Mandy Kaplan:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Make Me a Nerd. I’m Mandy Kaplan, a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore the world of nerd culture that I’ve been missing out on and afraid of my whole life. If you’re new to the podcast, first of all, thank you for checking it out. Welcome aboard. The premise is pretty basic. I have never really gotten into sci-fi, fantasy, video games, D&D, all of that. People come on and try to recruit me to the very colorful dark side of all of that with their nerdy passion for these things.

My returning guest today — one of my favorite past episodes that Kynan did with me were —

Kynan Dias:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ghibli Studios, Spirited Away, and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

And The Exorcist.

Mandy Kaplan:
And The Exorcist. What could be better than that? He’s a podcaster, a multi-hyphenate, professor of film, podcaster. He’s going to tell you all about it. Welcome back, Kynan Dias.

Kynan Dias:
Thanks so much for having me. Wow, how exciting. I didn’t realize — I forgot I’d been on here so many times. That’s wonderful.

Mandy Kaplan:
I give the people what they want. Nay, what they need.

Kynan Dias:
They need.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. So what podcasts are you currently on right now? Because you’re always doing them.

Kynan Dias:
Yes, I’ve got a couple. So with Lester Ryan Clark, we do a show called The Devil’s Details, which is a history of the evolution of the devil in literature —

Mandy Kaplan:
Isn’t it —

Kynan Dias:
— and art and movies. Right now we’re talking about how Mark Twain has depicted him, in a lot of his lesser-known material. So if you can imagine Mark Twain putting the devil into Huckleberry Finn kind of shenanigans, that’s what we’re covering on there.

And then, also with Lester Ryan Clark, I’m doing Every Minute of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which we go minute by minute through that movie. And we are nearing the end. So we’re at the dark period right now, where everything’s going wrong in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Mandy Kaplan:
And you’ve been doing that film —

Kynan Dias:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I mean, that’s a long film. We covered it.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I came on that show, and you came on my show to indoctrinate me into that world.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s a long-ass movie, so doing a podcast about it is a real commitment.

Kynan Dias:
It’s long, yeah. And we’re getting to the point in the movie where some shots in the film are one frame long.

Mandy Kaplan:
I say.

Kynan Dias:
So then we have to cover everything that’s in there. We’re kind of obsessive. Lester and my brand is to be exhaustive and exhausting. We will go through every single corner of this thing, and we’re making our way through there.

And then my other show is with Pete Wright, amongst others, on Sitting in the Dark, which is a monthly show about different subtropes within horror films — sub-genres within horror films. So we’ll do things like home invasion films, or we’ll watch the Smile trilogy, or disaster survival horror movies. That’s the one that I covered recently.

Yeah, so that’s super fun, really eye-opening. And I’m a scaredy cat. I’m not a big horror fan, so it scares the crap out of me.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, really?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, that’s why Pete recruited me — as someone who is a scaredy cat, and then it forces —

Mandy Kaplan:
Adorable.

Kynan Dias:
— me to watch these things. It’s not unlike Make Me a Nerd, where I’m like, I need to watch them, I need an excuse, I need someone to hold me down and open my eyes, A Clockwork Orange style.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, another movie that’s a blind spot for me, but I think I need to leave it —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
— in my blind spot. There’s no way I could handle that. But I get the reference.

Kynan Dias:
Oh good.

Mandy Kaplan:
So when I reached out and said, it’s time to come back, my friend Kynan, what you got for me this time?

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
You answered, Sphere.

Kynan Dias:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I said, what’s that?

Kynan Dias:
What is this?

Mandy Kaplan:
So it’s a Michael Crichton book adapted into a film.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And let me just give everybody the log line so everyone’s caught up.

The story is: a spacecraft is discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, presumed to be at least 300 years old and of alien origin. A crack team of scientists and experts is assembled and taken to the ocean floor to investigate. However, the ship is not as it seems. And when a giant, perfect sphere is discovered in the cargo bay, things begin to fall apart. Dun-dun-dun.

Kynan Dias:
And fall apart, do they? Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
So what made you choose Sphere?

Kynan Dias:
This was the time when I felt the most like a nerd on this show. Because I said, oh, I’m going to Make Me a Nerd, I’m talking about one of my favorite books — Sphere. And, like you, they’re like, what are you talking about? And I thought that Michael Crichton was obviously prolific enough that people would remember this movie and this book. But apparently not.

But it has really stuck with me ever since I read it when I was a kid. I first read Jurassic Park over and over and over again when I was like ten years old. And I started reading all the other Michael Crichton hard science books. And this one really stuck with me because of the philosophies and the questions it has about all of its different sciences.

So the movie version that came out — when I watched it in the theaters, like a lot of people, I’m sure — I’m like, not as good as the book. It never is, right? The book is better than the movie. But rewatching it to get ready for you, I think there’s a lot of really interesting stuff that would be a wonderful gateway drug for people to look at this movie and, if they’re interested, start thinking about questions like, what would be the nature of alien life if we found it? Alien life might not be very cinematic. It might not be little green men who talk to you, or even have little jaws, like the alien life in Sphere — if it exists, I guess. Spoiler alert. It has no body, and it might not even exist in three dimensions, is one of the questions they have in the book.

