Planet of the Apes Got Another Pass

With complicated make up, expensive sets, a tight schedule, little support, and brutal weather, it’s a miracle that the original Planet of the Apes was made at all! The fact that it spawned such a vast (if mixed) franchise is just as impressive! Paul Kaminski is back to help Sam and Case conclude their retrospective on the Planet of the Apes franchise!

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Meeting summary:

●      The meeting focused on the analysis of the movie 'Planet of the Apes', covering topics such as character analysis, production challenges, key scenes, ape society and social commentary, courtroom scene themes, character motivations, legacy and impact, and themes of control and misinformation. Participants reflected on the movie's significance, discussed its themes in contemporary society, and outlined future action items, including analyzing production issues and discussing themes of control and misinformation in a future episode.

Notes:

●      🎬 Introduction and Background (00:00 - 08:48)

●      Participants discuss their preparation for the meeting.

●      Introduction to the 'Planet of the Apes' franchise.

●      Overview of the movie's significance and its impact on the franchise.

●      🦧 Character Analysis and Themes (08:48 - 19:53)

●      Discussion on the characters Taylor, Landon, and Dodge.

●      Themes of American exceptionalism and nihilism.

●      Comparison of Taylor to Kirk, Spock, and Bones from Star Trek.

●      🎥 Production Challenges (19:53 - 28:03)

●      Makeup application challenges and solutions.

●      Filming location and weather-related issues.

●      Charlton Heston's involvement and health during filming.

●      🏞️ Key Scenes and Cinematography (28:04 - 39:02)

●      Analysis of the desert scenes and their significance.

●      Introduction of the apes and the impact of their reveal.

●      Discussion on the scarecrow scene and its symbolism.

●      🐒 Ape Society and Social Commentary (39:02 - 48:26)

●      Introduction to ape society and its structure.

●      Comparison of ape society to human society.

●      Themes of racial metaphors and class structure.

●      ⚖️ Courtroom Scene and Themes of Control (48:26 - 01:01:21)

●      Analysis of the courtroom scene and its significance.

●      Discussion on the control of information and misinformation.

●      Comparison of Dr. Zaius to real-world figures.

●      🧠 Character Motivations and Relationships (01:01:21 - 01:11:42)

●      Discussion on the motivations of Dr. Zaius and Cornelius.

●      Analysis of the relationship between Taylor and Nova.

●      Themes of survival and intelligence in the movie.

●      🏆 Legacy and Impact (01:11:42 - 01:21:59)

●      Discussion on the movie's legacy and its influence on other Sci-Fi properties.

●      Comparison to Star Wars and other franchises.

●      Importance of the movie's themes in contemporary society.

●      🎭 Final Thoughts and Reflections (01:21:59 - 01:32:25)

●      Participants reflect on the movie's significance.

●      Discussion on the themes of control and misinformation.

●      Final thoughts on the franchise and its future.

●      📜 Production History and Challenges (01:32:26 - 01:42:22)

●      Detailed discussion on the production issues faced during filming.

●      Importance of makeup and special effects.

●      Charlton Heston's role in championing the movie.

●      🔍 Themes and Social Commentary (01:42:23 - 01:53:17)

●      In-depth analysis of the movie's themes.

●      Comparison of ape society to human society.

●      Discussion on the control of information and its relevance today.

●      🎙️ Conclusion and Next Steps (01:53:17 - 02:02:22)

●      Summary of key points discussed.

●      Action items and next steps for future episodes.

●      Final reflections on the movie and its impact.

Transcription

00:00
Paul
I am not that prepared. I am prepared insomuch as I watch. I took notes this time. My God. But I watched it and watched behind, and then beneath, and then we started escape last night. Anyway, it's fine, but, yeah, I should have some background here. At the very least, it'll be a challenge to shut me up about the planet of the apes.

00:19
Sam
Excellent. That's perfect. And this movie is more coherent than the one you brought to us last time, so it should be easier.

00:28
Paul
Yeah, sure is.

00:30
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the perfect.

00:34
Sam
Beautiful.

00:35
Paul
Nailed it.

00:35
Case
Just ate my tongue right there.

00:36
Sam
Art.

00:39
Paul
Welcome to certain povs, another past podcast with case and Sam. This week is a fifth episode, so we're talking about a movie that overcame adversity. Let's celebrate the creativity of the filmmakers.

00:53
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the another past podcast. I am Casey Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alisea.

00:59
Sam
Hi, Sam.

01:01
Case
We have been talking about the planet of the Apes franchise for the last four episodes, and today is finally the day when we're gonna be talking about the reason why this franchise exists.

01:11
Sam
And listen, this is a good reason for the franchise to exist, however.

01:16
Paul
Oh, yeah.

01:16
Sam
This has been a journey. It has been a journey watching these movies in reverse order. And I almost want to tell people, just watch it in reverse order, because, honestly, you're saving the best for last. You won't. It won't make sense to you, but that doesn't matter. It shouldn't have to.

01:34
Case
Yeah, it's true. I mean, like, a person who's unfamiliar with the franchise, starting with battle, is gonna be very confused. But when they get to this movie, man, is it a treat. Yeah, it is a treat that has created a franchise that has gone on for so many fucking movies. Nine fucking movies in this franchise. And then two tv shows. So much stuff. It's amazing. Comic books, like, huge franchise, and it's touched a lot of people. It's been great to have so many guests on to talk about their experience with the franchise. And so for today, for talking about the original movie, the Planet of the Apes, we are joined by Paul Kaminsky.

02:09
Paul
Hello. I'm very honored. Thank you for having me back.

02:14
Sam
Yeah, welcome.

02:15
Case
Yeah, well, you. You took offense online when you found out that were doing a regular, another pass episode at Escape, which I.

02:24
Paul
Would consider a perfect movie under normal circumstances.

02:27
Case
It's pretty close. It's really good.

02:28
Sam
It's really good.

02:30
Paul
Yeah, well, you see, I'm a seeker, too. There's got to be a better movie. Out there, that's a little illusion, but, yeah, of the bunch, like, that's kind of a punishment, but, yeah, three and three in this one are probably the best, I would say.

02:46
Sam
Yeah, absolutely.

02:48
Paul
With four close seconds.

02:49
Case
Yeah, exactly. That's pretty much where I come down on it. My buzz term was that tide for last is the Burton battle in beneath. And I think the retrospective of this has made me put battle above the other two. Really. It goes battle Burton beneath, in that order. For me now, I think that's fair.

03:10
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

03:11
Paul
We're on the exact same page. Yeah. I mean, battle. Only one of those films has Paul Williams in it, so I guess you put that one above the others. That man hangs out with fucking muppets. Okay, so, yeah.

03:23
Sam
So by default, no one can change a sorter now.

03:27
Paul
That's right.

03:28
Sam
It is official.

03:29
Paul
It's official.

03:30
Case
Right. And then I just feel uncomfortable necessarily putting the circus movies in, like, in the same lineup. Although I guess I would arguably put OG Planet of the Apes, because it's also the OG. Like, you can't really have this franchise without it at the top. And I think it's a classic, and it's wonderful. And even the things that haven't necessarily aged as well are forgivable because it's still this, like, incredible work from. From the sixties. And then we get the circus movies in which I can kind of go back and forth on which one I like the most of them, but I like them all together, and I like them all individually. They're all great. Probably escape falls right underneath them. Escape can sometimes come above it, because I do find it so charming, but it's also dark as fuck at the end.

04:09
Paul
God, it's so brutal. I was telling my wife last night, who, by the way, is very annoyed at the both of you for bringing apes into the tv screen in our lives.

04:21
Sam
I'm sorry.

04:23
Paul
I was telling case over our chat that I tend to be aggressively interested in things, and this is one of those things I am aggressively interested in, and sometimes I will fall into an apex rabbit hole that my wife just cannot stand.

04:36
Case
But things that are true for both of us, it's easy.

04:41
Paul
I was telling her last night, I was like, yeah, because we had started escape. We actually watched beneath last night. She was like, what is this bullshit? I was like, I know, right? But it does have its moments beneath. But escape is genuinely very good. And I was telling her that, like, when I was a kid, it really disturbed me when Zira and, spoiler alert, when Zira and Cornelius died horribly, at the end. And, yeah, Cornelius is choking on his own blood before he falls over a banister rail and cracks in half. It's like she was like. And they made you cover your eyes during the boob scene in Titanic. I was like, yeah, I know. And yet I was left alone with this.

05:21
Sam
You were let to sit with your feelings about this. That's totally fine. Watching people get brutally murdered.

05:27
Paul
Those poor monkeys. They died pretty horribly.

05:31
Case
And their child, as far as you could tell. And even with the switcheroo, it still doesn't matter. They still just murdered a child. Like, regardless of how smart the child.

05:38
Sam
Was, I mean, definitely what's so brilliant about escape, and we will definitely talk about this film because it's like. But, and we talked about this when we did the episode, is that it mimics so many great moments from this film without feeling like they're retelling the story. It's just like a reverse mirror, but they do it so well. And, like, the court scene in this film and the court scene in that film are very similar. And, like. And so it's one of the things that makes escape so brilliant, because one of the things that Charlton Heston in this movie says is that the reason he goes on this expedition is because there must be something better out there than man. Right? And so he definitely finds out that, no, there is a whole race of.

06:27
Sam
Of beings that are just as bad, just still, like, hiding the truth and things like that. And then you get an escape to see how bad he really. How bad humans behave. Anyway. So it just kind of reinforces this hairstyn, like, anti people, anti social, like, just socializing, period. I like that he's a grump. It's one of my favorite things about his character.

06:51
Paul
Yeah. This rewatch, particularly going into the second and third movies, it's interesting to me this time around, I noticed the similarities between Taylor and Doctor Zaius much more clearly than I've ever noticed before. They're really very similar. They're kind of two sides of the same coin, and they're both kind of right about most things usually in the movie, I mean, plot wise, you know, whenever there's a character that's right about something, it's actually usually Doctor Zeus or Taylor. And the case of Doctor Zaeus, when he talks, he's like, grilling. I know we're gonna get into the movie, but there's a point where he's grilling Taylor about where's your tribe? And Taylor's like, you're nuts. There is no tribe. But there was a fucking tribe. That's what the whole second movie's about.

07:38
Paul
So it is kind of interesting just how right and similar those two characters are. And it made actually my favorite scene in this movie be that. That closed door sort of, let's drop the charade and have a conversation scene between Taylor and Zaius. It's one of my favorite scenes in the movie now. Which it never was before.

07:58
Case
Yeah. I mean, Zaius is such a villain that you love to hate and is so interesting at how awful he is without being wrong most of the time. Like, the worst things he gets wrong are, like, the specifics. It's usually not the broad strokes of anything. Is there a tribe out there? Like you said, for one thing, there is. But for another, even in this scenario where you only have this movie and it's just like, well, yeah, Taylor. I mean, he was right about humans, and Taylor honestly kind of agreed about humans. Like, yeah, all the realists are locked up with each other. It's just one person's in power and the other person's not.

08:33
Paul
Yeah, it's a great moment when they first crash and I forget which one he's talking to. I don't think it's Landon. Or maybe it is the guy, the astronaut, who's, like, sad about everything. The one who. The one who buries the flag.

08:47
Sam
Oh, yeah. And he starts, first of all, that laugh. That scene with the laugh is so iconic. Like, it's just so. Like, it's. It is. It is a living meme. Honestly, it would be memed the heck out of. I mean, there are gifs of it, too, but, like, honestly, like, if this came out, like, now, people would be sharing that everywhere. It would just be that. That would be the reaction to lots of things. Yeah, but, yeah, you're right.

09:15
Paul
Yeah. It's funny. He's like, I miss my friends and family. And Charlton Heston's like, you stupid son of a bitch. Your friends and family probably sucked anyway. Let's go walk around these rocks.

09:27
Sam
I love that he's like, they've been dead for 700 years. Stop missing them. He hasn't just come to the realization, like, they may have been dead, but I just figured that out, buddy.

09:39
Case
Well, figured out is sort of the other. Before we get too deep, I have a lot of thoughts when watching at this time, in this circumstance, at this point in my life, because we've talked a lot about how the franchise hits different now than it did even five years ago in terms of some of the stuff that we see. But, Paul, I do want to ask, what is the starting point for your interest in this franchise? What is your experience of the franchise as a whole? You said you're aggressively into it, which I relate. But do you remember when you first were introduced to it, how you were introduced?

10:13
Paul
Yeah, I got a lot of science fiction for my dad as a kid, so that's where Star Trek comes from. And this and lost in space. I didn't quite glom onto lost in space with the fervor of Star Trek and apes, but I got a lot from him. So from a very young age, this franchise was in my life. And because the three of us are, you know, were not alive when these movies were coming out. So it had already been. It was already a thing. So you could always just digest the whole package at once. It was like the original Star wars movies where by the time I was old enough to appreciate them, the three of them were out already and had been dormant for a while. So you could kind of take it as a whole and stuff.

