Summary
➡ The conversation revolves around the speaker’s change in living situation, their views on certain movies, especially Disney, and how it departs from traditional patterns. They mention a rewatch of a movie and their interesting notes, and proceed to discuss the bizarre, and round-the-clock infomercials in Japan, popularity of certain movies, Star Wars franchise views, and the cultural presence of Halloween, Christmas, and the unique KFC Christmas tradition in Japan.
➡ The text primarily discusses the effect and influence of Disney movies and music, particularly “This is Halloween” and “Last Christmas”, on culture and public consciousness. The narrator also shares their impression on ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ and touches upon personal style preferences and their interest in SCTV, a Canadian sketch comedy show.
➡ The text explores the movie “Nightmare Before Christmas,” suggesting its themes delve into a broader metaphor of the protagonist Jack discovering religion or higher power in the form of Christmas, contrasting with his life in a scientific, atheist world. The author further suggests that the other holiday doors present potential for Disney to produce sequels with Jack Skellington covering other holidays.
➡ The text discusses the “Haunted Mansion” and its significance in being considered a Christmas movie due to its recurring themes of Christmas, as seen in movies by director Shane Black. It further analyzes “The Nightmare Before Christmas” as featuring a blend of Halloween and Christmas thematics, while noting Jack Skellington and Sally’s uniqueness. The analogies drawn between Wicker Man and Jack Skellington lead to discussions of the film’s implications about Halloween, Christmas, spirituality, science, and real-world settings.
➡ The text discusses the visual and thematic contrasts in Tim Burton’s works, analyzing concepts like the weaponization of Christmas and the portrayal of an ‘idiotic’ Santa Claus in juxtaposing worlds. It explores the characterization of artificial beings like Sally, considering her an embodiment of the homunculus concept in direct violation of Rene Descartes’ theory, possibly implying the absence of a soul. The discussion delves into Disney’s role in ‘owning’ nostalgia and its impact, using Toy Story 3’s premise to explore ideas about perpetuating attachment to material objects, suggesting an nefarious agenda behind inducing emotions like guilt and fear of causing pain to these ‘living’ toys.
➡ The conversation explores many topics, focusing primarily on Sally as a character in the Nightmare Before Christmas, the traditional female role in occult practices she fills, and the concept of her as a homunculus. Other elements discussed include the practice of re-releasing the film with improved technology, the fact that Nightmare Before Christmas now belongs to Disney canon, and an upcoming homunculus makers kit. These discussions also meander into topics like societal programming and the saturation of modern pop media culture.
➡ The speaker shares a preference for home viewing over movie theaters, enjoying the freedom to pause and make snacks at will. Despite being a self-proclaimed misanthrope, they recount positive experiences viewing films in less crowded settings, like late-night Japan theaters. Lastly, they enter a detailed discussion about potential racial implications in film, specifically related to The Nightmare Before Christmas and old Betty Boop cartoons, exploring how past media might influence present perceptions.
➡ The text discusses different ways people enjoy their Christmas: some choose to work, others prefer “me time,” and many experience the joy and chaos of children screaming for presents.
Transcript
In the heart of these animated wonders, there are tales and symbols older and darker than the castle’s highest tower. Welcome to occult Disney journey with paranoid American and Matthew Comeggies as they traverse the intricate pathways of alchemy, the shadowed corners of biblical narratives, and the very folklore that birthed these tales. Beneath every brushstroke lie whispers of writers’taboos, the cloak and dagger politics of hallowed studios and secrets held close.
Every magic has its price. Every kingdom its shadows. Are you prepared to peer beyond the veil? Welcome to the Occult Disney podcast. Hi everyone. It is occult Disney. This is Matt here. Joining me, as always, is the paranoid American. Howdy. Hey, guys. There we go. Keep it nice and short and sweet. But it’s Christmas time, isn’t it? It’s the holiday season and it just happens to line up nicely that it is time on our list of movies to do the nightmare before Christmas.
The ground zero for hot topic stores, at least for the 20 years afterwards. I don’t know about now. I haven’t been in a hot topic for ever. You don’t have to lie. No, I was just thinking. I think I never went to one because by the time they showed up in malls, I was in Athens, Georgia, and we had, like, the junkman’s daughter. Why would I go to hot topic? So you’ve never been in a hot topic? Unironically.
I probably went in with a girlfriend at some point. Just kind of walked in for a minute. Yeah, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything at a hot topic. But I did notice that half of the things there, at least in the 2000s, were from the nightmare before Christmas or new metal bands. Right. I will admit, I think I bought a clearance, like Marilyn Manson shirt from a hot topic while I was in high school, so it fits the bill.
That makes sense. Maybe you didn’t have a junkman’s daughter or a junkman’s daughter’s brother. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And it sounds like it might even be illegal when you say it that way. No, those are some kind of boutique, weird young Hipster stores in Atlanta area and Athens, Georgia. So maybe they’re still there. I couldn’t say. But yeah, I guess all of this stuff kind of like keys into my mind.
Goth girls, high school, like you’re saying. For me, that kind of is the nightmare before Christmas. I mean, you could just extend that to Tim Burton, couldn’t you? You could, but especially this. You know, Batman returns or Ed Wood, the movies he was actually making when this was being made. Don’t have that great movies, but don’t really have that same nate. I don’t know. I think Edward Scissorhands might have been one of those OG.
He’s kind of like a cooler version of the guy from the cure, and I can’t believe I can’t remember his name right off. Robert Smith. Yeah. He’s kind of like an even edgier, pun intended version of Robert Smith in a way. But that became this new love interest. Like, I love the dead guy. I love the homunculus, because, let’s be honest, that’s what Edward Scissorhand was. He was a homunculus.
Yeah. That makes sense when you say it that way. I did say Ed Wood, by the way, which is a different flavor. No, I understand. Yeah. Edward didn’t really get the same attention as the other ones, but it was also more of a sleeper. Like, you had to care a little bit about Edward. It’s also a really interesting one. I did. I saw it opening night. I’m just saying I think it’s funny that he made some hardcore ed movies.
The other thing about the nightmare before Christmas is I saw it opening night and I watched it last night. That was my second viewing. I haven’t not seen it since October 29, 1993. This is a pretty consistent classic here. And we’ll get into, I guess, one of my main theories here. I’ll just blurt it out, whatever. But that Disney is, and this isn’t like I’m not uncovering these golden plates and deciphering them and claiming a new religion out of this.
It’s almost completely obvious. But just let’s state the obvious. Disney decided, why don’t we just own the entire months from October to December? If we take this particular strategy and release this movie, which came out on October 29. So it came out right at October during Halloween. And it has this longevity that can last all the way through Christmas. So now people collect it for not just Halloween, but also for Christmas.
And by establishing that, it almost made it, like, an evergreen thing. Because if it can apply to two holidays, why can’t it just apply year round and become more of, like, a mentality? And I think that that was g. I don’t know if they did it intentionally. It feels like they did it intentionally, but they definitely know how to market it intentionally. Yeah, I think it’s the marketing.
Some lucky serendipity, because this is a little bit outside of the Disney sphere. Tim Burton, of course, we’ve mentioned before was an animator with Disney in the early 80s. He did the first version of Frankenweenie. He did Vincent. He wanted to do this as, like a 30 minutes special or something. But then he left Disney, became a successful director. Beetlejuice, Peewee’s big adventure, the Batman movies, and realized that Disney owed him, like, a film project or so.
And Katzenberg was into the idea of him doing it. Of course, like I said, burton was actually making Batman returns and then Ed Wood when this was in production. So this is technically like a Harry Selik movie, and they’ve branded it with Tim Burton. So it’s his story, it’s his ideas, it’s his sensibility. Selik was partly tasked with make it a Tim Burton movie, but apparently Tim Burton was only in the San Francisco production studio, like, maybe eight or ten days for the whole production.
