Ever feel like the world’s taking a turn for the apocalyptic, and all you can do is laugh—or maybe raise a katana like Tilda Swinton's enigmatic Zelda Winston? That's the vibe we're catching in our latest chat about "The Dead Don't Die," where the dry wit and consumerist zombies of this eccentric flick have us talking. From the star-studded cast's quirky on-screen magic to the all-too-real parallel of fracking-induced environmental disasters, we've got a spread of topics that'll have you grinning like a ghoul with a new credit card.
Strap in for a ride through a small-town apocalypse, complete with department store nostalgia and a lawnmower legend named Rocky. We aren't just pondering cinematic choices here; we're dissecting the allure of a film that may trip on its own shoelaces yet still carries us to the finish line.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Ever feel like the world’s taking a turn for the apocalyptic, and all you can do is laugh—or maybe raise a katana like Tilda Swinton's enigmatic Zelda Winston? That's the vibe we're catching in our latest chat about "The Dead Don't Die," where the dry wit and consumerist zombies of this eccentric flick have us talking. From the star-studded cast's quirky on-screen magic to the all-too-real parallel of fracking-induced environmental disasters, we've got a spread of topics that'll have you grinning like a ghoul with a new credit card.
Strap in for a ride through a small-town apocalypse, complete with department store nostalgia and a lawnmower legend named Rocky. We aren't just pondering cinematic choices here; we're dissecting the allure of a film that may trip on its own shoelaces yet still carries us to the finish line.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a movie and that movie claims to be a movie. But is it? I'm Dan, and when I'm not making a giant and sometimes impossible leap into the void to change the entire path of my career at the risk of failure and hardship, I'm writing a novel that captures the visceral reality of a zombie getting wrapped up in a tire of a semi truck and torn to shreds. See threads for details.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's on threads and it's disgusting folks. And I'm Leah, some may say the apocalypse happened on January 6th 2020. For me, it's happening tomorrow, january 8th 2024, because that's when I am going back to work. So the world has ended for me. I had a wonderful, long two week vacation and I lived my dream life of a lot of dog cuddling, drawing genitals on Dan's tablet and, as I said in the last week, I'm making a lot of clay mushroom incense holders, which some might say are also a metaphor for penises.
Speaker 1:They are very penis like, that is for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's. Maybe a couple are Some definitely more than others.
Speaker 1:Today we're talking about the movie I can only describe as perplexing called the dead don't die. We release episodes every Sunday, so subscribe every Sunday.
Speaker 2:Now I know it's so exciting yeah we made it 24.
Speaker 1:Instead of doing one every two weeks, it's every week.
Speaker 2:I hope we don't regret this decision. We'll regret this One week. We're like oh God, we're tired.
Speaker 1:You know now that we don't do a personal life update, let's just jump right into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell me about the dead, don't die, as if I've never watched it.
Speaker 1:All right. So, for a film that subverts every expectation of zombie cinema, I figured that the only way to do this film justice in the form of a summary would be to summarize it in the form of a limerick. Oh God, are you ready for my limerick? Yes, seatbelt on. All right, I want to know everybody. If my limerick tells you everything you need to know about this film, how does it win the poetry prize? I hope so. It's a really good one. I love a good limerick.
Speaker 2:I did help with this. Yeah, yeah, I gave a couple lines.
Speaker 1:Oh, you always help with everything, you're the most helpful. In Act One, the dead start to rise In a town of quite a surprisingly small size. Bill Murray's perplexed with what happens next as zombies emerge under moonlit skies. Act Two the dead stroll the streets asking for coffee on repeat, with a craving for human treats. The town folks be mused, slightly amused as each zombie shuffle repeats. In Act Three, the end is quite nigh, with the lesson slyly arise. In a world so askew, one thing is true even in death, we can't say goodbye.
Speaker 2:You need a poetry snap.
Speaker 1:If I were to tell you what happens in this movie. The real answer is nothing, Nothing happens Nothing, is accomplished A few things happen and in that is the genius of the movie. It subverts every expectation of a good zombie movie. We have this zombie movie is it intentionally? Does everything wrong. Every trope is turned inside out and flipped upside down.
Speaker 2:That's true, you're going to wing it and you'll hear about random characters as we go. But let's talk first about zombie type, because this is one of the areas where it was different. The first thing that I got to say was real different with the zombies in the dead don't die is that they don't have blood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have some black city dust inside of them instead of blood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you slice their head off?
Speaker 1:it's like an explosion of dust, so I would categorize these as cosmic radiation zombies, the original night of the living dead, like in some versions of it. I don't think it's in every version, but there's a news clip at the end that says that explains all the zombies away as like radiation from a satellite that passed by Venus. So this is kind of the same thing where, like the polar fracking caused the axis of the earth to tilt and it caused some weird radiation with the moon. The moon has, like, got some purple.
Speaker 2:It's way gone with dead people up out of the cemetery.
Speaker 1:The moon was rotating.
Speaker 2:That's true. I forgot about the cool moon stuff, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was rotating really fast too, but ever since ever since that happened zombies started coming up out of their graves.
Speaker 2:And their makeup was very traditional, like B movie makeup yeah.
Speaker 1:And also something that we didn't talk about in our notes at all, but I just remembered, is that, like it didn't really seem the matter when the zombie died, they all came back at the same state of decay, as if they're like brand new, fresh corpses.
Speaker 2:It's kind of hard to know if they'd been in the ground very long.
Speaker 1:Some of them were wearing some 1880s garb coming out of their graves that say like 1870.
Speaker 2:All ages, lots of biodiversity of the zombies, which I appreciated, oh yeah, and one thing that was predictable was that they were slow. Yeah, classic Slow shamblin' zombies, but painfully slow. Yeah, well, the whole thing was painfully slow. They retained Ellen's, their humanity and that kind of made it fucking very funny to me.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so anyone who dies comes out because it was on zombie. Do we know that? I guess they do, because they come out of the graves. Yeah, they dig themselves up out of the graves. It's unclear how far back that people in cemetery come back, I guess. I guess we did talk about that in our notes a little bit. This is me paraphrasing, looking at our notes and thinking and realizing I said something that we actually did right down.
Speaker 2:This is what happens. We record at night.
Speaker 1:The film portrays zombies as literal representations of mindless consumerism, which is kind of a common thread with Romero zombies at least.
