, the 1974 historical fiction novel the killer angels by Michael Shaara.[00:01:00] We have so much to talk about, so let's get right to. If you have historical movies you love, or you hate, let me know, and maybe we can make it into an episode for Hollywood hates history. If you'd like to participate in Hollywood, hates history, send me an email to Steve at history. page.com. I'd love to hear from you, and maybe we can arrange to discuss some of these great, and maybe not so great movies.Thank you again for listening and I will see you next time beyond the big screen.so here we are, the first actual day of battle, which would, um, was Wednesday, July 1st, 1863. James, why don't you give us a quick overview of the fighting and then Sean, we can dig in a little bit deeper. Okay. So as we'd seen the Confederate, I mean, sorry, the union cavalry under general, John Buford was deployed on [00:02:00] seminary Ridge, just west of Gettysburg.Good high ground. And the Confederates are there and they fighting breaks out. Generally had ordered. The, uh, his division commanders that were in the front of his column, not to engage, not to get involved in combat, but they just couldn't help. It. It just, it just happened because they were being attacked by the, by the unions, uh, forces.They're the, the cavalry that we mentioned. So Lee finally says, okay, go ahead and attack. And he sends in a second division. Uh, there's one by Heath. He general Heath is the commander of, one of the divisions that got involved in the early fighting in general. Pender also gets involved and. So the cavalry's outnumbered, so they begin to fall back.And then the F the first of the union Corps arrives it's under the command of general. John Reynolds, John Reynolds had a reputation of being one of the finest generals that all the army general Reynolds had actually been offered command of the entire army instead of meat, but he turned it down so general Reynolds, his [00:03:00] core comes up and they get into a very intense fight between the Confederates who are gradually advancing the.Uh, to make a long story. Short general Reynolds is killed, uh, by a Confederate sharp shooter. He's replaced temporarily, at least by general Abner Doubleday. This is before he invented baseball. No, I'm just kidding. He didn't really mean baseball, but it really was Doubleday. Uh, the Confederates forced the union soldiers back.They have to retreat through the town of Gettysburg. There is a little bit of house to house fighting, but for the most part, it's a solid Confederate advanced pushing back the, uh, the blue coats. And at the same time as this general UL's division is pushing in from the north. Those divisions. Pushes, uh, more of the union army back and the union army at the end of day, one ends up on the high ground, the very high ground that general Buford had hoped not to fall into the hands of the Confederate Confederates and it [00:04:00] does it.And so they end up on seminary, seminary, sorry, cemetery Ridge. It's confusing because there's a seminary Ridge, which is where. Tennis cemetery. The first battle is at seminary and then they go to cemetery, which, uh, I have been to seminary and someone argue it's actually the same thing anyway. Uh, so that by the end of day one, the union army is.In a very good defensive position there on cemetery hill, which Sean already mentioned cemetery Ridge, which goes down to the south. And then also they have people on Culp's hill, which is to the east and the position is shaped like a fish hook. It's an excellent position. Uh, it's very good in, in the terms of the fact that it has interior lines, which means.You can quickly get forces from one side of the line to the other. We'll put a map up or actually Steve, we'll put a map up there, right? Steve, um, [00:05:00] Steve will do that and he's a good guy, but anyway, you really need a map for this, but just think of an inverted fish hook. And, uh, one of the things that's very important is that generally orders general, you will to take that hill if practicable, he means cemetery hill.And that phrase if practicable, yeah. Extremely important because if Jackson had been the commander Jackson, would've said, oh, heck yeah, I'm taking the hill and he probably would've done it. Or at least he would've come close. General Yule decides it's not practical. So he does not take the hill. I guess that's a summary of day one, or at least from my perspective, what else you got?That's such a good place to stop too, because that's such an odd wording practicable, because practicable sounds like practical. There is a pretty decent shade of difference between those two words was Lee being too clever by half by using that phrase that he [00:06:00] just used it the wrong way. Well, you have to keep in mind.Lee had been working with Stonewall Jackson for well over a year, and those two men could almost read each other's minds. Uh, Lee made very vague orders. A lot of the time. And he would just tell Jackson, I'm just paraphrasing here, but just get it done. Take that hill, do this. If you can. And Jackson would, would almost always do it.Jackson was very aggressive and he just had a knack for understanding what Lee wanted and getting it done. You will, as a different man, general you'll, uh, is not Stonewall Jackson. He's nowhere near as aggressive and he's brand new to the job. He's unsure of himself. He doesn't want to risk. He has been wounded.He doesn't want. Getting his army destroyed. So yes, it's a very different situation. A couple of things. So later on in the book, lung street makes a note to another character that, uh, to an observer, that Lee's habit was to give the orders to his subordinates and then to step back and [00:07:00] let them execute. He was not a micromanager.He was not a person who. Got into the battle and was moving units around he's he came up with the strategy, uh, and gave it to his, his, his core commanders and his division commanders to fulfill. The other thing was. He, uh, as far as you will goes, you'll was a fine division commander, uh, who had served under, under Jackson and long street.Makes a good point in the book that some end Lee, I think is he, the leader Longstreet makes the point that some people. Some in our good regiment commanders that don't make good brigade brigade, commanders. Some men are good division commanders that don't make good core commanders. Uh, so it's just, uh, it just varies, you know, if you push a person up and promote them, they may not execute in the same way at their level.APO was a great example of that. AP hill was one of the finest division commanders of the war. [00:08:00] Uh, he wasn't as effective as a Corps commander. So you know, that that's the other thing. And then the final thing is. I E Lee was a gentlemen of the, of the south, uh, and. It was a much different time. The language was more courtly.And I think that's where that practicable comes from is he, he had a gentlemanly way of asking for things of his subordinates. Whereas someone like Patton would say, go take that damn hill right in the later war until later, or even a grant who was a more rough homespun or a, or a Sherman would say your orders are to take the.You know, it was, it was a gentleman's way to ask his, his men, his subordinates to deliver something, to do something for them. Uh, it was a, it was not necessarily a commander's way in the way we probably think of, and, and it had worked for him up to that point. And

