Oppenheimer (2023)

Matt (00:00:47):

Together. Oh. Oh, that’s bad together.

Laci (00:00:52):

We’re getting jazzed about, oh, want to give you the big O, Oppenheimer.

Matt (00:00:57):

This is my Oppenheimer face. Oh.

Laci (00:01:00):

This is my Oppenheimer face. I can’t do it. I was tormented by a word. You think he’s just laying in his bed, he’s just feeling dust mites and stuff and thinking about just the interactions of every fucking subatomic particle in the universe and being like, “I can’t sleep.”

Matt (00:01:16):

What a tortured existence. I mean, we all got to think about something.

Laci (00:01:19):

And he just can’t stop. So a couple weeks ago, my hearing was suffering and I went to the ENT and he’s like, “Yeah, you got a ton of ear wax in that ear. They sucked like a fucking brick out of my ear. Suddenly I could hear and it was painful how loud the world suddenly was.” I was like, “Ah, I can hear echoes.”

Matt (00:01:37):

No, I have to actually listen to my wife.

Laci (00:01:39):

I imagine that’s every moment for Oppenheimer is like, “Oh, there’s a droplet in the water, causes the ripples.”

Matt (00:01:45):

All that swirling, spinning shit, that’s all him coming to understand this one thing. I don’t think he kept being bothered. I mean, I’m sure he’s a man of many ideas, but they don’t show his obsessive thoughts like that until after they crack the way to have the bomb. So once they figure out how to make the bomb, he stops thinking about atomic energy because he’s like, “No, fuck that.”

Laci (00:02:08):

When he gets to Cambridge and he just has to think about it, he does say, “I was tortured by thoughts of this hidden world.”

Matt (00:02:14):

Yes, Matt. I know. And then he then finds that world, makes a bomb, and you will see then that he no longer is doing those long stares and looking at the ripples of the water.

Laci (00:02:27):

Yeah. Well, a way that he. One cure for him was, I’ll think about other things like art and literature and – Cheating on my wife. My connection to my horse, feeding my horse an apple. Oh shit, apple. I poisoned my teacher with an apple. Okay. This is 1-Week Rental Summer of Nolan, season finale of the Summer of Nolan. It’s Oppenheimer. I’m Matt Stokes.

Matt (00:02:49):

And I’m Laci Roth.

Laci (00:02:50):

And this is our final Christopher Nolan episode. We’re going to bid him a font farewell. Next week we’ll have a little mini bonus episode kind of wrap up, do our Christopher Nolan movie rankings, final thoughts on the man. And then after that, we’re resuming our normal programming, Practical Magic, because Practical Magic two comes out in theaters in a remarkable coincidence. But this show is a show where we bring you inside the movie, take you behind the scenes, talk for a long time about the making of the movie, and then analyze the movie itself. So Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer, which during our interstellar movie episode, I said, “This is his best movie.” And now I watch Oppenheimer and I’m like, “What an idiot.” What

Matt (00:03:34):

A fucking ruse.

Laci (00:03:35):

This might be the best movie period. Ever happened. I feel about it the way I feel about Jaws. There’s nothing better. It is a perfect – I don’t need drugs. I need this. What do you think?

Matt (00:03:48):

This thing’s got whales, baby. It’s carried by the perfect person and it’s supported by wonderfully interesting people. What a nice little dab of fucking Matt Damon and a little sprinkle of fucking.

Laci (00:04:07):

Oh, everybody’s somebody. Because you could be talking about anybody.

Matt (00:04:11):

Downey Jr. I know, but all the supporting characters, they support the shit out of him. And I love the guy from Slums of Beverly Hills, who I can never remember his name. I love him

Laci (00:04:23):

In this movie. David Krumholtz, so great in this movie. Oh, everyone’s great in this movie. I like him as

Matt (00:04:26):

My best friend. He’ll

Laci (00:04:27):

Get me an old – Except Rob and Alec don’t like him. Nobody should think that Mr. Straw should be confirmed for the confirmation.

Matt (00:04:35):

Who are you? What? Oh, oh. Oh, you hate him anyway.

Laci (00:04:40):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (00:04:40):

But whenever I saw him in that little tiny role, I’m like, “What’s he doing here?” And then I’m like, “Ah, Switcher Rusky.”

Laci (00:04:47):

Everyone’s Someone. Every single speaking role, you’re like, “Oh, that’s James Darcy from Cloud Atlas.” That’s

Matt (00:04:54):

The thing though, this movie has such an important gathering of people in real life that you can’t help but give it to a real fucking actor and kitty like

Laci (00:05:08):

That

Matt (00:05:08):

Kitty.

Laci (00:05:09):

It’s just people in rooms talking. Bilga Abiri, our favorite film critic said, “It’s an action movie about scientists talking.” And you asked me after, we watched it separately and you said, “Why is this movie so fun?” But it

Matt (00:05:21):

Has no right to be. The subject matter has no right to

Laci (00:05:24):

Be, but dang. Oh yeah. It’s the most entertaining. It’s like Oliver Stone’s JFK. That’s the kind of feeling you get watching it where you’re just being pummeled, just fire hosed with information, but you’re like, “I get it. I get it. I get it.”

Matt (00:05:36):

Well, and to center it around a little bitchy bit of tea. Yes, please. I love that. You can relate it to Obama snubbing Trump at the White House Correspondent Center and that then setting him on the trajectory to become the president. Doing his comedy set

Laci (00:05:54):

About it. Oh yeah. Which you know, of course that’s what happened. This is

Matt (00:05:59):

Just a bunch of egos in a room, baby.

Laci (00:06:01):

But Robert Downey Jr. as straws is like the, “I’m very silent. I’m just constantly vibrating with rage and resentment.” And my God, that performance when you – It’s

Matt (00:06:10):

Fucking good.

Laci (00:06:12):

It’s so quiet, but when he kind of lets out the rage, it’s like, oh, he snarls and his nostrils flare.

Matt (00:06:20):

Ultimate face acting, the subtlety of pretending to be civil and keeping your brand new enemy who’s in the room with you, asking you questions you don’t like, who supports to be helping you through this phase of you getting it into the cabinet. And you’re like, “Oh, I fucking hate this motherfucker. I fucking hate him.”

Laci (00:06:39):

And then that guy realizing, “Oh, I hate this guy and I’m going to enjoy being very polite, handing him his hat, and maybe they were talking about something more important.” And you see on Danny’s face, more important than thy, than thou, whatever I am. And then the cameras start flashing and he’s like, “Oh.” And then he puts on the fakest grin you’ve ever seen. Look, I love this movie. There’s so much to get to. I always say it’s going to be our longest episode. This might be. In the history segment, we’re going to try to limit it because there’s so many different directions we could go. We could talk about Barbenheimer. We’re not going to. What we’re mainly going to talk about is the real J. Robert Oppenheimer and try to give you some historical context.

Matt (00:07:20):

Yes. And maybe it’ll help me understand the stakes at the end, besides the fact that he is pushed into doing this very important thing for the United States. He’s treated like a God for a while, and then as soon as he’s not useful anymore, he’s completely stripped of power in the sense of you’ve made it, but you’ve got no control over what we do with it. We’re never making it for you and we care about your expertise because you can make it. We then no longer care. And we certainly don’t care about your morals. And indeed we remind you, you are a communist.

Laci (00:07:58):

We might even hate you for you. There’s people who you help them and they hate you for it. And he becomes this sin-eating scapegoat for America. Okay.

Matt (00:08:08):

But I guess the only thing I was struggling with was why is this hearing so devastating, the

Laci (00:08:16):

One

Matt (00:08:16):

He’s in? Because I think it’s probably just the nail in the coffin of you’re no longer important here. You fought really hard to get this cue clearance. We’re taking it away. And we’re saying really shit things to you that you were reading into the record and it’s happening in a closed room with a meanie and

Laci (00:08:33):

I’m

Matt (00:08:33):

Embarrassing you in front of your wife. If you wanted to humiliate him, why do it so privately?

Laci (00:08:40):

So I think that if there’s one critique I have that’s not a perfect movie, I think that Nolan could do a better job of making you understand the significance of that hearing. And even I didn’t get, I though like, oh, big deal, his security clearance is revoked so he can’t go consult for weapons manufacturers or whatever. Right. Just get

Matt (00:08:57):

On 4chan.

Laci (00:08:58):

No, it’s all about he had devoted all of his life since 1945 to speaking out about how we need to have an international arms treaty. We need to stop building nuclear weapons. The only way to do it is to ally with Soviet Russia. As soon as they revoke his security clearance, he’s basically discredited in the public eye and he can’t. So they’ve effectively ruined his life. But he’s an old

Matt (00:09:23):

Man by then. But I got you.

Laci (00:09:26):

He’s still this vital figure at that point. And then the end of the movie, Albert Einstein talks about this one day they’ll serve you salmon and potato salad. That’s like, we’ve punished you enough. Now we’ll revive you and give you a medal and everything. It’s just a – But even

Matt (00:09:39):

The medal isn’t for you, it’s for the person giving you the medal.

Laci (00:09:42):

Yeah. I think that this movie is about just realizing the absolute powerlessness that we all have. Of

Matt (00:09:49):

Knowledge. Right. But

Laci (00:09:52):

The worthlessness of being in the room where it happens.

Matt (00:09:56):

Sure.

Laci (00:09:56):

The fact that you’re in the room means you can’t do anything.

Matt (00:10:00):

That and that you’re probably a useful perpetrator of something bad that you don’t even realize you’re helping happen. And then once it goes and it turns out you’re a part of something really shitty, then you’re the scapegoat somehow and you’re like, I wasn’t even needing to know. I didn’t even know.

Laci (00:10:20):

Yeah.

Matt (00:10:21):

And now I know.

Laci (00:10:21):

And his justifications change over the course of the Manhattan Project, but you can tell this is a recognizable figure. This is sort of a modern somebody like AOC. I can influence things from the inside. I can push everything in a good direction. And he legitimately thought that.

Matt (00:10:40):

And you can also see in the tech world, if these guys had any fucking ability of being really honest with themselves, you could see a Mark Zuckerberg being like, “I fucking changed the world and I do not know that that’s a good thing.” Any technology, having ideas is great and it can make you money and then it can really fuck up the world and that’s on you.

Laci (00:11:02):

And I devoted my entire life to physics and to thinking about physics. And now it’s applied and I realize, oh, physics is evil. Physics is, I mean, it’s this neutral force – It’s none

Matt (00:11:15):

Of

Laci (00:11:15):

Our business. It’s

Matt (00:11:15):

Been my

Laci (00:11:16):

Fucking – I agree. I agree. Who cares? It’s been

Matt (00:11:18):

My statement through this entire process. Nolan keeps showing me things that are none of our business. I

Laci (00:11:24):

Keep watching it and I keep realizing everyone in this movie is powerless. Straws is also Downing Jr. He’s also a pawn. Even Harry Truman is powerless. He’s like, “You think you dropped the bomb, I dropped the bomb, but you didn’t.” There’s forces, just the forces of capital say, “We’re going to go have a Cold War with Russia. We need to show them we have nuclear bombs.” Right.

Matt (00:11:46):

There’s a reason why you’re feeling so antsy about this, Truman, and why you want this man to come in here and give you exactly the answer you want so that you can then go to the next phone call that you have, which surely has to do if you follow it far enough with money. Someone gave you something to help you get where you are. Now you urgently need to prove that you were the right choice or that you’re going to give the favor you needed or whatever. It’s just follow the fucking money.

Laci (00:12:10):

And he’s kind of the opposite of Oppenheimer in being the least curious man in the world. The opposite? Yeah, the opposite of just like, I’m just like, I shake hands and slap backs and I do what my bosses tell me to say. Slap babies

Matt (00:12:22):

And kiss hands.

Laci (00:12:23):

Yeah. And I’m just in the right place at the right time and fucking FDR dies and me, a hayseed, a haberdasher from Kansas City get put into the presidency and I get to decide to drop the bomb. But you didn’t actually decide. There was no choice. The choice was made for you. And that’s what this movie captures so well. And I even will talk about this in a second in the history segment. I don’t even know that Nolan has totally wrapped his head around that because I think he really does think if Oppenheimer didn’t build the bomb, maybe the bomb never got built.

Matt (00:12:58):

But this movie does such a good job of showing you how many brilliant scientists there are and how really Oppenheimer, what he’s really good at is getting them all together and making them all feel heard and seen and giving them room to come up with their brilliant ideas. He’s not even the one. He’s just the project manager.

Laci (00:13:16):

Yeah. He’s the movie director.

Matt (00:13:19):

Thank you, Matt.

Laci (00:13:21):

And these are all the various departments. Yeah. All right, let’s get into the history segment. Just first remind you, we have a Patreon, patreon.com/oneweek rental with bonus episodes about the other Nolan movies we didn’t cover on the main feed like The Odyssey, Insomnia and Dunkirk.

Matt (00:13:36):

And Spider-Man for some reason.

Laci (00:13:38):

And also Spider-Man, which he did not direct that, right?

Matt (00:13:41):

I don’t think he did, no.

Laci (00:13:42):

No.

Matt (00:13:43):

Not nearly enough time travel.

Laci (00:13:44):

If you’re listening on the podcast feed, please subscribe to YouTube so you can see my sexy wife.

Matt (00:13:50):

I’m not doing a lot of sexy stuff right here, but I do have a fun shirt. It says Your Mom signed by Sigmund Freud. Your

Laci (00:13:59):

Mom – Apropo to this episode maybe. I don’t know. I don’t

Matt (00:14:01):

Know. There’s a lot of mom stuff in this.

Laci (00:14:03):

No, but they do say Freud in the movie. I think at least once. And let’s get to it. History of Oppenheimer. We’re looking at Albert Einstein now. What

Matt (00:14:40):

A

Laci (00:14:40):

Sweetie.

Matt (00:14:41):

Does anyone have a sweeter little pudding than that?

Laci (00:14:44):

Now this quote – Droopy

Matt (00:14:46):

Dog.

Laci (00:14:46):

That’s often attributed to him is, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Matt (00:14:53):

Ah, because everything’s going to go down, baby.

Laci (00:14:56):

Like all famous quotes. Infantino. Like all famous quotes, it’s unclear if he actually said this. It seems more like it paraphrased a sentiment he was often sharing and he was aware of the – I’ll

Matt (00:15:09):

Allow it.

Laci (00:15:10):

The idea that we’re not going to be able to stop nuclearization. A war is inevitable where nuclear bombs are going to go off and they’re going to knock everyone back to the Bronze Age or worse.

Matt (00:15:21):

Well, in an arms race is inevitable and they end in science and in physics and from gun to tank to bomb to mega bomb to SharkNATO, that’s an arms race, right? It’s just have bigger arms. You

Laci (00:15:36):

Have to keep escalating.

Matt (00:15:38):

How big is that?

Laci (00:15:39):

Now, do you think if Oppenheimer is Nolan and Albert Einstein is this sort of aging guy from the preview. Is he Spielberg? Is he supposed to represent Spielberg? I think so. But I don’t know. Nolan’s too similar to Spielberg.

Matt (00:15:54):

Right. That’s why I was also going to say Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick. But he’s not really a gatekeeper. He’s just more of a dream stealer. So let me think. Is there an old guard, but maybe just the old way Hollywood did things where it wasn’t about the director, it was about the team maybe?

Laci (00:16:17):

Yeah. I was thinking maybe it could be like a David Lean, if he got to talk to David Lean, but David, he makes movies that are like David Lean movies. So I think you’re right. It’d have to be like-

Matt (00:16:25):

Like the guy at the end of the Spielberg bio movie.

Laci (00:16:31):

John Ford.

Matt (00:16:32):

Right. Where to put the camera.

Laci (00:16:33):

Yeah. I don’t know. It’s just kind of fun to think about Nolan visiting this ghost of old Hollywood who’s like, “Yeah, you all made fun of me. You think I’m an old fogey.”

Matt (00:16:41):

That giant pond and then the long walk to the AOC, the ACO.

Laci (00:16:49):

AEC? The

Matt (00:16:49):

AEC. Is that just Washington?

Laci (00:16:52):

No, that’s at Princeton. And that’s not the AEC, that’s just the physics department or the atomic department at Princeton University.

Matt (00:16:59):

So why is Albert Einstein farting around around there?

Laci (00:17:02):

He works there.

Matt (00:17:04):

Albert Einstein needed a job?

Laci (00:17:06):

God. That’s sort of like – He should

Matt (00:17:08):

Have sold t-shirts.

Laci (00:17:09):

What he’s doing there is he’s in the, I have a medal. I wear a metal phase. I’m just kind of a mascot. I might as well be wearing an Albert Einstein mascot suit. I

Matt (00:17:18):

Just think it’s funny that the second most famous scientist I could think of, Oppenheimer is interviewing to be this thing and he looks out the window and goes, “Oh look, the other

Laci (00:17:27):

Scientists.”

Matt (00:17:29):

They’re just here.

Laci (00:17:30):

This movie is based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. I’ve now read this book twice. I read it when the movie came out three years ago. I cannot believe I finished it again to prepare for this episode because it’s an enormous book, but it’s so fun. Assuming it is accurate, the movie is incredibly accurate to the book, but the Albert Einstein thing is a fabrication. Oppenheimer did have this conversation, but with another scientist, not with Albert Einstein, but that’s an artistic liberty to make you sort of just understand the generations talking to each other. Yeah, this is a movie about a man who does something. He tells himself it’s for the right reasons. And then as soon as it happens, he’s like, “Oh shit, shouldn’t have done that.” And now haunted, absolutely haunted.

Matt (00:18:14):

Very Matthew McConaughey character and on the same trajectory of I am obsessed by these thoughts that I have bigger things. I have something else to give. I have a different mission and oh, the opportunity to do this mission. Okay, yay. And then, oh, what the fuck? And what was my decision? It’s different because Matthew McConaughey’s saving the world, but he threw away his whole family and his ability to be there for his children. It’s this driven man that he was never just going to sit still in his living room

Laci (00:18:45):

And teach science. Th great point of his daughter knows his mind is made up. It’s like it isn’t even a choice for him. I have to do this. I’m compelled to do this. And that’s why I think this is a movie about people realizing they have no power or agency even as they think they do.

Matt (00:18:59):

I do appreciate though that the women in his life, for the most part, already know what he is. He doesn’t marry them young and they’re like sweethearts and then all of a sudden he’s this driven thing. It’s like to a certain extent they know what they’re signing up for.

Laci (00:19:18):

As he says about Kitty, his wife, Emily Blunt, Kitty and I are grownups. And all that implies she’s so great. She has a snarl at the end of the movie. She also is just swimming in resentment for all – But the

Matt (00:19:32):

Whole time it’s building, you know she’s got something to say, but she’s in such a position as to be useless. She’s just a woman. She’s just his wife and she’s got, but she’s on the inside. She’s been told all these things that have been happening and she’s screaming from the rooftop, “It is straws. Fight.”

Laci (00:19:48):

Because she knows him better than anybody, her husband. It’s because you feel like you deserve to be flagellated. I know you. I know that you want this kind of punishment, you sick pig.

Matt (00:19:58):

Well, and you’ve got all these flaws. You are a womanizer. You do let down people. You did make something bad, but you’re not a bad person. You’re guilt ridden.

Laci (00:20:07):

In 2023, Christopher Nolan told the New York Times he absolutely believes J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived, a line that gets said in the movie multiple times. He said, “Because if my worst fears are true, he’ll be the man who destroyed the world.” Who’s more important than that? I think it’s very easy to make the case for Oppenheimer as the most important person who ever lived because he is the person who facilitated and achieved atomic weapons and indeed the hydrogen bomb because he let Teller work on it. So he is the individual who is most able to marshal the forces effectively. Is there a parallel universe in which it wasn’t him, but it was somebody else and that would’ve happened? Quite possibly. That’s the argument for diminishing his importance in history, but that’s an assumption that history is made simply by movements of society and not by individuals.

Matt (00:20:48):

But you also need the answer to why did Robert Downey Jr. not become a scientist, even though he’s clearly smart and has this background because charisma, that’s the difference between the scientists who lead things and the ones who don’t become scientists at all. You can have that though. You can have that interest, but what you are is charismatic and you know what people need to hear and you know how to say it. So it’s like Oppenheimer was as close to a politician as you can get while still deciding to be a scientist. He has so much ability to get people together, to get them to be getting along or to separate them just right or to make use of just the right people. A lot of scientists are probably a bit on the spectrum and he’s not. He’s very social.

Laci (00:21:40):

Right. The other difference between them is Oppenheimer grew up extremely wealthy and Straws did not. Straws is like, “I would’ve loved to go to Harvard and Cambridge and just think, but I had to become a shoe salesman.”

Matt (00:21:52):

Sure, sure. Okay. Well, that was the first straw. Okay. But no, I’m not saying the difference between them two. I’m saying that they are more alike than maybe the rest of the scientists are alike to Oppenheimer. Oh yeah, that’s a good point. That’s what I’m saying. Sure, there’s lots of scientists, but not scientists that can convince you of something that can work well with others. It took working with everyone to make it happen. So I’m saying this social scientist is what was so rare and maybe singular.

Laci (00:22:26):

Nolan is very dismissive. Is history made by movements of society or individuals? This is called the great man theory of history, something I wholeheartedly do not believe in. I believe it’s structures and giant economic forces that shape history. And I think if J. Robert Oppenheimer had not led the Manhattan Project, someone else would’ve.

Matt (00:22:45):

They would’ve just taken the second best choice and maybe it had been sloppier and more expensive or stops

Laci (00:22:49):

And stops. It might have looked the same, but what ultimately is the difference? And the movie seems to keep acknowledging that he says, “Well, the Russians are going to build a bomb.” Somebody split the atom, and it’s a great scene. They split the atom. I’ll go try to do it myself. Hey, I did it. And it’s like, yeah, you can’t stop this. It’s not that we just had the one genius in the world.

Matt (00:23:10):

Right, right, right.

Laci (00:23:11):

But somebody’s going to get to it first.

Matt (00:23:13):

And I love how there’s a lot of scientists, but they show you how small the community really is because they all know of each other and they all know you can name anyone from any country working on anything and they’ve heard of this person. It’s still an elite small group, even though it’s all over the world.

Laci (00:23:30):

Yeah. And maybe it’s already a three-hour movie. The book does a really good job of explaining why Oppenheimer was so distinguished for what he was accomplishing before the Manhattan Project that made him such a celebrity.

Matt (00:23:44):

Yeah, that I don’t

Laci (00:23:45):

Know. Yeah. It’s just sort of like, oh, because he did some science stuff. Great. Good for him. Now I said Nolan’s always been obsessed with Oppenheimer, but it appears that’s not exactly true. He knew Oppenheimer. He knew the things that a normal history dad knows about Oppenheimer. And there was that thing we learned about Nolan’s con artist, older brother, Matthew. He code named himself Oppenheimer, but it seems like that’s a coincidence. Yeah. But he knew the now I am become death thing, and he knew the famous story of Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands. And Oppenheimer is mentioned in Tenet and in Tenet, when they rapped Tenet, Robert Pattinson gave Christopher Nolan as a wrapping party gift, a book of speeches that Oppenheimer gave about nuclear proliferation. And this is what got Nolan’s mind racing. But the ideas had always been there, I think as far back as Batman begins, of society’s going to.

Laci (00:24:40):

It just naturally reaches a point where we almost burn it to the ground. It reaches the height of its decadence.

Matt (00:24:45):

Well, this is Nolan’s little physics flying around in his head at night. He can only find a way to make every story lead to this. He Nolans it up by saying there was always a driven man. Driven man drove to the bad place, made things worse.

Laci (00:25:02):

Yeah. In the prestige. Man, do

Matt (00:25:03):

That. Sometimes he drives to a good place, makes things better, but mainly it gets worse.

Laci (00:25:07):

In the prestige, Tesla builds the machine. He tells you, Jackman, you must never use this machine.

Matt (00:25:12):

Put it at the bottom of the ocean.

Laci (00:25:13):

But they both know I’m using this machine and I’m building this machine. We can’t stop ourselves. We can’t help it. We have to open Pandora’s box. You have to read the book that’s going to turn you insane.

Matt (00:25:25):

I swear to God, Chuck Klosterman said that it’s a book that makes you go gay.

Laci (00:25:28):

Chuck Klosterman did say that he was probably inspired by the John Carpenter 1995 film In the Mouth of Madness.

Matt (00:25:36):

And the title.

Laci (00:25:37):

So Nolan gets very interested in the idea of doing a movie about Oppenheimer, but there had always been attempts to turn American Prometheus into a film. Oliver Stone at one point was attached to it, and you can easily see the Oliver Stone version of that movie. Yeah,

Matt (00:25:53):

Because it’s

Laci (00:25:54):

Heisty. And it’s a billion characters and all these character actors, and you’re just fast editing and jumping around through time. Eventually it gets optioned by the producer, J. David Wargo, who partners with the actor, James Woods. James Woods is a key figure in this movie. And they told him, “Please do not do any publicity for this movie. We don’t want anyone – As

Matt (00:26:16):

Oppenheimer? Because he’s kind of tall and –

Laci (00:26:18):

No, I think he was just a producer. He wanted the book to be made. And James Woods is a big Trump guy and he sucks, but he’s also one of my favorite actors. He’s just a brilliant actor. But he was asked to,” Please don’t do any publicity for the movie. You’ll heard our Oscar chances. “So he didn’t get to go up on stage to accept a best picture trophy or anything. They met with Christopher Nolan. They gave him the book American Prometheus. Nolan’s like,” Hell yeah. He writes a script very, very fast. “He told the New York Times,” I wrote the script relatively quickly once I started writing, but I had a lot it worked out beforehand. Many years ago, I had written a script about the life of Howard Hughes that never got made because I wrote it right as Scorsese was making his own film.

Matt (00:27:08):

“This keeps coming up. God, he’s obsessed with not getting to make this movie.

Laci (00:27:11):

“But I cracked the script to my satisfaction, and that gave me a lot of insight on how to distill a person’s life and how to view a person’s life in a thematic way so that the film is more than the sum of its parts. So in some ways the script, yes, it took me a few months, but it was really a culmination of 20 years of thinking.” Now that is fascinating. I just did a find and replace with Howard Hughes.

Matt (00:27:32):

I feel that because it makes sense for The Odyssey. I’m like, “God, what a big story.” And I just didn’t appreciate what a big story Oppenheimer was. So if I had to though like, “Oh duh, he’s already taken a huge book and made it this fast-paced, fun movie where you feel all of it.” And then with The Odyssey, it’s like, “God, that’s meant to feel long. How’s he going to fucking keep this fun and not just, oh God, Matt Damon, just get home.” It keeps moving. He has cracked some kind of code for layering storytelling so that nothing ever gets so boring that you’re checking out.

