Minute 36: “The answers are coming.”

Transcript

Transcribed automatically from the audio, and imperfect for it — names and punchlines suffer worst. Useful for finding a moment, not for quoting one.

0:00Welcome to The Matrix Minute, a podcast where we discuss the first amazing film in one mediocre minute with us. Hi, I'm Phil, and with me is... Jake. Jake, hello Jake. Welcome back, welcome back everybody, and with us is as well as usual... Tim, and did you guys know that The Matrix was inspired by a comic book called The Invisibles that I only found out last week? Oh yes. Check out that comic book. There's a lot of visual stuff that looks like The Matrix. Oh man, we're going to discuss about that at some point, sometime. And now, because we're out of The Matrix, we're in the real world, and that means we're going to meet many new characters,

0:43but not only that, we actually go away from our isolation of just being three people to actually having guests. And the first one, so appropriate. In fact, it's like the most important guest that we will ever have, arguably speaking. Get ready for some serious butt kissing. It's our older cousin, Stan, whom we've been talking about for so many, probably every episode. Tim's brother. Tim's older brother. Hello, Stan. Welcome. Hello. Yay! He's here. Woo! Finally, there's four people. We've been wanting to get him on our podcast, our older podcast, the one that has nothing to do with The Matrix, for so long.

1:25And now he's here talking about the movie that inspired all of us. And I'm sure Stan has... Yeah, this is a special moment because you introduced us to The Matrix. Absolutely. All of us. You're the one. I do remember that. I do remember that. Yeah. Yes? Please talk about that. I'd love to hear about that. So, Njoni, what do you think? That's what we call you. That's the problem. Yeah, it's fine. We're still in the olden days. We have not moved on. We haven't moved on to calling you Stan because that is your name. Obviously Stan is Slav, but we, you know, obviously Stan is the nickname. But for some reason, it's Njoni, and I don't know where that came from, but we don't have to talk about that. Yeah. Just in case we let it slip that it's Njoni all the time.

2:07Because we're used to calling. We'll try Stan, but sometimes we'll just call him Njoni. Well, the shortest story about Njoni is it's a diminutive of a big nose, like a small big nose. I don't know how that came up. It's from another cousin. In Slovak, right? I don't know. Kind of a Serbian, Croatian Slovak. It was in Slovak village, but... Was it like Njofra or something like that? Yeah, Njofra. And then he said, my cousin said, oh, that's too harsh for you. So he started calling Njoni and, you know, it caught on and everybody there used to call him that way. But when I moved to Slovakia, it was just weird because I would have to repeat that story because it doesn't make sense. And especially not in England. I never questioned it.

2:47And you have to do it here too again. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, you can call me Njoni. That's fine. Awesome. So the other wonderful thing that we will have to say is that... And you're probably going to segue to the question of... The ultimate question. What does the Matrix mean to you? Or how did you get introduced to yourself? And how did you find out about it? Because I have told the story of how you've seen the Matrix for the first time. And I, that is from my childhood memory. And probably it is like 90% wrong. So I'm really curious to see what's actually reality. Do you know the story when I saw it the first time? Yeah. Because that's the first time I've heard of the Matrix. Because you came so amazed. And you tried to explain to me and our mom.

3:31And I was like, what is this movie? I must see it. I'm not sure when I saw it. When did it come out? 99, but what month? Do you know the release? That was summer. In the States, it came out in March 31st. Yeah, but in Europe, remember, it was late back then. Yeah, three or four years later. But Europe, back then, they always showed it later. So it would have come out maybe sometime in summer. I'm really worried that my story is completely bullshit right now. Okay, so I think it must have been for the New Year's of 2000. I went to visit my brother-in-law in Slovakia. No, it's wrong. Oh, no. No, my story is poop. I mean, it was kind of a winterish time.

