Inception (2010)

Matt (00:00:47):

Hello and welcome to 1-Week Rental: A Movie Podcast where we spend the week with a movie and we take you along on the journey and tell you everything we’ve learned about the movie. And it’s the Summer of Nolan so we’re doing inception today. I am Matt Stokes.

Laci (00:00:59):

And I’m Laci Roth.

Matt (00:01:00):

Inception, the fifth entry in our Summer of Nolan miniseries. And we’re only doing nine movies so that means we’re past halfway. I’m starting to feel the blues.

Laci (00:01:09):

Oh. Going

Matt (00:01:10):

To miss Christopher Nolan when he’s gone.

Laci (00:01:12):

I woke up really excited today because we were going to talk about The Dark Night and then I realized I was dreaming and we’re talking about Inception instead and then I got sad.

Matt (00:01:21):

Is that true?

Laci (00:01:22):

No, but you know how when we have a really good time with one movie and then I’ll come to do the podcast the next week and I’ll be like, “I can’t wait to talk about that movie again.” And then it’s the one that we already did. I’ve done that like three times.

Matt (00:01:34):

No, we spent three and a half hours talking about the dark night. All of that

Laci (00:01:38):

Is gone. I still have more.

Matt (00:01:39):

It is just erased. I know, me too. I had all this stuff I wanted to say that’s probably so, so boring.

Laci (00:01:44):

Well, re-listening to it, it makes me, I miss this and this. And then I’ll just learn this from my own self.

Matt (00:01:50):

That’s why we have a Patreon, everybody. Patreon.com/oneweekrental. Laci’s never on it. Everybody start hectoring her to get on it because people don’t want to just get me. They want both of us. For example, The Odyssey comes out this week. This is the week of The Odyssey.

Laci (00:02:04):

I’ll watch it. We’ll talk. We’ll talk off camera.

Matt (00:02:07):

When this podcast Inception Podcast comes out, it will be the day of release for The Odyssey. I made a video on TikTok and Twitter. I didn’t post it everywhere. I posted it in a few places where I’m like, wow, I got an exclusive sneak peek footage of the scene from The Odyssey and I’m going to react to it live. And I’m playing it and talk about how it’s groundbreaking and everything. And then I play footage from Wishbone from BBS. They did an episode about the Odyssey and I thought, this is the most benign joke of all time. And a guy on Twitter called me an incel.

Laci (00:02:39):

What?

Matt (00:02:39):

Incell alert. Have fun seeing Moana with your mama this week while I see The Odyssey three times in theaters.

Laci (00:02:47):

Spoiler alert incels hate their mothers and Moana.

Matt (00:02:53):

And my wife and I have had sex.

Laci (00:02:55):

So hard.

Matt (00:02:56):

At least once we have one child.

Laci (00:03:02):

We

Matt (00:03:02):

Have one child.

Laci (00:03:04):

I don’t know what I’m telling you. I was thinking about… God damn it.

Matt (00:03:08):

So the way this works is we spend a week watching a movie, obsessing over it, watching it multiple times, reading all about it. And then we tell you all about it first in a history segment, then in a movie review segment. And for the summer, we’re doing just Christopher Nolan movies. After this, we got the Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Tenet and Oppenheimer. And on the Patreon, we’ll be doing Dunkirk. And we’ll talk about the Odyssey in some way.

Laci (00:03:34):

If I’m going to watch it, we’re going to talk about it. Even if it’s when we’re leaving the theater when you hate talking to me about things.

Matt (00:03:40):

I really hate that.

Laci (00:03:40):

Why? Because you need time to process?

Matt (00:03:43):

Because you’re mean after a movie. You’re

Laci (00:03:45):

Mean. I have to say the right

Matt (00:03:46):

Thing or else

Laci (00:03:46):

We’ll get it. I’m riled up. I’m passionate. I’m not mean. And

Matt (00:03:50):

It manifests as you being mean to

Laci (00:03:52):

Me. No, you get so nervous because you have a different opinion sometimes and you think I’m going to be mean, but we’re just going to power

Matt (00:03:58):

This. Because I’m traumatized after 15 years of you fucking

Laci (00:04:01):

Digging

Matt (00:04:02):

Into me after a movie after a

Laci (00:04:03):

Movie. No, just admit that you haven’t processed it yet and it’s just not the right time for you to talk about it.

Matt (00:04:08):

Well, that too.

Laci (00:04:08):

So say that. Don’t make it all mean. I’ve

Matt (00:04:10):

Always had a little bit of embarrassment if people hear us talk, hear me or anybody talking about a movie coming out of a movie

Laci (00:04:15):

Theater. We go the back way. No one’s listening to us. I do not talk about movies that we just came out of the theater if we are going through the lobby. I think that’s fucking rude and you’re going to spoil something for someone. I don’t do that. I talk about it the back way. And you know that’s when I’m going to have the most memory.

Matt (00:04:37):

Yeah. So

Laci (00:04:37):

I let you

Matt (00:04:38):

Go off. I let you go off.

Laci (00:04:40):

And you fucking hide from me and you’re a little quiet little puss baby and that makes me mad. And then I’m feeling sad that you won’t talk to me about movies when that’s like our thing. Feeling sad talking about movies.

Matt (00:04:53):

Speaking of seeing movies in theaters, did you see inception in theaters? Well, I even ask

Laci (00:04:58):

Laci if she remembers her fucking business. I probably did. It was a big deal movie. This

Matt (00:05:02):

Is your first time ever joining us. Laci has the Guy Pearson Memento thing where memories get deleted 10 minutes after they form in her head.

Laci (00:05:09):

It was a big deal movie. I’ve never been in a relationship where I didn’t go see movies with the person I was with. So if we were going to see a movie, it would be one with Buzz.

Matt (00:05:17):

And you know

Laci (00:05:17):

What? What else would’ve been coming out in the same time there?

Matt (00:05:22):

The Town starring Ben

Laci (00:05:24):

Affleck. Didn’t see it. Never seen it.

Matt (00:05:25):

Let’s see. Oh, Toy Story three, that was the big movie of the summer.

Laci (00:05:28):

Wouldn’t have gone and saw that. That was the summer

Matt (00:05:29):

You and I met each other at work.

Laci (00:05:31):

I probably went and saw it with nieces and nephews or something.

Matt (00:05:34):

And my first day at our work, I had just seen Toy Story three the previous day and I talked to some atorneys at that office and they said, “What’d you think of it? ” And I said, “It was okay.”

Laci (00:05:42):

Cool.

Matt (00:05:43):

Yeah, that’s the story. Yep. So I recall watching this with you at least once.

Laci (00:05:49):

How did I feel, Matt?

Matt (00:05:50):

I don’t know, not good.

Laci (00:05:52):

And yet I gave it five stars on my letterbox because it’s one of those movies where I went to letterbox it yesterday right after having watched it again and was like, “Oh, I’ve already done this. ” And I gave it five stars. Oh, the previous

Matt (00:06:04):

Time.

Laci (00:06:05):

That’s now a 3.5.

Matt (00:06:06):

Wow. Okay.

Laci (00:06:07):

Okay. So I know I keep harping on this, but I still feel this way, that Nolan movies can be put into two buckets, movies that make stupid people feel smart and movies that are stupid for smart people. And The Dark Knight is absolutely a stupid movie for smart people. So is the prestige. And I would say inception goes into the… I believe I’m intellectual after having seen this thought piece category. Why do you think

Matt (00:06:40):

That?

Laci (00:06:41):

It’s a bunch of homework. It’s a pay attention to the ball. Where’s the ball? Where’s the spinny thing? You look in, you look in your band. Did you follow that? Huh? Are you in a dream? Huh? Did you go? Who’s getting put to sleep now? Are you paying attention? And at the end it’s like, fuck you. Who cares? Sopranos ending. Everything’s a dream. Fucking cop out. Spluge in my face without asking. All

Matt (00:07:04):

Right. Well, that’s insane. But this really is a divisive thing. And Disclosure Day by Steven Spielberg earlier this summer really points it out is there are people who are so turned off by an ending that’s abrupt and it leaves you with a huh or people hate ambiguity and people hate it at the end of The Sopranos.

Laci (00:07:22):

Gop, that’s not true. I feel like, and I wish I had examples and the smarter person would’ve brought those to the table right now, but I really like an ending where it’s like sometimes. But this movie had so many emotional moments and moments to close out things and goodbye dear friend and this and this was really important. I can’t believe I went on this journey with you and I have to say goodbye to you. And then I’m finally going to see my family. And then it was a crygasm.

Matt (00:07:56):

So your objection is that we didn’t get to go outside in his backyard and look at his kids.

Laci (00:08:01):

Oh no, I hated the way their faces looked. No. Stupid

Matt (00:08:04):

Kids.

Laci (00:08:05):

My issue is that it feels like nothing got resolved in this movie. And maybe that’s the point, fine. But the Matrix is a great example of a highly complex idea that explores the mind in reality and leaves you feeling like quenched. Yes, done. And I don’t feel like it was a stupid Pat ending. This one just feels like he cut too soon because he does that all the time anyway. And I don’t even know that he made his mind up as to whether this is a happy resolution. I think I’d have to watch it six more times. And I keep saying that about the movies that are dumb for dumb people.

Matt (00:08:45):

All right. Well, hold on. Just because people are going to be screaming

Laci (00:08:48):

In the middle of what

Matt (00:08:49):

You’re saying.

Laci (00:08:50):

I don’t want them to do

Matt (00:08:51):

That. I mean, he was very, very deliberate about when he cut with the spinning. You’re talking about the spinning top and the way it starts to wobble, then stabilizes. And he said he and his editor were tormented about when are we going to cut? Because we could show it start to wobble again. This is the perfect place. And it is the author of the work saying the story is over. Make your own determination about what it means. We’ve talked about Nolan movies being I think incorrectly read as puzzles, but he does invite that. And this is the most puzzly movie I think because it’s the one with at the very end of the movie the sort of multiple choice question. And your answer to that question determines what you think the movie is actually about. Which the three answers are the top topples over, he’s not in a dream.

Matt (00:09:36):

The top stays spinning, he’s in a dream. Or the top could topple over and that still doesn’t give you an answer one way or another.

Laci (00:09:41):

Tell me that one again. The top topples over and he’s in someone else’s, he’s not in his own.

Matt (00:09:45):

So the way they explain totems working is it will tell you whether you are in someone else’s dream. It can’t tell you whether you’re in your own dream. And importantly, no one else can know how the totem works, but that’s his wife’s totem. So she knows how it works. So she could also still be in his wife’s dream. And the whole thing about totems could just be a totally made up thing in the dream that he’s having that he’s writing as you’re watching it.

Laci (00:10:11):

Also, where did I come up with a bouncing ball? Why did I think a ball was in this movie? That’s the

Matt (00:10:17):

Prestige.

Laci (00:10:17):

No, no. I know that. Oh, was it the Matrix where a ball goes by and it makes someone realize they’re having a glitch?

Matt (00:10:26):

No, that was a cat, a black cat in the Matrix. God

Laci (00:10:28):

Damn it. There’s a

Matt (00:10:29):

Ball. Deja vu. What did you say?

Laci (00:10:31):

Dejavu. I remember that. God damn, maybe I really did. Immandela the ball.

Matt (00:10:36):

Now in terms of it being a puzzle to solve, I think that unfortunately there’s a way that that’s interesting, an interesting way to engage with this movie and then the uninteresting way. And I think no offense to all the YouTubers out there, most YouTube content is definitively explained inception ending and it looks at clues inside the movie. And we talked to a physicist to explain, but the spinning top could not… And none of that’s what interests me. The point of this movie is the uncertainty that we all have to live with, that’s a question as old as philosophy is how do I know that what I perceive as reality is real? It doesn’t matter. How do I know I’m real? How do I know I’m not being controlled by a demon? How do I know I’m not in a simulation? How do I know I’m not severed?

Laci (00:11:18):

And at the end of the day, if your experience at that moment is satisfying and you’re content, you don’t feel the need to know.

Matt (00:11:27):

Yeah. The point of his character arc is the top is spinning and he abandons it. Now he doesn’t care anymore. And he, through Ariadne, was given the tools to confront his wife and finally let her go and so he can stop living in this fiction that he’s built for himself. He might be going on to another fiction,

Laci (00:11:48):

But

Matt (00:11:48):

It was resolution on that story. And I find the last 10 minutes of the movie so emotionally moving

Laci (00:11:57):

That

Matt (00:11:57):

That’s really why I love the movie. I saw this movie a handful of times thinking this is an annoying movie that has so much interesting stuff going on that I kept going back to it. And eventually it clicked for me and this happens with a bunch of Nolan movies. And it’s the most obvious take in the world is, oh, the whole movie’s a dream. That’s why everything seems so weird. That’s why things that take place in the real world of the movie feel random and disjointed. It’s because it’s also a dream.

Laci (00:12:23):

And his wife points that out and that’s the most persuasive thing. They do such a good job of making her seem like such a villain and they give her so many scary moments, even though there’s nothing really to be scared of. But he’s terrified of her. But the whole point of you start every dream in the middle, you’re not sure how you got there. Yeah, they absolutely start the movie that way. And that’s what –

Matt (00:12:48):

And

Laci (00:12:48):

Him going to Kabul and then there’s some… Kabul.

Matt (00:12:51):

Yeah.

Laci (00:12:52):

Kobal

Matt (00:12:52):

Engineering, it sounds so –

Laci (00:12:53):

No, no, no, but he goes Cambodia? He goes somewhere like –

Matt (00:12:56):

Mabasa.

Laci (00:12:58):

He can’t go to the stateside. But the father-in-law’s stateside – No,

Matt (00:13:05):

He’s in Paris, but then he goes to the United States.

Laci (00:13:09):

So who are the kids with?

Matt (00:13:10):

The

Laci (00:13:10):

Grandmother.

Matt (00:13:11):

Presumably Michael Cain’s French wife named Marie.

Laci (00:13:16):

Yeah. Damn it. That’s on me. I needed to watch this a couple more times. And I still don’t know how I feel about a movie where you need to watch it more than once. I’m going to feel a little cheated and it’s a bit of a time suck and I’m not positive it deserves the attention it’s taking from me.

Matt (00:13:40):

I agree with you that a movie shouldn’t require you multiple viewings to appreciate it. But with these Nolan movies, every time I watch it for the first time, I’m engaged and think this is so interesting and I want to go back.

Laci (00:13:54):

Yes, that’s true. That’s true. He’s doing something.

Matt (00:13:57):

But what annoyed me is we finished the movie. You immediately get on a phone call with your friend who says, “How’d you like inception?” And you’re like, “I don’t know. ” And I was

Laci (00:14:04):

Like, “That’s

Matt (00:14:05):

Bullshit because

Laci (00:14:05):

You – I already letterboxed it. You could just go read that, man. But

Matt (00:14:08):

You gave it three and a half stars, which we have agreed is the most non-committal rating. And I think we should commit to never derating anything three and a half stars.

Laci (00:14:14):

Then you have to raise almost every fucking rating you’ve ever given you non-committal sack of shit. I’m

Matt (00:14:18):

Like, Cobb, you should not do as I say or do as I… You know what I’m saying?

Laci (00:14:22):

Totally.

Matt (00:14:24):

Plus his name is Dom Cobb. That’s Frank. Come on. No one else has a last name or a first name. This girl’s name is Ariadne, the figure from Greek mythology who guides Thessius through the maze.

Laci (00:14:37):

Stop.

Matt (00:14:38):

So then there are people who say the whole movie’s a dream and what it actually is Michael Cain or Marianne Cotillard trying to do inception to Leo to get him out of the dream. And I find that’s a little interesting, but that’s where I think… Now you’re digging too deep. And I know I’m just talking about my own specific way I want to read a movie. But what was I saying? So it was watching it multiple times and then I realized that the things that were putting me off about the movie I think are by design. Or if they’re not by design, they’re at least effective. The weird editing, the weird plot decisions, the things that – Why we’re in the smell of a sentence seem to contradict each other about the rules of this universe, the way things seem like they’re being made up on the spot.

Matt (00:15:22):

Oh, limbo. What’s limbo? Unconstructed dream space. That seems like something that a dreamer is just making up as he has the dream.

Laci (00:15:28):

Sure, but it’s the beach and limbo for some reason is his limbo for everybody. Yeah, I know.

Matt (00:15:35):

I know.

Laci (00:15:35):

How do they decide whose dream they’re in? It has to be someone who’s on charge of making sure they’re all asleep and wake up and kick and all that fucking shit. I got that. But they don’t bother telling us whose dream they’re in the whole time.

Matt (00:15:49):

They do. They

Laci (00:15:50):

Do it as they go. So it’s like a dream heist movie, but usually in a heist, they did the thing where they gather the team and I love that. I will always love that. But they didn’t do the thing where they tell us the plan and not really. So all of the layers get all the more confusing and I lose track of how many layers we’re in because I think we’re only meant to go down three, but they go down four. Yeah. Okay. Let’s just talk through why he did this. What I’m amazed with is that this was his idea. This isn’t from a book. That’s fucking cool. That he thought about originally being a dream thief is fucking stupid, but let’s see you dazzle me. Let’s dive in my love, my dearest baby boy. In

Matt (00:16:38):

The history segment now we shall go to. But first, if you are listening on the podcast, go subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can get bonus content such as my video about Fantasia 2000 and how it’s the Trump’s ballroom of Disney movies. A hundred billion dollars spent to make one old executive happy and kind of be a busy box so he’ll leave everybody else alone. He can go –

Laci (00:16:58):

It’s the cash register on Home Alone two. Yes, for Mr. Duncan.

Matt (00:17:01):

Yes.

Laci (00:17:02):

It’s his fake cash. What can I do? Break a five? Come on up. Touch a dove. Go ahead

Matt (00:17:07):

And check out our Home Alone two episode where Laci points out, it seems like the real cash register’s over on the other side of the store.

Laci (00:17:12):

The ones that are run on electricity. And he’s just

Matt (00:17:16):

Boring kids about… Oh.

Laci (00:17:19):

A precocious child will go up to this person that’s clearly not working at all and is in his twilight because they won’t know any different. And

Matt (00:17:26):

Kevin McAllister is just the first annoying child to engage with him.

Laci (00:17:30):

Unaccompanied minors are going to go in this line because to a kid, this looks like a man who’s going to check you out at a toy store or for adults. We’re looking for the beeps, the flashing lights, the people are in a hurry and not selling doves.

Matt (00:17:44):

Stupids.

Laci (00:17:45):

Subscribe

Matt (00:17:45):

On YouTube. Subscribe to our Patreon. Subscribe, like, comment, all of that stuff. Thank you so much. Let’s get into the history of inception now. Please. Christopher Nolan’s most autobiographical movie. That’s what I told you before we started watching. Even the fucking

Laci (00:18:26):

Pinwheel. Okay. I’m looking at a photo and you aren’t. There’s a picture right now of Christopher Nolan with his son or daughter sitting on his lap and they are blowing on a pinwheel.

Matt (00:18:37):

Yep. And then this picture, I think taken eight years before the movie was made of him and his wife doing the train track. Fun on the train tracks. Go try this everybody. Go lay down on a train track with your head on them. Don’t give me a

Laci (00:18:49):

Migraine.

