Queer Projection
This is a movie podcast about finding queer themes damn near everywhere. Hosts Alethia St. Joan and Danny Carroll share a 30+ year friendship that has been bound together by a shared love for movies. A trans woman and a gay man respectively, Alethia and Danny explore what these movies meant to them while they were young and closeted, and what revisiting these movies means for the actualized, arguably maladjusted adults they’ve become. It’s a heady, often crass and sometimes crude blend - part nostalgia trip, part queer theory, part film criticism. Check it out!
Queer Projection
BONUS: Disclosure Day
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We're still taking a short summer break from our standard episodes, but in the meantime, here's a BONUS on the latest Spielberg sci-fi. For the first time in Queer Projection history, we've recorded this one TOGETHER in the SAME ROOM in BROOKLYN, NY. We raise our voices, we come to blows, we threaten our 30 year friendship over this movie, and we have lots of fun doing it! Enjoy!
Okay, everybody. Hello. This is Queer Projection. Um, I happen to be in Brooklyn for this episode, sitting in the same room with my co-host Alethea. Alethea. We're on the same side of the country for one goddamn one. Just face to face, best friends, back together. Um, so yeah, there might be some, you know, different technical um issues with this episode, perhaps, because we are learning a little bit about how this is gonna go. So please forgive us. But uh today, uh, we are doing disclosure day by Steven Skibb.
SPEAKER_00And Danny is saying that right in front of uh the official one sheet or disclosure day.
SPEAKER_01I'm sitting in front of the poster. Alethea and I literally just wrapped up watching it. Um I did not manage to see it in theaters. We watch it here in Alethea's apartment. Um, and this is gonna be the first time we're talking about it. Now, this is a big deal for us, right, Alethea? Why?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Danny and I are, aside from, you know, growing up with the Spielberg fixation that we both had, um, uh Danny and I are both like kind of alien heads, aren't we? Yeah, I'm a sci-fi nerd. Let's put it that way. Well, but I'm not talking about sci-fi, I'm talking about science fact here.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01It is in fact true that we might not be alone. Um so yeah, so I uh I kind of want to just get right into it because this is gonna be a bonus episode. We're gonna keep it kind of short. We're also gonna record another episode today. Um so going into this movie, I was desperately hoping that it was just going to um astound me and all the cynics were wrong, but I have extremely complex emotions about this movie right now. Uh that, you know, I think come from sort of almost my just like production brain experience at this point, and also a little bit like my desires for science fiction. So, you know, there are some real like touch touchstone points, touch, you know, uh headlines about things that people don't like about this movie. Do you want to talk about some of those first, Olivia?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So I will say that um I thought this free times in theaters. Uh I unabashedly love it now. I had a more mixed reaction on my first few because uh to be frank, there are things about this movie that don't quite work. Um, particularly the casting of Josh O'Connor and to a lesser degree, I think Eve Hewson. Their scenes in particular just kind of don't uh they're they're sort of off key. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And David Kepp's uh weaknesses as a writer really, really come to the fore. They're not able to sell the material or the ideas in there, but luckily that is mostly kept to the first act, and the movie picks up at a certain point. Yeah. And gets past that.
SPEAKER_01Well, so that you know, that was one of the things that you know I was really frustrated about while we were watching that. I kept saying to Alethea, you know, like there was there was just something off kilter about those scenes. And and I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's also because we're dropped like in media res, and we have like no real like grip on on uh on on why they're supposed to be together, why we're supposed to care that they're together, or why, but there were also just like line readings.
SPEAKER_01So I mean you you have people in this movie that just know what to do with a ste with a Spielberg script, you know? And I feel like Coleman Domingo like really knew how to chew some of those lines, you know, talking about empathy and things like that. He knew what to do with them. I I think I don't know, um, there was sort of like a perplexing disconnect in some of the scenes with that couple when they were on the run, uh especially at the very beginning, um, were just like things kept sounding like line readings. And uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00It is true, but the movie the movie does recover from that, I believe.
SPEAKER_01But then you go back to Close Encounters of Third Kind. I think about that, you know, those scenes in the home with Richard Dreyfus and and um Terry Darr. Terry Garr, and I know it's a completely different tone, but but there's such like a natural elegance to uh those scenes, and and I I I just feel like I know they're different writers, but there's still a potential hokiness in some of the dialogue that just doesn't come across in those movies, it comes across in this one. And I feel like I need to surge my heart about what the disconnect is. And I think it's an intersection of the performances.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, I think it's just I think it's just uh script weakness that just needed to be um frankly. I think that aspect of the story could have just been cut or just like you know, into um consolidated into something else. Right. Um I think sometimes David Kemp is just not the greatest writer, sometimes he is, uh other times no, and I think uh sometimes uh say like the script or dialogue is not of like chief importance to Steven, so he'll just be like, well, whatever, and I'll direct it this way and it'll it'll work. Which he generally can do. Um, but let's let's be very clear. The movie picks up away from uh the the sort of draggy, uh heavy beginning, uh especially um as Emily Blunt kind of comes roaring into the film.
SPEAKER_01But that one, two, three scene sequence when we're first seeing Emily Blunt in her like Crisis in the Morning after she sees the Cardinal. I thought that was just like really elegantly composed. And I don't know, perhaps there is a thing where many drafts are just sort of crashed together a little bit um in what we ended up with on screen.
SPEAKER_00Spielbreak said he made David kept to 49 drafts. Yeah, I I think at a certain point a couple of the back wheels fell off. I think we needed to kill some darlings. Uh yes, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. But let's uh let's not give the impression that um you disliked this film.
SPEAKER_01No, because here's the thing. Uh I'm just like I'm always gonna be won over in a certain extent by endearing, um, optimistic science fiction because it it speaks to something very deep inside of me. And and but and so like that adds to the slight disappointment that I, you know, something wasn't revealed to me that just, you know, that the cynics just couldn't see. I can kind of see what the cynics saw here. But, you know, I am not actually that interested in talking about the performances and the disconnect and the tonal things. I do kind of want to talk about the science fiction of it all. Now, what was the question you posed?
SPEAKER_00So there there are hard sci-fi elements um outside of like alien shit, you know? And there's like bi-location. Um What do you mean biolocation? Like being in two places at once? Oh, like being like inhabiting somebody's consciousness. All the stuff that like the alien device can do. Um I was wondering, since you're uh more broadly read in classic sci-fi than I am, were the were the uh were any of those uh those ideas being pulled from some like major or well-known source?
SPEAKER_01Or or are these like I think it's a invented for this film? No, definitely not invented for this film, but it's a trope of the genre, and I don't necessarily know that it is um function specifically like it did in this movie and in things that I've read. But but the idea of being able to sort of hone in on a consciousness and like insert your own into theirs is an extremely common, um, extremely common uh device. And, you know, because so much of science fiction is speculating about what consciousness is and what like um individual experience is, you know. The the thing that's popping into my head immediately is Werner Vingi's Deepness in the Sky, where the aliens a little bit are the are the humans, and you know, there's this like spider civilization down on the ground and and the human vessel is circling and and uh and you don't really realize it, but from up there they're trying to sort of trying to like integrate into the spider consciousness, and as a result, these people start seeing spider history almost through the lens of human history, and so there's this distortion as people get lost. But like the idea of melding your consciousness. Sounds very interesting. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, it sounds very much Can you give me a reading list? Absolutely. Always, always, always. Um you know, actually, you just in a similar way, also involving human visitation upon an alien world and also involving spiders. Um Children of Time by Oh shoot, I don't want to. I think it's Adrian Tychovsky. I don't want to don't hold on, hold on, I'll find it real quick. Allie will cut this islands. Or I might keep it for realism. You know what it's really like. Yeah, it's Adrian Tychovsky. Uh yeah. Um but yeah, so I think that sort of projection of the self into another self is an extremely common trope. So borrowing more than stealing, because I don't think there was a specific enough store source to steal from, you know.
SPEAKER_00Um it's it's it's very interesting how the uh film explores the yin and yang of the radical of the of the empathy as a superpower, essentially. Yeah. Like Colin Firth uses it to uh literally um uh inhabit, but in a way that almost feels like rape or something, like against somebody's will in reading them for his own gains, as opposed to Emily Blunt being able to read people's hearts.
SPEAKER_01And they seem to be trying to make the point that when you use it for ill, it like injures you because he starts going through this like Palpatine like transformation where he's just like getting old and haggard the more he tries to use it.
SPEAKER_00Well, Domingo, who apparently was using it in a you know, peaceful way with with uh his alien friend In Vivo 17. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um we will get to him. We will get to him. Oh, I love In Vivo. Um yeah. So I I appreciate any science fiction that chooses that kind of thesis. That is like, listen, consciousness is the hard problem, the bizarre experience. So if we were to encounter another consciousness, the whole thing would be about figuring out what their conscious experience is, and that's the whole you know, thing about other humans. That is living with other humans. You're trying to deduce their conscious experience and how it is the same or different from your own. And I I love that.
SPEAKER_00And I love the interstellar type thing where it's like love is like a force like gravity and it can penetrate through time and more specifically, Colin Domingo says that they regard our capability for empathy as being our number one evolutionary advantage, and that because we're losing touch with that, we're kind of we're we're on the brink. Yeah, and that's kind of That's almost like the day the earth stood still or even the abyss.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's an anthropolog is an anthropologically sound idea too. I mean, human human hum modern humans developed because of our uh group dynamics and language is is fundamentally a tool of empathy. With empathy there is cooperation and And language is cooperation, otherwise you wouldn't need it so desperately if cooperation wasn't the key to human survival. You know, I I I I don't think that's idealistic. I I think ignoring that basic idea is sort of beyond cynical, it's um just lying. You know, it's just so distorted. And it's very prevalent in our society. Of course it is, because it's a frightening idea that you owe anybody anything.
SPEAKER_00That's why I think this movie is really a radical statement.
SPEAKER_01Uh but I don't think it is stating it with its chest hard enough. I don't know. It feels lost in the mix and confusion of the narrative. So much so that at a certain point it feels like they have to state it so explicitly that it kind of loses its punch, you know?
SPEAKER_00Alright, well, zero in on that. Well, first of all, let's let's just what uh give me something that really worked for you in this movie.
SPEAKER_01Uh, what really worked to me. I mean, you know, the the the the idea, and I know a lot of people d dislike it, but the idea that aliens visit us in forms we can understand uh feels again like anthropologically sound. Uh the idea being like if we're trying to communicate, and one of the obstacles to communication might be panic revulsion or just a general mind-blowing experience, then if we want to get to the communication first, it it kind of helps to look the part. And and I think in in many ways, human beings do this with other species, that we find that we are getting the most authentic and observable stuff from blending in better with nature and not making the observed thing feel as though there's a human in the room. You know? It's kind of a key experimental device. So that really works for me, but I don't know that it worked quite as well as I've seen it appear in other sci-fi. Like I think the contact moment is kind of perfect, but maybe I don't know. I don't know. Um other things that really worked.
SPEAKER_00Uh one of my favorite sequences, and it seemed like you were moved to, is when um First it's Colin Firth. When they when he when he first meets Emily Blunt, he looks into her eyes and he suddenly sees his dead wife standing before him. Right. And then uh he tells everyone to stand down, and as they're trying to escape, some of the henchmen are trying to stop them, and then they look into her eyes and they see the face of a dead loved one in sequence, and they're so taken aback that they kind of make that escape. That is that is for some reason that sequence really stands out in the film for me. It worked. It's also the music. Yes. I think that scene is incredible. John Williams is guiding our emotions there. I've heard so many people say that they think that was completely stupid.
SPEAKER_01I can see why they think it was stupid because I don't know that the performances sold it. I mean, Emily sold it. Emily sold so many things in this movie, but um is fantastic in the show. She is fantastic, and it seemed like she was having a lot of fun. So um You know, I I do think that that really worked on me because again, the the concept of empathy and the concept of communication being so fundamental to conscious understanding. There's this whole thing, and every I think we in our culture know this. There's this idea of like everybody wants to be seen, but not seen too much. You know, like don't perceive me is a very common phrase you hear these days thrown around jokingly. But there is that thing, it's like if you could see inside my mind and see everything, uh, I would want you to be drawn to the stuff that I care about and desperately need to feel comfort about instead of the stuff I really don't want you to see because it also scares me. So, so if it was possible to do that, to feel that sort of like intrusion into your own mind, and the thing that is first brought forward to you is the stuff that you love desperately, and you are made to feel like who you are is the stuff that you love desperately. Yeah, that would work. You'd put the gun down. I'm sorry, I believe that completely, but is it sold well in this movie? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I think it is. I mean, I think about that sequence several times a day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_00It worked on me, but um good old Steve's magical realism just does it for me.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and it does it for me, but I don't know that I got to the point where I was seeing I was seeing more than the cynics were seeing. The cynics were seeing the same thing. I was just bringing it into myself a little differently. And I don't yeah, I don't know. I don't think people missed it. I think they saw it.
SPEAKER_00The whole sequence beginning with her discovering that they've recreated her childhood home where this thing happened to her, and then the uncovering of you know the the the whole flashback which reveals that they were both abducted. Did not feel essential.
SPEAKER_01Like I get they explained why they did it, but it was just like such a production to just be in the one bedroom. Why did they have to recreate the whole house?
SPEAKER_00Because it put her back in the mindset of being able to go back to that time and place. I know. But also, but but it links back to what Spielberg just did in the movie before this, the Fablements. He completely recreated his childhood home and split it.
SPEAKER_01But you're gonna see that. I don't know that the average audience member is gonna see that. In fact, that feels specially for you and all the Spielberg and movie lovers out there.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think anybody our age is gonna respond to that too, because it looked like the living rooms that we grew up in. There was a fucking there was a fucking Nintendo on the ground because VHS is stacked in there. There's a fucking copy of Jaws.
SPEAKER_01I saw that. I was thinking that entire sequence, what it would feel like to walk into Fortwood Hall Lane in like 1999, and what that would be like. That would be beautiful, but also deeply unsettling. You know, the past is a foreign country, even if you've already been there.
SPEAKER_00Um But I just like but then the abduction look kind of looked like AI. I love the shot where it goes from uh deer hoof prince to like little alien for kids.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Good shit. Come on. The two kids on the slabs were a little too mysterious skin for me. Like I know that we've all been my generation's all been corrupted by having to see that movie, but uh it does have a yeah, I mean stories of alien abductions are like that. Yes.
SPEAKER_00And then we see that happening at the hands of Colin Firth to an alien, the inverse of that.
SPEAKER_01And we also, just the two of us in a screenplay we wrote a few years back, had an abduction sequence that was very much leaning in the direction of like uh the feelings of a molestation. But we didn't we didn't see inside the ship though. No, we did not. Um So yeah again, thematically, it's all stuff I agree with. This movie didn't like I don't I it doesn't feel like out of touch. So, okay, so a lot of people were like, the broadcast TV control room sequence felt uh incredibly dated in some way. I think the stuff that didn't work on me was the um the and I know Emily Blunt was using like conscious control powers and using her power of empathy to look into people's eyes and get them to just like do it because they know it's right or something like that, but there was a compliance with all of the controllers who like I just I feel like at first, even if all that footage was coming up, there'd be a moment of like, can we like confirm all of this? Like, I can't see that. But they did, but they were doing it in real time, and it was like glossed over, and it wasn't a key component of the moment. Look, you gotta you gotta roll with it a bit. I did. What don't be mad at me.
SPEAKER_00Don't be one of them.
SPEAKER_01I'm not one of them, because here's what I think they get wrong. And in and in so many of the things I see online, it's like broadcast TV is irrelevant. If they really wanted to get to people.
SPEAKER_00Okay, social media and Alethea, calm down.
SPEAKER_01I am trying to be contrary to that point. Okay. All right, all right, sorry, sorry, go ahead. But I think those people who are like, it wouldn't work if it was put on broadcast news, actually kind of have a fundamental misunderstanding of how our information universe does work. Um, I think so many people get their news from uh alternative sources and and whatever, if even if it's TikTok or or Substacks or all these things. But I think they miss the sort of tent pole reality of traditional journalism. And even if it has shrunk to this miserable-looking thing, the the device of it and how it exists in culture, like you you are going to sort of start there for even the illusion of legitimacy. And even today, the stuff that gets in through Reuters and and the Associated Press and New York Times, God forbid, and all this stuff, like that is still the baseline material for all the other, you know, um just sort of current event digestion. Or independent journalists who are. An independent journalist is fully capable of breaking a new story and often does, but m per, you know, uh again, maybe there is an extreme naivety coming into my mouth here, but like the New York Times still has enough money to get the scoop first. Well, as a trans person, I cannot support the New York Times. I'm sorry. I know. Okay, Reuters, AP, whatever.
SPEAKER_00Um, but see that so so the idea that you wouldn't necessarily start there that like I mean some of the most kind of profound reporting on the subject of what we now call UAPs and like eviden like circumstantial evidence suggesting that this really might be happening. Right is is all based on this uh investigative journalism done with the New York Times in like 2019 or something.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I remember listening to that daily episode and there being this like incredulity in the host that was also bordering on like, yeah, there was this feeling in I can't remember if it was Babaro or not, but but like uh this is all absurd, but also we're talking about it in the New York Times daily podcast. So, like that was either them sort of being like, has Has journalism fallen so far that we are, you know, just sort of peddling to the to a like to a low intellect or something?
SPEAKER_00Or when really they've fallen so far that they're, you know, all they do is uh work to serve the Epstein class and cover up for a fascist government. Sure. And say one.
SPEAKER_01Listen, I'm not gonna say no to that. Everybody's unfortunately trying to participate in that.
SPEAKER_00Here's where I think like that sequence is even like a little saddle. The fact that it so quickly doesn't stay on Emily Blunt, even though she's the main character and it's like a big moment, and it goes to the national um anchor who is like incredible and carries the whole sequence. Yeah, really, really good. Those big watery eyes, my god. When she when she starts crying, like I I always cry at that point in the sequence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because it gives it the gravity it needs, and that it's like tr that it's trying to convey is like possible.
SPEAKER_00Um I love I love the recreation of like the alien footage too. Like some of it looks like straight out of Schindler's list.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so this is my biggest bone to pick with this movie, okay? And I know you disagree, but I just don't get why we had to go with the little green men of it all.
SPEAKER_00Because I think they were just like, we we have to go with what's what has been pre-established and it's generally accepted as aliens.
SPEAKER_01It is not anymore.
SPEAKER_00I think one of the But that's what they look like in close encounters.
SPEAKER_01Listen, I think xenobiologists, and they do exist, would argue that the idea that humanoid aliens is sort of like the mm-the median or the mean, like all intelligent life evolves towards that the way all life sort of tries to be a crab. Um, like I think that just I I I think we've learned too much about um exoplanetary environments and physics and and certain things that that I think it's more likely that intelligent life is being seen right in front of us on the telescope when we just don't have the means to recognize it because we're looking for life as we know it. And so for life as we know it to be what the aliens are too, I have a gut reaction to that that says I don't think it's true or possible.
SPEAKER_00I thought it was great that they just were like they it was not it was not the fucking point to come up with some new concept of what extra trash. But why not? Because this is a movie that takes seriously as fact, like the fucking urban legend of Richard Nixon getting drunk and taking Jackie Gleason to go see the alien bodies. Yeah. And also, like witness testimony, they all say that they kinda look kind of like that. Okay. But I, you know And also there's consistency with this and E.T. Close Encounters.
SPEAKER_01But when you say that, okay, I just like I'm gonna take sci-fi and like if you want that, watch a rival. But I'm gonna, I mean, I'm gonna yes, that and that is a phenomenal, phenomenal conversation about what alien life could be like. Yeah, I don't love that movie. I do. Are you kidding? I think it arrivals great. Um I yeah, I also just like the like the idea of past, present, and future being stacked on top of each other. Reality has always felt that way to me, and I think it's maybe just because I have ADHD, but maybe it's because I don't know. I have a high level of consciousness. Um wait wait wait. No, so real quick, the point I just want to make about humanoid aliens. If I were to Occam's razor it, and if it's extremely unlikely that life out in the universe would look like humans and we're still seeing human-like visitors, I'd be more inclined to say that those were like interdimensional people. Comes people visiting the past or or through, you know, a wrinkle in time where that's how humans look.
SPEAKER_00Maybe they are. The film doesn't say they're from another planet. It's true, but and actually a lot of the stuff that they're riffing on, like commonly accepted like UFO UAP lore now. A lot of people believe that uh that that these creatures would be far future human beings coming back to visit us. Yeah. Or interdimensional.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I'd almost be more inclined to think that.
SPEAKER_00Um Because interdimensionality also explains how they can travel such vast distances to see us without actually uh having to interact with our environment in a way that causes them harm in some cases.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think the key there is they aren't actually traveling fast distances, they're just visiting the earth on the other side of the wall. You know. Uh we got real sci-fi there.
SPEAKER_00Um I are also developing a hard sci-fi kind of concept together that involves some of this stuff. Let's not talk about that.
SPEAKER_01Uh so I think overall, I'm going to be thinking about this movie a lot because it does have sci-fi ideas and executions in it that I'm really gonna want to chew on. I mean, I I am also working on working on a pilot right now that is very much in the same tonal camp of being like what what makes humanity great and what will save us from the perils of the future and the greater universe is empathy and love and our instinct to protect and try and understand each other. That I I believe so deeply and fundamentally on so many levels, uh that and it's in so many things that I write myself that like I cannot I cannot take that in and not feel good about it, having seen it in this movie. Um and so yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna be thinking about it. And maybe mainly in the in the capacity where I I need to convince people that it's true. And I feel like people who were really sort of revolted by this movie were insulted by the attempt to convince them.
SPEAKER_00Um I would also like to say, by the way, you're making it sound like audiences of wholesale rejected it. The movie has been his biggest moneymaker in some time. I mean, it hasn't lit the world on fire, but it's done pretty consistent business with a lot of competition. And also, some people really like this movie.
SPEAKER_01I think everybody was really thirsty for a new Steven Spielberg alien movie.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of like the same reaction AI got.
SPEAKER_01But AI is. I'm sorry. We did a we did a podcast on AI, and I think AI is a masterpiece. I'd I I would definitely put AI above this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Way above.
SPEAKER_00So where do uh where does this rank for you in the grand Spielberg canon?
SPEAKER_01I mean, you haven't seen all of his films, but I don't want to answer this one yet. Because I think I want to revisit it and also some of the criticisms of it and and just sort of see if there is a composition at work here that was hard to sort of like see on first viewing. Because there are many movies that I feel that way about.
SPEAKER_00I will say the things that bothered me, and some of which have bothered you too as well, um bothered me less and less with each subsequent viewing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though I still think this movie is not without flaws.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um okay, this is a bonus episode, so let's wrap it up. Um I loved being here in Brooklyn watching a movie on a tiny screen, just like we did back in the old days. Just like Steve's Fiber contented. Yeah, just like Steve's feeling. Hey, I didn't watch it on an airplane, okay. That's true. This would be a good airplane movie, I'd bet you. Yeah, probably. Probably. Uh okay, folks. Thanks for joining us in another bonus episode. Remember, the bonus episodes are about current movies, movies that don't have any explicit queer themes. We did not talk about queer themes in this episode, and that's fine because that's what bonus episodes are for.
SPEAKER_00Um no, this is a queer statement.
SPEAKER_01It is. Aliens are gay.
SPEAKER_00Um and Spielberg is coming out as a you as a real UFO head.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. What was the point you wanted to make? That there are a lot of closets in Spielberg.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's there's there's closets all throughout Spielberg films as as as a thematic and visual motif. We have the the closet in ET as a place of like comfort and and safety. And then the senior, then flipped on its head, uh, little Carolyn gets sucked into the closet and therefore into like an evil dimension through which she can only communicate with the outside of the television. I can't believe we haven't done Boulder Guys yet. Okay, save it, save it. And and uh more more closet shit. Um in this one, like the whole uh flashback to the abduction happens with them sitting in the closet in the Fablemans. He projects his whole movies in the closet and he literally shows his mother the footage that brings their entire world crashing down in the closet. I'm saying that Steven Spielberg is a little gay boy. Or he just understands the closet. He's he's queer at heart without living a queer life. Okay. While living as a sister then. Okay. We did a good job shoehorning some queer themes there. Yeah, that's gonna be it for this one. And uh before we go, I just want to leave you with one final word. Listen, I'll get it.