Laci (00:28:10):

He figured out the structure. And so at that point it’s like you just got to fill in the. It basically writes itself at that point.

Matt (00:28:15):

I know, but it’s so intricate that, yeah, he’s got it. And anyone could study his movies and still not get it. He’s got it.

Laci (00:28:25):

I love The Aviator. If we had more time, we’d watch it and do a bonus episode or something because it’d be interesting to think how would Nolan’s Howard Hughes movie be structured?

Matt (00:28:36):

Still do the Aviator and still apply our Nolan knowledge. We’re working with 20 years of knowledge in Nolan right now.

Laci (00:28:42):

And I think that movie also is like the climax is a hearing. So maybe it would’ve been like, yeah, we’re going to constantly jump back to this hearing.

Matt (00:28:49):

Most people who have a hearing in their life, it is the most important

Laci (00:28:53):

Part of their

Matt (00:28:53):

Life. Oh

Laci (00:28:54):

Yeah. Never have a hearing. That’s my advice.

Matt (00:28:55):

JFK don’t have

Laci (00:28:59):

It. Emma Thomas told Bilga Abiri in vulture, she said, “When you watch the movies, it’s very clear what’s preoccupying Chris at any given moment in time,” says Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife and the producer of all the skills. “When our kids were little, inception reflected his preoccupation with the importance of family. And as once kids get older, one becomes even more preoccupied with what the future will look like or if they’ll get to have one. Thomas notes their daughter Flora is among the extras in a convoy of people escaping the dust storms in Interstellar. “Look,

Matt (00:29:31):

He’s handsome. You always see pictures of people from old where, especially if there’s already been a biopic and you’re like,” Well, they used a hot actor. Of course the guy’s not going to look cute. “He’s cute. He’s

Laci (00:29:43):

Cute back

Matt (00:29:44):

Then cute.

Laci (00:29:45):

And everyone said Cillian Murphy looks so much like him. Do you agree?

Matt (00:29:50):

I don’t even care. I think just the essence was there, but sure, I see it. This guy looks more New York, more Italian. There’s Cillian Murphy looks British to me, but –

Laci (00:30:02):

He’s Irish, but

Matt (00:30:03):

Yeah. Yeah, it’s the blue glistening eyes and cheekbones that just don’t really sell the New Yorker for me. But I mean, who gives a shit? I loved him in this.

Laci (00:30:15):

Yeah. And the guy who wrote American Prometheus, he got to visit the set and he told Cillian Murphy like, “Wow, I can’t believe how much you sound like him.” And Cillian said, “Thank you, but that’s actually not what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to capture the spirit.” That’s what we actors are trying to

Matt (00:30:31):

Do. We didn’t need you to correct him, Cillian. Just take the fucking compliment.

Laci (00:30:34):

Julius Robert Oppenheimer, born in 1904. He always said the J stood for nothing, but on his birth certificate, it’s Julius. And this is because his father’s name was Julius. And they put that on the birth certificate and then learned we are non-practicing Jews and we just found out in the Jewish faith, you’re not supposed to name a child after a living relative. So they’re like, oops. Raised in the upper west side of Manhattan, a very privileged and wealthy upbringing. He was a child prodigy. His family knew he’s destined for great things. He goes to Harvard, goes to Cambridge. But

Matt (00:31:03):

What a big dick swinging move to be like, everyone here in this family’s last name is Oppenheimer, but I go by Oppenheimer. In fact, I so go by my last name that I have a nickname to my last name. And that is what people call me. It’s like, well, shit. That’s like if our kid had walked up to all the Sullivans when they were alive and been like, you guys keep your first names. I’m fucking sully. Just having your way with the family name is all I’m saying.

Laci (00:31:32):

He went to Cambridge

Matt (00:31:33):

Descendants. 5’10”. Oh, it’s fucking pathetic. I’m sorry. He has tall guy energy. 5’10”. Sorry L, 5’10” people. That’s the American average. You’re fine. Oh

Laci (00:31:46):

No, he’s towering back then. Plus I think Cillian Murphy’s like 5’2″.

Matt (00:31:51):

Really?

Laci (00:31:51):

He’s a dining man. Yes. I though he was

Matt (00:31:52):

Huge. I though he was like 6’2″.

Laci (00:31:55):

Trick photography. Dang. Well, that’s looking up. 5’7″. Okay. Not that small.

Matt (00:32:00):

He’s a baby. He’s my mom’s height.

Laci (00:32:04):

Hello. I’m Cillian.

Matt (00:32:06):

Little pocket gangster.

Laci (00:32:07):

Wanted to study the new physics. What are the new physics? I wondered. The

Matt (00:32:11):

Ones that hadn’t already been done.

Laci (00:32:13):

Classical physics, Laci, you see takes place at the level above the atom. The objects you could see with your eye. Quantum physics is like, what if we look under that? Now we see all kinds of shit that we don’t understand. So Oppenheimer enters this world, this revolution in physics and the movie shows, he’s lost it and he’s tortured by it. Also very emotionally immature, doing all kinds of fun pranks like poisoning his teacher’s apple.

Matt (00:32:36):

Okay, but he’s there for just the beginning of something that we didn’t know could be. I’ll bet you would get obsessed. I mean, it’s like being there for the first time television existed. There are always going to be those visionaries who see 20, 30 years into the future of what this is going to be. Like what’s his nose with the internet? I’ll think of his nose in a second.

Laci (00:33:02):

Al Gore?

Matt (00:33:03):

No.

Laci (00:33:04):

Okay.

Matt (00:33:05):

David Bowie.

Laci (00:33:06):

David Bowie saw the internet?

Matt (00:33:09):

Well, he just understood what the internet very early on, understood what the internet would do to people. Everyone was so excited about it connecting people and it opening the world and then now everyone’s going to be on a more equal playing field and stuff. And because being a celebrity and just being in this very dog eat dog environment, I feel like he just understood that this is going to be used as a way to misinform people, to hurt people, to ostracize people. He very much did not like the advent of social media.

Laci (00:33:49):

Goes over to Cambridge, but he’s bad in the lab. He keeps fumbling with his damn hands. That’s what

Matt (00:33:53):

I’m saying. He’s a bad fucking scientist. He’s just a thinker.

Laci (00:33:56):

He just wants to think. He just wants to think. He’s brilliant. And then when he becomes a professional physicist, they have the, why have you never won a Nobel Prize? And the book suggests it’s because he never had the attention span to devote himself to just one thing.

Matt (00:34:10):

He is a classic gifted kid. If he had been born now, he’d be. That’s what you learn whenever your kid gets into gifted. There’s plenty of smart kids and they go to honors. Gifted is for the kids that don’t know how to sit down.

Laci (00:34:25):

It’s for the really, really obnoxious children.

Matt (00:34:27):

It’s for ADHD. It’s for spectrum smarties. It just is.

Laci (00:34:31):

He would meet with other people, often his students and be like, “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s co-author a paper.” And then he outlines everything and is like, “Okay, you go off and write it.” And he just kept doing that. They say that’s why he never won a Nobel Prize because you got to do one specific thing, but he was all over the place.

Matt (00:34:49):

Respect.

Laci (00:34:50):

American Prometheus says that that thing with the apple never. Oppenheimer told that story, but they found no evidence that it actually happened.

Matt (00:34:56):

He was only 63 when he died?

Laci (00:34:57):

Yeah.

Matt (00:34:58):

What did he die of?

Laci (00:35:00):

Cancer.

Matt (00:35:01):

From the Adams? I

Laci (00:35:02):

Don’t know. The

Matt (00:35:02):

Adams got him.

Laci (00:35:05):

Hopped around Europe sitting under all these famous physicists making a name for himself at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He lectured in Dutch and his Dutch students gave him the nickname Oppi, and then he went back to America and split his time teaching between University of California and Berkeley and Caltech in Pasadena. And in Pasadena, he stayed with this married couple and fucked that wife for years and years.

Matt (00:35:27):

Is that the ones who eventually take his kid?

Laci (00:35:29):

No. Okay. No, but they do have the line at the end of the movie, Robert.

Matt (00:35:34):

Yeah, the blonde lady. Okay. I didn’t know that he lived with them.

Laci (00:35:38):

He died of a broken heart and he’s like, no, that’s absurd. He never found out that we were having an affair. All right. Now let’s talk about the 1930s and the labor movement. Folks, you’re not going to learn about this in your history textbooks – You’re

Matt (00:35:52):

Fucking

Laci (00:35:53):

Nuts. In high school, but labor militancy and the role of the Communist Party in America, it was the backbone of the New Deal. It was the New Deal by FDR was a way of like, how do we assure America does not have a communist revolution? Let’s give them half a loaf because there’s an extremely militant labor movement. There are strikes happening all the time.

Matt (00:36:14):

People absolutely know their power. Take everybody’s money and all they got to do is stand in the street, occupy Wall Street.

Laci (00:36:21):

Well, the criticism of Occupy Wall Street is the people who are gathering are sort of comfortable middle class kids versus people in the 1930s who were like, “This is my life. This is actual stakes for me.” Oppenheimer gets very sympathetic to the labor movement and to communism, but the thing about him is I think he is ultimately a liberal because his interest in it is just intellectual. It’s moral. “I have sympathy for you, but ultimately my life’s fine no matter what.”

Matt (00:36:48):

Yeah, he was very non-committal, just the same way as he is with his work. I’m not joining.

Laci (00:36:52):

Right. I’ve read all three volumes of Das Kapital in German.

Matt (00:36:58):

He doesn’t seem to want to be labeled, and that might include being labeled as a husband, but when you see him interacting with the communist party in the beginning, he’s not under any impression that this is going to get him in trouble. He doesn’t seem to care about that. It’s just his nature to be like, “I’m not joining, but

Laci (00:37:19):

I’m

Matt (00:37:20):

Learning.”

Laci (00:37:20):

So there’s two waves of communism in America. You have the late teens, early 20s. There’s also two red scares in America, both of them reactions to the popularity of communism. Then there’s the first red scare in the 1920s and communism dies down. And then in the 30s with the Great Depression, it really becomes very popular, hundreds of thousands of official members of the Communist Party in the 1930s in America, and they support foreign causes, namely the Spanish Civil War where you have the Republican loyalist side of communists and socialists fighting against the fascists led by Franco. Even sort of New Deal Democrats and mainstream liberals had sympathies for the communists in Spain. It

Matt (00:38:03):

Just wasn’t a dirty word.

Laci (00:38:04):

Yeah. And so communism was just

Matt (00:38:06):

Like – It’s just a different way to have a government.

Laci (00:38:10):

It was not this dirty word. I mean, think of it like if you were in the year 2020, if you posted a black square on your Instagram or something, I expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter or something like that.That’s how non-forbidden it was, how sort of mainstream and acceptable it was. And this of course changed, but Oppenheimer moved around in that world and he was very sympathetic to the labor movement. He organized students on campus. He took students to strikes.

Matt (00:38:41):

Okay. But see, that’s why it’s brilliant for the government to find out or to orchestrate a red scare. It’s because it was so widely a norm. If you want to control somebody, it’s not hard to find the communism in their past. And if you’re in mid-red scare, you’re going to feel guilty about any dabbling you did, even if you know you only attended one meeting and you will be more amicable to be. I mean, you can’t get controlled that way because it’s such a hot, bad time to be called that at all. And if you’re rising it all in your industry, whatever it is. No, no, no, no, no. It’s like being caught with a 15-year-old, not person, 15-year-old blackface photo of yourself or something. You’re like, “I mean, in the ’90s, I was flavor-flave, but I hope they don’t find that picture.” I wasn’t.

Matt (00:39:32):

But you know what I mean? It was so widespread and it wasn’t what it is now. So as soon as you come to any kind of level of notoriety, if someone wants to control you, they can dig enough to hopefully get to control you.

Laci (00:39:48):

Yeah. Even if you were not a member of the Communist Party, it was all sort of mushed together. I attended a strike or I went to social gatherings that communists were at. And then the other thing about communism at the time was it’s an international project. So you have the Soviet Union, which their goal at the time was we need to spread the revolution worldwide and that’s how everything can get mushed together. I can be a communist activist in America and maybe I have contacts with Russian intelligence, which is really weird, but that’s just kind of how it works. Or

Matt (00:40:21):

Maybe you just know Russian people.

Laci (00:40:23):

And then the communist label is a great way to be like, “You’re striking at your workplace?” It sounds kind of communist to me. Yeah, of

Matt (00:40:28):

Course. I mean, it’s the ultimate oppression. It just reminds me of the church. Let’s pick the things everyone have the drive to do and make that the sin. Sex. Saying the word fuck.

Laci (00:40:44):

All that is to say that the New Deal, which is the enormous expansion of the federal government, the creation of all these social safety nets, the sort of most robust welfare state we ever had, it didn’t happen because Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a nice, generous man. He was pressured by this very, very militant labor movement that was happening at the time. But communism then lost favor toward the end of the decade when Soviet Russia allied with Nazi Germany. It was a very surprising thing that happened that Molotov Rubendrop packed in 1939. It only lasted two years and then Germany declared war on Russia. But communism was never as popular in America. Oppenheimer, never a member of the communist party, but still had his sympathies and has this attitude throughout the whole movie. Russia is our ally. Why are we talking about them like they’re the enemy, they’re the equivalent of the Nazis?

Laci (00:41:43):

When the war starts in 1939, remember America doesn’t enter for two more years. If you’re a leftist, your sympathies are for the allies because they are fighting against fascism and they are fighting against the regime that’s oppressing Jews in Europe. And that kind of in him morphs into, “I’m a patriot for America. I want to help my country.”

Matt (00:42:06):

Yeah. So wait, that begs the question then if you’re on the right in America, you’re excited about Hitler?

Laci (00:42:12):

There were plenty of people who were sympathetic. Oh, absolutely.

Matt (00:42:16):

I knew that.

Laci (00:42:18):

History

Matt (00:42:18):

Buff.

Laci (00:42:19):

Charles Lindbergh, most famous, the America first party was – Well, I’m glad

Matt (00:42:23):

He blew up.

Laci (00:42:24):

Blew

Matt (00:42:24):

Up.

Laci (00:42:25):

He didn’t blow up.

Matt (00:42:25):

His daughter.

Laci (00:42:26):

His son, his baby was kidnapped. They never found him.

Matt (00:42:29):

They blew up in the Hindenburg.

Laci (00:42:31):

Maybe, yeah.

Matt (00:42:33):

The didgeridoo.

Laci (00:42:34):

The dirigible? Yeah.

Matt (00:42:36):

Yeah.

Laci (00:42:37):

But what’s your connection? How are you connecting these two things? Air?

Matt (00:42:41):

No. I though Lindenberg was the name of the dirigible.

Laci (00:42:45):

No, that’s the Hindenburg.

Matt (00:42:46):

Just so you can see how I’m connected. I get it now. God damn it. I get it now. If you were Max, you would totally understood that faster. That’s our kid, not my lover. It’s an ambiguous name. I wanted to clarify.

Laci (00:42:59):

The FBI starts a file on Oppenheimer in 1941 noting he attended a meeting at the house of his friend, Hakan Chevalier. Chevalier is the guy he gives his kids to. Will you take my kids, please?

Matt (00:43:10):

Handens is the guy that he gives to the feds.

Laci (00:43:14):

So as we go through the movie itself, I’ll detail more of these connections with communism and communists, but the Chevalier incident itself we have to talk about.

Matt (00:43:25):

Great casting.

Laci (00:43:26):

Yes, because this is the sort of central thing that leads to Oppenheimer’s downfall. His best friend, Hakan Chevalier, played by Jefferson Hall in the movie. This guy was also the guy who’s the agent that they extracted the beginning of Tenet. It’s another great thing about Oppenheimer is how many old Nolan actors come back, even if it’s just for one or two scenes. Like this guy. So he was Chevalier, an official member of the communist party and maybe or maybe not an asset of Soviet intelligence, but he was a professor of French literature at Berkeley. It was unusual at the time for the physicists to fraternize with non-physicists, but Oppenheimer’s like, “I love all intellectual pursuits.” Yeah. So they were best friends. No,

Matt (00:44:09):

My theory, I mean that he’s a social butterfly and he has his own butterfly effect. I’m just saying Oppenheimer is rare and special in the way he can get people together and has an interest in all people, not just inside of his own physics bubble.

Laci (00:44:25):

So Oppenheimer became very, very close with Chevalier. There was this predecessor to the Manhattan Project was just sort of this informal working group of physicists at Berkeley led by the Josh Hartnett character. Josh

Matt (00:44:40):

Hartnett is in this movie?

Laci (00:44:41):

Yeah. He’s the guy

Matt (00:44:46):

That’s Josh

Laci (00:44:46):

Harpy? In the lab. He runs the rad lab.

Matt (00:44:49):

The good looking guy with this

Laci (00:44:50):

Whooping

Matt (00:44:50):

Hair is Josh Hartnett.

Laci (00:44:52):

Yeah. Lawrence. Yeah.

Matt (00:44:54):

I was like, “He’s handsome. I have no idea who the fuck he is.” Oh,

Laci (00:44:56):

Wow. Yeah.

Matt (00:44:58):

That’s crazy, man.

Laci (00:44:59):

But they don’t include Oppenheimer because he’s being way too careless about all his union affiliations and all those people he’s fraternizing with. He’s being too

Matt (00:45:07):

Nice to everybody.

Laci (00:45:09):

But in 1940, they eventually let him in as long as, “Hey, can you tamp down the communist stuff? Okay, we’ll let you in.” So 1943, just before Oppenheimer leaves for Los Alamos, he has a social engagement with Chevalier. And Chevalier says, “Hey, it’d kind of be nice if we could share some intel with.” He

Matt (00:45:27):

Doesn’t say that. He’s so much more careful if it’s true to the movie.

Laci (00:45:31):

He does phrase it extremely carefully and –

Matt (00:45:33):

So casually.

Laci (00:45:36):

Says like, “I know somebody who wanted you to know they could make that happen.” And in the movie Oppenheimer says, “But that would be treason.” And Chevalier says, “I know. I just though it was important that you know that someone told me that.”

Matt (00:45:47):

And I think that’s reasonable because it’s like I don’t know what your instincts are right now. I don’t know what your goals are, Oppi. I know who you used to be and what you like and that you like everybody. And maybe that might be something useful to you one day. Here’s that information. I’m not saying I do it. I’m not

Laci (00:46:02):

Saying I’m

Matt (00:46:02):

Going to tell anyone else. Just you’re a guy that needs resources and I want to help you in your mission.

Laci (00:46:10):

It could even be a warning. You construe it as a warning. Hey, stay away from this guy. But he phrases it so beautifully, but Oppenheimer does not then report this. He

Matt (00:46:18):

Doesn’t say who the guy is though. He doesn’t say it.

Laci (00:46:23):

Somebody’s

Matt (00:46:23):

Cousin.

Laci (00:46:24):

He doesn’t report this, and because he doesn’t report this, this is the thing that they later use to bring him down. He doesn’t report it until later in the stupidest, most clumsy way where he tries to half report it. I didn’t

Matt (00:46:35):

Know Casey Affleck could be scary. It’s

Laci (00:46:37):

Terrifying. He’s

Matt (00:46:37):

Fucking terrifying

Laci (00:46:38):

In

Matt (00:46:39):

This movie.

Laci (00:46:40):

As Pash, Boris Pash.

Matt (00:46:42):

Ooh. Which name? Dealer’s Choice, Sophie’s Choice on that fucking name.

Laci (00:46:47):

But I think the thing is something would’ve brought Oppenheimer down. They needed him to come down. They

Matt (00:46:52):

Needed him.

Laci (00:46:52):

He’s too

Matt (00:46:53):

Powerful.

Laci (00:46:54):

So they would’ve found some. Oh, hey, you fucked this man’s wife. How dare you? Well, they

Matt (00:46:59):

Probably even set the skeletons up. You know what I mean? Why are all the wives so hot? Give the scientists ugly wives. But no, I mean, all these things are in his path and he’s got Matt Damon sniffing around him the whole time. If you need to control him, why not set up a meeting over here and see if he attends it? Why not send a kid in his class who’s got a poster?

Laci (00:47:22):

Easy. I think it’s like they didn’t need to set up those things. Those things were happening.

Matt (00:47:28):

I’m just saying the government seems to cover all their bases. If you need to control this guy later, you probably know that and maybe

Laci (00:47:34):

You go

Matt (00:47:34):

Ahead and give him some shit to step in.

Laci (00:47:36):

And I think one of the most important scenes of the movie is Oppenheimer realizing that. I though you hired me in spite of my communist past. No, you hired me because of my communist past because you could control me. I told Laci, we just watched a movie where this happened. What was it? It took me a while and I realized, oh, Sydney Sweeney and the Housemaid. I though you hired me because you didn’t know I was a criminal in my past. Turns out you hired me because you knew I was in prison for murder, so you could control me as your housemaid. It’s just like that.

Matt (00:48:05):

Quite the connection.

Laci (00:48:07):

A legacy of the Los Alamos station is the volume of nuclear waste dumped in the vicinity. Something not brought up in the movie. According to Searchlight New Mexico, “Beginning in 1943, the year the Manhattan Project came to Los Alamos, workers released radioactive waste into the canyon. Three remediations would follow, but as an investigator’s analysis found, a super weapons grade plutonium persists in the soil, water, and plant life in and around Los Alamos.” They

Matt (00:48:36):

Mentioned the boys’ school in passing in the movie, and that’s all that they do. They had to demolish that boys’ school to make. Actually, those boys are lucky because there’s a girls’ school that is around when this happens and the ash or whatever starts falling and they’re all playing in the yard. There’s 13 of them and they think it’s snow, so they

Laci (00:48:59):

Open

Matt (00:48:59):

Their mouths and they catch it. And 10 of those 13 girls died of cancer before 40 years old.

Laci (00:49:05):

Jesus Christ. They also say, “Yeah, there’s that school and it’s kind of that. Oh, and some Indians come up here for burial rights. No big

Matt (00:49:13):

Deal. Yeah,

Laci (00:49:13):

Because it’s

Matt (00:49:14):

Sacred.

Laci (00:49:14):

I know.

Matt (00:49:15):

These are sacred lands. You’re not the first person to find these vast, beautiful places.

Laci (00:49:21):

Chosen because it meant something to him personally, and it was his place where he felt centered and didn’t have to think about all the spinning particles and shit.

Matt (00:49:29):

So let’s put them all here.

Laci (00:49:31):

Now, I think that the movie’s already an incredibly complicated story and adding in the story about nuclear waste is just another wrinkle to make it. I think Nolan is interested in the implications of blowing up the world.

Matt (00:49:45):

This would be like saying that the director needs to be also interested in all the litter he leaves behind or how much film he takes up or how much memory it costs to save one of his movies. That for somebody else.

Laci (00:49:57):

Yeah, I know, but you got to think it probably haunts him. What damage are we doing? Okay.

Matt (00:50:06):

Not enough to make him stop.

Laci (00:50:07):

His worst nightmare is finding out movies are evil. What if I found out movies are actually evil? He’s been

Matt (00:50:12):

Preparing his whole life for this to be found out.

Laci (00:50:15):

So the Trinity test happens on July 16th, 1945. First ever nuclear bomb exploded in world history. Now, over the course of the movie, you can see Oppenheimer’s justifications for continuing with the project because he knows a bomb is bad, but he says, “First, we can’t let the Nazis get the bomb. We can’t let them get to it first. But over the course of the movie, they learn the Nazis aren’t on the right track. They’re not going to be able to do it.”

Matt (00:50:41):

Don’t make me go tenant on your ass, but the best way to give someone a bomb is to make one that exists. Now someone can take that one. Now someone can find out how you made it. It’s just like with all the nine pieces of the algorithm or whatever. It’s like you just put them all together. That’s how people take it.

Laci (00:51:03):

Yeah. And Einstein tells him, “If you find out that your calculations are correct about igniting the atmosphere, you go talk to the Nazis right now. And the thing is – Ask me.

Matt (00:51:13):

Ask me, Matt.

Laci (00:51:14):

I know. Who cares?

Matt (00:51:15):

Gives a shit. We might blow up the whole planet. There’s no one to grieve you fucking morons. What’s heaven’s going to be a little packed, a little cramped in here.

Laci (00:51:26):

If Laci had a button to end the world right now, she’d press it so fast.

Matt (00:51:30):

No, because I just want to see what’s going to happen. Nothing’s too bad right now. But yeah, if it killed all of us, I’m not a criminal. There’s no such thing as criminals once we’re all dead.

Laci (00:51:40):

Yeah, but it would be very painful and scary while it happened.

Matt (00:51:44):

But it’s universally happening to everyone. If I though it left even one person to figure life out afterward, I would feel a whole other way about this. Just one person is all it would take. All

Laci (00:51:56):

Right. We will – A

Matt (00:51:57):

Stupid person take.

Laci (00:51:58):

That’s fine. We will return to that. Can’t let the Nazis get the bomb first, but it’s never a like, maybe we need to be reaching out to the Nazis right away and have some. I don’t know. I don’t know how that would work, but okay. We have to let them get the bomb first, but we find out, oh, they’re nowhere close. They can’t do it. We need this to defeat Germany. But in early 1945, it’s clear Germany’s defeat is inevitable.

Matt (00:52:22):

But they already spent $3 billion, Matt. They got to just do something with the bomb.

Laci (00:52:25):

And the entire movie they’ve been talking about, we need to get this weapon to defeat Germany. So now they pivot. We need this to defeat Japan. And Japan, there was never any threat of them building a bomb of their own. So then it turns to, we need to use this on Japan to defeat them because you will hear all these weird kind of race science explanations about the Japanese are an unusual species. They’ll never surrender. They’ll keep going until the final. So we just have to bomb the shit out of them. Even though

Matt (00:52:54):

That wasn’t true. And I don’t think he’s not participating in these conversations in a way of wanting to see what the bomb will do. He’s just in the room and trying to guide them to the least evil fucking option that he has any control over. But he’s fully disengaged from anyone should ever use this by this point. Right. Before he even sets his off, the one that he does, he doesn’t want to do it.

Laci (00:53:22):

But he does say to people, “Once we show what this can do, that’ll assure this never happens again.”

Matt (00:53:27):

But that’s the way he’s coping with what he’s done and thinking he still has power over it. And they’ve spent $3 billion. He’s taking people away from their lives and babies have been born over the last three fucking years. It might be two billion, three years, whatever. He has to show something. Something has to have come of it. It really is just the biggest deliverable.What have you been doing? And so look, proof of concept. Now let’s not touch it.