Matt (00:18:50):

With your head on the track. They

Laci (00:18:51):

Were trying to make their heads a penny. That’s not how that works.

Matt (00:18:54):

No, that’s how that works at the train station.

Laci (00:18:57):

Just a penny head for the rest of your life. I

Matt (00:18:59):

Meant to ask you. We’re halfway through. I meant to ask this minute two of the podcast. Where are you standing on Nolan? Or what do you feel like you understand about him at this point?

Laci (00:19:09):

I feel like he is very much working out one part. He is Leo. It keeps going back to his dream space. His dream space are the movies he makes. He just keeps going back to the same well over and over and over again until he can undo his guilt around separation from his family. It might be one level deeper and be separation that he had as a boy from his family. But he is working something out and yet keeps coming out the other end the same person and maybe can’t accept that people love him for that anyway. Just leave it. Yeah.

Matt (00:19:52):

“But what if I stopped making all these giant blockbusters? You’d still love me? ” And the answer is yes, but he couldn’t accept that.

Laci (00:19:59):

I don’t know that he cares that they’re blockbusters. I think he’s still working through some shit. Otherwise, how is he turning movies that aren’t even his ideas into his fucking plot anyway? Where’d Interstellar come from? That idea.

Matt (00:20:13):

That idea originated with. I don’t remember if it originated with his brother or it was a different somebody else and then they took it over. But I mean that is totally his idea from the ground up. It just might have started. Like how Memento started with his brother having an idea and then Chris being like, “Oh no, I’ll take that for my

Laci (00:20:30):

Son.” I think it is a rare talent that has this many different enough sci-fi ideas in him. That’s amazing. He’s no prestige magician. He has plenty of illusions and that’s impressive. And he’s not shy to go to his brother and dig in there. He’s not a dream stealer the way maybe someone like Stanley Kubrick is who –

Matt (00:20:54):

Stealing dreams?

Laci (00:20:55):

Who will mind someone – By

Matt (00:20:57):

Adapting other things?

Laci (00:20:58):

No, no, no. Who is on the record by Steven Spielberg as saying, “We’ll just call you and talk to you for hours over and over and over again, just ruminating on your ideas until he’s done with you. Or he finally uses you for a project.” If he’s doing that to fucking Spielberg, he’s doing that to everyone who willtake his call. He is a dream stealer.

Matt (00:21:19):

I wouldn’t characterize it like that, but

Laci (00:21:21):

Okay. Okay. Well, whatever. He’s Kubrick, he can get things made and you’re Spielberg or someone lesser than that who’s like, “You want to talk to me? Yeah, let’s talk. Tell me he can’t steal your fucking shit.” But my point is Nolan is a deep well. And even if it’s a simplistic idea, it is an eternal struggle. So there’s always something full of heart. There’s moments where you will tear up probably in most of his movies. So he’s got something. I just think he has an editing issue. And sometimes there’s too much on the screen and sometimes there’s not enough of it. And sometimes he doesn’t know where to cut it off. But I still rather a guy like this that has such a signature, and we’ll say this every time, an auteur director, they’re just few and far between and when he’s dead, I’ll miss his movies.

Matt (00:22:17):

He says in the shown book, I think in 20… He said before he made Dunkirk, he proposed to his wife, “What if we just don’t have a screenplay for this movie?” Because he writes his own movies. Not all directors do that. And his wife said, “That’s insane.” And he’s like, “No, but I know what to do. D we really need a script?” And she’s like, “I’m the producer. I’m telling you we need a script.” But it sort of was like he was almost saying, “I wish I was one of these directors who didn’t need to write his own movies because that would speed things up. He takes a year, year and a half to write these screenplays. And he’s unwilling to give that part up.

Laci (00:22:51):

Literally sit down and go character name, interior. You say this and then with the sad look on his face.” The tedious, that’s a screenplay?

Matt (00:23:03):

Yeah.

Laci (00:23:04):

Okay. I guess I though that was called a script. Same thing.

Laci (00:23:08):

Okay. Wow. That anyone could sit down. I don’t think I could do a screenplay about you and me talking for 10 minutes. It’s excruciating and it’s amazing how wrong you can be in thinking that this is the expression a character should have in this moment because it makes sense in the way you wrote it. And then you go to shoot it, you find out there’s better chemistry. It makes more sense for a character to do this instead, but you already shot the reaction to the… Fuck, this is why I can never go into movie set again. I think I know things. I’m going to get way too in the weeds and not be able to explain what I’m saying. But movies are miracles and I can understand him wanting to skip this step after having already written the fucking thing.

Matt (00:23:49):

For a long time, directors didn’t write movies. Those were separate jobs. I’m going to really generalize here. In the new Hollywood era, directors sort of rise or recognize you’re the primary author of the movie start writing their own movies. Francis Ford Coppola writes his own movies. And in George Lucas’s biography, Francis Forcopla was his mentor and he said, “George, you have to write your own movies. You’re not serious if you don’t.” And George hated writing movies, but they’re like, “Okay, I guess I will.”

Laci (00:24:16):

And then the boy had a special talent, but he was sad.

Matt (00:24:20):

So I think there is a lot of directors who have the atachment I need to also write. I need this movie to end and it say written and directed by Christopher

Laci (00:24:29):

Miller. I mean, Quintin Tarantino made that a must, right? He really gets the most juice out of that.

Matt (00:24:34):

Or James Cameron, written, produced and directed by James

Laci (00:24:36):

Cameron. Oh gosh, yikes. Yes, business daddy.

Matt (00:24:39):

So I think that this is the most autobiographical of his movies in that I think you have the most of him in it and working out this thing where he seems somebody who feels like the movies he makes and the movies he watches are more real than his real life even as he loves his family so, so much. But maybe, and I’m going to read some stuff that he says where I get the sense that he can kind of only process things by thinking of them in terms of movies or just images or specific memories. And that’s why the DiCaprio character is like, these are moments. These are moments that I need to change and regret. And I think a thing you and I have talked about going through therapy, just living our lives is you realize these things like moments,

Laci (00:25:24):

Big conversations.

Matt (00:25:25):

I think that to a storyteller, it’s like the most important moment is the moment where I failed to say goodbye. Now in reality, your kids are not sad that you didn’t say goodbye. It’s that you’re not there anymore. So even if you’d had a grand goodbye, it wouldn’t make it any

Laci (00:25:37):

Better. Right. Even if every day you leave and I go, I hope you die in your car, that won’t be the most important. I’ll never stop thinking about it probably, but that’s not really what matters.

Matt (00:25:48):

So in the book, in the Shone book, he has this quote early on. H says, “I feel more of a craftsman than an artist.” I think people who criticize Nolan, the film critics who criticize him would say that exact thing. You’re not an artist or you don’t have anything to say. Your movies are impressive technical achievements, but I can’t sense that there’s a real person behind there who has something to say. And I disagree with that, but I think it’s interesting that he straight up just owns that, that I’m a craftsman. I’m an artist and he compares himself or he loves David Lynch. And I always group him and David Lynch together because they’re the exact opposites, the thesis and the antithesis. David Lynch being the pure artist, expressionistic movies, he’s the man who makes movies that feel like dreams.

Laci (00:26:34):

Feel like dreams.

Matt (00:26:34):

And then inception, a movie about dreams where the dreams feel way too literal and people criticize that. These dreams don’t feel surreal at all.

Laci (00:26:41):

But I get his point and I think that’s interesting. None of us feel like we’re in a surreal dream when we’re dreaming. It feels like the most real thing and yet we can’t reconstruct it. And all we can say is it was weird. And even if that reality was super weird, for whatever reason we have to drive in gel and we’re not allowed to wear shirts. In that moment, that is just what real is. And it’s like when you leave the dream, you’re like, wonder why that? I wonder why I was doing that. But it seemed like I needed to be doing that. And I am a person who can remember my dreams for days. They get gradually harder to remember, but there’ll be points that I can remember for days. And I’m still thinking of one that I had three weeks ago. But I never wake up and haven’t had a night full of dreams and it’s exhausting.

Matt (00:27:33):

Dreams are if you dream, you’re having restful sleep.

Laci (00:27:36):

Yeah, but people who can, that’s your head getting out garbage and throwing it away. That’s me staring at my garbage and remembering it. I think I’m processing and not giving myself enough privacy to do so. Maybe

Matt (00:27:48):

You need a CPAP. Maybe that’s all it is.

Laci (00:27:50):

I know there’s a reason. I don’t know. I’m not a deep enough sleeper.

Matt (00:27:55):

CPAP will knock you right. That’s the one thing missing from the movie. Nobody’s wearing a CPAP. Get to that deep level. It’s a limbo.

Laci (00:28:01):

You think it’s anesthesia in that CPAP, not just air.

Matt (00:28:06):

I think it’s literally just air, just pushing some air into your nose holes. I think that CPAPs, it might be that thing like… I think everybody might actually need CPAPs.

Laci (00:28:16):

I’m not going to disagree with you, but I think a ton of people have not diagnosed their sleep apnea.

Matt (00:28:21):

Yeah. It might be just thing that to disprove intelligent design. Our bodies are stupid and we’re not supposed to… When we sleep, we’re killing ourselves. So we need a little device to push air into o nose. Anyway, certainly the filmmakers who sort of can only process things through movies and the only thing it seems like they have anything to say about is movies.

Laci (00:28:47):

He agrees with his critics.

Matt (00:28:49):

But he seems, and I’m responding to the Tom Schoen book, which I’m working my way through. He also seems to understand about himself that movies, the movies he makes and the movies he watches feel more real than his real life does. And that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his wife and his kids in his real life. And so this movie about a guy who you can easily see as a movie director making a movie as a way to understand his own life better and sort of break out of the labyrinth of his mind, I find that kind of moving. And in the final stretch when he wakes up in the airplane and then gets off the plane, it really does seem like he’s ascending to heaven. And I’m not saying he’s literally going to heaven, he’s dead. I’m saying it is filmed like he’s passing all the people he knew in his life.

Laci (00:29:32):

You’re right.

Matt (00:29:32):

The angel Michael Cain meets him and greets him to take him up to Mount Heaven Olympus.

Laci (00:29:37):

And it’s ethereal looking like the lights are shining through. They are the exact age that they were when he though he last saw them. That’s what they tell to me. No,

Matt (00:29:45):

They’re older. The visions that look a lot like stock footage you’ve been seeing the whole movie are different kids. They’re

Laci (00:29:52):

Now older.

Matt (00:29:53):

And they’re credited for different actors at different ages.

Laci (00:29:57):

Okay. But they don’t seem old enough.That’s The thing, right? It plays with time and if he’s in a dream the whole time, then it’s a lot shorter of a period of time has gone by at the top, top, top level, which we may have never actually experienced yet. Okay. But he feels like he’s… Well, and he’s an old man, right? He’s already lived an entire life without them. So yeah, I guess he does feel like he’s been away for a long time because he has.

Matt (00:30:22):

So during the production of The Dark Night, his wife Emma, who again is his business partner, his producing partner, his right hand woman, becomes pregnant with their fourth child, Magnus. So she leaves the kids who were on set with them go home to England for the final two months of that movie’s production. He said it was the longest he had ever been away from them. And he said, “I remember thinking I know it’s more fun when we’re all together and we can do the thing together. That’s why we keep it as a family business. We were learning how to balance those things. I think that’s the experience that crystallized that aspect of inception. The call that Cobb has to his kids, trying to talk to them on the phone, the sandcastles on the beach.”

Laci (00:30:59):

And when did he have that experience? I’m sorry.

Matt (00:31:01):

2007 when he’s nearing the end of production on the dark night.

Laci (00:31:05):

Dark night. Okay.

Matt (00:31:06):

But he’d had this idea for inception all the way back as a student at uni. And it first started as dream thieves. What if you could go and steal an idea in someone’s dream? And I know that sounds you were making fun of it, but whenever I really think about it, I think that’s really neat.

Laci (00:31:24):

Wait, steal an idea. Sure, but not steal someone’s dreams. That’s dumb.

Matt (00:31:28):

I don’t think it was ever meant I steal your dreams. It’s we are thieves who operate in dreams.

Laci (00:31:33):

Fine. The concept of having something you’re hiding and locked away in a dream, that’s interesting, but that’s not the same thing. But okay, got it. Sorry.

Matt (00:31:44):

And very early on, he had the idea of music in the real world will penetrate into the dreams. That’ll affect the plot somehow.

Laci (00:31:50):

That really happens in real life too.

Matt (00:31:52):

And then he claims that the TV show Freddy’s Nightmares, the anthology short-lived anthology TV series based on Nightmare on Elm Street, where every episode is introduced by Freddy Krueger, characters would frequently wake up from a dream and then be in another dream. And he said that inspired him too.

Laci (00:32:07):

How?

Matt (00:32:08):

Just think that’s where he got the inspiration from. But in college, he claims to have been able to lucid dream because he would stay awake very late at night drinking probably tea with his friends. Then he’d go to bed and then wake up at 9: AM for breakfast because his breakfast was already paid for. Then he’d go back to sleep and sleep till the afternoon. And he said in that inter period between morning and afternoon, that’s when he’d be like half asleep, half awake and have these very vivid dreams that he could control.

Laci (00:32:37):

I do that too.

Matt (00:32:38):

Really?

Laci (00:32:39):

All the time.

Matt (00:32:40):

Where you can control the

Laci (00:32:40):

Dream. It’s only the very end because as soon as you realize you’re dreaming, you do wake up out of it slowly, but not before you can do some shit.

Matt (00:32:49):

He says, “I remember lucid dreams where I would see there was a book on the table and I would go and look at the book and I’d be able to read the words and it might even make sense.” So you say, “Okay, I’m writing this book as I’m reading it at the same time.

Laci (00:33:00):

I

Matt (00:33:00):

Found that to be an amazing thing. Film has a relationship to our own dreams that’s difficult to articulate, but there’s an extrapolation of your experience working things out through your dreams. You’re hoping to make connections and find things that are hidden from you while you’re living your life or being in the world. I think that’s what films do for us. They’re very dreamlike experiences.” Sammy Fableman’s mom says to him at the beginning of the Fablemans, “Movies are dreams, Sammy. But she’s right.”

Laci (00:33:28):

Someone’s dream.

Matt (00:33:29):

Before movies, you never saw images. The only other time you would see images that aren’t real are in your dreams and

Laci (00:33:35):

Things

Matt (00:33:36):

Like editing and editing is kind of a magic trick. Oh, you can jump ahead in time and I don’t have to see you moving from point A to point B.

Laci (00:33:44):

That’s

Matt (00:33:44):

Very dreamlike. But we’re so accustomed to seeing that in movies it doesn’t seem weird to us. But he has the question. How do you make an audience care about stuff that’s happening in a dream? And that’s actually a much bigger and older question. I think it’s called the problem of fiction of like, why should you care about anything that’s happening to fake people? Why should you care about any fictional story?

Laci (00:34:07):

Because I guess we’re all just projecting the projections in our dreams that it’s the perfect parallel. The only reason any of it ever matters is because we’re put in some way inserting ourselves in our notions or our ideas.

Matt (00:34:25):

It reminds you of something or at a baser level it’s just like triggering neurological responses. I know I’m not in danger, but I feel fear in this horror

Laci (00:34:34):

Movie. Yeah. Or it’s educating me or it’s solidifying a though that I’ve had or I’m making me feel seen or making me feel angry.

Matt (00:34:42):

But one thing you said was like, but if it’s all a ream, it was all a fucking dream. And I think a lot of people do have that sort of repulsive reflexive reaction of like, why should I care if the whole thing was a dream? But movies are always fiction.

Laci (00:35:02):

And I think he is suffering here from much lesser movies and shows using it as a way to get away with doing a very outlandish thing or like, oh my God, I can’t believe they killed off a main character in this show. It was a dream. Zach Morris alive. I’m not saying Saved by the Bell did it, but I know Young and the Restless are different. It’s a cheap way of getting a big hit emotionally from your audience that you didn’t actually want to deal with ramifications of. It’s not fair to get to reset. It’s boring. It’s annoying if you don’t know what’s happening and then you realize it at the end. Fuck you. But for a movie, there’s no reason to do that because all the stakes are in this movie. It’s its own thing. Yeah. So I mean, I love that the spinny thing kind of wobbles.

Laci (00:35:57):

And goddammit, I never once questioned why doesn’t he have his own? And what was his totem before? If he really had one and if totems matter, we should at least know what he had before he had hers.

Matt (00:36:09):

And even the things that they say about totems, it would not be a good totem because it’s like it has to be an object that only the person who has it knows it by the weight and feel. But the way the spinning top behaves is it spins infinitely and there’s no reason for a top to ever spin infinitely.

Laci (00:36:27):

Right. No one in an architect’s dream. No one would be an architect trying to fool you and make your spinning top spin infinitely when they know tops don’t do that. But I thought it was that it falls a certain way, just like the dice does, just like the – No,

Matt (00:36:44):

The thing is it just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning.

Laci (00:36:46):

That is stupid. It doesn’t make sense.

Matt (00:36:49):

And it’s one of those things I could see where people would get annoyed and say, “So you’re just saying everything that seems like a problem with this movie is actually an asset because it’s all in the dream. Everything that seems sloppy about this can be explained that it’s all a dream.” And I say, yes, that’s true.

Laci (00:37:04):

Well, then you will annoy me, sir, but let’s see. Maybe you could still persuade me.

Matt (00:37:08):

When he saw The Matrix, he said, “I think The Matrix for me was very much inspiration for the idea that you could give a virtual experience stakes in the real world, that it might all have an equivalent value.” That it seems like he saw the movie, he’s like, “Oh fuck, this is how you do it. This is how you can take a very complex concept and make people understand very quickly why they should care about something. Even if you have the stakes of you die in The Matrix, you die in the real world, et cetera.” He found it so elegant the way they had done that.

Laci (00:37:37):

And that’s why in my head this movie is you die in a dream, you die in the real world. So in the very first scene, it’s like, no, that’s not the case. I’m like, “Why do we care? What’s going on here?” But they make you care.

Matt (00:37:47):

But he says he writes about 80 pages of a script and it is, he says more of a horror movie than anything and more of a film noir. Eventually he realizes he needs to structure it as a heist movie. Then he can get all the exposition and explaining, build that into the movie without it seeming clunky. And then once he had that though, he retold it, made it less of a horror movie. He says, “There’s even the shot of him walking through the airport. You see the team, they nod at each other just like they do at the end of Oceans 11.” So that is him very much blending all the genres of movies he loves. He loves heist movies, he loves Bond movies. And can he use all of that as a way to Trojan horse in his dream thief concept?

Laci (00:38:31):

Something I kept getting stuck on was how much of an industry is this? How new of an idea is this? I have no grasp on that. That’s the whole effect of jumping in in the middle. You have this very old man who clearly was his teacher and his father-in-law and he learned to be an architect, but an actual one. And then this new field came about and so he ended up being a natural at that.

Matt (00:38:58):

I think I have an idea just from watching it so many times, but that is a thing that is frustrating about the movie is you feel like this needs a little bit more explanation instead of just, “Yeah, that’s why the military developed a dream sharing so that you could…” I’m sorry, what? The military developed dream sharing? And even simple things like does plugging into the dream thing put you to… Do you have to go to sleep regularly?

Laci (00:39:21):

Is it a needle? Is it an IV? They never show you.

