Minute 33: “Ooooaaahhhgggh!”
Transcript
0:00Welcome to the Matrix Minute, a podcast where we discuss the first film one minute at a time because I just love this movie. Hi, I'm Phil, and the Wachowskis were asked on an online chat once if they planned this as a trilogy, and they replied that they just had too much material for one movie. Hmm. Hello, my name's Jake, and I don't know if this is true or not, but Rowan Witz, a.k.a. Spoon Boy, his... Aw, man, I was saving this for, like, the one part. There it comes. Shh, shh, shh. Shh, shh. Till the Spoon Boy part. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it's gone now. Yep. You can strike that off. Strike, I have a check mark.
0:40I'm sorry, but, you know, we gotta... Think about front-loading the whole thing with, like, the first two episodes have all the trivia, and then when we get there, it's like... When we get to the Spoon Boy, we'll talk about different craft beers we like. That's what we do. And then we're just gonna make up our own trivia. Yes. Lies. Just lies. It'll be fine. Do you have any trivia today, Tim? This is the first podcast we're recording in daylight. Yeah, I know. It's weird. It's so true. It's so strange. It's strange. I can see the outside. It's distracting. It's weird. There's birds and children. I know. Birds and children. Birds and children. Things the real world doesn't have. Exactly. What are we... What is this? Minute 33? Yep. Sure it is. Let me see. What happens? Oh, you want me to tell you? Oh, yes. Fade in.
1:21Red. A lot of red. Neo's point of view sees a sea of crimson liquid and black piercing cables all around. With a hand outstretched, he bursts through the thin film of his human cocoon, and he looks out. He's awake now. Neo's point of view is a horrific world of human pods in skyscraper-sized cylinders. And Neo's bald. We're in the real world, boys. And that's the end of the minute. 33, my friend. 33. Neo is indeed bald. Okay, so we're on a definitive moment. A defining moment in this thing. I'm glad we're actually at this point.
2:02I mean, like, who would have thought? It took so long. We thought we would give up at this point. But no, we're here. Enough with the virtual reality. Let's get the reality reality. The reality reality. Now, before we start, I wanted to retcon something, and that was when we were talking about the video assist for, like, I think a couple of episodes ago. Oh, yes. And we were talking about the monitor. Remember how we were talking about, like, when you're filming on film, how do you see the live feed? And I just had to check it out for myself, and I had to do some research, and now I know. It's called Video Assist, and it was originally called a Video Tap, and it was both Tim's and
2:42Jake's and my thoughts put together. So it is, in fact, more or less a little camera that's mounted on the viewfinder setup. So it's going through the viewfinder. Okay. But it also has a prism that would split the light so you could actually see what the lens is looking, but it is a separate recording device. So you can record things. And I just wanted to know about that because, you know, this is archaic technology that no one needs anymore because we all have digital. Unless you're doing film again. Unless you're Chris Nolan. Unless you're, you know. I wonder if anyone ever did that, like, just use that as a recording for the video. And then they forgot. Not the film. Just mount that and just, like, record that.
3:22And it's like, no, film's too expensive. Oh, man. You can see how awful it looks. It looks pretty bad. Because that's probably, like, SD, you know? Yeah, black and white, SD, really, really low resolution. And it's not 100% accurate to what the lens is seeing. Like, especially what you were... Black and white, you say. Yeah. I think that's how the clerk's first movie was recorded, using the video assist. No, lies. Filthy lies. And here's a little fact for you. This whole video assist thing was partially invented by Jerry Lewis. What, the rock and roller? No, the comedian. Jerry Lewis. Oh, okay.
4:03With the thing and the... Yeah, Jerry Lewis. You know, you needed something to look at the... See the video feed. So Jerry Lewis decided to help make that a reality for one of his productions. I did not know that. We should watch Side by Side again. I have to say. Yeah, we should. With Keanu Reeves. No. You haven't seen Side by Side with Keanu Reeves? No. It's a documentary directed by Keanu Reeves about digital and film. Oh, you've mentioned this quite a few times. You should watch it. You haven't seen it yet. They interview all kinds of directors. They talk about where digital film started. They show you examples. They show you how they used to do digital color grading back in the day. There's all kinds of stuff. That sounds amazing. I should get that.