Title: Gettysburg in Literature, Film and History: Setting Up the BattleDescription: Today we start part 1 of a 4 part series on the 1993 classic Civil War film Gettysburg. We are joined by frequent guest James Early and Sean McIver to discuss this epic battle and film. In this episode we will fill in some of the background of the war and the battle.Learn More About our Guests:James Early and Sean McIverKey Battles of American History PodcastKeybattlesofamericanhistory.comYou can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By impawards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10571243Begin Transcript:, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Welcome back to beyond the big screen. We have another installment of Hollywood hates history. Today, today we have the first of not one but four part conversation on the incredible 1993. Classic Gettysburg. We are joined by two civil war fanatics and podcasts.Sean MacGyver of the common, take it, Texas history podcast and professor James early, a frequent contributor to beyond the big screen, the history of the papacy podcast, along with Scott rank's history unplugged podcast. In this first episode, we will look at the broad overview of the battle. Film, we will also discuss the major source of the movie, the 1974 historical fiction novel the [00:01:00] killer angels by Michael Shara and the prelude to the.We have much to talk about. So let's get right to it. If you have a historical movie you love or hate, let me know, and maybe we can make an episode for Hollywood hates history. I have a few other movies in the works with Scott rank and others. If you'd like to participate in Hollywood, hates history, send me an email to steve@atozhistorypage.com.I'd love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next time beyond the big screen.welcome back today. We are talking about the great movie from 1993 Gettysburg. So today I'm going to be the host, but, um, we have two great. Guests, but we're all kind of in on this [00:02:00] together. I'm Steve Guerra and I host the history of the papacy podcast as well as beyond the big screen podcast. I'm joined by James early and Sean MacGyver, Sean MacGyver is of the come and take a Texas history podcast.And James early is a professor from San Jacinto college who is an. Time's collaborator with Scott rank on his history unplugged podcast. Uh, it took a little doin, but we all came together. Are you excited to talk about Gettysburg? I am totally excited. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I'm so glad we're finally doing it.Uh, why don't we just get we'll jump straight into it. James. Can you tell us a little bit about the background? Um, the book and the movie Gettysburg? Yes. The, uh, movie Gettysburg is based on a novel called the [00:03:00] killer angels, which was written in 1974, published in 1974 by Michael Shera or shore. I'm not really sure how that's pronounced.I think it shares is Shara, Shara. Okay. S H a R a. Uh, it was Michael Shara is kind of an interesting person. He was a writer in the 50, 60 seventies, eighties, a little bit. He wrote primarily science fiction and sports fiction, not too much historical fiction. He had four novels of which the killer angels is his second.And it's his only novel that is. Uh, historical fiction as a side note, it's interesting that he also wrote the book for love of the game, which was turned into a movie with Kevin Costner. But anyway, I don't want to get too far off track, but the killer angels was very well-received. It won the Pulitzer prize in 1975 and Shara, after he, after he wrote his fourth novel for love of the game killer angels was the second [00:04:00] one.After that he. Just wrote, well, actually not much of anything, if anything. And then he died in 1998. Uh, interestingly enough, after that his son, Jeff, Sharon, or Shara, uh, took up the torch and wrote a pre-qual called gods and generals and a sequel called the last full measure, making a civil war trilogy.And then Jeff Shaara went on to write many, many, many more historical novels, but. Going back to the killer angels. What's interesting about the killer angels is it tells the story of the battle of Gettysburg through the. And the thoughts of some of the major commanders on both sides. For example, there are chapters devoted to Robert Lee.What he is seeing, what he's thinking. There are chapters devoted to James Long street on the union side. The primary character is Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was the commander of the 20th Maine regiment. One of the key regiments on day two of the. [00:05:00] And there are other characters, of course, that are brought into it as well, but he really does a great job in the book.Putting you inside the mind of these commanders and what they were thinking and what they were feeling, what they were hoping to do, hoping to accomplish it's it's fiction. Of course, it's not a, it's not a regular history book. It's a, it's a historical novel, but I think Shera does or Shara, it's going to take me several times to get used to that, but, uh, it's it, he really.I think it's, it's a very accurate novel. A lot of the speeches and the dialogues are just made up, but others are based on things that these men wrote in their diaries or their letters or their memoirs. Uh, so it's a, it's a fantastic novel. I'm not going to lie. I'm just going to go ahead and lay my cards up ahead of time.I love this book. I love this book so much. I've read it probably five or six times, and I love this movie. This is one of my all time. Favorite movies. Of any genre, but anyways, so [00:06:00] that's the killer angels, the killer angels. It took them a while to make it into a movie, but the movie was made by Ted Turner and Ted Turner.It was going to be a mini series, but they decided to make it into a movie. And the movie itself is extremely long. In fact, I read that it's the longest feature film ever to be made and shown in movie theaters. Clocks in at about four hours and 15 minutes. There's an extended version. That's even longer.If it just in case four hours at 15 minutes is not long enough for you. But I remember when it came out, I was in grad school the first time. Uh, and I went and saw it, the theater. I think I was all by myself. My wife says, there's no way I'm going to watch a four hour movie war movie. So I went and saw it in the theater twice.So that's just how nerdy and how crazy I am, but I've always been a civil war nut. So, so the movie stars, it has an all-star cast it it's, it's an amazing cast. The primary [00:07:00] character on the. Confederate side is actually James Long street and he is played by Tom Berenger. Who's been in platoon and many, many other movies.Uh, Robert Lee. Another of the major characters he's played by Martin sheen. Everybody knows who Martin sheen is. He's been in films for several decades and many that he was on the west wing for many years. The TV show on the union side, the primary character is Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Who's played by Jeff Daniels.Also a veteran actor. Who's been in a million things and let's see, who am I leaving out among the major characters? Yeah, Sam Elliot, how can I leave out Sam Elliott, dog on it? Sam Elliott, if you don't know who Sam Elliott is, uh, just turn off this podcast right now and go do some research. Go watch like 10, 10 of his movies.Sam Elliott is a legend. He's been in many westerns as well as other movies. Yeah, it was in the big Lebowski. He played the cowboy and he was the narrator. He [00:08:00] was in a, they were, we were soldiers, uh, the Vietnam movie with El Gibson. He was. Gosh, he's been so many things. He was in the original Hulk movie.Uh, the one that was didn't it had Edward Norton, I think, or I don't know. I don't know. That was, he was in the original one with, uh, uh, direct. Okay. So yeah, he was the general, but anyway, uh, so great cast. There's a lot of other people, C Thomas Howell is in it. Uh, Jordan Richard Jordan plays Lewis arm Armistead, and this was his last role.Uh, you can tell he was dying of cancer and you could definitely tell he was not well. Uh, but he's such a, if you've seen, you know, Richard Jordan, if you've watched the hunt for red October, he's the, uh, he's the national security. No way really. I don't have to go back and watch that again. Folks, Sean is like Mr.Movie. He is a walking film and cyclic was in it too. There's a James Bond in there. You have to look [00:09:00]