Laci (00:53:55):

Right. But he always knows they’re going to use it. And there is a moment in the movie where they’re having that meeting of scientists who are saying, “Germany’s defeated. We don’t need this bomb. What if we stop working?” And that right there is when he actually could have used his power and said, “Okay.”

Matt (00:54:12):

Who says, “What if we stop working?”

Laci (00:54:14):

There’s just the other. Who? It’s none of the main actors. It’s just a –

Matt (00:54:18):

No. What positions are they in?

Laci (00:54:20):

I don’t know. They’re just scientists at Los Alamos.

Matt (00:54:24):

They just would replace the scientist. He ended up with

Laci (00:54:26):

A change of life. Here’s what I’m saying. And then he goes in there and he persuades them, no, it’s good that we keep working because this will ensure all wars stop. But that was his moment where he actually could have said, “I now can use my influence to shut this down. We’ll all go to prison.” They

Matt (00:54:43):

Are not engaging with the military the way that he is. He knows of the persistence. All that would’ve managed to do is get that group out of here. He knew he was staying, so he’d have to work with all new people.

Laci (00:54:54):

No, what I’m saying is he could have at that moment –

Matt (00:54:57):

He couldn’t

Laci (00:54:57):

Have done anything. Said, “I’m not working anymore. You’re not working anymore. It’s a work stoppage.” And they all would’ve gone to prison. Their families would’ve been

Matt (00:55:04):

Arrested. Yes.

Laci (00:55:06):

But is that worth it to prevent a bomb, to not have the blood on your hands? If

Matt (00:55:10):

You’ve convinced yourself that showing the bomb does work might actually stop them from using it, yeah. I think you still keep going. You still keep telling people to stay. He’s got so much guilt on bringing people in because he just realizes they might die because they know of this knowledge, just like in Tenet. It’s like, “I brought all these people in because they’re brilliant and I’m about to take off the entire scientific community and their families because just by being part of this, they know too much and loose lips sinking chips.” So they go down the line of this guy’s fucking laying down railroads, this brilliant little dude that he raised in his bosom. He starts to understand that this is the only chance this group has of staying safe is doing what they’ve asked us to do. If they disaffect, they will just find a way to poison them.

Laci (00:56:08):

Right. I know. I’m saying, but this is kind of the only moment in the movie where he has the ability to stop the years of history. There would be huge consequences.

Matt (00:56:18):

Fine, but it’s really hard to see past the people. Look at how upset he is about what becomes of Gene. He cares very much about the people in his life. Once he knows the people in his lives are okay and America’s evil, then he can start thinking about all those little people in Japan. That’s when he gets there. I’m saying everyone he knows and brought into this dying was not an option for him. It could have never been that him understanding he’s like Matthew McConaughey’s character. He cannot think like Michael Cain and Interstellar. He would like to be able to do that, but he understands what’s in front of him, the people he is most able to touch the lives of, that is what he’s actually.

Laci (00:57:01):

And that’s why he has the position he has. If he was an actual true believer communist and though, “I’m going to be here to sabotage this,” he just would never have been given the job. If he were someone for whom it was a realistic possibility of saying, “If such and such conditions attain, we stop working.” He would never have had the position.

Matt (00:57:21):

There’s a reason why you give him a Matt Damon. That guy’s a hard ass. Is it Colonel?

Laci (00:57:27):

General Groves.

Matt (00:57:28):

General Groves. He’s a hard ass, but he’s likable. He’s charismatic. There’s a reason why that’s your point person. He’s meant to make friends with him and he’s meant to scare him too. And it’s like he likes being on his good side. He doesn’t want to let him down, and he’s coming constantly to check in and tell you how much money you’ve spent, how many people are here, how many babies are being. It’s just guilt on guilt on responsibility respond. Don’t make this for nothing, Appi.

Laci (00:57:57):

Don’t

Matt (00:57:57):

Make me mad at you, Appi.

Laci (00:58:00):

So I mean, full cards on the table. I don’t think we should have dropped the bombs on Japan. Okay. That’s my opinion. But the choice that’s always presented is what? If we don’t drop the bombs, we’re going to have to do a full scale invasion of Japan. But why? Those are not the only two options.

Matt (00:58:16):

Just remove yourself. Just take the boys home.

Laci (00:58:20):

There’s even like, okay, well, we dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Why did we have to then drop the bomb on Nagasaki? Yeah. What

Matt (00:58:24):

Was that about?

Laci (00:58:26):

So there’s lots of other different things, but the thing is it’s even kind of controversial among historians about whether Japan actually surrendered because of the bombs, because another thing happened at the same time that is not much remarked upon in American history, which is that. Okay, so Hiroshima happens August 6th, Nagasaki on August 9th. August 8th, in between those events, the Soviet Union, which had not been officially at war with Japan, declares war on Japan, invades Manchuria where Japan’s Chinese mainland colony. So their basically entire supply line was cut off from the Japanese islands, and Japan had counted on the Soviet Union being a neutral arbitrator to negotiate a peace.

Matt (00:59:10):

Yeah.

Laci (00:59:10):

So it’s like we have no hope. So it’s like their war was lost. Then they drop another bomb.

Matt (00:59:17):

What’s with that one? I didn’t know it was so many. I though they happened on the same day.

Laci (00:59:21):

Yeah, no.

Matt (00:59:22):

We have a payload. We don’t have enough fuel to fly back if we’re holding onto this. Let’s just drop it.

Laci (00:59:27):

And then the other thing, and this is mentioned in the movie, but I think it could be emphasized more, is for the people making these decisions, the nuclear bomb, the Atom bomb was just like, “Oh, it’s like a much more efficient bomb.” The United States had already crossed the moral line of bombing civilians in the course of the war. In 1944 and 45, they bombed Dresden and Hamburg.

Matt (00:59:50):

With different forms of dynamite, with things that are not leaving residual harm.

Laci (00:59:56):

Yeah, conventional weapons, but they sent Tokyo up in A hundred thousand people died. More people died in the bombing of Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. I put this image from Grave of the Fireflies on screen, the studio Gibli movie about the aftermath of a bombing. And I think most people in their memory think it takes place in Hiroshima or in Nagasaki. No, it’s in the firebombing of Tokyo, which was seen as the more traumatic thing. Much more

Matt (01:00:23):

Populated.

Laci (01:00:24):

Just the death toll is much higher. So it’s like, we’re already killing civilians. Why is the atom bomb such a big deal? We’ll just do it. We’re already doing it. And Oppenheimer wasn’t able to make them see that this is going to scale up in the future in a way that other weapons don’t. So immediately after the bombs are dropped, Oppenheimer fully pivots to what have I done? Shouldn’t have done that. American Prometheus, He spoke for an hour. This he’s testifying for Congress. Much of it extemporaneously in his audience was mesmerized. Years later, people were still saying, I remember Appi’s speech. They remembered this night in part because he explained so well the welter of confused emotions they all felt about the bomb. What they had done was no less than an organic necessity. If you were a scientist, he said, you believe that it is good to find out how the world works, that it is good to turn over to mankind at large, the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.

Laci (01:01:21):

Not like Laci Roth says, it’s none of our business. Besides, there was a feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atopic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution and a smaller chance of leading to disaster than within the United States. Jesus. So this is just the very, very famous clip of him.

Matt (01:02:33):

Yeah. When I see him speaking, especially in his older years, he looks a lot like Cillian Murphy.

Laci (01:02:38):

So he had fully pivoted to like, I’m going to weaponize my celebrity and my popularity to influence policy as much as I can, but the Cold War was gearing up. We’re not turning off this war machine. We’re building as many weapons. We’re going to make them bigger. We’re going to make them more destructive. And there’s going to be a response from the Soviet Union and then other countries are going to start doing it and you will never put the toothpaste back in the tube. And Oppenheimer’s ultimately a gnat to the national security state and they squash him like a gnat. We don’t want you to influence anybody’s minds about what we’re doing.

Matt (01:03:13):

So totally he understood how little information you need to be given a TED Talk or to just be in the talking circuit. I mean, I understand you were demoted, but that makes you even more of an insider. Look what they’re trying to do. He needed conspiracy brain.

Laci (01:03:28):

Yeah, I guess.

Matt (01:03:28):

Instead he was a proper gentleman.

Laci (01:03:30):

Yeah, I guess. Where are you going to say it? You have to get an AM radio station to say it or whatever. I

Matt (01:03:36):

Think he could figure out how to put one together. He’s up and

Laci (01:03:38):

Running.That’s true. He’s a very smart man. He

Matt (01:03:40):

Knows about gadgets.

Laci (01:03:41):

But the system reacts to him like a body, like white blood cells, like reacting to a virus. No, shut up, man. Shut the fuck. You’ve had your

Matt (01:03:48):

Time.

Laci (01:03:48):

Yeah. So they squash him and then a few years later when now he’s harmless, he’s neutered. Hey, nice job, man. We love you. Thank you for helping us win the war.

Matt (01:03:56):

Here’s a jello mold and a ribbon.

Laci (01:03:59):

And ironically, the system, the analytical framework and philosophy that would’ve made him understand that all of this was going to happen, Marxism. Should have just been a true believer.

Matt (01:04:09):

That’s what we’ve been trying to say to all you fucking liberals. Just go to the left. Just go to the left. Nobody likes you in the middle.

Laci (01:04:16):

But the thing is, yeah, if you’re a true believing Marxist, you’re not getting in that room. You’re not on the Manhattan Project. That’s the thing. All right. So Cillian Murphy, it seems like it wasn’t even a question. You’re playing Oppi, you look like Oppenheimer. Nolan and Murphy had made five movies together already. He auditioned to play Batman and Batman begins. Instead he gets the scarecrow role. He’s in Inception and Dunkirk. He’s great in both of those. He told the Associated Press in 2023, “I have always said publicly and privately to Chris that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part, but deep down, secretly, I was desperate to play a lead for him. He’s so understated and self-deprecating and in his very English manner just said, Listen, I’ve written this script.

Laci (01:04:58):

It’s about Oppenheimer. I’d like you to be my Oppenheimer.” It was a great day. Kai Bird. Oh, I already said that. The thing about Kai Bird telling him like, “Boy, you really sound like Oppenheimer.” And he’s like – Yeah, I don’t need

Matt (01:05:11):

You to say it twice.

Laci (01:05:12):

But on that note, Nolan and his wife held a private screening for Kai Bird who wrote American Prometheus. His co-author Martin Sherwin was dead, but this made this guy a new celebrity because I’m just saying –

Matt (01:05:25):

He was dead.

Laci (01:05:28):

They had had their success, but this totally renewed the interest in their book and now he’s doing interviews all over the place. There is a thing where he hosts a talk with Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, but he’s just asking questions like, “So when you’re making a movie, you pick the actors, okay?” But they held a private screening for him before the movie was released. And he said tears in his eyes, he was emotionally devastated. It

Matt (01:05:52):

Must be amazing to see your book come to life just walking and talking.

Laci (01:05:55):

Said he never thought anything like this would ever be possible.

Matt (01:05:58):

Nolan can do it.

Laci (01:06:00):

That’s

Matt (01:06:00):

Also how the person who wrote The Odyssey feels.

Laci (01:06:03):

Yeah, Homer. Just act. Then he screened it for Homer. He said no, he said woo-hoo.

Matt (01:06:08):

Homie. Listen and watch Oppi. Okay, I’m not going to –

Laci (01:06:12):

Peta.

Matt (01:06:13):

Peta.

Laci (01:06:13):

So not going to get into Barbenheimer, but this was Nolan’s first movie with Universal. Remember he divorced Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers released their movie Barbie on the same day that Universal releases Oppenheimer as a fuck you to Nolan.

Matt (01:06:28):

Excuse me, pinky nipple blinders. Is he wearing a see-through shirt in his picture? Look at him. I see nips. He brought his nips to the premiere. What are you going to do enhance? Oh.

Laci (01:06:45):

Yes.

Matt (01:06:49):

Now I can tell in this picture that that is Josh Hartnett. It’s so crazy. Put glasses on him and I’m like, whoa, Clark Kent. Look how happy Robert Downey Jr. is. I’m sorry. No one can see what I am looking at. It’s just the best looking people all in a row.

Laci (01:07:03):

I love showing Laci premier photos of just all the actors and she’s like, oh, they’re so nice. Look at Emily

Matt (01:07:07):

Blunt

Laci (01:07:07):

Outfit. Look at Flow Pugh.

Matt (01:07:10):

What the fuck’s a Flow Pew?

Laci (01:07:12):

This one, Gene Tatlock.

Matt (01:07:14):

What’s a Flow Pew?

Laci (01:07:15):

Florence Pugh.

Matt (01:07:16):

Oh.

Laci (01:07:17):

Yeah, this movie played like a Batman movie. It made $976 million worldwide. For comparison, The Batman from 2022 made $773 million worldwide. And we’ve explained why we think it was so. I mean, it’s still kind of baffling. I understand why The Odyssey is such a hit. It’s a big old action movie. This is just people talking.

Matt (01:07:39):

Yeah, but so is JFK and that movie is exhilarating. Yeah. It’s so much history and you think, how could anyone put this in a package and people can follow it and watch it? But he’s such a Charlotte weaving his web that

Laci (01:07:58):

He

Matt (01:07:58):

Just knows how and when and where to put the fucking shit together. I don’t know.

Laci (01:08:04):

I

Matt (01:08:04):

Don’t know.

Laci (01:08:05):

It won seven Oscars, including best picture, best director, best actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. I remember at the time Laci was a pro Paul Giamatti, winning best actor over Cillian Murphy.

Matt (01:08:17):

I didn’t have a special connection to Cillian just yet. Also, I am so Matt Stokes pilled that I thought that Jean is holding a fan so she doesn’t get hot, like it’s for her husband. In this picture. What is this big silver circle thing between the two actresses? I think it’s just an embellishment on a dress.

Laci (01:08:37):

Anyway – By the way, this picture, yeah. What’s Romi Malik doing in this picture?

Matt (01:08:41):

I just can’t stop looking at him like fucking imposter.

Laci (01:08:44):

And you know what?

Matt (01:08:44):

Imposter.

Laci (01:08:45):

What’s Kenneth Brannaw doing in this picture? You’re in two scenes of the movie. Oh,

Matt (01:08:48):

You also do not need to be there. That’s right. Scoochi Scoochi. I

Laci (01:08:51):

Believe this is the third best picture winner we’ve covered on the show. Can you name the past two, Laci?

Matt (01:08:58):

Casablanca.

Laci (01:08:59):

Casablanca, very good. The other is Rocky.

Matt (01:09:03):

I would’ve never gotten it.

Laci (01:09:03):

Yeah. So Oppenheimer, we’re going to now move on to talking about the movie itself. Love this movie. All right. It’s two weeks later. We’re in a different house and we’re in separate rooms. How about that?

Matt (01:09:26):

This might be good.

Laci (01:09:28):

Well, you can’t see my horrible face in all the faces I make. Yeah,

Matt (01:09:31):

But in my head, they’re even worse. Oh,

Laci (01:09:33):

He’s

Matt (01:09:34):

Probably making this one. You didn’t even

Laci (01:09:37):

See what I did. No, I can’t even see what you’re doing. Fuck.

Matt (01:09:39):

No.

Laci (01:09:40):

Fuck. I though this might be good. This is not permanent. We’re working on getting our new studio space set up, but until then, Laci and I are in rooms right next to each other. In

Matt (01:09:49):

Beige voids.

Laci (01:09:50):

Yes. Actually,

Matt (01:09:51):

The background of you might be a child’s kitchen and bags.

Laci (01:09:54):

It is a child’s kitchen. It is black garbage bags and it is the back of a television. So yes, Oppenheimer, a good movie. We like it a lot. And we both watched it again. I’ve watched it disjointedly over the course of the past two weeks. Laci watched all three hours of it yesterday with the 15-year-old who seemed, once again, very into it.

Matt (01:10:19):

It’s hard not to be.

Laci (01:10:21):

And they had watched it three years ago during the Barbenheimer craze. Yeah, got very into it once again. Yeah, it’s just the most fun movie ever made.

Matt (01:10:29):

Yeah. But if I ever want Matt to come spend time with me, I only need to just put on this movie. As soon as he fucking hears the score from any room, he just grabs a seat and sits down, which may I just explain, he never does. He does not join me to watch anything.

Laci (01:10:47):

I become like David Krumholtz when he’s watching Oppenheimer watch the lecture from. Yeah, he’s just staring at him like, “Ooh, what’s he think about this? What does Oppi think about this? What does Oppi think about what he’s going to say right now? Quantum physics are a very big deal.”

Matt (01:11:01):

I was more making a point about how you don’t like to hang out with me unless Oppi’s involved.

Laci (01:11:07):

I hear it. It’s the siren song. I’m Odysseus. I’m like, “Got to go.”

Matt (01:11:11):

Okay. So I’ve now teed that up two times to get you to correct the statement, but we’re going to go ahead and keep it on the books. You are not interested in my company.

Laci (01:11:20):

I like hanging out with you. What are you talking about? All right, so the movie. Yeah, the movie opens. I love this movie. It’s nearly perfect. I think it’s a little inappropriate that it opens with raindrops keep falling on my head. And he’s just standing and he’s snapping as he stares at the raindrops in the pond. It

Matt (01:11:37):

Is a weird. It’s a shift, a real tonal shift.

Laci (01:11:41):

No, but that’s that Nolan touch. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you ready for anything to happen.You’re

Matt (01:11:46):

Joking, right? It doesn’t actually. No, it

Laci (01:11:48):

Does. It does. Did I miss that every time? It opens with Burt Bacarax again. Raindrops keep falling on my head. Maybe

Matt (01:11:54):

I’ve just –

Laci (01:11:55):

And then there’s a Will Smith featuring Eminem rap remix and closing credits.

Matt (01:11:58):

That I definitely heard. Yeah.

Laci (01:12:00):

From the O to the P, to the P to the E. So Cillian Murphy is Oppenheimer staring into the raindrops and his head, his crazy head filled with visions of molecules and spinning. Physics stuff is happening. All this stuff happening in camera with the VFX department. They didn’t do any CGI. Christopher Nolan just had them on set being like, “Film a bunch of weird shit in front of the stuff.”

Matt (01:12:29):

I will say though that when the movie opens, it’s very dark between the poisoning of an apple. It’s funny because what he ends up doing is dark, not the beginning, but he can’t sleep. He’s homesick. The most mundane things are deeply disturbing him to where he can’t sleep. He’s bad in the lab. His professor won’t let him go see a guy, tries to kill. It is an odd start to something that gets a lot easier. It is a lot zippier. Yeah. Now we’re going to talk about real fucked up stuff, but it’s going to be fun. Or in the beginning, you don’t know what kind of movie it’s going to be or you’re not. It’s not that movie yet.

Laci (01:13:16):

And it is fire hosing you with jumping through time, through all these different settings. And now it’s going from black and white to color, shifting perspectives, hearing to hearing, and then a hearing where they’re talking about a previous hearing.

Matt (01:13:28):

It is an inception hearing, right? Because it does echo. I mean, they keep saying the same corrections to both men of this is not a trial. We only need to deny. We don’t need to have a burden of proof. All the little things.

Laci (01:13:41):

Yeah, we’re not prosecuting. We’re just denying.

Matt (01:13:43):

Sure. All the little tricks that Straws has up his sleeve, they get done to him

Laci (01:13:49):

Justice. Well, and so I think it’s a lot like the prestige where it’s jumping from timelines and also you’re seeing perspectives and maybe people are lying to you about their perspective or they’re misremembering. Well,

Matt (01:14:00):

Once you told me that it’s not different. I mean, I guess I’m not sure what the word temporality means, but I think it means something to do with your brain or perception of stuff. But anyway, once you told me that it switches from black and white to color, depending on who is having the memory, that helped a lot

Laci (01:14:19):

Because

Matt (01:14:19):

I’m used to those things meaning a time difference, but that was not adding up. We were along the same timeline while still being in black and white randomly. And I thought maybe Nolan was slipping, but no.

Laci (01:14:32):

Well, and he did that trick in Memento where you see.

Matt (01:14:37):

Lots of movies use it to help just a visual cue you of. Yeah. Especially if the actors don’t look very different from what they look like in both places, it’s helpful to. Or change the dimension of the screen to standard screen.

Laci (01:14:50):

Right. Or to IMAX ratio or whatever. But like Memento, it has the black and white signals, a more objective perspective and color signals were entirely from Oppenheimer’s perspective or from Guy Pierce’s perspective. And then it kind of folds in on itself because you’ll see the same scenes, a scene that you saw earlier in Black and White will now be in color, but maybe from a different part of the room. But then Nolan’s also so smart about the geography where it’s a huge movie and scope, but most of it takes place in a few rooms. So there’s like, this is a hotel ballroom. There’s a giant flower fucking bouquet in the middle. So you always know that’s where you are if you see the giant flower bouquet that they have to move around the table to see other people at the table. Whether you’re in color or in black and white, you know that’s where you are.

Matt (01:15:35):

Okay. But to be clear, we both agree that the black and white is from Straws’ perspective and the color is from

Laci (01:15:43):

Anyone else over

Matt (01:15:44):

Oppenheimer.

Laci (01:15:45):

You just

Matt (01:15:45):

Kind of changed what you were saying. I think it’s correct, the Straws and Oppenheimer. They are the two leads of the movie.

Laci (01:15:55):

Yes. No, I think in Memento it’s more objective because you’re still following Lenny, but yeah, the perspective is different. But oh no, yeah. Point of view character in Oppenheimer. So the book is called American Prometheus because Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to Iraq and tortured for eternity. That’s the story of Oppenheimer. I had this here. I had this smart observation. Oh, that’s kind of like the Garden of Eden, isn’t it? Yeah.

Matt (01:16:23):

Once you make the one sin, now we all got to have periods out of our vaginas.

Laci (01:16:26):

Just recycling the exact same origin stories over and over and over again of gods who are like, “Hey, here’s some super awesome thing. Don’t you go touch it now. Don’t you do it.”

Matt (01:16:35):

That and this nostalgia for a past way of life that was so much easier, so much purer, so much simpler, so better. We’re always burdened with this. If I just hadn’t done that, then life wouldn’t be like this. It’s cheap and easy.

Laci (01:16:51):

I like that there’s no onscreen titles. It never tells you the year you are in time. I like

Matt (01:16:56):

That.

Laci (01:16:57):

I like

Matt (01:16:57):

That. Okay. Yeah.

Laci (01:16:58):

They

Matt (01:16:58):

Do great at aging the people involved.

Laci (01:17:01):

On top of everything else, the makeup is outstanding because you have them like now this is the same person five years later and then 10 years later and then 20 years later. The Los Alamos stuff is happening 1943 to 1945. The Grayboard, which is Oppenheimer on trial, that’s 54. And then Straws at the Synod confirmation is in 1959. And then there’s everything like the first, you’re seeing Oppenheimer talking to the Grayboard and Emily Blunt’s right there, but out of focus. And it’s very interesting to introduce such a major actor like that out of focus just to the side of the frame.

Matt (01:17:42):

Well, because the first woman we’re going to meet is Jean. So yeah, she needs to be out of focus and we need to be thinking, “Oh, interesting. That’s not who’s with him now.” And in my memory, I didn’t realize there was two women. I mean, it’s been since Barbenheimer, since I’ve seen it until we watched it for the podcast. But yeah, when I first watched it to re-watch it for this, I was like, “That woman does not look like that

Laci (01:18:04):

Woman.” The movie is almost telling a love story of Robert and Kitty of a very different kind of love than the one he had for Jean, which is fiery and passionate.

Matt (01:18:16):

And not practical and not grownups. Neither of them were behaving like grownups. They were behaving like. They were enabling each other’s weirdnesses, this need to be detached, this need to fool around. It’s like Jean just knew, “You’re not going to be faithful to me, so I’ll be the person you’re unfaithful with instead.” And obviously she had a lot of mental struggles going on too, but their bad stuffs were. They were good at being bad together and smart together and quippy.

Laci (01:18:50):

And Kitty has her own demons, but they’re more compatible with him and building a life together where despite being unfaithful to her, they have this partnership and this enduring love for each other.

Matt (01:19:05):

Well, and you can say that Jean and Oppenheimer probably had a little bit more in common in the wrong way in that they’re both very selfish. They’re both very much of the main character of whatever they’re in. And Kitty has the ability to just be the supporting role, even though she’s going to do what the fuck she’s want, strength what she wants, raise who she wants, but she’ll be there to support your genius, not be jealous of it.

Laci (01:19:27):

Right. Even though she was a biologist by training, but then didn’t get to do anything with that and just became a housewife, two men who have big ideas. I’m going to go fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Matt (01:19:37):

Sure. But he would not have been able to be with someone who wasn’t smart at least. But the big difference with Kitty and Gene is that Kitty wanted to be alongside his brilliance, and Gene almost was annoyed by it, was annoyed by that he used to have people thinking you’re more complicated than you are. She wouldn’t have done well with his fame. That would’ve made her kill herself just that. Being his full-time wife or whatever would never have worked for Gene.

Laci (01:20:10):

We have the Gray Board. They keep calling it the Gray Board because the man, Morgan Gray is the guy played by Tony Goldwin. He’s the one who’s chairing the hearings. Yes. This is the Atomic Energy Commission, which was a government agency that was a predecessor of the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy today controls. It handles nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Famously, when Rick Perry got appointed to that position, he thought like, “Well, I thought I was going to go talk about oil and stuff, but it’s basically the Department of Nuclear stuff.” So this commission was turned into the Department of Energy in the ’70s. This board hearing, which is in 1954, is denying Oppenheimer the renewal of his security clearance, which would’ve been routine, like automatic renewal. Starts reading his written statement, “The accusations against me cannot be fairly understood, except in the context of my life and my work.” And so that’s the movie we’re going to watch.

Laci (01:21:13):

We’re going to watch. Yeah. His reputation destroyed, security clearance revoked, but in 2022, the United States Secretary of Energy posthumously reinstated his security clearance. So good job. Good for her. Thank you so much. But the movie’s also doing this device where it’s like the color sections are called fission and the black and white sections are called fusion. And I totally know what both of those words mean.

Matt (01:21:37):

I think one is things separating. The other is things coming together, right? Fusion is when they go to each other. Fission is when they separate. No?

Laci (01:21:47):

It is. I thought –

Matt (01:21:49):

Attracted things versus repelled things.

Laci (01:21:52):

Nuclear fission splits Adams apart. Nuclear fusion combines them together. You were right. Good job. Louis Straws, the real man, very fascinating figure, kind of a George H. W. Bush figure.

Matt (01:22:07):

In that he was inevitable?