So he was not very hands on, but it was kind of like he was franchising his aesthetic or something. Aesthetic. Pretty smart. And honestly, sometimes if you find a team that understands the vision, you don’t have to be there every day, and that might even be good. Right? Like, you might not have to micromanage any of it, and they might be able to do a better job. And stop motion animation literally drives people insane.
So I can see him being like, yeah, I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of stop motion animation. Like, even more than regular animation. Yeah, I got these hot topic shirts to sell. I can’t go crazy. Quite right. I already look crazy. Can’t go crazy. Of course. We got Danny Elfman here, which. Have you seen any modern pictures of Danny Elfman? You mean like a photograph of Danny Elfman? I have not.
Yeah, he’s been doing concerts recently. He’s like, in his sixty s or something, maybe up to 70. And he’s. He a looker? Well, he’s something to look at. He’s always got wildly dyed hair. He’s gotten jacked, which is insane. Like, he’s been bodybuilding or something. So when you see him now, you’re kind of like, what is on, man? Good for him. But he’s definitely, like, he’s chosen, especially in later years, he’s chosen an even stronger visual vibes and personal visual vibes than Tim Burton.
He picked it up a little late in life, but there’s never too long the peacock your way out. Well, he was weird from the start. He was. Started off in the band Oingo Boingo, which I was wondering if that’s why it’s Ugie boogie in this movie, who is legitimately creepy as a villain, in my opinion. Yeah, it looks a little bit like somewhere between the Ghostbusters symbol and when they tried to turn the Ghostbusters symbol into a CGI monster in the 2016 movie.
Kind of made me think of that a little bit. This is cooler because it’s got the texture and the bugs inside and stuff. I think there’s just something inherently scary about a burlap sack to a child. Like, you’re a kid, you see a burlap sack, you’re like, something good is not coming out of this thing. That could be it. Yeah. There is something about the psychic influence of this movie, because I’m like, who did I even see this movie with? I might have just gone with my dad, but of course, in my mind now, I went with, like, goth girls, but I don’t think I actually went to the movies with the goth girls.
We just had quote unquote lunch, as in, we weren’t eating anything out in front of the school. That’s how dumb a kid I was. I was like, I don’t want to be in a lunchroom. I’ll just hang out in front of the school. And then girls started hanging out with me, and I didn’t put two and two together through there, but that’s my own problem as a teenager.
Yeah, it clicks like ten years later, and you’re like, oh, that’s what was going on. I think this came out around the same time, too, that it was not cool to go to the movies with your parents at this point. Even though I don’t agree with that now, I don’t believe that now. At the time, I 100% believed it. It was like, if people even knew you lived in the same house as your parents, you might not be as cool as you really could be.
I live by myself. I’ve got my own apartment. Maybe not to that extreme, but I think because of that, I saw this thing on dvd when it came out, and the background when I wasn’t paying as much attention. But after I caught a glimpse of it, I did end up going and renting it and just watched it, and I thought it was cool. I mean, like you said, it was a complete departure from what Disney’s been doing up until now.
The closest I can even think of would be maybe fantasia when they do the whole black God scene. I can’t think of a lot of other overly, like, completely focused on just creepiness for the entire movie situations in any other Disney movie. Yeah, this one was released under Touchstone, like Roger Rabbit because they’re like, oh, it’s a little more adult. So we should not market it to kids.
But about. They’ve embraced it, though. They have fully embraced it at this point. As if it were. Yes, it’s been rebranded as, like, a mainline Disney film. When I was looking at the Blu ray here, I got the new CGI logo, which I wanted a touchstone logo. So I was a little disappointed there. It’s always fun to see the old touchstone logo here and there. Or even the weird synth themed white and blue logo from the.
Missed that one. Leave the period appropriate logo on your movie, people. I don’t think they’re listening. No, they’re not listening. Anyone that would actually hear that they could do something about it isn’t hearing it. The other fun thing is I had to rewatch the last 20 minutes of the movie, actually, just before doing this, because. Not because it was boring or something. It was short. I remember on opening night us being a little disappointed because it was so short.
We were like, what? That was it? But, yeah, last night I was, like, dozing off a little, so I had to rewrite it. But I kept writing notes while I was, like, falling asleep. So I’ll read a few of those because I don’t know what they mean. I said, something looks like a scientific bong. I don’t know what that means. The guy kind of does. The scientist does.
Oh, that might be it. That might be it. Okay. Santa’s OCD with all of his list. Well, that’s the list. Here’s the one. They’ve got something for Peyton Reese’s military organization. Like, what does that mean? Was this, like, an infomercial that came on in the middle of the night? I should look into that. I don’t know, but that’s the one that really blows my mind. But the point is, I was watching this, like, in a weird between state and writing strange things into my notes.
So I was kind of excited about that. But I did have to rewatch last 20 minutes of the movie this morning. Since you went on a tangent, I’m going to cash in a tangent card really quick. Are there any weird. And I don’t even know if you still even have, like, network tv, but let’s just say you had regular network tv. Or if it were ten years ago, are there weird infomercials in Japan, too, about stuff that would only be on at 02:00 a.
m. Or is it just weird? Twenty four seven. Oh, it’s weird. 24 07:10 a. m. On a Sunday morning, you’ll come on, and there’s a panel of tv talent. What is their talent? They’re on tv panels. That’s like all they do. And they’re all like, over an electric toothbrush or something. So it’s not just 02:00 a. m. It’s like all day every day. It sounds like free TikTok, like you’re just good at being excited and having facial expressions.
It is. People still watch network tv in Japan, which is a different beast in Japan of, you know, especially older people just watch whatever’s on tv, and even kids are watching tv. I can’t think of american kids like, watching proper tv much anymore. I think it would be weird. I mean, not that it would be bad, because I assume if you’re, like, homeschooled or if you don’t let your kids have their own devices to consume media, you might be watching network tv or you’ve got a stack of Disney movies or maybe just like, veggie Tales of Disney’s too evil.
Another interesting thing is NHK, the state tv, japanese state tv, which people do watch. It’s not like PBS in the states, but Sunday night they will feature an american or british movie or something. And then that validates the japanese people and thinking, oh, that must be a good movie. That’s a kind of weird subtle or not so subtle mind control. Do you know any of the movies they’ve played recently? Whiplash.
Okay. Fairly modern. Yeah. The drummer movie, right? Yeah. Which was called sessions in Japan, which I haven’t seen yet. I do my film podcast. It’s on the list. I’m like, I’ll watch it when we get know. But I’ve had a friend tell me, I think he saw it on the NHK, and just like, you should watch it. It’s great. And yeah, it’s supposed to be a very good movie, but that’s the one I can think of.
What are some other ones? I think maybe the Star wars prequels became more popular in Japan that way because in Japan, people like the prequels. Maybe because since it’s dubs, they got better voice actors. Is it a thoughts right now? Yeah, well, I’m just like, if you have a voice actors, they’re kind of. Because the prequels, even with very good actors, are giving you very stilted lines. So if you have someone dub it, then you’re doing okay.
I personally liked the George Lucas Star wars the best out of all of them. So far. And I mean, the two. What is it, the 1999 one? I don’t even know the name of it. The Phantom Menace. That’s my favorite Star wars to date still. And I’ll die on that hill. Yeah. Followed by the ewoks one. Which was return to Jedi, if I’m not mistaken. That’s correct, yes.
Which are, as I also understand, are, like, the two worst ones when it comes to hardcore Star Trek or Star wars lovers, I guess. I don’t know. Yeah, but it’s also an age thing, I guess. But it’s funny. Sometimes they’ll have vintage stuff in the japanese theaters. You will see nightmare before Christmas stuff regularly. They had, like, phantom menace action figures, like, six months ago at the little movie theater gift shop.