Speaker 2:I think it's a threat of zombies in general. I mean, I remember walking around the university, the university of all places, and being like these are a bunch of zombies, including myself, which is like mindlessly doing the things that we always do every day Look at our phones.
Speaker 1:They were even phone zombies that were holding their phones.
Speaker 2:Well, that was. What's great is that they retain a lens of their humanity. But like what is it to be human? Apparently, according to the dead don't die. What it means to be human is to be a zombie consumer that, when you come back, has the living dead. All you do is like mutter things that you want to buy. So the first zombies we see one of them has a very hilarious broken arm they go to go. They literally remember to go to their favorite local diner and they're just like muttering the word coffee over and over again. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they drink the coffee when they try to drink it, but there's like pulling it all over themselves. They're breaking the mugs and then you keep seeing the same zombie over and over again.
Speaker 1:It's just like holding on to a coffee pot. Yeah, I absolutely love that part.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was. The zombies were definitely one of the wins of this movie. But you see other zombies along the way saying and doing really funny things, like in front of the pharmacy. You see the zombies going Xanax, xanax, yeah.
Speaker 1:Xanax. Then there were some candy zombies outside of like the general store. They wanted some candy, they wanted popsicles, they want one of them, one of the Snickers, yeah, then there's also the Bluetooth zombies.
Speaker 2:Yeah or Siri. They were literally holding their phone, going Siri, siri.
Speaker 1:It would have been even more amazing if they also like, had the phone be like like boom, boom, like.
Speaker 2:I forget. I forget what Siri even says back to me it's a British man, I've made a British voice. Oh yeah, how can I help? So, dan, what would be like the one or two words that you would mutter on repeat if you became a zombie? And the dead don't die, oh.
Speaker 1:God, I don't know. I think I would. I'm probably just muttered zombie over and over again. I'd be like zombie Zombie sandwich Threads Sandwich. Sandwich is a good one, I'd love a sandwich, a zombie sandwich.
Speaker 2:What would you say? I probably mutter phone a lot because I lose my multiple times a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you'd say call my phone.
Speaker 2:Damn. Call my phone, Damn.
Speaker 1:What I love is when I call your phone and this is literally right next to you. It usually is.
Speaker 2:I got a rainbow cover for my phone, thinking it would stand out. But because our whole house is rainbows, because we love color, well, do you love color? I love color, dan, but I love color. So our house is a rainbow explosion. I can never find my phone.
Speaker 1:All right. So who the fuck made this film and why we didn't write anything here but Jim Jarmusch? I did just a little bit of research. I'm not familiar with a lot of his movies I think I've seen one or two but he's really known for this style where he just basically says to anyone reading or watching his movie go fuck yourself if he thinks this is a normal movie. That's kind of the attitude his movies have, it's like. If he thought this was going to be a normal movie, if he thought that he were going to get all of the things that he thought he would get watching a normal ass movie, then just get out, take your money with you.
Speaker 2:I think he lures you in with a star-side cast and subverts every expectation.
Speaker 1:I think these people signed on because they respect them. I think he has a lot of. He's like a filmmaker's filmmaker. Filmmakers look at him and they're like I love what he does because it's all wrong and he does it on purpose.
Speaker 2:And it is still entertaining. But it is kind of funny to see yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're going to talk about the things that we loved in this movie because, honestly, this is the best way to break it down, because there's just so much in this movie that we couldn't just tell you about these things, so we're just jumping into it and just let's just go.
Speaker 2:Let's go with it. Yeah, let's say first of all the reason why I even was like, yes, we should watch this, which is that Tell Us Wynton was in it. Yeah, Tom Waits, Chloe Savignier, which I love, Adam Driver, Bill Murray.
Speaker 1:Yeah, danny Glover. Yeah, caleb Landry Jones. I don't really know him, but he was in it.
Speaker 2:The RZA, selena Gomez. Selena Gomez Also excellent from Only Murders in the Building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Bill Murray, he's like the police chief, adam Driver is Ronnie Peterson, he's like a deputy, mindy Morrison is Chloe Savignier, and she's also another deputy of Centerville. She's kind of the only one that shows any like fear or emotion in this whole movie.
Speaker 2:She's the contrast to Bill Murray and Adam Driver, police officers who seem completely, utterly uninterested in the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Tell Us Wynton. She plays the town eccentric funeral home owner Martician.
Speaker 2:She's amazing. I love this character yeah.
Speaker 1:I love her because what I see a lot in zombie movies, zombie books, zombie whatever is people will sometimes make a character that's so overpowered that it's unrealistic. That's Tilda Swinton's character 100%. She is a master swordsman. Yep, she has a katana. She practices every day in her mortuary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Her vibe looks sort of like what's her name from Kill Bill? Yeah, what's her face. I forget the character's name, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Also a master computer hacker. Yep, she's Scottish, she's Scottish.
Speaker 2:And she's the mortuary owner and she paints really ridiculous. Oh my God, I just realized why they all have the same makeup and they come out of the ground. It's her. She paints ridiculous 80s makeup on the dead. I was saying, dan, I was like what year is this? Because the people who are undead were all in, like God, awful 80s. It's her.
Speaker 1:I just realized it. Okay, you have Bob the Hermit, who was played by Tom Waits. I know I've seen his face before, but I don't remember what else Tom Waits has been in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he's one of my favorite characters. He lives in the woods at Cider, Centerville and he's sort of like the narrator of the movie and the judge of everybody. He seems untouched by the zombies and he's kind of commenting on the suit of the world and saying we have all these societal trappings so we should live closer to nature. That's basically Hermit Bob.
Speaker 1:Then there's Bobby Frodo. Wiggins Love Frodo. I kind of feel like Frodo is kind of like us in this movie. He's the guy that knows everything about every zombie movie he loves the Lord of the. Rings. He's like a super fan of everything.
Speaker 2:His convenience slash gas station is also like a movie and paraphernalia store of all things nerdy and horror.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's got like some kind of zombie movie shirt on. I forgot what it said, but he definitely has a Night of the Living Dead button on his vest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, isn't he the one who says if they're dead, kill the head?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then the RZA is a guy named Dean. He plays a delivery driver of a fictional delivery company called WooPS and he comes in with a lot of like, really like, quirky one line pieces of wisdom. He's like the world is in discord.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there's a lot of Selena Gomez, who plays Mallory O'Brien, who's like a visitor with her two friends to Centralville. We have no idea why they're there, but they're looking for a motel in town of 763 people, which is very small, and they get entangled in the chaos of the zombie apocalypse and, of course, die, but like their plot line seems to go nowhere. And then there's a whole bunch of other people we haven't mentioned that are also relatively famous. Yeah, that's pretty wild.