Laci (01:22:10):

A legacy? No. And not like Bush came from a very wealthy aristocratic family and Straws did not, but this person who’s a career government official, a person for whom the term deep state very correctly applies and is like this Machiavellian, I have a 50-year plan to achieve ultimate power and I’m going to take all the right steps.

Matt (01:22:33):

You’re talking about George Bush senior. Right.ou didn’t say George W. Did

Laci (01:22:37):

You? George H.W. Bush is what I said.

Matt (01:22:38):

Okay. Well, when you do all of that, then I just hear the W. All right, got it. Senior, or even if he isn’t a senior, but right. No, that makes sense because he’s just kind of lurking around behind Nixon and then you just can see him in a photo and it’s like this guy’s just been kind of moving across the chessboard till he got into the presidential seat.

Laci (01:22:54):

Right. And that was deliberate. They famously. He gave a TV interview when he was running for president where they said, “Some would say you’re too nice to be president.” And he’s like this guy who’s probably tortured people by hand over the course of his career. And he’s like, “Well, if that’s what they say about me, that’s what they say.” Oh, gosh. During Watergate, he was conveniently working in the State Department in China. So he was just like, “Wherever the controversy is, I definitely maneuver away from it.”

Matt (01:23:28):

But for someone like that, is he not being handled by someone to be put in these. Is he that adept at moving around and getting himself into these positions, or is he the puppet of some kind of other thing that’s making sure he keeps his nose clean long enough to get into the office and do what they want?

Laci (01:23:49):

I wish I knew a more specific answer, but I mean, yes. These people are always the tools of business interests. Right,

Matt (01:23:56):

Because how do you skate around and these connections. You just got to be a guy who knows every guy, right? Because the entire time Strauss’ play is that he knows a guy at Times Magazine. He knows the head of this board. He knows this attorney that’s going to wipe the floor with whoever. He’s an extremely connected person who either is holding shit over other people, which that doesn’t read. He seems to be well liked and respected, but he’s just maybe a favor guy. He’s been doing favors for decades and now he’s cashing in.

Laci (01:24:34):

Yeah. You have to be that guy or you are like a Jeffrey Epstein who has some sort of mysterious handler from the ruling class who kicks you. I

Matt (01:24:46):

Thought you were going to go like you either got compromise on everybody and that’s how you get what you want, but then you’ve got this kind of dark reputation or you’re the favor guy who is doing things for everybody and therefore can pull levers for other people and do more and more and more and more favors. And then you become respected in the scientific community or that’s how you get the nice guy reputation that George Bush had but still being someone who can get exactly what the fuck he wants and what anyone else wants too.

Laci (01:25:15):

Yeah. If you’re a hatchet man, if you’re the one who does all the dirty stuff, usually people know that about you.

Matt (01:25:19):

Right. Like that disgusting stone, that disgusting attorney. What is his name? Or no, is he a stone? No.

Laci (01:25:27):

Roger Stone. Roger

Matt (01:25:28):

Stone, that kind of type where it’s like, I’m sure that man could get some stuff done, but he’s got this weird cloud around him. And like a Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s other, the person he first kind of rode the coattails of after his dad.

Laci (01:25:46):

Roy Cohn.

Matt (01:25:47):

Right. Tha kind of figure where it’s like, that man will get shit done, but Roy Cohn.

Laci (01:25:51):

He was a big ally of Eisenhower, who was president from 1954 to 1961. And during this time, he ran the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s, but he also became very controversial. There were accusations of self-dealing, like these political scandals that seemed so, so tame and quaint. Oh my

Matt (01:26:12):

God, you did this for something to benefit you?

Laci (01:26:14):

Yeah. But because of that, he gets written about and normal Americans and know his name like, “Oh, that is not an honest and forthright man.”

Matt (01:26:22):

Right. We are still the men of George Washington.

Laci (01:26:26):

And Eisenhower wants to appoint him to be Secretary of State, which is the most prestigious cabinet position you can get. He declines that position because that invites way too much public scrutiny and he’s afraid I won’t get confirmed by the Senate because the Senate’s going to make a big deal about confirming a Secretary of State. “What else you got, Ike? “Well, we’ve got the Commerce Department. You want that? And he’s like,” Yeah, okay. Nobody cares about the Commerce Department.

Matt (01:26:53):

“But what does he care about it? I guess to be in the Cabinet, is it just a cushy job or you’re made for the rest of life like a Supreme Court person? Why?

Laci (01:27:02):

Well, he would certainly figure out some tons of evil shit to do, but I think he sees it as a stepping stone. Okay.

Matt (01:27:09):

Okay. It’s

Laci (01:27:09):

Not the end game. Yeah, yeah. This is step – He was already in the end game key of my A to Z plan. I

Matt (01:27:15):

Made an Avengers joke.

Laci (01:27:16):

Now, he actually had already been commerce secretary for. He was the acting commerce secretary because Eisenhower appointed him during congressional recess. So then they don’t mention that in the movie, but somebody does call him Secretary Straws. So he technically already has the job and now he just needs to get confirmed for the job he’s already doing. And then they say, no, you can’t have it. It’s

Matt (01:27:38):

Interesting. Do you get stripped of the title? Because if you’re the Secretary of State, you’re your highest ranking thing forever as addressing someone. But if you’re stripped of it because of this.

Laci (01:27:49):

I think if you’re an acting secretary, then you don’t get that honorific. If you’re acting anything.

Matt (01:27:55):

Oh, gotcha. Got it. Okay.

Laci (01:27:57):

Because sometimes the vice president will be the acting president if the president goes under surgery or something. It’s not like the vice president then gets to call Mr. President.

Matt (01:28:05):

I guess I mean in the case of a death, has there ever been a vice president that was moved into the presidential role and actually stayed that until an election that didn’t get elected after? There is one, right?

Laci (01:28:17):

Sorry. So the president dies, vice president becomes president.

Matt (01:28:22):

Yeah.

Laci (01:28:22):

And then –

Matt (01:28:23):

And then an election happens and then the incumbent does not win. They do not officially ever get elected to be president.

Laci (01:28:31):

Yeah, that has happened. And the most infamous one, it wasn’t a death, but Gerald Ford, Nixon ran in 1972 with Spiro Agnew as his running mate. And then over the next few years, Spiro Agnew resigned in scandal and Gerald Ford was appointed vice president and then became president when Nixon resigned. So Ford literally never stood for. Didn’t even have to run as vice president.

Matt (01:28:56):

Interesting. See, now there’s a person that was not confirmed and yet

Laci (01:29:00):

Keeps their title. Does the vice president have to be confirmed? I can’t remember.

Matt (01:29:05):

I mean elected or confirmed, right? Either the people bring you in or a confirmation hearing body brings you in, because it’s not an elected position to be in the cabinet. It’s elected by that.

Laci (01:29:17):

Yeah. Okay. I’m glad you said that. I think this is kind of important to what the movie’s saying. So we have this Atomic Energy Commission. The whole point of it is we had this giant military project of developing nuclear weapons and nuclear technology, and that’s all being run by the military. So then the war ends and they’re like, “Now we’re going to transition it over to civilian control and we can give it this air of democracy because it’s like, well, we vote for leaders and they appoint the people to run these agencies and stuff.” But all of this stuff, like they call Oppenheimer the most important man who ever lived, all of this stuff was made without any democratic voice at all. The people didn’t get to decide, people didn’t get to vote. Do we now live in The nuclear weapons world.

Matt (01:30:01):

Yeah. How could these things exist? They exist. So we do. You don’t need to vote on that. It exists now.

Laci (01:30:09):

Yeah. They built nuclear weapons during the war without any democratic. The voters didn’t give their way in on the matter of whether they want to live in a world with nuclear weapons. It was decided for them.

Matt (01:30:23):

Well, that’s just because they kept acting like. They used the clearance level shit. Oh, this is a need to know thing. This is a compartmentalized thing. You certainly wouldn’t tell the general population what you’re doing. And even though it’s fucking obvious that you’re in a nuclear arms race, at some point everyone knows, but there’s no point at which you let people know. It’s one person at a time, one clearance at a time, and then it’s just kind of a known thing. But you can get away with a lot if it starts as a, well, this is a matter of state security.

Laci (01:31:00):

Yeah, that’s how

Matt (01:31:02):

Every – Yeah. No one votes on any kind of weapon, any kind of war. There’s no voting of a war. It’s just, oh, well –

Laci (01:31:10):

But there is supposed to be. Congress is supposed to declare war and Congress is supposed to be the branch of government that we vote for every two years. So it’s like we have way more of a direct way of making our voices heard there. But eventually they said Congress isn’t going to do that anymore. The president just declares. We don’t declare war anymore. We just go to war with that justification that this is too important to wait for Congress to vote. I’m just saying we don’t notice the erosion of democracy beneath our feet

Matt (01:31:48):

As it happens. Every single thing, especially what happened after nine eleven in terms of our privacy and stuff and the way airports are and all the surveillance stuff, everything is done under the umbrella of we’re protecting you. Everything’s moving fast. Things are more dangerous than ever. We had to go ahead and fast track this because of this. And it’s all under the guise of we’re protecting you and you guys don’t know any better. And sometimes you don’t need to know any better, you just need to let us do it.

Laci (01:32:16):

So he is Robert Downey Jr. at straws talking to Alden Ahrenreich, who’s really great as this unnamed Senate aide.

Matt (01:32:26):

Yeah. I love him.

Laci (01:32:27):

Yeah, he’s so much fun in this movie and Straws is just being totally aloof.

Matt (01:32:32):

Straws thinks he’s the smartest person in every room, so he’s being

Laci (01:32:34):

Dismissive. But acting aloof. Oh, you think they’re going to ask about Oppenheimer? Oh, okay.

Matt (01:32:39):

Right.

Laci (01:32:39):

All right. When it’s the number one thing everybody knows about him is that he ruined Oppenheimer’s reputation. And there’s a little moment where Alden Ahrenreich stands up, Strahs has finished his cup of coffee, or maybe has not finished his cup of coffee, but they’re about to leave the room together and Aaron Reich just reaches out and takes the cup of coffee for him and Downey just gives him just this brief little glance of like, “You don’t do that to me.You don’t take my cup of coffee away.”

Matt (01:33:08):

Quit calling it a cup of coffee before I vomit.

Laci (01:33:10):

What’s wrong with cup of coffee? I just

Matt (01:33:11):

Fucking hate cup of coffee. Just say coffee.

Laci (01:33:14):

But that’s the whole move.

Matt (01:33:15):

The whole movie’s a ton of these little moments, especially with Straws.That’s why it’s so brilliant. All of it, because he’s so conniving, he’s so plotting. It’s all internal. He’s constantly making moves. He’s not a person that wears his shit on his sleeve. So you’ve got to look for these little micro expressions, but you see them, the movie’s so good at showing them to you in so many moments of the movie. And you’re like, yeah, I can see a smarter Trump. I keep thinking of the fucking shit. I’m always going to forget the name of this thing. Correspondence Ball where he is made fun of by Obama and gets huge laughs and then he carries that one slight with him until he fucking gets into the presidential. Without that, he wouldn’t even care if he were president. He has such a way of seething and it’s like, “Oh, I come from lowly, non-Manhattan real estate people.

Matt (01:34:12):

Well, I wasn’t lowly. I was just a real estate people.” He’s got the same chip on his shoulder that Straub

Laci (01:34:17):

Does. Or at least he always talked about wanting to be president, but that’s the one where he’s finally like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to have to do it.” And that’s the engine to finally power this very lazy man to finally just go ahead and do it.

Matt (01:34:29):

Yeah. It’s like the nuclear bomb is fueled on uranium, but they’re fueled on pettiness. There’s such a chip on their shoulder that they are motivated by the slights, not by what can I do for people with this power? It’s who can I be better than and who can I fuck over with this power?

Laci (01:34:47):

And because if you want to exert power, being the president isn’t necessarily the position you go for, but if what you need is validation and fame and attention.

Matt (01:34:59):

If who you’re trying to top is a president that made fun of you, then yes, you do need to go be the president if you’re ever going to equal him and then make fun of him back.

Laci (01:35:09):

Yeah, that very specific grudge

Matt (01:35:11):

Is. And I think this is a very specific grudge with straws. If you have that same mentality that Trump does, it’s like, “I need my tat for the tit. I fucking need it or I’m going to obsess till I die.” What do you do when you’re up against Oppenheimer and you didn’t even get to pursue being a scientist because you weren’t passionate enough about science. You’re passionate about fucking controlling things and being number one, but then you get outdone by the greatest scientist to ever live in your generation. Fuck, you’re

Laci (01:35:41):

Never

Matt (01:35:42):

Going to get that tap back. You’re just not.

Laci (01:35:44):

Yeah. And he has a very specific resentment of, “I had offers to study physics and probably thinks I could have been Oppenheimer, but I didn’t come from the money he came from, so I had to go get a job.”

Laci (01:35:57):

He said, “I had offers. I chose to sell shoes instead.” And Oppenheimer, who is such an asshole to him, is like, “Wants a lowly shoe salesman.” No, just a shoe salesman. Right. But I just wanted to mention the coffee thing because it’s like that’s what the whole movie is about is people are taking away your cup of coffee without you telling them to do it. Everything is being taken from you and you not noticing it. You don’t notice the powerlessness that you have. Jason Clark as the prosecutor of the Grayboard fucking love this performance as Roger Rob, great name for this lawyer who later became a very famous anti-communist federal judge. Everybody in this movie is somebody, but they’re played by an actor and they have a Wikipedia page, the character that they’re playing. And there’s no composite characters either, which a more conventional movie would do, but it’s like –

Matt (01:36:55):

Oh, that’s interesting.

Laci (01:36:56):

Yeah. If somebody was there, then they need to be in the movie. We’re not going to combine three scientists. Think of how many physicists there are in the movie.

Matt (01:37:04):

Yes. And I love that they all go by their last name and everyone knows that it’s just exactly true about any niche, any kind of expertise, anything. The higher you get to the top, the smaller, small, the smaller that community is and the world is tiny. Literally the globe is tiny. You’re like, “Oh, Germany, Germany, you need to go see this guy. Oh, Portugal, you need to talk to this one.” It’s just.

Laci (01:37:25):

Yeah. And then the Manhattan Project was like, I was thinking about this last night when I was watching it. If there’s only 50 people who work in your profession, you all know each other, and now you’ve all gotten taken to summer camp together for three years. And you’re

Matt (01:37:40):

Not supposed to talk. You’re not supposed to talk to your. Science is all about thinking and talking and discussing and working through things and bouncing things off people, even just at the dinner table. But it’s like, okay, but so you take a scientist because you don’t need a military person to make a bomb. They don’t know how, or just really any other profession, and then you force them to be in the military where now all of a sudden there’s just so many rules. It’s really not fair. And it seems like all just to be able to control the person once they’re in there, it’s like, “Oh, you broke a rule. Oh, you’re in trouble.” Constantly keep them on their heels because they’re always in trouble, not following things that they have no business knowing.

Laci (01:38:20):

And Oppenheimer at least had the. You said that he understands people in a way that these other physicists don’t seem to as he knew you need to let them have their discussion groups and you need to let them pursue their own interests that aren’t necessarily helpful to the project we’re working on, otherwise you’re going to get a mutiny or otherwise they’re just not going to work anymore.

Matt (01:38:40):

Well, and what people don’t see is that science, like anything done at its best is an art. And the idea of you can see math, you can see music, that’s so interesting because a mind on fire, a mind in the zone, it’s art no matter what it’s creating. So it’s like, yeah, we’re going to need a bar. We’re going to need a school. We’re going to need them to have wives. They’re going to need to fuck. They’re going to need parties. These are not soldiers. They did not enroll, so therefore they’re not going to just fucking take their three square meals a day and then go to sleep in their bunk. That’s not how we do things.

Laci (01:39:24):

There’s a moment in the movie where he tries to pretend like he can. Because they all did technically have to enlist in the military, so he puts on his uniform and David Crumholtz is like, “Take that fucking uniform off. You look ridiculous.” But he’s very, very briefly trying. What if I play the part of officer?

Matt (01:39:43):

No, I think he just though it made him look good. I think he thought maybe this is a look for me. And then someone just had to be like, “No, dude, you fucking look so stupid. You’re scrawny under there.”

Laci (01:39:52):

You need to do what. Be the best you you can be. And then there’s the montage of him assembling his uniform, the hat, the pipe. You’re like, “Yeah, that’s Oppenheimer. I know him from the trailers to this movie.” He’s in college. He’s at Cambridge. He poisons his teacher’s apple. Who is this little dipshit in the class who leaves an apple for the teacher is what I want to know.

Matt (01:40:15):

He should have poisoned him.

Laci (01:40:16):

And this teacher just talking shit about. Yeah, yeah. He thinks he’s a great physicist, but his lab work leaves something to be desired. But everyone knows this Oppenheimer and – Why

Matt (01:40:25):

Do they know him here? I don’t understand why they know him here.

Laci (01:40:28):

Because he’s already making a name for himself with papers he’s writing and stuff.

Matt (01:40:32):

Oh, okay.

Laci (01:40:33):

Yeah.

Matt (01:40:33):

And he’s an American that’s decided to go to Cambridge to learn this thing that they do not know in America

Laci (01:40:38):

Yet. Right. He’s

Matt (01:40:38):

Going to bring it to America.

Laci (01:40:40):

And as you keep saying, this is a tiny world. Sure. So even a famous physicist, Niels Bohr, played by Kenneth Brown, just remembers him because he attended another lecture and asked a question.

Matt (01:40:51):

Asked the only

Laci (01:40:52):

Good question. And then asks the exact same question again, which I love. “Why’d you ask it again? Because I didn’t like your answer the first time, but I like it better now. “And then tell him,” Get out of Cambridge, go somewhere they’ll let you think. “And that’s his whole thing is I just want to think about stuff, think about everything. And all these other physicists, they’re not doing stuff like going to art museums and looking at Picassos and reading T.S. Elliot and reading Marx and its original German.

Matt (01:41:21):

I mean, yeah, he needs to be able to be in a place where he can do his best work, but he also wants to be around people doing their best work. That’s why when he goes to the next place he’s in, he puts his office right next to the guys that are building the theories, that aren’t just the theoretical people, they’re the doers. He works best when working and buzzing around and bouncing ideas off and having resources and knowing his lane. No, I’m not mathematics. He’s amazing at staying in his lane. He knows his lane and it’s like,” I’m going to delegate that. I’m not going to do that, but you are amazing at this. Let me put you in a place. “He’s definitely a rising tide lifts all boats person.

Laci (01:42:06):

I think that he thinks of learning about art, learning about political theory. He thinks about all of that as making him a better physicist. I know. That it’s all part of the same thing and no one else, at least no one that we see is doing that. And they think it’s kind of unusual that he’s somebody who not only is doing all this, but is making friends with people who aren’t physicists, making friends with a French literature professor and stuff like that. So we get the first meeting of Straws and Oppenheimer in

Matt (01:42:39):

1947. Wait, this is important, but maybe I’ve already said this, but Straws and Oppenheimer are just the two people that decided to go. They picked one way on a path and they each could have picked the opposite and been each other’s opposites that way too. That what we said is that. And they even referred Oppenheimer as being a politician. They mentioned it more than once. I’m like, “You’re a politician now.” He could have just as well chosen that path, been brilliant at that, and gotten probably just as far as Straws, but even further because it’s his money and his charm and his looks. Where Straws is very smart and had he had the money. They could have taken each other’s paths and that’s very interesting.

Laci (01:43:20):

You’re right. I mean, the worst moment of Oppenheimer’s life, the thing that he keeps returning to is him giving the speech in the gym and seeing all the reactions because there he is trying on the mask. What if I become kind of the politician, the rah-rah politician? Well,

Matt (01:43:38):

And it’s kind of like, so what does it look like with a brilliant mind that’s born with means versus a brilliant mind that’s not? So Straws just innately knows, no, I need money and then I can get power. So he does shoes and then he goes about his power where a free thinking, brilliant person is like, “I already know what power’s like. I already live on this side of the park. I’m not even interested in this kind of thing. I’m going to care if you’re not in my class, but I’m unburdened by this, so I’m just going to go straight to this passion of mine instead.” So it’s about class too. You don’t get an Oppenheimer if he starts poor.

Laci (01:44:19):

He

Matt (01:44:20):

Needs to eat and Straws has to eat and you stay vigilant in that way where Oppenheimer stays kind of naive. He marries Kitty who helps him kind of sack up and he surrounds himself by people who are looking out for him because he’s a good person in his heart for some flaws, but that’s okay. Where Straws kind of had to look out for himself and he’s not genuine. He says what he needs to say and Oppenheimer’s done so well by just using his brain and his thoughts and his beautiful mind that it doesn’t even occur to him to not say something he doesn’t mean. So then he’s being put in this more political position because now he’s working with the government and every time he tries on these politics, it’s so awkward. The military outfit, it looks crazy on him. I now need to make a speech because I guess I’m the man of the hour.

Matt (01:45:19):

It looks insane on him. I now need to go talk to a board and finagle my way into getting something I want. It’s like, well, no, I’m just going to go tell the truth to the board because that’s literally the only thing I know how to do.

Laci (01:45:31):

I’m going to try to talk to the president and convince him of something and just wilt like a flower because.

Matt (01:45:36):

Well, not that, just the naivete of him going in there thinking the president would have any fucking give a. He is sheltered. He’s well known and loved in his community, but he’s a private school kid. That’s how he acts. I’m just going to go tell. I don’t need to have power because we have the government and they protect us and gee golly, they’re going to listen to me because I’m the smartest person. And then the longer he’s in this world, he’s like, none of this is in my control.

Laci (01:46:06):

None of this

Matt (01:46:06):

Is in

Laci (01:46:06):

My power. I just wanted to ask you later, do you think he really believes that or is that just what he’s saying?

Matt (01:46:12):

What part?

Laci (01:46:14):

That he can influence policy when he tries to, when they go into the meeting with the Secretary of War, when they go into the meeting with Harry Truman. No, he

Matt (01:46:21):

Never says he can do it. He just says he’s going to try to do it. He realizes he now has to. It is his burden to at least try. I don’t think there’s any point where he. I think as he gets older, any little hope that he would actually be able to control what it is that he made diminishes very quickly and then more and more as he ages. He just agrees to carry the torch for the scientists. Out of all of them, he’s got the most respect. So if anyone could do it, it is him and it’s still a feeble attempt because at the end of the day, he’s a scientist, not a politician.

Laci (01:46:54):

He meets Straws in 1947 at Princeton because Straws is running this Princeton Institute of Science or whatever.

Matt (01:47:04):

Which I guess is like a feeding tube into then going into maybe a government body that does the same thing. It seems like a pipeline, right? You work your way up. Straws was the head of this thing and now Oppenheimer will be behind him. And so now Straws goes into the government and then if Oppenheimer wanted to take a step to the government, he could because this is a stepping stone is all I’m saying. It’s like this kind of position was created for people who mean to be in the pipeline.

Laci (01:47:37):

If not a pipeline, then at least a resource. You’re on the payroll, you’re on the payroll. Oh,

Matt (01:47:43):

Oppenheimer’s going to owe me. Straws is taken aback by the fact that he’s not chomping at the bit for it. He’s like, “No, you don’t understand. For a fucking washed up scientist who doesn’t have a bomb to make anymore, this is legitimately the only coolest thing you could be doing with your life in Straws’ world.”

Laci (01:48:02):

And so

Matt (01:48:02):

When Oppenheimer’s just kind of like, “Consider it.” He’s so carefree and happy-go-lucky. Straws could never. He’s like, “I’ve been chomping at every bit and you’re going to fucking say no to my bit.”

Laci (01:48:15):

This is the thing I’ve killed. I’ve eaten babies to end up in the position that I’m offering you right now and you’re like, “I’m considering it.” And I’m

Matt (01:48:24):

Handing it to you because I thought I knew people so well, including you, that you’d say, “Yes, sir, of course I want this,” and be very, very appreciative of me. And now if I’ve got the world’s best scientist in my back pocket, they’re my friend and they owe me, I might as well be Oppenheimer. And the whole movie he is just trying to be. Be in the sense of, I want the esteem this man has, or I want to take his esteem away. That’s the only way for me to feel okay about the fucking isotopes. Either I strip him or it gets added to me.

Laci (01:48:59):

And he has this. I don’t think it’s wrong. He thinks that Oppenheimer kind of likes to play the part of guy who feels publicly guilty about what he did.

Matt (01:49:14):

He thinks it.

Laci (01:49:15):

He thinks that – It’s wrong. No, I think he’s right.

Matt (01:49:18):

I do not think Oppenheimer’s putting it on. I think he’s felt guilt. I think he knows he’d do it again.

Laci (01:49:24):

That’s what I’m saying. The guilt is real.

Matt (01:49:26):

The guilt is real.

Laci (01:49:26):

But he does like the fact that he’s the one who did it because he does like being the most important man who ever lived. Oh, yes. That

Matt (01:49:35):

Would’ve overrode any decision making.

Laci (01:49:39):

And so I get the fury when he’s yelling about it because it made him the most important man who ever lived. And the unique anger of feeling like I’m the only person who sees this guy for who he really is.

Matt (01:49:52):

But why does Straws think he put him in that position? How?

Laci (01:49:57):

Because he made him a martyr by stripping him of a security clearance. He’s saying that after all of that has happened.

Matt (01:50:05):

Okay. Okay. Because right now when they’re at Princeton, his only interest is doing a favor for the most esteemed person he could think of, I really think. I think that’s why he’s so attached to Oppenheimer taking this position because he wants him to owe him. I

Laci (01:50:23):

Think

Matt (01:50:23):

Every interaction you see Straws in is him maneuvering.

Laci (01:50:28):

Right. But it isn’t interesting that he still has this. It’s just an interest in physics. It’s something that he’s always been interested in, but I mean maybe that is just part of the package of resentments is this is what I wish I could have done so I’ll still – He

Matt (01:50:41):

Wants proximity.

Laci (01:50:41):

Hang out in that world in proximity to all these people. The

Matt (01:50:44):

Same way Oppenheimer wants the veneer of someone who wishes he hadn’t created the bomb, but still get the benefit of having created the bomb. That is exactly what Straws is. He didn’t want to do the work or go hungry or risk not having power. I think he saw right away, no, I want power even though I have this strong interest in science. Science is not power. Science is something people with power take and do what they want with. So it’s like he wanted both. So he just keeps the proximity and that’s why it so upsets him. He has this tiny relationship with Einstein to the point that he could make an intro. It’s like the fucking assumption that Oppenheimer doesn’t know Einstein is insane.