10:58
Paul
But no kids in my class or anything were watching those things. Nobody was watching, you know, Star wars because it was old at that time. We're talking pre, you know, Lucas fiddling with them era and no one was watching planet the apes because it had been ages. But I had a Cornelius doll in my room just up there next to the Migo, Captain Kirk and Cornelius and stuff. And it was very representative to these two franchises which, by the way, share a lot of kinship with each other in that they came out around the same time. I mean, Star Trek starts up in 66, for real. Apes starts filming in 67. And they're both smart pieces of science fiction that have just that little edge of low budgety to it.

11:42
Paul
We're not talking 2001 here, although I would argue the apes in kind of the apes look way better than the apes in 2001. But there's an element of camp. It's just on the periphery, but it's smart enough where you don't feel like a dum for enjoying it and actually probably set the tone for a lot of what I enjoy in media, just in general. It's like having something to say but doing it in an over the top, kind of arguably ridiculous at times way with intricate continuity. So that checks all my boxes right off.

12:19
Case
Are there time travel shenanigans?

12:21
Paul
Yes.

12:22
Case
Is headcanon required to understand the franchise?

12:24
Paul
Yeah, check, check. And that leads to comic books and all. So that's sort of the basis for my media consumption, just in general. And then, you know, like a lot of kids, I put down these franchises when I was in middle school cause I didn't want to get beat up. But then in high school, I really found myself, like, embracing these things. Like, I had, like, you know, pictures of Admiral Kirk on my locker kind of thing, but I was able to feel like I owned it sort of in a weird way. And the same thing with apes. So as an adult, I've just grown to love these franchises more and more because they age so well. I mean, obviously we'll talk about how this move doesn't exactly pass the Bechdel test, but that aside, they still hold up pretty damn well.

13:09
Paul
This and Star Trek. So that's where I come at apes. And so I love them dearly and go through periods of watching them and was so impressed when those Matt Reeves movies and, well, I guess I forget who directed that rise movie, but I was so impressed when those movies came out because I could not believe, speaking of intricate continuity, that of all the things they could pick up, they pick up the story of Caesar from four and five. I just. I was so impressed with that decision. I was just like, oh, my God. Because not only are they picking it up, but they did it in this really interesting, unique way. I don't know. I was just really impressed with. So that's my apes background, and I make a lot of monkey noises and my wife can't stand.

13:56
Case
There are moments where you and I are just, like, too similar. The amount of times my wife gets mad about, like, me knuckle walking up the stairs or just, like, making random chest lumps.

14:08
Paul
When my daughter was born and I was doing the nova. Nova, she's like, you can't. Our child's first word will not be Nova. Okay?

14:21
Case
Get your paws off.

14:28
Paul
It's good times.

14:29
Case
Yeah, yeah. And just like, the franchise. Like, this is a franchise that has, fortunately, with the circus movies, it has really been additive to everything. Like, we've talked every time so far about my feelings that it creates actually a perfect addition to the chronology of, like, well, this is the story first, and then Charlton Heston arrives, Taylor arrives in the future, and then that prompts the time travel back, and that creates the splintered timeline of escape and so forth, but it all still fits together. And, like, it. It's so easy to glom once you ignore the specifics. Like the fact that some of the dates don't line up in any of the movies, the fact that the names that they recall as being, like, our legends tell us this. What fucking legends? First of all, and why is the legend different each movie? Yeah.

15:17
Case
Like, once you get past that, the franchise is just so damn strong. And then you have the Burton one, which at least the makeup is incredible, and you end up with this wonderful, again, nine movie series.

15:29
Paul
Admittedly, I don't go back to that Burton one often, although I'm sort of perversely happy it exists, because, like you say, it is the only time you'll see makeup like that on people like Michael Clark Duncan playing the guerrilla general and stuff. And that's kind of really. When I was rewatching beneath yesterday, I was thinking, well, the only thing I think this movie gave us appreciably additive to the franchise was Ursus. And that's kind of it, because everything else you get in the first film anyway, and I could have done without the mutants at all. Like, I don't know what your diagnosis at the end for could have used another past was, but I would have cut the mutants completely.

16:11
Case
We brought that up as a possibility.

16:13
Paul
Just because it's such a weird left turn and doesn't add anything to the story just complicates things a little bit. But, yeah, Ursus was a great addition, and that has maintained throughout the franchise. The gorillas. I mean, not that they weren't warlike and aggressive and stuff in this first one, but I think it was Ursus that really put a face to it and stuff. And that continued on throughout the rest of the franchise.

16:35
Case
Yeah. A central violent figure that stands out from Zayas and is specifically, like, the guerrilla side. Like a villain for the guerrillas, specifically. And not just. Or not just orangutans holding back information while subjugating the rest of society, it showed, like, well, here is. If you indoctrinate and feed all this right wing bullshit to a large group of people who are in working class and also make their only means of elevation in society, be through. Through violence and through the military, then, like, that might not be great.

17:09
Paul
Yeah.

17:10
Sam
Maybe not. Maybe not.

17:13
Case
The people you produce might not be the best people. And I think that's really interesting, and I think that is a good part of beneath that. I kept saying for beneath. And, like, also for the burton one. Like, it would be really nice just to have, like, a good scenario where we could see gorillas as being truly scary in this setting. And, like, the limitations of having humans in makeup just never really worked in the original five.

17:36
Paul
For the scariness, you mean for the.

17:38
Case
For the scariness. Yeah. And you don't want that towards the end. Like, I would find, like, aldo in battle. Like, he should be much more sympathetic, because this is where the society is starting to splinter as it's being formed in the first place. And so you kind of want him to have some more redeeming qualities. Then ultimately he gets. Because he's an Ursus retread at that point, to the point where they even have, like, costume pieces that are, like, shared between the two.

18:00
Paul
Yeah, yeah.

18:01
Case
And that's a budget thing as much as anything else. But, yeah. Like, it's. Because it's all just building on this really, like, great framework of, like you said, it's a little campy, it's a little silly, but it has so much to say that you can then start adapting it to say more and more things about our society. Because the whole point is that it's apes, and they're, like, literally aping human society and doing sort of this, like, approximation of it as they observe, rather than, like, creating something of their own. And, like, that becomes the lens for us to look at things. And that's why this first movie is so good. The book is fine. It's been a while since I read it.

18:40
Case
I read it back in high school when I was one of my tears about being obsessed with this, probably when the DG's came out, because you hyper fixate on something for a while, then a couple years later, you're like, oh, right. That was really fun to hyper fixate on. Let me hyper fixate on it again.

18:55
Paul
Cheaper than medication, right, exactly.

18:58
Case
So, like, I went through a phase somewhere around junior high, and then the dvd's came out. So that was probably, like, late high school, early college, where I was like, oh, yeah, fuck, right? I love these things. And around that time, I read the book, and the book is fine. Like, I get, like, it's a bit more just, like, raw satire because the whole society is, like, advanced and, like, it's honestly less scary than the movie makes it. And you can really see then the rod Sterling fingerprint when you get to the movie, like, that transition into making it this sort of, like. Like, this is a Twilight Zone movie. Even if it wasn't supposed to be a Twilight Zone movie. It's a rod serling initial script. Even if it's been retouched like, crazy.

19:36
Case
And, like, the reveal of the apes, the fact that it takes 30 minutes to get to the apes.

19:40
Paul
32 minutes and 10 seconds, which is insane almost.

19:44
Sam
Cause it's called Planet of the Apes. So you're standing there watching beautiful vistas. I mean, gorgeous. I mean, it is a beautifully shot movie. But there are no apes for 32 minutes on the planet of the apes.

19:58
Paul
Yeah, that was another thing I noticed this time around. Speaking of things that came from this recent rewatch was I was watching it really through the lens of a really long twilight zone episode. Because for some reason, I just. I don't know. I never really dwelled on the rod serling of it all. But, yeah, it really does scan like that. There is one. And maybe this. The movie would be impossible to get around this. But there is one leap of logic. That makes it one step below. Like a proper twilight zone is that. And it's a stupid thing to even bring up. But the fact that Taylor never questions the english language. I know it's stupid to bring up. Because in the end, doesn't matter at all.

20:44
Paul
But if this was a proper twilight zone, I feel like they would have addressed it at least. Because I can sort of rationalize that the english language survived with the monkeys through the Holocaust. I can kind of rationalize that. It's probably not likely, but I can rationalize it. But the fact that Taylor doesn't address it at all. And just seems to roll with it. Was one that jumped out to me. Like, I wonder where that got lost along the way or something like that. But anyway, I digress.

21:08
Case
Yeah. The fact that it's still English should be one an Easter egg. Just for, like, if the twist of it being still earth. But then also part of it is that it even speaks to the fact that the apes are not creative. In the same way that humans are. Or at least that's the bulk society. Like, it's very explicit in the book that chimpanzees are the first to really make advancements. And not just copy everything that they've been doing forever. And so it makes sense that language evolves normally. And the fact that these apes have learned a language. And are so iconoclastic. Like, they're so locked into everything. It will not change. Like, because they cannot let it change. Because that's all they know how to do. They don't know how to make new terms for things.

21:54
Case
They can just keep using the old ones about, right?

21:57
Paul
Yeah, I never thought of it that way. That's a great rationalization. Still wish Taylor would have been. And why are you all speaking English?

22:04
Case
Taylor should have thought about it.

22:06
Paul
But, yeah, no, it's a weird thing to.

22:08
Case
Because I also looked at this movie this particular time from the lens of. Is this just a Twilight Zone episode? And it really works very well if you think of it in that framework, the astronauts traveling through the California desert is super twilight zone staples. So many episodes are like, yep, we're just out here in California. And if it was black and white, it would look just the same as all those other movies. There are points in the movie that really feel like there should be commercial breaks, specifically right after Taylor says the. Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty apes. And, like, it's a great moment there. Great musical score, or this. This huge swell that occurs right there. The look on zero is perfect. Cut to commercial. Should happen right there.

22:49
Paul
Yeah, actually cut to commercial. Yes. I was also thinking of it like a play. It seemed to have the cadence of a play in that way where. Where it was almost like that's where the curtain would fall and then you pick it up again or something. It's such a dead stop, dead start. I don't know if the person who did the screenplay had any background in theater, but I wouldn't be surprised.

23:10
Case
Yeah. It also comes at about the exact halfway spot, and that makes it even more so. This whole, like, yep. We're like, here's the paradigm shift right there. Like, the act one, act two kind of structure to it, which is different than the way a lot of screenplays really work, because Taylor, as a speaking individual in that society, is such a shift to what the dynamics of everyone's relationships are. It's just a very dramatic. The first half is one, and then the second half is a totally different thing. But, yeah, like, man, fuck, I just love this movie, rewatching it.

23:45
Case
So a thing I've noticed as I've gotten older is when I try to rewatch a movie from the perspective of someone who doesn't have cultural knowledge going into it has really opened my eyes to, like, how some things have been paced really well. Like, I think that 30 minutes burn of them just being on the planet by itself with, like, much less score or like, these, you know, these, you know, a lot of mystery. And at first it's just like. It's just arid and it's bland and, like, they're barely surviving. But it's like, you know, there's some action that, you know, we get the crash landing. We get them, like, escaping the ship, and then it's. It's just this featureless desert that they're in, but we know that there's water and that they're able to survive and. Bare minimum.

24:24
Sam
Yeah.

24:25
Case
And you spend a lot of time with these characters who I tend not to think about the other astronauts very much. When I think about the franchise as a whole. But then looking at this movie and being like, oh, these are very important characters for the story of Taylor.

24:37
Sam
You do spend actually a lot more time with them than you think, right? Cause we think of the memes and the. Get your hands off me, you dirty apes. And him being sprayed by water later on. These are the things that kind of stick with you. But what his team offers in those 1st 30 minutes is it kind of tells you exactly who Taylor is, which is a big old grump. But it also. You're watching these humans struggle to survive, right? Like, yeah, Taylor's hardened, and he's like, get over it. But you've got these aspects of humanity, right? So you've got his one astronaut friend who is so sad about everything. And then you've got the real scientist who right away is, he goes and he collects dirt. He starts taking samples.

25:23
Sam
You know, like, let's figure out where we are, what and when we are, what we're doing, what kind of soil we're on. We've got to find water, we've got to find land. You know, like, it's like these three different explorers. An explorer who wanted the clout, an explorer who just wants to find something else because he thinks humans are shit. And that's Taylor. And then you've got the real scientist, right? And so you kind of, like, get this idea of, like, this exceptionalism. Like these guys. Like, you know, someone just wanted a statue of himself, but I just wanted to get the fuck away from that and find something better. And it's very interesting because it's also talking about, like, the exceptionalism, right? American exceptionalism. And what are the different types of people who are, like, these explorers that we look up to?

26:07
Sam
Because Taylor's not the least likely hero of the three. He's the only one that survives. But, like, there's one guy, right? The crier. I'm just gonna call him the baby because I don't know his name.

26:20
Case
It's Landon and Dodge.

26:22
Sam
Landon.

26:23
Case
Landon is the one who's, like, the. Like, he wanted to be the hero. He's the one who wants the statue.