4:11And I know I was there. My missus went to Paris with her friend Cornelia. And I went there to see him. And we met up later on. Anyway, so I probably was there. And yeah, he took me to this movie. Like, oh, this is... I don't know if he's seen it. I think he might have seen it. Like, you really want to see this movie. So I went there. Yeah, and that was my first time. And I was blown away. And then... But I kind of didn't get all of it. I was just super amazed. But then I think that summer or April, we had our seventh anniversary with my missus. And I took her... I made her surprise anniversary. I took her to Belgrade.

4:51We used to live in Serbia, Novi Saden. And, you know, took her for lunch. And then afternoon or evening, really, we went to see The Matrix. That was for her. And it was amazing theater. So, like, that was the best then, you know, surround and everything. Wasn't it sound good? Absolutely brilliant. Oh, yeah. It was completely... I think 7-1 or whatever was going... 8-1 at that time. It was like the state-of-the-art number one cinema in Serbia at that time. And it was brand new. And I know the company who built the sound system. Everything was JBL or something. It was top-notch. Yeah. It was a great experience. That's cool. And then you came back with an open mind. And your eyes have been opened as well. And you started preaching the gospel of The Matrix.

5:33Especially in 2001 when you came to work for our dad back in Croatia. And you were talking to... Oh, that was 2002. Yeah, 2001 or 2002. I think it was 2001 sometime later on there. And you were just building this story up for, like, what The Matrix is. And me and Jake, when we were kids, we talked about this in the introduction of our series that you're listening to. And we got to watch it with our dad and you on a VHS. And you were just preaching it to us. Like, just showing us these different moments in the film. And needless to say, we were all blown away by it as well.

6:13Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Stan. Thank you for introducing us to this world. I mean, I was blown away not by... I mean, there are a lot of technical stuff in there, which was really interesting in the first offs, you know. But I remember even when the movie started, and you probably talked about this in episode one, but even the Warner Bros and everything was changed a little bit. That was new to me. I don't know if they'd done it before. It wasn't very common back then. Yeah. Like, the color grading and everything. Everything was influenced by it. And the music started straight away. And I was like, what's going on? What's going on? Yeah. And I like the concept. I think, if you humor me for a few minutes, because I know you talked about this, but

6:54I think the time of internet was just blossoming, you know, in 99. Yeah. And the concept of hacking a system and, you know, it was kind of a very cool. Now, like, I watched the film yesterday with my 12-year-old. And he was impressed, but not to a degree. Maybe it's too much for him as well, some of the concepts, you know. But he wasn't like, oh, all right. Like, yeah, it's good. It's all right. But in 99, it was mind-blowing, you know, like bullet-time and all that stuff. And when we watched it in Belgrade with Mrs., but we also invited the other friends, Mark

7:34and Cornelia, we just talked about it later on, about the artistic approach to it and kind of the synchronicity of all these disciplines, you know, sound, grading, story, dialogue, and just working towards one thing, you know, the theme. And I was relatively uncommon for a mainstream movie with a lot of action sequences. And it was like, I loved it, you know, the Kung Fu and hacking and, you know, all that culture. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's very... Sorry. Sorry. I just want to say, it's interesting. And that's, we're really looking forward to having an opinion of someone who saw it, because we saw it from the eyes of a child and the most important things were the flashy bits. And even though the sort of thematic or philosophical stuff at that point was very, you know, impression

8:19of what you guys thought. We were still learning a lot about how movies work and how storytelling works. I'm curious how you saw it, you know, like, what were you, 20-something probably when you saw it? I don't know how old are you. You're like an old fart. I didn't know. More than 20. I must have been 28. Funny. Like us right now, that's pretty funny. So that must have been a different impression than... Because later on, I played the Matrix for our parents, Stan and our parents, because like for years we've been going on about this Matrix and they'd never seen it. And I was like, we're going to like watch a movie one day. I'm like, okay guys, you got to see the Matrix. So we watched. It was hilarious. The impression they got, it was just like, well, it was nice. It's like, they're very foul mouthed.