Matt (00:39:24):

Do you have to wait to go to sleep normally? Are you always sedated? Or does putting it in immediately just put you to sleep? But he said that the scene with Michael Cain went on so much longer and you got so many of these answers. And he said this brings the whole movie to a standstill. And it was when he felt like, “Oh no, I wasted $200 million. This movie doesn’t work.”

Laci (00:39:48):

Okay.

Matt (00:39:48):

And eventually he and his editor said, “Let’s just get rid of most of that and just the audience has to keep up.” And he said, “That was what made the movie work.” And it is true, you do have to keep catch up, but you’re grateful that the movie doesn’t bog you down with even more explanation.

Laci (00:40:07):

And it is smart that they’re clearly selling these services to rich people, which means that this is a technology that’s new enough that it hasn’t gone down to your common person. The only time you see a common person doing this dream sharing is in this other foreign land where there’s this chemist and he makes things more affordable maybe. And we don’t even know. Those could be the rich people of that town. We don’t know. But the two people they interact with in this movie are very rich men who they are selling their services or get interviewing to see if they’re the right ones. So they’re not the only game in town, but it almost seems like a technology that’s… It’s good enough for a rich person to see why they should need it and train to use it and whatever. But maybe it’s still not understood enough that it can get you out of a court case if it seems you might’ve killed your wife due to it.

Laci (00:41:09):

It’s one of those like, what did I create?

Matt (00:41:11):

He has a line where he’s like, “And I wouldn’t have been able to explain why she went so

Laci (00:41:17):

Mad.” I need a

Matt (00:41:17):

Whole movie. She’d filed a letter with our attorney saying, “I am first of all, very sane and number two scared for my life.” That itself seems like this is a soap opera or this is something out of a film noir movie. This is fiction. This is not real.

Laci (00:41:33):

Also, you’re in a hotel room so lovely, so large that it has a wraparound window and she’s wrecked the place before you got there for no fucking reason. That

Matt (00:41:44):

Is to stage a crime scene, that we had a giant

Laci (00:41:46):

Argument and he threw me out the

Matt (00:41:47):

Window.

Laci (00:41:50):

Okay. See, watch the movie more than once later.

Matt (00:41:53):

So on casting Leonardo DiCaprio, he told Dan Jolen an empire in 2010, “I absolutely desperately need him. I’d written Inception as sort of a clever, clever heist movie and heist movies tend to be deliberately superficial and glamorous. I needed him to bring the thing together, open it up to the audience and make it a human story. And he’s done that extraordinarily well.” What do you think about this DiCaprio

Laci (00:42:14):

Performance? What did DiCaprio just come off of?

Matt (00:42:16):

Shutter Island with a very similar plot. A very diferent movie, but extraordinarily similar thing. So he had done Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies, just a boring as shit movie that I just watched. Blood Diamond.

Laci (00:42:30):

Blood Diamond.

Matt (00:42:31):

Okay. So he’s

Laci (00:42:32):

Already deep into his I’m a serious actor stuff. Okay. The more I watch DiCaprio, the more I feel like there’s one DiCaprio. But there’s one mode of him. But I feel like he oscillated nicely between kind of scummy but very kind, kind of desperate. He came off more like a human with complex emotions where sometimes he’s a bit too clever, too witty, too. That disappears later you get into his career. But I wasn’t sure. He looks so young here that I wasn’t sure where we were in his career. I was like, oh, is he going to be too quippy?

Matt (00:43:16):

I was thinking about this. I think there’s three DiCaprios modes he’s very good in. One is slimy, like Wolf of Wall Street. Two, dumb. Jango. I’m a dumb guy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Wolf of Wall Street. Well yeah, Wolf of Wall Street two, but also Killers of the Flower Moon. He’s so dumb in that movie. He’s not

Laci (00:43:33):

Dumb. He’s great. He’s desperate. H didn’t see Killers

Matt (00:43:36):

Of Flower Moon.

Laci (00:43:36):

Oh, shit. Dumb fuck. I meant…

Matt (00:43:39):

Hollywood.

Laci (00:43:40):

No, I meant one battle after another. That’s my favorite. I don’t even know what to say he is. Erratic, drug, craze. A little dumb.

Matt (00:43:48):

But

Laci (00:43:48):

Dumb.

Matt (00:43:48):

Addled. Okay. Then the department would also fit into this is like, I’m in over my head. Desperate.

Laci (00:43:54):

I think that’s the word.

Matt (00:43:55):

Desperate. Okay. He’s desperate. Now this role, which I think he’d been trying this of like, I’m just kind of a straightforward, heroic guy. I think this might be the only successful version of him trying to do that. I

Laci (00:44:08):

Don’t see him as heroic at all. I see him as a fucking dick who’ve got a lot of people into some shit, but he still has to drive the whole thing. What other heroic movie would you say? What’s the other example?

Matt (00:44:22):

Body of Lies, which I just watched. Blood Diamond. I think in this section of his career, it’s maybe trying to play more… And when I say normal guy or hero guy – I know what you mean.

Laci (00:44:34):

It gives

Matt (00:44:34):

You a certain idea, but he’s like, “I’m not putting on an accent. I’m not trying to play stupid. I’m just kind of trying to be a likable protagonist of a movie.”

Matt (00:44:44):

Christopher Nolan said, “I started to write it at a time where there was a sort of little subgenre of movies that dealt with the idea of how can you trust the world around you? How can you distinguish reality from an alternative reality? Memento was very much one of those films, but The Matrix was the prime one. I also think Dark City, which came out first, and the 13th floor.” So he’s talking about the early 2000s when he originally wrote the movie and there was this little boomlet of the world is not real. And he said later he was lucky that he waited so long that that ended and now there was distance between The Matrix and his own movie. The 13th floor is actually a very good movie if no one’s – Who’s

Laci (00:45:20):

The lead in that? I don’t

Matt (00:45:21):

Even remember. Some guy. It’s a reality. It’s a simulation. Oh my God.

Laci (00:45:24):

When did Black Mirror come out?

Matt (00:45:26):

2010.

Laci (00:45:27):

So same time? Uh-huh. So he was catching it on the second wave, which is smart.

Matt (00:45:32):

Yeah. Production took six months over five different cities. Tokyo, Paris, Tangier, Los Angeles and Calgary. $160 million budget. It was a production as big and expensive as The Dark Knight. And he kept saying what gave him the confidence that all of this would work is that people liked Memento. Well, people liked

Laci (00:45:48):

Memento. Yeah. This is a Momento ass movie. And

Matt (00:45:52):

There’s so much in common with Memento, especially the way Memento ends with you realize this has all been about people trying to help him kind of. And

Laci (00:46:00):

I ended up liking that ending.

Matt (00:46:04):

And my wife tried to help me get out of this mind prison I put myself in and it led to her death. It’s crazy how similar those are.

Laci (00:46:15):

Oh, I’m doing math. I’m fucking mathing over here. Oh yes. Good comparison.

Matt (00:46:22):

Now one of the big criticisms was when the movie came out, it came out to mix to positive reviews, but not dream like enough, people said. A. O. Scott said, “Nolan’s idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, to rule bound, to allow the full measure of madness, the risk of real confusion, of delirium, of ineffable ambiguity.” That’s

Laci (00:46:41):

Not understanding a neurodivergent person. That’s what that is. If you are inside the mind of a person who is very much about detail and knowing your space, then you dream just like that probably. That is your reality. Someone like David Lynch, who is a complete creative, he dreams like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. It’s why his movies are amazing. I think this is the first time it’s made me think that I’ll bet the dreams of… If it’s neurodivergence, then that is exactly when you’d see the difference between how a brain processes information. For instance, our son now loves Google Maps and will just scroll and scroll routes and learn routes. I mean, he’s mapping the world. It makes him feel safe. He loves knowing exactly where he is and exactly where he wants to go. You telling me he doesn’t dream about that shit? I’ll bet it’s real fucking detailed.

Laci (00:47:31):

So yeah, I think dreams are our own and they reflect the kind of way we think. I’m dyslexic. I probably dream dyslexic.

Matt (00:47:39):

Yeah. And I think that he’s using dreams in this, utilizing them as a tool, whereas I think David Lynch is trying to make a movie that feels like a dream. Two

Laci (00:47:47):

Different things.

Matt (00:47:48):

And even if you watch Mulholland Drive, my read of that movie is it doesn’t have to be a literal dream, but it’s sort of a movie version of a dream for one person to process this impossibly complex feeling she has for her girlfriend who she feels betrayed her. And the only way she can process it is by making up this insane, two different insane things. One that I’m a starlet, newly arrived in Hollywood and two, that I hired a kitman to kill her. And both of them are kind of fake. But yeah, I mean, there’s a long tradition of surrealist filmmakers. David Denby of the New Yorkers said, “Nolan is a literal-minded man. Cobbs intercranial adventures aren’t like dreams at all. They’re like different kinds of action movies jammed together. Buildings explode or collapse. Anonymous goons shoot at the dream makers. Banuel,” he’s talking about Louis Benuel, the surrealist filmmaker, “sadly pushed us into reveries and left us alone to enjoy our wonderment.

Matt (00:48:47):

But Nolan is working on so many levels of representation at once that he has to lay in pages of dialogue just to explain what’s going on. “

Laci (00:48:53):

I think that. And I don’t think that makes him a craftsman even though he is one. I think that makes him an artist too. I just think it makes him a literal one. And literal art is still art.

Matt (00:49:02):

Yeah.

Laci (00:49:03):

Technically beautiful art is still hard to do and is still art.

Matt (00:49:07):

Yeah. And I think that my read of inception is like how Mulholland Drive is, I experience what this character experiences. I think inception is I am experiencing the experience. Sorry, I keep saying that word. I’m having the experience of never being able to know, of having to live with the uncertainty that I can tell what’s real and what isn’t real. And that gives the movie its power to me and that is why it is not… The point isn’t to show dreams that feel like dreams. The point is to feel what this guy feels, which is that I’ll never be able to tell what is the real world and what isn’t.

Laci (00:49:48):

I’m getting pissed. Just that someone who could make something technically accurate in a way that a neurotypical person could never even dream of fucking doing, like going into a room you go into every single day of your life at your house, but then being asked to now build it with your mind and not look at it. Who could do that? Sully. Our kid could fucking do that. But someone who’s not neurodivergent, who isn’t trying to focus on every single little bit of their surroundings so that they feel safe, who takes all that for granted, is going to miss a ton of details. And that’s not as cool even if you can think of something a little more artistic to do. I’m pissed.

Matt (00:50:32):

How you evaluate art, it’s constantly changing. And I think that things like that probably are being more given more credit than they would’ve at one time. Read movie reviews from movies from 50 or 60 years ago and you’ll see like, boy, they seem to value things differently than we value now and these things are always going to be changing.

Laci (00:50:49):

Fine. Then I’m not so mad anymore. I’ll calm down.

Matt (00:50:52):

But this movie was an enormous hit, made a billion dollars worldwide. I think it’s like The Dark Knight was huge, but it’s a Batman movie. Okay, but Inception’s huge. Nolan, you’re the guy now. We’ll give you as much money as you want to make whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be IP. And this is what they’re always chasing.

Laci (00:51:12):

Why is Gordon Levitt not in the photo? Do people hate him?

Matt (00:51:15):

There’s a billion pictures. Yes. Yes, they all hate him.

Laci (00:51:18):

Knew it. Oh my God. Leo and him are even the same height. Look at how similar they look here.

Matt (00:51:23):

Yeah. He looks so much like Nolan in this movie. It’s crazy.

Laci (00:51:26):

You think he slicked backed his hair just so you’d be like, “I’m not going to totally Nolan this for you. Okay.” Yeah,

Matt (00:51:30):

But even when he has licked back hair, I think Nolan,

Laci (00:51:32):

Just

Matt (00:51:33):

As Nolan. Slickback hair. Yes. His dad, the Don Draper dad, literally worked with Ridley Scott in the ’70s. So I was wondering, has there been a Nolan movie where his lead character financially insecure? Nope. Money’s never a problem for any of his characters. That’s kind of…

Laci (00:51:53):

Honest.

Matt (00:51:55):

It’s certainly honest to his experience. But the father-son conflict that he has to devise here, the father-son conflict is, should I inherit my father’s business empire or make a business empire of

Laci (00:52:05):

My own? That is stupid.

Matt (00:52:06):

So that’s just rich guy stuff.

Laci (00:52:09):

This whole movie is rich guy stuff. And when I was trying to figure out, why are you not connecting to this movie? Why are you being an idiot?You’re dumb for not thinking this is good. It’s a difference and this isn’t good and this wasn’t enjoyable and I’m somewhere in between there. I was having a hard time rooting for anyone in this movie. I know this is my baby brain. This is my baby brain. But I do tend to need to be attached or care about someone’s journey. Not that I didn’t care, but so much of it was very selfish, was very needless, was very entitled, was for a stupid motivation. Because if you’re operating the entire time on the premise that we are really trying to get this billionaire mogul, a complete monopoly to this one industry and that’s why we’re fighting so hard is fucking strange.

Laci (00:53:09):

And the fact that he doesn’t stay a villain or an outsider the entire time, in fact, he becomes a buddy and it’s emotional and we really care about this buddy. Who cares this much about this fucking entitled billionaire? It doesn’t read as true.

Laci (00:53:23):

And then you’ve got Elliot Page who you’re like, okay, so maybe something is blossoming between Gordon Levitt and I’m going to start to care about they need to make it out. They have a future together or they have futures. I know it’s so stupid and basic. So they toy with that and then it just completely falls off. I was struggling to grasp onto who I was being pulled through the movie by. I don’t know why that’s so important to me, but I think maybe in the aftermath, the direct aftermath of the movie, that is why I sometimes leave feeling a bit hollow inside because my brain seems to need that thing to latch onto and root for someone when that’s a stupid thing to need out of a movie. It’s what you

Matt (00:54:13):

Respond. I mean, it’s

Laci (00:54:13):

What – Yeah. Yes. I’m a very empathic person, so it’s why I cannot watch certain movies and let them go. But it’s also why I can’t seem to hang on to certain movies even when I know there’s something there.

Matt (00:54:25):

But maybe it’s a defect of DiCaprio that he wasn’t able to sell you on the stakes for him because that’s what it’s all supposed to be about is he needs to make it through the labyrinth of this dream to get home to his children.

Laci (00:54:36):

I just find him a liar and very selfish to put at risk all of these people. And I know they’re adults and they’re making money and whatever. I guess I just keep thinking of them as friends and not as heist partners where if it just straight up a heist in my mind, I’d be like, okay, they’re not best friends. They join up to do these things together and then they part ways. They’re all making a bunch of money. They know what they’re getting into. But because they make Anadrendine, whatever, his special little buddy, I don’t like that she’s the only one that knows what the real stakes are.

Matt (00:55:14):

Which is why I kind of like the reading of the movie that she is the inception. She is the projection sent into his subconscious to break him out either by Michael Cain

Laci (00:55:26):

Or by

Matt (00:55:26):

His wife.

Laci (00:55:27):

Let’s send him a little hymn.

Matt (00:55:29):

Let’s send him a guide. A guide for –

Laci (00:55:31):

Or in someone enough like him that he can totally respect that person right away and kind of marvel at how much they’re catching on.

Matt (00:55:38):

But she’s saying the right things to Tim. Listen, it doesn’t have to be me, but someone needs to know what you’re going through. And by the way, you’re going to have to confront your wife. You don’t have to do it alone. I’ll be right there with you.

Laci (00:55:48):

That’s true. She is a bit of a manic pixie dream girl in just that she’s saying everything. It’s so selfless.

Matt (00:55:56):

I love the performance.

Laci (00:55:58):

I do too.

Matt (00:55:58):

And FYI, when we’re talking about the character area, Adnee, we’re saying she because the

Laci (00:56:02):

Character’s a woman. Because the character

Matt (00:56:03):

Is she. Elliot Page is a trans man who uses he. If we accidentally say Alien Page or use she to refer to Elliot Page, it’s an accident. We respect gender identities and pros and pronouns and all that stuff.

Laci (00:56:19):

100%. Just

Matt (00:56:20):

Wanted to let you know that.

Laci (00:56:22):

Thank you.

Matt (00:56:23):

One final thing. I mean, just the question of the interpretation of art. Is there a valid way to read a movie? Is there an invalid way to read a movie? If Christopher Nolan said no, Leo makes it out of the dream, that’s the real world at the end of the movie. Does that mean anything or should we just discard that? He’s never said that, but if he did say

Laci (00:56:42):

There’s a

Matt (00:56:42):

Right way to read Inception.

Laci (00:56:44):

It’s stupid because the brought about to say means nothing matters. But I would be like, well then it was all for something. It all happened for a reason because at least he got… But even if it’s a dream and he feels better in the dream, that’s all for something too. So in a way, I don’t care as long as his reality is better, but I do care what happened to everybody else’s reality.

Matt (00:57:07):

I think none of them are real. They’re all projections.

Laci (00:57:09):

But that’s why it frustrated me when it ended because I had not made that choice yet or had that realization yet. I am obsessed with these infographics you have on the screen and I want you to zoom in on them please. Especially the triangle one. I want it so bad.

Matt (00:57:24):

Just so many diagrams on Google images.

Laci (00:57:27):

Do it.

Matt (00:57:27):

It’s not going to work.

Laci (00:57:28):

Damn. Enhance.

Matt (00:57:30):

Of the levels of…

Laci (00:57:32):

Oh God. Enhance. Okay. Well, I’m going to look her up.

Matt (00:57:58):

The movie opens on a beach.

Laci (00:58:01):

On the ocean.

Matt (00:58:02):

The most pleasant place of all. The ocean. Oh, what’s this a body? Leonardo Gabriel.

Laci (00:58:07):

He’s so beat up. He’s so blistered and his eyes are bloodshot and he’s been through so much.

Matt (00:58:12):

Seeing some little grimbling kids building a sandcastle and making little kid noises. Sandcastle. And he starts to reach out for them. And then he gets poked by a security guard and brought into a house on the beach where powerful security guards tend to an elderly Ken Watanabe. David Sims on the blank check podcast says he thinks that Nolan wrote this role for Ken Watanabe as an apology for killing him off and Batman begins with nothing to do.

Laci (00:58:39):

Yeah, good. You know what? Mia Coppa accepted.

Matt (00:58:43):

Yes. You’re a great actor. A digit dirty. I’ll give you a real plum role in this movie.

Laci (00:58:48):

I’ll find it plum.

Matt (00:58:49):

And he’s great. They do have a line where he says to allay your concerns about him being an evil billionaire is my competitor, they’ll be like a superpower. We can’t let them control the energy of the world. Did not. So they’re trying to make it seem like –

Laci (00:59:05):

Did not notice that line.

Matt (00:59:07):

If my company, I’m a good billionaire. I’m like Bruce Wayne. If I own the energy of the world, I’m good. I didn’t think so. And that’d be good. Yes. So Ken Watanabe, an elderly makeup, he asked for you by name and he was carrying this, a spinning top. And then Leonard DiCaprio’s haggard. He’s a very hungry man, just clutching his bowl to his face. Are you here to kill me? And we then flop over into, I guess, the present with these same guys in a very similar room. Young Ken Watanabe, talking to young, put together DiCaprio. What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Once an idea has taken hold on the brain, it’s impossible to eradicate. So once again, we are talking all about ideas and symbols. I need to be a symbol, Alfred, but here’s why I like it in this movie.