Laci (01:51:33):

Downey says he feels really bad for Straws. He’s like, “Yeah, I really relate to this guy. I feel for this guy. And the more I watch the movie, the more I kind of feel that. And I feel so embarrassed for him when he says that. I’d love to introduce you two.” He’s like, “Yeah, that won’t be necessary. I’ve known him for years.” I’ve known

Matt (01:51:52):

Him for years and I’m going to go talk to him right now. He’s going to be delighted to see me. We’re going to be in deep conversation and then it’s going to look as though he’s so mad at you. And for a ladder climbing kind of mentality, you read into everyone’s demeanor and it makes you very self. What word? Self-centered.

Laci (01:52:17):

You

Matt (01:52:18):

Think everything’s about you,

Matt (01:52:19):

But that’s because you’ve been trying to be so tuned into everyone in the room so that you can manipulate them and get what you want, that it kind of ruins your fucking life because you got a grumpy Einstein and now you’re like, “The whole scientific community’s been soured on me. What did he say?” And then he won’t tell you. You go up to Oppenheimer and you’re like, “What’d you say to him?” Which is, “Dear sir, very bold of you to fucking ask what two friends exchanged that have nothing to do with you.” He went on a limb to even ask. And then the guy’s like, “Don’t worry about

Laci (01:52:57):

It.” Oh, he’s fine.

Matt (01:52:59):

That’s the most embarrassing moment for me.

Laci (01:53:02):

Oh, he’s fine, is what Oppenheimer says. But

Matt (01:53:04):

I’m not.

Laci (01:53:05):

Crazy old Albert. We had already seen the earlier scene where somebody calls him Mr. Straws and he corrects Admiral Straws. Now, he is a guy who didn’t come from privileged upbringing, but rose through the ranks to become Admiral. So already early in his career in the war, he’s already just, you see, just vicious like killer climber to become an Admiral. But Oppenheimer says, Mr. Straws, it’s Mr. Strauss. It’s a pleasure. And he doesn’t correct him on the mister. He says, “It’s Straws. It’s pronounced Straws. It’s the Southern German pronunciation because Oppenheimer’s like,” Oh yeah, well they call me Oppenheimer or Oppenheimer. They still know I’m Jewish. “And he corrects him like,” No, no, no. I’m not ashamed of being Jewish. I’m the president of my temple. “And then he asks him,” You’re a physicist by training Mr. Straws? “He says,” No, I’m not a physicist or anything by training.

Laci (01:53:55):

I’m a self-made man. “And Oppenheimer says,” Oh, I relate to that. My father was one. He’s such a fucking cock.

Matt (01:54:02):

“Yes.

Laci (01:54:04):

And I can’t remember from the book if they had a prior relationship or if he had a prior. Did Oppenheimer go into this meeting with him already saying,” I’m going to fucking be an asshole to this guy? “No,

Matt (01:54:15):

I think this is just the way he is. I think he can feel his ass being kissed, and he knows he’s being schmoozed, right? This is a person courting him to take this position. And he probably knows on some level, this is a feather in your cap if you get me. And then I kind of owe you because you’re the one that’s so insistent I get this cush job with the whole fucking house and I accessed Einstein.

Laci (01:54:39):

And he’s classman by the arm and yes, two kids, is it right? Yes. He’s really laying on the charm offensive and it’s not working.

Matt (01:54:46):

Not at

Laci (01:54:47):

All. This is like when Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park is trying to charm Alan Grant and it’s not working. He’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been married a bunch of times.” Yeah.

Matt (01:54:55):

But people like that. Okay, and I’m only going to. I relate to this, but when you’re used to being able to charm people, and it comes from a sincere place with me, but when you meet someone that is Teflon to that, the kind of introspection and soul searching you got to go do in a bathroom real quick and then just regroup and be like, “Okay, I’ll try something different.”

Laci (01:55:21):

And when you’re married to someone who charms everyone, let me tell you, and you’re like, “Laci will handle this.This will be fine. Laci will make this right.” And then this person is not charmed by Laci, you’re like, “Oh no, it’s disturbing.” It isn’t. It’s upsetting. And it

Matt (01:55:34):

Doesn’t happen often. It’s

Laci (01:55:36):

Happened three times.

Matt (01:55:38):

I know exactly who you’re thinking of when you say that. That person leaves our house and you and I both look like, “What the fuck was that?” You’re lucky you didn’t go to this most recent IEP because it happened again. But I sent you and the kid down for dinner the first time at this new house and all four of us love this fucking house.This is a huge relief that we’ve had four and a half years of half of us liking where we are, the other half being like, “What the fuck?” Anyway, it doesn’t matter. There’s no weird

Laci (01:56:10):

Neighbors. Wait, I’m trying to.

Matt (01:56:13):

There’s no weird neighbors because we’ve also moved into a home we loved and immediately meet two insane neighbors. There’s these moments you can’t know exactly what you’re getting into when you switch locations of the place you live. And all signs point to this was a good choice. So I sit you and the kid down for dinner and I had been holding onto this because I had been worried about it for an hour. And I’m like, “Okay.” So I did yell across the street or loud enough for someone to hear me across the street, “Mom, don’t forget your big black cock,” because I had bought her a black rooster.

Laci (01:56:50):

Yo had bought your mother.

Matt (01:56:51):

Bought my mom a rooster, and it was black. She left it on the counter because of course she did. I’m like, “What would Beth think is funny?” It’s not even my humor. It’s not even my humor.

Laci (01:57:02):

Yes, it is.

Matt (01:57:02):

My humor is all humor. But I want to make my mom laugh right now. Well, no. Then I look up and older kid, but still has a backpack. So maybe college, I don’t know, is just kind of stop standing still in his yard. He is a black gentleman and he’s giving me the craziest fucking look. And then I’m, as much as I can with my face, it’s okay.

Laci (01:57:28):

Mom, you forgot your big black cock wearing a backpack.

Matt (01:57:31):

Fuck. Right. So we both feel awkward about it, but both go in our houses and I’m like, “Do I tell Matt this now, that I’m the weird neighbor, that I’ve ruined this cush position we have by yelling that at a child on accident?” Anyway.

Laci (01:57:49):

I wasn’t worried before.

Matt (01:57:50):

You weren’t? I had to sit you guys down.

Laci (01:57:54):

No, I forgot all about this. Matt

Matt (01:57:57):

Was worried. I’m going to feel weird about it until I see that guy again. But I don’t know if he’s a kid or not. He’s on the cusp. So it’s like, do I remember what I. It’s unclear. Here’s

Laci (01:58:09):

What you’re going to do.You’re going to double down. You’re going to shout, “Hey, I’m the big black cock lady.” It’s like the first time you punched me and I said, “You punched me. You punched me and you punched me again. In the spot where you’d punched me. Oh, I

Matt (01:58:19):

Thought I got you in the other

Laci (01:58:20):

Room.” So he’s talking, he’s putting on the charm offensive. “Oh yeah, there’s Albert Einstein out there throwing rocks into a pond. He does that. A crazy old man talks to the ducks. I’d love. “Hey. He’s

Matt (01:58:30):

Not throwing rocks. He’s feeding ducks, Matt. He’s

Laci (01:58:33):

Throwing

Matt (01:58:33):

Rocks at ducks.

Laci (01:58:34):

He’s confused. He’s just this dottering old man. And Straws says,” I always wondered why you didn’t involve him in the Manhattan Project. Greatest scientific mind of our time. “And Oppenheimer just has this condescension for him. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. No. Greatest scientific mind of his time, my friend. He doesn’t embrace all the new ideas that me and my friends are all about. And I was thinking,” Is this how Christopher Nolan feels if I came up to Christopher Nolan and was like, “I know a lot about movies too. I’ve read a lot of books.” No,

Matt (01:59:10):

I though you were going to say, because we said this, right? Is this what Christopher Nolan thinks about Henry Ford or something? Not Henry Ford. John Ford. John Ford, right? Yeah, he knew how to do the movies then. I’m Oppenheimer. I know the movies now.

Laci (01:59:24):

Yes, that’s the Albert Einstein. But who is the Lewis Straws for Christopher Nolan is what I would know. Oh, it would be

Matt (01:59:29):

You. Absolutely.

Laci (01:59:30):

But it probably is just some internet influencer interviewing him at a junket, just asking the dumbest questions.

Matt (01:59:37):

Oh God, you’re going to give me so much stress. This is like my Will Ferrell thing. What would I say?

Laci (01:59:42):

Yeah, because we are going to be talking to Nolan next week, so tune in for that. No,

Matt (01:59:46):

But you don’t ever do this. Just have it prepared so that we don’t get another Sandra O situation just to have something chambered. What is the least cringey thing but memorable thing you can say to a famous person who Got one moment to absorb your – Mr. Nolan,

Laci (02:00:02):

You forgot your big black cock. So do you want me to. I’d love to introduce you. No need. I’ve known him for years and then just walked right out to go talk to Albert Einstein. Completely in

Matt (02:00:13):

The middle of him getting a tour of this new position. You’re not on my clock anymore. You’re in the middle of a tour. He’s got a job to do. You just fucking left for 35 minutes. You made him come out to get you. That’s such a dick move.

Laci (02:00:31):

And the camera stays with Downey because we’re in the Downey verse, we’re in the black and white verse, and he’s just watching them. And then he gingerly starts to approach and then Einstein just brushes past and be like, “He snubbed me. Why did he snub me?” He goes over to. Well, and he first says, “So Albert, why did Albert snub me? What was that about? What did you say to him?” And Oppenheimer’s like, “Oh, he’s fine. He’s fine.” Right,

Matt (02:00:56):

Because Oppenheimer’s thinking like a normal person or maybe kind of a naive sheltered person, not a culture climbing. You know what I’m saying? He’s not thinking that he’s asking. He thinks he actually cares. Do you think Straws actually is worried that Einstein’s hurt? Is he okay? That’s what he hears. Not what’d you say to him?

Laci (02:01:21):

Boy, I didn’t think about it like that. Right.

Matt (02:01:24):

Should

Laci (02:01:24):

I go talk to him? Right.

Matt (02:01:25):

No. Yes. Go

Laci (02:01:27):

See if he’s okay.

Matt (02:01:28):

Oppenheimer answers it as though Straws is normal, not as though they’re both the same kind of person, which he would be like, “Don’t worry about nothing.” I don’t know.

Laci (02:01:38):

Yeah, but even if he hadn’t done the supposed snub or the appearance of the snub, he is big dicking him by just being like, “Yeah, we’re in the club and you’re not, motherfucker.” Shoe salesman, lowly shoe salesman, following a young opi around Europe, meeting all these people, going to art museums, meeting David Krumholtz, Isadore Robbie, this other physicist who’s also a Jew from New York, but from the other side of the park where we speak Yiddish. Oh,

Matt (02:02:05):

Okay. This other scientist is like fucking Heisenberg is the others? Okay, you’re still talking about Robbie. Got it.

Laci (02:02:13):

They meet Heisenberg, played by one of the few actors in the movie whose name I don’t know. But Robbie’s like, “Oh, there’s a German you have to seek out. Have you heard of Heisenberg?” And again, I figured there’s only 20 people in this world, so he probably already was on the way to do that. Well,

Matt (02:02:30):

And it’s just such an interesting way of showing you pre-war, you don’t know what this looks like. You’ve got to pass. We’ve all got past. It’s a small world of scientists. We meet each other. But you don’t imagine that 20 years later at a board to discuss your security clearance, they’re like, “So you only met Heisenberg once? And what did you say to him?” It’s like, “I don’t know.” But you have to be honest about it. I did meet him. Plus

Laci (02:02:55):

The thing, this is one of the only conversations in the movie that is just like, “Yeah, we’re just talking about the weather and stuff. Oh yeah, I like New Mexico a lot. It’s very nice there. Oh, I’ve never been to New Mexico.” That’s

Matt (02:03:05):

Important. That’s what they’re saying.

Laci (02:03:07):

It’s like

Matt (02:03:07):

These things that come up in your life and how they look. Yeah, he did go see a communist and fucker, but it’s not what you think. They weren’t talking commi shit. It’s just you’re living your life and there’s so many people who have passed communism ties because it was so popular. You go take something that popular and then make it illegal, we’re all fucked. And that’s so you can have an anti-state, that’s so you can do what nine eleven did. It’s all just like, what is the most common thing we could make an enemy right now so that we can control a lot of people because we want to lock it down.

Laci (02:03:44):

Yeah. Did you one time say that you don’t want the people of Palestine to die? Okay, we’re putting you on a list.

Matt (02:03:50):

Exactly. Or it being illegal to say things that are derogatory about Christians or whatever that paper said, the 25 thing. What am I thinking of? Project

Laci (02:04:01):

2025.

Matt (02:04:02):

Right. It was very nondescriptive wording that was like, I’ve had lots of thoughts. I have a website. I have lots of thoughts about. Fuck, you didn’t know what it was going to be later. So it’s like any of us could be controlled by our own government

Laci (02:04:19):

If we ended up

Matt (02:04:19):

Being important enough to them.

Laci (02:04:21):

And it was never illegal to be a communist. No. It’s just they just could bring you in front of Congress and make you answer a bunch of questions and potentially perjure yourself and go to prison forever. Right.

Matt (02:04:30):

Well, and they gave you this big prestigious project to do because they needed you and now they don’t like how you’re acting afterward, just being a total fucking salesman for, that was the right decision. Yay. Now you’re embarrassing the government. So they’ll pull the string they have, which is you want to stay with the clearance. You want that? Then act right.

Laci (02:04:56):

Did you ever meet Heisenberg again? He’s like, no, not in person, but our paths crossed. Heisenberg went on to run the nuclear program for the Germans. Right,

Matt (02:05:06):

But he didn’t even talk to him on the phone. So it’s like you didn’t meet him again. Just say you didn’t fucking meet him again.

Laci (02:05:12):

Presumably they corresponded.

Matt (02:05:14):

Fine, but they don’t ever show him writing anything down that’s not on a chalkboard.

Laci (02:05:18):

No, they don’t. But he does do a lot of chalkboard writing. Man,

Matt (02:05:21):

Does he?

Laci (02:05:23):

So he goes back to America to start up the quantum physics revolution in America, and he gets two positions, one at Caltech in Pasadena in Southern California, that’s two days a week. And then the rest of the time he’s going to be in Berkeley in Northern California. And I do love that when he’s in Caltech, he just lives with his married couple friends and just fucks the wife repeatedly. Richie and – You’re going

Matt (02:05:47):

To fuck her once.

Laci (02:05:48):

And Ruth, Ruthie, Richard Tolman. So then in Berkeley, he’s establishing the quantum physics department and we meet Lawrence, Josh Hartnett, establishing the radiation lab who’s so much fun in this movie. Yes,

Matt (02:06:03):

He is. And this is one of my favorite parts at the hearing too, and we’ve already gone past this part where he’s like, “Why go to Cambridge? Doesn’t Berkeley have the most blah, blah, blah, blah.” He’s like, “Yeah, once I created it, had to go to Cambridge so I could come back and create Berkeley. You fucking uneducated buffoon to asking me questions about my clearance. Everything’s need to know. And those binders, I can’t see what it says because I don’t have the clearance.” You don’t even understand what you’re talking about.

Laci (02:06:29):

Well, the entire point of those questions that Jason Clark is asking, it’s just prosecutorial dirty tricks. You like it in Europe? I bet you did. I bet you liked it in Europe.

Matt (02:06:39):

But the whole thing about how that works, these gotchas, are that you need to know what they’re going to answer or have a good idea of it or at least know that you’re coming from a place that could get him, but he fucking turns it around and makes him look like an idiot because it’s the biggest, “How could I go to something that didn’t exist because I didn’t create it yet? You fucking idiot.” It really undermines his credibility for the rest of the hearing because it’s like, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Laci (02:07:02):

He meets Lawrence. He’s like, “We’re building a machine to accelerate electrons. Want to help?” And he’s like, “No, but I want to use it once you’re done.”

Matt (02:07:08):

See, this is just a. I’m glad he had a hard time at Cambridge. He needed something to fucking weigh him down. This is just a mind like that just like, “Nope, I won’t be doing that, but I will be taking your things. Thank you. I don’t want to do the things that I want to do, and I do want to do the things that do want to do, and I do want to play with your stuff.” And it’s just like, he’s so brilliant. He’s as light as air, this man.

Laci (02:07:32):

Fucking

Matt (02:07:32):

Whoever.

Laci (02:07:33):

But we get the fun montage of his first class has only one student in it. And he’s

Matt (02:07:38):

So excited.

Laci (02:07:39):

But then what do you know? More and more and more students. And he

Matt (02:07:42):

Knew that.

Laci (02:07:43):

And these students, they don’t call him professor. They call him Oppi. They’re allowed to just call him Oppi. Call me Oppi. It

Matt (02:07:48):

Is adorable.

Laci (02:07:48):

Yeah. And the movie doesn’t go into this. Can you call

Matt (02:07:51):

Me Rafi?

Laci (02:07:51):

Okay, Rafi. He co-authored tons of papers with his students. He hung out with his students.

Matt (02:07:56):

That’s what I’m saying. He lifts people up. He gives people opportunity. He’s so lucky and so rich in spirit because of his luck that he doesn’t even realize he’s doing these tremendous favors for people that lots of people in his position would ever think to do because they fought tooth and nail to become the best at what they do. But it’s effortless for him. So he’s like, “Yeah, come on, let’s write a paper. You’re going to be okay. Why don’t you join my team?”

Laci (02:08:23):

And it being the 1930s when there were real politics in America, the students on campus. Well, I mean, yeah. When there was an actual left-wing movement is what I mean. These kids on campus are really politically engaged and he encourages that. In fact, I’ll hold a rally for support of the communists in Spain. And Josh Hartnett comes in the class and he’s like, “You shouldn’t let your students write that on the board.” He’s like, “No, I did it.” And Josh Hartnett is like, “No, no, no, no. Keep your head down. We don’t have to worry about stuff like that.” And is notably a Gentile. And Oppenheimer says, “Well, the Nazis are persecuting my people over in Europe right now, so I do feel like supporting people who are fighting fascists is a personal thing to me, and maybe in a way that it isn’t to you, but Josh Hartnett has the, no, no, no.

Laci (02:09:18):

I basically agree with you, but no, let’s keep our heads down. Let’s not think about any of that stuff.” In real life, Lawrence was way more of a conservative and they did have a lot of real disagreements.

Matt (02:09:28):

He’s just so much more typical. Everything is just to show you how very different Oppenheimer is. I don’t know. It’s amazing the doors that are open for brilliance, but then how once it’s used up like Einstein, it’s almost this albatross around your neck.

Laci (02:09:48):

Yeah, it is. And I do love his line. He’s like, “Don’t you care about integration?” He’s like, “Yeah, I want to vote for it, not talk about it.” But that’s the attitude, that’s like the modern American political idea is like, eh.

Matt (02:10:01):

Because from his perspective, he has worked his ass off to be in a room next door in this place in Berkeley. He’s a fucking professor at Berkeley. That’s really hard to do for most people. Most people aren’t just prancing in from Cambridge and be like, “I’m going to need an apartment in two places and two schools, please. I’m going to be wherever I want.” This is just this oddity of Oppenheimer brushing up against normal people and constantly being bewildered by them.

Laci (02:10:30):

Why

Matt (02:10:31):

Don’t you just ask for what you want and do what you want? That’s what I do.

Laci (02:10:35):

Do you have a favorite supporting performance in the movie aside from the – Matt

Matt (02:10:40):

Damon and then Emily

Laci (02:10:43):

Blunt.

Matt (02:10:43):

I don’t know. They call that supporting. No,

Laci (02:10:45):

I was going to say, let’s exclude Oppenheimer, Downey, Emily Blunt and Matt Damon.

Matt (02:10:50):

Okay. All right. Fuck. Who am I delighted by every time they come on the screen? I mean, Jean’s parts are always very captivating, but definitely Crumwaltz is the one where I’m like, “Yeah, he’s here.”

Laci (02:11:01):

He’s here. You just feel good. He’s going to give me an orange.

Matt (02:11:05):

Yeah. He’s there to take care of. Open Amber thinks he’s above it, but no, you need to be taken care of.

Laci (02:11:16):

I don’t know. It’s either Hartnett or Crumholtz for me.

Matt (02:11:18):

Yeah. Again, can’t believe that’s Hartnett. Don’t look anything like him.

Laci (02:11:22):

Oh, I had no idea when I saw the movie in 2023.

Matt (02:11:26):

Is there a prosthetic on or something?

Laci (02:11:28):

No, he aged. He just – No, no,

Matt (02:11:30):

No, no, no, because when he’s at the premiere, he looks like himself again. I don’t

Laci (02:11:34):

Know. He’s just styled.

Matt (02:11:35):

No, there’s something around the eyes that is not him. Also, when we first meet him, he’s got grease by his temple. So I’m like, “Is he a Frankenstein spot?”

Laci (02:11:46):

I’m a Frankenstein. Is he

Matt (02:11:48):

A Frankenstein spot? He’s got bad hair plugs? What is that?

Laci (02:11:52):

So Oppi’s going to take in the local political scene by attending a party. Oh, wait.

Matt (02:11:57):

You got to put in the running the fucking guy that is in the room the whole time during the proceedings for straws, right? The guy that is there to help him. Alden

Laci (02:12:07):

Arenrech. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (02:12:08):

He’s a fucking delight.

Laci (02:12:10):

Goes to this party of lefties and he meets his brother, Frank Oppenheimer, and who’s marrying. Sorry, I can’t remember the name, but make a point. Still Jackie. Yeah, still Jackie. And Robert is a dick to her too. Why is he being a dick to all these people? Well,

Matt (02:12:25):

Because you think these interactions are the most important thing and the only things that happened to him in his life, but you got to keep reminding yourself, no, these are the things in that report, right? Because he’s so flippant. He’s so laissez-faire. What am I trying to. Laissez-faire. And it’s like, yeah, because these things are just in a report and now he has to talk about them. Important things might have happened. He might have met people, but this was just some day to him. It just happened to be the day that a guy was taking down license plates, so it’s in the report. So it’s like, yeah, on the day-to-day when he’s not around his people, especially. And he’s not bad to women, but he just kind of can sense like, “Oh no, you’re not on my level. No, thank you.” He’s very dismissive. And this was an important day to him.

Laci (02:13:16):

Who’d want to defend their whole life? Now imagine it’s the present day and they’re reading. Okay, and we have every text message you’ve ever. Okay. And Ms. Rothy, you sent the side eyes emoji and –

Matt (02:13:28):

Take us back through that day. I mean, my recall would be shit, but on me on any given day walking through fucking Hobby Lobby or something, I’m sure I’m dismissive to somebody. It could be someone’s very important interaction and to me it’s like I’m in a mood. That’s what’s interesting about this movie is you think you’re seeing these critical moments, but the point is to show you a lot of this was fucking nothing. It’s just a lot to this moment. It’s a lot to this hearing.

Laci (02:13:58):

And a lot of it, the mingling of the social life with the physics, with the politics, it’s all one kind of big glob. And at this party – For the

Matt (02:14:06):

Movie.

Laci (02:14:08):

But that’s how it was experienced for these people. It didn’t feel like a big deal that I was meeting these communists. Yeah,

Matt (02:14:18):

This is when we were figuring out what political party we wanted to be a part of, what kind of America did we want. A lot of people are dying and a lot of people are doing a lot of suffering. Let’s shape America into something that’s worth fighting for. And what do I want to do with my adulthood? I feel like this kind of searching happened way more then. Now it’s just like you’re born into it.

Laci (02:14:44):

Because there was more democracy in a way. There were more things you could actually do. And

Matt (02:14:52):

Not be completely alienated by the side that’s not you, right?

Laci (02:14:57):

It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s just for one thing, union membership was huge and lots of people were members of a union. If you’re a part of a union, you could do things. You could do things that actually influenced the world. And the only thing that we call political activity anymore is voting. Did you vote? Did you vote up or down on this thing?

Matt (02:15:15):

A lot more local level power to make change. The government has also become this big monopoly just the same way as Amazon has for purchasing things. And I hope to have another example and I didn’t, but anyway, but things are getting so and so more concentrated at the top that it almost means nothing to be a mayor where it would’ve been a lot. And then under a mayor, a union leader. And then under that, the board chair of the school district. There were other avenues of power because you could focus locally. Now everything is like, “Oh, we can’t do that because it affects the very, very top of Washington. Who cares?”

Laci (02:16:05):

Or things like Kitty’s second husband who she says, “Came from money just like me, gave up his entire life to go fight in the Spanish Civil War for a cause he believed in.” Can you think of anybody doing anything like that today? It felt to people at the time like we actually have the ability to change things in the world. And

Matt (02:16:28):

There’s a lot of options. I could be a lot of things and I could be a little bit of two things. Everything’s not at critical opposite polar. Everything’s not red and blue and we’re against each other. There’s just more options and more civility amongst everyone in those options

Laci (02:16:49):

Because

Matt (02:16:50):

There’s power diversified. You can’t be too much of a shit to any one thing because it’s got power like you do.

Laci (02:16:57):

At this party, he gets to meet Hoken Chevalier, who becomes his best friend and indeed watches his kids for him all the time. Great friend, Hoke, who is a – Keeps his

Matt (02:17:07):

Kids and watches them.

Laci (02:17:09):

He

Matt (02:17:09):

Fucking keeps the kid.

Laci (02:17:11):

Yeah, he watches him like how we watch our kids every day. I’m watching my kid today. Okay.

Matt (02:17:15):

We’re talking more like Walter White level of watch my kids. Yeah, I know.

Laci (02:17:19):

Months

Matt (02:17:19):

Of. Okay. But I will say, you said there’s no composite people. I will say there has to be some composite events because there’s no way he met Jean, he met Chevalier, he met the guy from Shell. The guy was taking licenses numbers. Yeah, I’m sure. And he met Jackie. He saw his brother Frank. They show you this one, this is definitely condensed.

Laci (02:17:41):

Yeah, it has to be. And then he meets Jean Flopu, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock. She is a very famous person from American communist history. Look into the strange events of her death. Christopher Nolan presents it both ways, both she was murdered and she committed suicide. I don’t know enough about it either way, but it seems like consensus is that she was murdered by the deep state. For

Matt (02:18:12):

Being a distraction to Oppenheimer while they needed him?

Laci (02:18:15):

I don’t even know. Well,

Matt (02:18:16):

I mean, it makes sense. She’s the reason he is risking his security clearance. She’s one of the reasons to take that out. Take away that distraction from him. I don’t know.