9:00There's a lot of shooting and it's just this basic story. Foul mouth? Where was the foul mouth in Matrix? I don't know. Trinity says shit a lot. But it was like, well, you know, in the end, it's just a love story about a hero. Like they completely glanced over anything that was amazing to us. It was just like, well, it's just a Hollywood movie, you know? That's so funny because our dad, well, our dad, I can recall our dad watching it with us for the first time on VHS. And he actually, he really loved it. He was like, yeah, he was going with the flow with us, keeping that same track of mind. So yeah, that's, Stan, I just wanted to say one more thing. Because we don't have a context here. Like you, we're doing a lot of country hopping. There's a lot of Belgrade. There's a lot of Slovakia and stuff like that.

9:40But Stan, right now you are in the UK. Yes. Yes. South of England at the coast. Awesome. All I wanted to know because just so we know location-wise what everybody's doing. Cool. So yeah. Welcome. Minute 36. Welcome. We're on minute 36. And minute 36 is, as we go through Neo's recovery from the system shock, Morpheus operates on his body. Dozer, a member of Morpheus's crew, says he needs a lot of work. We are treated with a solemn montage of Neo in hibernation as they rebuild his muscles. Because Morpheus tells him it has atrophy. Why do his eyes hurt?

10:21Because he's never used them before. So what I love about this is that Neo, upside down, it's a really great shot because it distorts the idea a little bit more, you know, like of the new world and how he's perceiving this new environment he's in. I still think they're trying to, again, keep the disorienting feel still going a bit. Oh, definitely. Definitely. It's a classic sort of movie kind of thing. You know, like when it's like an anti-montage. It is a montage, but, you know, it kind of gives you that drifting feeling like, oh, you're kind of lost. But you do it a lot. Yeah, definitely. There's a wonderful portion in the 1996 script, which we'll talk about later.

11:03Okay. Not now, but, you know, that's what we're going to do at the end. What's that script? Oh, explain to Stan what we have. Yeah, I just wanted to say that what we do now is at the end of our minute, I read a little bit from the 1996 draft, which has a bunch of different changes. And we just, we kind of just laugh. We compare the older version to the new. Yeah, it's an early version of the script that has some really wacky sort of ideas that they change later on. It's funny. You mentioned that you're talking about the boom of the internet in 99. A lot of the 99 script has a bunch more cyber influence and hacking and sort of this like subculture. Yeah. There's a lot of slang about like, oh, who's a bigger hacker? And they mention all these crazy names and what they hacked.

11:45Kind of like the hackers movie, you know, that terrible one. It's a lot more. Angelina Jolie. Oh man, everybody knows about this movie except me. What is this? Oh my goodness. Come on. Oh. Angelina Jolie in the Japanese dress. Come on. Yes. Yes. And her like, what was it like? It has 12 megabytes of RAM or her laptop and they're like going crazy over it. Oh no. Never mind. We digressed. It's fine. This is a digression podcast as well. Oh, this is what we do. So what we have now is in this scene, it kind of relaxes us a little bit more and it's more of a scene, like after this shock of being out in the real world and seeing all this crazy

12:29stuff going on. Now the movie is able to quite sort of bring us into and just like when Morpheus says, your muscles have atrophy, we're rebuilding it, we have to be rebuilt into getting used to what's going on in the real world. And that's how I feel about what's going on in this scene. And the way the camera moves from that monitor as it goes to Neo, it's a really like the angle is like super, it's like so perfect and just we reveal his acupuncture parts. And it's so weird, like what kind of acupuncture stuff is going on? I don't know. I'd love to know more about this. Did any of you guys have any had acupuncture or did you know anyone who does that?