So that was weird. Yeah. How is nightmare before Christmas play out in Japan? It’s a style thing only, I would say. I mean, I’m sure a few people have watched it, but people definitely know the imagery from the movie. But that’s the thing. In Japan, I’ll often see kids wearing, like, a ramon’s t shirt or something. That’s because the design’s cool. Or, you know, Stanley Kubrick movies t shirts.
And they haven’t. They got it at the uniqlo, but they don’t actually know what it is. They got it at the hot topic or whatever the version of hot Topic is. Right, right. Well, that’s half the stores in Tokyo, I guess. But do you stop them? Name three Kubrick movies right now. No. If they’re wearing a 2001 shirt, it’s like, have you seen that movie? And they’re like, oh, this is a movie.
They don’t even necessarily know it’s a movie. What about Santa Claus? Does he have any presents whatsoever? Yeah, Christmas is basically like, kids get a present. Everybody is supposed to eat fried chicken. KFC did marketing so well 20 years back that everyone thinks they have to eat fried chicken for Christmas in Japan now. So when I tell them we don’t eat fried chicken in America, so much for know, they’re like, what? It blows their minds.
That’s honestly awesome. We should just do, like, an episode on how KFC managed to establish their foothold in japanese Christmas. Oh. And in the past year or two, they’ve started putting into Commercials a young japanese colonel Sanders. So he’s in the colonel Sanders suit. He’s got the goatee, but he looks like he’s about 30. He doesn’t look that old. I think he could do well. Man, he could be big in Japan.
He is big. In Japan, they should market him in America just to really confuse people. Halloween here is interesting, actually, because Halloween only became a thing in the past ten years. When I first started working in Japan, I’m working at english school. We’d have a Halloween party and I had a hell of a time finding a costume because just what, Halloween wasn’t a thing. Here it is now, not so much like trick or treating, but Halloween parties.
Kids are a little more into it. But what is Halloween music? I guess there’s the monster mash and there’s. This is Halloween from this movie. So Halloween, October in Japan, you get just pelted over the brain the entire month with the song, this is Halloween. And then for Christmas, they hardcore last Christmas. So in Japan, those are the ones you hear the most. This is Halloween and last Christmas.
That’s a great note because, yeah, when you say Halloween music, I think monster Mash, which is what, like 60s, they don’t play that. Not a lot since then. There’s like the Dr. Demento one. I can’t remember what that one was, but that was a little bit more obscure. And then there’s this song. So again, Disney, they found a gap in the market and they’re like, we can really.
And I guess this will go into my Disney theory, but they own nostalgia. They’ve invested in the ultimate bitcoin, which is nostalgia. And it means it’s like the ultimate brand loyalty, essentially. And this is just a way to solidify you thinking of Disney. Twenty four seven. Or when Halloween pops up. Now there’s a reason for you to think of Disney again and keep thinking of Disney all the way through Christmas.
Although it wasn’t this viewing when I figured out that that was the nightmare before Christmas song. But I’ve been hearing that song for the past five years and I haven’t seen this movie for a while. So for the first two years of that, I’m like, what is a song? If someone told you it’s a Disney song, how surprised would you have been? Yeah, there’s a kind of this crazy discount store and it’s not like a, like, it’s almost like mixing a hot topic with a Walmart, if that makes any sense, called a Don Quixote, where they just have like super cheap stuff.
When my parents visited a few years ago, my mom really liked it. So when they visited this October, I took them there because they needed some things. But yeah, my mom was going nuts because they were playing that song at top volume and she was like, I can’t think getting out of here. So Disney was melting her brain, and she had to get out of there, like, just a few months ago.
It’s worldwide, man. The programming is. Yeah, that’s. That’s at least, like, an amusing outcome of it. Well, not for her, I guess. She was being driven nuts by the loud music and flashing lights in the discount store. What was your takeaway opinion on your second viewing ever, aside from putting you to sleep? Apparently. Well, that’s because I was watching it late at night, not because I was bored or didn’t like it.
I’m, like, trying to stay awake. That’s where I started writing, like, bizarre notes, because I’m trying to stay awake and not quite managing it. And I woke up this morning, it’s like, you know what? I didn’t actually know what happened the last 20 minutes of that, but that did let me watch the Ugie boogie sequence in kind of a dream state, I guess. So watching it this morning, I could make sense.
Albin, last night, what was that? What happened, man? That sort of thing. There was, like, black lights. Whoa, what’s going on? That’s kind of like, I watched the last 2030 minutes of it, like, on acid or something last night. So that’s kind of cool. The sleepy version, but whatever, homegrown. Maybe the DMT in my brain was just, like, pausing a bit. I don’t know. So that made it kind of cool.
But, yeah, I guess now it has a reputation. So when we first saw it, it was like, wow, that animation is so cool. Not really understanding even what goes into stop motion like I do now. So now I’m just sitting there trying to figure out how they did half of this stuff. So that’s kind of cool. The story, knowing more about archetypes and knowing more about relationships and stuff, it worked better.
I don’t know. When I first saw it, the story didn’t latch me for some reason, so maybe it wasn’t for kids. What would I have been, 14 when I saw it? So I don’t know. But, yeah, I quite enjoyed watching it last night. So I’m not the biggest person. I like a lot of Tim Burton movies, but the Tim Burton aesthetic has never really been, like, my, uh.
So there’s a weird, rambling answer to your mean. I definitely think Tim Burton’s aesthetic was my thing. Although Edward scissorhands by far is, like, for me, that’s, like, peak Tim Burton aesthetic. And after that, it kind of just gets ridiculous. Then you get, like, Willy Wonka, which is almost like the lip injection BBL version of Tim Burton. In a way. It’s got this artificial gleam to it where everything’s just inflated a little bit.
But yeah. Is that making me, like a Tim Burton hipster? Maybe. Maybe. I’m at my most burtony now because I wear dark suits a lot. I don’t know. I usually wear black. Dark jacket, dark shirt, if I can. What would have been my aesthetics? I was playing in bands in high school, so in early 90s, just straight grunge flannel shirt and band t shirt and jeans, which I don’t wear jeans anymore.
And then in the late ninety s, I actually did this several times where I would play concerts dressed basically like croftwork on the man machine cover, skinny black tie and a red shirt thing. I did that for a few years. Then when I went to university, I went with early fedora and I was trying to look like Jack Harak in the guess for a while. So that’s always been, like, my style choices.
Did you ever tip your hat and call someone? Don’t. I don’t think I did any hat tipping. It was like an Indiana Jones fedora. It wasn’t like a classic. Okay. It still doesn’t get a pass, by the way, if you’re wondering. It doesn’t get a pass. Even in 97, it doesn’t count. It’s like possession is nine tenths of the law. If you had a fedora, you’re guilty. I did.
So by 2003, 2004, I was like, maybe I shouldn’t wear this thing. But there you go. I still have that. I don’t wear this one. I just got this one because it was like two hats, 50% off. But you’re forty s now, right? Yeah. Okay. You’re allowed to wear fedors now because they’re made for old men. Okay. I will be rocking the Santa cap next week, I guess, because I’ll be doing Christmas all week at the school.
So maybe I should sing this as Halloween. I don’t know. You could do the Jack Skellington version, something like that. I couldn’t hit those notes. I can sing. Okay. But you do have to give Danny Elfman credit for being able to hit all those notes since he does Jack’s singing voice. I did notice Catherine O’Hara, it seems, did the voice of Sally and the singing as well. So I guess she could actually sing.