26:27
Sam
So he wants the statue.

26:29
Case
He contributes nothing to the party.

26:30
Sam
Yeah, he mostly, he's just emotional. He's just kind of like. And he's there as a golden boy. He's always been exceptional. And when they gave him the honor of going on this test mission, he took it because, you know, for humanity, but really for his vanity, right? And then. And then you've got a true scientist. And, like, yeah, Dodge. Dodge. There should be something. I mean, like, it is so. Because this. When I was rewatching it, like, I remember the scene, like, when I was younger, seeing Dodge and be like, oh, no. But now as an adult, like, I was hit even harder. And I was like, oh, fuck. Like, all Dodge wanted to do was collect some soil, make some discoveries. Like, it really, like, you know, because it also feels like Taylor, curmudgeon.

27:17
Sam
He has a respect for Dodge that he does not have for Landon. Like, he, like, oh, absolutely. And so we also have a respect for this character because, like, he's an explorer. He's like, he wants to discover things. He thinks that this is bettering things. And that's what we aspire to, right? That's. That's what we should. And then we've just got Taylor, who's just like, well, I was like, well, I can leave, and maybe there'll be something better than what was here. I've never made a connection with anyone here, so I'm just gonna go somewhere else.

27:51
Paul
Fuck.

27:51
Sam
It doesn't matter. And so, like, out of those three guys, like, really poor Devin, like, Landon could have died any day. But, like. But, like, Taylor. But Taylor's, like, the least likely of the three of them to be the person that you're rooting for. And yet he is the person you're rooting for, even though he at first is callous and all of those other things. And it makes for an interesting dynamic.

28:19
Paul
It's like a dark version of Kirk Spock bones in that it's almost this cynical. The whole movie is kind of a tonal opposite of Star Trek, in which Star Trek is very hopeful. Taylor, our hero, as you say, is the epitome of nihilism and cynicism. And he wants. And he's. I mean, it's. It is a fascinating thing, too, coming from somebody like Charlton Heston, captain fucking America over here and all he. In this movie, this character he's playing this movie, is this guy who can't stand humanity.

28:55
Sam
He hates it.

28:56
Paul
It's kind of remarkable that happened, although I suppose he was younger at the time. I wanted to mention on the Dodge thing, I think there's a quote in there where they say Dodge would walk headlong into a volcano if he thought that there was a soil sample to obtain or something.

29:11
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

29:12
Case
Lots of things about him being the first to do. It is really like he has this insatiable curiosity and desire to acquire knowledge for the sake of doing something new, which I think is really cool. And not for nothing, that's the african american person in the cast, like, I think is a really nice element as well. Landon comes off as, like, if this was a pulp fiction story from, like, the thirties where you. You just have your, like, your buck Rogers type or your flash Gordon type who's just, like, again, like, all american. Yeah, like, saves the day and go home or goes home and everything's fine. He's, like, with no scars on him and never really thinks about what he wants out of life or thinks about anything. He just wants to be the hero, and that's why he's terrible at it.

30:00
Case
And then we get these ironic results for both of them because Landon never really thinks. He just kind of goes with it because he expects to be the hero in this whole scenario, and he survives, but he's the one who loses the ability to think. He is lobotomized. Dodge is the one who is most focused on the scientific aspects of everything, and ultimately, he becomes a museum piece, a monument to the ape science, like, celebrating everything. And then Taylor, the nihilist, the one who could kind of take being alive, he could take it or leave it, is the one who ultimately survives the most and is, you know, forced to reckon with all the sins of humanity's past, even though he's the one who's already, like, I've already, like, written off humanity. I don't care about them anymore.

30:50
Sam
Yeah, right.

30:51
Case
And he's forced to kind of acknowledge that he does care, that humanity has.

30:54
Paul
Destroyed itself, but he doesn't. It's an interesting thing when Zaius gives him that final speech before he rides off to the statue about how humanity is terrible. Taylor, who always has a retort for everyone, does not have a retort for it. Man is a scourge. Man is. Man is terrible. Isn't that? And he doesn't say a damn word because I think he agrees.

31:16
Sam
Yeah.

31:16
Case
Yeah. So we. We have these wonderful, we have this wonderful time with these actors who, you know, we lose pretty quickly into the movie, relatively speaking. So much so that, like, I often think back on the movie and, like, don't even really think too much about the. The march through the wilderness with them all, which I think is just being too familiar with the franchise too soon in some regards. Like, like, sometimes you need to take a step back and be like, okay, wait, let's watch this with fresh eyes, because then you get into the actual, like, when you. When you're watching this and you spend all this time with them, like, wandering through this arid desert. And it's really arid in the real world, too. Like, it's a terrible time for them all on this whole filming.

31:59
Case
And then you get to this, like, the green space, and you start with, like, the scarecrows, and that's, like, this wonderful, like, oh, no, there's definitely intelligent life here. And they're also trying to be, in some way menacing, regardless of, like, how. Like. Like, what they're trying to be menacing towards or anything like that. Like, we're. The first sign of civilization of any kind is like. Is a warning. And then you know, we go in and we get. We get many people's favorite scene in the movie where we get a bunch of naked dudes hopping into the water.

32:31
Paul
Couple of butts.

32:32
Case
Some sexy time.

32:32
Paul
Yeah, that's three separate butts.

32:35
Sam
You know what I was thinking? The only thing is, like, I was just like, these are very trusting scientists because they just jumped into that water. Like, they didn't even, like. Like, for all that they know, like, we know because it's been around for so long. And, like, you know, I. I came into it knowing the twist because it had been out for so long right when I was a kid and I watched it. But, like, for all they know, they're on another planet and they don't even do, like, a test. Like, they don't even, like, stick a stick in it to see if it dissolves or, like, you know, anything. Like, they never question the fact that it's just water. And, like, listen, I get it. They've been walking through a desert. They were really dirty and stuff like that.

33:20
Sam
But they were scientists, and they should have checked that.

33:25
Case
They should have. Honestly, looking back on this movie, I'm impressed that they even took the time to be like, oh, wait, we should check if the atmosphere is breathable before we try to leave.

33:34
Paul
Before they leave.

33:35
Case
Yeah, that part's good. I guess you could argue that because they had to deal with the ship sinking, they're at least familiar with that. The water that they had encountered was just salt water up until this point. And this is arguably probably fresh water because there's, like, a lot of vegetation around it. But even in a scenario where it is perfectly clean water at this lake they're jumping into, you don't know what's in the lake.

34:00
Sam
Listen, there are lakes in our current timeline that you probably don't want to swim in.

34:07
Paul
Yeah.

34:08
Sam
So just putting that out there in general, I get it. It made for a fun scene where lots of butts went flying into water, and there were some splishy splashing and there were some clothes stealing, which, I mean, everyone knows that hijinks are hilarious and fun, so they must have added layers of humor and lightheartedness to what is actually essentially a pretty nihilistic and dark script. But also, I'm just saying.

34:39
Case
Yeah, that's true.

34:40
Paul
I mean, the whole pond is kind of. Or waterfall or whatever is kind of the embodiment of the false sense of security that it represents. It's almost like they give you a break before everything goes horribly wrong again. So you have this really decompressed, almost lost Ian in scope, sort of dwelling on the dry nature of the desert. And so they really just need to pop that bubble real quick before they throw you into the next horrible thing.

35:11
Case
I guess, because there's a moment of them being almost optimistic following this. The fact that they find a thing that's like humans, but they're dumb. And Taylor's like, if this is the best this planet has, we're gonna show this place.

35:25
Paul
And they're sitting around eating coconut like it's no biggie. Like, they're just.

35:29
Sam
Yeah, they should be chilling, just having a great time. Just jump in the water, swim, relax. They're very optimistic about a lot.

35:38
Paul
And I think this is around the time, or maybe it's earlier, where I mentioned the Bechdel test earlier. There is a fourth astronaut, of course, Stuart, who sadly does not make it. And she becomes mummy lady because the seal or something was broken and her or cryogenic tube.

35:55
Case
But classic twilight zone, by the way. There are multiple twilight zones where characters are in pods of some kind. And when they all wake up, they're dead or someone's dead, which is good.

36:08
Paul
And I think, actually, that happens in the con in space seed, if I'm recalling correctly. I think that literally happens in space seed where some of the pods were broken and there's corpses in there anyway. But I think it's when they're chewing on that coconut and Taylor's eyeing up nova, and I think he says something, that Stuart was their most precious cargo. They just.

36:32
Case
Yes.

36:33
Sam
Oh, my God, this was so bad. Yes.

36:35
Paul
Treat this lady like a commodity or like a sack of rice or something. It's just bonkers.

36:42
Sam
Yeah, he actually says something about her. Of course, they would have to put their passionate input or something like that. Cause I paused it, rewound it, looked at the subtitles, like, as I played it again, and then I rewound it again, and my boyfriend was like, wow, that was sad. I was like, yeah, that would make it into, like, a straight remake of this film. Now. It would be really bad.

37:09
Paul
I guess it makes sense for Taylor, the character. Yeah, but it's also, like, smell test on any level. Really?

37:18
Case
Yeah. Well, and later, he brings it up when he's like. Is, like, talking about her to Nova when he's just kind of thinking about the character, and it's like, oh, yeah, like what? Like, I guess if you're, like, launching a probe of. With a manned probe to an unknown planet, it makes sense to have, like, breeding pairs, theoretically. But, like, also, they didn't. What was the plan?

37:42
Sam
Yeah, it made it sound like she would just breed with all of them.

37:47
Case
It would make more sense if it was the reverse in the gender ratio on that one, honestly.

37:52
Sam
Yeah, but I don't like, it made it sound like just in case one of them failed, one of them should be able to succeed. I don't know, Case. It was a bad line.

38:08
Case
I mean, it makes sense to have a.

38:10
Sam
You are right.

38:11
Case
Why is it four people? And why is it a ratio of three to one? Like, why are any of those choices being made?

38:17
Sam
You are completely right. This is definitely a flaw.

38:21
Case
And the honest answer is, don't worry about it. That's not what we're trying to.

38:25
Sam
She's dead anyway. It's fine.

38:27
Case
Yeah.

38:29
Sam
And Landon shouldn't be sad about it, her or his family.

38:36
Case
She's been dead for 50 years at this point.

38:40
Paul
Yeah, I think they say that. Yeah, yeah.

38:43
Case
And then we get this, like, very. We get this incredibly dramatic moment, which is the horn and all the humans running and, like, the camerawork is so great there. Like, where, like, all of a sudden, you dip down into the level of the corn levels so that, like, you. You can't see things very well. This is where the music really kicks into overdrive. And, like, they get the message pretty quick. It's like, whatever the fuck that was. We're joining them.

39:06
Paul
I love the big sticks. Reminded me it might have been something Spielberg borrowed for the raptors actually in lost world, but, like, later on.

39:17
Case
Yeah, with the tails, the sticks popping.

39:18
Paul
Up and whacking it because you don't know what they are right away and stuff. And it's just. It's something that is on its face, not threatening, but in the context of the music and the flow of the scene, you're like, oh, something's coming. Something bad.

39:33
Sam
Yeah. I think also, like, you know, you see the humans kind of, like, start to, like, back up slowly and then the music starts building and you see those sticks and it's just like, wait. And in my head, it was just like, you see people moving. You should be moving with the people, like. Like, total animal instinct. For me, I was like, run, right?

39:57
Case
Yeah. They convey it so well. And then we get the, you know, the wonderful reveal of apes on horseback. Like, this huge part of the franchise that's crystallized so well because you see one rush by and you can't quite see its face and then another one comes through and turns and it's like, oh, yeah, no, that's a gorilla face right there. And this is the first test of the makeup, and it does a really good job of being like, yep, that's. Oh, I see why this is called the Planet of the Apes.

40:25
Paul
Yeah. I forget the name of the guy who designed the makeup, but I think that he is probably, like, a decent chunk responsible for the success of this movie. Because if those prosthetics didn't work, like you say, it wouldn't work at all. And they really sell it, man. Those. I don't know. Even now, jaded with CGI and all this stuff, I look at those eight prosthetics and go, those were damn good. They're really convincing. Like, you see those backstage shots of them, like, smoking cigarettes and stuff and it just weirdly looks like apes sitting around smoking cigarettes. Really strange. But, no, it works really well.

41:06
Paul
I would also love to point out the irony of an allegory about animal rights with them, like, fucking around with horses so much in this, especially the second movie where they're knocking them over and sort of tripping them and all that stuff. I'm just.

41:20
Case
Yeah, we called attention to that one in the beneath episode. It was like, oh, no, I'm not a big fan of the amount of horse stunts that are going on here.

41:26
Sam
Yeah, I want to go back because I want to. It's. John Chambers is the gentleman who did the makeup. And he actually, before there was actually a real award, he actually got an honorary award for makeup because I think it was 1986 when they actually made that a real category. So he was one of the few. I think there was only one other guy before him that actually won Academy Award for the makeup that he did in this movie. And he actually learned some of the techniques for crafting it from crafting bandages in World War Two.