Speaker 1:A lot of famous cameos with the zombies. Apparently there's a lot of zombies that are like famous actors and I'd like to rewatch it just to like. Look for them, they just want to be a zombie.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sometimes happens, especially like with Romero movies. Sometimes, like people that are like A-list celebrities are just like I'll be a zombie in your movie because I respect them, because it's George Romero, that's fun. Yeah, one thing I will say about Selena Gomez's crew is they come into town in a 1968 Pontiac Le Mans, and this is significant because the night of the living dead it wasn't a 1968, but it was a 1967 Pontiac Le Mans. They're pretty close that Barbara is driving at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 2:So do you think that the people who found that car got it wrong by one year, just one year? Yeah.
Speaker 1:They were like we're trying to have them and they didn't even correct it. They weren't. They didn't even lie about it like oh, that's a 67. They like named it in the dialogue a 68.
Speaker 2:That kind of brings us to our next thing we loved about it, which is that it's subversive. I feel like that was intentionally just slightly off, because movies do do that, Like you point out all the time. You're like that's not the correct car for this time frame.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That car wasn't made until 10 years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the movie submits several traditional zombie tropes in unique and unexpected ways. One that's really fun is that the characters in the movie quickly come to the conclusion that it's zombies. The zombies are the cause of the mysterious acts of violence around town. Without, without any evidence, and fairly quickly, they convince everyone that zombies are real.
Speaker 2:And everybody's okay with it. Yeah, people seem too upset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a. What's his face at the very beginning. Now I can't remember his name. Oh, fuck, hold on, I gotta look at his name Adam Driver, ronnie, officer, ronnie. At the very beginning, you know, bill Murray asked him. So what do you? What do you think this is? This is this running joke that everyone's like what did that? A wild animal, several wild animals, like it comes up several times like repeated comedy, which I thought was really funny. But he's like oh, you know what? You know what I think it is? It's zombies. It's zombies, dead man. He's like zombies. He's like the undead and they're like okay, well, let's go with the zombie theory. And like everybody in town is just like yeah, yeah, it makes sense, this is zombies, definitely yeah. And also it's worth noting that he keeps on saying this will end badly. From the very beginning, before anything ever happens, he says he just says this will end badly. And Bill Murray is like why do you keep saying that? He's just like. It's a feeling, feeling I have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is another thing that we love because it does get explained later. This movie breaks the fourth wall a lot. Yeah, which is the next point? Is it the fourth wall? Is it's listening?
Speaker 1:I think most people do, but we should explain it.
Speaker 1:So the fourth wall is your TV. You know, when a character turns towards you watching the movie and they acknowledge your existence and the fact that they are on TV and it's a movie, that's breaking the fourth wall. So if, like, you're watching a TV show and somebody makes a, makes a joke, like yeah, well, that's what she said, and then the other person like looks at you and they're like, they're like, they raise an eyebrow, like can you believe that that was the punch line, that's breaking the fourth wall.
Speaker 2:Which is exactly what officer Ronald Peterson or Adam Driver does when he says this is going to end badly, because he later acknowledges that he read the script.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Bill Murray is like why do you keep on saying this will end badly, Like how do you know these things? And he's like, oh, I read the script.
Speaker 2:Which was an unexpected thing for him to say.
Speaker 1:Bill Murray is like you read the whole script. He's like yeah, and he's like Jim only gave me my parts.
Speaker 2:So how does it? Very specifically to the filmmaker, it's pretty funny. Actually, the first place where they break the fourth walls almost immediately. I was like in one of the opening scenes were they just like driving around? I don't think zombies had even appeared yet and the theme song comes on oh yeah, the Dead, don't Die by Sturgell Simpson.
Speaker 1:That's the only song that plays in the whole movie.
Speaker 2:That's not like just score music yeah, and it's a banger for country music. Yeah, I'm not really a country music fan. No offense if you are, but I appreciate the Dead Don't Die yeah. But yeah they're listening to it and the guys like Bill Murray is like this is kind of familiar, Like this is familiar.
Speaker 1:Why have I heard this before Because like they just played the the intro sequence, yeah, like two minutes before, and then they played the song again when they get in the car. So this sounds really familiar. And he's like where have I heard this before? And and Adam Driver's just like, oh, it's, it's the theme song. Yeah, he's like the theme song.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Bill's like OK, yeah, and then they just keep going like no big deal. There's this other moment where the character that's played by Sheldon Swinton, zelda Winston which I just realized how close that is to her own name, but he must have made that character based on her, as, because she's an incredible actor she actually mentions the phrase like oh yeah, the dead don't die, and then she explains that she read it in the script, so it's, it's pretty like out there.
Speaker 1:I actually missed that part. Oh, OK, I might have missed that. That's why I looked at that. I'm like confused. But Farmer Frank, we forgot to mention Farmer Frank. Oh what, who's the actor that plays him? I forget his name.
Speaker 2:Is it Steve Buscemi? Steve Buscemi is Farmer Frank. Yes, farmer Frank is Farmer.
Speaker 1:Frank is an asshole.
Speaker 2:He is, and he's wearing a red hat.
Speaker 1:A very baseball hat, iconic red hat with white lettering and it says it says make America white again. It was yeah, which, honestly, like I don't think it would have made me laugh if it was a maca hat like a real one. But yeah, that version of it. Just I gave me a full, a full belly, belly, jiggle.
Speaker 2:It was pretty wonderful. I always look at those in like how does anybody who's not and how does the Republicans enjoy movies? Don't they just see themselves being insulted constantly?
Speaker 1:I think they just look at at their funny faces, like they only laugh at comedies. If, like, they do funny faces, like if they do like wild movements on screen, they're like body humor. Yeah, like if, like if an actor just like jingled their keys in front of the camera for an hour they just clap their hands of you like that was brilliant.
Speaker 2:Well, they do always say that the media has been co-opted by the liberal elites, so this is definitely an example of that.