Are you very familiar with Catherine O’Hara? The name sounds familiar, but I don’t know why. She’s the mom in home alone. I think she might be in Schitt’s Creek more recently. Okay. Yeah, the best name titles. And I’m just a massive SCTV fan, so of course she was on also beetlejuice. Yeah, she’s the lead in Beetlejuice. Yeah. But, yeah, for me, it’s always like one of the SCTV people because that television show has always been one of my weird obsessions.
Even now. SCTV, it was a canadian sketch comedy show from the late 70s, early 80s, had Eugene Levy, Joe Flatterly, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Martin Short were all on it. Harold Ramos was on it for a while. He was a headwind canadian. Saturday Night Live or what? Yeah, but it’s not like a stage or anything. It’s set up to look like you’re just watching this network. So it’s like fake commercials, fake tv shows, and it takes a little while to get into it because there are almost no punchlines.
Everything is played almost like 100% straight. So it’s just you have to get in the vibe that they’re subverting what you expect from television. So it’s really funny, but there are no punchlines. And that’s off putting for a lot of people. But, yeah, you can watch a bunch of on YouTube. If you go for the first couple of seasons, it’s like 30 minutes episodes or something. Bob and Doug Mackenzie, the canadian beer swillers, come from that show.
If you’ve ever seen the movie strange brew. Have you seen the movie strange brew? I know I have, but I can’t even place what the hell it was about. Oh, that’s about using beer with chemicals to mind control people. So then they can be triggered by basically a mog. We were talking about mogs earlier. So you’ll see all the employees of the brewery. Someone’s in there, like, they go run and put in these stormtrooper hockey suits and they force them to play hockey or something.
On the top of a gas station? No, in a hockey rink in the brewery. They have a hockey rink in the brewery as you do. That’s right. But, yeah, actually, I would highly recommend having a look at least at the Wiki for Strange Brew, because that does have some interesting mind control mkultra vibe stuff in is. What do you think this movie is trying to get across on? More subtle.
Can’t. Like you said, Disney aced the marketing as hard as they could, but the construction of the movie is from different sources. Apparently, Disney did not meddle that much in this is, you know, Burton’s orders and Selic making and his team making it for the most so I was wondering how much of this is autobiographical for Tim Burton, because to me, it almost seems like Jack is living in this scientific world, and it’s basically atheism.
He’s living inside atheism, where the world is dead, there’s no life anywhere, and everyone’s obsessed with the scientific method and everything, like having to equal something. And even Jack, when he first discovers Christmas, he goes back and he’s trying to make potions and he’s writing out math equations and he’s trying to figure out what’s the logic and what’s the math and what’s the science behind all of this.
There’s a lot of references to science in general. And I guess in this way, it’s like Christmas kind of represents just religion as a whole, in a way, to Disney, where it’s like Jack just found religion and he doesn’t understand what it is yet because it’s a feeling, not necessarily something that he can write down on a board or explain that exists in this world of dead, like the Halloween world that he lives.
It’s, to me, that’s what the real story is about, is about Jack discovering religion or like some kind of a higher power and not being able to come to terms with it. And to me, that feels like something that Tim Burton probably went through as a kid, maybe, and so that would make a biographical. But I’m reading into that deeply because that’s what we do here. Yeah, of course, the shot that sticks with me, and I didn’t remember it.
I mean, it’s been 30 years since I watched it last time. But the scene where he is looking at all of the holiday doors and the trees for me, that really stuck in my mind. And he just happened to choose, well, the picture of a tree on a tree. So he could have gone with a turkey on the tree, too, but I’m glad he didn’t because that movie would have been dry and tough, I think.
I don’t know. I had that same exact thought, because when he gets to that scene, he gets into the middle of the woods. And this is a great way for. I’m surprised that they haven’t revisited this yet. Maybe they have, and I just don’t know about. There’s been attempts at sequels and prequels, and none of them have ever really taken. But there’s a St. Patrick’s Day tree, there’s an Easter tree, there’s a Valentine’s tree, there’s the turkey tree that represents Thanksgiving.
And I was trying to think there’s not a lot of kids Thanksgiving movies that blew up. The only one I can really think of would be like Adam’s family too, because they go to camp and there’s the big, you know what I mean? But there’s another gap in the market. Example, I was going to spit out a. So clearly there’s a gap in the market here because if someone says Christmas movie, you can think of a bunch.
Someone says Halloween movie, you can like nonstop options. Valentine’s Day movie, same thing. Thanksgiving movie. I don’t know, man. I don’t think anyone’s really fully owned. Like the Thanksgiving cinema sort of go to isn’t planes, trains and automobiles Thanksgiving? I think that one is, but that’s not really a good one for kids. Yeah, maybe, but it’s also very date. I mean, is that from like the early eighty s or the mid 80s? Late 80s, yeah.
40 year old movie. That’s what I’m saying is that nobody has really owned that in quite a while. Does nobody want Thanksgiving? It seems like someone’s leaving money on the table here. Well, you know what? I’ve lived in a world with no thanksgiving now for quite a long time and that’s fine with me. Yeah, thanksgiving, the only thing I was excited about was going to see a movie at night because thanksgiving is like everything’s closed.
We’re eating food I don’t really like. There’s no Thanksgiving movies. People watch football, but there’s movies opening on Thanksgiving. You go see the new James Bond, right? But I don’t know, maybe this jumps following a thread too deep. But I feel like there could be an awesome Thanksgiving movie out there. Oh, there could be. Yeah. But that is a mountain to climb. I’m sitting here thinking, man, could I make that entertaining.
I don’t know. It would have to be like a horror for me. It would have to be a horror movie. Oh, there’s got to be a Thanksgiving horror movie. There’s lots of them. They just aren’t great. I always love it when people take like somewhat obscure holiday and make a joke. One from about ten years ago featuring Tim Allen as a trailer for Arbor Day where dad’s too busy and stuff for his son and then he gets turned into a tree.
Like a Rob Snyder movie. Well, the trailer has Tim Allen actually, so yeah, I think it’s on his YouTube page. You couldn’t watch it. Arbor day. I do think this is genius though, because Disney could at any point go back and do a Jack Skellington Easter movie or a Jack Skellington Thanksgiving movie. I would vote for taking votes. I would vote Jack Skellington Thanksgiving movie. But because now you could span Jack Skellington and apply him to even more holidays.
I was going to say Jack gets the haunted mansion from October to December pretty much every year now, I believe. I’m not sure if that’s true in all parks. It’s definitely true in the Tokyo one. And I kind of assume the american ones do that too. How much weight can Jack carry? Do you think Jack could carry another holiday on his back? Or do you think that he’s kind of loaded up with Halloween and Christmas? Pretty.
He just. He just dabbled in Christmas. He could do New Year. I guess he had another old man and a baby to contend with. So that would be like a sequel addition. Oh, it’s not just old man time, but it’s the baby new year as well. So he’s got two critters to deal with. The Easter Bunny. They kind of like dispatch the Easter Bunny really quick in this movie.
I guess 4 July, Uncle Sam, another old man. I guess we just need to pair Jack Skellington with old white men with white beards. Or again, since they dispose of the Easter bunny pretty quick, the world of Jack Skellington could also. If it’s not this relationship between atheism and religion, it could be like the non psychedelic experience versus the psychedelic. Because I still firmly believe no one has pushed me off that Santa is a mushroom, that Easter Bunny is a mushroom.
The Easter eggs are mushrooms. I really do believe this. The holy grail is a freaking mushroom. So here’s Jack Skellington in a world of black and white monotony. Everything’s the same all the time. And then he gets this glimpse of a completely different world filled with color. And he goes through all of the symbolism of Santa as a. He’s got. They talk about the socks being hung up and he notes that they don’t have feet in them.