Laci (02:18:31):

And it’s been two weeks. They’re

Matt (02:18:33):

Spending billions of dollars and they built a city to get this bomb done and he’s taking little trips because she needs to fuck Matt. I think just based on the amount of money that’s costing them, they will kill her. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Laci (02:18:47):

And Matt Damon says something when they’re having the big meeting with Stimson, with the Secretary of War, says, “Yeah, we’re working with a lot of scientists right now who are of questionable character. Once all this is done and we don’t need them anymore, we’re cutting all of them loose.” So there is this attitude of like, “Yeah, she’s not on the Manhattan Project. We can get rid of her.” This

Matt (02:19:06):

Is literally the only thing. I mean, because it’s gained such a head of steam. It went from one years to two years to three, and the amount. It’d be unfathomable that much of money. The stakes are so high that if you’ve got a level of autonomy within the military, like Black Ops kind of stuff, just go kill some people. Yeah. I mean, your career’s on the line. They

Laci (02:19:30):

Knew he had the hotel meeting with her, so they could easily have said anything. If she’s a spy. Exactly. We’ll just kill her right now. Anything.

Matt (02:19:38):

But

Laci (02:19:38):

We have talked about Nolan not being interested in sex. They’re not being sex in Nolan movies. There’s some sex here.

Matt (02:19:44):

I love them talking naked after. I love that

Laci (02:19:46):

They show

Matt (02:19:47):

Him all of

Laci (02:19:47):

A sudden he’s

Matt (02:19:48):

Naked. It’s like, oh, yes. And I’m talking about obviously the hotel whatnot, this first fuck. This

Laci (02:19:52):

First fuck, which was so. Well, first real sex scene in a Nolan movie. And the most famous thing about Oppenheimer is him saying the quote, “And now I am become deaf.” And I remember there were jokes online before the movie came out of. One I remember was just a screenshot from the trailer of Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon talking, and it’s like Cillian Murphy Speech Bowl, and now I am become deaf. And Matt Damon’s like, “Oh, so that happened.” So it was like, “So how is the movie going to handle that?” And they introduced it so early and during sex. She’s like, “Read from the Bag of Vadgeta to me, please.” And she climbs on his erect penis, as he says, “And now I am become deaf.” But it’s like the first time I heard Oppenheimer say that quote and say it’s from the Bagavad Gita, I though, “Why does he know the Bagavadgita?

Laci (02:20:45):

That’s very strange, but I didn’t – Well, I

Matt (02:20:46):

Also didn’t know that he was a person that could just in a couple weeks learn an entire language. I mean, of course he looks brilliant throughout this movie, but he’s such a delegator and he’s getting formulas wrong. He’s getting theories wrong. He’s being proven wrong two or three times through the course of this. He’s surrounded by very smart people who are getting things right. But I love that we know the thing about him learning to speak Dutch and that he’s learning Sanskrit. They demonstrate his brilliance and his huge spectrum of interest to illustrate his. You never doubt he’s smart, but in terms of what you see in the movie, you’re like,” I don’t know. Did he make the bomb? I don’t know if he made this bob.

Laci (02:21:33):

“She’s talking to him. She’s a true believer communist, and he’s trying to one-up her like,” Yeah, well, I’ve read all three volumes of Capitol in the original German. “And she’s like,” That doesn’t fucking matter. “And what she says to him is a version of what Kenneth Brana says. It doesn’t matter if you can. The physics is like music. It’s not can you read shoot music, but just can you hear the music? And she’s kind of doing a version of that. It doesn’t matter did you read the theory? Do you understand it? Do you live it? Do you see how it applies to everything? But his interest in communism and his interest in everything is just intellectual. Yes.

Matt (02:22:09):

But she, Jean, she’s just another type of Matt Damon. She’s another type of straw. She’s another type of. She has climbed her way into the top ranks of this party that what she’s there to do is sell it. And it’s like with the Scientologist, a big get would be Tom Cruise. A big get would be Oppenheimer. So she’s got no time for Oppenheimer who will not say he is a card carrying communist. She’s hard selling him. So you’re saying he was woman-upping her. I think they’re constant. She realizes right away she’s not going to get him to commit to anything, but they’re sexually attracted, so they stay.

Laci (02:22:48):

Yeah. And Nolan does a good job of showing the sexual attraction, even as I think he’s not interested in sex itself, but it is hot,

Matt (02:22:59):

Their

Laci (02:22:59):

Sexual attraction to each other. And

Matt (02:23:01):

He’s good at showing when Oppenheimer’s being stimulated intellectually, that’s the people he ends up being with. So the wife of a really renowned scientist is who he’s fucking on the side. He marries a scientist. He marries this top person at the top of this. I mean, she’s also kind of a philosopher. To be a communist, you have to have. This is how things could be, not the way

Laci (02:23:28):

They are.

Matt (02:23:30):

Different points. But

Laci (02:23:32):

She has a way more soulful approach to it. It isn’t based in like, well, what did Marx literally say about this?

Matt (02:23:40):

And

Laci (02:23:40):

When I was younger, I was – I feel like I know

Matt (02:23:42):

People like her. I don’t find her soulful. I don’t find her complicated. I think she’s mentally ill. Well,

Laci (02:23:47):

Yeah, she’s mentally ill. And

Matt (02:23:48):

Smart and sexy, but I think she. I don’t know what I want to say. I’m sorry. I just feel like I’ve met her before.

Laci (02:23:57):

They go to New Mexico. Robert brings his brother to New Mexico and Josh Hartnett. I am

Matt (02:24:02):

Totally not understanding why they do this. They go to watch a rainstorm and then look at the sky and then drink and then leave. Let me

Laci (02:24:09):

Show you. Let me show you the stars and the rain and then we can drink. Why? Because it’s his favorite place in the world.

Matt (02:24:14):

I know, but when I first watching the movie, I’m like, “Oh, they’re scouting for a place for the bomb.” It’s like, “No, they’re just on a rose trip right now.” Yeah. They can at least do peyote or something. Maybe

Laci (02:24:25):

They did. This is just what you did for fun back then. And I guess Josh Hartnett’s also an outdoorsman, so I was like, “Yes, yes. We’ll climb on some steeds and we’ll climb the mesa.”

Matt (02:24:36):

Stop it. This is though doing the legwork of showing you no, these are true friends. He knows my brother. I’ve introduced him to my life. This is not just a colleague, this is a friend. So that there is some real heft to when he shows up at the hearing to say whatever the fuck he was going to say, but that when Robbie’s able to guilt chew him away with his face and he pretends he came down with colitis, that’s to let you know this matters that this guy never spoke on the record. He was going to. That’s why this scene’s here.

Laci (02:25:11):

Well, it’s a very economical screenplay. It’s also to get out the- The

Matt (02:25:19):

Location.

Laci (02:25:19):

Attachment to Los Alamos that he had as a kid. If I could ever combine physics with New Mexico, I’d find true happiness.

Matt (02:25:27):

And the curse he put on that land is just so fucking ironic.

Laci (02:25:31):

Wow, thank

Matt (02:25:32):

You.

Laci (02:25:33):

And so arbitrary. It’s just like, “Oh, well, I went there as a kid and I liked it,” which is exactly what

Matt (02:25:37):

Stimson

Laci (02:25:38):

Says. And they’re

Matt (02:25:38):

Picking the place to bomb in Japan. I’m like, “Oh, that’s perfect.” Millions of lives were saved because this guy fucking went on a honeymoon there when any location in Japan’s going to have cultural significance to the people. It’s a lot of

Laci (02:25:53):

Culture. And that’s what he says first. Also, my wife and I honeymooned there and it was exquisite.

Matt (02:25:57):

He’s saying that because his fucking honky ass took some kind of tour, and they pointed out the cultural significant places there because that place is going to have, just like you come to New Orleans, we’re going to tell you the United States least significant things we’ve done here. It’s like everyone has significance. Jackson

Laci (02:26:16):

Square holds a lot of meaning

Matt (02:26:19):

To the people of New Orleans. Yeah. No, but I mean, you’re going to say to the people of America, this has a lot of. Because that’s what that place in Japan was doing.

Laci (02:26:29):

No, no,

Matt (02:26:29):

No. For Japan we’re important, not just for us we’re important.

Laci (02:26:33):

So they get the news back at. Meanwhile, at Berkeley – Science. Science article.

Matt (02:26:38):

From

Laci (02:26:39):

The San Francisco Chronicle headline that just says, “Science, science.” It’s got to

Matt (02:26:43):

Be like the sports section, right? This is just the science column. Find science in these two rows.

Laci (02:26:47):

Right. But they split the dang Adam. Can you believe it? And what I love is – He’s like,

Matt (02:26:53):

“No, they didn’t.” And he gets his fucking chalkboard. And

Laci (02:26:56):

Immediately, yeah. And the

Matt (02:26:57):

Other guy goes next door and goes, “No, I get it.” Yeah.

Laci (02:27:00):

“What

Matt (02:27:01):

Do you guys have in here? But this is magic chalkboard and that fucking magic weird tube bathtub thing you made earlier.” And I

Laci (02:27:07):

Love this, and I don’t understand it at all. I mean, I don’t understand – Of course not. I don’t even understand what splitting the atom means. I don’t either. Oppenheimer goes and does all the calculations and he’s like, “My calculations prove you can’t do it.” He’s like, “Yeah, but we just did it.” It’s

Matt (02:27:18):

Fission. They know how to make things condensed, like a black hole, like a collapsing star, but all that does is suck things in. You can’t make a weapon out of something that sucks things in. You can only make a weapon out of something that blows things out. So they need to be able to split the atom to prove that they can do fission. Fission is a bomb.

Laci (02:27:38):

Fusion

Matt (02:27:38):

Is interesting, but it’s a black hole. I though you

Laci (02:27:41):

Said you didn’t understand this stuff. I told

Matt (02:27:43):

You I didn’t understand fission and fusion.

Laci (02:27:45):

Okay. Okay. I just love this idea of. And I think it’s kind of what the movie is about, is all of these things are, people are going to discover them. They’re going to figure it out. Yes.

Matt (02:27:56):

It doesn’t

Laci (02:27:56):

Actually – This isn’t a

Matt (02:27:57):

Secret. That’s what. Sorry, I keep interrupting you, but that is what’s pissing me off the whole fucking movie. Oh, how did Russia figure this out? Because there’s five ways to do the thing that we’re all trying to do. We all come from the same schools. We’ve already told you that. Cambridge, that fucking place in Germany, fucking Berkeley. We all have the same education. We’re all coming at this and going to come through it with different but similar pathways. There doesn’t need to be a leak. Nothing is leaking. We’re scientists who have four ways to figure out a thing. And

Laci (02:28:30):

As soon as we can see that it was done, then we can do it ourselves. Yes, that’s what science

Matt (02:28:35):

Is.

Laci (02:28:35):

But I just love, there’s something about, I don’t know, nobody could run a four-minute mile until somebody did, and then people could suddenly start running four-minute miles. It’s not the same

Matt (02:28:43):

Thing. It’s not the same thing. It’s not the same. No. It’s like a medical procedure. People are trying to figure out how to perfectly do Lasix to an eyeball, and they keep doing it wrong. You just need one doctor to have figured it out. That’s science. To figure it out, to put it in a paper, to show proof that it worked, and then another science takes it. That’s what makes science awesome, is it’s replicable. That’s what makes it scientific. So it’s not a physical thing like running a four-minute mile or just having an idea. I didn’t have an idea to make a hamburger stand. It’s not that. It’s everyone’s been trying to do this thing and it only takes one of us to figure it out, and now we can all do it. It’s like the ultimate, what do you call that? Open source, right?

Matt (02:29:27):

No, this is for everyone. It’s supposed to make life better,

Laci (02:29:31):

Knowing things.

Matt (02:29:32):

Whole

Laci (02:29:32):

Thing is he’s a theoretician. He thinks about things. Other people do the things. He just thinks about them. He thought about black holes decades before anybody could find a black hole.

Matt (02:29:41):

He’s from the prestige, right? He’s the one that’s constantly thinking of the illusion. He’s important. He’s Michael

Laci (02:29:49):

Kane.You need

Matt (02:29:50):

More and more. No, no, no. He’s not the builder. He’s the thinker. The rest are his builders. He’s the most important thing. He is the Christian Bale. But he keeps thinking of the biggest and biggest tricks, and he’s got all these scientists around him to make it happen. He’s got a bunch of Michael Kanes. You get what I’m saying? A theorist is just a person who can come up with different illusions.

Laci (02:30:13):

Yeah. And then Josh Harton, it’s like, “Well, your math all checks out, but we just did it next door.” And so he has to go look at it and then he’s like, “Oh, I now see

Matt (02:30:21):

That

Laci (02:30:21):

My assumptions were incorrect.”

Matt (02:30:23):

It’s exciting though because it changes the math. Math is constant, but what you could do with it isn’t. So that’s what’s exciting. It evolved the science. It evolved the math.

Laci (02:30:34):

And everybody’s already on the same page. Every scientist in the world now knows what this means. A bomb, a bomb. That’s what’s inevitably going to come. And it’s why I keep reiterating this movie I think is about how Oppenheimer’s not actually special, but history demands, give us a special man. It

Matt (02:30:55):

Could just as easily have been Heisenberg. Whoever got to the moon first, right? But America got to be American. But what made him special was his tenacity and his ability to bring people together, his ability to keep people together even when they do not agree, his ability to utilize people so that they felt value and worth. You got happy wives because they’re being utilized with their skills, not just in a dusty house waiting for cranky tired scientist husband to come home. He’s very intuitive, even if naive. He understands what people need and the space they need because he can’t do his best work when in the confines of a lab. He’s not a lab person. You let him do what he does and he’s happy. And that’s what made him special. He’s connected like a politician, but to scientists. He brings out the best in people.

Matt (02:31:46):

He gives people opportunities. He earns goodwill by doing good things for other people just for the sake of it and for the sake of science, not to see what he can get out of it.

Laci (02:31:58):

I don’t want to get bogged down in this. I’m saying –

Matt (02:32:01):

I was just letting you know, he is fission where Strauss is fusion. That’s why there’s a difference. Oppenheimer’s constantly pushing out and wanting growth and what can I make grow? What can I push out? What can I do to advance the ball? Where the reason why Strauss is fusion is because what can I take in? What can I keep? What can be mine? You see?

Laci (02:32:23):

Yes. Consolidate

Matt (02:32:24):

Power.

Laci (02:32:25):

No, I see what makes him special on a human level. I’m talking in a more historical lens. I’m saying

Matt (02:32:30):

Historical. I’m explaining to you why he was the man to do it because he at once has a great ego, but a complete lack of ego if it means we get to do the thing we’re curious about. I don’t care who gets the credit as long as we figure out this thing. He has more intellectual curiosity than he does ego. That is what makes him special. I’m

Laci (02:32:52):

Saying from a historical perspective, if he had not done this, someone else with a similar set of traits would have, and it wouldn’t have looked the same and maybe it would’ve taken longer, but in the arc of history, Robert Oppenheimer didn’t really change anything that anyone else couldn’t also have changed. That’s

Matt (02:33:08):

Like saying Hussein Bolt isn’t important. It’s only important that he is such an amazing person at running because he got there first. Getting there first matters is what I’m saying. Why does anyone race to be the number one? He did and he got there. Yeah,

Laci (02:33:26):

But Usain Bolt didn’t. But that’s not changing history. And Oppenheimer didn’t change history.

Matt (02:33:31):

That’s how we gauge who is special is yeah, given enough time, anyone can get there, but he did it in that amount of time and enough time to make it matter for the war.

Laci (02:33:42):

And just the interesting thing is that he was the one. And that’s why I have also kept bringing it back to Nolan being the filmmaker who gets to make all these giant movies and probably has this guilt of I’m not the only one who could do this. There are other filmmakers who could do this. Why am I the only one who gets to and has to carry this burden of savior of cinema and everything and the person who’s keeping alive all these dying technical professions in filmmaking. So Appi is doing a lot of political activism. He’s giving speeches, he’s leading a drive to unionize Josh Hartnett’s radiation lab. He’s taken students to union rallies like the FAECT and stuff. And Hartnett tells him or does not tell him, but it’s made clear to him, we have a working group that you’re not invited to where we’re working on the bomb.

Laci (02:34:40):

We’re coming up with plans for the bomb.

Matt (02:34:42):

I want you to see these two guys you know who are of certain prestige who are going to Einstein you whenever you walk by them. And I want you to be so like, I want to know what you guys are doing that you stop all this foolishness.

Laci (02:34:56):

But makes clear to him, “Hey, if you just cut out all the union shit, you can join our club.” And he’s like, “Okay, consider it done. No more union shit. Now I get to join the club.” Yay. And he goes home to Kitty and he’s like, “Kitty, great news. I’m in the project. I joined the club.” And she’s like, “Great let’s celebrate.”

Matt (02:35:11):

Car, baby. Because

Laci (02:35:12):

She’s just sitting in the dark downing martinis as their baby screams in the next room.

Matt (02:35:17):

She’s a perfect example of a completely wasted woman. I mean, she ends up finding her purpose, but she’s miserable. There is no place for her really, her exact kind of person.

Laci (02:35:30):

Right. Don’t you think you should go to him? I’ve been going to him all fucking day. A fucking day, Christian Slater.

Matt (02:35:38):

If I have to dock this movie a 0.0001 star, which I can’t, it is for the amount of children crying. And I know that there is a reason. I know we’re supposed to be thinking of the crying children that the bomb affected and the lives destroyed and there’s all kinds of different sound effects throughout the entire movie that are screaming and moaning and random crying. It’s at these different moments when you’re like, “Did I just hear what I heard? Did Sully just call me from upstairs?” And it’s like, “Oh, oh, this is his haunted head. This is what we did. We’re dealing with.” But it’s like, “Ah, movie, stop with the fucking crying babies.” It’s hard and I know I’m supposed to feel bad, but I don’t like it. I love how much she’s an alcoholic and it’s never dealt with.

Laci (02:36:21):

He

Matt (02:36:21):

Never tells her to stop because he’s fucking everybody.

Laci (02:36:24):

So he’s

Matt (02:36:25):

Just like, “I don’t know. I’m kind of doing my thing.” That’s

Laci (02:36:26):

What they mean by grownups. We both have our piccadillos. Yeah. He gets this paper published about black holes the same day that war, war and yarp. Hitler invades Poland. People are

Matt (02:36:38):

Going to remember this day. God damn it.

Laci (02:36:41):

Reading the headline, “Victory or death for me, Hitler says Hitler. City’s bombed. Danzig seized.” This was September 1st, 1939. War has broken out. No one’s going to read my paper. Oh man. But he meets Kitty. He meets her officially and Emily Blunt is now in the movie. They meet at a party, at a party at the house of –

Matt (02:37:03):

She’s married currently right then.

Laci (02:37:05):

Yeah. The party hosted by Richard Tolman and his wife, wife Ruthie. Not to be

Matt (02:37:12):

Confused with Rothi.

Laci (02:37:14):

Don’t let that mistake happen to you people. And even Emily Blunt can tell, “I think this guy’s fucking Ruthie,” just from the briefest of exchanges. But she’s like, “Yeah, I’m married, but barely.” And he’s like, “Hey, come to New Mexico with me.” She’s like, “Yeah, okay.” And they’re riding horseback. They’re drinking from flasks and she’s telling him all about her previous marriages, including to the guy who went and fought in the Spanish Civil War. First time he put his head out from a trench, fucking got shot. All his life amounted to was stopping a fascist bullet from hitting a brick or something.

Matt (02:37:48):

Mud bank.

Laci (02:37:49):

A mud bank. And he’s like, “Yeah, I think I want to marry you.”

Matt (02:37:55):

Yeah. He loves a stern intellectual woman. Man, he likes it.

Laci (02:38:00):

And goes and tells Jean, “Hey, sorry, I’m getting married. I would’ve married you, but you made very clear, no, that will not be happening.” This

Matt (02:38:07):

Is the first huge emotions you’re seeing from her, so you’re not expecting it. But she definitely thought this cat and mouse thing they were doing was their relationship or that’s what she wants. She wants it to be kind of shitty.

Laci (02:38:22):

And I love what she says. She says it’s a door closing. And he’s like, “No, it’s not. We can still fuck. Corners don’t fuck.” So they get married and what a wonderful marriage it is. As Jean points out, he impregnated Kitty while she was still married to her old husband, but we talked with the old husband and yeah, it’ll all work out. They’ll be nice and divorced by the time she starts showing.

Matt (02:38:49):

Right.

Laci (02:38:50):

Jean

Matt (02:38:50):

Is like, “Well, that’s fast forward implying that Emily Blunt was trying to lock that down. I need proximity to power and I need it to be the sexiest kind of power.”

Laci (02:38:59):

But they do not enjoy their baby and they go to Chevalier. Well, this is a lockdown,

Matt (02:39:04):

Baby. We did a lot of weird stuff in lockdown and then we just gave it to Chevalier.

Laci (02:39:09):

“Will you take our baby?” And he’s so wonderful and generous about it. And he even says, “No, you’re not a bad person for doing this.” Well,

Matt (02:39:16):

And there’s this constant reminding Oppenheimer of like, “No, you are here for greater…” You do get to get away with so much because you’re so important. It’s supposed to be so weird to be like Jesus Christ, but be with the reputation of Jesus Christ while you’re walking around on earth, where Jesus Christ didn’t even have that. Oppenheimer does. To just be walking on water in front of everybody and being constantly told, “You’re so important.”

Laci (02:39:47):

Well, we talked about The Last Temptation of Christ, which Nolan was obsessed with. That is kind of what that movie’s about is what was life like for actual Jesus of carrying around in my head and being told by all these followers, “Dude, you’re the best. You’re God basically on earth.” I

Matt (02:40:03):

Guess, but I’m saying it’s even beyond that. It’s him after he dies. You get to have the reputation of somebody that’s idolized and put on a pedestal because they died for something while still alive. That’s what Oppenheimer got.

Laci (02:40:16):

Now inter Matt Damon. I’m looking for someone to run my Manhattan Project. Won’t you be that man? They called it the Manhattan Project because their initial meeting started in Manhattan. That’s why they called it that. Thank you. And the Manhattan Project was I think 130,000 employees, $2 billion budget. It was enormous. It wasn’t just Los Alamos. It was this huge international operation. The British and the Canadians were also involved. Sure.

Matt (02:40:43):

Cillian

Laci (02:40:43):

Murphy is getting hired to run the literal laboratory that will develop the bomb. Right.

Matt (02:40:48):

Compartmentalization. Cillian Murphy has no idea what 99% of those people are doing, just his 1% at Los Alamos. There’s a lot of people, but they don’t know each other in the project.

Laci (02:41:01):

Right. There’s not

Matt (02:41:02):

A tenant that they get to do with each other to be like – No,

Laci (02:41:05):

You can just concert. Tenant, tenant

Matt (02:41:06):

Maybe. Manhattan. I’ll have a Manhattan.

Laci (02:41:11):

Damon is like, “Yeah, I asked around everywhere who should lead my Manhattan project and your name never once came up. And also, why don’t you have a Nobel Prize?” And he does the same thing that he’ll later do to Robert Downey Jr. “Oh yeah, I’m considering it. I haven’t offered the job. Yeah, but I’m considering it. “And so they hire him, they’re hiring him, and now it’s a heist movie. Now we’re putting a team together. We need the best of the best. Compartmentalization, all these people, all these stations working all around the country coming together at this nexus, this one point, Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Matt (02:41:42):

That man loves a chalkboard.

Laci (02:41:45):

Los Alamos. And the good thing is there’s one boy school that will have to a requisition and some freaking Indians come up here for Barretts. And very fast, they build this town. They build the town. And the movie did shoot a lot of stuff on location in Los Alamos and even shot on location in Robert and Kitty’s house, which is now a museum.

Matt (02:42:06):

Oh, interesting.

Laci (02:42:08):

But as they’re building up their capacity, building up all their facilities, all the scientists are still meeting in Berkeley and Teller, Edward Teller played by Benny Safti, this Hungarian physicist, and Oppenheimer’s giving a lecture and Teller just comes in and he’s like, “No, no, no. Stop talking. This is important.” Just hands around his equations or his calculations. And they’re like, “What do these calculations mean?” And what they mean is if we set off a bomb – It

Matt (02:42:37):

Could go on forever and ever until it burns the entire universe and planet and everything outside of it.

Laci (02:42:44):

And Laci would feel very sad about that.

Matt (02:42:47):

As we know, I would not. Even Martians couldn’t mourn us.

Laci (02:42:51):

Well, you said it would ignite the whole universe, so eventually it would get to the. And Oppenheimer’s immediately like, “Well, I need to go see Einstein about this.” I think this is the only. Because I know that the stuff between Oppenheimer and Einstein is a dramatic liberty, but him saying, “Ooh, I need to go consult Einstein immediately,” is kind of like a. I don’t know. That seems like kind of a conventional biopic thing. I like it. I love every scene between them, but he’s like, “Yeah, I need to go consult him right away.” I think it’s

Matt (02:43:24):

Important because did Einstein actually have a relationship with Goebbels? Is that true?

Laci (02:43:29):

With Goebbels? You mean with – Is that

Matt (02:43:32):

Who’s standing right next to him?

Laci (02:43:33):

No, that’s – Yes, it

Matt (02:43:35):

Is.

Laci (02:43:35):

Gobels is somebody else. You’re thinking of, but that.

Matt (02:43:39):

I’m thinking of a German scientist. Yeah,

Laci (02:43:42):

Kirk Godle. Godel.

Matt (02:43:44):

Okay. I’m not crazy. That’s the look he gives him is like, “Fuck, who are you talking to?”

Laci (02:43:49):

I never thought about what that look meant. Okay, but

Matt (02:43:52):

You need to because these are two men who used to live in a different country and they left for two different reasons. But at any moment, your country, for whatever reason and always political reasons, will kick you the fuck out. Oppenheimer keeps getting confronted by this and needs to shake it off because he has to understand this is you guy. You’re

Laci (02:44:17):

Important

Matt (02:44:18):

Until you’re not.

Laci (02:44:20):

Yeah, because I’m reading Godel fled from Austria, but Austria was occupied by the Nazis, fled the Nazi occupation in 1939. So yeah, that’s a good point. It comes in all kinds of different forms, but it’s going to come.

Matt (02:44:35):

Right. You’re important now.

Laci (02:44:37):

I was

Matt (02:44:37):

Important in my time.

Laci (02:44:39):

Yeah. And

Matt (02:44:40):

Even to you, I’m not important anymore, and you’re the one who should understand how I’m still important.

Laci (02:44:45):

But shows Einstein the figures. We’re worried that if we set off an atomic device, it’ll set off a chain reaction that ignites the atmosphere. What do you think? And he’s like, “I think that if this is true, run the numbers again. You have a good man on it? Yeah. Okay, good. If the numbers are true, then you get in touch with the Nazis right away and you make a deal. Neither of us is ever building an atomic device.” I love

Matt (02:45:07):

That. And

Laci (02:45:08):

Probably even if the numbers are wrong, you should still say that to them. We’re now getting the sense Oppenheimer maybe running not such a tight ship because all these people are talking to each other. And for him’s like, that’s important. That’s we do. That’s the scientists do. But these military guys, Groves, Matt Damon, and his little guy, Nicholson or Nichols – Tiny

Matt (02:45:28):

Little man.