Speaker 1:It definitely is. So he tells Hank, a black owner of the local hardware store, played by Danny Glover I was going to say Elfman, Was it Danny Glover? Not the same person? Yeah, Danny Glover. He tells Danny Glover Well, he's actually just saying it out loud he's like I don't like my coffee too black. And then he looks at Danny Glover and he's like I don't need it like that. Also, he names his dog Rumsfeld after Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 2:Who was responsible in many ways for the wars that you participated in in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001, 2003.
Speaker 1:I know Donald Rumsfeld.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like we're not really like I know no you know, donald Rumsfeld, are we going on a side dive?
Speaker 1:I was directly for Donald Rumsfeld for two weeks.
Speaker 2:I feel like you told me this, but tell people Dan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a lot classified, I guess. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, is he?
Speaker 2:a nice guy Actually he was.
Speaker 2:Would you name your dog after him? No, okay, but either way, like I was going to say that we don't, in this movie I don't have to talk about the misogyny of the living dead. I don't have to talk about the racism of the living dead. I don't have to talk about homophobia of the living dead, because it's actually a really well done movie where it's clearly critiquing racism. There's great gender parity. It definitely passes the Bechtel test. More than two women talk to each other about things that are not related to a man. It definitely passes the race test. There are no LGBTQ characters that I can see, but also there's nobody that's really clearly in a relationship. Except for that, till this went in the Scottish Mortuary, mortician has a crush on Adam Driver, the police officer. Other than that, it's a really nice movie. On that way, there's not much to say there. So that was one of the things was like. I appreciate that humorous critique of racism in America and somebody naming their dog Rumsfeld.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny. Cometary and climate change and believing what we are told. So zombies in this commentary symbolize the consequences for environmental degradation caused by polar fracking.
Speaker 2:Which, I mean, is not real as far as I know, but they do. I know that they have like a lot of oil, maybe it is. Is it real, holy shit?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I know that they want to like drill for oil and fracking is sort of like a. You know you get oil from fracking, yeah, or?
Speaker 1:no, sorry.
Speaker 2:You don't get oil from fracking, but you get gas from oil. It's like an off, yeah, a thing that happens anyways.
Speaker 1:That's so unscientific, but you know what I'm saying, you know. You know more about it than I do, because I hear the word all the time. I don't know what it means.
Speaker 2:Well, it's, it's a push it. Yeah, we're not going to try to claim that we know, so you can look us up.
Speaker 1:I'm like it's bad. I don't know what it is, but it's bad.
Speaker 2:It's bad. I mean, there's fracking for fracking. I'll say this there's fracking for fracking sake, which is just to get gas. And then there is you like, when you produce oil, it also off in its gas, which a lot of time they just like like gun, like go in the air and don't do anything with it. There's just like a little flame that goes up in the sky. But oh yeah, regardless, there is shit happening in Polar, the Polar, the great, the North Pole, where Santa is when Santa is in this movie.
Speaker 2:It's polar fracking and it's the cause of the zombie apocalypse, as you said earlier, because all of a sudden the poles are shifting, yeah, and there's like weird mushrooms growing at the wrong time. So says Hermit Bob.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Hermit, Bob looks at a mushroom. He's like you're not supposed to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody's pets are acting weird and disappearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the times of day are all wrong. People's clocks stop working, the electronics stop working. Right.
Speaker 2:It happens very quickly. I actually remember being a kid and hearing about the possibility of like a magnetic pole shift and being really afraid of it. Good news, it's unlikely that it will happen. As usual, I think, like the zombies not only serve as a metaphor for consumerism and how we're all zombies to the machine of consumerism here in the West, but also our disregard for nature and the things that we do that create environmental catastrophes. So what's interesting for me is that Officer Mindy Morrison, played by Chloe Sivanier, one of my favorite actors, is kind of a parallel to myself, because Mindy Morrison is freaking out. She's like what the fuck? Like? We're all gonna die. There's zombies everywhere. There's my mother looking at me through the cop car window and actually, very sweetly, her mother does not want to have coffee or Xanax. She just says her daughter's name over and over again as a zombie Mindy, Mindy. But Mindy is like saying to Adam Driver and what's the other?
Speaker 1:guy's name again Bill Murray.
Speaker 2:Bill Murray, famous actor. The two other police officers are like why aren't you upset? Like why aren't you freaking out? They're like perfectly calm. And I feel this way sometimes I feel like I'm chicken little running around. I mean like the sky is fucking falling y'all. The end is nigh.
Speaker 1:Except it actually is.
Speaker 2:Climate change is bad. This is happening. You're already around me. He's like eh, it's probably just blue eggs. Yeah, it's okay yeah. Uh you know I can't do it. I don't know if I can do. That's the thing everybody says and, like the characters in the film, other than Mindy Morrison's character, display such a sense of apathy and disconnection from what's happening, Like it's almost like they either don't care or they don't want to feel anything about it. But that's what I feel like there's a very clear metaphor happening in the movie of this.
Speaker 2:I feel that and then I will say briefly that the pull shift is possible. You can have geometric reversals, but it would take thousands of years to happen, not overnight. So we're in the clear for this as far as I know. I bet America could do it.
Speaker 2:You know what it's? Her polar fracking. Maybe we already are, but it does. It is like that I really resonated with her character, cause I do feel like I'm the person mostly on social media my personal one, not Sony Book Club podcast where I'm just like yo, shit's fucked up. Hey, we actually can do something. We can make personal life changes but, more importantly, pressure politicians to make changes so that corporations are forced to do something different than what they're doing, like Mark fucking Zuckerberg and everybody's just like eh yeah, you're probably overreacting, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or just like well. I think there's like a very fatalistic approach in this movie. We're like well, we're fucked anyway, so let's not do anything. Which the more people behave like that more real behave like that. That's going to be the self fulfilling prophecy. That's what makes me so mad about it. Yeah, so I won't go into my rant about climate change. I think y'all have already figured out that I have feelings about it.
Speaker 1:I guess that's kind of the thing with Adam Driver is that you know he read the script, he knows what's going to happen, but he still has that fatalistic view of it, Like it's all going to end badly. They could have made different decisions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you're like. I think they had a moment where like, yeah, zombies, and they're like, oh shit. And then they're just like, okay, I guess we're just dealing with zombies now. It's a big deal. But what's also funny about Mindy Morrison's character is that she's also the one who, while she freaks out, is the person who believed 100% of what the media was saying, which is that polar fracking is fine and the pole shifting thing is not real.
Speaker 1:Do you think she started freaking out after she realized that they were lying to her?