13:13Do you have any experience with such things? I did not have. I just don't get the light and everything. So it could be like an electrode and some stimulating, you know, the muscles. Oh yeah. Because you can see the wires on top of it. Little Christmas lights on top of it. Yeah. Yes. And then they take them off. Yeah, that could potentially be something like they sending electric impulses to kind of work out the muscles. Yeah, like those top shop things, you know, those little belts you put on your like ab destroyer, whatever it's called. And you're like, you don't have to exercise. Just watch TV with this for $9.99. You can get really thin and muscly. That's what they're doing. So they were watching old commercials that they found in the archives and they were seeing,

13:55oh yeah, this might work. But he's twitching. You see that like poke him and he goes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what Morpheus says. He says, your muscles have atrophied, rebuilding it. So I went and just did a little bit of research on atrophy. Oh, please tell us. It's basically, you know, just muscles not being used. They're not being used on a daily basis. Many people know this, but I had to, you know. Well, because me and Tim, our biology skills are weak. Yeah, you should have listened to the last episode when we tried to find out what muscle memory is. If it's actually memory in the nerve endings of the muscle or in the brain. No, it's not. It's a misconception, I think. Yeah. It's just in the brain. Ah, he didn't even have to go on Google and search that. Well, he's wise and old. He has lived to the world, seen movies. Yeah.

14:35So the muscles are just not being used on a daily basis and start shrinking. And because there's no nutrients and not enough activity with them, they just start getting smaller. Question though. So when you come out of a coma or something like that, you just look like death. But when you start using it again, then they rebuild, right? Yeah. So what they're doing is with these acupuncture needles, I guess, is that they're actually artificially trying to rebuild his muscles. And what I wanted to say is it would be so much more interesting now that I was thinking about it is that originally probably the idea that when a human comes out of the, like he wakes up from the Matrix into the real world and then he gets discarded.

15:16I think most of these people in the tubes would probably look like skeletons. Like they would be very, very skinny because their muscles wouldn't be active. And Keanu Reeves, I mean, taking a lot of effort, trying to lose weight for these. Those are the last scenes that they actually filmed with Keanu in. Oh yeah. Because they shaved his eyebrows. Because they shaved his eyebrows as well, but he tried to lose a lot of weight. He didn't do, he didn't go Christian Bale, like the machinist. Yeah. But, but yeah, so he tried as, as best he could. And, you know, in 1999's technology, you couldn't CGI that stuff. But now, if they made this movie now, they would, they would definitely be, like, I would

16:00love to have seen. The ghost in the man. Just like. I would love to have seen like this really shriveled up Neo. Because I think that was the intent. And then we could see him in this montage that we're watching, how they would start rebuilding his muscles and he gets more full. So you would say, but. Like completely creepy levels where you get shocked into seeing Neo in that state, right? Here's the thing, right? So, so he's in the little womb, right? And, and his muscles are not being used. So his muscles are not being grown. But on the other hand, they're feeding him. So shouldn't his fat grow? Shouldn't be like this fat blob that just squirts out of those, like tubes? That's even more gross. That's disgusting. Like he has, like, imagine that if Matrix, he has to like exercise and it's like a Rocky montage. He's like, dude.

16:40Instead of this, he's just like. Or it would be like WALL-E, you know? Exactly. That's what I thought. Like the fat people in WALL-E. Yeah. That would make sense. Cause he's like, well, maybe they have like a specific dose. They like know exactly. They're monitoring. Like too much fat. Like that's, that's not efficient for a battery thing. Oh, what about this one? What if the machines are already rebuilding everyone's muscles? Right. In the meantime. Oh, I guess. Like they'll, like they'll have their own little acupuncture. Acupuncture? What? Acupuncture? You're, you're getting a little, it's a little bit. Now we're. Okay. Let's compare this because he was in a, in a kind of a water, like when babies are in mother's womb. Right? Right. So when babies get born, because I've seen my kids, uh, if they stay too long, they,

17:22their skin is a bit shriveled, but they're not, they nicely and chubby depends, you know, on what a kid. Yeah. So because you get fed and they move maybe a little bit because of the impulses or something, it's not like they completely still. Um, but I don't know, you know, it's a science fiction movie, but still, I think it would, it would probably look quite similar, quite similar. Okay. But some babies are born with hair. So I don't know why. I mean, like, obviously they were trying to do the visual thing of having like a baby and him having not any hair. But if you think about it, practically, there's absolutely no reason why he doesn't have hair. Like what, what? The little machine came and shaved his eyebrows every, every like hour.