And sometimes they’ve got like little goodies. He notices the whole tree, the like. He brings back all the symbolism that is specific to mushrooms. And Santa being a shaman, essentially. The amanita mascaria, I believe like in. So I feel like that could be another really thing that overlays on top of this movie is that Jack got his first big hit of something and he doesn’t know how to explain it.
Which know the biggest problem when someone has their first spiritual or other dimensional, like, you don’t necessarily know how to write it down or explain it to another person. So what does he do? He goes out and he brings mushrooms back for everyone. In this case, he brings Santa back for everybody to partake in it. So Ugie boogie ate too many mushrooms that we’re getting at. He’s driven himself, didn’t, he didn’t stay on the middle path well enough, maybe because, yeah, the kids bring Santa to Ugie boogie first.
Right. So he was going to try and take a heroic dose, but he wasn’t prepared for it. He was no McKenna. Okay. He was no McKenna. My. Yeah. Yeah. And I got a quick question just before I forget it. Is this a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? Oh, that’s always been the thing here. Like you said, it’s both. You get to own both. Right. But if you had to pin it to one, what is it? Well, it is the calendar that we’ve been doing these movies on, but I’m clearly pinning it as a Christmas movie this year.
I agree. I think this is more Christmas than Halloween. But if we had started this podcast two months earlier, then for us it would have been a Halloween movie. But that’s just because of scheduling. Maybe. I think. I think Christmas more. It’s marketing. Again, I think that the haunted mansion is going to do its holiday overlay. And when you say holiday in that way, you mean Christmas. So that’s cemented this in my mind as a Christmas movie.
Before that, I might have said Halloween, but now, haunted mansion, Christmas theming. Yes. I think that once you’ve got a Santa hat in a movie, it’s a Christmas movie more than anything else. Oh, yeah. It’s always fun. I mean, there’s always diehards. My favorite Christmas movie, Iron Man Three, is a Christmas movie. That’s the interesting thing about Shane Black, the guy who directed that, all of his movies are secretly Christmas movies.
I guess he just relayed into Christmas. Christmas movie. I really do. And I know how simple minded it is, but I think it would be genius to sneak in a reason to have a Christmas tree or a Christmas hat in every movie you ever make just so that you can get it on Christmas playlists. It really does qualify as a Christmas movie as far as I’m concerned. If you check it with me, it counts.
Yeah. In 2023, I’m going to put a hard yes on this being a Christmas movie. But if you did want to watch it, Halloween, I can get that, too. Some people probably do. And Jack also in this movie at the very beginning, because I’m rewatching this for the first time, caring about what’s happening instead of just the visual eye candy. And I noticed right away that he is the wicker man.
He’s the burning man at the very beginning of their Halloween ritual. So he’s literally covered in bales of hay or wheat or grass, and they burn him like he’s on fire, and he’s dancing around, and this is the big night. This is them expelling all of their cares. He’s the cremation of care ritual, essentially, with a pumpkin on his head instead of anything else. And as soon as that ends, the rest of the town, all they care about is planning for the next Halloween, like, for the next 364 days.
That’s all they care about. So to me, this is a very real imagery of Jack being the Wicker man, the burning man, that whole pagan concept, know, burning your cares away in this symbolic, magic way, which is kind of weird, because the rest of everything that they really discuss feels like it’s very scientific, and everyone’s trying to prove things, and everyone’s trying to figure out the logic and the ration, and that’s what sets Jack apart and Sally, because Jack’s the only one that has a feeling about something.
And then Sally, she has a vision, and she has the same feeling, and no one else seems to have that kind of insight, like any sort of empathy. So a lot of the techies would have been teenagers or even younger or a little older. And do you think this is a seed? Because this sets a lot of kind of style choices, especially in the years later, the tech folks start going out into the desert for Burning man, maybe trying to have this kind of a back canal.
I don’t know. I think the burning man is a bigger influence than anything else that’s been adapted to it. And when I say Burning Man, I mean the original Burning man, not the one that’s out in the desert, but like that original Wicker man concept, even. Oh, no, I’m getting that. I was going to say Christopher Lee would have loved this guy, because I want to make sure we’re tying that into the 1973 Wickerman.
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you might as well just say Christopher Lee. Burning man is the same exact movie as nightmare before Christmas. There’s not a single frame difference between the two, although it is interesting. Yeah, not a single frame. The constable and that is driven to terror, whereas in the nightmare for Christmas, it’s Santa that’s driven to terror. The constable is going into the situation not knowing what it is, but walking willingly into the situation for reasons that he doesn’t know.
Santa is being kidnapped here. So that’s kind of a different thing. The level of terror is a little different because it’s Wickerman, the movie. I’m specifically saying the good one is, what have I done? I walked into this where Santa just gets to be creeped out by. Accosted by Oogie Boogie. Yeah. Although he’s not the one that gets sacrificed. He does get kidnapped, but it’s for a slightly different reason than Wickerman.
Because in this concept, it’s Jack Skellington that burns and represents that Wickerman. But if you think about, like, his original plan is, I’m going to bring Santa here and then I’m going to go and become Santa. We’re going to swap places. So if Jack Skellington is used to being the Wickerman every year, and he’s tired of it, he goes out and he turns Santa into the Wickerman in this case.
So, yeah, Santa didn’t necessarily ask for it, but he’s now in the exact same place as the Wickerman would be. And in theory, if Santa performed Jack Skellington’s role, he would be set on fire. So if Santa had been down with a plan, could you accept a Holly Jolly Halloween? Well, Wickerman doesn’t necessarily represent Halloween, right? Isn’t that a summer solstice ritual? Oh, I’m just assuming that if Jack is taking Christmas, then Santa has to take know.
It’s only fair. I mean, if it just means more presents for everyone. Maybe. Well, you get presents like Jack’s given the kids. I guess I don’t. Definitely. Another favorite shot is the kid just nonchalantly holding the shrunken head. That’s fantastic. Because all the other kids are being attacked by their creepy presents or flipping out their creepy present. That’s because it’s like. And it looks so much like the shrunken head in the Beetlejuice movie again.
Yeah, maybe they just borrowed it from there. It’s the Tim Burton version of a hidden Mickey as he just sneaks a shrunken head into all of his movies. I do the podcast where I look through all the twilight Zone episodes and the space ones in particular. It’s just funny because half the props in all of those episodes are from. So, you know, they literally just went into the closet and got these forbidden planet props and used them.
So could be like that. We’ll get to in the Pixars, where every Pixar movie has something in it to suggest the next Pixar movie. Like, you’ll see a lotso bear on the wall somewhere. And up, I think, that sort of thing. Yeah. And we speculated that that might have started with the brave little toaster and that the lamp might be the lamp in the Pixar logo. Yes. We’ll get back to that line soon enough, I imagine.
Did we hit your notes directly? Yeah, I’ve got one last note. And this kind of backs up the theory that it might be about atheism and finding religion or maybe some kind of a spiritual experience of some kind. But Santa, as they first kind of interact, and he says, haven’t you heard of heaven on earth and goodwill towards men? And then Jack just nonchalantly just like, nope. And then he just keeps going, right.
Wasn’t this. Wasn’t was that was. And the boogie boys also representing this scientific method way of thinking. Like, there’s no room for spiritualism. Right? It’s all logic. And that’s when he’s like, no, wait, I don’t fit in there. And they’re like, you fit through a chimney, so you’ll fit through here. And I thought that was another really good way of just showing their scientific way of rationale. Right.
They logically thought out, oh, this property applies to you in this way, so it should apply to you in this. So again, like, they’re very scientifically minded, and it keeps coming up. The mad scientist, even Jack mentions the word science a few times and how he’s, like, thinking about the world. So all that is making a really strong case. And then the Dr. Susie land I was going to mention, because, know, when he goes to Christmastown, it is like a psychedelic, you know, very whoville, that kind of thing.