42:02
Case
Yes.

42:02
Paul
Yeah.

42:03
Case
And prosthetics making fake limbs and, like.

42:05
Sam
So helping people to, like, look more normal and be able to, like, fit back into society. So, like, it is kind of like, pretty amazing. Like, the makeup that was done on this and the test is the reason why. Like, his makeup is the reason why this movie got made, because the studio was like, actually, that looks pretty good. All right, let's see it.

42:26
Paul
That's right. He also did Mister Spock's ears, and so he had that going for him. A really talented dude. That test is bizarre because, you know, if you squint, they don't even really look like monkeys, kind of. But I could see how you would look at that and go, oh, there's potential here.

42:43
Sam
Yeah. I think the best part about the makeup is that there's enough room around the eyes so that you really see how the actors emote. You know, like, it gives. It gives a chance for all of these actors to give performances. I mean, like, one of my favorite scenes is the courtroom scene, because every single one of the orangutans have different expressions as things are being said to them. And it just. They're just so good. Like, oh, no. Why? It's amazing. I love it.

43:16
Paul
It is. I love that, too. When you watch the documentaries and stuff, Kim Hunter, when she's talking, I still see her exaggerate her lips and, you know. Cause that's how they get the emotions out of the monkey makeup is by hyper exaggerating what they're doing with their faces and stuff. And so I couldn't help but wonder, well, I hope that didn't develop into a tick for Miss Hunter for the.

43:37
Case
Rest of her life.

43:39
Sam
Or at least like. Like, she didn't have to ice her face at the end of every night. Right? From overuse.

43:45
Case
Well, I mean, she competes for. For most appearances in the Planet of the ace movie. The. The only Roddy McDowell ultimately beats her. And then the producer's wife. Yeah. Natalie Trundy, she's not in this one, but she's in all the other of the original.

44:04
Paul
She plays a mutant in two. She plays.

44:07
Case
She's a scientist in three, and then she's. Then she's Caesar's mate in four and five.

44:13
Sam
Yeah.

44:14
Case
And she's the person who kept the lawgiver statue. Oh, she had that until she auctioned it off, like, in, like, the, like, early nineties for, like, some charitable cause thing.

44:25
Paul
I was. I was a couple drinks in looking for a statue of that lawgiver statue that I could purchase last night from the eBay. And let me tell you, those are too expensive for my blood. It dropped, like, $3,000. The one that was affordable was the bleeding one from two. It was like, I don't want a lawgiver statue covered in blood. What kind of nerd do you take before? What, am I gonna look at that all day? Geez.

44:46
Case
Yeah. So before we move on from this first encounter with the apes, I think one of the things that's really cool, in addition to we get to see how the three astronauts are smarter than the other humans. Their intelligence is allowing them to avoid traps that everyone else is getting caught by, which I think is really cool. And we get the element of the one who comes out unscathed. Is the one who has actually ultimately maimed the worst with Landon. But I really like after Taylor gets shot in the neck, which is a cool, dramatic thing, that's like, this is how he fucking survives by staying quiet effectively. But we get some time with the gorillas before we go back to ape City.

45:28
Case
And it's kind of nice to have a few moments here where, like, this part right here would have been a sufficient satire of human culture just by itself. Like, it's so similar to, like, a Calvin and hobbs trip where, like, deer start hunting humans in offices. Like, where it's, like, all the apes they, like. We get them speaking English. So we establish that part there. We get the camera stuff. We get, like, the fact that this hunt is a thing that they're participating in as, like, a sport. Even if it's, like, protecting crops or whatever the impetus for it is. But I think it's like, here's a microcosm of all the things that we're going to talk about with the apes right here. Humans are being put up in cages, and apes are the ones celebrating it. And they treat them as pests.

46:06
Case
And I think that's such a cool moment right there with the gorillas themselves. And we see how they take joy in this all.

46:12
Paul
Yeah. Bungalow builds. Yeah. It's disgusting, but it's really striking imagery to see them hanging upside down. And then the photos being taken. These really mundane. And that's where the twilight zoning stuff comes in. The really mundane human things or scenes you would normally associate with humans being turned on their head like that. It's really striking.

46:37
Case
Yeah. But then the movie continues on, and we get introduced to, finally, Kim Hunter Azira. And we get to see a bit more of what ape society is like. With the whole chimpanzee doctors that are looked down upon by the orangutans. And the racial metaphors that they start introducing here. And it's so good. All of it's just so good.

47:01
Paul
Yeah, I love that the actors who played the different types of apes, tended to eat lunch together, as it was observed in one of these documentary things I was watching where. That's an interesting little sociological.

47:14
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

47:18
Case
Yeah. It speaks to this unconscious pack mentality that humans have just in general. And, like, it's going off of what we see in the movie. As soon as the people start running, the astronauts start running. Like, you get everyone dressed up in makeup. And probably there's some very simple reasons that are, like, the start. Like, not just that they're all gorillas or all orangutans. They probably had their makeup being done at the same time. So there's probably a starting point there. Their scenes are going to be, like, together. All of those things are going to be going on. So, you know, like, there's probably innocuous, specific reasons, but then it becomes, when you take a step back, you're like, oh, I see how these, like, striations in society develop without even necessarily, it being a malicious choice.

48:00
Paul
And that's the beauty of science fiction, to look at these things through a detached lens so you can slip the medicine in with the mashed potatoes. Whereas, like, you know, you couldn't do a movie like this necessarily straight up and have it be a, you know, blockbuster or something like that. I mean, it's hard to. It's. Sometimes it's hard to say these things. It's easier to say when there's monkeys involved, or aliens, in the case of Star Trek or whatever, you know. I mean, it's just handy that we're humans have that capability.

48:33
Case
Yeah. And then we get to see, like, the different relationships between them. Like, the relationship julius the gorilla, like, human wrangler that is there in his relationship with Doctor Zira. Like, they're very nice to each other. He looks up to her, has a really good relationship. But then he's also the one who's just gonna just take a baseball bat and just start smacking around humans. Or he's the one holding the fire hose. And that's such an evocative shot when he's blasting them later. That's later in the movie. We see how the, like, later in the trial scene, there's the really important line of, it seems some apes are more equal than others.

49:18
Sam
Yeah.

49:19
Case
And that's like, that, I think, is thesis of this movie where it, like, people, even if they try to present an egalitarian world where everyone has upward mobility, like, there are still all these things that are binding us down, and it's things that we're putting on ourselves. This is in the wake of the Watts riots. We are seeing that american exceptionalism may not be real. It might just be a story that we're telling ourselves. And I like that we are showing. We've got characters who are at the different echelons of their society and how that doesn't mean, like, a person who is a bad guy to the human isn't necessarily a bad guy to the other apes, but their ways of existing are through this much more rigid class structure that's being put on them.

50:13
Case
But it is supposed to reflect the harder to define class structure that exists in the US.

50:20
Sam
Yeah, I can definitely see that. I think also going back to just Julius and Zero's relationship, too, you have that just happened on a regular every day. Right. You know, a guy, he says a couple things, but he's actually. He's a good guy. He's a good. Until he does something that's like, oh, no. All those jokes, they were not. They weren't jokes. So I think. I think you see that a lot. And, you know, he's part of that enforcer group, right? The guerrillas are the enforcer group. So he's going to enforce things on humans and he's going to do his job in those ways. And he's not going to be someone who's going to agree with Zira, no matter how friendly he is with her as the doctor, overseeing certain things, because that's just not her place.

51:19
Sam
You know, he's an enforcer and Zaius is the law.

51:23
Paul
That's really interesting. I never really think about Julius as an important character, but you're right. Like, he exemplifies that, you know, that even the most normal seeming people in the context of a society are capable of these horrible things. I had misheard that. We mentioned that later in the movie where he's really, you know, that.

51:48
Case
Shut up, you freak.

51:48
Sam
Shut up.

51:49
Paul
And I had always misheard that line. I never knew what he was saying. But Taylor knows his name is Julius because he name checks him. He goes, julius, you, and then fires him again. Which, as a kid, I am not embarrassed, but bemused to admit that I misheard what Charlton Heston says there. The madhouse line. I thought he was screaming, it's a man hose.

52:15
Sam
Which honestly would make sense, as in.

52:18
Paul
A hose to squeeze down men.

52:21
Sam
I mean, it could be. It's the planet of the apes, and they're using that hose to hose down men.

52:27
Paul
Yeah.

52:29
Case
Talking about the hose scene, one thing that stood out. So one of the sources that were looking at for. This is sf debris did a video about both the background for the movie the Planet of the apes and then also the, like a deeper analysis of the movie as a whole and a point that he raised that I thought is really cool. And I hadn't really put two and two together. But in the context of the sixties, like, seeing that he had at his disposal this powerful hose to knock people up against a wall is very evocative of television coverage of riots and specifically of the police state that exists but doesn't normally get discussed in the real world of the United States.

53:10
Case
And a lot of the conversation might be american centric, but that's because this is, while the novel is french, everyone making this movie is american and it was ultimately shot in America. And the intended audience is american. And so making a connection of like, oh, well, they readily have these hoses, which would be suppression tools that they are turning. They probably turn on each other like they. Ape does not kill ape is the thing in this whole franchise. But that doesn't mean that gorillas aren't being used to beat down chimpanzees every now and then or other gorillas at the behest of the orangutans.

53:45
Paul
Yeah, we see it in the second movie where they do that. Where the gorillas do that to the protesting chimps.

53:50
Case
Yeah. So it's not just a society that treats their animals poorly. It's a society that, like, violently oppresses each other and that the only form of upward mobility for gorillas is to be the source of that violence.

54:04
Paul
It's deeper than I've ever thought about it, frankly. But okay.

54:06
Case
Yeah. Like, every time I look at these movies, I keep feeling sad for the guerrilla group because despite the fact that we end up with villainous military characters, the fact that they're even in that position. And part of this is just the real world understanding that, I don't know, was necessarily common knowledge when this movie was made, but that is common knowledge now that gorillas tend to be the more docile of the ape, of the great apes. Like the fact that their role that they have been cast into just by virtue of their physical ability to be the enforcers of violence or like, through violence by virtue of size is a really tragic thing that is being put upon them.

54:48
Sam
Yeah. I mean, I think we touched on this a little bit too when we talked about battle, which is actually the first of our long series that we talked about. But in that, there's a moment where Aldo is. He's in school and he's completely belittled and made to look bad. And I was like, not only is that bad teaching, but it's just a messed up moment. This is a messed up moment overall. So I think overall, you know, I can see why, after watching five of these movies case, albeit in reverse, you feel a true, like, sympathy for the gorillas overall because they're constantly placed in that position where this is their only option.

55:40
Paul
It's interesting, though. It's like the american military, too. A lot of poor people don't really have a lot of choice for options for higher education and things like that, but for going into the military and serving. So it's interesting you bring up the guerrillas not having a choice in the matter of being forced into this or something like that because there's probably some similarity to american military forces anyway.

56:08
Sam
Yeah, I mean, definitely there's always active recruitment at schools of people who are not upwardly mobile, like any high school with a group of people that don't have lots of money, you'll find a recruitment towards the end of the year to be like, hey, this is how you can go to college. And again, for guerrillas in this film, like, how they can move upwardly or have any kind of power or, say, in this society is by being the enforcers for the faith that the orangutans hold over everyone as the law.

56:45
Case
Yeah. And I mean, like, the. The point of doing a movie like this is to put in stark relief the things that are subtle and maybe overlooked in our society. Like, that's why, like, the movie benefits from a degree of camp. Like, the. The way that the society breaks down. I mean, outside of, like, already the conceit of, like, well, could apes ever be in an intellectual position to be in the society? What are the logistics of how this works when they are different species? So, like, would it all, would it just be like, for one thing, they're not gonna be interbreeding because they're, like, fully different species? That just can't happen. So are these three distinct population groups overlapping each other without any kind of conflict? It doesn't matter because that's not the point.

57:32
Case
The original was supposed to have a fourth class of an undesirable class of baboons. It didn't work with makeup, so they cut that completely. But, like, that's even, like, taking that step even further, like, of having not just a different species, like, but a different type of animal altogether. Because while baboons are primates, they're. They're not apes. Like, so you would have this like separate group in that regard. We don't care about the logistics. Like, we never see a female orangutan or gorilla in at least as a main character. Like there might have been one in like the funeral scene. But for the most part, we're looking at like male characters for all this. Because again, this movie fails the Bechdel test horrifically, but we don't really care that much about the intricacies of how the society would actually function.

58:22
Case
Like, we never see how they deal with some of the crafts that they do, like the guns and everything like that. It's just a process of, well, we want to show a stark relief of human society against this contrast. Having a society that is done as such a campy, over the top striation that doesn't work intellectually. Like when you get into it does not break down into a way that would logically play out. And the Matt Reeves movies have done a wonderful job of establishing some of that. But there is a reason why when you're looking at dawn, it's almost exclusively chimpanzees in that movie. There are a couple gorillas, but we barely spend any time with them. And there's only Maurice, as far as orangutans go, who named after Maurice Evans.