Speaker 2:I think she was afraid in general, but she didn't understand the cause of what was happening. She was like this is terrible, I'm scared. And then I think Adam Driver says when they're all in the cop car again together at the, I think are they at the cemetery. When this happens, I think they're at the cemetery.
Speaker 1:I thought this was a different time. Are you talking about the conversation that they have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're in the cop car. They're all about to die. Spoiler, I thought it was much earlier.
Speaker 1:No, no, I'm gonna bring it differently.
Speaker 2:And she's like, okay, yeah, let's read the lines together of what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, do you want to be Mindy, and I'll be Ronnie Peterson? Sure, it's zombies. What are you saying Well, it's the undead. They've been reanimated because by the earth having been pulled off its axis, caused by the polar fracking.
Speaker 2:But the authorities and energy people keep saying that's not true.
Speaker 1:And then Cliff and Ronnie just look at her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then she loses her mind. A jump set of the police car and her mother and other zombies tear her apart and that's the more or less story. But they show the media this newscaster. We remember again saying that anybody who's discussing consumer polar fracking are alarmists, who are dangerous liars and so-called scientists. I loved it and I think you see her watching it at some point. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So the whole time she's just like she's just believing the hype. Yeah yeah, we talked about this a little bit. But another subversion of our expectations was character arcs that went literally nowhere, Kind of like real life. Yeah yeah, there's a lot of character arcs around us that go nowhere.
Speaker 2:Including ours. What did I do for a occasion, I made mushrooms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Selena Gomez and her friends. They show up in the town, they introduce themselves to the main characters and then literally nothing happens. They just die later.
Speaker 2:And what's weird is their introduction to the movie feels a little bit like the beginning of a horror story. Yeah, like they had their own movie. Yeah, she's in short shorts. It's like very classic horror story. They have a cool car. They're stopping at a gas station. There's kind of a creepy dude Frodo in it. Like is Frodo gonna ultimately be like chainsaw massacre, kind of vibe? What are we talking about?
Speaker 1:here. Maybe there could have been a spin-off where we see what happens to Selena Gomez and her friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then they just kind of like disappear for a while. Then the cops decide they need to tell these three folks that are in town that they're zombies and they should stay inside, yeah, and then later we find out they've been eaten and that's it. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:We don't see them getting eaten. Also, like you know, like everything about this, like the way that the dialogues written and the way that like people deliver their dialogue, like it has all like bad writing all over it. Like Selena Gomez comes up and talks to the police officers and then she's like all right, and I'll see you later. She goes to her, to her, to her motel room, and then Bill Murray tells Adam Driver well, I guess you have to go tell her to lock her door. And then they couldn't just tell her when they were having the conversation. They had to like end the conversation and then go and knock on her door and start another conversation to tell her to lock her door.
Speaker 2:That felt very human and real.
Speaker 1:I will say that A little bit, yeah, I mean like real life yeah.
Speaker 2:There's also like a whole other arc of these three teenagers and a juvenile detention center. Yeah, and it's two teenage girls and one teenage boy, and the teenage boy keeps getting in trouble because he's in the wrong floor with the girls hanging out.
Speaker 1:They even ask him if he wants to be a girl. Yeah, and he's like no, and then he's like then stop sneaking into the girls room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so they like eventually escape because obviously the tensions and it gets like overrun with zombies, but nothing ever happens to them. We don't even know what happens to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the last time we see them is they're just crossing the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just cross the road.
Speaker 1:I guess we can take that to mean that they probably survived.
Speaker 2:What did the juvenile or why did the juvenile detention center kids cross the road To get away from the zombies? Yeah, yeah, but um press the bit, um show. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Let's see Till the Swinton. She shows up as a Scottish Japanese martial arts expert, funeral home director, slash makeup artist, master, computer hacker, was unfazed by the dead returning to life, excellent at killing them, and they let us believe that she's there to save the day. She even, like, asks where they're going to end up the graveyard, like you're going to be at the graveyard doing your end of the movie mission. Also, can I have the keys to your car, adam Driver? That's right.
Speaker 2:But she's just really wanting to take a fun ride.
Speaker 1:She sets it up so that she can come in at the end of the movie, at the climax, and save the day with all of her skills. Right? Except spoiler alert. Cover your ears if you haven't seen this movie, because this will blow your fucking mind. A fucking flying saucer shows up and beams her up and takes her away from everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she just like she like looks at it like no big deal. I know this was coming. Walk straight to it. It's beamed up. Yeah, that's it. Don't see any more till the Swinton.
Speaker 1:And like her fighting of the zombies was like so nonchalant, like she could have taken out every zombie in the whole town, but like she very lazily just lobbed off heads. That's a spinoff, like it was boring.
Speaker 2:She's just so uninterested. I would love to see a spinoff movie of this character, zelda Winston. Yeah, like, why was she there? Why? Why Is she an alien? Is she like an issue human? That's like in cahoots with aliens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is she a star seed? Yeah, possibly. Yeah, we don't know. And then we've got Frodo and Danny Glover. They're both. They're both store. They're both business owners, small business owners in the small town. They both own their own stores. They hold up at the hardware store Danny Glover's hardware and they seem to be prepared for the apocalypse. They're gathering weapons, they have shotguns, they have everything they have all their.
Speaker 2:They're boarding up the front door.
Speaker 1:They're boarding up the front door. One zombie gets in, they blow its fucking head off and they board it back up again. Then they're, they're getting, they have like a heart to heart conversation and then zombies come in through the back door. Mind you, these are slow as molasses zombies.
Speaker 2:They barely move. Are they slower than Shaun of the Dead? Zombies Slower?
Speaker 1:You think?
Speaker 2:so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we need to watch side by side for comparison. Definitely slower, ok, definitely slower.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that. I'll never forget the scene, where they were in the backyard, but they shoot one zombie and then act like there's nothing more they can do.
Speaker 1:Now they will die. Now they drop their weapons and just let the zombies take them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a very funny moment, but you know what that whole section reminded me of Speaking of going back to like Walmart it brought me back to the days of being a little kid, growing up near a town like Centreville, population 600, woodville. That I grew up near, yeah, and we had a little tiny hardware store like that, which is now gone because of the Walmart's of the world. Yeah, I mean you feel nostalgia. I used to love that hardware store.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a little hardware store too, but I don't remember going to it. Oh, we used to have a lot of Western Auto stores which are still very much like a corporate chain, but they were more like a hometown hardware store that was like had a Western Auto name at the front.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to say I didn't have it on my list, but I'm going to add. One of the things I love was the small town, Centreville, because it did remind me of where I grew up Very tiny, very quaint. Yeah, yeah, you got your hermit, and it's bringing back like yeah.