18:02It's like, Oh, the eyebrows are there. I mean, there's, there's probably ways to genetic, to sort of like, just stop that from happening when you're in the tube. Like, was it like unpractical to have hairy babies in the womb? Like, it's like, Oh, the hair is like, I don't know. Go to the machine council. Yeah. Just ask them. They'll probably be able to answer it. It definitely helped the dramatic effect. Oh, definitely. It looks freaky. And I, and I, and I have to be very impressed that when Neo wakes up for this little brief moment and he asks like, why does his eyes hurt and stuff? His, there's a little bit of hair growing. And I have to say like, that's, that's impressive. Like what time did they film that? When did they, you know, cause these sorts of little details.

18:45Yeah. Yeah. Just practically when they were filming it. It was, uh, I just a little tidbit I wanted to mention. I think that's one of the things that make this movie feel more, uh, more rich than it would have otherwise. Cause of stuff like that. Um, I want to bring it back to that line you mentioned, you know, because it's very important because I want to bring it back to, like I said, I was very young child viewing this and I was very, um, the oppression of my older siblings of watching this movie kind of made, you know, the impression, my opinion of the movie. And I remember you, Stan, and then our sister, Katarina, really putting this line out there, the, uh, why do my eyes hurt? Because you never used them before as this very important.

19:27And philosophical, as a child, I understand. I was just like, oh yeah, it's very important. So what does this line mean to you? What does it mean to me? Yeah. Like, why was it so like, cause I remember when we were watching it as well, I was like, you've never used them before. Whoa. Yeah. That was like the, like, look, look, listen to that. That's, that's, that's, that's some deep shit. So that's interesting because I think only a few years later I got into, um, a writer. He's kind of a, a preacher writer, Peter Hyatt, who talks, who has this really cool theories about reality, uh, from a religious point of view. And, uh, so it's really interesting.

20:07Well, I like that because, um, if, if you are a spiritual being, right, I think usually that change when you become, um, what I, what word would I say? When you wake up, let's say, you know, from the, from the reality, your thing is the reality, just the daily grind of everything, you know? Right. And, and kind of realize there is something more to this life, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, and see that, you know, every person or maybe in every different religion that could be a different thing. But, um, I would say like, oh, maybe I have a purpose in my life rather than, you know,

20:48when you realize that. And, uh, I guess that at that time they must've connected with that because, because I've watched this movie like every two years probably. And later on when I read Peter Hyatt, he has a book called Eternity and it's based on the last book of the Bible of, um. Revelation. Revelation. And I always hated that book because it doesn't make much sense. It's pretty metal though. I have to say. People always, yeah, it's quite mad and people draw pictures and timelines out of it. And I thought it doesn't, it doesn't make, it's not right, you know? Yeah. And he threw a lot of other light to it. And so one, one simple example, he thought this mathematician, I don't know what his name

21:30is. He tried to explain, um, kind of a third dimension or like a spiritual dimension of something. And, and it's, the book is called Flatlanders. You might look at that. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's a really cute story of these people who only lived in two dimensions and they couldn't realize what the third dimension is. I've got to. And so his example is like a sphere was approaching their, you know, plate, whatever, two dimensional. And they said, oh, look, there's a dot coming, you know, and, and, and as it approached closer, no, it's not a dot, it's a circle. You know, they were always talking in these two dimensional kind of terminology until the moment the sphere kind of interacted with their, um, world, which was flat.

22:13And suddenly they were inside of it and kind of understood, oh, this is the third dimension. And this to him is like the kingdom of God, you know, inter, intersecting, I would say, with this world or the way we think like normally from your morning to your day. So that was really interesting. That get me really started into, and, and he used this metaphor quite a lot, like that, um, God doesn't shake you up, but he whispers to you and tries to wake you up from a dream that we, you know, people build around ourselves, you know, so you're kind of a daily grind, you know, work for, uh, you know, to pay off your mortgage and everything and just stick in there. Yeah. You know, exactly.