Like, what if we open the door and it is a four-dimensional being? And we think that we’re going to go in there and, like the Apollo moon landing, have these great speeches and be like, ah, here we are at the precipice of it. And it might not even be something that we could see or experience with our senses. And that has always blown my mind.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

I just was reading about Michael Crichton, because I truly don’t know anything about him.

Kynan Dias:
Right. Oh, okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
And they used the phrase “techno-thriller.”

Kynan Dias:
Uh-huh.

Mandy Kaplan:
That was his genre. Techno-thriller. I thought that was — he has his own genre.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I knew him from ER.

Kynan Dias:
Right. He’s the creator of ER.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I’ve heard of this movie called Jurassic Park, but I had not seen it until a few months ago, when I covered it for Make Me a Nerd with Tommy Metz and Pete Wright.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
So yeah, this was definitely more science-y and heady than ER or Jurassic Park.

Kynan Dias:
Heady, yeah. Well, the Jurassic Park novel — which I would love to come back to sometime, if you’re not too Jurassic Park overloaded — is heady. Obviously it’s got dinosaurs eating people on the toilet and all that, but it really is heady, and that’s what I like about Crichton. His books are about systems, which is about as nerdy as anything on your show. It’s about the failure of systems, and the failure of people to even understand the systems they’ve created.

So Jurassic Park is really about, we make a theme park and all the things that go wrong with the theme park, and then we make a genetic code, like a computer code, and we fail to understand that. So Sphere is a lot like that as well. Sphere is, we’re going into this thing, we have expectations of what it’s going to be like, and then it’s a failure of imagination. And then, if we can get into a little bit of the spoilers of this movie, what this alien thing gets into is giving people the power to manifest what they can imagine.

Mandy Kaplan:
Of course.

Kynan Dias:
And perhaps the alien is having a failure of its own imagination. Maybe. Because it gives human beings the power to manifest their thoughts, but it might not understand that human beings’ thoughts are kind of wackadoo.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, it’s the power and it’s a curse, right?

Kynan Dias:
And it’s a curse, yeah, exactly.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s a double-edged sword. Because if you just have the thought, oh, I want to kill him —

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
— he’s so annoying — then obviously you don’t actually want that to happen, but it could happen in this world.

Kynan Dias:
Right. Or, in the movie version, it’s “man, I just wish I was dead.” So one of the characters is like, I just had a brief moment where I thought, man, I wish I was dead. And how many times do we say that to ourselves, or have that thought, and then someone says, how you doing? And you go, oh, I’m fine. And you don’t even recognize yourself that you had that thought.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. Right.

Kynan Dias:
So when it’s unlocked in you and you have all the powers of the sphere — ooh. All these terrible manifestations happen. And the movie does a good job in the third act of it, where all three people who are given this power don’t even want to admit that they have the power.

Like, that’s a scary thing for them to admit. So it becomes this gaslighting exercise of, no, you have the power. No, you’re the one who’s killing us all. You’re the one who’s killing us all. And so that becomes the whole last 40 minutes of the movie — everybody in the film saying, it’s not me, I wouldn’t do that. If I had all the powers of the universe, I wouldn’t be killing y’all. I wouldn’t be manifesting monsters. I would only cure cancer and cause world peace and all of those. But of course, that’s not really how human nature works.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Well, let’s not start at the end, Kynan.

Kynan Dias:
No, oh gosh, oh gosh.

Mandy Kaplan:
Let’s start at the beginning of this movie, which is directed by Barry Levinson and has a powerhouse cast.

Kynan Dias:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Dustin Hoffman — little-known actor. I don’t know if you saw my name when you logged in: Dustin Hoffmandy. Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah. But the movie starts with Huey Lewis flying a helicopter.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Who knows why? Huey Lewis. And here was what delighted me on every level.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
So Dustin Hoffman wakes up in the helicopter and the pilot, Huey Lewis, is like, oh, did you have a good nap?

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Where are you off to? And Dustin Hoffman tells him, oh, I’ve been called in —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
— on this plane crash, or some kind of crash. And Huey Lewis actually delivers the news.

Kynan Dias:
Right, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
He’s like, oh, I heard this, and this is what really happened back there.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I was like, oh shit, Huey Lewis is really going for it with the news right now.

Kynan Dias:
The part he was born to play, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
So that was right.

And so they get to the military base. And the next person I see is Chuck from Roseanne — Dan Conner’s best friend Chuck from Roseanne — who is also a prominent actor on The X-Files, which I covered with Chelsea Stardust.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

I don’t know who plays Chuck from Roseanne.

Mandy Kaplan:
Also from Sitting in the Dark, right? Oh gosh, I should have written down his real name. I only know him as Chuck from Roseanne. They play poker at the table. But yeah, he is in this movie, and he was in The X-Files.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s all coming together.