59:09
Paul
Who played Doctor Zaeus. Yeah.

59:11
Case
Yep. And then the gorilla in the first movie is named Buck, after Buck Cartelian, who plays Julius. There's a lot of love for those, for that. But those movies, like when they try to have a protagonist and a focus on the society, have to kind of shift into like, okay, well, mostly one type of person, like, because it's having such a disparate group of species in a society just doesn't work. And that's why the movie can't be that realistic. The point isn't to be like, well, here's how a logical ape society would function. No, the point is here is how we as humanity is terrible. And what, let's reflect that by way of these animal figures, that them all, being apes, works for this general theme, but could have honestly been all kinds of species if they really wanted it to be.

59:58
Case
It could be a zootopia type situation if they cared. But the point is they don't. The point is, let's look at all the terrible things about humanity from the lens of a thing that's just copying us at best. I find it really cool what this movie does with it all, the fact that we get this visualization of how they suppress dissonant or dissident thought by way of both violence and also cultural shunning of each other.

01:00:27
Sam
And theology.

01:00:28
Case
Yeah, and theology. The chimpanzees are really scared to share anything.

01:00:32
Paul
Yeah. Cornelius says that at one point, when Zira is pressing him about his discoveries he made in the forbidden zone, he's like, they're not a big deal anyway. And besides, I don't want to get my head chopped off. And I was like, oh, shit. I mean, that's the level we're at in this ape society. Something even innocuous by Cornelius's standards, even if he's downplaying it, he's literally scared for his life.

01:00:59
Case
Yeah.

01:00:59
Sam
Yeah. The entire time, too. Because there's a few times where, you know. Cause she is pressing him. Cause she definitely feels like this is, like, very important science. This is. You know. And he's just like, hey. Like, yeah, no, I can't do this. And she's like, but you had a permit. He's like, and then it was revoked. You know? Like. And it was taken away. Like, I can't talk about these things. And he feels, you know, a lot of fear. Even before the trial, he feels. He's more hesitant than she is. And when Taylor asks him to read the statement, he is hesitant because he's like, oh, my God. This is not. The statement's not gonna go over well, but he still reads it. He's just like, I am a spaceman from very far away on another planet, and I flew.

01:01:52
Sam
And everyone's like, what? And he's just like, it wasn't me. It was the human. Please don't kill me. That's kind of like his reaction. But there is like. This is, like, very. Like, they're scared to challenge the status quo.

01:02:08
Paul
And Roddy sells it so well, too. I don't know. They are lucky that they had actors of that caliber under that makeup to deliver on scenes like that, because you can see his hesitancy to read the statement, even though he's wearing layers of plastic and prosthetic or whatever. It's remarkable what they were able to do.

01:02:29
Case
All of those actors did such a great job. But we just cannot state enough that Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter just did just gangbusters work on this. Just incredible stuff.

01:02:40
Paul
I guess I didn't even realize that she was Stella in Streetcar named desire. I was not even registering any of that. I think the only other place I know Roddy McDowell from is the Poseidon adventure. I think he was, like, a waiter.

01:02:51
Case
Or something in that we, not too long ago did bed knobs and broomsticks, where he shows up as a skeezy reverend who's trying to sleep with Angela Lansbury.

01:03:03
Paul
Awesome.

01:03:04
Case
Which is a lot of fun. But, yeah, the two of them just do fantastic work. And apparently, because the makeup time was so long for them that Charlton Heston actually never worked with them without makeup. So that when. When they went to the premiere, Kim Hunter came up to Charlton to, like, say hi. And he did not recognize her until she was like, no, I'm Kim. I was zero. It's like, oh, my God.

01:03:28
Paul
Get away from me.

01:03:30
Case
Well, like, so Charlton Heston has this. You know what? All right. This movie is great. We've talked a lot about that. Like, I want to, like, hit a couple great points, but we do also need to talk about this. The things that went into this production, and we've hinted at a lot of those. So I just want to, like, knock out some of the other things that are, like, great. The ending, everyone knows is fucking amazing. Like, the Statue of Liberty is so iconic. It is. The lack of score when it happens is so cold. And, like, yeah.

01:04:02
Sam
And then. And them keeping the sound of those waves coming in as the credits roll and nothing but that. Just, like. And it's consistent for, like, a good two, three minutes after, like, as all the credits roll, all you're hearing. So I could just imagine sitting in theaters after all that being like, wait, basically. And then just hearing that. And so it's like, just the echo, the realization that all of this time and that we. We, as a society, as a world, blew ourselves up. Like, this is why there's a forbidden. Like, I was just like, oh, yeah. And the poor Statue of Liberty, it's.

01:04:41
Paul
What bears repeat viewings. It's what makes it, like, the shock ending is probably what hooked people the first time. But then everything else leading up to it is also strong. So it has those two great elements working for it. It works as one narrative, but it also works as this little world you can kind of get lost in all the nooks and crannies and stuff. It's funny, my daughter was. I was trying to watch it the other night, and as you can see, my house is full of small creatures that make lots of little noise. For your editor, I apologize, but the. But my daughter was like, can we watch cosmic kids yoga now? Can we watch cosmic kids yoga now? I was like, well, listen, I'm watching a monkey movie, so you have to wait.

01:05:16
Paul
So she sat with me for the very end, and then she goes, oh, the Statue of Liberty. And the only reason she recognized it is because she has my old x Men, the movie Statue of Liberty Playset, the one where you can trap saber tooth in. But she was like, huh? Now can we watch cosmic kids yoga?

01:05:38
Sam
Yeah.

01:05:38
Paul
Anyway, sorry, case, you were on a. You were on a whole speech there. Yeah.

01:05:43
Case
I think it's such a wonderful thing because, like, so the. The way the book played out was that it is a story within a story. Someone is reading a transcription of events that they, like, that they're in space, and they, like, come across it. And it tells the story of this astronaut who comes to this planet that has apes that are intelligent, and they realize that, like, oh, God, the apes, like apes, are a civilization that was built on top of a human civilization that preceded it. And he leaves that world depressed to discover that humanity on this world falls and that apes just rise up as, again, this, like, pale imitation of human society on this world.

01:06:21
Case
And he goes back to his own world, where, by the time he gets back there, because of all the time dilation, the same thing has happened there where apes have taken over his. And then the people reading the story, like, put it down. It's like, oh, that's silly. That a human could ever be intelligent because they're apes piloting a spaceship at that point. It's way more over the top. And here's just raw satire versus trying to have a more grounded approach in any way. So this movie finds a really good balance on that one. And the stroke of brilliance that is the statue of liberty and the fact that Zaius knows about it like that.

01:06:55
Case
He is entirely correct that Taylor is not going to like what he finds out there is the thing that, like, makes this whole, like, Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode writ large so perfect because it's. It's such a picture world where you travel long enough, and then you've now arrived at a place where apes have remained. That's the twilight zone. Like, it's right there.

01:07:18
Paul
Yeah.

01:07:19
Sam
Yeah.

01:07:20
Paul
I was always unclear whether or not Zaius knew specifically about the statue. But during this rewatch, I was convinced he absolutely knows.

01:07:31
Case
If not that specific statue, there's probably other human shit that he saw that would have been just as big a tip off. We know Queensborough Plaza apparently fell and is not too far.

01:07:40
Paul
That's right. It's so funny, though. I was watching the doll scene as a kid, I remember, was really like, you know, like a big reveal, a doll that talks, and he throws it. But I was just cracking up because I was thinking about what? Like, by that logic, I would love for them to have found any number of anthropomorphic action figures and dolls and shit. My daughter's got a room full of talking giraffes and stuff. And, I mean, what implication? Any profound implication for the purposes of the story, no.

01:08:12
Case
When the horse people from space come and they're like, well, why do you have. Why do you make art about horses that can talk? Like, I am not your little pony. We will have a reckoning about how our horse overlords used to run things.

01:08:28
Paul
It is kind of interesting, though, in that scene with the doll, that Nova is the one sort of playing with it, because she's got this sort of weird, perverse, childlike thing going on, which may just be by virtue of her play acting more of animal and stuff, but it is kind of funny that she's the one that does the thing that a child would normally discover on their own, which is to find the pull string.

01:08:51
Case
Yeah, I mean, like, Nova is supposed to be somewhat curious. Like, we do see that she, at the very least, has, like, an awareness of, like, try to don't speak. She, like, tries to stop him from speaking. At times, she erases the writing. Like. Like, there is an element of the dumb human being, a facade that they put on themselves. So, like, she's not dumb. She's just not educated in any meaningful way. But she has survived in a world that would destroy her for showing any kind of intellect.

01:09:25
Sam
I think they show a little proof of that, too, because when Taylor is trying to show Zara that he's smart enough and they're in that larger cage outside, he writes something on the ground. And when she's sees that other apes are coming, like, gorillas and zais are coming, she bends down and starts, like, wiping away his words. And everyone, of course, is distracted, because Taylor sees it and is a total a hole and pushes her very violently out of the way. But she's survived. She clearly understands that there are certain things that people don't do.

01:10:02
Paul
That's a nuance. That's a nuance I hadn't considered. I hadn't thought of it, her protecting him. I had just thought of it as. I don't know, when I'm watching it just seems as though she does it on some sort of an instinctual level. But you're right. Yeah. She's doing it in a purposeful way.

01:10:19
Sam
Cause she looks up at him, and then she sees the others, and the shot actually shows you looking, and she gets down and she looks up, and she very quickly uses her hands to wipe away the first word very quickly. And so there's this implication. Like, Nova may not understand what was written. Like, she doesn't necessarily understand the symbols. She doesn't understand everything. She can't verbalize things, but she kind of knows some things are happened. And I think she does understand that. Like, Zira intends her to be Taylor's mate because she follows him around like a puppy. She's like, okay, well, I'm his now. You know, she likes. She does these things where, like, she's actively very attached to him, and it's not because of his sparkling personality, let's be honest.

01:11:08
Sam
So I think that there is some level of understanding that's kind of, like, implied in the script. It's just harder because it's never really confirmed by anyone saying it. It's just kind of something. Like, if you're watching it and you're really watching her beats. You can kind of see Nova have this awareness, but her awareness is very fundamental to her being a survivor, like, surviving this reality. She's not looking for anything more than that. She's not super curious. She's just kind of like, oh, no, we're gonna get in trouble. Oh, no. We have to hide. Oh, no. We're together. Oh, look. This is fun. I think the doll moment's the only time that she's actually kind of having fun. Cause she's looking at this thing, and she's like, oh, it's so pretty. And she's like, oh, whoa. It makes noise. Like. And.

01:11:55
Sam
And so as much as. As much as her role is limited, there is stuff that she's doing in the background. So.

01:12:05
Paul
Yeah. And they go out of their way to say, I think Zira has a line that there's no scientific reason why humans should be mute. They have the capability to do it. And so there's another reinforcement of the survival mechanism of the humans that have remained.

01:12:19
Case
Yeah. Like, they exist in a society that violently oppresses them for any ape like behavior as they see it. So why would they present anything like that if it's only going to create more trouble for them? Yeah. I mean, we haven't shouted out enough about Linda Harrison as Nova. Young girl dating one of the producers. Easy to see how she got the part. But at the same time, did a really good job of being this companion for a character who. A big thing for. For Taylor is that he rejects humanity. And then once. Once humanity has been taken away from him, he starts to have cold feet about it. Like, he regrets it. He longs for some kind of companionship, and Nova provides that. And she kind of becomes the protagonist of the next movie.

01:13:06
Case
We see her speak in the next movie, we find there's more going on for the character in that regard. And like you said, she is curious and she is protective, and she has all these elements, even if they're not. Even if they're not conventional intellect. And I think that the part could have been worse. You know, it's a, like, the fact that it's like, here's your mute girl on your, like, jungle planet. To, like, be your. That we're just gonna give you as a mate is, like, a little icky in some. In some ways.

01:13:39
Sam
Like, I mean, I think. I think it is, but it's in the context of it's probably icky in a way that serves the thing, because, like, Zira is so amazed that he has this capability that she wants him to breed. And it's, like, from, like, this very scientific thing, like, and when you think about it, like, dog breeders do this, right? They see, like, a really cute feature in a dog and, like, a similar feature in another dog, and then, you know, eventually we get a pug, and we're like, oh, no, we've gone too far. And, like, what hath science wrought? This thing can't breathe. And so, like, it's icky, but it's also the kind of icky that you kind of expect from the apes, because this is anomaly. This is a human that can speak. This is a human that has reason.

01:14:31
Sam
Up until this point, the apes don't even think that they have reason. I mean, zero has been doing, like, brain experiments on. On humans. Like, actively, like, autopsied and pulling them apart and figuring out how they tick and what they do. And, like, so, like, she sees this creature that for the first time, she respects, and she's like, oh, whoa, there's one that's just like us. I need to breed it. So it's icky, but it fits within the overall narrative and definitely is beautiful, because later on in three, the next best movie, she's kind of called to task for the experiments that she has done. Right. Like, that's one of the things that the humans in the past. Future, because technically, it's the future and the order of the movies, but the past in the movies, because they went to the past. Oh, boy.