Title: The Least of Us and the Pandemic of Drugs in AmericaDescription: Today Steve is joined by author Sam Quinones to discuss his books on the drug pandemic in the United States. Sam takes us through the evolution of the use and abuse of prescription and illegal drugs over the past 30 years.Learn More About our Guest:Sam Quinones, author of The Least of Us and Dreamlandhttps://samquinones.com/You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:Begin Transcript:Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Sam Quinones Author of the books Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic and The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. Links to learn more about Sam Quinones and his books can be found at samquinones.com or in the Show Notes. You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon.com/beyondthebig screen to learn more. By supporting Beyond the Big Screen on Patreon, you are going a long way to continuing to make this podcast sustainable and available in the future!A special thanks goes out to our supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. Thank you to our Executive Producer Alex!Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.Least of Us[00:00:00] Thank you so much for joining us again on beyond the big screen, I am really excited to be joined by Sam Ken Yonas. Sam is an independent journalist and is author of a number of really great books, including the books that we will focus on today. His latest book, the least of us, true tales of America and hope and the time of fentanyl and the.Sam is also the author of dreamland. The true story of America's opiate epidemic. Uh, Sam, can you maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in investigating these, uh, drug epidemics in the U S sure. Um, Steven, great to be with you. I, I, um, uh, I really had no interest. I have to tell you.I had no interest in, in addiction or pain management or any of that stuff. I had lived in Mexico for 10 years as a journalist. I've been a reporter 35 years. I've been a crime reporter a lot of those years. [00:01:00] And that's kind of how I see myself in, in general. And, um, I, uh, I lived in Mexico for 10 years, came back to LA, which is my, kind of roughly my home region and, um, got a job at the LA times when they put me on a story.Um, that really, they put me on a team of reporters talking about writing about the, the, the drug war that had just kicked off in Mexico. When I lived in Mexico's 94, 2004, I mean, there was nothing like what's happened since it was a, it was an easy country to move around. Uh, there was very little danger.It seemed to me, I, I was a freelancer, very Vagabonding all over the place. It was not a, um, a dangerous thing. And then all of a sudden it became, uh, deadly. Uh, and, um, and so my job was to write about drugs as they trafficked, uh, after they crossed the border were how they got to the rest of the country.And as part of that, I got onto the story [00:02:00] in dreamland of the town of Holly SCO in the state of. Mexico, small state on the Pacific coast of Mexico in which people had divine. Uh, a system of, of delivering a heroin very much like pizza delivery. So you call a number and the operator takes sure your order and they send a driver to you to deliver your heroin.And not only that, though, the real importance to the, this, this group, um, w in my opinion, was that. Um, they were extensively expansionary, so they began to move all over the country. They were everywhere. They were in Phoenix and Reno. They were then they moved across the Mississippi and they were in Columbus and Charlotte and various places.But 20, 25 states eventually, I think I counted them in anyway, as I was doing that, I began to realize there was a much, much bigger story. Behind me that I was unaware of because I had been in Mexico when it really evolved. And that was the revolution in pain management [00:03:00] with regard to the very, very aggressive use of opioid painkillers, narcotic painkillers, Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycontin, very well known.Um, and so I, that was how you explained why these guys had this. Heroine market. I didn't, I could not explain why they had grown. I thought, you know, who would ever go back to using heroin? I mean, I thought the seventies were the time when we forgot about heroin. Um, we learned it was a bad drug and, and moved on.And, and so it was that revolution in pain management that I realized was much bigger than anything I was dealing with with, with these guys from, from Mexico. And so I began to see the two stories as connected. And that's when I began to really figure all that out. I really had a lot of background in Mexico.By that point, I had written two books about Mexico and Lou knew a lot about small town, Mexican life and immigration and all that. I didn't know a thing about addiction. Didn't really know what an Oxycontin [00:04:00] was when it's, when I started all this, but it kind of, it was backing into the story with the heroin.Coming to this realization that I was really focusing on the smaller story, the much bigger story affecting the entire country was the opioid pain revolution. It's so interesting. You mentioned that, um, the change in Mexico in that time you were living there, I'm originally from upstate New York and we go to Canada, just going to Canada is like nothing.It's like going to the next town over and we moved to Texas and I asked somebody, okay. You know, pop over to Juarez or Laredo, Laredo, and they were like, that's probably not the best idea. And you're saying that changed to very recently. I would say that that changed in in 2000 began to change in 2005 and six.Um, that's when you begin to see the first cartel. A lot of this has to do with Chapo Guzman, Chapo Guzman was the head of the Sinaloa cartel. He was in prison for a lot of years. He [00:05:00] escaped in a variety of kind of very corrupt ways in which, you know, anyway, it's a long story that, but he gets out and when he gets out, he begins to kind of throw his weight around the country a little bit and disrupt a lot of the.Ways of controls that had been in place for drug trafficking, uh, at the different border air. So he begins to attack, Porres begins to attack Tijuana. Um, and, and he also, um, begins to attack, um, the Texas. Side. So he's got all these things going on and that's why, um, these, these cartel wars began to pop off beginning and about those years.And that's why, um, uh, Laredo, but particularly, um, uh, Reynosa Macallan, those areas that were extraordinarily. Uh, Tijuana Juarez a few years later, you begin to see a murder rates through the roof. Uh, 3000 murders a year in acquires becomes the most dangerous place in the, [00:06:00] in the, on the planet, as what I understood, um, all of that because of these very, um, these, these attempts to control and, and battling back, um, by Chapo Guzman and.