Kynan Dias:
It’s all coming together, yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
My nerdery and my past episodes are coming full circle with my present episodes. And I’m trying to scroll to get — it’s James Pickens Jr.

Kynan Dias:
Oh cool, all right, great.

Mandy Kaplan:
All right. So they get on the sub and they start to go down into the ocean.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And doesn’t it feel exactly like that ride at Disneyland? The 20,000 Leagues — now Finding Nemo — ride?

Kynan Dias:
Right, yes. I can’t go back on that, because last time I was there a child threw up and couldn’t be let off and had to sit in his own throw-up first. So apparently you can’t stop that ride, which is like what happens in our movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yep.

Kynan Dias:
There’s no aborting this. But you’re right, it feels exactly like that.

And we start to see — because really the movie is about group dynamics. It’s about how everyone’s dealing with the same stressors and they cannot deal with it in the same way. And they get annoyed with each other’s defense mechanisms of humming, or tapping your foot, or whatever. Everyone’s crazy but me.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

And none of them are qualified.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
They are a mathematician, a psychiatrist — help me out — a physicist.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, an astrophysicist. And a biologist, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And a doctor. Yes.

So what I immediately liked about this film is they are all quipping.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s very humorous.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
They make fun of each other. They’re self-deprecating. I just came off of watching Alien: Earth —

Kynan Dias:
Uh-huh.

Mandy Kaplan:
— for the podcast. Ain’t no quipping on that show. That is a dark, intense show.

Kynan Dias:
Uh-huh. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
So it was a breath of fresh air when I’m like, oh, they’re going to snipe at each other and it’s going to be light. Which I think is a Crichton quality, I would guess?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I guess. Certainly Jurassic Park is one of the wittiest books you’ll ever read. And they’re just incredibly smart people and they’re very aware of themselves. And I think Levinson brings that to the movie even more than the book.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

And there’s interpersonal drama hinted at.

Kynan Dias:
Just hints. Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
We don’t quite know what it is, but Sharon Stone and Dustin Hoffman clearly have a past.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And for me, the non-nerd watching this, that’s important stuff to keep me engaged.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because if it was all long speeches about technical things, that would go right over my head. But feeling all the interpersonal drama and chemistry keeps me engaged.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. That’s what’s new in the movie. So that subplot is new in the movie, not in the book. In the book, it is Dustin Hoffman putting together this report where they’re like, hey, if we discovered aliens, what would you want, and who would you want there? And he really just knows these people professionally, like through their publishing and everything.

So with that in the book, you’re able to go through, okay, they have different philosophies about different versions of life or extraterrestrial natures, et cetera. So in this one, he is just blowing off this report, and he’s like, I’m just going to pick my friends. ‘Cause there are never going to be aliens. They’re never going to call me about any of this. There aren’t aliens. So that’s the reason why they all know each other here — where in the book they don’t. They just know each other by their work.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Well, Dustin Hoffman at one point — his name is Norman — he admits, when somebody questions him, but you’ve written about all this stuff —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
— you should know about a lot of this stuff.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
He says, are you kidding? I borrowed from Rod Serling and Isaac Asimov.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I only know the name Isaac Asimov from crossword puzzles.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
He is oft in there.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, very good. Yes, very good.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. But —

Kynan Dias:
But you know Rod Serling by now. Maybe?

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I haven’t done any Twilight Zone. But that’s Rod Ser—

Kynan Dias:
Twilight Zone.

Mandy Kaplan:
Isn’t that — no, Rod Serling.

Kynan Dias:
Yep, that’s him. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Who’s Gene Roddenberry?

Kynan Dias:
Star Trek.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. Rod Serling is Twilight Zone and the Planet of the Apes movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m still learning, Kynan. Oh, okay. I haven’t done any of that.

Kynan Dias:
All right, great.

Mandy Kaplan:
I really bought into these characters. They acted in these situations like we would act.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
They’re not badass protagonists who know exactly what to do every moment.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
They are scared and flawed. And that is always thrilling to me. I’m very sick of protagonists who are one step ahead all the time.

Kynan Dias:
Right. That’s the advantage of casting these characters wrong — getting all the wrong people down there.

I like Ted a lot, who is Liev Schreiber’s character. He’s bigger in the book. I like that character, and how he can’t help himself even when they’re in a life-and-death situation. He’s trying to be like, I thought of that, let’s write that down. Like, I’m the one who had that. Because he’s a scientist who’s trying to, as he says, make his mark. And he’s like 30, but he’s like, I’m past twenty-five, so as an astrophysicist, I’m old, I’m not going to make it, et cetera.

So it’s like, I need to be there — and sniping at each other when they should be getting along. And they do not act as a team until the very end of the movie, when it’s too late.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Kynan Dias:
Before that, they are just constantly picking at each other.

Mandy Kaplan:
Now, in terms of the book versus the movie: if there wasn’t all of this interpersonal stuff — and you’re saying there wasn’t — do you like that it’s so technically heavy?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure people who actually know astrophysics better than me don’t think it’s very technically heavy. I think it’s very understandable. But yeah, so it’s more about the philosophies. It really is more about that.