01:15:30
Sam
But, like, that's one of.

01:15:31
Paul
Doesn't matter. Don't ask.

01:15:33
Sam
It does. Doesn't matter. Just. Just come along with me, just follow. But, like, that's one of the things that's kind of levied as to, like, whether or not these two apes should be, well, chimpanzees should be allowed to still exist within human society, and whether or not they should be allowed to breed and, you know, have, because she's done monstrous things to humans, and sticking him with a mate is probably the least of the monstrous things she has done well.

01:16:04
Case
And that gets into, like, the thing from. So the book, the ultimate reason why he has to flee the planet of the Apes is because he breeds with Nova, and that baby is distinctly intelligent in a way that human babies had not been at that time. Like, they note that even its cries had a cry of longing that had some sort of deeper intelligence than other babies. And that is then reflected in escape as being much more direct by way of baby Milo being an intelligent ape baby. So, like, there was always going to be this element because Nova was always part of the book, and, like, pushing that character forward was always going to be there. And I think they did a fine job with it, like, adapting.

01:16:44
Case
And the fact that the apes are way more hostile to Taylor in this movie than they are in the book, I think that all. It all makes sense. Like, the world feels much more cohesive, even if there are a lot of parts that the second you think about, why would three species live in the same city together? How does that even work? There's different anatomical differences between them, regardless of anything else. Different dietary needs for all of them, regardless of anything else. Would that work? No, it doesn't matter, because the point is, we're going to do this, like, expose of America fucking sucks, guys, in a lot of ways.

01:17:22
Paul
I mean, and that's why it helps so much that you can buy into the world, because it buys you a ticket to all those logic leaps. If you're already buying the world and you buy the world through the pacing of the movie, you buy the world through the skill of the actors. You buy the world through the amazing use of those prosthetics. So. And that's where that camp comes in. You know, we talked about earlier with this and Star Trek and stuff is like, okay, yeah, it is there, but I can buy it. I'm willing to. I'm willing to fork over the money to ignore. It's like you're paying your own brain to ignore certain parts of the thing. Like, I was talking about English earlier. Yeah, that really makes it, like, why wouldn't Taylor address that?

01:18:05
Paul
But, yeah, it doesn't yeah, it doesn't matter.

01:18:06
Case
Yeah, yeah. We bought the ticket for this movie, and this movie made a lot of money. This movie was a huge success. It had a $5.8 million budget and had a $33 million return, which is small potatoes nowadays, but at the time was fucking incredible. Like this. This movie should not have worked. And yet somehow it kind of saved the studio after Doctor Dolittle was a giant flop.

01:18:31
Paul
So also in Arthur P. Jacobs production.

01:18:33
Case
Right?

01:18:34
Paul
Yeah.

01:18:36
Case
Why don't we take a break? And when we come back, let's actually talk about the issues that befell the production of this movie and how it was overcome. And we've talked about a few of them, so we can move through kind of quickly. But it is really interesting just to see how this movie almost didn't happen in the first place. And I am so glad that it did. So we're gonna hear. We're gonna hear from a wonderful show on our network. And when we come back, we'll get into the nitty gritty. Video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun, whatever fun is to you.

01:19:13
Paul
I'm Jeff Moonan.

01:19:14
Case
And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon.

01:19:16
Paul
And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games.

01:19:21
Case
It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them.

01:19:26
Paul
And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us.

01:19:31
Case
Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff.

01:19:33
Paul
Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming.

01:19:38
Case
And we're back. So I did want to actually look at this from the perspective of the production issues that went into it. It's got a lot of stuff, and we can kind of go through some of them fairly quickly. Like the novel was not thought to be a good choice to be adapted to screen. So Pierre Boulle is better known for the bridge over the River Kwai, which different kind of animal that we're talking about in terms of both its pedigree as a book, but then its success as a film. And part of the reason people were very interested in Pierre Boulle works is that he was credited as the screenwriter because the actual writer of the Bridge of the River Kwai screenplay was on the blacklist, so they couldnt use that name.

01:20:16
Case
So Boole got the credit for both the book and the movie. Like, he wrote the book, but in adapting it, all of a sudden his name became much more, like, in the circles of Hollywood conversation. So other books of his were, like, snatched up. And the planet of the apes was quickly snatched up because it was like, oh, well, this could be visually interesting. How do we make this work? And so, you know, a lot of people didn't want to have it made, including Pierre Boulle. He did not think it was a particularly good book of his. He thought it was just sort of like. Like a fluffy science fiction piece that he did that, like, didn't necessarily have the weight of other projects. So there was a lot of people who had no interest in it. But Arthur P.

01:20:59
Case
Jacobs, the producer, bought the rights and was like, this is gonna be. This is gonna be a thing. And kept going to studios trying to push it. And no one wanted to make it because they thought, like, this is gonna look terrible. Are you talking about actual apes in the scenes? Oh, no, it's gonna be makeup. Is this gonna be expensive? What, is it gonna go? So we alluded there was a makeup test early on. That was one of the big things to actually get the movie fully greenlit because they needed to see that they could have emoting actors who looked, convincingly enough like the different types of apes. The makeup test is very crude compared to what we ultimately got. But it still did its job, ultimately, in terms of being like, oh, yeah.

01:21:39
Paul
And it's funny to point out that in that test, the civilization is more advanced. Seemingly. There's, like, computers or at the very least, light sort of mapping equipment things. And you had mentioned that one of the key differences between the book and the movie is the extreme treatment of Taylor. Yeah. In this scene, he's just hanging out. He's wearing clothes. He's having a calm conversation with Doctor say it's all very calm. And I would point out, too, I think one of the other big factors in the thing getting made was even before the makeup test. Because in the makeup test is Charlton Heston. Arthur P. Jacobson rightly understood from his experience in Hollywood that in order to get people excited about a movie you had to have a star people could get excited about. He got his start, I believe, with Marilyn Monroe. Right.

01:22:27
Paul
And then that movie ultimately had to be made with somebody else because Marilyn Monroe died before it could go into production. But that is kind of those. He had been in Hollywood for long enough to kind of know how to manipulate some of the stuffier folks. And so Charlton Heston, plus the makeup, that's your. That's your green light.

01:22:46
Case
Yeah. And Charleston Heston was a perfect choice because, in addition, he wasn't the only person they ever approached about it, but he is ultimately the best choice because he, while he had a number of successes and was a bankable name, he had also had a number of flops at that point. And so it was a good time for him to come in on a lower budget movie that he was then the champion for. Like, Heston was a big part of why this movie was made. It was his baby that whole time. And that's a reason why he had to come back for two, because.

01:23:15
Sam
Despite demanding he get killed off.

01:23:17
Case
Right.

01:23:20
Paul
Real Nimoy situation. Yeah.

01:23:22
Case
Yeah. So he championed the movie and kept advancing it forwards. Now, this is, again, shortly after the Twilight Zone ended. So they got Erling as the initial screenwriter on it. And so we end up with some, apparently snarling has quoted that he did 40 or 50 drafts. It probably includes a lot of minor revisions because he only had x number of handed in full draft changes. But either way, they radically reconstructed the world from this much more elaborate scientific kind of future that was in some ways more advanced and in some ways less advanced than 20th century America and then. And shifted it to this, like, more primitive society. But Serling's big thing, the big thing to build towards was the Statue of Liberty part.

01:24:13
Case
And that apparently came from inspiration that Jacobs had while at a deli where they just, like, saw a statue of Liberty painting and being like, that's the iconic kind of thing we need.

01:24:23
Sam
Yeah.

01:24:23
Case
And who knows? Because, like, then some who takes credit for it, like, they probably all have stories for how they came up with it. Everyone has their story for. I saw a fly climbing up the window, and that's how it came up with Spider man.

01:24:35
Paul
Yeah. Yeah.

01:24:36
Case
But then we get into the issues with the actual makeup, because the makeup ended up being extremely elaborate. It originally took 6 hours to apply to anyone, which meant that they needed to hire, like, an army of people to put on all the eight prosthetics, so much so that it cost or it set back other Hollywood productions because they had so many people, so many makeup artists on hand for this shoot that other shoots couldn't get enough makeup people to do their shoots.

01:25:01
Paul
I love that.

01:25:02
Case
And by the end, they got it down 3 hours.

01:25:04
Paul
Yeah. That was gonna say, yeah, they halved it. That's pretty good.

01:25:07
Case
Yeah. And apparently another reason they were able to reduce that time is they started specifically casting for specific ethnicities to make it easier to do the makeup for them. Specifically. Asian people, they found, had less pronounced nasal features that would get in the way of the prosthetics. So if you just cast that way, it worked better, which is everyone was kind of uncomfortable about in the production. They were uncomfortable about casting black actors to play gorillas because they thought that would come off as racist. But then they got accused of racism for not hiring enough black actors. And so there was like, this whole, like, back and forth on this one in terms of, like, wait, hey, hang on. What are we allowed to do to say here?

01:25:51
Paul
Yeah, well, good old fashioned sixties Hollywood eugenics. I mean, you just. You. They were. They were living their best lives at that time. What can I say?

01:26:02
Case
It is a movie about racism, and it is a movie that, like, the. At least the producers were aware of the perception of racism. And the fact that they overcorrected is, I guess, better than not correcting at all.

01:26:15
Paul
Well, yeah, it was funny because I was in that documentary, they go through all the films, and I had forgotten that the guy that puts the. Put Caesar on the slave auction block as a black dude, and I was like, wow, that does not look great.

01:26:28
Case
But they.

01:26:29
Paul
But they do address it in there. I think that the head bad guy says something like, I came from slave blood or something like that. So at the very least, they're cognizant of it, even if it's a little.

01:26:40
Case
Oh, definitely. Like the. It's. It's cruder than we get to when we get to, like, the matt Reeves movies, but it's. Or at least less subtle. Like, you know, the big movie of LA is burning and we have a chimpanzee cackling in the night is not a subtle movie, but it is aware of what it's trying to say. And I do appreciate this franchise for all of that. But then we get into the actual shoot itself in terms of, like, the issues that they had to deal with at all. They fucking decided to film this thing initially. They were going to shoot it in England. That all kind of fell through, and they decided to film in southern California near where the actual studios were, but they decided to fucking film it in the beginning of summer.

01:27:19
Sam
Yeah.

01:27:20
Case
And we've noted that when you get to the later ones, there are times where people are awkwardly wearing extra layers in battle. Everyone has a turtleneck under whatever they're wearing. And it's very obvious the whole time. This movie is the exact opposite problem. And that's because even when they didn't have people in full eight prosthetics. There were people passing out on set, like the three astronauts for their hike through the desert were constantly having heat stroke issues. And then when you start getting the actors on set in that scenario where with full a prosthetics, like, it got even worse, including one time where they left the straws at base camp. And so Charlton Heston, in order to prevent all of his fellow actors from dehydrating, walked a mile through the desert to get the straws and bring them back.

01:28:03
Case
Because when they were in their makeup, they couldn't eat or drink without using.

01:28:06
Paul
A straw, which was to make the prosthetics, to preserve the prosthetics, right?

01:28:13
Sam
Yeah, but it's still insane that anyone forgot the straws. Those poor people in those costumes.

01:28:21
Case
I mean, there's a reason all those actors, after a certain point were like, no, I'm good. I don't need to come back for the next one. Like, Kim Hunter was okay with being done after number three. You know, it's not as bad. So we talked a while ago about the wizard of Oz and how that had a lot of issues with the makeup for the actors that included, like, almost death for variety of reasons, such as mercury poisoning or also just aluminum poisoning from an inhalation. Each of them had their own cavalcade of horrors. As far as being applied, at least it comes off as everyone was on the same team. It just was a long, burdensome process. Like Roddy McDowell apparently would take a nap every time they would put their makeup on him because there was plenty of time for that.

01:29:01
Case
Kim Hunter couldn't do that. So she would take valium before so that she could just completely zone out while that was going on. It was a big process. But again, they sped it up. By the end, they half it, which is substantially better. Cause, like, God, can you imagine sitting in a chair for 6 hours while they just fuck with you and then go to work?

01:29:21
Sam
That's insane. But I remember a story, like, I was on a talk show. This is not about planet apes, but it is about makeup. And Jim Carrey was talking about having to put on the grinch makeup and how when he first started, it took 8 hours in makeup to get it on. And after, like, the first or second makeup test, he was, like, done. And he actually went into his trailer and kicked something and called the producer and was just like, that's it. I'm not gonna do this movie. I can't do it. I'm going crazy in that chair.

01:29:52
Sam
So they hired someone from the CIA, a former CIA member who deals with people that are being tortured to teach them how to get through torture so that he could basically have little ticks and things he could do during the 8 hours that were required for makeup. That was their solution.

01:30:11
Paul
Boy, no wonder he lost it at a certain point, I guess.

01:30:15
Sam
Wow. So maybe he should have just tried to volume like him.

01:30:21
Case
Yeah. There's all these pictures behind the scenes of all the apes with, like, cigarette holders because that was the only way that they would be allowed to smoke. And so, like, that just became, like, kind of iconic for all these shots of, like. Yep. Have these, like, tiny little, like, extensions that we can put in your mouth because you. You just can't put anything of any real volume to it. Like, you can't take a bite of food. You have to drink us, like, some kind of, like, smoothie through a straw. Like, that's the only way you're going to have any kind of sustenance right now. If you're going to drink some liquid, it's going to be through a straw. If you're going to smoke something, it's going to be effectively through a straw.

01:30:52
Case
Like, that is going to be your existence for the rest of the day, every day of shooting.

01:30:57
Paul
Woof.

01:30:58
Sam
Still, it looks great. Yep. Congratulations.

01:31:03
Case
When the choice was made to move the filming from England to California, initially, they were going to try to save money because it was going to cost more money to film in California than England because they were going to get tax credits for England. They tried to slash the shooting time from 55 days to 45 days. And that was a whole fight mostly based around, like, them being like, no, this is literally the amount of time it takes to get the makeup on these actors. Like, we cannot possibly do the shoot faster. And that was pushback that was eventually won. But can you imagine if it hadn't?

01:31:31
Paul
Yeah, I mean, they would have had to make some substantial cuts or expand some of the other sequences or something. I don't know what they would have done.

01:31:38
Case
I mean, the easy cuts would be to shorten that opening. But, like, that the opening time, you just, like, you need with those actors to, like, really, like, get into who they are before you deal with the planet of the apes. But, like, one thing that they never were able to make work was the actual landing of their spaceship. So they ultimately built the nose cone for it, but they never figured out a model that they could use to show. And so at the very end of filming, it was like, fuck, we have nothing. And they figured out, like, all right, well, what if we just, like, use, like, helicopter footage and, like, simulate the crash by way of it being first person, like, that was not an artistic choice.

01:32:15
Case
That was them coming up with the best case solution for a thing that they just didn't have in the can and they didn't have a model for or anything like that. So, like, you know, lots of creativity going on to make those parts work. Censors didn't love this movie when they. When it actually, like, was finally cut together. They did. They did not care for the fact that Charlton Heston was naked in what was supposed to be a g rated movie. They did not care for the fact that he constantly was saying, damn it all to hell, particularly at the end of the movie, but also, take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty apes.

01:32:42
Case
Like, these were all objections that the censors had to it, and they actually had to push it through, being like, no, the scene is necessary of him naked to show how degrading it is and that he's being treated like animal, and they damn you all to hell. They had to actually convince the censors, no. What he's doing here is he's not swearing. He's literally cursing. He's invoking God's wrath upon humanity. And that's how they got things through. Which is funny to think. It's like, oh, man. On the one hand, society was way less prudish than we sometimes give it credit for. But then there are moments where it was really prudish.

01:33:17
Sam
Yeah. And it's really funny. That that is a huge distinction. Right? Like, oh, he cursed. No, no. He's actually honestly damning us all to hell. So that's better. Oh, okay. I see how that works. Okay. All right. It's biblical. All right, cool, cool.

01:33:37
Paul
The rating system is such a joke.

01:33:39
Sam
It's stamped and approved.

01:33:41
Paul
Such a joke. Oh, God. What? I. Speaking of him screaming, though, it was interesting to find out that Charlton Hesson had, what, the flu? Or he was very ill. Yeah. During the chase. And that's why he sounds so raspy when he does the tinker stink. You know, that thing.

01:33:56
Sam
Yeah. I thought it was really funny that the producers actually like. Like, where everyone who was on set was like, no, I think it adds something to it. We should still shoot. And I was like, that's fucked up.

01:34:07
Paul
It really is.

01:34:07
Sam
Like. It's like, no, actually, you have a gravitas when you feel like crap. So let's just do all of these scenes. They even shot him. Like, that hose scene. He had the flu.

01:34:20
Paul
The man hose.

01:34:20
Sam
Yeah, yeah, with the man hose specifically made for men. Like, and I get it. Cause, like, you see a man there and you gotta use that hose.

01:34:29
Paul
Got to.

01:34:30
Case
Just gotta use your man hose on that man.

01:34:32
Paul
Listen, when you're eight, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. But would not pass current COVID protocols. Probably this, but.

01:34:41
Sam
Oh, definitely not. No, no. None of this. I mean, I don't even know if, like, the union as it stands today would be okay with how the star of the movie was treated.

01:34:54
Case
Yeah. I mean, certainly him running around spreading disease to all the other people. You wonder, like, because everyone talks about that part of the, like, oh, it made his voice sound so perfect for, like, someone who just got over, like, a throat injury. And, like, it works so well for the scene, but, like, I don't know if anyone's talking about, like. And. Yeah, and 55 extras also all got the flu that day. And maybe they didn't. Maybe he actually was, like, keeping his distance for the most part, aside from, like, when they were shooting and, like, you know, they're all. They're all literally weird.

01:35:24
Sam
There's no way, case, you saw him screaming. There's no way, when he was doing his scenes, that spittle was flying everywhere that flu got on anyone near him in those scenes. Maybe. Maybe the makeup saved them a little bit, but I doubt it.

01:35:40
Case
Certainly not. Like. But. But it's just funny how they. They don't really talk about it, you know, like, again, to bring up wizard of Oz again, like, we. There are so many horror stories from behind the scenes and how the actors were treated and how they almost died and how the scarecrow had marks on his skin from the Scarecrow mask for months after the production and how the original Tin man almost died from aluminum inhalation and how there were third degree burns, like, whoa. On the Wicked Witch of the west. Like, all across the board, you know, just terrible stuff. And you hear about similar moments in this movie. But at no point is anyone down on this movie like, Charlton Heston championed this movie and continued to speak highly of it for years. Kim Hunter continued to speak highly of it for years.

01:36:21
Case
Even if they were done being like, I don't know if I can do another shoot where I'm getting this makeup on me. No one was that angry about it generally. The vibe coming off of it was like, yeah, that was hell. But damn it, we made a great movie. And, like, everyone was in it together.

01:36:38
Paul
Yeah, there's probably something in there about success and passion. And perseverance and believing in the. Believing in it, which is kind of. I give a lot of credit to Arthur P. Jacobs. I mean, that's not something terribly controversial to say. But whatever he did to instill this passion for this project in everyone along the way, from their stars to the people suffering and through the makeup, through, you know, making experienced, famous Hollywood writer and personality Rod Serling write 30, 40 drafts of a script. Like, for whatever reason, this guy was able to convince everyone to do it, and that's probably no small part of its success.

01:37:23
Case
Yeah. And this movie then had such a legacy coming off of it in addition to the fact that, again, it had eight sequels and two tv shows and.

01:37:31
Paul
All of that, God willing, there'll be more.

01:37:34
Case
Yeah, yeah. And we constantly are hearing news about, like, there will be another thing that's gonna be after the time of Caesar, yada, yada, all very cool. But, like, also this movie was a highly successful Sci-Fi property that made the big leaps during, like, the quote unquote, bronze age of Hollywood, like, actually possible. Like, there is a direct line from this movie to Star wars getting made in the first place. And I think that ties this franchise back around so well to what the show started as a spin off of a Star wars podcast that I love it so much to even bring up. Like, this is, like, this is our 150th episode. And, like, being able to, like, look back at what was a truly herculean task to get this movie on screen.

01:38:20
Case
But it created such a work of art is so cool. And to see how it still ties into nerd culture in such big ways beyond just, like, its literal aspect, but it is the seed that was planted for other big properties to continue growing and actually make money. And there's a direct line then you can make from here to Star wars and Star wars into everything else, ultimately getting to things like the MCU or anything like that, you can see how nerd culture while looked down on, like, people didn't want to make this movie because they thought it looked like a serial. They thought that it looked like it was going to be just like some kind of schlock, and instead it became, you know, infamous in pop culture.

01:39:06
Case
And you can see how more and more people are, like, accepting of, like, the weirder Sci-Fi stuff and the weirder kind of the fantasy of nerddom. And I'm just really glad that we got to talk about it in such great detail.

01:39:22
Sam
Yes, it's such a fun movie, and I'm glad it has stood the test of time, barring one or two lines.

01:39:36
Paul
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'll ever get bored of this franchise or this movie. It's a double edged sword case, like you're saying, because, you know, nerdy culture, boy, Flash Gordon really did a number on the whole genre, didn't it? Like, for. For years, everyone thought, oh, well, it's just going to be stupid. You know, little cereals or cardboard stuff. It's like, well, relax. Like, they didn't have the. They didn't have the materials to make these really nice effects.

01:40:02
Paul
But once they did, there's an element of being able to take it seriously, which is a double edged sword, because to take it seriously is, like, what I was talking about at the beginning of my love for this franchise to begin with is this idea of it's smart enough in places where you can glean something from it and you can take it seriously if you like. But it is important, I think, to maintain the perspective that these are people running around in monkey costumes, and it's the people that lose that perspective where you get to, like, incel culture and stuff. So there's, like, divergence in the woods at some point where people start to take it way too seriously.

01:40:44
Paul
You have to remember, this is a movie about a space laser and a big screaming dog that they allow to carry a gun at the end of the day. Star wars. You can take Star wars seriously, but you also have to remember it's kind of silly fun, too. So it's important to have that perspective and. And healthy, I would argue. But the current movies are a good example of how they can play with that, too. They take, I guess, a little bit more seriously, even there's more of a horror bent to the current ones. But, yeah, I love it. I'll never not love Planet of the Apes. Thank you for inviting me to talk about it.

01:41:19
Case
Thank you so much for coming on. I was so glad to connect about this specifically because we've shared nerd interests of all kinds before.

01:41:27
Paul
But by the way, why hasn't boom done a young Taylor, like, prequel comic to show how he got to be such a prick? Like, why hasn't that happened yet? Like, we should probably.

01:41:38
Sam
I mean, it should, honestly, because I feel like. I feel like there's definitely a story there. I mean, like a. Like an intelligent astronaut scientist who, like, was a ladies man, clearly, because he does tell Nova there were plenty of women just came and go, probably in the scene. That definitely needs to be. That's not the point. The point is that it would be interesting to watch this very apathetic scientist kind of like, and how he gets to that point where it's just like, yeah, no, I'll go on a mission that may be a mission of no return. Yeah, I'm fine with that.

01:42:17
Case
The fact that they ended up back on Earth was an accident. They shouldn't have. I do have a headcanon thing that Paul, I think you'll appreciate, which is Taylor's full name is George Taylor. And so there is a little piece of me that wonders, is this like the earth one version of George Taylor? Because Earth two, George Taylor was the publisher for the Daily Star, Superman's first job.

01:42:41
Paul
Oh, man, that is some pretty deep headcanon right there.

01:42:45
Case
Wow.

01:42:46
Sam
I was actually bracing myself and it was as wonderful and terrible as I thought it would be.

01:42:51
Case
Yeah.

01:42:52
Sam
I was like, oh, no, he's got a headcany canon. Everyone grab on to something. Here it comes.

01:42:58
Case
Yeah. So secretly the planet Dia's property should have been a DC Elseworld store.

01:43:02
Paul
I'm sure we would have treated that franchise with the kinds of dignity and respect we treat our current franchises with on the silver screen. This is what we have to do. We have to pitch. We're gonna write it together. The three of us are gonna write Taylor Colon, a planet of the Apes story. And it's going to be like the right stuff, but with a real just prick at the heart of it all. And we're going to have to hire somebody who looks enough like Charlton Heston. Honestly, it can't be that hard. They found one in Brent pretty quick.

01:43:35
Case
That's true.

01:43:36
Paul
So I'm sure someone's around and we're going to get this thing made. You know, always do the cold call. Yeah.

01:43:43
Case
And then we do a little bit of deep fake to like, make him fully just look like Charlton Heston because there's plenty of footage. Like, we can make that work.

01:43:50
Sam
Oh, man, let's not do that. I'm sure we can find a cookie cutter. His expressions will always be a little dead behind the eyes. Like, as much as I am excited getting to watch Luke trade someone or show, I don't want to watch a whole series like that. Please don't do that.

01:44:07
Case
That's true. That's true. One last thing before we go. We didn't mention this earlier. One reason why Nova would like Taylor that we just never said out loud is he probably smells so much better than every other human and has all of his teeth. He very distinctly has all of his teeth and like, you gotta imagine that both. Like, yeah, sure, he's probably pretty dirty. He probably smells terrible to us. But you know what? He doesn't have years of grime built up on his body.

01:44:34
Sam
Listen, he went into that lake. At the very least, he is semi ish clean when they first meet. And. Yeah, and he has all his teeth, case. That is such a big one. That is. That is the biggest one, I think. Like, it's like, wow, his teeth are really nice. You know, it's like that. That song, like, I love being a girl, you know? Except it's her being like, you don't have teeth. You have pearls. Like, so nice, Taylor, it'll be amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's perfect.

01:45:04
Case
So you can see how he'd be in a good position to take over if the apes hadn't been there.

01:45:09
Sam
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Smells better than people, has all his teeth. Perfect.

01:45:16
Paul
You get the perfect glimpse of that, where he's standing there, slobbering all over that coconut piece, and he picks Nova right out of that crowd, and he goes, yep. And that's. It's funny. Like, there's an alternate future where the hunt didn't happen or something, and they tamed the world or something like that. It's kind of interesting.

01:45:34
Case
Yeah, yeah. Like, they just ended up at a spot that was, like, not quite close enough to the ape city, and they just built up.

01:45:42
Paul
And they were fine. Yeah, yeah, they were fine.

01:45:44
Case
Yeah. Or something. Yeah. God, I. I gotta say, if anyone is listening to this that has not watched this movie recently, I would highly recommend checking it out. We have said multiple times that this franchise hits differently in this era. Like, I think that we. We as a society have had a reckoning in a lot of ways with. With racial violence and with inequality in society, that this movie is definitely putting a magnifying glass over. And it does it really well. It's very smart about it, and it's also fun. Like, the Ape city is a fun place to be, even if it would suck to actually be there. Like, it's. Ape fantasy is so cool.

01:46:23
Sam
Like, we've got case coasters that I think also a theme that we kind of mainly touched on, but, like, it definitely also feels very real. Like, and still speaks volumes here, is, like, controlling information. Right? And the fact that Doctor Zaeas is using a lot of misinformation and half truths to control the population. And, yes, that's presented as theology, and you can totally do theology atheist science argument, but there's also just, like, he controls the narrative. He knows the truth and he only tells his people what they need to know to survive, the way that he thinks it's best for them to survive. And I think that there's a lot of discussion in our day and age because we have infinite information, but a lot of the information, half of it is wrong or mischaracterized.

01:47:21
Sam
And it's really interesting because for Doctor Zeus, there is a control factor of like, well, it's better for people not to know these things, right? And so, like, there's an interesting conversation about what keeps a population safe, what information should people have? Is it okay? And like that in an age where like, you're living in an age where there are constant, there's constant misinformation from bots and things that are just pushing out things, theories, and there's conspiracies all over the place and all of that stuff. And we have so much information. It's a really interesting conversation because how wrong or how right is Doctor Zaeus under that?

01:48:09
Paul
Yeah, and that's why I don't think of him as a villain, even though he does villainous things. When you watch the movie, especially in that scene I started talking about right at the beginning when they're doing the closed door meeting, you get the sense that he really believes this. Like he really believes. I love our way of life. We have a good way of life. Why would we want to screw that up? It's very good for us. It's very good for me specifically. But also, like, you do get the sense he's working with the chimpanzees. You get the sense he is working with the gorillas to some sense, to some extent. And maybe you're right, maybe it is all control.

01:48:46
Paul
But I don't know, there's something about just the timbre in his voice where he talks about it, where I don't get the feeling that it's malicious, necessarily. Maybe it's right.

01:48:56
Case
Yeah, well, it's not like a power grab. It is a paternalistic response to like what Sam was saying, like a deluge of information. And even in the sixties, they were starting to deal with that. Like, the reason the Vietnam war was not as popular as previous wars is because all of a sudden there was more information getting out there. The fact that you would look at our police departments and see them, like, beating people who were doing peaceful protests is an amount of information that was causing fissures in american society.

01:49:23
Case
And you can imagine that in a society that has fallen apart because so much information got out there and even if it was a nuclear war that ultimately was, like, the pushing point, it's still the advancement of that society and then pulling back to a level that you think you can maintain effectively, but having to be, you know, this authoritarian state that locks down, like, too much progress. Like, they can have medicine, but they can't go too fast, and they have to, like, make sure it doesn't, like, violate a thing or. Or disprove a thing. Like, they're not allowed to go too far into the future, which, yeah, you.

01:49:58
Sam
Know, it just makes it interesting and it's very open ended. I feel like it's not like, I feel like there are moments where the movie takes, like, a very steep, staunch, like, pro science bad theology. This is control, but then it will shift on you. And Doctor Zais is just like, no, this is the good for all of us. Like, we have to break down this cave. Like, people can't. Like, the apes can't know this, like, our society can't know this. This is damaging to us, you know? And so, like, it's just there are themes in this film that if you've never seen it and we've now ruined everything for you should still watch.

01:50:38
Sam
And if you haven't watched it in a long time, you should go back and watch it, because I think that you will discover new things just coming from a perspective of having survived the last ten years. Like, you'll just discover. And that's the testament of this film, is that there's so many themes and so many questions and it kind of. I mean, this entire series, really, especially the original five movies, I always feel like no one's ever really the hero and no one's ever truly the villain. Truly, truly. In all of these movies, I feel like I can always kind of empathize with the villains and with the heroes. And there are times where I feel like the heroes do things that I don't think are right.

01:51:28
Sam
And I think that overall, from the five movies that we watch backwards, that I feel like it's really nice to watch something where, like, I'm not challenging myself. Like, being like, oh, that's antihero. It's not antihero. He's just. He's just. He's a person in this position and he's just doing stuff and he's, you know, it's. There's nothing truly black and white about these films. It's all in the gray area.

01:51:57
Case
Yeah. The franchise as a whole has such an absurd name, and every sequel has an even more absurd. Long title. So long that, like, it's been issues with, like, character counts for posts I've made about it, because it's just like escape from the planet of the, like, just to even have the title of the movie we're talking about takes up so many characters, but so it feels like it should just be like B movie fodder. But the movie. All of these movies, this one especially, but all of these movies have been just so fucking radio. Like, every single time we talk about it, there's always something fun to talk about that's really cool that's going on. And there's like, there's the fun trappings of the ape stuff, but then the social commentary elements are.

01:52:36
Case
Is so much deeper when you spend even a moment, like, being introspective about it all. It's just such a fucking wild franchise. And it started right here with such a near perfect movie, despite monumental difficulties in actually getting it made and pushback from even the person who fucking wrote it. It's incredible that this exists. It's incredible that it is a franchise that has consistently been making movies now for what, 50 years? Yeah, like 54 years at this point, I guess going off of when war, which would have been like 49 years since the first one. Huge swath of time that keeps resonating with people for a reason. And it's so cool that we spent this time talking about it. I'm so glad that we wrapped up our 1st 150 episodes of the show by doing the five in retrospect.

01:53:25
Case
And I'm so glad that we had such a wonderful guest for this. So, Paul, give your plugs. Like, where can people find you outside of coming on to talk about sixties properties?

01:53:36
Paul
Yeah. My brother and I do a podcast, a Jack white history program, which we're up to, believe it or not. Episode 176 at this point. Been a long time. It's been about six years, but were really excited because this last year were included one of the tour posters for the Jack White solo tour. This year were called out there. And so we do a lot of cool interviews there. Not a lot of overlap with Planet of the Apes, but we bring on a lot of musicians and things and do that. And that's called the third menu. And we're available every other week, usually. And then I produce a Beatle podcast from my father called yesterday and today, where we go through the chronological journey of the world's most famous band. And right now we're in the middle of 1984, so Paul's about to launch.

01:54:35
Paul
Give my regards to Broad street, which I did mention on the last show that we all got together with the magical mystery tour. If y'all ever interested in really slicing those film veins open, I'd be happy to come on and talk about give my regards to Broad street. But. So that's really interesting. I'm learning a lot about how Michael Jackson wound up purchasing the Beatle catalog because that's where we are sort of in the. In the story, so really detailed, sort of encyclopedic rundown there. And then I also work on two other music shows now here this, which is an album Exchange podcast and take it away, which is a Paul McCartney podcast, which we are now starting to do. George Harrison albums. We're going to be switching from Paul specifically to solo Beatles in general and go through the George catalog.

01:55:27
Paul
So a lot of podcasts. You can find me in the pages of DC Comics and Superman and all that fun stuff. That's my day job. And I don't know, I think that's about it. That's all I can plug.

01:55:39
Case
Yeah, well, I mean, those are quite the plugs.

01:55:42
Sam
Yeah.

01:55:44
Case
Hard working nerd about town, but also multi time dad. So I tell you, it's been tough.

01:55:52
Paul
With the kids, your poor editor. We'll find out. Yeah. But we've been managing somehow. I managed.

01:56:00
Case
Yeah. Well, again, thank you for coming on. It was. It was a blast talking with you about this movie. And, yeah, everyone should check out all of that stuff. If you're a Beatles fan, check out the Beatles podcast stuff. If you're a DC comics fan, check out the DC comics. It's across the board.

01:56:15
Paul
We got an event going on right now called Lazarus Planet, where a Lazarus volcano explodes. So that's fun for everybody and kind of feels a little planet of the apes ish. So there's that do that. Yeah, read that.

01:56:29
Case
But after they are done supporting all of those things, Sam, where can they find you?

01:56:33
Sam
They can find me here on another pass every other week, and then they can sometimes find me on our discord, if I remember it exists. You know, other than that, I am just walking through the desert trying to find a mysterious lake to take a bath in. And so I will not be available. But if you have any complaints about anything I said, as always, you can find case at.

01:56:56
Case
You can beat your chest in my direction on Twitter at the moment, as long as it exists. Aiken at other socials that are popping up like Hive and whatnot. I'm also doing theiken. Or you can find me on Instagram etzelcoatl five because I'm a legion of superheroes nerd and also a mythology nerd, and I've been hanging on to that goddamn screen name since the aim days, so that one's staying the way it is. You can find the podcast on Twitter anotherpass, and you can find us to actually chat on the aforementioned Discord server, which you can get a link to at our website, certainpov.com, or just all over the place. We share it like I believe it's in my bio on Twitter. Come interact with us on Discord because we have a lot of great times chatting about a lot of fun subjects.

01:57:39
Case
We have more shows joining the network, which have opened up some really cool conversations. Like we recently added Jukebox Vertigo, which is a Spotify building podcast where each or each episode, which is bi weekly, they add stuff to the playlist, which is a lot of fun based on a category for that week. We also have a show that just came back off of hiatus, which is United States of women, where Elizabeth and Jessica each week go through notable women from specific states, going in the order that the state joined the union. So they started with Delaware, and they've worked their way across. Currently they're in Massachusetts, talking about influential women that history often overlooks because history likes to focus on the other gender and like not really valuing the contributions that half of our population have given.

01:58:25
Case
And this is a really good historical breakdown of why these people have been important. So check that out and. Yeah. And then circle back here for our next episode. We are done talking about the Planet of the apes movies for the moment.

01:58:40
Sam
We are?

01:58:41
Case
Yeah. What?

01:58:42
Paul
Why?

01:58:42
Case
Well, because the Matt Reeves movies are great.

01:58:45
Sam
Fine.

01:58:46
Case
And we already talked about the burden.

01:58:49
Sam
Yeah.

01:58:50
Case
So fair. So we are going to go to what was supposed to be our next episode until we decided to do this whole thing. Sam, do you care to tell the audience what that is?

01:59:00
Sam
Absolutely. I would love to. Next time we'll be doing planet of the apes. No, I'm joking. Next time we'll be doing Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

01:59:16
Paul
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

01:59:30
Sam
Another pass is a certain pov production. Our hosts are Sam Alicia and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macri and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.

01:59:51
Case
Hello, case.

01:59:53
Sam
Sam. Alicia here. Ever heard of Planet of the Apes?

01:59:58
Case
The movie or the planet?

02:00:00
Sam
The brand new multimillion dollar musical and you are starring as the human.

02:00:05
Case
It's the part I was born to play, baby.

02:00:18
Paul
Help. The human is about to escape.

02:00:21
Case
Take your paws off me, you dirty ape.

02:00:25
Paul
You can talk. He can talk. He can talk. He can talk. He can talk. He can talk. He can talk.

02:00:30
Case
I can sing.

02:00:35
Sam
Ooh. Help me. Doctor Zaeus.

02:00:39
Paul
Doctor Zeus. Doctor Zaeus. Doctor Zias.

02:00:43
Case
Doctor Zias.

02:00:44
Paul
Doctor Zias. Doctor Zias. Oh, Doctor Zias. Doctor Zias.

02:00:49
Sam
Doctor Zias.

02:00:50
Case
What's wrong with me? I think you're want a second opinion.

02:00:54
Paul
You're also lazy. Doctor Zeus. Doctor Zaeus. Doctor Zeus.

02:00:58
Case
Doctor Zias.

02:01:00
Paul
Doctor Zias. Doctor Zias. Oh, Doctor Zias. Doctor Zias.

02:01:05
Sam
Doctor Zias.

02:01:06
Case
Can I play the piano anymore?

02:01:08
Paul
Of course you can.

02:01:10
Case
Well, I couldn't before.

02:01:16
Paul
This play has everything. Everything.

02:01:19
Case
Oh, I love legitimate theater. I hate every ape I see. From chimpanzee to chimpanzee. No. You'll never make a monkey out of me. Oh my God, I was wrong. It was earth all along. You finally made a monkey. Yes, we finally made a monkey. Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me. I love you, Doctor Zayas. Certainpov.com.