4:43Side by side. It's perfect for what we're talking about today because Keanu Reeves is in it. Yep. And he's directing it. I think he interviews the Wachowskis at one point. His buddies. Yep. His best pals. So if you wanted to know what it feels like, POV, when you were born, watch the first shot of the scene. That's right. That's you. Listen to this. Coming out of your mother's womb. Did you know? I can't believe... Not as violent, but... I can't believe I never noticed... A birth is always violent. There's actually this extra bit of film on top of the pod. Yeah. That's great. Protective film. He just breaks loose. Yeah. I really didn't realize that. Well, that little POV shot, it's got that pink and red liquid.
5:24For the longest time, I didn't know it was a point of view shot. I honestly thought it was his bald head. Weird. Like the top of his head. When I was a kid, when I was watching this. It's been for a long time as well until I actually was looking at this video footage very recently. What I really liked about the color scheme here, it's completely different. There's no green tint anymore. You notice that, right? Yeah. And it's got this red and black and white and gray. And a lot of blue as well. And also pink. And, you know, it's a great combination how pink and black actually kind of goes pretty well together. It makes a very scary look, in my opinion.
6:05It's intrusive. It's very intrusive. I think it works perfect. I mean, this might have been the attention from the beginning, but the staggering contrast, the difference between the real world and this. I mean, when you usually in classic sort of science fiction, yes, sure, this is dystopia, but you would usually have some kind of high tech kind of establishment, probably like a bunch of robots running, you know, very high tech, very clean. And that's what you'd expect usually in sci-fi. But I love the sort of industrial, disgusting, the fact that Neo is like completely hairless, like a little baby. He's got these things stuck to him.
6:46And it's just, it's just pods stuck on a corn cob. Well, and it's also completely, it's almost messy how it's organized. It's almost not even organized. If you think about it. Yeah. It's really, it's just like, it's really, what's that word? When there's no, I'm missing a word. It's just for use, you know? Utilitarian. Utilitarian. That's exactly what I want to say. Thank you, Jacob. You are my savior. Yeah. You are the one. You are the one. What I wanted to ask you guys is, what was it like, because this is a very, like we said, definitive moment. What was it like the first time watching this scene, the first time you watched the movie? I wish I could remember. I wish I could remember as well.
7:27Well, I remember. Okay, go on. This is one of the few films where you get that sort of scared, sinking feeling in your stomach because... Oh, yeah? Yeah, because it challenges all your, like, you know, when you're a kid, you haven't seen that many movies. Oh, yeah. So you don't know what to compare things to. And this is one of those movies that is so stark and so shocking at presenting a twist in the middle of a movie that completely changes the dynamic of the whole film moving forward and it's something you didn't expect. So when I watched it, I remember I was just like, oh my goodness, like, basically this scene meant anything could happen after this point. You know, it's like, it was scary because suddenly it's all challenged and look where
8:09Neo finds himself. It could, you know, it could be borderline into some kind of a thriller horror stuff going forward. You know, you never know because look at this. Now... A human... Did you have... Humans enslaved, you know, all kinds of stuff. Very, you know, dystopian and... Definitely... Depressing and that kind of stuff. Boundary because the beginning there was, it was basically an action thriller with some slight sci-fi horror like stuff, you know, on the side. Like there's a little bug, the mouth is melted. Right. And it also... But it's like the flavor now just completely switches on to like hardcore. And it's also one of those moments in a movie where suddenly, you know, I think great movies, what they do is they make you, make your, um, make the cogs in your brain spin a lot.
8:51You like start thinking about other things, start thinking about, oh my goodness, like, so what does this mean? It's like in the history of humanity, what happened here? Why? And you always ask, why did this happen? You know, how did humans get here? You know, that kind of stuff. And so that's always interesting because... Now, wouldn't... Were you guys, um... Did you guys have doubts and thought maybe this is a dream sequence and not real? No, I didn't. I really never did. Yeah? No, it's too, it's too real. It's too, it's too real and it's too complex and there's too much going on and... Hmm. And I think it wouldn't be so emphasized in the story as well. Well, I love that shot where, you know, Neo's hand comes out and reaches... Yeah, Neo just loves to touch the plug in the back. Yeah, that's what I was going to talk about.