Like the assumptions that the mathematician has, that math is a universal language, and so that’s the conversation that he’s going to be able to have with the alien, that the others aren’t necessary. Them thinking about the psychologist is not a scientist — and him trying to defend that, I’m a scientist. But they’re like, no, you can’t reproduce this, et cetera. The biologist’s idea that when you are thinking about extraterrestrial life, they might have completely different forms. We’re thinking about how many arms do they have, or how many eyes do they have? And she’s thinking about, well, does it have to have arms or eyes at all? Does it have to have a reproductive system?

You know, all these things. And so yeah, it’s really a battle more of ideas. And so most of that battle of ideas happens in the first half of this book. And in the movie, it’s the first ten minutes. And then we’re getting into dramatizing it, because it’s a movie. That’s how movies work.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

We are going to continue breaking this down right after this.

Welcome back. While I have your attention, let me tell you all that Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM, engineering by the peerless Pete Wright. The theme song is “Wonderstruck” by Jane and the Boy. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, do me a solid. Leave a review. It helps other people find the podcast. Five stars, write a message, I’ll give you a shout-out.

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This movie has really a little bit of everything. There are a lot of laughs, a lot of technical stuff, and it even sneaks in some good jump scares.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Which I think — in other stuff I’ve watched similar to this recently, they weren’t quite as successful with those jump scares, or there were so many of them that I’m like, I get it, something’s jumping.

Kynan Dias:
Uh-huh.

Mandy Kaplan:
But this one feels much more like a popcorn movie than a deep, intensive study of these things.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Does that please you or offend you, as somebody who loves the book and loves to get in the weeds about the tech or the ideas?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, when I was a kid, I was much more nose-up, like, meh, why isn’t it the same thing? Watching it again right before I jumped on with you — no, this is very effective stuff. I was jumping at the jump scares. I was surprised how effective they were, and how they weren’t all — it wasn’t always a jump scare, it’s a fish that’s coming after them. Sometimes it’s something electrical, or some other — a dead body.

Mandy Kaplan:
A dead body.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I was completely — who’s Chester Copperpot?

Mandy Kaplan:
They’re very Chester Copperpot, right? The Goonies. They see a skeleton, and it really feels like a Goonies moment.

Kynan Dias:
Oh, see. That’ll have to be, yeah — when you come on my show, Make Me a Goony.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, any time.

Yeah, they’re underwater, they’re doing their thing, and they all see the sphere for the first time.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m coming off of watching Arrival.

Kynan Dias:
Oh, huh. Uh-huh.

Mandy Kaplan:
Which is a beautiful, beautiful movie.

Kynan Dias:
Wait, wait. Which Arrival?

Mandy Kaplan:
Denis Villeneuve.

Kynan Dias:
The Amy Adams one? Oh yes, okay, great.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, Amy Adams.

Kynan Dias:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
I have to say — and I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but here goes — that a sphere is not as intriguing a visual as some of the things I’ve been watching lately.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Mandy Kaplan:
To see creatures, and how we imagine aliens to look — it was like a tough sell to get me to care about just a glowing ball.

Kynan Dias:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons why the movie didn’t do very well, and why no one talks about it but me. I don’t know if you’ve seen Contact yet, but that was a big, big hit movie, but people didn’t like that you don’t see —

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kynan Dias:
— the alien as you would expect to see it. So yeah, this is essentially an artifact. The sphere is an artifact of an alien civilization. So the scientists can get excited about that, but for us — like, we could build a sphere, I guess, right? You and I, if we worked hard enough on it, we could do that.

So yeah, I think that is part of the problem. If you go into the thoughts about that, an alien creating a sphere is difficult. It shows some kind of civilization, it shows some kind of mathematical understanding. So it’s a little bit more that this civilization has created something that it knows doesn’t happen in nature, because you don’t get spheres in nature.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kynan Dias:
So people can’t go, oh, that’s just something that happened. So instead we have this.

So yeah, that part’s a little bit heady. I don’t think you can get around that. I don’t think you want to add a little emoji face to it or something and have it crack wise — which they do in Jurassic Park, with Mr. DNA, who is a brilliant thing that’s not in the book Jurassic Park. Mr. DNA comes by and he’s a cartoon character, he’s Mr. DNA, and he explains everything you need to know about Jurassic Park. They don’t have that in the movie Sphere, and maybe they could have used it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, there’s a lot of explaining, but I still would argue that I don’t know what the sphere is or does.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I know that when you go into it, you come out with the power to manifest your imagination.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I get that. But why a sphere? What does it look like on the inside? What is it? And they explained it away a little with Dustin Hoffman saying, I don’t remember, did I go in?

Kynan Dias:
Right, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
So do you have a better answer from the book, or from your own —

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, absolutely. So in the book, you’re with Norman as he goes into the sphere. It’s not a false memory or some kind of implanted memory there. He goes in it. And it is like a sea of fireflies all around you. It’s more fireflies than you could see.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, fireflies are so cute. Oh no.

Kynan Dias:
Aw, well, that’s just kind of a metaphor. It’s some bright shining lights, like a sea of stars, and it’s got foam in it. And it’s foam as far as you can see, and you just go into feeling everything and nothing all at once.

And then he has a conversation with whatever’s inside the sphere, and the sphere tells him about how the great thing about humans is your imagination — that that’s what separates you from the animals. Not tool-making or taking care of children or war or any of that. It’s imagination. And it has a talk about why the other two people who got the power, Harry and Beth, couldn’t control it: because there’s also this other part of imagination that is fear-based and afraid.

And then Norman, who’s a psychologist, is trying to psychoanalyze himself, and he’s like, I’m a psychiatrist, I can be in control of my emotions. And then you realize, oh wait, that’s also BS, isn’t it? Like, I just think that I can.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kynan Dias:
So yeah, that’s a whole scene in the book that is very interesting. I don’t know how you put that into a movie necessarily. So maybe Denis Villeneuve in the remake could do it.

Mandy Kaplan:
But how do you feel about it not being in there? It’s not a short movie.

Kynan Dias:
Mm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I will say Sphere is a long movie, and there are sequences that I got a little like, move it along.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
We’ve seen something like this already.

Kynan Dias:
Right, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But why leave it as this nebulous question about what’s inside the sphere?

Kynan Dias:
It’s a good question. I mean, I don’t know. That’s the kind of thing that I suppose is dealt with in book form better — monologuing to yourself, or seeing the voice of God. And this was a year after Contact, which I’m sure you’ll do on the show eventually.

Mandy Kaplan:
Eventually.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, but people had trouble with that, how they deal with the exact same question of the alien explaining itself in the movie Contact. And the parody of that in South Park is Mr. Garrison puking over how stupid it is.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh.

Kynan Dias:
I think it’s great. I’m all about it. But yeah, sorry to bring up puking twice on your show here.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Yeah. Third time’s a charm.

Kynan Dias:
All right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I wasn’t thinking about it until now, but I have said on the podcast a few times, I like the answers. I don’t like a nebulous, you know, what was it?

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Was it real? Was it not?

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
It just brushes it away for me in a way that feels cheapened.

Kynan Dias:
Yep. Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And they can do anything in film. So they spent a lot of money on this movie, clearly.

Kynan Dias:
Very expensive.

Mandy Kaplan:
So they could have come up with a foamy, firefly-y thing. I could have used it. It would have been a nice change of scene, ’cause so much of it takes place in the control room or the water.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. It’s a dank-looking movie, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, it is.

And death by jellyfish. That’s a new one. That’s how Latifah bites it.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. That’s a horrifying scene. I still think about that a lot. Ugh, oof. ‘Cause then she’s narrating over it, like, I could feel them eating through the suit or whatever, and there’s nothing you can do to help her. It’s just awful.

Mandy Kaplan:
However, no one shows any emotion when she dies.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
They’re like, Fletcher’s dead, moving on, what’s for lunch? Or when anyone else dies, no one shows emotion.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Why, Kynan?

Kynan Dias:
I think it has to do with — yeah, maybe we could have used a psychologist voicing this a little bit — about how sort of treating it as a task of, okay, we’ve got to move her body here, et cetera, et cetera, is their defense mechanism. Because they are down there and they’re in the exact same circumstances, and they could get jellyfished to death tomorrow, or within an hour. So it’s them compartmentalizing, is the way I see it. Of like, okay, she’s dead. And the Navy people are good at that. They’re like, okay. That’s it.

And so the civilians sort of take that on as well. They’re like, well, I’d rather not think about that. About Queen Latifah, one of the most likable people on earth, being jellyfished to death.

Mandy Kaplan:
Was that explained in any way, or is that your supposition?

Kynan Dias:
I think that’s my supposition. In the book, they have differing reactions to this. And in the book, there are more Navy seawomen down there, so she’s not the first one.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kynan Dias:
And yeah, there’s a lot of talk about the different ways that people deal with grief and all of that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

About halfway through, there is this huge, deadly action sequence with floods and fires, and they’re screaming and running, and it takes lives.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
It felt like the climax of a movie.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then I looked at the time and there was still 45 minutes to go.

Kynan Dias:
That’s right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I wrote, what else could go wrong? Little did I know.

Kynan Dias:
Right, yeah. It feels like the climax of a movie because, as we find out, it is. It’s Harry’s imagining of how he would die down there. And it feels like him manifesting 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into his life. So that’s how he sees that.

And I will say this creepy thing that he says at the beginning — this is Sam Jackson’s character — where he’s like, this spaceship is a time-traveling ship. And they’re like, okay, there’s no notice that we were ever here, so we must all die, right? Forefronting that in the movie is very smart. They don’t do that until the end of the book, where they list that.

So yeah, listing that of like, okay, if it’s a time machine, it should know that we were already here. There should be a sign that says, hey, welcome, this is us, right? So he says at the very beginning, you’re all going to die. And that’s really effective, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he’s creepy as hell in this movie. It’s a fun role for him.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
But he is the one who figures out a way to communicate with the alien, who they name Jerry.

Kynan Dias:
Right. Jerry.

Mandy Kaplan:
Let’s talk about Jerry, because I don’t think this was effective in the movie. Jerry can just type — the way they communicate is just white letters on a monitor.

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But Jerry’s omnipresent on the ship and can hear everything going on.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, he gets more omnipresent as he goes along. That’s something that makes sense backwards, where you’re like, okay, Harry is manifesting this alien. He’s not really there. He’s talking to them. And then it just gets more overt as they go along. Like, okay, now he can just hear us, because Harry is frustrated with having to type, basically.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I’m so confused by it.

Kynan Dias:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
At the very end, the computer says, “stop calling me Jerry.”

Kynan Dias:
Right, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s really Harry, right? So was it Harry all along, just manifesting what aliens would say if they made contact?

Kynan Dias:
Exactly, right, yeah, that’s what that is.

Mandy Kaplan:
So there was never contact with aliens.

Kynan Dias:
Whatever’s in the sphere is probably an alien, yes. But Jerry is not real. No, Jerry is Harry’s manifestation.

Mandy Kaplan:
So then the reason the jellyfish kill — this one confused me.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
The jellyfish kill Latifah because somebody manifests that. Because they do explain that the earlier crew all ends up dying ’cause they’re afraid the other ones are trying to kill them, so they’re manifesting others’ deaths to —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
— save their own lives.

Kynan Dias:
Right, they’re getting paranoid, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. So I have that right.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. But I wrote that Jerry feels laughable — this idea that a computer’s like, I have the power, blah blah blah.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
But now that I understand it was never real, it was always just Sam Jackson being like, see, I can talk to this thing —

Kynan Dias:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
— then it —

Kynan Dias:
Look at me talking to this thing, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, then I guess that makes some sense.

Kynan Dias:
That, as a mathematician, he was valuable. So the three people who get the power, they end up creating these reasons why — where at the beginning everyone’s like, what are you even doing here?

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kynan Dias:
Like, why do we have this person? By the end, they’re the most valuable person on the team. So they each have created this fantasy for themselves, without knowing it, that they’re the ones who are going to solve the problem of the sphere — through psychology, biology, or math.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I have so many more questions right after this.

Kynan Dias:
It’s heady stuff. This is why I love Michael Crichton.

Mandy Kaplan:
Quick break. I have more questions.

One of my main questions is, why is Sharon Stone applying eyeshadow throughout the journey?

Kynan Dias:
No, I just always think of her that way. I always think of her as so freaking beautiful in every single moment.

Mandy Kaplan:
Pink eyeshadow. So she has almost died at least four times.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
She is paranoid. She is going out of her mind.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
She thinks everybody’s trying to kill her. She’s trying to kill others. And yet has the time to apply pink eyeshadow. I thought there was interesting gender stuff happening.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Oh good, I’m glad you said that.

Kynan Dias:
Oh yeah. Yeah, what do you think?

Mandy Kaplan:
So the men fear monsters, but the woman fears not being good enough.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. That’s great, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
What gives?

Kynan Dias:
That’s wonderful. Yeah, I mean, the book is from about ten years earlier than the movie, so I guess he’s probably writing this in the mid-eighties, so it still is a little bit lagging in terms of feminism.

But in the book version, there is a lot of that talk about what makes women great in some situations. So the reason that there’s Latifah, and all the two women Navy seawomen down there — in the book it goes much more in depth about this, about how the Navy has understood for a long time that in submariner situations they should all be women. And that women get along better in these situations. They’re smaller, they use fewer resources, but they’re also calmer, and there’s not as much inter-rivalry there.

So it’s very, very fascinating. And then when we have the civilian put in this position, and she comes from a place where she’s been overlooked for tenure because she’s a woman and all this stuff — she kind of comes in expecting that they’re all going to be trying to take her ideas and screw her over. In the book it also talks about Sam Jackson’s character, Harry, being a Black mathematician in the eighties, when that also is something where he has the chip on his shoulder. He’s already going in with this defense thing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kynan Dias:
So then when it becomes the three of them at the end — which is wonderful, right, the paranoid ending where there’s three people, Dustin Hoffman, Sam Jackson, Sharon Stone — in the book, everybody’s dead. Sorry.

Mandy Kaplan:
Everybody else is dead. Sorry, Peter Coyote.

Kynan Dias:
Oh, he has the worst death in this, I guess — is cut in half by a door.

Mandy Kaplan:
At least it’s quick.

Kynan Dias:
I suppose so.

Mandy Kaplan:
That jellyfish thing was —

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. But whenever Norman is agreeing with Beth, then Harry’s like, oh, this is a race thing, this is two white people up against the Black person. And then when he is with Harry, she’s like, this is a gender thing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kynan Dias:
This is two men against me as the only woman here.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

It’s like the old debate on Will & Grace. Jack is debating with his Black boss about who has it tougher.

Kynan Dias:
Uh-huh, mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then a Hispanic worker comes in and says, I have it tougher, you’re both nuts.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then a woman comes in and they’re all like, okay, you win. There’s my mainstream reference.

But I did think that was quite a statement, and I didn’t know how I felt about it — that men fear monsters —

Kynan Dias:
Oh yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
— and women fear not being good enough.

Kynan Dias:
I’m not sure what you would think about the ending in the book, which again is a little bit laggy in terms of its feminism, if you can call it that. Because Beth manifests these unknowable, unseeable sea storms. And then when Norman’s analyzing her, he’s like, Beth won’t admit that she has power. She’s playing a victim, is how they put it in the novel.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kynan Dias:
So she doesn’t understand that she has that. That feels a little bit more like Michael Crichton — like in Disclosure, the antifeminist —

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, did he write Disclosure?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I very much saw that movie.

Kynan Dias:
So you know Michael Crichton, then. Which is an anti-feminist techno-thriller.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Correct.

Kynan Dias:
It’s very much like, women in the workplace are evil.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. Yes.

Kynan Dias:
So yeah, it’s a little bit like that in the book.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I remember.

Yeah. Michael Crichton, again, foreign to me, so I looked him up. And here’s a sidebar: died in 2008.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Brand new novel came out last month by him. Do you know anything about this?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. I haven’t read it yet, but yeah, he’s the Tupac of novels. They won’t let him stop publishing even after his death.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, it’s called A Murder in Hollywood, which is right up my alley.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sorry, my sister, whose name is Allie, and she hates that expression. But yeah, I was a bit dumbfounded. I mean, I know you can release things posthumously.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m not an idiot. But this is quite after the fact.

Kynan Dias:
He’s a whole brand. And his estate was suing the creators of The Pitt. They say that he created The Pitt, even though he died a long time ago.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, The Pitt is ER, essentially, so — oh, okay.

Kynan Dias:
That is what Michael Crichton’s estate says. Yeah, there was a lawsuit.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh. I can’t even watch The Pitt. It’s too intense for me. I tried, and I think it’s —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
— perfectly written, perfectly acted, but I was like, I have a pit in my stomach watching this and I just can’t. Pun intended.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I need the nineties broadcast version of this, which is ER. That one I can handle, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Yeah, a lot sexier.

Well, this maintained its humor even at the end, when everyone’s dead and the three survivors — Harry, Beth, and Norman —

Oh, and I don’t like — it makes sense they added it for the movie —

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
I don’t like that there’s this kind of history between Beth and Norman. She was a patient of his. Great, that’s enough for me. Because then it’s like, oh boy, you know my secrets, and you know my strengths and weaknesses.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But then something sexual happened between them. And that is deplorable, and cheapens it. Why, Hollywood? Why did you have to make it sexual?

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. Even when they don’t kiss in this movie or do anything romantic, we still have to have the idea of sex in there, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Just because it’s a man and a woman. Yeah.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah. And Sharon Stone, who is perfectly cast. She has that strength and also that brittleness, and you cannot predict her scene to scene. That’s perfect. But I wonder if it’s also like, we have Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct, and so we’ve got to make this about sex in some way.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, that pisses me off and feels very anti-feminist.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I struggle with the idea that it didn’t add anything, other than making Dustin Hoffman feel like more of a leading man — which is something he isn’t at this point in his career.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
There’s an elephant in the room, and I haven’t wanted to say it.

Kynan Dias:
Oh. Oh, there’s a sphere in the room. What is it?

Mandy Kaplan:
Kynan, have you ever looked this up on Rotten Tomatoes?

Kynan Dias:
Oh, it’s a very poorly thought-of film.

Mandy Kaplan:
Twelve percent from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, yeah. And I remember that when I was younger, I didn’t really care for this movie either.

Mandy Kaplan:
So what changed for you from then to now?

Kynan Dias:
Letting go. Not being so much of a nerd. Because for me it was like, this is changing things from the book, et cetera. For whatever reason, that didn’t really have to bother me. It does a lot in other Michael Crichton pieces, but this is such an interior book, and it is so much a point-of-view book from Norman’s point of view, and it’s all about what it feels like to be underwater and freezing, et cetera. It’s so much about what he sees in here. So I had trouble breaking away from that.

I don’t know. I’m optimistic that maybe people could watch this movie and get something out of it today that they couldn’t in 1998, where it was seen very clearly as a Jurassic Park rip-off sort of idea. And I hope that they could maybe watch it today and then also look at this book and see Michael Crichton’s books, which are fascinating. I know they discover Jurassic Park and they read that, and that’s all great, but this and The Andromeda Strain are about as nerdy as I can get. And I didn’t realize that until I came on this show and started doing the prep for it. Like, yeah, this is some nerdy stuff — the kind of thing I would be embarrassed to explain to somebody, why I like watching someone for five chapters try to decode a message all in circles.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, is that what The Andromeda Strain is about?

Kynan Dias:
Just ones and zeros. Oh yeah. No, no, that’s what Sphere is about.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, oh, oh.

Kynan Dias:
In the middle of the book there’s all this like, hey, we’re trying to decode all of this — if I could just show you — things of ones and zeros and zeros. There’s whole pieces of paper of it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kynan Dias:
But no, The Andromeda Strain is about deadly viruses, and being locked in a habitat like this under the ground, with all these different layers. And the deadlier the virus mutates, you have to go down one extra floor, and they change the colors of the walls to make you calmer. All this really, really cool, interesting stuff. And yeah, it’s about viruses mutating and them trying to come up with a vaccine or solution for it before it gets out into the world.

Mandy Kaplan:
So was he a lighthearted guy ever? I mean, all of these things are so heavy. Disclosure was not that heavy. Disclosure was like a sexy thriller.

Kynan Dias:
It’s sexy, yeah. Well, Jurassic Park has dinosaurs, I guess. But the dinosaurs in the book Jurassic Park eat babies’ faces. So, you know.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wow.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, they didn’t put that in the movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, I actually cut myself off because I got excited by something. But the three survivors — Harry, Beth, and Norman.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
There is still humor. And I really like that. Everyone’s still being snarky.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
But then — correct me if I’m wrong, maybe I missed something — they decide, we’re not going to tell anybody what happened down there, to protect the world from this power that the sphere gives you, right?

Kynan Dias:
Right. People aren’t ready for it. We aren’t ready for it, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. So they decide that. They hold hands like a weird Benetton ad. And then the sphere flies off into the sky like Danny and Sandy in the car at the end of Grease.

Kynan Dias:
Right. Hey, and they waved to people.

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that right? Did I understand the end of this movie?

Kynan Dias:
I think you did, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I think I get both sides. I get why you could watch it today and think there are some great concepts, and it represents parts of the book that I love.

Kynan Dias:
It’s all right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But I also get why people were not so into it. It just felt like a swing and a miss, particularly if you don’t have a relationship with the book.

Kynan Dias:
Yeah, I don’t want to defend the movie too much. I think that would make me — but I found myself having a real good time.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, we are recording this, Kynan, so —

Kynan Dias:
This second time around, yeah. I read a couple of reviews. I read the Roger Ebert review, who specifically called out this last shot of the sphere going out of the ocean and said, well, that’s enough to give this a thumbs down, I suppose. That one shot.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kynan Dias:
But yeah, that is an odd choice to me. In the book, they could just say, okay, we’ve all forgotten about it. And then it goes into a bit of a coda about how we’ve collectively remembered that there was a real plane crash down there and everyone died as we tried to explore it, et cetera. No mention of the sphere.

So in the book, the sphere is still down there at the bottom of the ocean, but everyone’s forgotten about it. In a movie, I guess they had —

Mandy Kaplan:
Sequel.

Kynan Dias:
— five million dollars left to spare in their budget, and they needed to animate this as the reverse of Independence Day and have this thing fly off. Yeah. I don’t know. I wouldn’t have spent my money that way, but there you go.

Mandy Kaplan:
So do you think — when I said what do you want to cover, and you said Sphere — is this your favorite Michael Crichton book?

Kynan Dias:
Oh no, Jurassic Park is. But I saw that you had covered that recently. Jurassic Park is crazy, man.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

So rather than say, Mandy, you have to read the book Sphere, you just took pity on me and said, okay, let’s just watch the movie so we can talk about it.

Kynan Dias:
Well, I mean, I like the book, I like the movie, and I hope people can discover it. Yeah, I think it’s worthy of uncovering at the bottom of the ocean from the nineties.

Mandy Kaplan:
Fair enough. Thank you so much for introducing — I mean, never heard of this. I actually thought, oh wait, I know what this is.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
This is about the outbreak of Ebola. But that’s a movie called Outbreak.

Kynan Dias:
That’s Outbreak.

Mandy Kaplan:
But with Dustin Hoffman, right?

Kynan Dias:
That’s also very good.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. So I saw Dustin Hoffman, I pressed play, I was like, oh, I do know what this movie is.

Kynan Dias:
No, no.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh no, I don’t. No.

So really different, really interesting, and really entertaining. This one’s a popcorn fun movie. Again, I’m coming off of Alien: Earth, which you can’t call fun. Have you seen that TV show?

Kynan Dias:
The pilot of it, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, it’s just so intense.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
So remind everybody where they can find you.

Kynan Dias:
Great. So you could find me on Instagram and Letterboxd — it’s howdykynan. And look me up at trustory.fm. You can get to my shows with Lester Ryan Clark and Tommy Metz III, Chelsea Stardust, and Pete Wright.

Mandy Kaplan:
And —

Kynan Dias:
And come take a class with me at UNLV, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I’m an assistant professor there.

Mandy Kaplan:
There you go.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And all those links will be in the show notes. And Kynan is spelled K-Y-N-A-N.

Kynan Dias:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
For anybody not looking at their phones, but they want to find you. Howdy Kynan. I adore you. Thank you so much for being one of my prominent nerdicators. You make it fun.

Kynan Dias:
Thank you, Mandy. You made me feel more like a nerd than I ever have in my entire life.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s what I’m here for.

Kynan Dias:
So I appreciate it.

Mandy Kaplan:
And thank you all for listening. Until next time.