Laci (02:45:29):

Played by Dane Dehan, they’re a little worried about all this, especially Nichols. Of course. He’s the one who just stands there and sees in the background. And

Matt (02:45:36):

Ends up being the rat. No,

Laci (02:45:38):

He doesn’t. That’s

Matt (02:45:38):

Him.

Laci (02:45:39):

Well, Rat, in what respect? He

Matt (02:45:41):

Was the one leaking information. To

Laci (02:45:44):

The Atomic Energy Commission, because there is an actual Soviet spy,

Matt (02:45:49):

But

Laci (02:45:49):

That’s not who you. No, no, no. Doesn’t

Matt (02:45:51):

He look just like that? No. You’re lying.

Laci (02:45:53):

The spy is Fuchs. Nichols though is the guy who was working with straws to rat fuck Oppenheimer.

Matt (02:46:01):

Okay. He knew he was something.

Laci (02:46:04):

And Teller, Benny Safti is the one who’s like, “I have this idea for this hydrogen bomb. It’ll be like 10,000 times as big as the Atom bomb.” And Oppenheimer’s like, “Great, you work on that. We’ll work on this over here.” Well,

Matt (02:46:14):

Because it’s like, “Well, what do you need to make that bomb go off?” “Well, I need the one you’re working on.” “Okay, so we’re just going to keep doing that then.” Since

Laci (02:46:21):

We’ll need one anyway. Yeah, they’ll love the idea of, “Yeah, this bomb will require an atomic bomb to make it go off.” Right. Then we’ll just have it. It’ll be nice. We’ll just have it. It’s

Matt (02:46:31):

Nice to just have.

Laci (02:46:33):

But we’re cutting ahead to the future when they get the news that the Russians now have done their own nuclear test. They have an atom bomb too. Oppenheimer, it must have been your fault. Somebody that must have been a spy at Los Alamos and all these questions about should we now develop an H-bomb because then we’ll have nuclear supremacy over them once again. This is all happening right here at the same time. It’s all very

Matt (02:46:56):

Stupid to me. It’s all very. Because I mean, that’s what the government is only thinking in like, “Oh, if we get there first, then we’ve got it.” It’s like, “No, that’s not how science works. Only one of us needs to figure it out and then they just make it too. They’ll just make it also.

Laci (02:47:12):

This is why I asked you, did you think Oppenheimer actually believes that building the autumn bomb and setting it off will end all war? That’s really what I. Does he actually believe that or did he always know?

Matt (02:47:27):

No, I think that he hoped the diminish. Even just the one that he did in the desert, I think he hoped just that would scare people the way it scared him to his core. And what he does, it’s his naivete again, right? He’s thinking in a pure. We’re trying to make things live and go on and we’re figuring things out. Well, that’s me, that’s everybody, right? He thinks they just need to see how dangerous it is and then no one will use it. As if shooting someone with a gun and showing someone die would scare everyone out of using a gun. No, some people, yes. The other half of people, they think power, control, fuck yes, tit-for-tat.

Laci (02:48:08):

Or they think, oh, that’s so scary. I guess I better get one.

Matt (02:48:11):

Sure. I’m just saying there’s two different kinds of people. The ones who would run the other way, and then the problem is the other half who are like, no. Yeah, that’s our shit right there. I will control people with that. There’s always going to be that other half.

Laci (02:48:25):

I guess what I’m not settled on is did he really not realize that the whole time and was just in denial about it because of the ego, because of buying in and wanting to succeed?

Matt (02:48:38):

It was a toy that they finally had every piece to create, right? It’s like we’ve all been waiting for this to split the atom. Can it happen? If it can’t happen, then there isn’t this whole new set of toys to play with. But it’s like, okay, someone just opened this set of toys. Fuck. The inevitable conclusion of what to do with these toys is make a bomb. And as a scientist, he wants to do the thing. I want to do the thing with the thing, please. And it’s an intellectual curiosity and a need to just see it, but then you done made it because you wanted to see it. His curiosity and his putting intellectual curiosity above everything else, including relationships, is what constantly puts him in a bad situation. It makes him a bad person. I wonder what her pussy’s like. I wonder what a bomb would be like.

Matt (02:49:33):

He’s so curious and you know what they say.

Laci (02:49:38):

Gene gets in touch with him again. I need you, Robert. So he sneaks away from Los Alamos and sneaks over to San Francisco and they have sex in a hotel room and then just sit naked and have a very serious conversation.

Matt (02:49:49):

About him not being able to see her anymore. Yes,

Laci (02:49:52):

Because. I can’t tell you why. I’m doing super special government stuff. Fucking

Matt (02:49:57):

Guess, Jean. Fucking guess. What science do I do? What did we learn how to do in the fucking split dam? It’s so stupid how it’s all such a secret. I’m making a bomb.

Laci (02:50:07):

What do you think? You like them being naked on chairs. Love

Matt (02:50:10):

It.

Laci (02:50:10):

Why do you like it? Because

Matt (02:50:11):

It’s so realistic. It’s just like.

Laci (02:50:14):

Yeah, we’ve done this. Well,

Matt (02:50:15):

I mean, after sex, you don’t necessarily just hurry up and get. Especially if you’re with a person who’s really good at fucking you, probably just going to be naked for a minute.

Laci (02:50:23):

No, you have sex or you’re about to have sex and then somebody says something serious and they’re like, okay, now we have to talk about this, but we’re naked. Or

Matt (02:50:30):

We know we’re going to have sex again, so we just stay naked.

Laci (02:50:33):

Yeah. And it’s like the most intimate scene in any Christopher Nolan movie is them being naked in chairs and talking about very serious stuff. And then in the AEC hearing, Kitty watching her have sex with him and him being naked, feeling like he’s naked. Right,

Matt (02:50:51):

Right. How this is revealing uncomfortable for everyone.

Laci (02:50:55):

And this is why people – And then the

Matt (02:50:57):

Scariest scene ever happens with Casey Affleck. With

Laci (02:50:59):

Casey Affleck. Kills

Matt (02:51:02):

My bones.

Laci (02:51:02):

While he’s like, “Well, as long as I’m in California, I went to see Gene. I’m going to go back to Berkeley.” He

Matt (02:51:09):

Only does this map because he feels really bad about that kid getting drafted, and he’s only getting drafted into the war because he’s been making things difficult at the Manhattan Project.This is the bomb he set off is that this is why he won’t let Teller leave. He thinks if Teller leaves, they’re going to kill him and they might, and they will, or they’ll go work on a railroad yard for some fucking reason, or they’re washed up and they can’t ever be any kind of normal job again. Only at the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos are these people I gathered here safe. And when he’s starting to see that that’s not true, like, okay, this kid keeps doing union shit and keeps being a problem. So now they’re just not going to kick him out of here. He’s enlisted in the fucking war where he’s going to die.

Matt (02:51:54):

That’s why he goes to this place. He’s going to talk some sense into the kid. But because he got a security clearance as he’s out the door to do this, they’re like, “You probably shouldn’t talk to the kid.” And then he doesn’t even ever do that. He never saved that guy. That guy probably dies in the war.

Laci (02:52:11):

And

Matt (02:52:11):

Because now he’s scared –

Laci (02:52:12):

No, we learned later he’s building railroads. That’s the

Matt (02:52:15):

Guy? The same guy?

Laci (02:52:16):

Lominitz, I think. It’s hard to keep track of everyone. Okay.

Matt (02:52:19):

Yeah, it absolutely is. But he’s nervous, right? Well, I did just go fuck a communist and I’m here to see if I can talk this guy out of being a communist so he can stay and not go to the war. Why don’t I throw them a bone and be like, “Look, no, no. I really respect my security clearance. Let me come give you guys a hot tip. Here’s some gossip,” thinking it’s going to get him some credibility. And then he’s way over his fucking head. About

Laci (02:52:46):

The Chevalier incident, which we mentioned in the history section. We didn’t talk about the scene in the movie where it happens, where Chevalier is like – We do. A

Matt (02:52:52):

Little bit.

Laci (02:52:53):

“Hey, maybe I can help you get some information to Russia. “Well, that would be treason. Yeah, I know. And then Kitty comes in, she’s like,” The brat’s down. Where are the martinis? “Right. So now he’s like,” Okay, yeah. Can I tell my boss, my higher ups here about this, but without getting anybody in trouble? “After he tells this one officer about the other guy, he’s like,” I might as well now tell them about Chevalier without saying Chevalier. “And the guy’s like,” I want to know more about this. Can you come back tomorrow morning? “And he’s like,” Yeah, sure. “And when he comes in the morning – Now the

Matt (02:53:27):

Scariest thing ever is

Laci (02:53:29):

The athlete there. As Boris Pash. Oh my God, this is. Yeah. And he’s like,” Yeah, he told me some stuff and I was just pretty, I don’t know, been kind of disturbed, been thinking about it all night since then. Pash

Matt (02:53:43):

Is Straws. If Straws’ passion were killing, you can just see the calculation in the ice cold eyes of Pash of him trying to get enough information for him to be able to kill the next person he’s going to kill. No, no, you should talk. Everything he’s doing is to get this person more and more uncomfortable till they just give up some information so he can go kill a commie. Yeah,

Laci (02:54:13):

And certainly –

Matt (02:54:14):

It’s the eyes. It’s behind the eyes. It’s the same as with Strauss. It’s like these little micro expressions are just like.

Laci (02:54:21):

His dad was a Russian Orthodox bishop who was kicked out of the country after the 1917 revolution. So this guy hates communists more than anybody in the world. He’s killed communists with his bare hands. It’s his favorite. He lives to kill communists. He loves it so much. It’s his fucking favorite. And

Matt (02:54:36):

Now they’re in America. Fuck that.

Laci (02:54:39):

It’s his job. And there was certainly an attitude in World War II despite the Russians being an ally of the United States, not only an ally, being the ones who actually defeated the Nazis who suffered by far the most death and destruction is like, “No, no, no. We hate Russia way more than we hate Germany.” Because

Matt (02:54:57):

They are the scientists, right? They’re just useful when they’re working for us, when they’re

Laci (02:55:02):

Doing the thing

Matt (02:55:03):

For us. And then they’re a threat because now they still have all that brain and power, but they’re not under our thumb anymore. These are scientists that know how to build a bomb who are not employed by us anymore, and that’s Russia. That’s the biggest kind of. It should be obvious. You are going to be thrown away and considered a danger as soon as you’re not useful to us anymore.

Laci (02:55:28):

To fight World War II, the United States built the modern military industrial complex. And the thing was, once the war ended, it wasn’t an option to turn it off. Right.

Matt (02:55:39):

So

Laci (02:55:39):

It needed a new target and the Soviet Union was right there. It had to happen. But didn’t

Matt (02:55:43):

They take over factories that were meant for other things and use it for stuff for the war? Is that part of turning on the machine, repurposing things that built sheet iron for something else? Did that also not go back? No, that

Laci (02:55:58):

Stuff went back. But the idea of we’re just relentlessly manufacturing weapons.

Matt (02:56:04):

Now that we know how to make one of these missiles, what if we keep doing it, right? Yeah.

Laci (02:56:10):

And we never turn back. And the promise of a wartime economy is we’re going to do this until the war is over and then we’ll go back till normal life. But we have never returned to normal life. And

Matt (02:56:19):

For someone like Passion Oppenheimer, it’s in their best interest for things to never go back in a way because they both have this similarity in that this war happens to just fit exactly the kind of shit I know how to do real well. I’m going to hunt and kill commies and I’m going to make a fucking bomb. And I don’t hope to not get on the other side of this one day because I’ll just be reassigned, pass, or I’ll be embarrassed and stripped of my security clearance. Oppenheimer. This whole movie is about being disposable.

Laci (02:56:55):

Yeah. But like Die Hard, this is a Christmas movie. Oh,

Matt (02:56:59):

I know.

Laci (02:56:59):

Because we have a very nice Christmas scene.

Matt (02:57:01):

Which is hinted at being way before Christmas. Isn’t it early?

Laci (02:57:06):

I don’t know. Yeah,

Matt (02:57:07):

It’s like six weeks before Christmas because everyone’s like, “Is this really…”

Laci (02:57:11):

Wait, what else are you going to do? It was like COVID when everybody suddenly was into gardening. Maybe

Matt (02:57:17):

If they meant, “Is this really the time for Christmas…” That meant –

Laci (02:57:21):

The war? Yeah,

Matt (02:57:23):

That’s probably what it meant. I was like, “Why are they…” It

Laci (02:57:25):

Would be funny. Yeah. It’s only September 15th.

Matt (02:57:28):

Right? They didn’t do timestamps, so I didn’t know. They’re

Laci (02:57:33):

Having a big Christmas party and then Matt Damon comes in and he’s like, “I got a present for you all. It’s Neil’s born.” Everyone’s like, “Neils, welcome. What’s been going on?” Because he was in Copenhagen, which was under Nazi occupation, but he’s got some intel, some dirt on the Nazi nuclear program. Can

Matt (02:57:49):

I ask a stupid question that I should know

Laci (02:57:51):

By

Matt (02:57:51):

Now? I know the blonde person that he’s fucking, that he lives with. I don’t know who she lives with. I don’t know the man. That

Laci (02:57:59):

Oppenheimer?

Matt (02:58:00):

Who’s the man she’s married to that

Laci (02:58:03):

He lives

Matt (02:58:03):

With when

Laci (02:58:04):

He’s

Matt (02:58:04):

In Caltech? I don’t

Laci (02:58:06):

Remember which actor he’s played by. It’s not somebody too – But what does

Matt (02:58:08):

He look like?

Laci (02:58:09):

His name is Richard Tolman. When Josh Hartnett kicks him out of his classroom because he’s having a meeting, the two men who come in, one is Matthew Modine and the other is – Tell

Matt (02:58:17):

Ruthie I’ll be in Pasadena. Oh. Okay. Because I’m like, “Wait, this scientist he’s really glazing and excited to see in the very beginning of the movie is also Ruthie’s husband.” He appears when she does. It confused me.

Laci (02:58:35):

Also, yeah. Hey, oh, it’s my roommate coming to the next class and he kicked me out.

Matt (02:58:43):

Yeah.

Laci (02:58:45):

Anyway, they’re having their Christmas party and Nielsbor explains what the Nazis are doing and they’re like, “Great, they’re on the wrong path. They’re not going to be able to get a bomb because they’re looking in all the wrong directions.” Well,

Matt (02:58:57):

They went the water path that took them six months to undo. So they know that they’ve got a long road of figuring out they’re wrong. So that just built them in three, six months.

Laci (02:59:07):

Right. And – They’re at

Matt (02:59:09):

The start of their wrongness. Oppenheimer

Laci (02:59:11):

Makes the point to Matt Damon that an advantage we have is that Hitler specifically calls physics, quantum physics, Jewish science. So he’s never going to devote the resources because all of this is just a question of pouring money into stuff. And the Manhattan Project itself, almost all of it was we just need to manufacture uranium and plutonium. All that stuff you’re doing, that’s all nice, but we just got to manufacture this stuff. You

Matt (02:59:31):

Need the stuff to put in the thing. That’s what we’re doing.

Laci (02:59:33):

I mean, the same thing with the moon landing. It’s going to happen. We just need to keep pouring money into it and eventually it will. But yeah, the money’s being spent in the wrong direction, and so great. Maybe we don’t even need to get the bomb at all because the Nazis are never going to do it. Well, Jean dies. Does she kill herself or does she get murdered? We don’t know. We don’t know. But

Matt (02:59:55):

If the goal was to give him less distraction, a little weird because now he’s upset. But he does shake it off.

Laci (03:00:02):

I mean, I don’t think it was. That wouldn’t have been the goal. The goal would just. We cannot risk her being a spy. In cas she’s

Matt (03:00:07):

Right, in case they weren’t fucking. In case they were fucking in talking, pillow talk.

Laci (03:00:12):

Yeah. He might not have known. Or

Matt (03:00:14):

She’s a honey pot.

Laci (03:00:16):

Exactly. Yeah. Honey trap. Emily Blunt, he tells her, he goes, he rides his horse into the woods to cry and she comes like, “What are you crying about?” To

Matt (03:00:23):

Cry and freeze to death.

Laci (03:00:25):

And he’s like, “I’m sad because Jean’s dead.” She’s like, “You don’t get to commit the sin and then make me feel sorry for you.” And he’s like, “Well, I am out here by myself, crying by myself.” She’s like, “Get back to work, soldier.” But you

Matt (03:00:36):

Can tell he’s been missing, Matt. She doesn’t come scared on a horse hollering for her husband to find him shivering in the snow, laying down, freezing to death. It’s rather dramatic.

Laci (03:00:49):

It is dramatic. And she’s like, “What has happened to you?” And you don’t

Matt (03:00:52):

Know how long it’s been since he’s been gone and missing.

Laci (03:00:56):

We have the scene that Laci and I have already fought about where the. So this would’ve been in May 1945 because Hitler has already killed himself. The German government only survived another week before they surrendered. And so this takes place between that time where these scientists at Los Alamos are having a meeting and they put the flyers everywhere like, “Should we keep building the bomb?” And they’re like, “Germany’s going to surrender. There’s no point in building this bomb anymore.” And this is kind of a union meeting and Oppenheimer now becomes a union buster. He’s like, “No, no, no. We have to continue. Keep doing the work.” It’s not what it is. I know you disagree.

Matt (03:01:38):

Because he’s already proven over and over again, and the military’s already proven over and over again, once you leave this project, especially if it’s on negative terms, you will be killed, mysteriously put somewhere else, washed up. He is so scared for these people who he has brought in to ruin their careers. They are still Pollyanna about it. They think they have control. Who are the scientists? Either we make it or we don’t make it. No, you have enrolled in the US government army, whether you understand that or not. And if you leave here before they want you to, you guys are in huge fucking trouble. That’s what this is.

Laci (03:02:15):

Yeah. And what I keep saying is, is that an acceptable consequence if it means we don’t drop this bomb on someone? If my life is ruined forever, maybe that’s worth it. That’s what they’re debating. And he rallies the troops and he’s like, “No, work must continue.” And it’s why I think it’s so important that we have all that union activity early in the movie where he’s on the side of the workers and now he’s in a managerial position and has to use his charm and popularity to rally them to keep working, to be on the side of management. I think

Matt (03:02:47):

He’s seen behind the curtain and he understands the lengths the military will go to for defectors. And I think this group of people might understand that they’re giving up some kind of access, some kind of security clearance, some kind of maybe a really cool job or favor with the government. I don’t think they think they’re giving up their lives here to consider stopping. I don’t think they think they’re throwing their lives away. I think Oppenheimer uniquely knows that because he’s met Pash.

Laci (03:03:15):

Yeah. I mean, maybe, but the idea is if there’s enough of us, they can’t kill all of us, which is the same thing that drives the judge strikes.

Matt (03:03:29):

Right. But we’re not usually striking against the military. I think the point this whole time is like, yeah, you can rise up against corporations sometimes, but not the US military.

Laci (03:03:40):

We have the scene where he goes to meet with the Secretary of War and first he meets with Fermi or one of the other physicists who works in Chicago who’s hanging out with Rami Malik, who’s just lurking as this evil presence in the background of the movie, who turns out not to be evil, but good, trying to get him to sign a petition. These are all the physicists who don’t want the bomb used and he’s like, “Don’t give that shit to me.” And he knocks the petition down and then goes to meet with Secretary Stimson and they select the targets, “Where should we bomb? Yes. Where shall we bomb?” And Oppenheimer keeps trying to be like, “Maybe we don’t bomb.”

Matt (03:04:17):

Just the test. What we just show him the test?

Laci (03:04:19):

Yeah. What

Matt (03:04:19):

If we had TV? What if TV were a thing and we show him the test?

Laci (03:04:23):

And this is one of the scenes that really, really adequately shows the uselessness of being in the room where it happens to influence anything. No, he just gets stomped down.

Matt (03:04:34):

And you get more, what is the word? Implicit? What am I trying to

Laci (03:04:39):

Say? Complicit?

Matt (03:04:39):

Yes.

Laci (03:04:41):

Including by Matt Damon, who’s supposed to be his protector and starts talking over him, says all this stuff Oppenheimer doesn’t agree with. And wouldn’t you agree, doctor?

Matt (03:04:50):

Because he’s trying to protect him.

Laci (03:04:52):

I know he’s trying to protect him. And we do have the revelation at a certain point that Pash was transferred to England and they’re like, “Who transferred him?” General Groves. And Oppenheimer’s like, “Oh, good job, general.” They decide they’re going to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They’re going to do two bombs and very, very close together to show them.

Matt (03:05:14):

So they don’t understand why

Laci (03:05:15):

They did

Matt (03:05:15):

Two after seeing for days what the first one did.

Laci (03:05:18):

They say right here, “It’s one to show we can, two to show we’re not going to stop.” I mean, the question is why three days? Why not two weeks? Why not –

Matt (03:05:27):

What would that matter.

Laci (03:05:27):

Two months? Let the Japanese government take time to figure out what it wants to do. But I mean, yeah, we’re just going to pummel you into submission.

Matt (03:05:40):

Well, we have these toys and we want to play with them. They’re so excited that the money was not for nothing. They need to show just utter uninterest in people that are being killed just to be the big swinging dick in the room.

Laci (03:05:57):

Yeah. And this whole thing, I mean, he’s kind of been talking about like, “Well, just because we build the bomb doesn’t mean we have to use it.” And is slowly realizing, “Oh, that was stupid of me to think that.” Of course, you don’t build a bomb to not use it. And we finally get the Trinity test sequence. What do you think of all of this?

Matt (03:06:13):

I love it. I mean, it’s so much buildup and Nolan has such a great ear for when to make things go silent. And I guess you could take it as things are really quiet. Well, things are quiet because you’re hearing his breathing. After the explosion happens, it goes quiet. But then the first time you do hear something is when the, I don’t know, it’s the sonic boom or aftershock or whatever wave hits everybody. So it’s obviously something loud is happening when the sound comes back in, but what I don’t know was that, was it really, really quiet before that? I don’t know, but it’s definitely effective of I’m just deep in my thoughts right now. I’m just taking in this insane moment and then I snap back out of it when the physical part hits me.

Laci (03:07:04):

Right. And remembering the bag of Adgita, because that’s the famous thing he said. And in that speech or the thing we listened to earlier that the real Oppenheimer said, after we did the Trinity test, some laughed, some cried, some didn’t know what to do. But what we see here is everybody’s celebrating. I mean, it’s kind of uneasy, but they’re like, “Yeah, we did it.” And then the longer it goes on, the happier people get. We get Jack Wade playing the bongos standing on a car and it’s like now a tailgate and everybody’s really excited. You

Matt (03:07:33):

Do have to remember how tired. I mean, people are on 36 hours of no sleep. I mean, it’s kind of the delirium you feel after a two week trial where it’s like, “Yeah, I just probably saved billions of dollars to a fucking corporation that killed a lot of people with mesothelioma, but woo, I did my job. I’m not in trouble. I get to go home.” That’s what I’m picking up. At no point do I see many, many people with like, “We’re number one.”That’s just not the mentality of this group. It’s more like we were hired to do a job. And we did the job. And by golly, we did it. We’re scientists.

Laci (03:08:11):

We could have been assembling pens in a pen factory and we’d be just as happy. And they’re all, “Man of the hour, Oppi. Yeah, you did it. Congratulations.” Shaking hands. And there’s this deadline. They’ve imposed a deadline. Truman’s meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam, the Potsdam conference, and he wants confirmation about the bomb. He’s going to tell Stalin, “We have a bomb.” And then at Potsdam is where they issued the proclamation to Japan. It’s

Matt (03:08:38):

Like they haven’t learned about lying yet. You just say have a. Man, gentlemen’s agreements really mattered before video evidence and

Laci (03:08:49):

Bones. I think it was more we don’t want to be embarrassed to say that we have it and then find out we don’t. Yeah, I don’t know.

Matt (03:08:57):

Yes, but you can just keep bluffing. Oh, we’ve got it.

Laci (03:09:01):

They issue the Potsdam Declaration to Japan, surrender now or face unimaginable destruction, but don’t specify what that means. Rude. And now that they’ve successfully done the bomb, they’ve built the bomb, Oppenheimer sees how quickly they take away the control from him. Now you don’t matter at all.

Matt (03:09:20):

And his friend. Can I go to Washington with you? And he’s like –

Laci (03:09:24):

Why?

Matt (03:09:24):

No. Okay, but you’ll keep me informed. You’ll find out on the radio. I know what he says, but what happens is he finds out on the radio.

Laci (03:09:34):

But I love the way Matt Damon plays it. He’s like, “Wolf, should I go to Washington with you? What for?” And then, “But you’ll keep me informed.” Of course. And then takes a few steps away and he’s like, “As much as I can.”

Matt (03:09:45):

Right. That’s all just a job.

Laci (03:09:47):

Yep.

Matt (03:09:48):

I mean, because how many little oppies has he left in the dust too, just the way Matt Damon does here? It’s all just the shit goes this way, it goes that way. We’re all doing this to each other constantly. It’s like, “This was the most important thing ever and now I’m not important.” I don’t know how to explain what I’m saying.

Laci (03:10:05):

They ship away the bombs and he’s a nervous wreck. Oh, when am I going to find out? Did they drop the bomb? They’re going to give me a phone call, of course. I’m not going to find out like everyone else in the world 16 hours later on the radio with President Truman. And this is actually Gary Oldman on the radio doing a Truman impression.

Matt (03:10:24):

But how weird to have he simultaneously so relieved that your thing worked again? You can do one, but how do I know when they go drop it where it counts? That’s what

Laci (03:10:34):

I was thinking. So you’ve

Matt (03:10:35):

Got to be relieved and horrified. It’s got to be both.

Laci (03:10:39):

Because then Damon calls and he’s like, “Congratulations.” And he’s like, “And everything went right with the detonation?” Because detonating it with a switch versus dropping it from a plane seemed like hugely different things to me, but I don’t know anything.

Matt (03:10:51):

It’s all just about impact. You just got to be high enough up.

Laci (03:10:55):

So they have the big pep rally, and this is the most traumatic moment of Oppenheimer’s life, at least according to the movie Oppenheimer. And it’s the most effective scene in any Christopher Nolan movie. I think it was definitely the thing that affected me the most the first time I saw it, partly because of the sound design, to see people jump up and scream and roar in applause. And then it go quiet

Matt (03:11:18):

For

Laci (03:11:18):

Him. But not entirely silent, you’re still hearing stuff in the room.