9:32Like, there are all these plugs on his body. So what do you think those are actually for? Yeah, I never actually knew. Well, the thing is that they could be, you know, outputs or they could be inputs. Now, later on it's explained why these humans are in these pods, so we're not going to get into that at the moment. But, you know, we talked about the umbilical cord already, right? Oh, yeah, we had a famous talk about that. Yeah. So, a famous talk of the umbilical cord. Yeah, we did. And this is technically a womb, so they could be feeding him. But honestly, he is a grown man, you know, so you can't just do the umbilical cord. Well, that's what the tube is for in his mouth. Yeah. The tube is in his mouth and then the brain one on the back is for the, you know,
10:15connecting to the matrix. Now, the rest of the things, they could be, you know, they mentioned they harness the energy. Maybe that's how they harness the energy. Could be just extra inputs. Maybe they're just like stimuli, you know, they need to... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The body would sort of decompose or something like that, so... Hmm, yeah, yeah. That's cool. That's a cool idea. Um, what do you guys think? I really don't know. I think... I agree with you. Um, I guess those could be the power sockets. Mm-hmm. That might be the most reasonable explanation where some kind of... Like, this way they can, instead of using just one source, they have a lot of different plugs that could quicker generate their power or suck energy. Also, originally there's supposed to be little machine bugs crawling around and stuff.
10:58I'm so glad they didn't use that. It was supposed to be a lot more alive. Like, there was more little, like, spider machines and stuff. Well, actually, think about that. That might be interesting. Crawling around. If it didn't look CG and bad. Yeah. That might be CG, because the next CG monster that comes is a bit wonky. He's a little wonky, isn't he? So, um, most... Yeah, well, Neo, um, took the red pill and now he's, um, sitting inside a big giant red pill. Yeah. But this is, I think, again, it's just a great... Oh, it's pretty cool. It's a great... What did you say again? He took the red pill and he's sitting inside a big red pill. He's gonna get out of one. There's some observations I had. Well, it's kind of pink, yeah, that too.
11:39I mean, it's kind of strawberry flavored. He was going for the hot tamale, but it turned into strawberry. Or watermelon, you know? Um, so all of this is, uh, from concept artist Jeff Darrow. Hey! Jeff Darrow's name. Oh, yeah. I got the concept book. Now I am in control like Phil. I looked at them. I looked at them. I looked at the one nice one when he's, like, bursting out with his hand. Ah, yes, yes. Out of the goo. That's a good one. That's a classic one. Yeah, that's from... Also, he has a lot of those tubes on his crotch, by the way. He does it a lot. If you stop frame the POV, there's like a hundred cables coming from his crotch. Well, you know, this is weird, but, you know, it must be a very sad, sorry state down there. I just feel sorry for all the people.
12:20I just feel very sorry. Because he's pulling things out of his mouth. I mean... I mean, you know, they have to get rid of all the excess. I'm telling you, man. Like, down there must be just... Oh, man. Devastation. The tubes. I was going to talk about... We never see that part of him pulling those things out. I was going to talk about Jeff Darrow, but... Okay, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, talk about Jeff. Sorry, Jeff, for ruining your... Jeff is a super talented illustrator, and he draws, like, super pristine lines and lots of little details. Well, didn't he do the comic book that looks... Not comic book. The storyboard that looked like a comic book. No, that's Steve Skroos. Okay. Skroos. So they both did comic? They both did... Jeff Darrow did a little bit of storyboarding, but Steve Skroos did most of the storyboard.
13:01It's a little bit of storyboarding. Jeff Darrow did all the concepts for the machines and the machine world, and... Oh, okay. I know what you're talking about now. Okay. I know the difference between the two guys. He's influenced by the French artist Mubius. Mubius. We've talked about Mubius, indeed. He's... That's who's... What can I say about Mubius? He also has, like, really nice and clean lines, and... Mubius did the ships for Dune. Indeed he did. Mubius. And, um... He... And then Jeff Darrow did comics like Hard Boiled. Which is with Frank Miller. And then he did Big Guy and Rusty, the boy robot. Which is a thing. And Doc Frankenstein, Shaolin Cowboy. And that's two of the things that the Wachowskis were involved in as well.
13:43After The Matrix in between. And then he's also known for, like, super ultra-violent, like, scenes in his work. And John Gaeta once said that he assumed he was one of the most demented individuals on the planet. But he's not. He's a pretty cool guy. That could be either a compliment or not a compliment. Yeah. He has a really good pencil art sketchbook. So, that's great. I would buy that one. It's called Lead Poisoning. I think that's pretty... That's hilarious. That's good. I like the title of it. Yeah. So, in this scene, we see a lot of Darrow's style in the machine world mechanics. Like, the cocoons, the pods. The pods were later refined by concept artist Warren Menzer, who did the final look of the pod designs.