Matt (00:59:58):

I Because we’re only talking about how an idea affects one person, not about how an idea changes society. Because of course it’s true. Yes, you can get consumed with an idea of I don’t love my husband or my gender identity is different from what I… I don’t believe in God anymore. These are just ideas and then they come to define your life. And that is a real thing versus a bat symbol can change the world because everybody will be inspired.

Laci (01:00:29):

My dad doesn’t love me. All those are good examples, but that is truly something that you can believe that can totally steer your life a different way and your self-worth and who you decide to bring into your life and accept what kind of treatment you’d want to accept. Or I’m worthless. That thought can… Yeah.

Matt (01:00:53):

So then his partner, Joseph Gord Levitt, they’re talking about what they do. They do extraction. They steal ideas in the dream state and what they’re here to do is they can train you, Mr. Saito, that’s Skinwatanabe, to repel even the most skilled extractors. So what’s going on in all of this? What happens here?

Laci (01:01:10):

I mean, he’s doing a pitch. He’s pitching. He clearly sells this service to very important rich men, but for some reason he’s… Yeah, this is a dream. Because okay, you have this service, you go door to door and you sell this or whatever and you’re pitching him, but then it turns out he’s actually interviewing you. So you don’t even know what’s going on in this dream or who’s having it or any of this stuff.

Matt (01:01:44):

Yeah. I think they were hired, at least what they say is they were hired by Cobalt Engineering, a competitor of his to infiltrate his dream, but he was prepared. He was ready for them and started using this as an audition for them. Yeah.

Laci (01:01:58):

Right. Okay. But because they’re in a dream within a dream, he’s like, “Whoa, hot damn, you really are the shit.” And he realizes this because he wakes up outside of the dream he thinks, but he’s laying on a rug that should feel of wool and it feels of polyester and that’s how he wins him over. Another issue with this movie for me, and this is my stupid baby brain, I know that. Action distracts me. And this truly is five action movies on top of each other. So at some point I do start to lose threads of what layer is what. And I think it’s all going to pay off and I’ll figure it out. And I think that’s why I start to resent the movie is I’m now so distracted by everything I’m trying to hold in my head at once instead of just enjoying what’s happening on the screen.

Matt (01:02:53):

And I will say the action I think is very, very good in this movie and it tremendously improves when you watch it a second time. The centerpiece of the movie is a 30 minute thing where the things that happening at different levels of the dream are affecting each other. And when you can really track them because you’ve seen the movie already, it’s like a beautiful thing to behold.

Laci (01:03:14):

It is a ballet. It’s an orchestra of making sure that this thing takes seconds, this thing takes minutes, this thing takes microseconds. All of that, it is amazing how much they know when they wake up in a new reality.

Matt (01:03:30):

Because with action, the most important thing in any action sequence is you want to see cause and effect. Because this happens, this thing happens. Now we have to deal with that thing. And Nolan’s idea is like, well, what if we have three different movies playing simultaneously and because one thing happens in one movie, it affects the other movie, which then ripples to the third movie. And it is too hard to track when you see it for the first time. When you see it the second time, it works so well.

Laci (01:03:54):

Well, and really the only thing they give you to let yourself know how deep they are inside of a dream and a dream and a dream and a dream is how unstable is this world that it should get harder and harder to do anything wrong inside of the space. But they don’t treat it like that because they’re down to the 10-year level and they’re just walking. They’re just talking. I agree. It becomes more relaxed the deeper you get in because you have more time. But it should be being heightened also in that you cannot mistake, make a mistake. And it should be easier to track what would be a mistake, I guess. But I guess more rumbling should be happening more.

Matt (01:04:36):

I agree because it seems like the car, the van flies backward off the bridge, that affects things in the next dream down. And then at the snow level, there’s an avalanche, but that’s it. You don’t see any other ripples of the thing going down and maybe that’s because everything happens so much slower there. But I agree. I think it should be in the stories where you try to change the past. The closer you get to accomplishing your goal, the more the world rebels against you. So the harder

Laci (01:05:04):

You’ll

Matt (01:05:05):

Be driving on a street and then a tree will fall in front of you.

Laci (01:05:08):

If you’re going to give us a rule, then you need to follow it the whole time. You didn’t have to say that at all. We could just understand like, oh, you’re shaking because it’s shaking out there. We can put that together. You don’t need to say that it’s because of this, because now I’m trying to apply it.

Matt (01:05:24):

It’s distracting that the gravity thing doesn’t happen on the snow level. It should happen on the snow level.

Laci (01:05:29):

It’s like

Matt (01:05:29):

He so wanted to do –

Laci (01:05:31):

That was amazing.

Matt (01:05:32):

Honor Majesty Secret Service, the Bond movie where there’s snow ski chases.

Laci (01:05:36):

Well, oh, sorry. That was not amazing. That can go eat a dick. But the whole scene of Jordan – Joseph Gordon Levitt. Joseph Gordon Levitt of the aerobatic fighting of these two random men and then the gathering of his friends and stacking them ass to foot or whatever and wrapping them up and you don’t know what the fuck he’s… It’s just beautiful and it looks so hard to do.

Matt (01:06:03):

And Laci’s making my favorite noises to hear from Laci of huh. And when you got that phone call from your friend and said you don’t know how you felt, I got annoyed because we just watched the movie and you were wrapped with attention the whole movie. You weren’t on your phone. You were just twiddling with your fidget twiddlers and you’re just focused. And I can tell that means you were into a movie.

Laci (01:06:27):

That meant I knew I needed to pay super hard attention to a movie so that I could make sure if there’s anything at the end that doesn’t work for me, it’s not my fault. So yeah, you heard the noises of me paying really good attention. That doesn’t mean I’m enjoying myself. You didn’t

Matt (01:06:46):

Make your frustrated noises though.You

Laci (01:06:48):

Didn’t go like this. Because it wasn’t doing anything frustrating. The experience ended up being really tense and not that chill. It turns out I like to chill and watch a movie I guess. So I mean, I knew I was signing up for an activity and not necessarily something to decompress. And we were solidly in my decompressed time.

Matt (01:07:10):

But this is a job.

Laci (01:07:12):

And I was doing the job. You did your

Matt (01:07:14):

Job. You did your job beautifully. Mall, we haven’t mentioned her, Marian Cotillard, who just won best actress at the Oscars, the Academy Awards for playing for in a French language movie. Her performance in Love Vion Rose was so impressive that they’re like, “We’ll give this French lady an Oscar.” And then she gets the big plum roll.

Laci (01:07:31):

Stop saying plum.

Matt (01:07:32):

In inception. And I think this is my favorite Marion Cotillard performance. I love her in this movie. The thing with him and her is what I really connect to in the movie, even as it is reduced to him saying at the end, “I, Christopher Nolan, can’t write a convincing woman character. You’re just a shade. You’re the best I can do. ” And yet even that I find, because I think her performance is so good.

Laci (01:07:55):

Well, but also it’s a really sweet thing to say because the thing he’s able to architect is still a very compelling person. And he’s saying, “No, you are even more incredible than this that I know I’m not doing you justice.” So it’s the sweetest way you can say I’m face blind and I’ll never know the color of your eyes, Laci.

Matt (01:08:15):

Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s also why I maybe relate to it.

Laci (01:08:18):

No shit.

Matt (01:08:19):

No. Shut up.

Laci (01:08:20):

Okay.

Matt (01:08:21):

I can imagine your imperfections. Trust me. I can’t imagine you with all your perfections.

Laci (01:08:26):

Don’t whisper at me.

Matt (01:08:28):

So she’s always intruding. I love this thing Laci said last week about The Joker. The Joker is what if my intrusive thoughts win? And in this movie, Intrusive Thoughts. Oh shit, they keep coming. My damn wife and my damn kids keep showing up when I’m at work. And his damn wife shows up at work and Gordon Levitt’s like, “What’s she doing here?” And he’s like, “No problem. I’ll go take care of it. ” And he goes and talks to her, he’s like, “Mal, what are you doing here?” And she’s like, “If I jump off of the balcony, will I die?” And he’s like, “I don’t think so. I think you’ll probably be fine. But hey, come up with me. ” And we don’t know that she’s his dead wife yet, but if he’s trying to… Whatever he’s trying to… This is a thing where you have to watch the movie again to realize he’s not trying to get her to go away.

Matt (01:09:16):

He’s talking to her. He’s engaging with her. In fact, he needs her help to do what he’s trying to do. He needs her to sit in a chair so he can use it as a weight so he can rappel down to an earlier floor and she doesn’t do it.

Laci (01:09:29):

Okay, wait. I need a refresher here and I just watched this yesterday. An adrenodine.

Matt (01:09:34):

Ariadne.

Laci (01:09:36):

Ariadne.

Matt (01:09:38):

No one says it naturally in the movie.

Laci (01:09:40):

Ariadne. Good work. Okay. Ari, she says something about Mal that apparently even Foster doesn’t understand about Mal. Is it Foster? Fisher.

Matt (01:09:55):

Arthur. Fisher.

Laci (01:09:56):

The fucking Joseph…

Matt (01:09:58):

Arthur. Arthur is Joseph Gordon Levitt.

Laci (01:10:01):

There’s an Arthur in this fucking movie. His character’s

Matt (01:10:03):

Name is Arthur.

Laci (01:10:05):

Alfred and Arthur need to get the fuck out of these movies. This is insane. Okay. Well, fine. But he seems to be the most longstanding partner, but she comes in and she’s like, “So Mal is doing this and this and then this? ” She sells all these things and it’s treated as though even Arthur doesn’t know this. But what is it? Because it’s clear that she can just come into any… It’s Arthur’s dream there initially and she comes into it because of his subconscious. So what’s the other thing that she – The thing

Matt (01:10:38):

That he should be ignoring her. He’s talking to her, he’s indulging her. He’s feeding her. He’s keeping her alive basically.

Laci (01:10:46):

So she realizes that the reason she’s coming in is because he kind of likes it.

Matt (01:10:52):

Yeah. And Arthur doesn’t seem to see that or he’s ignoring it. And I kind of like the idea that if Arthur is supposed to be the producer to Cobb, the director, he kind of gets a sense maybe he’s a bad producer. You didn’t do your job. You didn’t do the due diligence. And whenever they’re having their story conferences, all he does is criticize people. And they’re like, “Well, how about you come up with your own idea?”

Laci (01:11:15):

Okay, but then it’s revealed that yes, he did do his due diligence. That is Cobb’s shit coming in and shooting everybody up and the train going through with Cobb. The train

Matt (01:11:25):

Is Cobb. The people shooting are… No, the people shooting are Fisher.

Laci (01:11:28):

But he is projecting saying that you didn’t do your due diligence when it’s just as bad that Cobb has not worked on himself at all enough to make sure that shit… Th doesn’t happen. So he’s just as bad.

Matt (01:11:41):

Yeah. So up on the upper level, we got Lucas Haas as another member of their team who is part of the pussy posse, of course.

Laci (01:11:49):

God about the pussy posse. So on the upper, upper level where this person is actually Leonardo DiCaprio, he’s a piece of shit. I don’t

Matt (01:11:58):

Know that he’s a piece of shit. He likes

Laci (01:12:00):

Pussy. He’s a poon hound.

Matt (01:12:01):

What’s wrong with that?

Laci (01:12:02):

I don’t know. We

Matt (01:12:05):

All love poon, don’t we?

Laci (01:12:06):

You need a posse?

Matt (01:12:07):

Folks, don’t we love poon? Sometimes you got to get together with your bros and go hunt for poon. The mob, this mob arrives and then we find out, oh, this is a dream too. Anyway, they all wake up on a fucking bullet train and the mission was a failure and cop gets off of the train and he hands everybody money and he’s like, “We split up now. I’m getting off the train in Kyoto. I don’t like trains.” So then we go to his house in Kyoto and he’s spinning his top, holding a gun to his head. If this thing doesn’t stop spinning, I’m going to shoot myself in the head. So everything we see here is supposed to be in the real world. The I am awake and not in a dream world. But in my read of the movie, this is all fake too.

Matt (01:12:46):

Cop gets a phone call from his kids and they’re like, “Daddy.” And we once again see this, it really does look like stock footage you could buy on Vektisi of these glowing little angels running around in the backyard. “Daddy, when are you coming home? Is mommy with you? “And he says,” I told you mommy’s not here anymore. “And the kid says,” Where? “So it’s like if this is all a dream, he can sort of acknowledge if she’s alive in the real world, she’s not with me right here. And the kid asks,” So where are you exactly?

Laci (01:13:17):

“And it is odd that he has only two children and they have distinctive voices. And he’s like, ” Is that you, James? Is that you?

Matt (01:13:24):

“Philippa.

Laci (01:13:25):

Philippa. It’s like, ” Well, if the other one was James, then that one’s full of fucking what?

Matt (01:13:30):

“And their grandmother gets them off of the phone because she hates that cob, that Dom Cobb. And then Arthur shows up at the apartment and he’s like, ” Hey, or Cobb says, Hey, I’m sorry about Mal. She shot you in the leg. And I know that that hurt.” And he says, “It’s getting worse, isn’t it? ” So he does

Laci (01:13:49):

Know. He does know. Right. But he seems to think that Mal’s powers are getting stronger. That’s what I took it as, is that she is stuck somewhere and is so good at breaking into his brain space that she’s making it to where he can’t do his job and anyone working with him is in danger. That’s what I thought.

Matt (01:14:11):

Yeah. And these are guys who work together and sort of –

Laci (01:14:14):

She’s working for Cobal.

Matt (01:14:17):

Arthur’s hitched his wagon to Cobb and he’s like, “I hope it’s not getting worse because I have to go with you no matter what. ” Whereas Ariadne is a newcomer and can see the situation more clearly.

Laci (01:14:27):

You didn’t at all react to my little idea here.

Matt (01:14:31):

How could she be working for Cobal?

Laci (01:14:33):

Well, if this is just his reality, then he’s dealing with the fact that his wife left him to work with a more powerful dream company. She never wanted to be with the kids anyway. She’s spent 50 happy years without them. So it seems perfectly natural that she’d want to keep doing dream espionage and not deal with the children.

Matt (01:14:49):

So she’s in the real world. She’s made it out. She’s made it back to her kids, but she’s like, “I don’t know about these kids.

Laci (01:14:54):

I

Matt (01:14:55):

Need a job. I need a job, baby.”

Laci (01:14:57):

That’s why she keeps busting in on these dreams.

Matt (01:14:59):

No, you might. I mean,

Laci (01:15:01):

I’m sure there’s

Matt (01:15:01):

A YouTube video out there that has that theory.

Laci (01:15:04):

She just has the energy of a competitor.

Matt (01:15:07):

A French competitor.

Laci (01:15:09):

That’s the energy.

Matt (01:15:10):

They go up under the roof. They’re going to hitch a ride to, “Where are you going? Buenos Aires. Wherever. Cobalt can’t reach me. But on the helicopter is Mr. Saito, Ken Watsonabe. And he starts making them his own pitch about what’s the opposite of extraction? Inception, you can steal an idea from somebody’s brain, but can you plant an idea inside of their brain?” And Gordon Levit’s immediately like, “No, it’s impossible. Here’s why. If I tell you, don’t think about elephants, what do you think about elephants? Instantly, elephants.” He’s like, “But no, no,

Laci (01:15:45):

No.” But that’s not an idea. I mean, it’s too simplistic.

Matt (01:15:49):

But it’s not your idea. I gave it to you and you’ll know I gave it to you. This can only work if the brain generates the idea on its own. It can’t be done. And Cobb’s like, “No, it can be done.” And so this is their relationship. And this is also any director who’s like, “Oh, but wouldn’t it be cool if we shut down the entire city of Chicago and – ” Can’t be done. Got 10 school buses. Yeah. Yeah. It can

Laci (01:16:10):

Be done. You just have to do extra work and I’m telling you, you’re going to do it. And

Matt (01:16:13):

Saido says, “Please do it because if I make one phone call, you can go back to America.” Cobb’s deal is he can’t go back to America. We don’t know why yet, but something about extradition.

Laci (01:16:22):

This is another huge clue that this is a dream. It makes no sense. It’s

Matt (01:16:30):

Way too

Laci (01:16:31):

Simple. It does. But this man who isn’t an evil billionaire can make one American phone call and get someone off a murder list that makes – What

Matt (01:16:41):

Murder list? What the

Laci (01:16:42):

Fuck? What call did

Matt (01:16:43):

You make? And why is

Laci (01:16:44):

It one? How did that do

Matt (01:16:46):

Everything? Even if at the end of the movie, he makes the call on the plane. We’re landing in Los Angeles in 20 minutes. Paperwork is done. He calls the State Department. Hey, please take him off of your fucking… Please unflag him. Even if he’s that powerful, I bet that takes longer than 20 minutes. I bet that takes

Laci (01:17:03):

A while. It takes me 20 minutes to get through Walgreens to let them know that my prescription is going to be called by a different doctor. But

Matt (01:17:09):

It’s all dream logic. I

Laci (01:17:11):

Can’t

Matt (01:17:11):

Go home. I can go everywhere else in the world from country to country, but this guy can make one phone call and make my problems disappear. So his thing is, my main competitor is a man whose CEO is dying. Hi son will inherit it. I want you to convince the son to break apart his inheritance because they’re an evil company. I’m a good company. Okay? Okay.

Laci (01:17:32):

I mean, this team, this gaggle of actors are these characters. No matter what, when Nolan’s got an idea, he’s going to go assemble a group and it’s going to be Michael Cain and it’s going to be fucking Gillian Murphy and it’s going to be… Yeah.

Matt (01:17:50):

He’s

Laci (01:17:50):

Like, “I got to get the team back together. Why? I’ve got another fucking idea.” Mother God, Jesus Christ. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, they’re the

Matt (01:17:58):

Best. Especially at this point, he always uses the same editor, cinematographer, production designer. Although Nathan Crowley’s his production designer wasn’t able to get work on this movie, but it’s basically always the exact same team. Which

Laci (01:18:11):

I always like about somebody. And that those people are willing to do it makes me know something about the person. Everyone

Matt (01:18:18):

Loves him. Everyone says just the most glowing things about him. Now he’s also the most powerful figure in Hollywood, so maybe you have to. Do

Laci (01:18:24):

You?

Matt (01:18:25):

He seems like a swell guy.

Laci (01:18:27):

All right. Wait, name another really powerful person in Hollywood. James

Matt (01:18:30):

Cameron. Steven Spielberg. Do they

Laci (01:18:32):

Say nice things about both of those men? Only nice things. People

Matt (01:18:35):

Say James Cameron’s really intense. Okay,

Laci (01:18:37):

So there you go. In Spielberg, they say nice things. They say

Matt (01:18:39):

Nice things.

Laci (01:18:40):

Okay. But there are directors who are still big and powerful who people are willing to say how they feel. I think there would be a code word, right?Just the way that intense is a code word for this is going to be hard. James is intense. He’s

Matt (01:18:55):

An intense man. He knows what he wants. He knows what he

Laci (01:18:58):

Wants.

Matt (01:18:58):

Yep.

Laci (01:18:59):

And I know I want that paycheck.

Matt (01:19:02):

So they go to Paris because he needs a new architect in this team is a film crew metaphor. DiCaprio’s the director. Joseph Gordon Love is the producer. We need an architect. An architect would be your screenwriter and/or your production designer. But I think it’s screenwriter because Leo says, “I can’t design anymore. I can’t build anymore.” Which is when Christopher Nolan said, “I wish I didn’t have to write.” It’s like there are directors who feel like I don’t like writing. It’s lonely. I like being on a crew on a set with people, but alone with my thoughts for six months.

Laci (01:19:38):

Right. I can do it. I have done it, but I can no longer do it because it poisons me as much as it fulfills the project. Yeah. And I

Matt (01:19:47):

Keep writing characters with dead wives and I keep writing… Yeah, I keep having these tropes and maybe someone else can come in and give me new ideas.

Laci (01:19:55):

Right. So

Matt (01:19:56):

He arrives in Paris to talk to Michael Cain in a classroom. This particular sequence, and this is the one that was super

Laci (01:20:03):

Trimmed down. Michael Cain’s poor tired corpse. It’s like you had me shoot and re-shoot that scene for three hours and you took out all of it. I’m Michael Cain.

Matt (01:20:17):

I bet he seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t care about that. I had a bloody check cleared. So both this scene, the way it’s edited is a thing where you can point to and say, this is like a dream because he’s moving in weird ways. He didn’t open the door to the classroom and now he’s in the middle of the classroom.

Laci (01:20:33):

This is another thing that can be hidden by the fact that he cuts weird everywhere. Is it safe for you to be here?

Matt (01:20:39):

Is it safe for you to be here? And what he says is extradition between France and the US is a bureaucratic nightmare. Which I don’t know if that’s true, but I think the French police, if they picked him up, would send him to America or send him to a French jail. You’re wanted for murder. That’s how that works.

Laci (01:20:55):

Yeah. So it seems like it’s a different kind of question, which is like I’m literally her father. Being this close to me isn’t going to trigger you in some kind of massive way. Oh,

Matt (01:21:03):

That’s true. But what a lot of people complained about is they didn’t realize from this scene that he is his wife’s father. They thought he is Leo’s father. Oh.

Laci (01:21:13):

I mean, I realized it. Or that

Matt (01:21:14):

They’re not related or that it just wasn’t clear. And this is the scene that they really trimmed down. And then the editing with him appearing to, we don’t see him open the door. When we see him in the middle of the room, the door is closed. There was no noise to indicate opening the door. And all this sounds really boring, but there are basic editing things you do because we know this sort of cinematic language where if you enter a room, there’s things you do that make us –

Laci (01:21:38):

Yeah, he seems more like a ghost than a person with footprints.

Matt (01:21:42):

Yes. He’s

Laci (01:21:43):

Not

Matt (01:21:43):

Leaving

Laci (01:21:43):

Footprints anywhere. He’s Bruce.

Matt (01:21:46):

Bruce Willis.

Laci (01:21:46):

Yeah. Bruce Willis. Yep.

Matt (01:21:47):

In Armageddon.

Laci (01:21:49):

Yeah.

Matt (01:21:50):

So I guess he taught Cobb how to navigate men’s minds. He’s the guy that – I

Laci (01:21:57):

Don’t think he did.

Matt (01:21:58):

It’s what he says. “You taught me to navigate men’s minds. But after what happened, there weren’t a whole lot of legitimate ways for me to use that skill. But I think I found a way home. It’s a job.” Well, he says, “You taught me how to navigate men’s minds. I didn’t tell you to be a bloody thief.” So I think that his job was he either advises –

Laci (01:22:16):

Therapy or something, like helping people work through stuff. Wilds enter into there.

Matt (01:22:23):

Although this is an architecture school. So if he was a great architect, he got hired by the military to build people’s dreams because you need convincing architecture in dreams.

Laci (01:22:33):

Oh, okay. So the end justifies the means you were in there getting military intelligence. You weren’t stealing from regular people who had enough money to ask you to steal from another person.

Matt (01:22:45):

But him saying, “Teach you to read men’s minds.” But he’s an architecture teacher. So is it like we’re doing this actual other thing?

Laci (01:22:52):

You say your

Matt (01:22:52):

Job is you’re

Laci (01:22:53):

Building – You need an architect to build the dream space to go into the minds and read men’s minds. Wait, but he has to build what they’ve seen or what they will believe is something. How the fuck do they do that? Oh, movie.

Matt (01:23:14):

I know. So

Laci (01:23:15):

I

Matt (01:23:15):

Think the way that works is you build models, you show them to the person having the dream and they’re like, “All right, when you dream, dream this. Okay, good. I think that’s the way it

Laci (01:23:24):

Works.” No.

Matt (01:23:24):

Yes.

Laci (01:23:25):

No. I don’t know.

Matt (01:23:27):

So he gives a big

Laci (01:23:28):

Speech. It’s all very fucking Lego movie. Okay, just think of something. Okay, architect. I built this world.

Matt (01:23:38):

But it doesn’t work exactly like that.

Laci (01:23:40):

Right. And it’s like, but don’t do anything too specific. Don’t do something that you actually remember from your own mind. I’m going to write a song based on nothing I’ve ever heard before. How? Whose mind works this way? You gave me a reference picture. What’s that picture of if not a real thing? What are you talking about?

Matt (01:23:58):

Well, no, it can’t be a real thing that you experienced in your own life.

Laci (01:24:04):

Okay. Because

Matt (01:24:05):

Then you can get confused and you will lose track of whether you’re in a dreamer in the real world.

Laci (01:24:10):

Oh, and he built all those houses when he was in limbo and fucked himself up.

Matt (01:24:16):

Yes. He gives his whole fucking speech about some people, some very powerful people. And if I do this job, this one last job, I can go home. And Michael King says, “Come back to reality, Dom. But no, I need an architect. I need one of your best and brightest. Okay, I have someone who will do.

Laci (01:24:38):

” You’re so worried about your son-in-law. You’ve already lost your daughter that you’re going to give up to him on a plate the most promising other person you’ve met in a long time. You’re a fucking psycho.

Matt (01:24:51):

Yeah. So maybe this movie’s an inception of Cobb because he has to at first push back. It can’t be too willing and then say, “Okay, I got the perfect person for you. Ariadne. Elliot Page’s Ariadne. Love this performance. So soft-spoken, especially here. We’re first here. Design a maze in two minutes that I can solve in one. Seems I’d fucking shit my pants right there.” But she does it on her third try when she makes a maze, he’s like too easy, makes another maze too easy. And then is like, “Fuck you. I’ll make a circle maze.” And he’s like, “Well, goddamn. That’s more like it. “

Laci (01:25:30):

Morgan Freeman.

Matt (01:25:31):

And now we’re doing mission prep. We’re assembling a team and they’re going to be able to explain how it all works. So you see dreams are minds. The mind fills in the details on autopilot, like Nolan said about having the dream with a book with words in it and realizing, oh, my mind wrote

Laci (01:25:46):

That book.

Matt (01:25:47):

But you do creative things Laci, you have the moment where you realize this does feel like it’s on autopilot. What’s the metaphor they always use? The sculptor is just revealing the statue beneath the rock. It’s always there. You’re just sort of discovering it.

Laci (01:26:04):

Yeah, but there’s a difference. Sometimes I think of the thing in its entirety and then I make it. Other times I just dive in and go, I’ll figure it out as I go. And I do it both ways.

Matt (01:26:16):

Every creative thing I’ve ever done, I create it as I go. I can’t think of things like that.

Laci (01:26:20):

And sometimes I’ve dreamt it.

Matt (01:26:22):

Yeah? Yeah. I’ve dreamt a couple of songs

Laci (01:26:25):

And

Matt (01:26:26):

That’s why they’re so good.

Laci (01:26:27):

Okay.

Matt (01:26:28):

So what she says is she’s, “How can I ever come up with enough detail to be able to fool somebody?” And he’s like, “Well, you only need enough… People have expectations about what everything should look like and they’re sort of diminished in the dream. But this is very similar to simulation theory where you only, if you play a video game, the computer only has to render what’s in sight of the player. So everything else in the dream that they’re not seeing, you don’t have to render any of that stuff.

Laci (01:26:57):

It’s still also so simplistic. Well, they’re giving you plenty of exposition, but in no way explaining why she’s good at this, why what she’s doing and we’re seeing is good. Yeah, I agree. We have to just depend on him being like, damn.

Matt (01:27:13):

The

Laci (01:27:14):

Best I’ve ever seen.

Matt (01:27:15):

Exactly. We watch him follow her. It’s impressive because she makes a bridge apear. But why is that?

Laci (01:27:20):

It doesn’t

Matt (01:27:20):

Seem like that should be that impressive.

Laci (01:27:22):

Right. And then she makes the world fold in on itself, but still function. And they walk around for a while and it’s like, okay, Nolan found a tool that he wants to use. So he’s doing that. And then she made two big mirrors come out of nowhere and did the thing we all know how to do, which is make infinity. And then she makes it break. Wow. I mean, whatever. I get it. If you can bend reality, how do you make someone look really good at it when none of us know what that would look like?

Matt (01:27:48):

Right. The meta thing is Nolan is so powerful that he can be like, “Well, I’ve always wanted two giant mirrors in the middle of a parish to reflect on each other.” And he’s like Ariadne. Oh, I can do whatever I want to do. Just maybe what I always wanted to do is kind of boring. What of two mirrors?

Laci (01:28:07):

Infinity shit creeps me

Matt (01:28:09):

Up. In my parents’ home, me and my brother’s mirror, we had our bathroom. We each had a mirror that face each other. And when I was a kid, I would stare into it and try to see as far as I could see around the curve. Everyone. And it was horrifying.

Laci (01:28:21):

Yes. All of us have done that. I

Matt (01:28:24):

Thought it was special of me.

Laci (01:28:26):

Infinite shit freaks us all out.

Matt (01:28:29):

So we learn about the projections. Okay, you see, here’s the thing. You have the person who’s having the dream and then you have the person who’s the subject of a dream and they’re the one whose mind populates the dream. And all the projections are projections of… Wait a minute. The projections are the projections of the dreamer or the subject?

Laci (01:28:50):

Jesus Christ.

Matt (01:28:51):

I get confused so much trying to think of the rules

Laci (01:28:53):

Of this movie. Where is that diagram?

Matt (01:28:55):

Because –

Laci (01:28:57):

Whose dream are they in right now?

Matt (01:28:58):

They’re in –

Laci (01:28:59):

They can’t be in his, right? Because his are dangerous?

Matt (01:29:03):

They’re in his dream because the

Laci (01:29:04):

Projections keep looking at

Matt (01:29:05):

Her.

Laci (01:29:05):

Well, and they wake up just the two of them. So yeah, just the two of them dreaming.

Matt (01:29:09):

Yes. But the projections reject her and that’s what the projections do. They’re the people who sense a foreign invader of

Laci (01:29:16):

The

Matt (01:29:16):

Dream. You shouldn’t be here. Which that’s always effective in anything. And eventually one of those projections is Mall and she shows up and fucking kills her. And they wake up in the real world and she’s like, “Holy shit, who was that? Oh, I guess you met Mol. Mrs. Cobb. They’re together. They’re dating. This guy’s fucking crazy. I’m not sharing my dreams with him. I’m out of here.” And Cobb’s immediately like, “She’ll be back because… “

Laci (01:29:39):

But what was crazy about this? It all seemed fine to me.

Matt (01:29:45):

I guess he didn’t prepare her for like, “Oh, you might get killed. Somebody might come up and murder you and it will be just as terrifying as if it happened in real life.”

Laci (01:29:53):

And let me tell you about totems after you do it for the first time. Let me not tell you you’re about to do it. But the thing is she had to go under. Yeah, there’s no

Matt (01:30:02):

Way to teach somebody any of

Laci (01:30:04):

That without doing it. No, it’s just she had to go under. So I’m about to put this thing in your arm, you’re going to wake up at a French cafe. Why doesn’t she remember the first time she put the thing in her arm unless they bagged her head and chloroformed her and made her wake up in the middle of a dream? Yeah. Unless you just have to get used to waking up in the middle of a dream. Yeah.

Matt (01:30:25):

He says that later to kill

Laci (01:30:26):

Yourself. Okay.

Matt (01:30:27):

It takes years of practice to be able to remember something like that.

Laci (01:30:30):

And yet she’s had no time. Okay.

Matt (01:30:33):

She’ll be back because he knows the obsessive personality.

Laci (01:30:37):

I think he knows once you’ve had a taste of this and you see what you can do and you’re an architect and you want to build things. But that

Matt (01:30:44):

Will take a hold of you like an obsession that you can’t get rid of.

Laci (01:30:48):

I think any regular person would want to do this more than once.

Matt (01:30:53):

We’re going to need more people. We’re going to need Eames, Tom Hardy, he’s in Mimbasa and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s like, “That’s Cobalt’s backyard.”

Laci (01:31:03):

Totally.

Matt (01:31:03):

Okay. Eames is the best forger in the world. So he’s the actor of course in the movie. Tom Hardy playing Eames and Eames’ role on the team is the actor. Costume. Or the costume department, whatever. Both. Do you like this performance from Tom Hardy?

Laci (01:31:17):

I do. I like him. I always like him.

Matt (01:31:19):

Yeah, he’s the… But this is a moment we don’t get to see Tom Hardy in is kind of a fun but sassy bitch. Usually I have a giant Bain mask or I’m Mad Max or I’m venom. I don’t know. But yeah, he’s fun here and there’s a

Laci (01:31:34):

Lot – He’s smooth. He’s clever.

Matt (01:31:36):

So he’s like, “Hey, I’m going to try Inception.” He’s like, “Yeah, I tried that once. It didn’t work though.” So who are you going to try to incept? And he’s like, “Well, there’s this fucking… A guy hired me to break up his competitor’s business, father-son thing. And Eames reacts immediately by being like a script doctor.” He’s like, “No, no, no. See, all that set all that stuff aside of political machinations and anti-monopolistic sentiment. This is about a very core idea, the relationship of the son and the father.” Which this is how Hollywood script meetings work is we got to really reduce this down to what this is actually about. And then we meet Yusef, who’s the best chemist in the business, but Cobb first needs to evade his tail because Cobalt Engineering’s goons have arrived and they chase him just like the projections chase the people in the dreams.

Laci (01:32:27):

Yeah, as if there are no laws. They just shoot indiscriminately at each other.

Matt (01:32:33):

And they’re talking so casually about it. I got a tail over there in the bar. Well,

Laci (01:32:36):

They’re talking about it like Indiana Jones. Yeah.

Matt (01:32:40):

It’s a very Indiana Jones sequence and a very bond sequence.

Laci (01:32:43):

And a very

Matt (01:32:44):

Jungle

Laci (01:32:45):

Cruise.

Matt (01:32:46):

A jungle cruise?

Laci (01:32:47):

Yes. It literally is. I’ll meet you back here. This isn’t where they’re going to look.

Matt (01:32:52):

That

Laci (01:32:52):

Happens at Jungle Cruise?

Matt (01:32:53):

Oh, Jungle Cruise. Remember Jungle

Laci (01:32:56):

Cruise? I enjoyed it.

Matt (01:32:58):

Oh, The Rock. We got to do an episode where we catch up with the rock because stuff’s happening with him. It’s not going well.

Laci (01:33:05):

We got to catch him before he rots.

Matt (01:33:08):

Moana live action did not do well and he’s not happy about it.

Laci (01:33:12):

Oh. That was supposed to be his safe landing after he tried something so tricky.

Matt (01:33:17):

I know.

Laci (01:33:18):

Poor guy.

Matt (01:33:19):

But he’s got Jumanji coming up.

Laci (01:33:21):

Why won’t you guys just do what I want? Why won’t you love me? He’s a wishing paw or whatever. A

Matt (01:33:28):

Wishing. A one wish willow. One wish willow. As DiCaprio is running from the people, he runs down this alley that literally folds in on it narrows in

Laci (01:33:38):

On it, which is so dreamy. Freaks me out. Yes.

Matt (01:33:41):

And then he makes it through. And oh, what do you know? Ken Watsonabi just happens to pull up right there. Mr. Cobb, here, jump into my car and get away to safety. It’s a dream, people. Come on.

Laci (01:33:50):

Come on.

Matt (01:33:52):

I was expecting you to be more resistant to this. Wait,

Laci (01:33:54):

Why?

Matt (01:33:55):

Because when the movie ended, you said, no, it’s not a dream.

Laci (01:33:57):

I was going completely off the thing. The fucking physics of was a thing about to fall. And it’s like, that’s not the point. It doesn’t point. It’s stupid that spinning top could have fallen. I knew I’d be talked into stuff. I just needed to be able to think through it and I wasn’t really even sure how to tackle that. And I’m annoyed by this is a project. When I watch a movie, I like catharsis. I like to laugh. I like to be scared, but I like to be done. This is frustrating to me. That doesn’t make it bad.

Matt (01:34:34):

I’ll tell you something funny. When Joseph Gordon Levitt is giving Elliot Page a tour of paradoxical architecture and they reach the top of the infinite stairs and he goes, Paradox.

Laci (01:34:43):

And then he does it to that guy and he pushes him.

Matt (01:34:45):

Knee slapper right there.

Laci (01:34:46):

Right. Then he pushes the guy off the infinite stairs. Paradox.

Matt (01:34:49):

Bitch.

Laci (01:34:49):

Does it again? No, he says paradox.

Matt (01:34:51):

Oh, he doesn’t say bitch. I

Laci (01:34:53):

Remember him – Paradox.

Matt (01:34:54):

Yeah, I know he did not in a Christopher Nolan movie. Yeah, bitch.

Laci (01:34:58):

Why wouldn’t they say bitch?

Matt (01:35:00):

Because this is a t-sip in a nice

Laci (01:35:02):

Suite movie. Do Nolan movie’s not curse?

Matt (01:35:04):

You wouldn’t say bitch like that.

Laci (01:35:07):

What?

Matt (01:35:08):

Jesse Pinkman would not be in a Christopher Nolan movie.

Laci (01:35:10):

Well, that’s dumb.

Matt (01:35:11):

So Ariadne comes back. She’s like, “Yeah, there’s just nothing like it, is there? Well, let’s look at some paradoxical architecture.” Explains the thing about Mall. She’s dead. She’s married a cop. She’s dead.

Laci (01:35:23):

Wait, but this is also the first time we learned that because the landscape cannot be infinite, it also needs to be designed as a maze. You need to trap someone inside this one setting. So you’re only going to be at the ski slope place. You’re only going to a bank.You need a reason to keep somebody stuck inside of a one or two places the entire time. Otherwise, it’s impossible to contain.

Matt (01:35:48):

Right. So you can break the rules like doing the pimrose steps, but it can’t be that obvious to the people.

Laci (01:35:55):

That’s why she has to be a good maze builder.

Matt (01:35:58):

Cobb goes and meets with the chemist. This is Delip Rao as Yusef. And they’re like, “We need to go dream within a dream within a dream, three levels deep and we need a sedative that will keep people awake so that that can be sustainable.” And he’s like, “That’s impossible.” And they’re like, “Is it really? ” And he’s like, “No, it’s possible. I can go. ” Here, let me show

Laci (01:36:16):

You. Don’t ask me anything three times.