Speaker 1:You got your small town sheriff. Yeah, you got the funeral home director.
Speaker 2:We didn't have any town drunks who only drive tractors into town because they are not legally able to drive cars anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, In my town that guy's name was Rocky.
Speaker 2:Apparently Comet, he got a.
Speaker 1:DUI three times on his lawnmower.
Speaker 2:You got a DUI on your lawnmower His lawnmower would go 50 miles an hour.
Speaker 1:Oh wow.
Speaker 2:He must have driven that out. He used to drive it to the bar. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Because he couldn't drive a car anymore. So he'd get on his lawnmower and take off to the bar.
Speaker 2:I can see why that's extra dangerous for DUIs, because you've got like a weapon on your. Not only are you a weapon you could hit somebody, but you also have like a blade. Yeah, you could like kill, at least like small children, animals. But I will say that just briefly. The memory brought back for you is the home hardware store and like looking at all the trinkets and remembering that they are full of really good zombie weapons, but also like my little town protesting when the bank closed. They're like we've got to keep the bank. Yeah, save the bank. The population 600.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's that is a Hallmark movie if I've ever heard one. We gotta save the bank.
Speaker 2:The bank was not saved. There's the Canadian. I don't even know what the I stands for Something. Cibc is. The bank name is a huge bank in Canada and they left. They don't care. Yeah, Now there's a little ATM.
Speaker 1:All you get is an ATM. One more thing that I noticed later on that I absolutely love about this movie is that like it's kind of a comedy, so they got Bill Murray. Bill Murray is a big comedy name. He's one of the funniest people in film and in this movie is the least funny character in the entire movie. Everyone has jokes about him. He is, he's just dry, he is just by the books. I'm playing a sheriff. Yeah, this is me, bill Murray playing a sheriff.
Speaker 2:Indifferent to everything happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like that was like a joke in itself, was like I'm going to get Bill Murray. It's going to be a serious role.
Speaker 2:That is true, it was not very funny. He also. I just remembered they. They did have a conversation. Do you remember what they said? They talked about how nonchalant they were and they're just like, that's how we cope, right before they died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. I think he asked Adam Driver that. Yeah, he's just like yeah, this is how I cope with stress which I get. That that's me. Yeah, it's either that or jokes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is very true. Sometimes I'll tell Dan the most serious thing and he'll make a joke and I'm like this is not the time I actually really need to have a joke about this.
Speaker 1:This brings me to the last thing that I loved most of all. What's that? It's the fact that I didn't hate it. It's the weirdest thing that I don't hate this movie because it does everything wrong.
Speaker 2:Starting with saying that they're zombies, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it reveals the origin of zombies. It reveals that everybody knows what zombies are. The editing was horrible, the writing was horrible, the dialogue was horrible, the acting was horrible, everything.
Speaker 2:Not all the acting was horrible.
Speaker 1:Steve Buscemi was great, yes, but it's like everything that you could do wrong in a zombie movie. They do it, and what I love is that they did it on purpose. They did it all wrong on purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you spend the movie just being perplexed and kind of being like what, yeah, what? It's not like you're scared. It's not like you're captivated by the plot line, because there barely is one there wasn't a plot, yeah, but you're just mostly like what is that what? Especially when the flying saucer that's what I was like what. That breaks your double mumbo jumbo roll. It activates your imagination.
Speaker 1:I'm still thinking about it. I'm like why did they make this movie? How do producers sign on to this and be like I'm going to spend money on this knowing that it's going to get 30% on Rotten Tomatoes?
Speaker 2:Actually, I don't think we've looked up the review. I did, you did it. I didn't want to tell you.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to tell you because I knew that you would be less interested in watching it.
Speaker 2:That is true. I do look at those reviews.
Speaker 1:I think it was like 50% on IMDb and 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. Damn yeah.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because, like the actual experience of watching, it was not highly enjoyable, but we are still talking about it days later there were times when we just like turned to each other and just like had horrified expressions like what are we watching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just confused and I will say I did not really pass my attention span test, although you did a great job. I was like I am paying attention because I want to understand what the fuck this thing is, so I guess maybe it does not mean it passes my attention span test that I forced myself.
Speaker 1:There was a point where you were going to sit in front of the TV and start fidgeting with things, like you were going to like reorganize like the table or something. I can't remember what it was. You're like is it okay if I just like start doing this? And I'm like, I'm like, honestly, like it's very distracting and I cannot pay attention to you doing that. And then you came back and like at that point, like you committed your attention as best as you could, I did a good job, and you were like I'm putting my phone down, I'm doing it, and you did it and I'm very proud of you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, this was a test. This was such a test. Does it mean I don't have ADHD? No, it doesn't. It does mean that, like like you, were able to take control of it for a short period of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was a thing I hated in the moment as much as it was interesting to think about. Like later in the moment I was like this is a fucking, this is so slow. Yeah, the first half it's like almost a two hour long movie. Like almost nothing happens for the first hour.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Like the whole three act structure is way out of whack. Another thing that they purposefully do wrong they're just like there's like creeping that story along inch by inch and too many characters like so many people, like what the hell's happening, who? Do I mean Too many, all those characters and none of almost none of them do anything. No, so let's talk about what we hated, and I'm surprised at how short this list is.
Speaker 2:It's funny that it's so short. I feel like this is one of those movies that gets better after you've watched it.
Speaker 1:Do you want to bring up number one? Yeah, we already talked about.
Speaker 2:We were talking about this. Yeah, just that it was slow. It's the thing that we hated.
Speaker 1:It's slow. Yeah, leah resisted picking over phone. What is your attention span ranking of this movie?
Speaker 2:Okay, the amount of attention I wanted to give it was like a two out of 10. The attention I did give it was like a solid seven.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to give it a five out of 10.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Because it was compelling enough that I was like I'm going to pay attention even though it's hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the thing that I hated was the editing, and I talk about editing from time to time. I've been an editor. I know how editing works, yeah, and it's something that I'm kind of a stickler for, and the thing is is that this was intentionally awful, like there are scenes that are cut longer than they need to be on purpose, like there'll be several seconds before the delivery of a line and then a few seconds after the delivery of a line.