Matt (03:11:23):

Well, it’s like he doesn’t feel like he’s in his body. He’s there, but he’s so apart from it. He’s so distant from the words he’s saying that he can hear it from the other room.

Laci (03:11:34):

And the stuff, the moment calls for him to be very patriotic. I wish we could have used it on Germany. No, on the Germans too.

Matt (03:11:41):

Right. It’s so forced and so. And then the lady crying underneath, not underneath the bleachers, there’s people fucking or making out. People are so horned up. People are cheering. And then there’s this random woman uncontrollably sobbing as he walks by and you’re like, “Is he imagining that or was it really this polarizing? Was it really this mixture?”

Laci (03:12:07):

Yeah. It’s the most expressionistic Nolan’s ever gotten because everything in his movies is usually very locked down, but with the lighting, with the sound.

Matt (03:12:16):

Stepping on the

Laci (03:12:17):

Outline of the – Yeah. A charred body, going outside seeing a guy puking.

Matt (03:12:24):

And then a man crying while a woman’s consoling him. They really show you. They show you so much emotion.

Laci (03:12:32):

I think it is notable that all the project leaders were the ones celebrating right after Trinity test. These are all sort of the lower level people who feel more conflicted about all of this. And that’s kind of interesting. The

Matt (03:12:46):

Further you get from the money, the more you get closer to the morals,

Laci (03:12:51):

Unless you’re up

Matt (03:12:51):

And hover.

Laci (03:12:52):

What we don’t get is we don’t get the scene of actually, actually, Japan surrenders. Don’t get that at all. We don’t get that moment of – Because

Matt (03:13:00):

Who cares? Because who cares? At what fucking cost?

Laci (03:13:02):

Of what this has all been

Matt (03:13:04):

For. Right, right. But it wasn’t, right? It wasn’t. It was for America to be number one. It wasn’t to bring our boys home. It was to say we brought our boys home. What boys? Which ones exactly? You ever going to go shake their hands if that’s not for a photo op? And you don’t fucking care.

Laci (03:13:20):

So we have the scene with President Truman where he goes to Gary Oldman as President Truman.

Matt (03:13:27):

It’s a hard scene.

Laci (03:13:28):

Truman is one of history’s great monster, underappreciated great monsters. And I’m grateful to Nolan and Gary Oldman that they make him just a fucking slime.

Matt (03:13:36):

His little voice is what kind of downplays what he is. He sounds like a little country rat.

Laci (03:13:45):

You know when the Russians are going to get the bo Yeah, like a dandy.

Matt (03:13:49):

He sounds like a dandy. He sounds like, “Oh, the vapors.” That’s what it sounds like.

Laci (03:13:52):

So the famous story that Oppenheimer told is he went to meet with Truman and said, “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” And Truman took out his tissue and said, “Would you like me to wipe them for you?” So that was the story I knew. So when Gary Oldman literally takes out the tissue, I was surprised. And then he doesn’t say that. It’s just a reference to that story. And instead what he says is, “You think the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki care who built the bomb? They care who dropped it.” I did. I did. Get that crab, baby, out of here.

Matt (03:14:28):

He’s ruining my big dick party.

Laci (03:14:30):

But once again, he tried to like, “Well, maybe I can go and be like Mr. President. I’m very concerned and I think that now’s the time for arms negotiations with Russia and everything.” And you’re useless.You’re a wet sponge.

Matt (03:14:42):

He really is just kind of roaming around. He knows, he’s seen how factless he is. He’s seen what power actually looks like. And it’s not being the person who knows how to do a thing. It’s so much bigger than anyone could understand unless you’ve seen it. But he also knows in his small group, he’s at the top. It’s just that the next level up is here and his small group doesn’t know that and doesn’t even matter if they don’t know it. It does have to feel like just a pummeling of Ls though. Your whole life, you’ve just been winning, winning, winning, and then it’s like loser, loser, fucking loser.

Laci (03:15:28):

Yes. That you’re just running into a brick wall and that you didn’t understand at all the game you were playing.

Matt (03:15:36):

And your power was always an illusion. People were only ever excited about you because they could harness you and put. You throw three billion, $2 billion at any scientist, they’re going to do something. And it’s like he just happened to, I don’t know, he went straight from the what, college to the pros and then he tore his ACL.

Laci (03:16:00):

I mean, kind of, yeah. Yeah.

Matt (03:16:01):

Yeah. I mean, the tone shift is just like –

Laci (03:16:05):

That actually is a good comparison is now you career ending injury. Allright, good luck to you.

Matt (03:16:10):

Right.

Laci (03:16:10):

Go figure it out.

Matt (03:16:11):

Truly walking on water, truly could not do any wrong. You are just amazing. You are once in a lifetime talent, but you’re just one misstep from being useless and you never had this power, this infrastructure, this system, the NFL, the government has this power. And we can put anyone, like you were saying, in this spot and get something.

Laci (03:16:36):

And Harry Truman isn’t anyone. He was literally just plucked out of obscurity. “You be the president now, you drop the bombs where we tell you to drop the bombs. “So even when he as dropped the bombs, I did, it’s a lie. He didn’t.

Matt (03:16:48):

Right. I don’t think of him. I do not. I think of the bomb

Laci (03:16:52):

And the

Matt (03:16:53):

Place.

Laci (03:16:54):

Almost any president, it’s not actually their decision. You just work for forces. The forces say,” We got to keep this war machine going humming along. “So he’s like,” All right, well, trying to appeal to the better nature of Harry Truman didn’t work. So now I’ll just be a celebrity. I’ll embrace being a celebrity and maybe I can use that to influence things. “And it seems like this is a role he wears very well. He enjoys being a celebrity. He’s good at it. And Robert Downey Jr. notices he enjoys being a celebrity and they have his birthday party, my big birthday gala. Here comes the

Matt (03:17:27):

Birthday boy.

Laci (03:17:29):

Well, I’m looking at this screenshot of Straws’ kid and that looks like a Yardley Smith, Lisa Simpson as his daughter. Oh, it does. From the Legend of Billie Jean. But anyway, he’s like,” Robert, my children are dying or my son and his fiance are dying to meet the man who built the Atombaum and Oppenheimer just raises his glass.

Matt (03:17:49):

“Fucking great Gatsby.

Laci (03:17:50):

Yeah. And he was like,” What was that? Why did you snub my children like Einstein?

Matt (03:17:55):

“Right. Why are you doing a snub-snub? Why are you not pleased?

Laci (03:17:59):

And it’s because the government just announced they’re doing a hydrogen bomb program despite. So Oppenheimer’s job now is he chairs the general advisory committee of the Atomic Energy Commission. Got that? The Atomic Energy Commission has an advisory committee of scientists.

Matt (03:18:17):

I am here for them to use me and wind me up whenever they need to wind me up.That’s as close as you’re going to get to what you had.

Laci (03:18:25):

But what he did, the advisory committee gave a report saying,” We recommend against a hydrogen bomb. “And the commission was like,” Don’t listen to them.

Matt (03:18:34):

” Rewrite this.

Laci (03:18:35):

They’re just the advisory committee.

Matt (03:18:37):

Do this again, but opposite.

Laci (03:18:41):

So there’s going to be hydrogen bombs, and this is what he was really afraid of. All the stuff we’ve already done, terrible. But where this goes from here, that’s what’s really terrifying. You

Matt (03:18:50):

Know what’s interesting in recounting this movie, we’re focusing so much on the Oppenheimer parts and we haven’t talked about straws since the beginning of the movie.

Laci (03:18:56):

Because now is where he comes back. Yeah.

Matt (03:18:58):

I know. It’s just interesting because he’s really woven through the whole thing. That’s the whole point.

Laci (03:19:04):

Yeah. No, I noticed that too, as I was doing my notes today, is he does kind of disappear for about two hours.

Matt (03:19:11):

Because you don’t expect the pacing of the end of the movie. You’re like, “Whoa, this is a thing. This is not just a heist. It’s a whodunit. Oh, fuck shit.”

Laci (03:19:18):

Yeah.

Matt (03:19:19):

And Kitty’s a badass. Come on. Kitty’s got claws.

Laci (03:19:22):

One of the big things Oppenheimer did to really piss straws off was Straws was against the export of – Isotopes. Isotopes to Norway and he was against it and Oppenheimer was for it. And he’s like –

Matt (03:19:38):

No, no no. He just didn’t think it would matter. He’s like, “You could use a beer to build a bomb. Isotopes don’t matter.”

Laci (03:19:43):

And he says this to Congress and every. Or not Congress. He just says this in public and everyone, “Oh, Oppenheimer’s so funny.”

Matt (03:19:50):

Why do that? Because it’s implied by his counsel or whoever’s sitting next to him that that was intentional. He was like, “I think that worked.” And then he goes, “A little too well.” And it’s like, “What does that mean? Was he being a dick to straws on purpose?”

Laci (03:20:04):

I don’t know.

Matt (03:20:05):

I don’t know either.

Laci (03:20:06):

I don’t know because –

Matt (03:20:07):

I don’t know either. That scene confuses me because it seems like, “Oh no, you did something intentional.” But I think he might’ve just been a Pollyanna puppet on that

Laci (03:20:15):

One. No, I think he doesn’t think of straws. No,

Matt (03:20:18):

Right. He doesn’t. He wasn’t playing a game. He’s not like, “Who is my friend? Let me be friends to my friend.” He’s just going to tell the truth. And that’s what people that are doing politics don’t understand about him. No, I’m just here to do the truth part, and if that works for everybody, all right.

Laci (03:20:35):

So I’ve always loved this movie. I did, the first time I saw it, think it’s such an interesting decision to make two hours of the movie be about building the bomb, and then the final hour be about, oh no, he’s going to lose his security clearance.

Matt (03:20:51):

Again, who gives a shit? I feel like they could do a better job of explaining why that matters to us civilians since everything else is so easy to understand the gravity of.

Laci (03:21:03):

I mean, now I’m like, oh, I love it. It’s all one story. It’s all one story of you being just a cog in the system that gets crushed by the system once your usefulness is – This is

Matt (03:21:17):

Just the final boot on the neck. And that’s what

Laci (03:21:19):

We’re

Matt (03:21:19):

Witnessing is him grasping at straws.

Laci (03:21:22):

And I guess the first time I saw the movie, I didn’t know any of this stuff about him losing a security clearance, but it is a major part of American Prometheus. It’s a major part of his story. And I think if you were alive during Oppenheimer’s time, it was a major thing you knew about him.

Matt (03:21:36):

And it’s probably because you can feel it, you can feel a slight, but it’s hard to explain it to someone else. So it’s just like Chinese water torture or whatever, that whole metaphor of a death by a thousand cuts. He’s feeling those thousand cuts, but that’s not interesting in a book. You need to wrap it around evidence. So it’s like they took this. This was symbolic. I wasn’t seeing any documents. I wasn’t doing FOIA requests. I wasn’t doing anything with the security clearance. Taking it from me was just a symbol of how crushed and over I was.

Laci (03:22:11):

The gray board interviews him, they interview Matt Damon, they interview everybody. All the people we’ve been watching the whole movie. Some people are on Oppi’s side, some people are not. Turns out teller, Benny Safti says, “I would not recommend clearing him.” I

Matt (03:22:24):

Mean, I feel like there’s no surprises in this entire. It’s nice. I like the in and out of who’s going to say what. And we all want to think we were experiencing something that’s real and we’re good readers of character and of what’s happening in the room. Everyone’s not straws, right? It’s a reminder of that. These are serious men who care about the job they were supposed to do, and it’s not friendship over whatever. That’s what straws is like, right? You do a favor for him, he’s going to do a favor for you even if it’s lying. But Oppi surrounded himself by honorable men, and that’s what this parade shows you. These are friends, but these are truth tellers too. Oh, can I say something controversial? The kitty scene is my favorite scene in the entire movie. Is that controversial?

Laci (03:23:14):

No. I don’t think that’s controversial. I don’t know if everybody would agree with that, but yeah, it’s an exhilarating scene. What’s your favorite? She finally gets to. Oh gosh. Oh, the last scene. No,

Matt (03:23:27):

That one’s almost a little too painful for it to be my favorite.

Laci (03:23:31):

Well then maybe then my favorite part of the last scene is kitty snubbing teller is keeping her hand to herself.

Matt (03:23:41):

Yes, yes.

Laci (03:23:42):

But I love the final two minutes of the movie, the

Matt (03:23:45):

Entire

Matt (03:23:45):

Part. And I like him going up to their house after all this happens, don’t put in the sheets. And she’s just crying by the fence and the resolution of that is like, “Come back to the house, kitty.” It is a secret love story. That’s what’s buried underneath. That’s what makes this movie work so much is that at the end of the day, it’s about relationships. And what this movie does so well is rewards relationships that were real and earnest and it punishes the ones that were meaningless at the end of the day. Who cares if I was in the cabinet? I care that I had two kids and then I was married to this woman. You know what I mean? I had real friendships and they came and they spoke at this board hearing for

Laci (03:24:28):

Me. Yeah. And what if he got to be commerce secretary? You’d be any happier doing that. Exactly.

Matt (03:24:32):

Right. This whole time he’s built on a deck of cards, he doesn’t even know what he needs. He doesn’t have a partner. And if he does, they never mention her. Is he like a confirmed bachelor? Is that why? But whatever it is, he’s immiserable. No,

Laci (03:24:46):

He has kids. He had the big birthday party. Yeah, I guess we don’t need. But Kitty does have her final day in court and it seems a little bit like she’s flustered then she takes control and fucking cucks Jason. That’s good about it. And because she’s being – She disarms them. She’s being shitty and petty to him. She’s just like, “No, your phrasing is bad.” You meant through when you said to.

Matt (03:25:08):

Right. Anyone can do these little tricks and doesn’t it feel like shit to get this on the record because me and you in person, you can hear what I’m doing. I’m being an asshole. But when you go read this record that’s public now or public to our people, it’s going to show how wrong you are and how much we had a fight over how stupid you are. And it’s like she’s giving him what he. Two can play this game, you unfair fucking asshole. I can make you look stupid too.

Laci (03:25:36):

David Krumholtz comes in and testifies on Oppi’s behalf. Josh Hartnett is going to go in and testify against Oppenheimer because he heard that Oppenheimer was having an affair with Ruthie. No. And that’s why Richard died. He died of a broken heart and Oppenheimer’s like, “Nope, that’s preposterous. Richard never knew about our affair.” And Crumholt just gives him a little smirk like, “Oh, you dog.” You

Matt (03:26:00):

Dog. You dog married to a kitty. That makes sense.

Laci (03:26:04):

But Robbie convinces, with a look, convinces Josh Hartnett not to testify. And as we see in the flash forward to his medal ceremony, all is forgiven between Hartnett and Oppi.

Matt (03:26:15):

Right, because it was a true friend. It was not nothing.

Laci (03:26:17):

Yeah.

Matt (03:26:18):

And I think at the end of the day, the Hartnett character just probably was like, “Fuck, does that mean he would’ve fucked my wife? I just didn’t happen to have the hot…” You start to think –

Laci (03:26:29):

He almost lived with me.

Matt (03:26:30):

He wasn’t what I thought he was. He could have hurt me this way too. But no, he was what he was to me.

Laci (03:26:38):

Still, they write their opinion where, “Okay, we’ve determined you are not a trader to your country. You’re a loyal American.”

Matt (03:26:47):

Two to one.

Laci (03:26:47):

But two to one, we voted not to renew your security clearance. Based

Matt (03:26:50):

On these new guidelines. When you really dig in, it’s like, “Is this really that big of a deal?” But it’s a symbolic gesture.

Laci (03:26:58):

And Matt Damon says he wouldn’t approve him based on the guidelines, but he’s like, “I wouldn’t have approved any of the scientists from back then.” And as soon as he says that, Jason Clark’s like, “Yeah, nothing.”

Matt (03:27:10):

You’re muddying up our record. It’s all about the record. That’s the thing. That’s what’s embarrassing about the entire shit is you’re reading that under the record. It’s the version of a camera or the internet or taking out your cell phone when you’re being an asshole or a Karen. It’s like, “You’re putting it in the record.”

Laci (03:27:27):

That was in 1954. 1959, things are not going well for Robert Downey Jr. at the Senate hearing. It’s supposed to be a formality, but now that Oppenheimer’s been defanged, people like him again. And also the political climate has changed. The red scare is over. We don’t love communism, but we’re not afraid of it the way we used to be. And we

Matt (03:27:47):

Also knew it was weaponized in Hollywood and stuff. We’re probably coming to a little bit of an understanding, huh?

Laci (03:27:53):

No, I don’t. Not yet. I think it’s just like we’re not paying attention to it as much.

Matt (03:27:57):

Gotcha. That’s not our du jour. That’s not our issue du jour.

Laci (03:28:02):

Because they’ll say, “That was the McCarthy era.” And they’re talking about four years old.

Matt (03:28:06):

Right. Now we’re in this one.

Laci (03:28:09):

I mean, it’s almost like Martin Luther King was very threatening to the federal government when he was alive. As soon as he was dead, it was like, “Oh, what a hero. Now federal holiday for him, and every year we will honor him and only quote a few of the things he said that we approve of.

Matt (03:28:25):

I always dig for the ones I’ve never seen.

Laci (03:28:28):

But yeah, as soon as you’re not a threat, then we can honor you. But Straws, he loses because Romy Malik comes in and gives some heroic testimony.

Matt (03:28:38):

And I don’t even find it that moving. I listened to it really carefully this last time, and I’m like,” There are so many moments when he’s talking where I could just imagine someone on the opposition interrupting right here or coming back to say that’s not a fact you’re saying.

Laci (03:28:54):

You’re just making a

Matt (03:28:55):

Lot of assertions.

Laci (03:28:56):

What he says is because. So he’s like, “None of the scientists of America want to see Mr. Straws confirmed.” And the senator’s like, “Is that because of how he handled the Oppenheimer Affair?” And he says, “No.” No. And you’re like, “Holy fuck.” And he’s like – It’s because of – Actually, yes. Yeah. It was because he was vindictive in the way he handled the Oppenheimer Affair. And they’re all like, “Oh, my stars. Vindictive.”

Matt (03:29:19):

He was doing politics to him.

Laci (03:29:22):

Downey, fucking incredible in this movie. My favorite moment that he has in the movie is when the Senate denies him and Aaron Reich is coming in to tell him, and just the way –

Matt (03:29:32):

He just knows.

Laci (03:29:33):

His posture. So just anger and rage and resentment in just the way you position your body, just the way that you straighten your back and turn your torso. It’s incredible. He loses. He’s fucked.

Matt (03:29:51):

Does he end up fucking over Kennedy? I mean, because it’s pointed.

Laci (03:29:55):

That is one of the other things I don’t like in the movies. Holdouts. Some young, young book from Boston.

Matt (03:30:03):

Trying to make a name of

Laci (03:30:04):

Ourselves. Name of Kennedy, Jack Kennedy.

Matt (03:30:07):

Now there’s going to be a fucking Oppenheimer two where it’s not about him at all. It’s just about GFK.

Laci (03:30:14):

No. No. No. I don’t remember what Straws did after this. I don’t actually care. He was fine. And then –

Matt (03:30:23):

Time for potato salad and salmon.

Laci (03:30:25):

Straws gets up and he says to Aaron, “You told me I was fine.” He’s like, “Well, I didn’t have all the fucking facts. You were lying to me throughout this whole movie.” And he’s like, “I told you. I told you Oppenheimer turned all the scientists against me. I told you about Einstein, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you about Einstein?” He’s like, “Yeah, you told me so many times.” Yeah.

Matt (03:30:40):

In the 40 minutes we’ve been together back here, yeah, you told me.

Laci (03:30:43):

But I was thinking, since you don’t know what they were actually talking about that day, maybe they weren’t talking about you. And this floors him, the idea that they weren’t talking about him. And it’s just a comforting thing to tell yourself. If you get upset about some people at work, you get in a fight with somebody, just remember when they go home, they’re not fucking thinking about you. That’s

Matt (03:31:01):

What I was thinking about the boy across the street.

Laci (03:31:03):

Yeah. No one’s ever thinking about you. He’s

Matt (03:31:04):

Not thinking about my big Blackhawk comment.

Laci (03:31:06):

No. We

Matt (03:31:07):

Went inside and he had to do homework.

Laci (03:31:09):

Or maybe he went outside inside and he though about it and he’s like, “I think I like it.” But we get to see now the scene this time in color from the perspective of Opie and Einstein. And Einstein gives this great monologue. You remember you held a reception for me in Berkeley. You all gave me an award, but you all thought I’d gotten old and out of touch. So the award wasn’t for me, it was for you, for all of you for being so young and smart. But it’s going to happen to you. And then after they’ve punished you enough, they will serve you salmon and potato salad. And I love the old age makeup. We’re seeing them – Michael Keaton. Where Cillian Murphy and the old age makeup looks so much like Michael Keaton. And this Lyndon Johnson guy they have, I don’t know, that’s a little upsetting.

Matt (03:31:57):

That’s a throwaway right there.

Laci (03:31:59):

They’ll give you a medal and it is so patronizing putting a medal on him like he’s in Cub Scouts. Here’s a little medal for you little buddy. I hope it’s not

Matt (03:32:06):

Too heavy for your frail body.

Laci (03:32:08):

We see Kitty and him still marriage going strong. She’s still fixing his collar.

Matt (03:32:13):

Dyeing that hair black, keeping it hot.

Laci (03:32:16):

There’s maybe a few too many people repeating dialogue, but it’s Nolan. He loves that. So his brother comes up to him and says, “You’re happy, I’m happy,” which is a thing. “Remember you said that to me 30 years ago in a tent? I’m saying it to you now. “And then Teller comes up and shakes Opi’s hand. He’s like,” My old friend Teller, “and then goes to shake Kitty’s hand and she keeps it isolated to herself.

Matt (03:32:35):

Kitty’s got

Laci (03:32:36):

Claws. And then Oppenheimer says to Einstein,” Remember that day? I told you we were afraid if we’d start a chain reaction that would destroy the world. “I think we did. I think we did, which is. And now we’re seeing Nolan’s showing nuclear bombs going off and the atmosphere actually igniting. But see, it’s not exactly like he though it would happen. It’s just this will be how the world ends. Really makes you think. It does. And that’s what we’re. Shut up.

Matt (03:33:07):

You shut up.

Laci (03:33:27):

So yeah, five stars for me. Favorite Nolan movie. What about you, Laci? Favorite,

Matt (03:33:31):

Five. Yes.

Laci (03:33:32):

When that means we have to give our Nolan rankings, rankings, rankings.

Matt (03:33:37):

I forgot what they were.

Laci (03:33:39):

And because we moved, we weren’t able to do a wrap up episode. I’m sorry.

Matt (03:33:42):

Did you write down what mine were?

Laci (03:33:44):

No.

Matt (03:33:44):

Damn it. Can you just put on the screen what they are and then I’ll tell you? Thank you.

Laci (03:33:49):

All right. So I will be going in. I will go first and we have one, two, three, four, five. We have 13 movies. We’re going to go backwards to forwards. Number 13, Batman Begins is his worst movie. Sorry, I do like it. I like all of his movies, but I think it’s his worst movie. Number 12, following. Number 11, Memento. Number 10, The Dark Knight Rises. Number nine, Dunkirk, number eight, Tenet. Number seven, The Dark night. Number six, The Prestige. Number five, Insomnia. Number four, The Odyssey. Number three, Inception. Number two, Interstellar. Number one, Oppenheimer. And I could easily see The Odyssey rising, but right now it’s Oppenheimer, Interstellar. And then after that, it’s kind of a drop off. Or not a drop off. It’s a beautiful

Matt (03:34:32):

Plateau.

Laci (03:34:32):

Those are my huge one, number one and number two. Laci, you didn’t watch – I did not watch Insomnia. Dunkirk or Insomnia, so don’t include those. I saw

Matt (03:34:40):

Dunkirk, but I don’t remember it.

Laci (03:34:42):

And you’ve seen Insomnia, but you don’t

Matt (03:34:44):

Remember it. I don’t remember it. Okay. Shit. I’m going to go the other way. Oppenheimer.

Laci (03:34:52):

Is number one.

Matt (03:34:53):

Odyssey, Interstellar.

Laci (03:34:55):

Say numbers before each one.

Matt (03:34:56):

Okay. Number one, Oppenheimer. Number two, The Odyssey. Number three, Interstellar. Number four, Prestige. Number five. Number five is The Dark Night.

Laci (03:35:06):

Whoa.

Matt (03:35:07):

I mean, I could put that before the Prestige though. Yeah, it’s getting wild. Then Following.

Laci (03:35:17):

Above Inception?

Matt (03:35:19):

Oh, did I not say Inception?

Laci (03:35:20):

No.

Matt (03:35:20):

Okay. Well, but Following is still before Inception. Inception bugs the fuck out of me, so I’m going to go. Yeah, that’s fine. Wow. I’ll take that. Prestige, the following Inception, the other two Batmans, then Momento. In

Laci (03:35:35):

What order? What about Tenet?

Matt (03:35:37):

Oh, I fucking hate the first Batman actually. Tenet’s. Fuck Tenet. So the three bottom ones for me are the first Batman, Tenet, and Momento. Those are the ones that fuck my mind in

Laci (03:35:58):

An

Matt (03:35:59):

Unfun way.

Laci (03:35:59):

Last place would be Batman begins. Second to last place is Tenet. Third to last place is Memento? Yeah. Okay.

Matt (03:36:05):

All good movies. It’s just I put them in order of enjoyability plus cleverness.

Laci (03:36:13):

All right, great. Summer of Nolan over. We’re done with Christopher Nolan.

Matt (03:36:17):

Bye. I hardly Nolan you. That didn’t make

Laci (03:36:21):

Sense. And next week we’re returning to normal programming. What do

Matt (03:36:24):

We do? We’re doing a Tim Curry.

Laci (03:36:25):

Practical magic. Thank you so much for watching our four-hour episode or listening.

Matt (03:36:32):

Sorry it took so long to make it. We moved. See this beige palace I live in.

Laci (03:36:39):

Things will be back to normal. I’ve missed the podcast. Doing the podcast brings order to my life, makes me feel soothed. And follow us on social media, subscribe on YouTube or the podcast. Letterboxed us. Music Us Roll Route nine. See you later, people.

Matt (03:36:54):

Okay. I love you. Goodbye. That was my Truman. I

Laci (03:36:59):

Don’t think so.

Matt (03:37:01):

You think you did the podcast? I did the podcast.