Intro: Brian's midnight Batman and Star Trek: The Motion Picture [00:00:00]

Brian Pritchard: From Cell.

Nicky P: Welcome everyone to another episode of We Came From Celluloid. I'm Nicky P here with my good friend and band mate, Brian Pritchard of Puma Thurman fame. How are we doing there? Brian?

Brian Pritchard: Excellent. Excellent, excellent. I'm watching my cats misbehave. I'm in a, a totally different wing of the house today than usual, and there's cat mischief all around.

Nicky P: That's interesting. Cat mischief sounds like a fun kinda mischief.

Brian Pritchard: That's true. I watched, an episode of sixties Batman last night. When I texted you to say that I was hanging out with our. Our mutual friend James, I was watching YouTube music videos, but then I watched. Two episodes of, the Adam West Batman series, which which were catwoman episodes.

So there was feline mischief afoot there as well. And then I watched one episode of classic Star Trek, which was okay, but like the pacing was quite. Sluggish

Nicky P: Those. It depends on the episode. Like they, the reason the show got canceled is because it just never quite knocked anything out of the park when the original run.

Like some of it was good, but it wasn't like the whole thing wasn't good enough to do and then eventually took off later.

Brian Pritchard: No, and, and there's episodes that I remember really digging and, I, I, I actually got a, a, a fairly cheap. Box set, of the first four motion pictures of like the Kirk era and, like for like the 25 bucks that it cost for the, the set I, you know.

You know what I mean? Is pretty much worth the price mission for me. And, and, but no, I, I hadn't watched, star Trek, the motion picture in a while. There's, I, I definitely have some sentimental attachment to it, but it, it's brutally slow. Like there's, there's like long, long chunks where it's just. The camera floating over the outside of the enterprise for like four or five minutes, you know what I mean?

Star Trek vs. Star Wars pacing problems [00:02:00]

Like at a time, just like looking at this model of a spaceship, you know, like I'm thinking like, I, I guess at the time this was about like how they built the notion of, scope perhaps in people's minds. And the work does hold up. It looks excellent. I'm not, I'm not literally sitting there. It's not that it looks like a model, that's not what I mean in terms of the, you know, it's not that it looks cheap.

It's just, you're, you're not used to that. I mean, I, I haven't seen anything just like hover on the exterior of a structure for five minutes. Like I cannot think of another example and just struck me as really bizarre. I guess 2001 is maybe the closest precedent at the time for like. Well, although Star Wars had already happened, I'm pretty sure isn't, isn't the Star Trek the motion picture?

Dan? That's the question. I'd have to look it up to be sure. I I feel like it's either 78 or 76 and that's a huge difference as far as Star Wars coming out, in 77. Um. I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna look up when the motion picture came out, because is it more influenced by 2001, which is also slow as hell, or is it just somehow oblivious to what just took place

Nicky P: Or, or is it influenced by THX?

Brian Pritchard: I've only seen that movie once, you know? I don't remember, enough of

Nicky P: That is a very slow movie, even compared to 2001,

Brian Pritchard: But I, I don't recall that one being as much of an outer space movie so much as more like a, like Logan's run, almost, like a dystopian future movie, I thought. Right. Closer to, like on a planet as opposed to out in the stars.

Nicky P: I mean, maybe there's certainly that element to it, but I mean, it was clearly in my mind, always a science fiction space. Movie

Brian Pritchard: Art Trek, the motion picture came out in 1979. That's shocking to me. Well, and I guess there, there, there's some, certainly some pacing issues in a new Hope, but not. Not like that.

Not like that. And then, and then my mind goes to like Moonraker, right? Which was absolutely an immediate reaction to Star Wars, right? And Moonraker has some terribly painfully long space sequences. I remember there's like a laser gun battle in space, right? At one point, like a whole group of people.

Is Star Wars actually science fiction? [00:05:00]

And that goes on way too long. Um. Yeah, but Star Wars, star Wars moves it at a pretty good clip. The, the worst I could say about any revisit of, a new hope, right? As they call it, is, is what a, a little bitch, you know, Luke Skywalker is, he's just kinda whiny at times or like the, like that. That character and that performance.

I, I sort of go like, man, I'm surprised anybody like came away from this, like being like, I wanna be like Luke Skywalker. 'cause he is very, very whiny. He's a, a whiny young man.

Nicky P: Well that's sort of the amount of getting out of his own way that has to happen in those movies. I'm, I've never been a Star Wars guy myself.

It's not for me.

Brian Pritchard: Do you watch either of them? You, you've spent more time with Trek than with the Wars?

Nicky P: Certainly watched more Trek over the years. At, at least Trek is like sci-fi. You can, you can't really even call Star Wars science fiction. It's more fantasy than anything like. The forest is certainly more akin to magic than it is like a jump in human evolution.

We'll say that.

Brian Pritchard: No, I mean, part of science fiction, one of the traits that I associate with the genre of science fiction is how it uses. Aliens and other planets and other worlds to talk about Earth shit. You know? 'cause that's all of course that us Earth writers can really, really comprehend. You know what I'm saying?

It is like, try as we may, to be clever and imagine things. It all tends to be filtered through what it is to be a human being. And so the, the idea of uh. You know, what's the better word? Allegory. Like, you know, the, the idea that like this represents that kind of kind of stuff, right? That,

What actually makes something sci-fi: the Asimov standard [00:07:00]

Nicky P: Well, you're not wrong, but there's a certain part that I think you're missing that actually makes it science fiction.

If you could tell the exact same story amongst human beings and it wouldn't make a difference. It's not sci-fi and the real story of like. Stars. Star Wars could be told. It's all politics and it's all, you know, relationships. It's smuggling and politicking and that kinda stuff. Certainly interpersonal relationships, it doesn't, whether or not you're human.

Like it wouldn't change anything. What makes science fiction is say like, okay, we are now trying to deal with the same situations, but we have something that's completely unhuman, like the idea of an alien that like, if you're examining how a, a, a people that don't have a concept of race. Exist in a world and deal with the same type of questions that humanity has.

That would be science fiction to me, or speculative fiction more broader. It's if you're telling a story that has no way to be told. If you're dealing with strictly people, it's like when you run into like the aliens that breathe completely different and it's how does this. Difference in evolution changed some way in which they interrelate with the world.

It's the idea of pushing a

Brian Pritchard: Well, yeah. Except that most episodes of Star Trek, to me, it did seem like there they were dealing with themes of tolerance. Right. Through. Interacting with other species. That was a very common thread to which point you could say, yes, there's a piece to be made that you could tell those stories without them being aliens and just like substitute, like, you know, a nationality.

Bicentennial Man and the robot who wanted to be human [00:09:00]

You know what I mean? And like, yeah.

Nicky P: Well, and, and, and towards that, that end. Most science fiction people would consider Star Trek soft sci-fi at best. Like Star Wars is not sci-fi at all. Star Trek is soft Sci-fi Isaac awesome off his hearted Sci-fi

Brian Pritchard: Wrath of Khan, which is just a blast to watch. I would pair up more with, uh.

Like master in Commander, right. Than with what, than I would with another sci-fi movie. It's like, it is these two fighting, Warcraft, you know, captains battling it out and the interplay between those two. And, that, yeah, like there, there, there's, there's more inside. I don't even like. I'm sure Master and Commander has movies that like it drew inspiration from.

I only ended up seeing it because I like Peter Weir. Right. I like Peter Weir's bizarre, body of work. And, but like, yeah, you sort of go like, oh yeah, like these, these two are actually like oddly kindred spirits, you know? So, yeah.

Nicky P: Well, and, and once again, to that end, what I think the, the real takeaway is that is the more popular something is the less sci-fi it is, like by definition, like science fiction should appeal to a very specific, scientifically minded subset of audience, which that's not probably the biggest.

Audience out there. There's some of it, but you know, it's not gonna be for

Brian Pritchard: Everybody. So you're defining it in part as saying that, that, that it, it, it has to have story ingredients that are truly alien Right. In, in, in nature, whether it's technology or. A trait of a living organism or something.

Nicky P: Ab exactly.

So like a, a really good example of sci-fi. And don't get me wrong, I hate this movie. I think it's done terribly equilibrium. You know, how does society work when. You know, you can't, you have an entire echelon of people that have found a way to push emotion out of your being human. Are you human anymore?

Like, what does it mean to be human? When you can ask that core question of what does it really mean to be human by seeing us versus something completely different, you know, or. Speculating on if this was different or if this happened. What does that mean? Like, that's like those kind of questions are what really make something sci-fi.

You know, Isaac Ooff, like if you've ever read any Ossoff, he has a huge, a canon of things that like,

Equilibrium as hard sci-fi in a film I hate [00:12:00]

Brian Pritchard: Well, it doesn't need to be alien in terms of being different from

Nicky P: He did robots. That was o Yeah. Oovs thing was robotics and he had like, oh, his story is a lot of them focus on like. And have you ever watched the movie Bicentennial Man?

Brian Pritchard: I, I, I know the Robin Williams movie. I probably like, at least, you know, not well. I don't know it well, no.

Nicky P: The whole point of that movie is he starts out very specifically as a robot and like literally we're talking, the movie ends with him in a court case, trying to define himself as a person because by that point.

The only part of him that was still a robot was his ponic brain, which is a thing that, you know, Asimov always talked about every point part of him by the point, at the end of the movie, and I think he'd lived for maybe like six or 700 years in that span. But he eventually got rid of everything of him that was robotic and replaced it with organic material.

With the exception of his brain, and he was on his deathbed trying to get himself declared human and he making a case for it.

Brian Pritchard: So it's the contemplation of of things that are not available in our world as opposed to simply using. Allegory or metaphor or whatever the right word would be to substitute it, right?

Like 'cause, 'cause even equilibrium. Equilibrium I haven't seen in a number of years, but just from memory, I remember it feeling like a 1984 esque story, right? Like that it was about a group of cops fighting censorship and, and. You know what I mean? That it was, again, it was another sort of dystopian future world scenario, but you're also describing traits within humanity.

So the X-Men would be sci-fi from that perspective.

Nicky P: The X-Men absolutely gets into that in a lot of different ways. A, a movie that I maybe you wouldn't think is sci-fi,

Brian Pritchard: Even though that's earthbound, it's not spaced at all. Well, sometimes it's, but it doesn't have to.

Limitless as accidental sci-fi [00:14:00]

Nicky P: And take, take this one. How about Limitless with Bradley Cooper?

When you think of that as a sci-fi movie, I mean, the, the whole point of that is if there was a drug that could like, make you more human than human, what part of that, where's the line drawn in that, you know, how does the world look different if some people have this or not?

Brian Pritchard: Okay. So No, but, but from that perspective, present a world in which there are.

Such levels of space travel and other worlds and things like that. Why wouldn't that immediately just count? Like Star Wars of course counts. If that counts, then that counts. You know what I mean? Like, like we don't have spaceships either, right? You know? Yeah.

Nicky P: Well, but here's where I would find the difference.

The, the world in which Star Wars exists. What is, what do the space, the ships do actually. Do they in any way impact, impact us other than say, you could tell that exact same world in 800 BC where they have sailing ships and it feels just as far away as those planets do to us If we have rocket ships, when the core.

X-Men and earthbound sci-fi [00:15:00]

Like, does the fact that travel is so much quicker impact the story that, that I guess would be the difference to me is like you're still telling the same human bound dramas once again. But that also, as I believe, one, those stories are more successful than say anything Isaac Moav ever put out.

Brian Pritchard: What about all the psychic powers and things that come with support, those, those extra powers exist in that world?

Nicky P: Two i I, and that's what I said, like. That is the real quibble to me at that point. What differentiates fantasy from sci-fi? And to me, like the force feels more like just a general magic, certainly in the way they've treated it in the newer movies where like they're making up powers left and right. That didn't exist in the earlier movies, but like they feel just more of like a kind of a drawing a thing.

The heroic impulse — why we need action movies and sports [00:16:00]

Brian Pritchard: Does separate fantasy from sci-fi. That's a a weird question. Yeah. I hadn't considered that little nuance either. I think of one is wizards and one is space. Right. That's the big difference. But Star Wars is fucking

Nicky P: Exactly. Well have you have you never followed like the Harry? What is Harry Potter other than Star Wars? It's fucking wizards. He, it, it is. An older man goes out and finds a young boy, takes him from his parents or whatever, or from his aunt and uncle takes him to a school where he is going to teach him how to utilize these latent powers that he has, and he's going to be special and save the world.

Brian Pritchard: The story of the one right is in the matrix. It's, you know, Superman like that. That's just because we, you know, we love that story. We, we sure do love that story because. It's the ultimate fantasy, it's the ultimate ego fantasy, right? Is is the idea of, of going, you know, I've always suspected I was a special, special boy, and to have that, that validated Yes.

Is, is this like wish fulfillment, right? That like, is clearly fairly universal in people that, that we love. And elevate those stories so much

Nicky P: From me. From a psychological standpoint, it's actually more than that. And have you ever done any study on like how what you watch affects your brains? And I've read some pretty incredible ones.

I can tell you on the one that I did, which was watching 110, horror movies in three months, it affects your brain like it does things to it. Your brain can't differentiate movies from reality very well. It's like you start watching a lot of certain things, your brain starts reacting to things as if.

That's reality when you're watching like these, those movies like The Heroic Impulse. I think so much of that and why we, why a lot of movies are unsuccessful today is because when we try and humanize our heroes. There's less of that impulse, which is our need to go out and kind of at least feel as part of a world that doesn't exist anymore.

Like there's no heroic, no heroic actions that we can take in our daily world because it's not the way it's set up. You're not going out and fighting lions. You're not going out. Possibly dying every day just because of nature, which was the normal state of humanity for most of our existence. And without that, the exercise, what kicks the adrenaline up is the film.

Brian Pritchard: There's relative heroism, but yes. Heroism in terms of, adrenaline, adrenaline style, heroism, high stakes heroism, perhaps Yes, is largely la largely lost. I'm gonna be called Save lives, you know, I'm saying than making it my, you know. Yeah.

Musicians as magic trick performers [00:19:00]

Nicky P: Well, even saving. We're not usually called upon to show great acts of anything.

Like, that's one of the reasons why watching us pro athletes is so YY you get involved in, in it is because you're watching people do things that like that, that are pushing the boundaries of humanity. What we defines who we are, it does that sa hits that same dopamine drip that you get from watching somebody save the kid.

You know, the mom lift the car to think. Our daily lives don't, don't present those opportunities to us other than usually in film form, just 'cause it doesn't, in life it doesn't exist that way anymore. There's no need for it. But we still have that need to exercise it.

Brian Pritchard: I guess we get a bit of that too, as musicians as well.

Right. That, that we also have one of those, one of those, areas of discipline that, having developed the skill, society. Broadly speaking, you know, you get a lot of people that look at it as a bit of a magic trick, right? To sit there and, and, and I've acknowledged that myself. I, I still do, feel that way as a.

Spectator consumer part of society. You know what I mean? That I, I'm absolutely dazzled by, different artistic feats of strength, when they're on display. Right? Yeah.

Nicky P: Well, and, and it's like, imagine you're a coder. How often do you get to flex the awesome and cool things that you study and practice have taught you how to do other than when you're in a room full of other coders and you're like, oh man, check out this cool thing that I wrote and did.

Brian Pritchard: Right. And in the meantime, like, yeah, to have the moment where the door's dropping down and you have just enough time to slide underneath it, you just, you don't really get that in like web design, you know? It's a shame.

AI music and Suno — why the panic is misplaced [00:21:00]

Nicky P: Well, I mean, there's a certain amount of which I feel like all those careers are, they feel feeling that right now as AI comes around to take all those jobs in a, in a very unpleasant way, but.

Brian Pritchard: Yeah, they're, they're collectively just trying to be like, don't lock me in this room. It's gonna flood.

Nicky P: Certainly to a certain degree.

Brian Pritchard: Well, you know, but that's where I think in, in business and in music and in life in general. I think that there's a, there's something in the air, as far as a hunger for authenticity that I think.

Is gonna be interesting. I think that, live performance in, in that sense, may feel more precious than ever. I don't know what that means for the fucking business of it all, but I, I think that human beings will continue to appreciate watching other human beings do the magic trick fucking right in front of him.

Right. You know what I'm saying? I think that will continue. I

Nicky P: Don't know. I don't know that you and I have talked about this ourselves. I definitely brought it up talking to someone today, but everyone is terrified of AI music and like suno and what it's gonna do to the world. Couple things I want people to think about, and it's this.

Number one, from a consumer standpoint, if you make it easier for everyone to create. Which this will inevitably do. People who had never been able to play an instrument will now be able to create fully performed songs that other people can enjoy listening to. And just by telling it from a jobs standpoint in music, I think that this is going to open up a space for even more amazing live performers.

Electronic music, Aphex Twin, and the non-musician creator [00:23:00]

'cause you're gonna have number one. More music being made that can reach that echelon of, of you know, interest. And because pseudo can do things that are super human, like as far as performance goes, you're going to have a need for far more talented performers to recreate the things that the AI did.

'cause you're not gonna go up on stage and perform just by yourself in most cases. 'cause part of the live. Thing is a band. Even hip hop artists go up with bands half the time, and so you're gonna need to have a level of musician even capable of keeping up.

Brian Pritchard: Other, other than like something like a fucking Daft punk show where indeed they've got, you know, mouse hats on.

You know what I'm saying? And I, I fucking love Daft Punk, right? Like, you know what I mean? So I'm not even trying to be like a, a dick about it. But like, the, the, the, like, I, I did throw on like a live, concert thing on, on YouTube the other day, and it was just like. Damn, there's not a lot going on, on stage, is there, you know what I mean?

And, and I was thinking about like, competitive gaming. I was talking to somebody the other day who told me that there's universities now have scholarships for, and fucking teams for, eSports. I was going seriously, right? Like, because when, when that first bubbled up on my radar, you know, 15 years ago or whatever it was, um.

It was, I was already shocked at that time to, to, to picture people going and like watching somebody else play video games being like a spectator sport. You know what I mean? Like that, that struck me. And so I was just thinking about that. When you talk about AI and I think about a guy like Apex Twin Richard D.

James, who, as I understand it, that is his performance, is he, he brings his laptop and he goes, you know. It's like maybe dance is a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Like, I dunno. People do gather for that and seem to be fine with it?

MIDI panic and the history of music technology fear [00:25:00]

Nicky P: Well, it de, once again, it depends on like the kind of thing they're doing.

And when you're doing an industrial music, yeah, for certain. But like when you're dealing with music, like say a lot of the AI that I usually see as country music, which is very much an acoustic performer based musician, and I think you're gonna find a lot more space with My point is everyone always jumps to the worst part of this as opposed to thinking of what are the ways in which.

Good things could absolutely happen from this

Brian Pritchard: Non-musicians, right? Electronic music wa was already this huge evolutionary leap. Let's assume for the moment, 'cause I don't actually know that Richard D. James doesn't know how to play instruments. I think he does play piano, but let's assume he knows nothing.

What he's been able to build musically as Aex twin. I'm, I'm so fucking grateful for it. And, and again, you sit there and go like, you know, we're, we're, we're trumpet players sitting there at the moment that electronic music and be like, what the fuck? I guess no one's ever gonna need me anymore. Because now you can make, you know, trumpet noises on keyboard.

Right.

Nicky P: I mean, dude, even into the nineties people were arguing about how MIDI was going to destroy music. Like this has been a thing that they've been complaining about forever. And, and, and what's weird about it to me is that first off, anytime there's more good music for the consumer and for like the people at large, I don't feel how that's bad for humanity.

Like that, that that is by and large good for humanity. If you're a person who thinks you're going to lose your job in there, well maybe that's a fear. But I also want you to think about the fact that music for most of history was not a job. It was a thing that people did collectively as a group. Whether it was a drum circle gathered around the campfire, it, the performance wasn't like the spectacle.

It was a thing that everyone was a part of for most of human existence. Until like, we'll just say, you know, maybe like. I wanna say the kings and stuff like started having Mozart and those guys writing these big pieces, having orchestras, and it became a spectator element. Like for most of history it's a community building thing and it maybe that it, maybe it changes, maybe it never does.

Celebrity culture and "special person status [00:27:00]

Brian Pritchard: Even the notion though of, of. It's, it's making me think of even like aspects of the notion of, of celebrity and what I've referred to as like elevating people to special person status. Right. That, that like actors, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm always fascinated with, and we might have talked about this on here, but I, I don't, I actually don't recall, but like when you see a new crop of, of young actors emerging, right?

The. The Sydney Sweeney's of the world. It's like, yeah, no, she's, she's objectively to me, she's beautiful. Sydney Sweeney is beautiful, but it's like the world is full of beautiful women and it's, and it's always interesting when, when you go like, yeah, no, no, you got elevated. Like somehow as a culture, we, we.

There was no real formal agreement that got made. But like, it just, you know, we, we all elevate certain people to special person status at any given time. And, what, what I was connecting that to in my mind actually was what we were talking about on, in terms of those storytelling archetypes and going like, yeah, I guess maybe as a society we kind of like.

Like having that as an ingredient. We like having it that certain people get to like be the one, you know what I'm saying? That's our version of making those sort of fairytales almost come true, is like these incredible, at least what we've. How we treat it and like, because I, I don't think that their lives are actually that necessarily, you know what I mean?

But like the way we treat and build it up is, is certainly a long, there's maybe a,

Nicky P: Let me take it to a different place. This place I always go 'cause spend so much time there. But take it to politics. Why do we elevate these people who are ostensibly not even the best amongst us in most cases, these people that just have these jobs.

Why do we elevate them as beings? We, we, we put people in these places primarily 'cause we don't want it to be our responsibility. And I think part of the idea of politicians is kind of that they get to be hated because we want someone to be able to blame by default for when things don't work out the way that we actually want them.

And so part of the deal is you are there to take the slings and arrows. Of the lack of responsibility I have for things that is actually the job of a politician is to be elevated to the point you get the rewards of being a higher class in society. But the real job is I get to sit here and talk shit on you because I don't want that job and I don't want to have the responsibility.

Brian Pritchard: But I mean, everybody sort of self-selects. You know what I mean? In, in both politics and in entertainment, people are self-selecting in terms of going like, no, no one really twisted your arm to be there. I guess to to, to me it's a

Why politicians exist to take the blame [00:30:00]

Nicky P: Oh, in politics.

Brian Pritchard: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but, but in the case of a lot more,

Nicky P: In politics, it's socio, if you're an a sociopath, you go for the job.

Most people don't want the power.

Brian Pritchard: I think there's a lot more. People competing for entertainment jobs, right? The number of. People right now across the United States who consider themselves aspiring actors and actresses, right, as a goal, right? Relative to the number of them that would be elevated to special person status, which is not the same as having a fucking job.

Right. That like there's actors and actresses that, you know, are those, you know, faces, everybody recognizes, but you don't nec they're not a household name Right. Kind of thing. And, and, and it, and it is a job, right? But, but then like a Brad Pitt comes along where. He'd worked a little bit before Thelma and Louise, but, but he's in a movie that, that, you know, has enough of a wide release and is seen by enough eyeballs where suddenly he's just.

Brad Pitt: Thelma & Louise vs. True Romance [00:31:00]

Almost immediately propelled to special person status in a way that goes beyond self-selection. He's of course, self-selected to be an actor, go get the job, all those other things. But what happens in a moment that a thing is released, a song is released and manages to break through, that's something that like, I feel like no business has really ever.

Fully been able to control or manipulate that. It is still something like that, that, that, that is this unspoken communication between the people. And again, I know that there's publicists and I know that like there's a, an engine that puts people on our radar to make those picks. But I've also joked about the Casper van dies of the world, right?

Who I'd get my new issue of Entertainment Weekly. And it's like. You know, Casper Vanian, like Hollywood's Hot new star. And I would just shake my head and be like, I don't think so. Like, you're trying to tell me this guy's a star, but he's not. Whereas like Brad Pitt, it, it, it almost feels like it wouldn't have mattered if, if what his publicist did, like the public was clamoring for more.

Once we met that dude, we were like, give me more of that.

Nicky P: Well, 'cause I'm gonna argue. Why you think you think it the, and Louise, you don't think it's his part and true romance that made him what he is today.

Brian Pritchard: No. No. That is not what made him a star. Being shirtless and Thelman and Louise is what made him a star.

Napoleon Dynamite and the unplannable cultural moment [00:33:00]

Yeah.

Nicky P: You mean, you mean him being a dirty, drugged out pothead in one scene in the movie is not what propelled him to fame and fortune.

Brian Pritchard: I'm too literal. You you mean his work in class act or Yeah. What He was in something else prior to that too. Right. Um. Yeah. No. And then there was that,

Nicky P: Well, it's funny because Sure.

Romance is a great movie, popular film by its, you know, by its time. But it's, it's, that's certainly not what was going to be the thing that utilized him for the best thing he has in there.

Brian Pritchard: Well, and you're right that, that, that, that point's well taken as far as like even the notion of going, yeah. Even just showing up and getting work, on screen in a movie that has eyeballs on it.

Yes. Like that, that didn't propel him to start up either. It.

Nicky P: Well, and, and, and, and add to that, add that to the element of dude taste does take, does matter in this, who in the world ever imagined Napoleon Dynamite was going to be what the Napoleon Dynamite became? John Heater wrote that train for quite a while.

Like, you know, it's not like he's the most famous guy ever, but he's probably way more famous than the guy who made Napoleon Dynamite ever Should have been.

Brian Pritchard: You, you remind me of that, joke in dogma, right? Where Salma Hayek plays like the muse, the, you know what I mean? And, and she's like, I was responsible for nine out of the, the 10, you know, top grossing films of all time.

And they're like, what about, what was the other one? And she's like, home alone. This, I have nothing to do with that. I have no idea. You know what I mean? How that would fucking happen. Right. I dunno. He just reminded me of it. It's a funny joke that like, yeah, people are always trying to like perfectly plan everything and then you do get this weird shit that, that just like, yes, you're right.

A, a a as a, that's a, a great example where the people decided, although MTV certainly helped, right? The marketing engine and all those things has to put it in a spot where people can be. Exposed to. They couldn't have forced it and indeed his follow up stuff, you know what I mean? Like Nacho Libre certainly had the right amount of marketing push, but it didn't land.

Tim and Eric and audiences you just don't understand [00:35:00]

You know? It didn't,

Nicky P: Yeah. And that was the first thing that came to mind for me. Nacho lib didn't do what that did.

Brian Pritchard: Yeah. Right, right.

Nicky P: Well, here's another one like Joseph, Joe, Joe, you know, granted it's earlier in the MTV era, but Joe's apartment never did What? What could I think it should have? That movie's hilarious, but like.

But the point is, is like, it, it just, it's not for everybody. Unless you wanna watch a bunch of cockroaches talk and throw parties in a guy's house in New York City, like you're, what the hell is there in that movie? It, it's, there's so much of, well, the taste of the people decides with this, I'm gonna be out.

Like I've never understood anything Tim and Eric have ever done, but there's a whole lot of people that love Tim and Eric. Like to me there was, I mean to me it all kind of seemed like it was poking fun at like people that didn't necessarily need to be poked fun at. But I think that's just 'cause I didn't get it.

Fame as a sliding scale — the urinal story [00:36:00]

I didn't understand the comedy like this purposely making things look bad just was not for me, but. Clearly they've gone on to make movies. They had how many different series? I think five or six series over the run that were all very popular for the people that they had an audience with. So you know it's plan all you want.

Sometimes it's just gotta hit.

Brian Pritchard: And even that, that's, that's, that's, that's a career. That's a career. And that's an audience. Right. And that's a following. You know what I'm saying? Which are all amazing.

Nicky P: You and I, you and I would kill to have that many people give a shit about us. Right.

Brian Pritchard: But it's still not, that's not quite special person status either.

Right. You know what I mean? I don't consider Tim Heider to be, a. Yeah, he could, he can walk around the world unmolested. I would, I would suspect for the most part.

Nicky P: Well, but, but, but, but let's take this. There are, I'm sure there are celebrities that you could stand at a urinal next to and it wouldn't, you wouldn't mean anything to you.

Be like, oh, hey, you just wouldn't care. Meanwhile, I've lost my shit. Standing at a urinal next to the bass player for the band. Okay, go. I was drunk as hell, and I just look over like, oh my God. And, and that's not the time you wanna be freaking out, like standing next to somebody. So the special person status, like it's on a sliding scale in and of its own.

Like I, I co in the world of podcasting, like. They, they, they always tell you, it's like, sure, you only have 20 listeners and that, and that doesn't feel like a lot. And you tell, you think of how many rooms have you ever been in, where there's 20 people listening exclusively to you. Show up to do that routinely.

Michael Stanley, Eric Carmen, and Cleveland-specific celebrity [00:38:00]

Like the internet has our, our brains think about these things very, very abstractly and not for what they really are, you know? So fame is a thing that exists, you know, at all kinds of different levels. Like some of my, like literally one of my all time favorite bands that I would geek out watching is from Cleveland.

Nobody else I know, even from Cleveland knows who the hell this band is. But I'd lose my shit if I ran across the lead singer, like out in public. Oh. Oh my God. And he is a dude that like probably teaches at the school locally.

Brian Pritchard: I know, I know. You're nutty for Mike Stanley and the resonators. Yes. You've told me on and on about Michael Stanley.

Michael Stanley. Yes. Yes. Nick, we know you love Michael Stanley, but, people know him outside of Cleveland.

Nicky P: Not, not to say he, not to say that he jokes. I am not from Cleveland and have. Hardly any connection to who Michael Stanley is, and I think of him not as the great, what could have been as the more, as the great.

Why do you think he could have been

Nothing against Michael Stanley? He's a fine musician in what he does. I just, I've never, never quite understood Cleveland's fascination with him. I felt there were plenty of people that did what he did better at the time he did it.

Brian Pritchard: We've got, uh. His face on slot machines in our casinos. So what does that tell you?

Nicky P: Well, once again, the scale, man. If everyone in Cleveland loves you, is that a bad thing?

Brian Pritchard: Yeah. I dunno.

Nicky P: You know, or is he, or is he doing that because, what's his name from the raspberries left Cleveland?

Brian Pritchard: I dunno. I dunno who that would be.

Nicky P: Oh. What's it, what am I thinking of here? It's 'cause he is, he is, I can never remember the guy's,

Brian Pritchard: The guitar player that was inducted in the rock hall and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Nicky P: I mean, no he's not. I mean, I mean he probably was a guitar player in the raspberries, but No, he is a multi-instrumentalist. He's like written a million hits and like the, the raspberries is probably the thing he's least known for, but it's, the thing always comes to mind.

Oh, this is gonna, okay, now I have to, I have to look it up,

But I think as someone who doesn't, like, he doesn't take like, where he's from in Cleveland as being like the biggest thing in his life. The ra, the raspberry is from Cleveland in 1970, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where am I looking for here? Yeah. Eric Carmen. Eric Carmen's the, the lead singer for Raspberries.

Outro and summer tour news [00:41:00]

Who else is, you know, all by myself, that guy, and I'm pretty sure he did. Hungry Eyes for Fricking

Brian Pritchard: Interesting. Yeah, I feel like my dad may have had some Eric Carmen tapes kicking around the house. A lot of Ru Todd run.

Nicky P: I actually, I know some people that recorded with him. I know some people that used to record with him back in the day here in Cleveland, like when he was around.

But I think that the biggest thing, he's not in Cleveland anymore. He like got famous and left, whereas Michael Stanley like is still here pseudo and being pseudo famous. Like he like, well they still own me. They still take care of me. I'm Cleveland proud.

Whereas Eric Har was like, well, it was just stop on the way to fame, guys.

Brian Pritchard: Fair enough.

Nicky P: Anyways, thank you to all of those who've hung out with us on this. Very strange trip we've taken today, but that is the thing that you get with us. Strange trips, usually music or movies of some kind, but strange indeed.

If you'd like to hear more, subscribe, I hope you do look for us on YouTube or wherever. Really look for us to be playing out some shows. We've got a summer tour lined up that we're getting ready for, and a couple, probably a couple shows, hopefully before that, you know, warm up and limber up before we go out and hit the country by storm.

Brian Pritchard: Do it

Nicky P: So.