22:54So I think there's a lot of, um, uh, while we're at that topic, you know, many times when they talk about the philosophical concept of that, of waking up to a real reality, I connected to it quite a lot. And that's a really good answer. I like that. Very good. If I may. So those lines, that one was really good. And I guess that's why, you know, your sister, my sister. Yeah. And we call it like, oh, that's a great line. Yeah. Makes sense. If I like that a lot. Put it into full circle. Um, speaking of the flatliners, if you go to YouTube and look up Carl Sagan telling the story of the flatlanders, you will really realize that where the, the actor Hugo Weaving got

23:36inspired for the accent of Agent Smith. Oh yeah. Because just watch that. Watch that. You will be amazed of how much it sounds like Carl Sagan, especially in that video. And then the flatliners can't see the camera. Yeah. It's like a spit, but, um, if I may, it could be mean like, if you see the reality for the first time, you might not like it. That could be also, you know what you're saying, like your eyes hurt because you never used them. So, so the reality is something that you're not used to and it may be uncomforting because of the first time you see it. That's another way to return it too. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. To, to trivialize this whole thing, I just wanted to mention, can we just talk about Morphe, like, um, Lawrence Fishburne's delivery there?

24:18He is so sad. That's what I was saying the last time. He's never used them before. He's like, he's concerned for new as well being. And then a cutaway to Dozer, new character, by the way. First time we actually saw him. Oh, I think you're calling him Tank. That's Dozer. Yeah, that's Dozer. And he just looks at Morpheus and it's just, it's, I don't know. There's just something about that, that resonates a little bit more when these two things are put together. Um, there's another thing we have here and we can go to the transition now, this, uh, montage and it has the, the wonderful Don Davis choir boy. Don Davis is the composer. Um, and he has this choir boy, choir, choir boy solo going on the, ah, and it was choir

25:01boy. And, um, it's, uh, something that Stan, you noted that I remembered. You were saying this music, man, it's so great. I remember that. That was back in 2001, my friend. And, uh, I like the soundtrack. I mean, there's a few parts that I always, I even sometimes sing a few themes when I walk on the street, like, when they go into the house. He knows, you know, because it's so like many people, uh, usually just, uh, associate the Matrix music with the songs that are in the movie. Oh, well, you'd be like, propeller head. But it just made me feel so happy that you actually did the, did it, did it, did it. Thank you. Thank you. No, no, no. That's, that's a really good sound. As I say, it is really a synchronicity.

25:42It works for the message. So, and there's a lot of movies that work that way, but this one, for me, at least at that time, 99 and 2000 was like, wow, they actually put everything together. Yeah. Yeah. It was impressive. I wanted to ask you. Because like the score, I'm just, I just wanted just a little tidbit, like the score that Don Davis was, uh, composing for this, he was actually, uh, very mindful of trying to put repetition and reflection on into his music. So like the, to show the, the duality of the universe. No, I just wanted to ask, um, in general, when you first saw The Matrix, you obviously saw more movies at that point since you were what, almost 30.

26:23How did you view The Matrix in light of the rest of the films you've seen up, up to that point? Did it become an old, like an immediate favorite film or was it like, what was the initial thought in comparison to other movies? Anytime movies like Shorts and Redemption and stuff like that, I go back to. But this is like pure drama, right? And Matrix is, is, is, um, almost like the genre, like Odyssey would be a similar movie to me. Okay. It's 2001 Space Odyssey, right? 2000, yeah. Kubrick, yeah. Uh, Kubrick. Um, and maybe a few others. At that point, I think I already seen Man on the Moon and a lot of weird movies, maybe, you know, by Kaufman, uh, was it?

27:06Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think I was already exposed to different genres and stuff. And I knew like stuff that I don't like and I like, and I was really impressed, I guess, because I've seen science fiction movies, but I guess none of them had Kung Fu. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. And, uh, and the styling, of course, that's what we talked yesterday with kids, like at that time, like all the stuff they wear. And it was like exact on time. I actually remember a trailer. On point. They played, which was really just the first scene with Trinity and it, it just stopped. Do you, do you want, do you want to know what the Matrix is?