14:29And, of course, there's the brutal close-up of the plug in the back of the head. And that is the dummy. Another Keanu Reeves dummy. What? That they made. Touching the dummy. Are you serious? Yes. You look at it. The insert shot is completely different from the other ones. Okay, I'm looking at it right now. I think so. So, is any of this done by Jiger himself? No, unfortunately not. It was just inspired by Jiger? Oh, yes. Inspired by Jiger. Neo is now fully awake. Okay? And I don't think anything would prepare you for this kind of revelation. No, I think Giger would say this.
15:10And then Neo bursts out of this vagina-looking pod. It looks like it comes out like a birth. It's like a sexual thing. And very... I don't want to get into the details, but... But we see the rows and rows of sleeping people in their pods. Yeah? It's incredible. Don Davis' music. It's really good. You can listen to it by commentary. It's just very... It's like super like... Oh, man. I wish it'd be the commentary for the Matrix. You can listen to the commentary. I think we're going to say Jiger. Jiger, people are going to think we're actually saying Jiger.
15:50I forgot his braille pronunciation. H.R. Giger. Yes. But no, Don Davis' music is amazing here because it has this choir now. Man, the Don Davis music is... The choir is building up. I think that also adds to the whole fear factor of the scene where you go, Oh, my goodness gracious. Yeah, there's some lightning in the power plant. Is that normal? I don't know. Just, yeah. That's it. It's very like... Oh, just put it all together. You know, no one really cares. As long as it works. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to, you know, make sense. Just as long as it works. I think as for the set design, if you look behind Neo, there's some kind of containers of water that are bubbling. I think that adds quite a bit of...
16:31There's a lot of containers. It adds to the dynamic. It's not so static, you know? Yes. And fake. It looks... Actually, this is... This reminds me a little bit about Alien because it's... I think this moment is kind of like Alien with the giant space jockey, you know? When you know you're not really watching a low-budget, you know, schlock movie anymore. This is one of those shots where it's like, oh, it's expensive. It's something that's been, you know, it's artistic. Give me the wide shot. Yeah. No more offices. It's not... Because it's just like Alien with the space jockey scene where it's like... Yeah. It's a big moment that shows the quality that they were reaching for. And I think that's... It's one of those moments where you kind of need some choir to make it work, you know?
17:16It's one of those moments where you go... Yeah. Eyebrow-less Neo, you know, he makes like this huge dramatic look as we catch a glimpse of this giant power plant. The choir. Sure. And I personally, like when you're looking at the cylinders, those big giant cylinders with the power plant, when Neo's looking over at the wide shots... The corn cobs? Don't shoot... Yeah, don't... Well, they're grown, aren't they? Don't you think that there's too much space between them? I think that it's like, what are the machines thinking? There should be a lot more space between those pods. They should just put them all together. Maybe they need like a huge machines that need to walk by them. So they need space. You know, it's like a place to walk by.
17:56That's what Phil said too. But I was thinking also, you know, there's a lot of technology and machinery going on. They have to... Because this is, you know, stuff that they had to custom build. Right. Stupid explanation. But anyway, who cares? That's my answer. My answer is, who cares as long as it looks cool? That's great. So Jeff Darrow's wonderful stuff. We're getting to see all that design now and the wonderful color combinations we have. What else did you want to say? Do you have anything you wanted to add about Neo's plug touching? Well, Giger has something to say. I looking. Then the problem, I told them like a hundred times, connect the tubes to his nipples.
18:40But they won't connect them to the nipples. They said too much. And I said, no, no. Too powerful. This would symbolize, you know, the man. The milking of the man by the machines. The milking of the man by the machines. Milking his soul. We're turning into Bill Lugosi for some reason. The powerful male nipple is, yeah. Milk to nipple. But yeah, Neo sees this and we see it and we're like, where are we? Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. That's how the fire goes.
19:21That's what I talked about. And all that's, that's all I can talk about with the bin. I can't think of anything else. I'm just, I'm watching the clown. Honestly, that's it. I can't think of everything. Let's look at another minute. I can't speak. Let's look at another minute. Join us for the other minute. For the other minute. We have a one special announcement today. We have one special announcement. No social media plugging except for one. No biggie. We have a short, extremely short survey we built. It's like six or seven questions. Most of it's multiple choice. Super easy peasy. You can take that if you like. It is, if you just open your description on your podcast player, either on your iTunes
20:04or your phone or on the website, whenever you listen to the podcast, just go to the description. There's a button that says feedback. You can tap that and take the thing. That's the only plug we have for today. Take the red pill of the survey. Especially because I think it's appropriate because Neo becomes unplugged now. So we don't have to plug anything. Exactly. We unplug. Unplug. See you on the next episode. A real world. See you later. Goodbye, teacher.