Matt (01:36:18):

Let me go show you. And he takes out the set of dungeon keys and he’s like, “Oh, I’m not so sure you would want to see this though.” And he’s like, “Trust us. We want to see.” So they go down to this dream den where all these people are hooked up to a thing together, a dream together. They – Why

Laci (01:36:32):

Wouldn’t he want to see it?

Matt (01:36:34):

Because it’ll freak you out, man.

Laci (01:36:36):

All these people are plugged into the Matrix because they want to be.

Matt (01:36:39):

I think he says that because that’s his own projection telling him you don’t want to confront what you know is the truth, that the world isn’t real, that you’re going to dream. That there are people out there who will choose to live in dreams rather than live in the real world as these people do.

Laci (01:36:51):

It’s the only way they can wake up.

Matt (01:36:53):

And that guy then says, they really come here to be put to sleep? No, they come here to be woken up. Who are you to say they’re wrong, sir? Which is another part of his subconscious thing. This world I’ve chosen down here is totally valid. This is where I’m alive. This is where my wife is alive. But it’s a very fucking powerful sedative. And when he wakes up, he’s frazzled and he spins his top, but then his top falls off the sink. And so there are people who think that everything after this point is a dream because he doesn’t find out spins his top

Laci (01:37:24):

But doesn’t get anything. I know, and I remember fine. Yes, but there’s so many signs that everything before it are a dream too. So if everything before it isn’t, then they’re doing a shit job of showing you what reality looks like ever.

Matt (01:37:36):

Yeah, that’s an impulse people have of like, but how can I make the movie more boring? I

Laci (01:37:40):

Think

Matt (01:37:40):

Everything after this point is a

Laci (01:37:41):

Dream.

Matt (01:37:43):

Now in the mission prep, we got this thing with Robert Fisher, who’s played by Killian Murphy, who I think is my favorite performance in the movie. Killian Murphy. I think secretly one of the big MVPs of the movie. And I guess in the film metaphor, he’s like the movie itself or he’s the lead character.

Laci (01:38:02):

Yeah, he’s the project.

Matt (01:38:03):

So his father runs Fisher Morrow. His father’s played by Pete Possethwaite. His father is dying. This business is maybe Australian or maybe American. This is all stuff that I just like getting steals from the movie, realize Killian Murphy’s passport is Australian.

Laci (01:38:21):

He

Matt (01:38:21):

Takes a flight from Australia to America every two weeks. He speaks with an American accent. His dad is dying in Australia, but is then going to be flown back to America. Why would he be doing… It’s just more clues that this world doesn’t make sense. And Tom Hardy’s like –

Laci (01:38:37):

Very leftover.

Matt (01:38:38):

Go get me down there to do reconnaissance. And obviously you don’t need to see him get on a plane and fly to Australia, but never mentioning, “Hey, I just went to Australia,” is weird.

Laci (01:38:51):

It is weird. And it also echoes his life being split between two continents and Bail being split between two continents too. Bail and Nolan both have that in common.

Matt (01:39:04):

Oh, that was Jackman. Hugh Jackman, Australia, Australia and England. Yeah.

Laci (01:39:08):

With Bales issue. Well, whatever. He grew up somewhere else and then came here.

Matt (01:39:15):

Yeah. He has American citizenship now. Yeah.

Laci (01:39:17):

Dual citizen.

Matt (01:39:18):

And his father later remarried Gloria Steinem.

Laci (01:39:22):

See, I told you.

Matt (01:39:25):

So Tom Hardy is, he goes to do the reconnaissance there, gets to get into a meeting where Tom Beringer plays their business conciliary who Killian Murphy keeps calling Uncle Peter because he’s his godfather. And he’s the dying Mr. Fisher’s right-hand man. And Tom Hardy’s going to be playing the Tom Beringer character, but Tom Beringer’s talking to these lawyers and they’re like, “What would Mr. Maurice Fisher have to say about all this? ” And he’s like, “Well, you could ask him yourself. Opens the door to the next room and the next room is a bedroom. That dream logic.”

Laci (01:39:58):

Also, this isn’t a bedroom. Yes, but

Matt (01:40:00):

Why would he be in the office?

Laci (01:40:04):

Yes, but I’ve also seen this before. It just houses so large that when you go to put something very standard sized in it, like a hospital bed, it’s no longer a giant rich person bed. It’s tiny in the room in Saltburn. It just doesn’t belong there. Yes, but this is… He’s so far away. I feel like I’d keep walking toward him and I wouldn’t be able to get to him like a dream. I agree. Well, dad was just always in the office. I can’t even dream about him without picturing him there, even if he is in his hospital bed because this is an office.

Matt (01:40:37):

I guess.

Laci (01:40:39):

Or a dining

Matt (01:40:39):

Room. I guess it could be a home office. I guess the… I don’t know, but it just feels like the dreamlike thing of I open a door, now we’re in an entirely different environment that doesn’t make sense.

Laci (01:40:50):

Well, and they will do it again with this exact setup when they’re three levels down. Yeah.

Matt (01:40:56):

So they’re having a big production meeting with whiteboards. Tom Hardy’s given the speech about the character motivations. He studied browning. He studied his mannerisms, his speech because he’s a method actor. But we’re trying to tell a story. See, this is about a father and a son reconciling. DiCaprio says, “I want this to be about something positive because I feel like positive emotion… The heart yearns for catharsis. Positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time. This is Nolan. This is Nolan, the showman. I want audiences to be left with feeling something positive.”

Laci (01:41:32):

Well, you failed on this one.

Matt (01:41:36):

Man, I don’t think so. I feel so good for him at the end of the movie.

Laci (01:41:39):

Oh, failed.

Matt (01:41:43):

So their plan is they’re going to have three dreams. On the top level, they’re going to incept Killian Murphy with, “I don’t want to follow in my father’s footsteps.” In the second level, it’s, “I will create something for myself. And on the third level, my father doesn’t want me to be him.” Because the idea has to feel self-generated, but you have to give it this emotional attachment. And then Cobb is later explaining that his totem used to belong to Mall. It would just spin and spin in a dream. Ariadne says the very awkward thing of, “Arthur told me she passed away.” And he’s like, “Okay. So can we keep looking at some dream shit?” And she’s like, “Yeah. And they go down. He can’t keep Mall out of her dreams. That’s why he can’t design anything because everything… Because she’ll know the designs and she’ll be able to infiltrate and find him anywhere they go.

Laci (01:42:30):

And it turns out that the reason she’s so familiar with all of that he can design is because he’s keeping her in a dream prison that he visits every single night.

Matt (01:42:41):

Yeah, I guess.

Laci (01:42:43):

Right. He’s not doing any work to process her out. He’s doing everything he can to keep her in. But it’s not really her.

Matt (01:42:50):

Well, even

Laci (01:42:51):

If it’s not – He’s doing it to himself.

Matt (01:42:52):

Well, yes. And even if it’s not that she’s trapped in the prison.

Laci (01:42:56):

He is.

Matt (01:42:57):

Yes. So it doesn’t matter.

Laci (01:43:00):

So she can

Matt (01:43:00):

Find him anywhere

Laci (01:43:01):

Because he

Matt (01:43:01):

Hasn’t actually closed her off.

Laci (01:43:02):

Elliot Page’s job the whole time is to make it his idea that he’s doing the right thing for Mal, when really they’re trying to do the right thing for him. All right, fine. It’s a dream.

Matt (01:43:14):

But it doesn’t need to be a dream for that to also be a thing that’s actually happening.

Laci (01:43:20):

I know. I don’t know. I’m very smart. I understand this movie.

Matt (01:43:25):

All right. So another complication, this sedative. Normally, if you die in a dream, you just wake up in reality. But with the sedative, two big complications. Time. 10 hours of waking time, that’ll be a week in the first dream, six months of the second dream, and 10 years in the third dream. And Christopher Nolan just had the biggest fucking boner when he wrote that and then didn’t get it all out here, needed to do another movie interstellar that’s even more about that. And then if you die in any of the dreams, you’ll go down to limbo. Although we don’t find out about that till later. The way that they get out of the dreams is they have a kick. The kick is another thing I always struggle to understand.

Laci (01:44:03):

So what do they say are the stakes of, okay, now you can’t die. Yeah. Fuck me. Because normally they go under for like five minutes. That’s their normal little, I’m in a dream thing.

Matt (01:44:17):

For the training stuff. I think they go on, it’s longer

Laci (01:44:20):

For – Five to 10.

Matt (01:44:22):

I think it’s longer for –

Laci (01:44:23):

I don’t think so. Because I don’t think they realize hours can happen until they meet that chemist. So maybe an hour, but definitely not five or 10. They’re not doing that. So now they’re playing with much bigger sluts of time. So they’re all just like, dang, that’s a long time. But why are they finding that? Why do they think they need that amount of time to get done what they need to get done? If the time gets longer and longer, the deeper you get in, then why do you need 10 hours? Why not one minute?

Matt (01:44:55):

Because they know how complex it is and they need to give themselves enough room for error and trial and error and

Laci (01:45:00):

Everything. But at what point do they find out that, hey, it’s different if you die here? That’s not right now?

Matt (01:45:05):

No, that’s once the people start shooting at them in

Laci (01:45:07):

The garage.

Matt (01:45:08):

Okay.

Laci (01:45:08):

Well, that’s a rude way to do it. So that’s another thing that there’s no transparency with this team in so many moments. So again, hard to root for Leo. But anyway, so their issue now is that they need to find time to get the subject alone for 10 hours where no one else is going to walk in on him and it’d be weird that he’s plugged into a thingy. Why not while he’s asleep at his home?

Matt (01:45:35):

Because they can’t go into his house because he has security or whatever. I don’t know, because he doesn’t know them. But on a plane, he’ll be by himself.

Laci (01:45:43):

Why?

Matt (01:45:44):

Because he usually flies private, but they’ll concoct a reason for his private

Laci (01:45:49):

Plane to be grounded.

Matt (01:45:50):

So he has to go very… Oh shit, guess I’ll better take that flight to LA that Ken Watanabe has bought the airline of.

Laci (01:45:59):

It’s all very trouble with… Okay. All right, sorry. Buying it wholesale, got it.

Matt (01:46:07):

Sydney to LA, it’s the longest flight in the world, 10 hours. He takes it every two weeks. We’ll just buy out the whole airline and then we’ll have 10 uninterrupted hours with him. Great. Cobb is sleeping. Ariadnet sees him asleep and he’s like, okay, we’ll just hop into the dream, se what’s going on down with you.

Laci (01:46:26):

Wait, but when does… Okay, so they’ve discussed how they’re going to make this happen, but they have not gotten on the flight yet. Right. Right. Okay.

Matt (01:46:32):

She hops into his dream, drives an elevator down into a house where she sees him just talking to his wife.

Laci (01:46:37):

Just having a moment. Yeah.

Matt (01:46:39):

You know how defamed me. You’ve said you had a dream we’d roll together. We can. But then she sees Aryadney and he’s like, “The fuck.” And so he rides the elevator back up, but now he’s just taking her on a tour

Laci (01:46:52):

Through his life. These are the remnants of the horror movie that it could have been. Yeah,

Matt (01:46:55):

You’re

Laci (01:46:55):

Right.

Matt (01:46:56):

And it is a horror moment when she snips.

Laci (01:46:59):

All of the ones with… I mean, sometimes it’s like a spy action moment, but mostly it’s whore.

Matt (01:47:04):

And what she realizes is you’re not trying to keep her out, you’re trying to keep her alive. These are moments I regret that I have to change. And down at the basement level of the elevators where he’s stored his most horrifying memory and so she sneaks into the elevator and goes to see it. And it is the hotel room with the gone girl staged crime scene and his wife appearing maybe on the ledge of another building or just their own hotel suite that wraps all the way around that either by design is shot sloppily so that you don’t understand it. Right. Or it’s a dream. Or it’s in a dream and it’s supposed to be weird like that.

Laci (01:47:43):

Yeah.

Matt (01:47:44):

And she says, “I filed a letter with our attorney saying that I’m afraid for my life, that you’re going to kill me. We have to die. We’ll have to be back with our kids.” But what the audience doesn’t know yet is that she’s been consumed with the idea that she’s still in a dream. And that

Laci (01:48:00):

She needs to kill herself. Do

Matt (01:48:02):

We know that that’s why she wants to kill herself right

Laci (01:48:04):

Now? Yes, that he incepted the idea so that she would kill herself to get out of limbo and to come back up to reality, but then they woke up in reality and she still had the incepted feeling of, “No, this isn’t reality. I need to kill myself.” So she killed herself inside of reality.

Matt (01:48:18):

But specifically that he incepted her with that idea is like a big reveal for the final 15 minutes of the movie. It doesn’t

Laci (01:48:26):

Happen here. What do you mean here?

Matt (01:48:28):

At this moment in the movie where Ariadne is watching this scene play out.

Laci (01:48:32):

All we find out here is that he’s been keeping himself and her in a perpetual mind prison. That’s all we find out here. Is that the reason why he can’t keep her out of other people’s shit is because he’s purposely keeping her in his head. That’s all we find out here.

Matt (01:48:50):

But we find out that the hotel room is the most significant thing. And he says, “That’s only one thing you need to know about me. Don’t ever go to that room.” And she immediately goes and sees this hotel room scene. But

Laci (01:49:01):

Then again, yes, she sees it. I think she even sees it in full, but then comes up and just has the thing that I just said. That’s it. That’s all she knows is that what I already said.

Matt (01:49:12):

They wake up and the other people just happen to walk in right there and they’re like – It’s

Laci (01:49:16):

Not where you two are plugged in together alone, but hey

Matt (01:49:19):

Guys. Taking

Laci (01:49:20):

A little nap. It’s

Matt (01:49:21):

Time. Maurice Fisher just died in Sydney. So let’s all hop onto the plane.

Laci (01:49:27):

Again, the timing. Okay. It’s also, well, right when we were supposed to go, ready to go. And this is one of those times where he’s going to fly to America.

Matt (01:49:36):

And they all get into this first class cabin together. Killian Murphy doesn’t recognize his biggest competitor is sitting right across from him.

Laci (01:49:44):

Yeah, right.

Matt (01:49:45):

But DiCaprio spikes Killian Murphy’s drink, puts him to sleep, and they all get up their equipment and set up the dream thing and go into the first dream where it’s raining.

Laci (01:49:55):

That’s because the chemist has to pee. Yeah.

Matt (01:49:57):

Yusef didn’t go… Yusef, come on.

Laci (01:50:00):

Okay.

Matt (01:50:01):

But it’s raining. They all get into the taxi and they kidnap Killian Murphy in the taxi. And I like how he’s just like, oh great, you’re kidnapping me. This is why

Laci (01:50:09):

I have security usually.

Matt (01:50:11):

I’m insured for 10 million. Take my wallet. Take all my cash. It might as well just drop me off at the next thing. And they’re like, nope. But then what’s this? A fucking freight train goes through the middle of the streets and then all these people are shooting at him. It’s crazy.

Laci (01:50:22):

It’s not expected. What’s the intel here?

Matt (01:50:26):

The train thing is Leo’s fault. All the people shooting at them are Fisher’s fault. Fisher’s been trained on what to do. I guess one of the things that Cobb could have been doing when he was on the right side of the law is he would’ve been doing this kind of training

Laci (01:50:42):

For Fisher. Yeah. But also we’re still just taking his word for it that any of this isn’t his fault. I

Matt (01:50:49):

Always assumed it was all his fault. Yeah.

Laci (01:50:51):

But

Matt (01:50:52):

I think the movie gives you evidence that it’s not just that. It’s that Fisher knew Fisher had the training. So he’s got military people who are protecting him in his dream. His subconscious is military.

Laci (01:51:06):

Who’s he?

Matt (01:51:07):

Fisher. Killian Murphy.

Laci (01:51:10):

Right. He should have known that he’s already been trained to not be invaded in his brain space. Okay. Okay. I’m back. Got it.

Matt (01:51:19):

One of the things that makes it hard is that it doesn’t have to be your dream for people to steal your thoughts and for you to fill your projections. And

Laci (01:51:26):

For you to wake up there. Yeah. You’re just on a mission. This is exhausting. When do they sleep? Shit.

Matt (01:51:35):

And what do they feel like when they wake up? How groggy do you have to be then?

Laci (01:51:39):

I mean, I guess I’m never sleepy in a dream, so maybe they’re always just nah. Oh, that’s

Matt (01:51:43):

What you

Laci (01:51:44):

Meant. I’m refreshed.

Matt (01:51:44):

Oh, in the dream. They’re just awake for a week or for 10 months?

Laci (01:51:47):

No, I mean, if it’s this much action every time you go to sleep, when do you rest?

Matt (01:51:53):

Yeah, good point.

Laci (01:51:55):

You’re not supposed to wake up and remember your dreams.You’re especially not supposed to wake up and remember the dream within the dream within the dream you had.

Matt (01:52:03):

Yeah, we know it doesn’t have to be a shared dream for you to be able to control it. As long as you plug into the machine, you can control it.

Laci (01:52:08):

But if they can control it the whole time, why aren’t they winning?

Matt (01:52:11):

That I don’t know. I don’t get that.

Laci (01:52:14):

They should not have the moment where Eames just says, think bigger and uses a bigger gun. Because then the sky’s the limit. Think bigger is, you’re dead, you’re dead. Snap my fingers. Fucking, what are you doing?

Matt (01:52:25):

Yeah, you just have the Neo in the Matrix

Laci (01:52:27):

Moment. He’s got this heist idea in his head. So there’s these little parts where he’s trying to be funny because he thinks they need the Brad Pitt cloony back and forth moments. And it’s like, this is a serious movie. This is not a funny movie. And I don’t find any of these… Joseph Gordon Levin’s like, “Huh.” And we’re supposed to be like, “Ha ha.” And I’m just like, “Get back to what we’re doing.”

Matt (01:52:51):

Good work. Good idea, Eames. Your sarcasm. Arthur’s appreciated as always.

Laci (01:52:56):

A fucking action turducken is not ever going to be something I want. I’m barely able to follow the action, let alone Nolan’s action in one movie and now I’m following. And then you give me a snow movie. Anyone who knows me knows I fucking hate snow. That’s true. And they put it three levels fucking down. You know the second thing I hate most? Sand. And now we wake up at a fucking beach. Ew. How

Matt (01:53:22):

Do you feel about rain?

Laci (01:53:24):

You

Matt (01:53:25):

Hate it. You stay up all night because of

Laci (01:53:28):

It. Last night was hard.

Matt (01:53:29):

I know. How have we gotten here?

Laci (01:53:32):

Laci? I know. We’re

Matt (01:53:33):

Getting worse. It thunders in the middle of the night and both of us are like, uh-oh,

Laci (01:53:37):

The world’s ending. Because he’s going to get upset. And we know if it’s lightning and thundering too close, we have to go get the older kid and move them into our room because we have something over us that protects us from trees and they do not. And I don’t feel like doing that.

Matt (01:53:51):

And also, yeah, if you spit on our house, our power will go out.

Laci (01:53:54):

That’s the other thing.

Matt (01:53:57):

All right.

Laci (01:53:57):

Now I’m anxious because of that.

Matt (01:53:58):

All the people are shooting at them. They make it into this garage and cop starts yelling at Arthur, “This was your job. Yo should have… ” And he is like, “Yeah, I’m sorry. My intel should have prepared me to know that his subconscious would be militarized.” And he screams, “It was your responsibility.” And then he screams, “We are not prepared for this. ” Which is also something Matthew McConaughey says in Interstellar. And I realize this is Nolan’s biggest fear is just being in a situation that you’re not prepared

Laci (01:54:22):

For. Well, spending a whole bunch of a production company’s money and not having been prepared enough to make sure you’re going to pull it off. Us dealing with an unknown anything while there’s so many pieces going into making this whole. And for someone, you know how hard it must be for him to rely on anyone? He needs a bunch of him just running around. If you heavily rely on this one producer and he lets you down even one time, it’s like you don’t understand.

Matt (01:54:53):

And

Laci (01:54:53):

That producer – This doesn’t mean not being able to trust you with anything now and me being able to sleep. I can’t sleep.

Matt (01:55:00):

And when that producer’s literally your wife and you yell at her, you fucked up, Emma. You were suposed to… Maybe she’s the one who yells at people. I bet that’s what it is, is he’s just like, oh, oh, what a disappointment.

Laci (01:55:12):

Okay.

Matt (01:55:13):

Sado was shot and they’re like, “Well, that’s fine. He’ll just wake up back in the real world.” No, the sedatives mean no, he’ll go to limbo. Limbo, what’s limbo?

Laci (01:55:22):

Unconstructed dream space. You were all on a plane. We could have had this talk. This is not the time. At least two of you knew of this.

Matt (01:55:31):

But no, they didn’t know of this. This is all being invented as they go. It’s a dream that he’s writing as it goes. And this is the stuff that turns people off about the movie is literally that actually… What’s Limbo? Unconstructed dream space. There was a whole South Park episode about it where they’d say something and then everybody would be like… Make like, ooh.

Laci (01:55:49):

No, what does that even mean? That’s a stupid thing. That’s a stupid phrase, especially the fact that it’s constructed. And especially the fact that you and your wife built everyone’s unconstructed… What are you talking about?

Matt (01:56:01):

I know. That’s the one that trips me up.

Laci (01:56:04):

It’s everyone’s limbo. Maybe it’s because by the time they get down to that level, he’s the only one left to dream. They have to go to his… They’re finally in his dream where they’re not supposed to any other time. But he needs to go down one more because Cioto. Saido. Saido unintentionally went there. So he’s like, “Fuck it. I got to go get him.”

Matt (01:56:25):

But here’s my question.

Laci (01:56:27):

Okay. Why is he in Leo’s?

Matt (01:56:30):

You can kill yourself and get out of limbo. Right? Because that’s how they

Laci (01:56:36):

All get out of it. Yes.

Matt (01:56:37):

So what isn’t it just… Hey, if you die and you end up in limbo, kill yourself right away. And the answer that I made up for myself is if you die and end up limbo in limbo, you’re not going to know that you’re in limbo.

Laci (01:56:51):

That’s what I thought too. But how do they end up figuring

Matt (01:56:54):

It out?

Laci (01:56:54):

It’s DiCaprio

Matt (01:56:54):

And Arriad and they choose to go there. They hook themselves up to the thing, to the machine and go into limbo.

Laci (01:57:00):

That’s

Matt (01:57:00):

Why they retain

Laci (01:57:01):

Their memories. The only ones that know.

Matt (01:57:02):

I think that’s it. I think.

Laci (01:57:05):

But how does he know what would happen to someone who does not intentionally go there? How is he so sure that that’s where anyone that dies here will go?

Matt (01:57:15):

I don’t know.

Laci (01:57:15):

Fuck’s sake.

Matt (01:57:17):

All right. So we got to go down. We got to go one level down because we’ll have more time there.

Laci (01:57:22):

Great.

Matt (01:57:22):

First they interrogate Killian Murphy. Tell us the combination of your father’s safe. I don’t know it. Oh, well, all right.

Laci (01:57:28):

Just give us any numbers that come to your mind. Five fucking 6969.

Matt (01:57:33):

429.

Laci (01:57:34):

Mine would be 000. It

Matt (01:57:36):

Did. Then they pull in Tom Beringer, who’s Tom Hardy actually. And he’s like, “Your father loved you, Robert. I’m sorry. Maybe, maybe, maybe you do know the numbers to the safe.” And he’s like, “No, I don’t, Uncle Peter. Okay. He loved you, Robert, just in his own way.”

Laci (01:57:55):

No, he didn’t. Do you know what he said to me? He said disappointment.

Matt (01:57:58):

I couldn’t make it out. Any of the words except disappointed. And so –

Laci (01:58:03):

And he kept swatting at my photo that I put there. I mean, he was swatting at the nurse and everything else, but he definitely wanted to break my photo. And of course she needs to be on… Sorry. Now there’s another scene of the hotel scene. I think this might be the first time we see the full thing. So excuse me talking out of my ass earlier. But obviously she needs to be wrapped around the building like this because he needs to not be able to get to her. There’s not enough time for him to run around and he can’t jump forward.

Matt (01:58:33):

Yeah. And that’s itself a dream thing is just the obstacle I’m not going to be able to get past… The thing I can’t get to.

Laci (01:58:39):

I have to get to a plane. My son is running toward the street and I cannot catch him. I just need to catch him. And then at some point, all I start doing is going, “I hope I’m dreaming. I hope I’m dreaming.” And then I wake up and I’m so relieved.

Matt (01:58:50):

So he explains, “I went to limbo with Mall. We were having fun experimenting, building stuff. We spent so much time together. We pretty much forgot that we’re in a dream.”

Laci (01:58:59):

Oh, so this is him and his wife getting too deep on a project and they’re both not even paying attention to their kids. Exactly.

Matt (01:59:05):

It’s the danger of working with your spouse as Laci and I have found whenever we went to conferences and we’re having too much fun

Laci (01:59:10):

Working. The kids get sick at home.

Matt (01:59:12):

Yeah, we get a call from the babysitter.

Laci (01:59:14):

We get pulled out of our reality. I have

Matt (01:59:17):

A kid. Oh, fuck.

Laci (01:59:18):

I don’t even like what people ask me about my kids when I’m away. Nope.

Matt (01:59:24):

But this is the shit I’m really into of any story where I’m alive so long that I forgot who I used to be.

Laci (01:59:30):

Yes.

Matt (01:59:30):

Literally forgot. Down in limbo, getting to build whatever we want. A bunch of boring buildings.

Laci (01:59:37):

Sounds boring as fuck. Look at this skyline that looks like the same skyline over and over and over again. And then what was he saying? Well, me and Ma always wanted to live in a house, but we much more liked this office building. What was he talking about?

Matt (01:59:51):

But we were so in love with a building like this, like a 60

Laci (01:59:55):

Story

Matt (01:59:56):

Exxon

Laci (01:59:56):

Skyscraper. We love it. Give me beige of Ceilings and you can move little squares and then there’s a drop ceiling.

Matt (02:00:04):

Look, I read there’s tons of stuff about the production design and how they worked with architects and all this means something and I just thought boring.

Laci (02:00:11):

Well, look at what we’re seeing across the street in this dream and I wouldn’t have noticed except for you stopped it. These look like little TVs. These don’t look like windows. These look like a wall of TVs. Yeah. I’m

Matt (02:00:21):

Sure this is a real place though. It’s

Laci (02:00:23):

A TV place.

Matt (02:00:24):

It’s kind of interesting how a window’s kind of like a TV.

Laci (02:00:26):

Yeah, but the way that… Fine. I’m right. Those are TVs.

Matt (02:00:34):

So down in limbo, but Cobb always remembered and Mall had forgotten. Or maybe he forgot too, but then he remembered, oh shit, this

Laci (02:00:44):

Isn’t real. Because they started building their own house. They started building real things from their real memories and maybe that’s how he remembered.

Matt (02:00:52):

Suddenly remembered, oh wait, we have kids and we’ve been here a long time and we haven’t seen our kids in a long… That’s another dream I’ll have

Laci (02:00:59):

Is – Yes, they’ve grown older.

Matt (02:01:01):

Or just like, I’ve always had the dream, like I left my kid at home. I ran to the store. Oh, it’s taken me a long time to go to the store. Oh, way longer. And then this happens in the movie with Roseburn. What was the movie called? Fuck. If I had legs, I’d kick you.

Laci (02:01:18):

Oh, I haven’t seen

Matt (02:01:19):

It. I know. She leaves her sick daughter at a hotel to go to the store and then goes even further out and then goes… And it was like, how do they know this anxiety I have and they’re showing it to

Laci (02:01:29):

Me on

Matt (02:01:29):

Screen? Oh,

Laci (02:01:30):

Fuck that. No.

Matt (02:01:32):

So I needed to figure out how to wake her up and I did. And we woke up, but we were old souls. We were 50 years older than we had been, but suddenly woke up in these youthful bodies. How do you do something like that? She didn’t come back right. She was possessed by an idea, one very simple idea that changed everything, that our world wasn’t real, that she needed to wake up to come back to reality. In order to get back home, we had to kill ourselves. We see scenes of her with their children. She’s like, “You don’t think I could know my own children? These aren’t my real children.” And finally the night of the hotel suite where she jumps off. And I think they’re both very good. I think DiCaprio just reacting to her jumping. Yes,

Laci (02:02:16):

God. Yes. And

Matt (02:02:16):

Just

Laci (02:02:17):

Going, oh

Matt (02:02:17):

God.

Laci (02:02:18):

Stop, Matt. Fuck. Yes, it’s effective. Then they do it twice in the fucking movie. You don’t know me at all.

Matt (02:02:26):

Well, we’re not just talking to each other.

Laci (02:02:27):

You don’t know our audience at all.

Matt (02:02:30):

Ariadne is like cob, Dom Cobb. I’m here for you. You are valid. You are not responsible for the idea. Literally the thing that I’m going to learn later – It is

Laci (02:02:40):

A therapist. Right. It is a therapist just talking to him. Yes. That’s the new job is someone going into someone’s psyche to therapize them out of psychosis.

Matt (02:02:48):

You are not responsible for the idea of the destroyer. You need to forgive yourself, but you’re also going to need to confront her. So three action items, okay? Okay. But you don’t have to do it alone. Anyway, the assailant so –

Laci (02:02:59):

You know a lot for being an architect.

Matt (02:03:02):

It’s just this new generation. They’re much more in touch with their feelings.

Laci (02:03:06):

Also, this woman’s supposed to be hot as shit and she looks like an alien. She looks like a dream alien, like a hot person that doesn’t exist.

Matt (02:03:14):

I believe this is Tallulah Riley.

Laci (02:03:16):

Your fake Talola.

Matt (02:03:18):

I just know I know the name because her name is Tallulah. Tallulah Riley. Tallulah is a city in North Louisiana. Talulah. They go to the second level where they’re going to run the scheme of Mr. Charles. The second dream is a nice hotel.

Laci (02:03:32):

A lot of leftovers.

Matt (02:03:34):

The show, The

Laci (02:03:35):

Leftovers.

Matt (02:03:36):

Yes.

Laci (02:03:36):

Using of hotel. Shit. I had another example. Damn.

Matt (02:03:42):

Australia.

Laci (02:03:43):

Yes, that was it. Australia. No,

Matt (02:03:44):

I always group them together. And The Leftovers also has an ending that you can read one of two ways.

Laci (02:03:50):

Which I fucking love. That’s the best example of me like, “Yeah. Yeah, ending.”

Matt (02:03:55):

But one where you and I are –

Laci (02:03:57):

Have very different opinions. Have very

Matt (02:03:58):

Different –

Laci (02:03:59):

And that’s fine. That doesn’t bother me. So I guess that’s a great example of this was done correctly.

Matt (02:04:06):

Without spoiling it, it’s an ambiguous ending and you can read it a number of ways.

Laci (02:04:09):

Which are polar opposite from each other and equally could be right.

Matt (02:04:13):

Yes. And there’s not going to be an answer. They’re just supported by the evidence of what kind of story you think you were watching. And

Laci (02:04:22):

How smart you are.

Matt (02:04:23):

And how smart you are. In this hotel bar, DiCaprio goes up to Killian Murphy and he’s like, “My name is Mr. Charles and you’re in a dream, sir. Don’t you see pay attention to the way the gravity’s all fucked up and the rain outside is starting and stopping.” He’s like, “Oh my God, we are in a dream. Okay.” And he’s like, “I’m the head of your security detail down here. So come with me, come with me. We got to guard you against anybody who’s going to try to steal your shit.”

Laci (02:04:51):

Right now I’ve been activated because someone is trying to invade your dream. You’re not always experiencing this, but you’ve had years of training and this is what we’ve trained for.

Matt (02:04:59):

Yeah. But this is also just classic con artist movie of I get your confidence by telling you I’m the one protecting you from the thing I am doing to you. And it would work on me.

Laci (02:05:08):

Absolutely. Oh, fuck. I would follow that man into a river.

Matt (02:05:12):

The projections are starting to look at… Hey, there’s foreign invaders in this dream. This isn’t right. And Arthur is explaining this to Ariadne as they’re sitting out very, very true, very attractive people out in the hotel lobby. And he’s like, “The projections, they know they’re looking for the dreamer. Here, quick. Give me a kiss.” And she does. And it is the most clinical kiss in movie history, least romantic kiss.

Laci (02:05:35):

I though it was

Matt (02:05:36):

Sweet. It is sweet because-

Laci (02:05:37):

Because of her face after.

Matt (02:05:39):

Yes. And she’s like, “They’re still looking at us.” And he’s like, “Yeah, it was worth a shot.” And she’s like,

Laci (02:05:44):

“Arthur.” Misdirect though. Why do that and not have any other touching moment at all? This is the biggest evidence that this is not a dream. I mean, his dream is like, how is it that we are following stuff outside of his conscious? Because they’re projections of

Matt (02:06:00):

His subconscious.

Laci (02:06:01):

Why is he thinking of stuff happening in the other room?

Matt (02:06:03):

Because they each represent… You get all

Laci (02:06:06):

Freudian.

Matt (02:06:06):

He’s the this, she’s the that. She’s the version of him that this. He’s the version of him that that.

Laci (02:06:11):

Fine.

Matt (02:06:12):

He’s his desire or he’s his work self. She’s his romantic self. I don’t know. There’s ways you could watch those videos.

Laci (02:06:20):

I won’t do it.

Matt (02:06:21):

Yeah, me neither.

Matt (02:06:22):

So they bring Killian up to a hotel room and they’re like, “Sir, kidnappers are planning to put you into another dream to crack into your father’s safe, including this guy.” And they pull Tom Beringer in and he’s like, “I’m sorry, Robert. I’ve been working for the competition.” He’s like, “Uncle Peter, no. Oh man.” And DiCaprio’s like, “He’s lying. We need to go into his dream, blah, blah, blah.” And they all hook up to the thing and go into the dream. Okay. And even Elliot Page is like, “Wait, I’m confused. Whose subconscious are we going into?”

Laci (02:06:52):

And what did he say?

Matt (02:06:54):

Whose subconscious are we going into? And they’re going into Eames’ subconscious… No, they’re going into Fisher’s subconscious, but they’re telling him they’re going into Tom Beringer’s subconscious who’s not Tom Beringer, he’s Eames. Because

Laci (02:07:08):

Yeah, they don’t have access to that actual man.

Matt (02:07:10):

Yes. Yes. That’s

Laci (02:07:13):

Right. And what I don’t know is how they choose whose subconscious they’re going into. And I don’t think it matters. I just think it has to logistically work. Well, it can’t be someone that needs to stay awake to watch us sleeping on the other level. So as we get lower and lower, we lose a team member every time because someone has to stay awake. It’s the stewardess at the reality and then they lose a character each time.

Matt (02:07:38):

No, it is Tom Hardy’s dream that they go into because he’s the one that they put the headphones on.

Laci (02:07:45):

Only the person who’s dreaming needs the music cue.

Matt (02:07:48):

Yeah. And so now the snow level and I’ve labeled this slide, Laci’s going to hate this.

Laci (02:07:52):

And

Matt (02:07:52):

She did. I

Laci (02:07:52):

Did.

Matt (02:07:52):

And I think that the snow part is the least.

Laci (02:07:55):

It’s just, what are you doing? Ames, what are you doing? Why is this what you’re dreaming about, you fucking nerd?

Matt (02:08:01):

Why couldn’t you have dreamed of the beach? They ask. But that also would’ve sucked.

Laci (02:08:07):

They’re running out of places. Maybe they did a survey of what are the places most people, landscapes people randomly wake up in, in their dreams? Mine’s always the car and school.

Matt (02:08:19):

Mine’s alligators.

Laci (02:08:20):

You wake up in an alligator?

Matt (02:08:22):

I dream about alligators so often. I dream I’m in a river all the time.

Laci (02:08:26):

In a river. And that there’s an alligator. Are you swimming in the river? Are you standing still? Is it taking you with it? All

Matt (02:08:30):

Kinds of different ways. Yeah. A lot of times I’m floating in a river.

Laci (02:08:34):

Like happily?

Matt (02:08:35):

No.

Laci (02:08:36):

Okay.

Matt (02:08:36):

I’m always aware. Oh fuck. I bet there’s alligators.

Laci (02:08:38):

Okay. Is it a drowning dream or is it a, I’m being taken in a direction I don’t want to go?

Matt (02:08:43):

It’s an alligator dream.

Laci (02:08:44):

No, it’s you’re being pulled along in this life and not in charge of your own choices.

Matt (02:08:48):

It’s never

Laci (02:08:48):

Drowning.

Matt (02:08:49):

It’s always, oh shit, there’s an alligator.

Laci (02:08:52):

Okay. And it’s I’m being pulled toward it somehow.

Matt (02:08:55):

Yeah.

Laci (02:08:56):

At the end, it’s just an open alligator’s mouth and you’re being sucked in.

Matt (02:08:59):

Yeah. Okay. Kind of. And then there’ usually

Laci (02:09:02):

A lot of

Matt (02:09:03):

Alligators and they’re bigger than alligators. So they’re really crocodiles, but in my dream, they’re alligators.

Laci (02:09:09):

Are they nice and they talk and they sing you a little song? No. Okay.

Matt (02:09:12):

And I do have dreams about snakes too, but mostly alligators. And I say this all the time to people and I think they think I’m joking. And no, I think at least half of my dreams are about

Laci (02:09:23):

Alligators. I’ve never thought you were joking. This is not – Why would I

Matt (02:09:27):

Joke about

Laci (02:09:27):

That? Yeah.

Matt (02:09:31):

So it’s a snow level. It’s Honor Majesty Secret Service, but I think it’s the least inspired action sequence. But it all coalesces with they have to get into the fucking ice fortress, but up at the top level, the Yusef is driving the van backwards. Well, no, first he’s chasing, gets chased by the projections and the van topples over. That’s where they lose gravity for the first time. And they lose gravity in the hotel and it rules. And a big thing Nolan said he wanted to do was when he saw 2001 A Space Odyssey and the spaceship centrifuge, it spins and spins around and that gives people the ability to walk in space. And he’s like, “I want to use that in a movie.”

Laci (02:10:07):

Well, you’re using the opposite of that, but okay.