27:46And I was captivated. So I've seen the trailer before and I forgot about the movie and then, you know, my brother-in-law took me to see it. Um, so it was very much, they were building up the whole thing. And I think that was a new at that time, you know, the whole marketing thing behind it. It was worldwide. I just remembered something really stupid. Um, before I saw the Matrix, um, I hung out at your house and I brought the Sims games and we installed on Stan's computer and then immediately you got bored. So you went online and you looked for, um, like, like packs and downloads. I remember you downloaded like Duke Nukem and, and, and then you download this man with glasses

28:27and a black coat. And, and it was like, and he looked so like Asian to me. It was like this strange and you're like, oh, look, I'm making Duke Nukem and this guy dance and kiss. And it was like funny, but I was like, who is that? Like he said, that's from the Matrix. And I was like, the Matrix is about Asians. That was always confusing. Yeah. So I kept waiting. Where's this Asian guy who's going to come in? And I was like, oh, that's Neo. That's just completely random. It is remembered. But Keanu is Hawaiian or something? Yeah. He's like half, he's like half Hawaiian. There's quite a few. He's, he's, he's all over the place. He's an international man. But it was Sims 1 with like three pixels of graphics. So you can't really.

29:07And you worked out he's Asian from those three pixels. Yeah. Racist. Okay. So there's, there's the only thing I can say is that a little behind the scenes thing that I don't think many people know. So back from the logs of Phil Osterhaus, who was the assistant for the Wachowskis when they were filming, the prosthetics for the acupuncture there, it took eight hours to apply. That's long. Which is, yeah, it's pretty long. Hopefully it was just one day. And they, and there are real acupuncture needles on Keanu's head and face. Oh, so no dummy? No, no dummy. So no, well, all the other acupuncture needles are makeup appliances.

29:49You can tell with all the bulges, that's just the kind of like the suction cups going on. And the guy who placed them on, on his face is a, is a guy called Longy who was, who was the cast masseur. And he made them all relax and, you know, made them. And put needles in their faces. They got hurt. Yeah. And his, his official title is master of pressure points. Wow. Nice. Longy. That's the guy. Let's hire him. Well, that's the thing. Like acupuncture, I think is used mostly to relax muscles. So muscles. So if you have, you know, a really tight muscle, they know exactly where to, you know, pinpoint and then it will release that. I mean, maybe just stress. I don't know, you know, but it looks cool. So they used it.

30:30Oh, definitely. The imagery is fantastic. And so is that wonderful fade in and fade out to show the passage of time and fade to black. And that's how our minute ends. I think that's it for the minute. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And also it ties in nicely to the Asian culture of Kung Fu and everything. Yes. Yes. Acupuncture comes from that part of the world. Okay. Now it's time to go back to 1996. Oh yeah. We got to go back to. Cue the music, boys. All right. We have a little theme to play. We have a little, we have a little jingle. It's amazing. It's beautiful. It's snazzy. It's jazz. By the way, you know, you guys, you can play jingles on the Zencast. I'll do that next week. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. All right.

31:10So in the 1996 script, I just want to mention a wonderful thing that happens. And as Neo opens his eyes, Dozer says he needs a lot of work. Morpheus says, I know. And then they're talking about the atrophied muscles. And, you know, you've never used your eyes before. It's all there. But this is one of the best things I've ever heard. Morpheus takes his sunglasses off and puts them on Neo. What? So Morpheus has had sunglasses this entire time. Because his eyes hurt. And he puts them on Neo to help him with his eyes because they hurt.