Please enjoy this preview of the Eyewitness History Podcast, hosted by Josh Cohen. This show features first-hand testimonials of people who witnessed first-hand events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the Vietnam War, and much more. Learn more about the show and enter a giveaway contest for the first people to review the show by going to eyewitnesshistorypodcast.com

Title: Coming to and Leaving Las VegasDescription: Today, Steve is joined yet again by contributor Chris to talk about the really intense film from 1995, Leaving Las Vegas. Nicolas Cage delivers a career performance walking us through the life and end of life an alcoholic. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16665294Begin Transcript:Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. Today our contributor, Chris and I are going to talk about topics of alcoholism, suicide and other sensitive themes through the 1995 movie Leaving Las Vegas. We aren’t graphic by any means, but these are themes that might not be appropriate for all audiences. So with that warning out of the way, let’s get on with the show. As usual, thanks to Chris for joining me. I always have fun talking to him and learn something.You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon.com/beyondthebig screen to learn more. By supporting Beyond the Big Screen on Patreon, you are going a long way to continuing to make this podcast sustainable and available in the future!A special thanks goes out to our supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. Thank you to our Executive Producer Alex!Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.[00:00:00] All right today, we are talking about the 1995 movie leaving Las Vegas directed by Mike FAUS and based on the 1990 novel, leaving Las Vegas by John. Oh, Brian, this movie stars. Nicholas cage is Ben Sanderson and Elizabeth shoe as his sort of girlfriend, Sarah, and a great cameo by AR IIE. Now, today we are joined again by Chris to talk about this movie.It really the, the basic concept of this movie is about a washed up writer named Ben played by Nicholas cage, who has in some way imploded his life. Ben is absolutely mired in a deep depression and alcoholism in east. Decides to leave Los Angeles [00:01:00] and move to Las Vegas where he plans to drink himself to death.So this is gonna be, I'd say one of the heavier episodes of beyond the big screen. And in this episode, just a little bit of a content warning. I. This episode will necessarily dive into themes of addiction and suicide. So it may be particularly disturbing to some people in the audience. If you're struggling with any of these issues, I highly suggest you contact your healthcare provider.If you live in the United States or Canada, you can now connect. To the suicide prevention lifeline by simply dialing 9, 8, 8. If you need them, call them. Don't wait. You just have to simply dial the numbers. 9, 8, 8, 3 digit code, just like 9 1 1, except in this case 9, 8, 8, and talk with someone. So with that, there will be spoilers.And like I said, this will be a little bit heavier than we normally talk about. Now, Chris, as a lifelong. [00:02:00] Nicholas cage fan. What drew you to this movie in particular? 1990 fives leaving Las Vegas. Yeah. So when I was younger, I would, I, I watched all like Nicholas cages, like action movies, and I started getting more into some of his smaller rules and I, the first time I watched.Leaving Las Vegas. I had heard he won in Oscar for it and no Roger Ebert would gave like RA reviews for it. And when I, first time I watched it, I was. I was just absolutely me mesmerized by Nicholas Cage's performance and the character Ben Sanderson. He, I dunno, he fills me with, I've never really had, uh, a character quite horrify.Me and me mesmerized me at the same time where I'm completely horrified by Ben Sanderson, but I can't stop. Watching this movie. I, I can't stop thinking about him. Like every time I watch this movie, I, I catch myself during the day thinking about Ben Sanderson. It's, it's quite, [00:03:00] um, it's actually quite, uh, accurate with, with how.Most people. And this has been my experience of if you know, somebody close to you, that's dealing with alcohol addiction or drug addiction that you really care about. You'll find yourself being horrified at what they're doing to themselves, and then you'll catch yourself. During the day thinking about them, like, how can I help this person?What can I, you know, what can I do? Yeah. I think for this episode, we really, as we talked this, this out and planned this episode out, we both came to the diff. Different conclusions, but kind of the same conclusion at the end is do you take this movie? And I'll say when I first watched it in 1995, so that's going on almost 30 years ago, I took it in the literal view that Ben Sanderson was going from Las Vegas.Or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. That's what he stated. And so he is seeing it as kind of a [00:04:00] realistic portrayal, but now watching it again, I almost feel that that, that this movie is, could be really portrayed in an anti fairytale way. And I think we both came to this conclusion that it's a, not necessarily a realistic view of Sanderson's life, but maybe.Almost a dream sequence for him, a, a hallucination of Ben. And I think we both came to this from slightly different directions. And I wonder just before we even get started with diving into the issues too much, what did you think and how did your thinking evolve? In this movie. Yeah. Quite like you. Well, actually the first time I watch this movie, when they go to the resort, her, him and Sarah, and she starts pouring liquor on herself and Ben's, you know, licking her up or what have you earlier in the movie, Ben does like a monologue where he recite basically says the [00:05:00] exact same thing that Sarah's doing.And it was at that moment, I started thinking to myself, I go. Is it, is this, is this really happening or is this something that Ben is daydreaming? And then I, after multiple watches, I started noticing like a couple other things that get said throughout the movie that made me question whether this is at least.Is this a hundred percent reality or is it 100% like the drunk daydream of a screenwriter? Like he refers to, he says to Sarah that she's an angel from his drunk Fanta and one of his drunk fantasies. So that there's an, an example right there. When he first goes into Sarah, his apartment, he sees a giant picture of like an angel.And then that immediately says like, oh, you're an angel. And then. At the very beginning of the movie. It's if you it's a very good song, it's by staying called angel eyes. And one of the first lines in the movie is are you [00:06:00] slowly losing your mind? You look around each corner, hoping that she's there. And once you take like all these things into combination together, you start thinking to yourself, it almost comes, says like a hardcore alcoholic, like Ben, who is still who's obviously.Was at one point a very talented screenwriter, kind of daydreamed this fairytale in his head about Sarah and going to Vegas. And that's why it seems like it's almost like an anti fairytale because it it's coming from the. The drunk imaginations of like a hardcore alcoholic that is suicidal. When I first started watching the movie, what, what, one of the first few clues that I got that things were maybe not exactly what they seemed was to me.The dialogue seemed very. Almost stiff between Sarah and Ben forced. And when you think about it, it almost sounds like a play writer [00:07:00] or a screenwriter working through a first draft of a script. And, and then as you start going back into that whole section, there's the whole section in Los Angeles. And if you notice they don't roll the beginning, credits or show the name of the movie until about what about a half an hour into the movie?When he leaves Los Angeles, maybe it's 20 inch minutes. It's a long ways into the movie. Yeah. About 15. Yeah. I'd say about 15, 20 minutes. Yeah. And do you see that clear break? That beginning act of the movie in Los Angeles is completely different than the whole rest of the movie. And I think of going back and thinking about it, that that was really, that was the end of his real life was.

Title: Nicola Tesla: A Man of ScienceDescription: Today, Steve is joined by podcaster, professor and scientist Chad Davies to discuss the life and times of one of the most important scientists and inventors of the modern era, Nicola Tesla. Was Tesla a mad scientist, the most forward looking scientist of all times or all of the above? Learn More About our Guest:Chad Davies of the Scientific Odyssey Podcasthttps://thescientificodyssey.typepad.com/You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:Begin Transcript:Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Chad Davies of the Scientific Odyssey Podcast. Links to learn more about Chad and the Scientific Odyssey can be found at thescientificodysee.typepad.com or in the Show Notes. You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon.com/beyondthebigscreen to learn more.A special thanks goes out to Alex at the Executive Producer level!Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen., [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Today, we will be talking about how a particular person, a scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla has been portrayed in both popular media, such as films and books, and a few of the last previous episodes we spoke with Annie of the five foot, two blog about the movie and the book, the prestige, what shows Tesla as the archetype, all mad scientists.We also talked with the producer and lead actor of the movie, the American side, they use the idea of Tesla as the futurist who predicted and developed the ideas that could radically change the world. As we know it. Today, we're going to focus in on who exactly Nikola Tesla was his life and [00:01:00] times and how he was portrayed, how his portrayal in these films matches up to his real life.I am very happy to be joined by Chad Davies of the scientific Odyssey podcast to discuss all these fascinating films in this fascinating person of Nikola Tesla, Chad Euro scientists. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your podcast? Sure. Steve, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.Um, my background actually is a little bit different than the subject that we're going to be talking about on the show. Um, my, I have a PhD in computational astrophysics. Um, I'm a professor of physics at, uh, a little access institution called Gordon state. Um, and then my podcast, as you mentioned, is a scientific Odyssey, which, um, is a show where we really look at the process of scientific inquiry.In other words, how science has done, how it asks questions and answers, questions, and that sort of thing through, um, the history and philosophy of science. And so, you know, my [00:02:00] background coming from that is I'm really interested in not just. What the results of science are, because I think oftentimes there's a lot of that that goes on.But the process at which we arrived at those results in the people who did the work and what they did and the types of questions they asked and the things that they sort of thought were important, how they, you know, stumbled around sometimes in the dark and sort of search their way to the answers, how sometimes they get the right answers for the wrong reasons, or they got wrong answers, but we're on the right path.It's all just really fascinating to me. Let's excellent. I think that you are the exact person when I was thinking about who to have on, I actually put it out there and I was like, who could this be? And then when somebody mentioned your name, I was like, why didn't I think of that in the first place?Excellent. Uh, just to set things up a little bit of context of some of the background that we'll be using here, Nikola Tesla has been used as a character or a literary device in a number of fictional movies and films today. A few of the [00:03:00] pieces that we'll at least reference a little bit are the prestige by Christopher priest, which was also a movie, the movie, the American side produced by Jenna Ricker and Greg stewer.Along with the novel, the city of light by Lauren for that gets a little bit into Tesla at Niagara falls. I thought we'd start off with just two quotes from Tesla that I thought really got to the point of where we're going here. And then the one is Tesla said, one must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.And the other one is the present is there's the future for which I really worked is mine. And I thought that those were just two really cool quotes. That book-ended what Tesla was all about. Um, now Chad, can you just tell us a little bit about Tesla's early life? Yeah, absolutely. So Tesla's kind of an interesting guy.One of the things that, you know, probably [00:04:00] your listeners should know is the, the biggest problem with Tesla is. Just so much information out there that's probably apocryphal or, you know, folklore. I mean, some of it even, you know, borders on almost fairy tale or mythology, um, it's, you know, until probably the last 15 years, 20 years, something like that, um, there wasn't a lot of good scholarship on his life.There wasn't a lot of folks looking in and really digging into the documents that sort of, you know, laid out what his life was going to be like. And so there's all kinds of stuff that, especially if you go back before that, about 20 years or so, there's a, you'll find all sorts of information. That's really.

Title: Going Over the Falls on the American SideDescription: Today Steve is joined by the director, actors and producers of the feature film The American Side from 2016. Jenna Ricker and Greg Stuhr discuss how they made the film and the impact that Nicola Tesla had on the creation and direction of the film.Learn More About our Guest:Jenna Ricker and Greg Stuhr, The American Sidehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt3093286/You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3093286/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57788336Begin Transcript:American Side, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Today. I'm very happy to be joined by Jenna Ricker and Greg stewer of the 2016 film, the American side, Jenna wrecker as the director and co-writer with Greg's store, who has also the star as the lead. Charlie the movie set in Buffalo, New York.You could say Buffalo is even more than just a setting. It's a supporting character. Uh, Jenna and Greg, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourselves and maybe, uh, What connected you to make this film in Buffalo? Right. It's like it as being so, uh, so complimentary to each other, you kick it off.Um, okay. So I grew up in Southern California and I grew up loving [00:01:00] films and, um, really thought I might be an actress for a long time and came out to New York city to study acting at NYU. Uh, but while I was there, love. Being a part of the whole process, the set and the writing and the costumes. And, um, so I quickly worked out that I might be more of a director or at least more driven to be a director.Then the drive, it takes to be an actor. Uh, and I have nothing but admiration for actors and, and the drive that it takes. So, um, so I started shifting gears and focusing on my writing and directing, um, some theater, but also getting some chops in some films and working on sets. And that's, I made my first film in 2005 and, um, kept going from there.And that first film, the work I did on that, and some theater stuff that I was involved in is how I met. [00:02:00] And we shared a very similar taste in films and love of films. And. Then I'll toss it over you, Greg, and you can tell how we started working here. Yeah. Well, the, you know, when we first met, I think you were, you were right in the midst of rewriting in the midst of shooting.Your first film was that. Oh yeah. Right. When we first met, we met in the theater and I was just going to pre-production for myself. Yeah. I was, I remember, uh, being very, very impressed with that. That Jenna was. Actually making a film. There's so many people out there who want to make films who flirt with making films, but she was making it and she was taking it upon herself to make it because she was, you know, producing it.She was, she wrote it. She was directing it, obviously. And, uh, she was using her connections to, to cast it. And, uh, it was just very, it was the main apartment with me. Um, but it was, I was just really impressive that because, um, film, I was [00:03:00] making my living, um, as a theater actor, uh, Still pretty much how I survive, but I'd always wanted to get into film.And I, I, I thought that I naturally would, that it would just start happening and it really wasn't happening. And then of course, the there's so many options now for independent filmmakers. Um, and there certainly was starting to happen at that time that I thought, wow, I really just need to have the drive to, to write something and make something.So that's why I was really impressed with Jenna and then to top it off and we started hanging out, we discovered we both could sort of passionately talk about films and show each other films that maybe one of the other hadn't seen. And we. And we had very similar tastes, um, for the most part and probably where we don't have the same case.That probably just enough to keep the other one, you know, semi honest, um, what's that movieyeah. We [00:04:00] used to have a list of films that maybe we wouldn't, we will want to say that we love. Um, but we do, but we do, we do share a lot of, um, A similar taste. And so as far as the American side goes, it was just something, it was an idea that I'd been kicking around and Jetta, and I had decided to write a script, um, based on my idea of hers.And we wrote that script together and it got into, you know, the first draft of it somehow got into this independent film market in New York, where you get to sit with producers and kind of pitch. And, but again, you know, the script gets vetted and you have all these people looking at and they say, oh, this is good enough to get in here.And they set up these meetings for you, but we of course, went back and looked at that script and we're like, wow, I can't believe that got in. Yikes. Um, uh, and we went in taking those meetings. We, we ended up, you know, being asked, of course, as you often are. What else do you have? And because I've been kicking around this idea, um, just kind of on the spur of the moment started pitching the [00:05:00] American side because it's a little bit.Commercial maybe than, uh, than our other project at the time. Um, and the story itself, you know, having grown up in the Buffalo area, I loved this city. I I've always been a fan of mystery and film war, and, um, conspiracy theory films from the seventies. And I w I always felt like a store, like. Could be told and could be made on a, on a relatively low budget in a place like Buffalo, because I think that's one of the few places because there was kind of throwback feel and vibe.And as you talked about Buffalo being a character in the film, which Jenna does such a remarkable job of capturing, um, Buffalo just felt like a great place to set a story like that. So that's, you know, basically, uh, part of the, part of the discussion's done and I had very early on, um, as the story developed.One of the things that I love the most about this movie is that it was, it doesn't easily fit in any genre. It's a crime new wire at, as a science [00:06:00] fiction element, but it's also fit into it's placed in the modern day. Where did this idea come from? I'm fascinated to know where this idea was originated and what the Genesis of it was.Greg. Um, but, well, you know, it's interesting part of the, um, challenge and the low budget world. I mean, it was never, I don't think it was ever a consideration for us to make it any kind of period piece, even though we wanted film noir. And as I said, conspiracy film from the seventies and even Hitchcock does sort of resonate, um, throughout the story.Um, so. You know, it was always going to be contemporary setting, but because it's a detective story and kind of old fashioned in that sense, we also wanted, first of all, to believe in a private detective character in, you know, 2015 or 16, you. You do have to set it in a place where you can [00:07:00] buy into a character living a little bit off the grid, working out of the back room of a bar using, um, you know, public phones and things like that.So, uh, that all sort of fit into this idea of this timeless quality. And it just, for us, it just added a layer to the, the depth of the story, given that it's about Tesla, who. Sort of definitive autobiography on Tesla's called man out of time. And, and then we've got this main character of Charlie Potynsky, who's a detective who's kind of out of time, you know, one's kind of forward thinking the other, one's a little backward thinking, but the two of them in a way come together in this world and Buffalo certainly feels like a place.You can imagine that that might happen well. And also along those lines, I think one of the key reasons that, you know, the, the Tessa element even exists. And then so much of the story is born out of that is because, you know, in wanting to tell a story back in his hometown of Buffalo, Greg, you went [00:08:00] down that rabbit hole of like, what, what were some of the things that were happening here?

Title: Before Orion, Myths and Heroes Description: Today Steve is joined by author Bernie Taylor to talk about his book, Before Orion. Bernie leads us through a discussion of the origin of myths, the human psyche and the birth of heroes. Learn More About our Guest:Bernie Taylor, author of Before Orionhttps://beforeorion.com/You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Begin Transcript:[00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Thank you so much for joining us again today, we are talking with author, Bernie Taylor, about his new book before Orion. Bernie Taylor is an independent naturalist and author before Orion finding the face of the hero of 2017 and biological time published in 2004.His research explores the mythological connections and biological knowledge among prehistoric indigenous and ancient peoples. We will be discussing how the hero's journey will be used in popular culture and in films, especially in the movie star wars. Thank you so much for joining us today. Bernie Stephen, thanks for having me on the show.And I believe that the [00:01:00] story of this hero's journey is one that we all traveled. Now Bernie, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself for your background? Sure. I'll kind of tell you how I fell into this. I wrote the previous book biological time, which was about how plants and animals know when to do things.How's a salmon known when the migrant river. The salmon node to come together, spawn how to geese know when to migrate and so on. It was a book about biological clocks. And then I asked myself the question, well, if someone must have known this before. And so I looked at a hunter gatherers. In fact, they have it in their calendars as well.Ancient peoples from the Mediterranean, the biological clocks was how they found their food because they didn't have Costcos the niceties that we have in our modern time. And when I was working on that, There was an image from Lusko, which the cave in France from about 17,000 years ago. And this image is of a mega loss serous.A mega losses is like a huge elk, but just bigger and bigger rack and all that [00:02:00] sort of stuff. And this, this mega loss versus blowing out. So we can tell it by that has a huge rack. It's in the fall, it's running condition and it's blown steam out it's in the morning. So we kind of have a lot about time and place in that.And under that Meg Gloucester's with the blowing out the steam, it's got 13 days. And I, I looked at that concept as it relates to the how the, um, large Angela Institute, deer, elk, how they drop their antlers and how they come together to run and an all the timing, all that sort of stuff. And it fit how hunter gatherers in native Americans targeted the deer.And the elk was exactly the same timing as these people are doing it 17,000 years. Which makes sense because the animals didn't change. Could you tell us a little bit why you wrote this particular book before Orion? I wrote bylaws time and I gave lots of presentations to the tribes, to scientific organizations, you know, classes, college classrooms, and so on.And I put it on the shelf for [00:03:00] 13 years and I said, I'm going to raise my daughter who is now 16 picking off the shelf. 13 years later. I started getting with the dots. And I said to myself, well, if I'm going to find the origins of this concept of biological time, I need to go back further. And I went back 40,000 years ago in the ELCA steel cave, which has the oldest cave art or known to man, or has been at least chronicled that we can actually date.And there's a series of dots that run across this panel. It's called the, the, um, the panel hands. And the one dot was dated to 40,000 years ago, five, six years ago. It was huge news. It's a curved surface, this, this cave wall, which you can't take a very good picture. So the media would just like, shoot a picture of the red dot and then people ask the question.Well, what's the red dot, you know, you know, if it was, uh, you know, running IBEX or a mega lossless, you know, they might kind of find a story. They couldn't find the story in this red dot and it wasn't a very good. So they ran with another image from the SA same cave system on the gallery disc. [00:04:00] And this one's a flat panel.You can see 80 or so dots streaming across. It's absolutely beautiful. And well, I looked at that and I said to myself, well, let's go working on that lots again, just like I didn't enlist. And I also said to myself, this, this is a 10 meter panel, almost 30 feet. It's huge. There's gotta be more of than on this thing than dots red, these red discs and with the red district about the size of your hand, the most common animal in the Palaeolithic was the horse.So maybe there's a horse in there. So I go looking for the horse. I didn't find a horse two, three years later, but before I found the horse, I found lines. I found elephants. I found. I found all these animals that were in either in Europe at the time or in Africa. And that's how it led into this concept of before.A big part of this buck is the hero's journey. What is the hero's journey? Good question. Really good question. And that ties in this whole thing before I said that there was, these [00:05:00] animals are in Europe, there's animals in Africa, and there's a, so then for someone traveled between the two places and I was strictly looking at this one, the.And someone said to me, you know, you're telling the story, the hero's journey. And I knew the co roughly knew the concept of Joseph Campbell through, through the metaphor of the story of star wars. And Joseph Campbell said that theirs is a journey that we all take in our storytelling it's and myths throughout the world.He called it the model myth. And in this journey, someone leaves a place of familiarity. So Dorothy, she leaves the land. She leaves Kansas. And she goes off into her dream world. Then she goes to another place where she finds companions. We have the scarecrow with a 10 man and the cowardly lion and they help her on her journey.And she also picks up magical ambulance and potions and things to help her and as the good witch and the bad witch and they battle each other and ultimately Darthy comes to face herself. She realizes that, you know, there's no place like home. And so by facing that fantasy, she had of having to [00:06:00] leave.Kansas to find the better place over the rainbow. She projected herself back to, um, to Kansas. And it's like, that's like a mini hero's journey. And we, we tell this story throughout mythology and we see it in the big screens. Um, think of Lord of the rings, where Frodo goes on a journey to, to put the ring into the mountain of Mordor.Yes. To return the ring to where it was smelted to set society. And then he goes back to his home to tell his story is very similar to the, the general theme of Darthy. And of course, we find this in star wars. Let's back up just a little bit to get into your book. Before we talk about pop culture. You really focus in on one geographic area, that area of these caves in Southern Spain?Probably not everybody is intimate with the knowledge of Southern Spanish, Northern north Africa [00:07:00] geography. Maybe you can set the table a little. How this area has a really specific geography. Absolutely. Well there's I use two panels or two images in two caves. One is so-called Gorham action, which is at the rocker Gibraltar at the Strait between Southern Spain and Northern Africa.Northern Africa would be at Morocco to one side is the Mediterranean. And the other side is the. The gallery of discs and the Al Casteel cave isn't way north of Spain, near Bilbao. So we're talking up the top side of the Iberian peninsula, Spain, geographically. This is. So a person in Northern Spain travels across Spain, he swims across.We can actually show them in the image. He swims across the Strait of Gibraltar, where you find animal Marine animals, there's dolphins seal, and then he arrives on the other side. Which has draft elephant lions with manes, which were not [00:08:00] in European caviar. So we, and the Barbary Macau, which is an animal and ape, that's indigenous to the Atlas mountains of Morocco.

Title: Akira – More than Manga Description: Today Steve is joined by frequent guest Erik Fogg of the Reconsider Podcast to talk about the 1988 sci-fi anime classic Akira. We talk about the huge themes this movie tackles and the challenges of understanding the cultural aspects of this movie from a western perspective. Learn More About our Guest:Erik Fogg of the Reconsider PodcastReconsidermedia.orgYou can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:www.atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comClick here to support Beyond the Big Screen!https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreenhttps://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreenClick to Subscribe:https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feedemail: steve@atozhistorypage.comwww.beyondthebigscreen.comhttps://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyParthenon Podcast Network Home:parthenonpodcast.comOn Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypagehttps://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcasthttps://twitter.com/atozhistoryMusic Provided by:"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Image Credits:By TMS Entertainment, Toho - CineMaterial, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41984890Begin Transcript:Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Erik of the Reconsider Podcast. Links to learn more about Erik and Reconsider can be found at reconsidermedia.org or in the Show Notes. You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon and Subscribe Star. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon dot com forward slash beyond the big screen or subscribe star dot com forward slash beyond the big screen dot com to learn more.Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.[00:00:00] We're going to talk about the 1988 Japanese manga anime film, our Kira. And I have to admit that before this, I did not love Anna Mae, but I think this movie really started to change my mind. It's a, it's a great movie that I think you get lost that you don't think of it as a cartoon, as you're watching.And I think the other mistake that I made was watching it dub D and this time I watched it with subtitles. That makes all the difference in the world. And maybe we can talk about subtitles versus dubbing at some point, but, um, just a really quick overview as this movie takes place in new Tokyo and 2019.So three years ago, There Tokyo was annihilated by a nuclear bomb during world war three, which happened in 1988. We'll get into the ESB angle of that. Uh, but new [00:01:00] Tokyo is a violent post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare where it's ruled by street gangs, ineffective and corrupt government and police and just, um, layers of government.And it's just this huge. Built up post-apocalyptic nightmare, but there's some different aspects of that that we can get into. But it's, it's basically in this movie, we have riots, ESP science fiction and all the great things that are fun. Uh, Eric, maybe the first thing we can get into is, um, is this anime magnet, manga?What's the difference? Magma. Liquid hot magma. Um, so, so I'm not, I'm not a. Anime manga buff, uh, in the way that a lot of people are. Um, but here's, here's the good news. So, so you'll see a lot about a Cura, the Akira, the anime, and Akira, the manga. And you're [00:02:00] like, are these being used interchangeably? It turns out they're two different things.So Akita the anime. So anime is like his animation. So if it's animated, if it's like a cartoon it's anime, um, it was made in 19. It's based off of CUDA, the manga that was written. So manga is like a comic book written in 1982. So we're we, um, we, a kid of the anime or the anime is, um, it is shorter. And the plot diverges substantially from Akira, the manga much like.Uh, blade runner and do Androids dream of electric sheep, and 2001 a space Odyssey, the movie versus 2001, the space, obviously the book, right? Like, so we see it's actually, it's interesting like you and I, I think it's because you asked me what movies I want to watch. Like we're seeing like the theme I've got here.Um, but yes, a kid on the animate in 1980, Mostly, well, it's somewhat sticks to the first half of, of a kid on the manga, [00:03:00] 1982. And, um, and like one of, one of the, like kinda the kid or the anime is not necessarily for everyone. It is a, like, I think it is a landmark. And like, it is, it is historically incredibly important, much of the same way that, like, I don't know if 2001, a space Odyssey, even for everyone, like some people are just gonna get bored out of their skulls.Now I think it's probably a sign that. It's a sign of the times that you get bored out of your skull, uh, watching 2001, a space Odyssey, like too much tick-tock and other short film. But, um, but, but I think a kit assembly is not for everyone because like the plot is almost incoherent and I wanted to, like, I wanted to get your impression, Steve.Cause I know when we talked about this, you're like, I don't even know. I don't even like Anna and like, this is a weird, you know, like there's a lot of weird anime out there. This is like a super weird. And so I'm glad you liked it, but what was your like, you know, I want to know, like, what was your first impression AF as soon as you're done, right?As soon as like like starts the big bang right. In this new universe [00:04:00] that was just created somehow. Um, like what did you walk away? It, it's an absolutely confusing movie. There's so much going on and there's different aspects of it that I really loved. And then there were some that I kind of had to muscle through.Like, I think that the, the investigating the society that was really cool and like with the gangs and their interactions with the police and that vocational school that they went to, I kind of, there was certain things like if they had cure it, rated it. I would have curated it more in those directions.I think the, a lot of the stuff with the ESP got very confusing and kind of weird, especially that last scene, which was the one guy like kept like turning into different blobs than like yeah. And absorbing, and that was. But that was hard too. That was hard to wrap your mind around. And that's one of the, yeah.And so those were some of the areas that I was hoping that you might be able to walk [00:05:00] us through a little bit more. And I think that I, I really liked the part of it that you got lost in it, that it was three big chunks in the movie. You did not think that you were watching something animated, like the animation.So not what I was expecting in anime and maybe some of the more like, um, kid focused anime that I've seen in the past where this was, this was an adult movie, not adult movie. It was a mature movie for, uh, for adults. It was not a child's cartoon. No, no, it's super not yet. I think that, um, and there's a lot of animation that we watch that is either for children or for both, right?Like every Pixar film we ever watch. And I could, like, I think I've seen them all and I would like love to do a Pixar film with. They're great. And they're like, really, you know, they're there, they can be appreciated by any adult, but they can also be measured by any kid. This is [00:06:00] not for kids at all. Do not show this to your children.Right. Um, there's a little like, it's like that time that like someone got mad, like some, some parents got mad cause they took their kids to see Deadpool and they're like, oh, this is FDIC. Like if there was only, there was some way to like warn us that like a superhero film would be FDIC. It's like, yeah, it had an R rating lady.Like. But yes. So similarly like this, this seems to break out of the genre a little bit. Um, and in some ways that's true, but what's interesting about. Um, what's interesting about anime is that it's such an art form. It is, it is an art form that has a lot of, um, like, and so I'm like, I find myself kind of defending it sometimes much in the same way that our defended metal people are like, oh, metal is just like grates on the ears.It's like, yeah, some metal, but like some like, but like it's very diverse genre. And so a lot of the anime that we, that, that like, if you're not into enemy that you get exposed to around the edges, it's like dragon ball Z or, uh, Pokemon. I don't [00:07:00] know if that's on a may as such, but yeah, it is anime a hundred percent.

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