Matt (02:10:09):

But just, oh, I’d love to play with now. Now the wall is the ground. Now I can walk on the wall. Wow. Okay. And then that turns into an action sequence where each level, the things reverberate with each other and they have to go break into the ice fortress. And that is where Killian Murphy will confront his father. And so they’re about to get there, but oh fuck, it’s mall. Mall has arrived. And Ariana’s like, “Shooter, shoot her DiCaprio.” And he’s like, “I can’t. What if she’s real?” And she’s like, “What are you talking about? ” And then they shoot her, but not before she shoots Fisher. Fisher is dead. Is he not dead? No, he’s dead. Yes. But they can revive him with a clear…

Laci (02:10:53):

I don’t know. I don’t know. This movie’s impossible.

Matt (02:10:57):

And so they’re all like, “Well, fuck, he’s dead.” And DiCaprio’s

Laci (02:11:01):

Like – Yeah, they can’t revive him. He has to go get him. The only way to save the guy that dies this deep is, and that’s why DiCaprio’s like, “Fuck, I got to go. “

Matt (02:11:10):

Right, right.

Laci (02:11:11):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (02:11:12):

Okay. There is no clear. But

Laci (02:11:15):

They do say defibrillator at some time.That’s the kick. Defibrillator is the kick.

Matt (02:11:18):

DiCaprio says like, “All right, the mission’s failed.” And they’re like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s that. We can’t do it. ” And Tom Hardy’s just like, “Well, not my kids I want to get back to. It’s just a job for him.”

Laci (02:11:28):

Yeah.

Matt (02:11:30):

But Ariadne is like, “No, no, no. We can go down into limbo, Cobb and I, and we’ll go find Fisher.”

Laci (02:11:37):

Yeah. It’s not because I’m a therapist or anything. It’s because I just really like you as a person and I’m along for this ride. Yeah, it’s a dream. She’s a therapist. Fuck.

Matt (02:11:46):

Or young artist realizing I’m having so much… I’m so enthralled by the

Laci (02:11:50):

Creative process. I cannot – A therapist, Matt.

Matt (02:11:54):

So Fisher is dead

Laci (02:11:55):

And in limbo. Or hospice. She’s helping him cross over.

Matt (02:11:59):

Dr. Sleep, that’s what that’s about. Did you know that? Danny Torrance when he grows up,

Laci (02:12:03):

He uses the

Matt (02:12:04):

Shining. Well, I’ll tell you. He

Laci (02:12:05):

Grows

Matt (02:12:06):

Up to… This is the premise of the thing.

Laci (02:12:07):

It’s very boring to describe the premise of a movie. It just is boring to describe a dream. So don’t. The experience is what’s interesting. I

Matt (02:12:15):

Really want to though.

Laci (02:12:17):

Please move on. We’re finally at the lowest level.

Matt (02:12:21):

Got to go. Got to go down to limbo. So they get down to limbo, but they do it the old-fashioned way by hooking tubes up to their arms and they wake up in the ocean with the crumbling shit. And this now is where the Han Zimmer score is going nuts and we hear the famous which was in the trailer. And when we saw that trailer, I was like, holy fuck.

Laci (02:12:42):

Not an ominous warm.

Matt (02:12:44):

And buildings are crumbling into the ocean. What’s that shit about? And Arianne’s like, “This is your world? It was. It’s where she’ll be. ” And it’s just lines and lines of symmetrical, huge buildings.

Laci (02:12:59):

Decaying. His mind is decaying. Yes,

Matt (02:13:01):

Yes. If you have seen two, hellbound, Hellraiser two, Kirsty goes into hell and hell kind of looks a little bit like this, just lines and lines of symmetrical shit like

Laci (02:13:12):

This. Just fucked up teeth.

Matt (02:13:14):

Yeah. Well, I guess hell as a maze. That’s kind of an old idea. It’s like 20 years old at least.

Laci (02:13:20):

Well, and the idea of descending into hell through the layers, that’s all this is.

Matt (02:13:24):

Right. You’re right. So we built for years, then we started on our memories. And now Han Zimmer’s the main piece

Laci (02:13:31):

Of music. How to say, 50 years? Not that fucking long, Leo. I’m just saying 50 years isn’t that long. I mean, if it could be forever, 50 isn’t really a big number.

Matt (02:13:43):

It has to be a plausible enough –

Laci (02:13:45):

I guess it is a long time to be with just one other person.

Matt (02:13:48):

But it has to be an amount of time where you could conceive. I could come back from that. I couldn’t come back from… There’s another Stephen King story, The Jaunt. I can’t spoil this for you, but that ends with somebody getting trapped in the infinite and it will freak you the fuck out. Yo should read that

Laci (02:14:02):

Story. I’ll read it.

Matt (02:14:03):

It’s great. It’s a short story. It’s not a novel.

Laci (02:14:07):

Just a quick jump.

Matt (02:14:08):

It’s a quick jump. It is his best short story. Okay. Han Zimmer’s music is… I haven’t really talked about it, but it is one of the huge things that makes me so emotionally connected to this movie. It’s so extraordinary, especially the final track on the soundtrack is called Time. It’s the… And now it’s becoming more and more prominent and I’m getting more like my heart’s racing. And part of it is like I can’t really intellectualize why I feel so powerfully about all of this. But it is kind of like getting attached to a song where you feel like that song’s about me.

Laci (02:14:46):

I don’t know

Matt (02:14:46):

Why.

Laci (02:14:47):

We’re getting to the heart of the matter here. We’re really going to work out our shit. Something’s about to be released or I’m going to die.

Matt (02:14:54):

And they go to the building. We always wanted a building like this. Why?

Laci (02:14:58):

Is this a fucking realty ad in the middle of the movie?

Matt (02:15:03):

We’ll find Mall here. No problem. But there’s something you should know about me. An idea is like a virus. Resilience is

Laci (02:15:10):

Highly

Matt (02:15:10):

Contagious.

Laci (02:15:11):

How is that something about you?

Matt (02:15:14):

I feel like you’ve said this to me already, but okay. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you. And then they get to Mall and she overhears this and she says, the smallest idea such as your world is not real. A simple little though that changes everything. So certain of your world of what’s real.This is the part where the movie most openly suggests

Laci (02:15:35):

Everything

Matt (02:15:36):

You’ve been watching has not been real, that he is lost in his own subconscious. Right.

Laci (02:15:41):

She makes her best point of why is everything persecuting you?

Matt (02:15:44):

No creeping doubts. No feeling persecuted, Dom, chased around the world by anonymous corporations and police forces. That was really the thing that on the fifth time I watched the movie like, oh, that’s why everything seems so weird in the scenes in the real world. That’s why suddenly the Cobalt Engineering’s found me. Oh no. And

Laci (02:16:03):

That’s also why I can’t really totally always remember what is the top layer. Because it all feels dreamlike the whole time, if any of this is a dream. It all feels like a stupid action movie, some kind of thing I’ve seen before. Some sort of derivative action place. That’s why I can’t ever place the top level. There’s no top level that’s just regular shitty life.

Matt (02:16:26):

And it’s by design, but because of that, you’ll feel unmoored. And that too is you should feel unmoored, but that is why it is kind of hard to attach yourself to this movie. Yeah.

Laci (02:16:37):

And it

Matt (02:16:37):

Requires multiple, multiple viewings.

Laci (02:16:41):

Fucking cheat coat. It’s like you’re cheating. But

Matt (02:16:45):

That happens with music too. You listen to it repeatedly and suddenly things unlock

Laci (02:16:48):

For it. You do that in the background. You can do that not against your will. I go to watch a movie to have absorbed a movie. When I realized I needed to do it two or three more times, I feel lied to. You need to tell me the runtime of this movie is 14 hours if it’s going to take me this many times. That’s

Matt (02:17:08):

A good point. If it requires multiple viewings, it should

Laci (02:17:10):

Disclose that. It should be said, yes. Bring a pen and paper or watch twice.

Matt (02:17:16):

So she asks, “You don’t have any creeping doubts that you’re not in a dream or you don’t even know where you are, but you know that I’m real. You can talk to me. Our children are real. This is all down here, but you say you know it’s not real. What do you believe? What do you feel?” And what he says is, “I feel guilt.” She’s like, “Why? Because I did this to you. Inception, I did that to you. You locked away in your little dollhouse in a safe.”

Laci (02:17:45):

Your totem.

Matt (02:17:46):

Your totem, because you didn’t want to remember, oh fuck, the real world exists. But then I went and found the totem and I guess I took it out at the dinner table. What about this?

Laci (02:17:56):

So I guess as a husband and wife team, they’re constantly going back and forth on who’s trying to pull them back toward their family life. Okay, we need to take a break. We need to not hop to another project right away, but they maybe take turns on that and who’s getting lost in the project the most and needs to be pulled back to the surface.

Matt (02:18:15):

In doing this, in infecting her mind with the idea that limbo is not real, he inadvertently infected her at every level, or at least that’s what we are showing right here. And I find it so haunting them waking up in their sun-drenched home. It feels like, oh, we took a nap and we woke up

Laci (02:18:33):

At

Matt (02:18:34):

7:30 in the PM and groggy and like, what’s going on? Fucking what time is it? Are our kids alive? And she couldn’t –

Laci (02:18:46):

Yeah, maybe don’t be doing experimental dream shit while your kids are home.

Matt (02:18:50):

Yeah, not good parents.

Laci (02:18:50):

It’s like they’re microdosing.

Matt (02:18:53):

It really is. It is like a drug using couple. And she’s playing this like, “You did this to me? Oh my God, I’m so devastated to learn this, but you can make it up to me by just living down here forever with me. “

Laci (02:19:05):

That’s so interesting, Mall, because that’s literally the only thing you ever say to me, even though you’re pretending to have new information here. So I’m going to choose to believe that you are still a production of my mind. You are not real because the real mall would be acting different having now had new information.

Matt (02:19:21):

Yeah.

Laci (02:19:21):

Yeah.

Matt (02:19:22):

And that’s what he said. That explains that. Yeah. I can’t imagine the real you. Guess I should. Yes. Only to get up one layer. And he’s like, “I’ll stay with you. Or if I stay with you, will you give me Fisher?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “No, you can’t.” He’s like, “Oh, I just lying to her. It’s fine. Go get him.” But he’s

Laci (02:19:39):

Not lying because he does want to give Fisher. He’s going to stay. He needs to stay. He has to because he has to go get Sodo or whatever.

Matt (02:19:46):

Saido, yeah. Yeah, not staying for her. So she goes and gets Fisher and then they jump off the thing and it gives them the kick to wake up one level up. But yeah, he says, “By now, Cydo will be dead.” So this whole thing of what’s the big deal if they die and go to limbo? They’re still going to eventually wake up in the real world because there is a timer. They will be woken up. But the thing is, if they stay in limbo, they’ll wake up insane. Yeah. They won’t remember who they are. So we got to get to him before he’s been here that long. And I guess – It

Laci (02:20:22):

Looks like he’s been here a minute.

Matt (02:20:24):

It looks like he’s been here, I don’t know, 20 years, 30 years.

Laci (02:20:26):

But I guess if you have a shepherd to be like, “So here’s what’s going on. You’re going to wake up. It’s going to be weird, but that’s the real real.”

Matt (02:20:37):

Yeah, like when you take hallucinogens and you have somebody to be there for

Laci (02:20:40):

You.

Matt (02:20:41):

So Fisher wakes up back at the ice fortress and they’re like, “Go on, go in that vault. See what’s in there. Go confront your father.” And he goes –

Laci (02:20:49):

Even this is like Citizen Cane.

Matt (02:20:51):

How

Laci (02:20:51):

So? Rosebud. Isn’t it like a deathbed whisper that drives the entire movie and it’s just a guy that wants to succeed, but he’s got this dad thing?

Matt (02:21:03):

That’s a good point. And that’s

Laci (02:21:05):

Why – And doesn’t it happen at a bedside like this?

Matt (02:21:09):

Charles Foster Kane is dying in his bed, says Rosebud drops the snow globe.

Laci (02:21:13):

Disappointed.

Matt (02:21:16):

But yeah, that is… Kelly Murphy goes in and the guy’s like disappointed. I know dad, you’re disappointed.

Laci (02:21:23):

Well, it just makes sense that even this is a derivative thing in a movie.

Matt (02:21:27):

That’s what I was getting to is in all of this, that’s sort of the only way we can conceive of things like this is big emotional –

Laci (02:21:34):

It would be sad if you found your pinwheel.

Matt (02:21:38):

Oh, he saved your pinwheel. Who gives a fuck?

Laci (02:21:40):

Because the same memory that you had that meant so much to you was the same memory that meant so much to him. And you both proved it in two different ways, unattached. Without communicating it, you have this picture of you blowing it and he has it in a safe.

Matt (02:21:55):

Yeah.

Laci (02:21:55):

And he saved it this whole time and look how old he is. He’s so old.

Matt (02:21:59):

And even if that were true, and I like that all this is fake, they’re staging this for

Laci (02:22:03):

Him.

Matt (02:22:04):

Yeah.

Laci (02:22:04):

But what a nice thing to do for this man.

Matt (02:22:06):

It is a nice thing, but I’m saying it still wouldn’t mean anything.

Laci (02:22:10):

What do you mean? To who?

Matt (02:22:12):

Because they still were not close. They still did not have a real relationship. Just because he valued you as a child and thought that was a nice memory that day that you blew the pinwheel. Oh, wow. Okay. Still didn’t take away the fact that you said, “Your mother’s dead. I don’t think we ever need to talk about this.

Laci (02:22:28):

“

Matt (02:22:28):

True. But yeah, disappointed. No, disappointed that you tried and then the music stinging. Killian Murphy’s just devastated. He’s so fucking good here. And it is such a rote plot and it’s off-putting because it’s like feeling bad for Kendall Roy like, “Oh, I’m not going to be a business success.” I’m like, “Yeah.” But the fucking actors, NPs of Postlesway is great too. And the music and it’s all so fucking real. And

Laci (02:22:55):

That this is supposed to be the fake part of the movie. It’s amazing that they even make you care about his story.

Matt (02:23:05):

Yes. Yes.

Laci (02:23:06):

His fake story.

Matt (02:23:08):

Yeah. If you watched a Hallmark Christmas movie and by the end you’re like, “This is working on me. Oh my God, come on. ” Yeah.

Laci (02:23:14):

You’re like, “You even told me what you were going to do and me watching it feels like I didn’t get told first.”

Matt (02:23:20):

Yes.

Laci (02:23:20):

Because you can tell me what you’re going to do, but I don’t understand how you’re going to do it.

Matt (02:23:26):

One thing about the pinwheel. I know that the pinwheel is in that picture, but no one doesn’t put a fine point on it. And so just him seeing the pinwheel, it’s all in Killian Murphy’s face and you immediately understand what it means.

Laci (02:23:39):

I know why, but yeah, I can see how other people like you sitting there wouldn’t know.

Matt (02:23:45):

So now everyone’s waking up back in… Well, they’re at least waking up in the first dream. But down in limbo, Dom –

Laci (02:23:52):

Does that airplane even make sense? Is that really what first class looks like? Everyone’s got a little lounge chair. I know, but maybe even that’s weird. We don’t know. We’ve never been in such a place. I have no idea. Hot towel, papers, paperwork.

Matt (02:24:07):

Somebody should give us a fucking hot towel right now at the end of this recording.

Laci (02:24:10):

It would just get cold.

Matt (02:24:13):

Now to finish up the mall thing, she’s talking to him and she says, “You said you dreamed we would grow old together.” And he’s like – We did. But we did. You don’t remember. And now we see the same footage of them walking around their amazing world and they’re old people. And that’s also a thing I find very moving.

Laci (02:24:37):

Yeah. “I

Matt (02:24:38):

Miss you, but we had our time together. I have to let you go. ” And so he leaves to go find Cyto. And he does pretty easily. At least, I don’t know. We have no idea how long it takes him. But he washes up on his shore, goes to meet him, and he’s like, “We were young men together. Now I’m an old man filled with a grit.” And like Christopher Nolan characters have to do, start finishing each other, setting each other up to say catchphrases that they heard earlier. “To convince me to honor our argrangement, to take a leap of faith. Yes. But it’s all fucking working for me. Come back so we can be young men together again. “And he moves his hand over to the gun and it just cuts. It just cuts and they wake up on the airplane. And this is one of the Nolan cuts that fucking works like hell for me.

Matt (02:25:22):

It’s so quick. DiCabrio wakes up on the plane, looks around at all his teams, and they’re like, ” Yeah, we did that shit. “And Ken Watanabe is like… And just sits up and gets the airplane phone. He’s like, ” State Department, Secretary Clinton.

Laci (02:25:36):

“Do that thing rich people can do.

Matt (02:25:38):

All right, great.

Laci (02:25:38):

And put a jiffer on it.

Matt (02:25:41):

They go through customs. Oh my God, it’s my passport.

Laci (02:25:43):

How did Michael Kane know to be waiting for him?

Matt (02:25:48):

One phone call. It’s

Laci (02:25:50):

A twilight bark.

Matt (02:25:52):

It is a twilight park.

Laci (02:25:53):

No, it’s a thing from the office.

Matt (02:25:54):

It’s woof. Cobs going through customs. Oh, the great Michael Gaston from the leftovers is working the… Welcome home, Mr. Cobb. Holy shit. It works.

Laci (02:26:06):

Yeah. You know what? That right there, you know it’s not real. No fucking person at the airport’s like, welcome home. I think they do. Why do you know I live here?

Matt (02:26:14):

Because you arrived from Australia in Los Angeles and you have a US passport. Welcome home to the United

Laci (02:26:22):

States. You mean you’re that guy and the airport’s busy like that and you’re saying that every fucking schmo that comes through –

Matt (02:26:27):

Only to Americans because you love the

Laci (02:26:29):

Goddamn US of A. Amanda. This guy does. No, he’s the exact… No, there’s a reason why he’s the leftovers guy. He doesn’t. You shoot your dog.

Matt (02:26:37):

Why does the

Laci (02:26:38):

Guy – It’s a dream.

Matt (02:26:39):

Why does the guy at the post office always talk to us? Because you got to say something.

Laci (02:26:43):

He loves me, Joe. Joe loves me.

Matt (02:26:45):

Oh, Joe?

Laci (02:26:47):

I know so much about Joe. He’s an anti-vaxxer.

Matt (02:26:51):

Shocking. And again, it is like he’s ascending to heaven, passing by all the people from your life. Oh, remember Joseph Gordon Levitt? Oh, look, Tom Hardy.

Laci (02:26:58):

Remember Fisher?

Matt (02:26:59):

Yeah. Does he remember me? I don’t remember how I know that person, but I don’t know. We went to kindergarten together or something. Michael Kane’s here. Gives me a handshake, a firm handshake. Welcome home, Sean.

Laci (02:27:10):

As if he’s been able to touch him for the first time in a very long time because even in that office scene, he can’t get but halfway to him.

Matt (02:27:16):

Right. Take you to your house where your evil

Laci (02:27:20):

Mother-in-law lives. Where your kids have faces.

Matt (02:27:23):

Hey kids, your father’s coming home for the first time in 50 years. Maybe wait for him or just be playing outside back.

Laci (02:27:28):

Be in the exact position. Assume the position.

Matt (02:27:31):

And before he goes out to see them, he puts his spinny top on the thing, but then he hears his kids, but they’re a little older now. They’re dressed diferently than in the stock footage.