Speaker 2:I guess it was intentional, yeah, but I didn't realize it was intentional, yeah, and this somehow redeems it.
Speaker 1:But the thing is, the thing that makes me mad about that is that there was potential to make like a universally funny and interesting movie, like there were good bones here to make a good zombie movie.
Speaker 2:It's true, I thought we were watching just like a funny B movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it could have been a B movie and it could have been a comedy and like with just the tiniest amount of editing this would have all come together in a much more like palatable thing and like maybe it wouldn't have gotten 30% unwrought in tomatoes. And did this person just have money to blow on a movie? Yes, jim Jarmusch seems to make films that are intentionally bad in this way and it's like his satirical statement of the film industry and it appeals to like a very small group of people, but to those group of people it appeals in a big way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people, people, famous people, who are busy were like I wonder if they even got paid to do this.
Speaker 1:Honestly, yeah, adam Driver was in was doing the three Star Wars movies. He was being paid crazy amounts of money to be in the Star Wars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's like. You know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be in this really shitty zombie movie that everyone's going to hate. It's a choice. It's a choice, yeah. So I mean, I guess it's not a bad thing to like to like appeal to a small group of people instead of everyone, like it shows that you can make a movie that's not for everyone. But I just think it could have been better and still achieve this goal.
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny because I think our podcast is not made for everyone. It's made for a very small group of people. You're listening to it, thanks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know it'd be like if we intentionally used the shittiest microphones and didn't edit any of it.
Speaker 2:That's true, that is true. We do actually put some effort into this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like sometimes I do leave in, like the mistakes that we make, like apparently on purpose.
Speaker 2:I don't know. You know what?
Speaker 1:I want to know.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God you're a little bit of a Jim Jarmusch yeah.
Speaker 1:You know there are times when it's just like and then other things. I messed that up, I'm going to cut that out later.
Speaker 2:And then I leave it in and, Dan, I'm always like, are you sure you should do that? He's like no people will know I'm doing it on purpose and I'm like, but will they? Yeah, Do you yeah?
Speaker 1:Let's, let's. So I guess there's a little bit of that in there. Yeah, you're a little bit of a Jim Jarm, jim Jarm, jim Jarmusch, jim Jarmusch, yes, you know. But I think that if I think just with editing, like if it was just put together in a way that we want a three a three act structure to be, I think more people would have liked it If it flowed better. Maybe the, the jokes, even as dry as they were, would have had more punch to them and it would have delivered a better cinematic experience and people would have enjoyed it more.
Speaker 2:But you know what? I'll remember this movie, Like I'll actually remember this movie because it's so different. So way to go. Jim Jarmusch. Also, there's some really great survival tips. In fact, probably one of the best I've ever ever heard in any zombie film, which is if it's undead, kill the head. Yeah, there's so many like how many movies for zombie stuff? Put that on the shirt. I want that shirt. It was undead Kill the head. If it's yellow, let it mellow right Like it's going to stay with me for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really good advice and a lot of people in zombie movies need that advice because they don't realize right away and they're like I'm shooting them in the chest. Why do they keep coming?
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that's a trope that always seems to seem to happen. They did it in this movie, but it was only like one time. Well, that's because we had Frodo, who said if it's undead, kill the head, and the only, the only time it ever happened was when they shot the Chardonnay lady.
Speaker 2:Chardonnay, I forgot about her she was really great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, like none of them thinking about it like, I think a lot of people watched this movie because they saw the trailer. The trailer was well edited and made it seem like a really hilarious movie Because it has its moments. Yeah, it has its moments. All those moments are in the trailer. So, second survival tip Always read the whole script if you find yourself living inside of a zombie movie yeah, press pause.
Speaker 2:Tell the director that you need a break. Yeah, and you require the whole script.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if he says you only need your lines, be like, I feel like I'd understand my character better. I had the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you find out that it ends badly, don't participate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or do it differently in the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fuck it all up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, improvise If it has a bad ending, just improvise. Yeah, yeah, it's what they would have done in. Oh fuck, no, I can't remember his name. I had this whole thing about Apocalypse Now and the guy that was in Apocalypse Now where he just didn't listen to the director at all and just made up his own shit, I can't remember his name anymore, though the guy that plays Colonel Kurtz in the end, anyways.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:That's a story that I totally fucked up, anyways.
Speaker 2:Are you going to keep it in here? Yes, totally Say, you're not going to keep it in here and then keep it. Yeah, I should cut it out.
Speaker 1:I'm going to cut that out. Yeah, if more than one zombie is coming at you, don't give up just after killing one, especially if they're creeping along and in an incredibly slow place. You have tons of time and an entire supply of weapons inside of a hardware store. That's a good one. Yeah, just keep going.
Speaker 2:Don't give up. That's a good one. Also, be an alien. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, be a star seed. Yeah, take a star seed quiz.
Speaker 2:If you are one, you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're an alien, the mother ship will come to get you at the climax of the film.
Speaker 2:I always, you know, I wonder if that's like the. What is that called? The? No, the resurrection. I'm thinking about the thing I used to be afraid of when I was a kid the rapture, the rapture. Yeah, it's almost when we got raptured by aliens Are all of the people that will get raptured technically like actually aliens Maybe.
Speaker 1:Huh, yeah. And our last survival tip learn kendo and get a badass sword. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We have a practice kendo sword that we use mostly for trying to find things that we've dropped behind our bed.
Speaker 1:That we can't get to. Yeah, we just. We just reach under there with the fake kendo sword and we just like whip it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes it's very difficult to get something, but it's our best option.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's talk about our Z-Rating. How many Z-Words are we going to give this movie?
Speaker 2:I think we have to have two different Z-Words yeah, zed, zed, zedward ratings. One of them is like our point of view of people watching it as unsuspecting victims right, we showed up, we thought we were watching a regular zombie movie, yeah. And then I think we should do another Z-Rating which is like from the point of view of Jim Jarmusch yeah, like the goal of making this film how well do we think he did so? From your, like, when you were definitely not editing out our dog drinking water he's the loudest water drinker. So let's talk first about what Zeds we would have given it like immediate reaction, before we had time to even think about the movie. How many Zeds would you have given it? Like you're just like. I just finished this. What the fuck happened.
Speaker 1:I'm actually like torn between three and four Z-Words Wow.
Speaker 2:Usually you rate higher than me. I was going to give it a six.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's, I did not expect that.
Speaker 2:I thought there was enough humor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the humor is really the only thing that saved it for me upon viewing. But I feel like my opinion changed over time as I thought more about it and like, the more you think about it, the more you enjoy this movie, and that's why this movie is kind of genius.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and probably why they wanted to bait and switch you with a really good trailer, like if the trailer had been like the actual movie, nobody would watch it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what? Oh God, like my my post movie viewing, enjoyment of it is like an eight out of 10 Z-Words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Jim Jarmusch did his job, because we're literally talking about the podcast, which we plan to do anyways, but in our own spare time for no reason. Dan will be like hey, more of that thing that happened. Yeah, that was weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, you know, we just plan on talking about a fun zombie movie and then it just turned into this whole thing where we're just like what, what, what is a movie? Yeah, yeah, what are our lives? Well, you know, I think, I think let's just give it like an average Z-word rating of like six and a half Z-words.
Speaker 2:I like that. I have a final question for you. Okay, if you knew how the end of your life would go, you got the script to your life as a Jim Jarmusch movie. You're in it, would you? Would you read it?
Speaker 1:Oh no, definitely not. I don't want to know how it ends. You don't want to know. No, I, you know, I've pondered this question a long, long time and I want it to be a surprise. I maybe, if I had somebody read it for me and like, if I could be like, do I have any regrets? Tell me what things I would regret, and maybe I can change that. And that's really it. The only thing that I don't want to do when I'm dead is have regrets when I'm dying. What about you?
Speaker 2:I used to be interested in this kind of stuff. Like when I was young I was like super interested in psychics and I did a lot of tarot, and I still like tarot actually. But I have and I like read a lot of astrology. But the older I've gotten, the more I've just been like you know what? Channey Nicholas, famous astrologer. I don't want to know that Tuesday is going to be a terrible fucking day at work. I don't want to know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause you know what happens. Like you know, I'm not like. I'm not like a super firm believer that we can predict things in the future. But you know, whenever we like pull tarot cards or talk about astrology, I'm like why is this so accurate?
Speaker 2:Why does everything that?
Speaker 1:we that comes up in these cards actually happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tarot is no joke. You know, I used to be pull Oracle cards, sweet little like magical unicorn cards that are really positive. But tarot, it's like your life is going to turn upside fucking down and it's going to be bad and then it is, but then after that it was great and now you're in my life, yeah, and you know, because of my heritage, that I'm like trying to embrace more than I've like learned more about it.
Speaker 1:I got into ruins because because of my Viking heritage. So you know I you know I come at it from a place of curiosity, but you know, like I'll, I'll do it just to like try to understand how I feel about a certain part of my life that happened over the course of like I don't know, like a year or something. Yeah, and what comes up is like so weirdly specific and accurate and I don't understand and it's it's it's hard to be like. Yeah, I don't believe in any, any type of higher power or anything, but also I have these rocks that have scratchings on them and they tell me what happens in my life.
Speaker 2:It's weird, yeah, and when I was a kid, I played with a Ouija board that I hand made myself and weird shit happened that I'm never going to talk about. Yeah, so this is a total diatribe offside, but we didn't do our personal life update so I figured you know what it's the end of the episode. Yeah, I wanted to know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, you guys asked for this. It's your fault.
Speaker 2:You're listening. Thanks, by the way. So uh.
Speaker 1:so let's, let's move, let's dial this in and come to the end. This is the end. So remember, guys, we're we're doing things a little bit differently now and on episode 35, we're going to be talking about the book that we are reading for episode 35, for our book club, which is Sylvester Barzee's Planet Dead. It's a book that's set in a politically isolated future, where the wall has been built and America has turned its back on many of its allies.
Speaker 2:Was it ever a good ally?
Speaker 1:In World War Two I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a good for.
Speaker 1:I mean we showed up for France.
Speaker 2:We got involved for our own political reasons, mostly to have world dominance after.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I worked out. Um yeah for white people. No regrets, Americans certainly worked out. An unknown virus has been released into the world, and those infected die rapidly and painfully. Only the return is bloodthirsty zombies. That sounds terrible.
Speaker 2:I don't want to die rapidly and well. If it's going to be painful, I'm good with dying rapidly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like a car accident.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that sounds horrible. Also why I don't want to my future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So that's the book that we're reading. If you want to join the book club, read the book Also like we're not getting paid for this at all.
Speaker 2:So I'm just telling you this, genuinely I ordered the book and then I opened it and it was full of so many fun goodies and it was even signed. I'm not sure if Sylvester always does that or if I, like, bought it when there was like a special promotion he was doing, but yeah, there's some fun stuff in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got like stuff inside, yeah, promotional things. Yeah, it was really nice. It was a nice surprise, because I just thought it was going to be.
Speaker 2:It was also wrapped in caution tape. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also you can call us with your burning questions or zombie apocalypse tips and we might, might, emphasis on, might, play it on the air and respond. The number is 614-699-0006.
Speaker 2:That was very fast, so I'm going to say it again, like it's 1998 and you need to repeat your phone number, because there's no caller idea Idea. There's no caller ID 614-699-0006.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can leave a three minute long message, or you can email us at zombiebookclubpodcastcom.
Speaker 2:Which we almost never check, but we will occasionally and occasionally we will try.
Speaker 1:Respond specifically on air Don't forget to subscribe or follow or whatever. The thing is that the button says Write and review. If you give us a writing and a review, it helps us spread our virus, our zombie book club virus, infecting new listeners through their ear holes.
Speaker 2:Which is one of our goals this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to. We want to infect your ears.
Speaker 2:Basically, we watch Twin Flames Universe on Netflix the documentary and decide we need to start our own zombie book club podcast cult. So if you spread the virus, we can guarantee you will find your Twin Flame.
Speaker 1:You will find happiness in the afternoon, but you have to pay us $99.99 a month. Yeah, it costs money. Yeah, that's how it works, but thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram and threads at zombie book club podcast. On both of them, subscribe, rate and review. Link tree is in the description. There's a description at the bottom.
Speaker 2:And don't forget if they're undead, kill the head. That's right. If it's yellow, let it mellow. Bye. Bye everybody. The end is night. If it's brown, flush it down. Bye.