31:50And he goes, rest Neo. The answers are coming. All I wanted to say. That's amazing. Thank you very much. That's perfect. They should have kept that in. These little pin sunglasses. Just like, boop. That's beautiful. He never wears them when they're in the ship. No. They don't have any sunglasses there. There's no time for that stuff. There's no sun. There's no sun. Simple as that. He just likes the agent's look, you know. The agents, they just wear sunglasses anytime, anywhere. He's envious of their angel's looks. So who wrote the script in the 1996? Oh no, it's the Wachowskis. They developed, this was their passion project. They were developing this for like almost a decade before they even got it to, you know,

32:32to get picked up. Yeah. So there were many iterations, but this is the one we got. But it's just so interesting. The 96 version is so close to the film version, but it's just, the vibe is very different. The vibe is more wacky. It's more like a comic book than an actual film. I mean, there's this whole... A whole section, like remember when they're in the car and they're like pulling out the little squiggle that's in his belly? Oh yeah. There's a whole section when they go to this guy's house in a van and he's like, oh, I've got to get this out. It's like a crazy professor guy. It's like this all sorts of madness. It's very anime-like. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for listening to... What minute is this? 36. 36.

33:13No begging. No begging for himself. Yes, he can. And in fact, we're going to ask him to do that right away. So thank you, Stan, for being here with us. And tell me, you seem to be pretty natural with talking on the microphone and there has to be a reason why. Could you tell us? I was born near a microphone. Did you record your birth? Do you mean like my recent endeavors? I was going to do the reason thing, but yes, you're absolutely right. I completely, that just escaped my mind. And I just totally forgot that, yeah, you were born with a microphone in your hand because that's like most of your life has been music and recording and audio and all that kind

33:58of stuff. Also broadcasting. So my dad worked for this worldwide, you know, Christian radio broadcast. I mean, I was, I guess, 10 or 11. He sat me down the mix and watched the needles, push the faders and record him, you know, because it's kind of a pre-recorded show just like this, really. Isn't it ironic that both of us are doing this? So I started really early. Yeah. And then I said, oh, can I use this to record, you know, a guitar or whatever, a piano? And I used my tape recorder. So yeah, that was that. But my recent thing is, yeah, I'm doing a podcast about beer, which is called Podcast. And you can find it on iTunes. And we talk about craft beer most of the time. And I don't know when this is going to be live, but the latest episode, which we'll, you

34:41know, publish soon. We actually have been to a brewery. So very exciting. Sweet. That's quite lovely. We listen to the podcast, but it's quite lovely. We do. We do. Oh, indeed. Ideas for some beers. Ideas for some beers. I make a list of every beer you guys mentioned. I took your survey. Oh, yeah. Your evil survey. Okay. We got a book to pick. Why do you have an evil survey, Stan? Why do you have a question where they have to pick their favorite? No, no. What is this? Least favorite voice. No, it was the worst. Least favorite voice. Who wrote this and why is someone so cruel? I guess it might be Ian. But maybe it was me. I don't know. I was sitting there for a minute. I was going, I can't do this.

35:23I mean, you're my brother, so I could just pick you. You know, that's an easy one because I have the right. Yeah, just pick me. That's right. Yeah. I don't know the other people. They'll be confused. They'll be like, no, I cannot finish the survey. I think we only have feedback from three of you, so it's fine. Oh, perfect. Let's go. All right. So that's the podca.sk. Yeah. That's the website. And that's the CA. If you put podcast into iTunes, podcast, whatever search, you'll find that too. So, yeah. Do you have a Twitter stand? It has great graphics, great logo, all that kind of stuff. What people can find. Well, it only has a great logo so far. It has a great graphic that a very talented artist made for us, but we still have not put it on the website. But it's on Facebook. Watch that space.

36:04It's still unknown who that was. Yes. It's a mystery, man. Schraudetend mystery. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. A great illustrator. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a Twitter stand? Do you want to plug or no? Yes. I think it's podcast beer or something. All right. Sure. Yeah. Podcast. It's all about beer. It's all about the beer. Yeah. You'll find it on the website anyway. So. Okay. Go and listen to it. Yes. Absolutely. I agree. I'm going to listen to it. We heartily endorse this. Yes. We heartily endorse it. Quite. Yes. All right, listeners. Have a good night or bon appetit or whatever you're doing. Listen to this. And Stan, are you going to be with us for the rest of the week here? Oh, yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. If you feel like it, you know. If you feel like it. Well, if you call me, I'll be back.

36:44Yes. Fantastic. All righty. Wonderful. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye.