Medieval (Hulu)

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your Hostdan Bettimore. I'm a

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producer, writer of film and television
and now a podcast producer. And despite

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having every streaming service, I never
know what to watch. So anytime I

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watch something good, I talk about
it on this show. This way,

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you'll never have the same problem I
do. I watched this tonight. There's

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always something good to watch. Let's
get started today on the show, I'm

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doing a Hulu roulette. Hulu is
kind of actually a pretty good selection of

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movies. A lot of movies where
what I found is a lot of movies

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where it's like I kind of wanted
to do this movie. I didn't want

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to rent it. I'll watch it
once it shows up on Hulu. That's

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happened to me a bunch of times
recently. So there was a movie in

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particular, it's called Medieval. The
reason I wanted to watch this movie it's

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because it stars Ben Foster, is
one of my favorite actors. It also

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has Michael Kine, Matthew good,
Till Schweiger. It's got a really good

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cast. It is the most expensive
movie in the history of Czechoslovakia. I

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believe it's about a military hero from
their history. So on these Roulette episodes,

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you know, I'm not necessarily say
you should watch it. It's more

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like I've taken the Roulette spin for
you, and let's find out if it

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was worth it, and then you
can decide if you want to watch it.

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I have to admit the first minute
of fifty one seconds there's a bit

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of a red flag immediately, which
is Michael Caine has this voiceover and it

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ends with him saying something to the
effect of much of Europe sank into chaos,

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and then it just says on the
screen only that part much of Europe's

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sake in the cast, which is
a little bit awkward. Do you would

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think that it would either be all
the voiceover you see it on the screen

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or none of it. It's like
one sentence that was a little weird,

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and as it kind of keeps going, you're like, oh, maybe the

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reason they did this is because people
were extremely confused about the beginning of the

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movie, because it's like, you
know, you're turning on this movie and

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you kind of feel like you're in
like a history lecture. You're you're like,

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what's a hold on? Who I
mean? You know, I watched

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the whole movie. I couldn't necessarily
tell you the historical context of it in

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a super accurate way. I do
know where in Italy. I do know

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it's fourteen or two a d.
And I know we're with Ben Foster Michael

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Caine. And it actually has a
really great opening fight sequence. I'm just

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gonna tell you some stuff that happens
in this fight sequence, and the precedent

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that this sets in terms of the
quality of the action filmmaking does hold for

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the rest of the movie. So
they're fighting like next to a lake.

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It's like a little almost like a
dirt road next to a lake, and

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they're pushing horses off in in this
lake. We see a guy doing like

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a dive, like a swan dive
with a spear and stab someone. They're

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like recon dudes with a mace.
The guy gets his foot cut off at

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the ankle. Ben I think dives
in and has an underwater fight with a

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guy at one point. It's really
good and it's very Gladiator. I mean,

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that's the one thing about this movie
is that when you watch this movie,

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you feel like they just finished watching
Gladiator. Like the first time you

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saw a Gladiator you're like, man
Gladiator. You know, obviously Gladiator is

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very influential, but yeah, it's
like it's you know, sometimes you do

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a comp for a movie, you
say, it's this means that this movie

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is like Gladiator meets Gladiator. Like
it very heavily takes the disaturated visual style,

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the sort of vaguely humming woman on
the soundtrack, the sort of you

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know, quasi religious spiritual hero a
lot of Gladiator stuff going on. But

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and again, I want to compliment
the film in the beginning, so we

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have that great fight sequence they let
the last guy live and then Ben Foster

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essentially conscripts him into his crew.
These guys are basically like medieval the expendables

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like Dolph Lundgren's gonna show up playing
and they're like hired guns from Michael Caine,

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and they do some some real like
shit talking of the boss kind of

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stuff in the sequence. And again, yeah, I went into the movie

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immediately with relatively low expectations, and
I think that it starts very strong.

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Also, and this is how the
movie effectively is like Gladiator. There's a

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little moment where this guy, he's
sort of like the rival version of Ben

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Foster. He's like the the Bad
Expendables team leader guy in Medieval Times and

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at one point he sees Ben Foster
and he's like, hey man, remember

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we're doing God's work here, and
then he drags off a bloody woman who's

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tied to his force. That little
moment, right, that's sort of like

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kind of dark in a way.
We're very like darkly comic, but also

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like very cynical and yeah, just
like very visually striking. They don't.

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I wish there was more of that. So my thing on this movie is

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I remember in Baltimore one time where
I'm from a friend and I went to

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see a led Zeppelin cover band and
they were backed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

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I love led Zeppelin. It was
awesome, it was really cool.

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Was it as good as seeing the
real led Zeppelin? No? It was

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not right. So that's a kind
of situation here. It's like there's there's

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a lot of good qualities of this
movie, but you know, it's not

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Gladiator. A couple other examples,
they kidnap a girl and the way that

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they escape is they all hide under
a bunch of dead bodies in a wagon.

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At another point, a guy is
impaled, and it's like, really

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you know, upsetting the way that
he's impaled, and then you see that

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he's sort of still alive for a
moment. It's just there's these individual scenes

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at moments that are very strong.
Another really good battle scene and a big

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thing that they say in the movie
and if you look up the real guy

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that Ben Foster is playing, they
see that he never lost a battle.

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So there's a scene when he is
super outnumbered and it seems like he's actual

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she'd been trapped. But he has
all these tactics that are really clever and

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like perfectly counter the enemy soldiers,
Like he has a way to counter the

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archers, encounter the horsemen, encounter
the foot soldiers. So again, all

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the battle stuff is great, and
you have this kind of overqualified cast.

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This is what I call like a
summer home movie where you're watching it and

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you're like, I wonder if Michael
Caine is, you know, at the

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Palermo villa that he bought with the
money from being in this movie for twenty

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minutes and his grandson's like, how
did you you know? When did you

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get this villa? And he's like, well, I did a movie called

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medieval like that's you do kind of
get that vibe. I think ultimately the

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shortcoming of the film and the reason
that this is a you know, I

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have to say, kind of like
what happened with when I did The Snowman

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recently. A lot of good qualities, good production value, good cast,

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but it's like the pieces don't all
come together, and I think for me,

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the missing thing is humor. You
know, Gladiator has a lot of

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like warmth to it, outright humor, sort of like Quansai humor. It's

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just a warm movie. Even though
there's a lot of brutal stuff in it,

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it's countered by the warmth between Rulso
Crowe and the other Gladiators, the

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sort of colorful, fun Proximo character. There's a lot of just stuff that

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is so fun in Gladiator, and
that's kind of what's missing here. Is

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it's very dour. There's some stuff
of i'll I guess technically spoilers, but

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again I apologies to everyone evolved,
especially Ben Foster, who I adore and

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I think it's like one of the
best actors in the world. So as

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I've said a couple times on the
show, if God forbid, Ben Foster

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ever hears this, forgive me,
but I can't recommend this movie, and

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I, yeah, this happens when
I do the Roulette, right, it's

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maybe don't watch this tonight. So
I am going to say some things now

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that could be considered spoilers, but
because I'm not really recommending you watch the

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film, maybe you're okay, let's
do it. There's a part at the

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end of this movie that was so
ripe for humor. Is a lion that's

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established in a castle. Ben Foster
intentionally releases the lion so it will kill

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his enemies, and it kills a
guy so brutally, and the staging of

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it is really good. Like you
see it, there's like a moment where

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it's sort of like grabs this guy's
head and like mangles it and then almost

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like drops the mic like the lion
like it's like Chris Rock for a second,

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and it's like you can't even like
just like a even a look that

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had a little bit of humor to
it from the Foster. That moment would

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have made such a difference. I
just think that humor was the missing piece

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for this whole movie. If there
had been humor wall to wall in this

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thing to balance out the bleakness.
I think it all would have hung together

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because the staging of the action is
fantastic. I can't stress that enough.

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It's so good. I wish more
movies stage action this way. There's so

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many moments where you're like wow.
I was reminded of seeing Unbak the Thai

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Warrior with Tony Jah. I saw
it in a small theater in Baltimore.

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It was like me, my dad
and a bunch of guys sitting in the

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back and we were all going damn, like and that. There's a bunch

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of moments like that in this but
yeah, it just never they don't have

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enough fun with it. I mean
that's kind of the bottom line, right

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If they had had more fun with
it, I think us as the audience

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could have more fun with it.
And you get to the end and they

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say again that this guy was undefeated
in combat, which I you know,

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I was how do you know that? Like, how do you know that

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for sure? Is it just like
some people said that, it's not like

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they have ESPN dot com. Like
they're not like Lamar Jackson forty five and

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sixteen winning record, Like who's keeping
track of those stats? So anyway,

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I mean a lot of credit to
the quality of the production, but and

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I have to say also a nice
character arc from Ben Foster's character. There's

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a there's sort of a callback to
the beginning, the conscription of the last

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survivor that happens at the end.
We've Ben Foster where this enemy momentarily seems

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to defeat him and he says,
hey, come work for me. You're

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the last one. Work for me. And Ben Foster doesn't want too,

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so he's changed. And then the
princess character, and this is a big

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spoiler, what is essentially the princess
character. I don't think she's actually a

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princess and kind of still the historical
stuff, but she serves that purpose of

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the movie. She shockingly dies at
the end. So there's a lot of

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good qualities to this film. It's
one of those ways where it's like you

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wish it would you almost like if
you blink, you think it's better.

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Like the ending, there's so much
good action at the end, like very

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much like The Snowman. It's like
it almost kind of got me back in.

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So I was rooting for this movie. I think there's a ton for

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everyone involved to be commended for but
I can't and good conscience recommend it.

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So this is a watch this tonight
roulette where I have to say, maybe

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don't watch this tonight. How before
we wrap up, I did get a

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listener audio message that was sent to
me regarding the Jury Duty episode. So

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I'm actually gonna play that for you
right now. Dude, I knew that

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I'm racist. Joke was coming Injury
Duty and I laughed my ass off.

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Anyway, So good, so good. I haven't read up on the show.

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I'm, you know, fifteen minutes
in. But are we sure this

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guy is not an actor himself?
Like the whole thing isn't scripted and we're

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just pretending, like the show is
pretending that he's the unaware man, you

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know what I'm saying. Otherwise,
it's it's brilliant, it's too good.

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Fine. Now, I've looked deeply
into this, and there's a ton of

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like TikTok videos of interviews with the
real guy and reporting interviews, and I've

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read a lot about it, and
everything is consistent that this guy was a

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real guy. It all was real. He just went for it, he

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didn't, you know, So I
do think it's all real That is the

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show for today. Before I wrap
up, I want to tease that I'm

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actually gonna be a guest on on
the We Like Movies podcast where we're gonna

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be talking about Medieval So I suspect
that will devolve into anarchy because it's kind

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of a flawed film, but it
has again, it has so much fun

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stuff to talk about, so it's
actually almost ideal for to talk about with

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a bunch of people. And yeah, I think I think it'll actually be

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pretty fun. So if you are
looking for a longer form kind of podcast,

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check those guys out. That is
the show for today. Until next

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time, Bye bye.