The real world is made to look pretty much in between and somewhat bland. It’s kind of like intentionally bland in this movie. Like, the houses are very suburban, which Tim Burton loves to do. Again, look at Edward Scissorhands again. So he’s going to this. Is he trying to bring magic to a very unmagical place? He’s been bringing dark magic, which if you wanted to get weird and fire and brimstone religion, you could also say, that’s science.
If you wanted. Science is dark magic. And he’s opposed to the brightness, but then he’s trying to bring whatever to our real world. Made somewhat bland in this movie. Animation is great. I’m just talking design, right? And you can even see when it goes between the different worlds that when he’s in Christmas town, it’s. It’s colorful, it’s saturated. It’s what you probably would expect, like, a Disney movie to look like in a lot of ways.
And then when he goes back to his town, it’s very much more like sepia toned. It’s cooler colors. Obviously, there’s color treatment for the obvious reasons, but they crank it over a little bit, and then once they go to the suburban town in the regular world, it’s got more than just a neutral effect. They almost, like, suck some of the saturation out to make it seem a little bit more lifeless than either Jack Skellington’s world or the Christmas world.
Yeah. When they’re trying to shoot down his. Know, the shots of the infantry. Not infantry, the artillery is just very, like, it looks, know, World War II stock footage sort of stuff. Yeah. I mean, maybe there’s a story here where Tim Burton is talking about the weaponization of Christmas in a way, because there’s, know, the fact that Santa’s normally coming here and he kind of paints Santa being, like, an idiot and everyone in Christmas town being idiots.
And that everyone that lives with Skellington, like, they’re kind of more advanced, they’re smarter. Again, they’re like the scientific mad scientists. Don’t fit in, but insane. But wouldn’t you rather be smart and insane? Well, I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a good question. Smart and insane or dumb and happy? Yeah. Well, I guess we get to a bit to Sally and her creator, because Sally is our shrinking violet, who is literally stitched together, able to separate her parts.
And those parts can remain, like, sentient in some way. Brave little toaster. We talked about. We’ll talk a little more in Tori’s story, but I thought it was interesting. I had to think about that here a little bit too. Daddy splits his brain with his new creation. Nice and ghoulish for the animation. But when you think about, it’s like, okay, that’s kind of a wild trip. Is this AI? Is that him uploading? And does that mean that the scientist is catfishing Jack Skellington? Like, is there even really a.
I mean, but in the case of his new crate, she literally pulls out half of his brain and puts in a new one where you don’t get the impression he did that with Sally. Sally. Is Sally kind of a homunculus as well being created? Absolutely, she is. Yeah. And how many of these creations are. Is lock and shock the same thing? Where did the doctor come from? I mean, I’m getting a little chicken the egg here, I guess.
But how many of these are actual beings? And how many of them are like magical or scientific creations. So I would argue that Sally is something different, like, if not a homunculus, something more magical, because it directly violates Rene Descartes whole theory of where the soul sits, the whole souls in your pineal gland. And even if you don’t believe that, the reason that he came to that conclusion was because if you chop off your arm, you’re not like an arm less in your soul.
And it’s like you can even still feel your arm. You even had that phantom limb concept that people go through, right? That phenomena where you still feel your fingers or you get like a cramp in your leg that’s no longer there. So he used that to explain that the soul doesn’t live in your arm. If anything, it’s got to live somewhere. That if you chopped everything else off, it would still be there.
And it would also have, for that reason, would have to be almost in, like, the central position. And that’s where he pinpointed the pineal gland, because it’s completely centered in the brain. So it can’t necessarily live to the left side or the right side. But if Sally can chop her arm off and the arm can remain sentient, then she violates that whole concept of either having a soul in your arm.
So either she does, or it means that she never had a soul to begin with, which seems more likely the case. Which definitely means that she’s a homunculus. So that’s two homunculus confirmed in one movie. Okay, and then we’ll get to the toy soon. I guess it’ll be a while before we get to toy Story three. But I did recently rewatch that, and since we’ve been doing this podcast, I had forgotten that Mrs.
Potato head, since her eye is at Andy’s house and they’re a few miles away at the kindergarten, she can still see that eye still functions, and it’s like, quantumly entangled with her somehow. And watching recently, I’m like, okay, that raises, like, eight different questions, at least skipping ahead a little bit, because toy story three, in all seriousness, was the first Disney movie that I saw on my own.
And I don’t mean, like, literally on my own, but I mean that as I was watching it, I remember thinking, this is programming. This is nefarious programming. And it wasn’t because I was listening to conspiracy podcasts or anything. I remember seeing it in theater with my roommate, and my roommate brought us kids, so I tagged along. I was like, yeah, it’s probably going to be a good movie, because it’s a freaking Disney, multi million dollar budget movie.
But there’s this scene, and the whole premise of the movie is that they’re trying to save the toys from either being given away or being ground up. Very brave little toastery, right? It’s almost the same beat for beat in a certain scene. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like a big grinder and there’s, like, fire. Oh, yeah. It’s an incinerator. I think we brought it up a bit in brave little toaster.
And I remember thinking, and I’ll break. We’ll bring it up again when we go to the movie. But I remember thinking that this is nefarious because they’re teaching kids right now that your toys that you’ve outgrown, that probably deserve to get thrown away or given away, that they’ve got souls and that they will suffer and they’ll die, and you’ll cause pain and anguish and grief to them if you throw them away or let them out of your sight or give them away.
And how. I don’t know. That just seems so incredibly nefarious to be drilling that in on such a smaller, like, a strong level for these little tiny brains of, like. No, truly, your toys, not only are they alive, but they can feel pain, and they’re terrified that you might throw them out one day. I don’t know. I think there’s something nefarious about that. Yeah, well, that one in particular is considered the dark toy story.
And people are like, oh, it’s because they almost get incinerated. But then it’s because of those feelings that the movie is creating, like you are saying, which makes it feel extra dark. So I think people understand that even if they’re not saying it out loud, which makes it extremely effective if we’re looking at from a programming angle, I guess. And if you believe, like I do, that Disney cares more about owning nostalgia and the price of nostalgia and investing in nostalgia more than necessarily the movies being breakout success left and right, because they can bank on it to just always exist.
So you might say from, like, a business standpoint, it goes against the whole planned obsolescence thing. Like, yeah, of course we want you to throw out your old woody so that you buy another one in five years. Or, like, when you’ve got kids, you don’t want to pass it around, but you also want it to be omnipresent. You just want that toy to always be around. And then now, not only do you have dad’s Woody, but you’ll have your own, and then you’ll get one for buzz Lightyear for your kid.
And maybe it just turns into like a whole legacy. I love what you’re doing here. For people that can’t see, there’s a continual lotso bear behind me, which I did save from a garbage bag once. I did buy it, but then they were house cleaning too much and tried to throw lotso bear and the cookie monster. And like you’re saying, I saw toy story through. I couldn’t let that happen.
So I did let a few toys get thrown away, though, but not watcher the cookie monster or Dumbo. I think I saved Dumbo from the garbage as well. My wife got a little too genky, too energetic with the house cleaning ones. Everything gets thrown out. That’s right. Yeah. The cookie monster. I have a full size cookie monster puppet, which I keep at work for obvious reasons because I’m a teacher, but I only bring him out so much.
He’s become legendary. Kids are always talking about the cookie monster, but I only actually bring him out once a month because I don’t want them ripping him apart or something because kids will try and rip off the cookie monster’s eyes if you let them. I kind of want to just thinking about it. There’s ping pong balls so they can be damaged, but, yeah, also, when you hear puppeteers complain in Muppet movies, and this is a hard, you know, controlling that guy for five minutes and doing the voice, your hand gets tired and your voice gets blown out.
So I get it. I see why Frank Oz doesn’t want to do this stuff anymore. I imagine they just find people that smoke Newports exclusively to do the voice. Yeah, smoking and then getting on Sesame street. That makes sense. I’m sure it’s happened. I mean, 70s, probably. I mean, it turns out they didn’t have the greatest vetting process based on some of the stories. Yeah. Elmo has a new voice now, DOesn’T he, in puppeteer? How about let’s roll back to the nightmare a bit.
If you had ANY more strain threads to pull on, there’s a good way to say it. The only remaining one is really. There was just an interesting note that SALLY is performing a very traditional role when it comes to occult practices. She is sort of the master of poison here. And she’s also being kept away, Kind of LiKE a homunculus would by her creator. Right. Like when she disobeys, he locks her up.
But she’s also the one that’s entrusted to making all of these different little concoctions. And poison was kind of known as the tool of the ladies or something. Or like the ladies. That’s my daughter is always trying to poison me. That’s kind of a Adams family thing. Yeah. Right. It’s a very real. Sort of like, my girlfriend is trying to poison me constantly. So it’s a very real thing.
Just warning for everyone out there, too, that if you do have a significant other that’s female, they’re trying to poison you constantly. It’s a. I eat what they leave for me when I come home at night. I must be filled with all the poisons by now. DINner is ALways a surprise. Actually, it’s not a surprise. Some nights they sleep curry half of the week, which is fine because I like she.
Sally also serves as almost like the king’s taster, in a way. Right. Because she has to taste the soup before she feeds it to her master. And that might be because she sees poison in there once in a while. Yeah, as well. Say she poisons and tests it. She does both often enough that she keeps a spare spoon in her sock just to trick her master from thinking that she’s actually tasting the poison.
Do you think Sally’s demeanor kind of did some societal programming, especially in the. You know, I don’t think too many guys were like, I’m going to be like Jack Skellington, but I think a few girls were kind of like, oh, I want to be kind of a Sally. I don’t think there’s any guy out there that’s like, well, there probably are. Let me take that back. There’s a bunch of weird.
There’s a bunch of weirdos out, but, like, yes, Sally is just a completely vacant doll. Like a complete homunculus. No soul in a lot of ways, at least for me. I don’t know, maybe there’s a lot of Sally simps out there, but, yeah, she kind of gives off that Disney project monarch mind control vibe in a way, doesn’t she? Yeah, but then she does take a little more agency, I think.
I mean, she actually goes and goes about trying to fix things and saves, maybe, but she’s a homunculus. How much agency does a homunculus have? Well, that’s my point. She goes out to do this little mission. She’s got a pretty good plan that works 80% of the way until they’re recaptured and almost dumped into a lava pit. But that takes some proactiveness, I guess, that you would not expect from homunculus, to be sure.
And I don’t know of many female homunculi either. Do they have a sex? They do, yeah. Because homunculus means little man. Okay. And it’s a fractal version of a man. From what my understanding is that every homunculus has always been thought of as a man and that there’s not really, like, a female equivalent. Well, maybe that’s what we get with this movie, then. So that’s kind of exciting.
Well, yeah. Sally is one of the first female homunculi. Yeah, but you got a different creation. You got to stitch her together. I mean, I guess you stitch the animal when you’re making them. Okay. Yeah, sure. That totally counts. Haven’t made my own yet. I know. You have your own make it yourself kits, too. Yeah. Here’s some of the magic powder that it comes with. I swear it’s legal, but it clearly says, do not inhale the dust or powder.
And if you do, you need to call, like, four or five different organizations. But, yeah, that’ll be coming out soon. We have a whole homunculus growers kit for people like you that don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You can now rely on the experts to kind of have, like, a little pre. Think of it as, like a frozen meal, right? Like a tv dinner version of a homunculus.
You want to go through and find your own cow uterus and have to find the dung of some exotic animal that you have to dig up on a full moon. No one’s got time for that in these busy days. So we’ve gone through all of that extra effort and put together the perfect kits guaranteed to grow homunculus, and we’ll come out with that soon. I don’t know when we’re going to drop it, but it’ll be sometime in the first half of next year.
And, no, I’m not kidding. It sounds like a joke, but no, I’m not kidding. No, he’s not kidding. Yeah. Everything I’ve heard about the creation, I’m like, man, I guess people of the past were cooler with putrid odors and farm smells and stuff. They saw putracide as one of the key elements to life in this weird way of dichotomies. Paradoxically, the smell of death meant that something else could be living.
I don’t think that’s true. But what they saw is that they would see, like, a cow starting to die, right? And maggots would be born, and you would get this smell, and they would equate that smell of putricide to the life of the maggots. And they actually thought that the death created the life. No one really thought like a fly came and laid its eggs there and flew back away.
It was like, oh, my God, this dead flesh turned into new life. So that was some of the premise of all this. Yeah, I guess that’s where you got to put a little more scientific method. Watch it for a while, see what happens first. But poke it with a stick. It’s the original scientific process. Poke it with a stick, see what happens. I think that’s often still a scientific process.
They just charge a lot more for the stick now. Yeah. Did you have any final thoughts on this one? Or maybe lots of thoughts. I don’t know where you are. It’s legitimately a great movie. I think that it’s weird that it’s a touchstone movie. So it has like a little asterisk. Like, yeah, it’s a Disney movie asterisk, the same way that Roger Rabbit is. But at this point, it made enough money that Disney fully graduated it into being like a normal Disney canon thing.
Maybe Roger Rabbit just never made enough money for them to fully embrace it. Evergreen. And I didn’t realize, probably because I haven’t been in the states for years, but since 2010, they’ve been rereleasing this thing in guess using this as sort of a vehicle to try and up the technology every year. Like if you go a few years later, it’s supposed to be a better 3d experience. They’ve just done the 30th anniversary.
I’m just going by with the wiki saying here. But it’s like, yeah, this is kind of causing a resurgence in 3D, which I don’t know, doesn’t excite me that much because we’ve been through so many of those resurgences at this point, right? Yeah, we’re on like the fourth or fifth one of my lifetime at least. But one of the reasons there is no sequel is I think around 2002, Disney was like, we should make a sequel.
Burtman’s like, sure. CGI. No. Yeah, it would have to. And by the way, Frankenweenie that you mentioned is awesome. One of my favorite. There’s a cartoon version, but also a claymation, right? Or am I making that up? I have it on Blu ray right over here. I got it for one dollars in the Blu ray apocalypse. Have not watched it yet. It is phenomenal. Seriously, I really need to watch it.
Yeah, I definitely bought it, but I bought like 80 movies from the Blu ray apocalypse. And then we’re getting to that one anyway, so that’s the thing with doing podcasts like this. It’s like, oh, I should really see that movie. Well, I’m going to see it in two and a half years. We’ll leave it for that. Like I said, with whiplash, I’ll see it in like two years from now for sure.
And parasite, I’ll finally watch parasite like two years from now. But hey, that’s a nice way to pace yourself, right? You don’t want to do everything at once. That’s one of the problems with modern pop media culture. It’s like, here’s 87 television shows you’re supposed to watch so you can watch this one movie. It’s like, no, we’re throwing shots at Marvel right now, which is also Disney, or Star wars, which is also Disney, or Netflix.
I mean, I don’t know if I was talking to you. I’ve definitely sound podcasts where I really like the new Fincher film the Killer, and it’s barely gotten a release because it’s like a Netflix thing. People are like, oh, that’s not a real movie. No, it’s a real movie. It’s good. I don’t think that at all. I know I’m in a niche here, especially within movie aficionados and cinema files, but I hated the movie theater.
I never like going to the movie theater. I like having a huge sound system where the base is as big as my house or bigger than one of the rooms in my house. And I liked the huge screen, and I liked the smell of the popcorn. But I’m a misanthrope, and I don’t like to be around other people, and I don’t like not being able to pause it or go and just make a stinky Lindberger and sardine.
I don’t really do that, but the concept, right? Like, go and do your own thing and watch the movie in your own way. And I know that there’s probably also directors and people that work on movies that are like, cringing, that it’s like, no, you’re supposed to sit in this little tiny box and stare at a screen for two and a half hours and not move. And no birth, bathroom breaks, and no making noise.
But that’s not how I’ve ever liked watching movies. I get a win in Japan because they like to see movies during the day. So the late show, which is usually like eight or nine, is cheaper, and I’ll go. And I’ve had private screenings of movies, basically, and maybe there’s like five people in there. It doesn’t sound sustainable, man. Well, everyone comes in the afternoon, so it’s like going to a matinee, except it’s nighttime.
Anyway, I will give a plus up to the killer, which I did not watch in a movie theater. I did watch that on my computer, but that’s a good one. So it seems to have mixed reviews. And I’m on team positive for that one. But I’m on team positive for nightmare before Christmas. I omit. 30 years ago, I was slightly underwhelmed, but it helps to have, I think, more experience than a 14 year old for this movie.
I don’t want that smoke from the hot topic crowd. So. I love this movie. I’ve always loved this movie. I will forever love this movie. Nightmare before Christmas till the day I die. Go after Matt. Yeah. I’m assuming there’s, like, a Taylor Swift. There’s, like, a swifty movement behind nightmare before Christmas. You don’t want to upset. Yeah, probably. Anyway, I just watched it, first time in 30 years and quite enjoyed it.
I kind of thought I would like it when I saw it again. I just hadn’t gotten around to it. It’s good. Not every song is an earworm. Some of the songs are like, this didn’t need to be a song. You could just be talking at this point. This is Halloween. Playing for a month every year in Japan is enough of an earworm. I don’t need more than just.
Just last note I’ll throw out is they were worried about Ugie boogie coming across as racist. And I think, actually, let’s see what it says here. They basically. Yeah, don’t worry about it. I need to look at this specifically, I think, to get it right. Concerts, video games, man. Yeah. There’s so much stuff on this. Okay, possible sequel. Here we go. Okay. Danny Elfman was worried that oogie boogie would be considered racist by the NAACP.
The screenwriter thought so. Burton said she was being oversensitive. They got an african american singer to do it. They actually did get caught out a little bit. It didn’t kill the movie. But there was a bit of an issue for hoogie boogie apparently being racist, I guess because it’s all the voodoo y stuff. He’s, like, rapping a little bit. I don’t really know what it was, to be honest.
It was like the mini, the Moocher, Betty Boop cartoons. I think that was part of the explanation. I got that, and it’s not because I felt that way, but it was like, oh, I felt very much like this was out of place because a 2023 Disney movie might have done it slightly differently. But I was just like coming hot off the heels of some of the previous movies.
The person with soul that sings jazz is always black, and I haven’t seen soul, but I’ve heard several people have issues with that one. Well, it’s racist. It’s about a black guy. I don’t know. What was it that he dies? I don’t know. I haven’t seen a movie. So I was just hearing someone complaining about last week. I guess it’s all is where I’m coming from, but forgot what the specific description was.
What was that last. Oh, I was just going to say, have you seen those Betty Boop cartoons from the early 30s with, okay, those are racist, but they’re also like, well, they’re not. Well, they all work because the one that you’re talking about, like the Max Fleischer early ones that had the cap Calloway and stuff. If you look at Disney cartoons the exact same time, guess what? They had the Mammys and they had the guineas that know cooking everybody in the big, like, everyone was doing that.
Bugs Bunny cartoons were doing the same thing. I remember growing up watching the reruns and it was know they were all doing the Mickey Rooney routine. Every single cartoon was doing, like the slanted eyes and the chopsticks as teeth. But there you get footage of cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong actually performing in the early 30s, which is amazing. And it’s really good. Rotoscope, too, is where you draw over each frame of something.
It’s one of the best examples of rotos. And in fact, I believe that in particular scene, the cab Calloway and the Betty Boop, that one is what inspired cuphead. Or one of the many ones that inspired cuphead. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the imagination there, you have to put lots of butts on it, but it’s still just amazingly imaginative within the weird constraints of the time. It was very creatively racist.
It wasn’t just regular racist. Like, there was a lot of flair to it. I guess that’s why Ugie boogie kind of, you can draw a line to it because it does have a, like, if those earlier cartoons didn’t exist, I don’t think anyone would ever have that feeling. It’s like the earlier media informed the later know. When do you think Disney’s going to remake birth of a nation in be? It’ll be a plus on streaming and no one will see it.
Sounds more like a daily wire sort of thing where they’re like, Disney wouldn’t do this, but we will. It actually came out a year ago. You just don’t know about it. It came out in 2021. Yeah, this is random, but just to wrap it up, have you seen the Atlas Shrugged movies? Have I even read the book? No, I haven’t. But that’s another fever dream in itself, I’m sure.
Fever dream movies, those seem like books you can’t easily adapt. And they were made. That was like ten years ago, isn’t it? A while ago? Maybe more than ten years. Yeah. The first one was done with a very high budget and it didn’t do very well. And then the second one, they really had to finish the story. Was there even three? I don’t remember if there was three, but it’s like a long, like, if you watched them all back to back, it’s like a seven hour experience, and there’s an immediate drop in quality after the first movie where they recast everyone and everything’s like green screen and CGI instead.
But there’s a very real sunken cost fallacy feeling where you’re like, well, I saw the first one and I watched that 3 hours, so I kind of have to watch this other 3 hours. Okay. I don’t know if you’re selling me on that one. I mean, I’m not a salesman, but if you do paranoid 15, if you put that code in, it’ll play 15% faster. So it’ll be over a little bit sooner.
I guess we’ll wrap up for today. If you want to give a bit more in your code there. Yeah, chaos twins. com. Still the big thing, the campaign ended. It’s fully funded. It’s shipping in January. But even if you’re listening to this now or in the future, even if this is like, in the year 2030, you should be able to still go to chaostwins. com and grab a copy.
And hopefully, if it is 2030, you’ll grab all six, plus the movie, plus the neural link branded chaos twins that you plug in through your eye. All right. As for me, I do a lot of media esque podcast on Patreon. Where podcastio podcastius. I’ll try and micro machine it. There’s a Twilight Zone time enough podcast. There’s really good movies, really bad movies on films and filthices and cha podcasting.
This one’s a caught Disney. We talk about space 1999 on podcast 1999, and some of my friends do video game stuff. There’s Luke loves Pokemon, Hyrule fuel to report about Zelda games and the game game show where gamers game each other about the games. Okay, there we go. I’m trying to make it so if people really want to hit the plus 30 it like times outright. If you listen every week, maybe you don’t need to hear the plug every time.
But hey, if you’re here for the first time, welcome too. Because this is a big movie. People might show up for the night before Christmas. Okay, so what are you going to do for this Christmas? I’m going to go to work. It’s usually my day off, but we’re working on Christmas. That’s Japan. I got laid off recently, so I’m kicking back and I’m doing a little me time for Christmas.
Okay, that sounds good too because I’m going to have kids screaming at me for Christmas, which I guess that is the Christmas experience. It is a Christmas experience. That’s why you have to give them presents. It’s the real Halloween, the real trick or treat. Going to ask for presents too. Imagine not giving your kids presents on Christmas. If you really want to know what trick or treat was all about, I feel like that would be a better example.
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