Big Fish: Having a Complicated Relationship With Your Parent

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
<v Speaker 1>movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
<v Speaker 1>I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.
<v Speaker 2>Ben Stover, individual therapist.
<v Speaker 3>Hannah Espinoza marriage and family therapists.
<v Speaker 1>We're all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists,
<v Speaker 1>who practice out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed
<v Speaker 1>mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes
<v Speaker 1>and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and
<v Speaker 1>all forms.
<v Speaker 4>Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
<v Speaker 4>we aren't your therapist.
<v Speaker 5>If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
<v Speaker 5>a local mental health provider.
<v Speaker 1>Hey everybody, So today we are doing our first official
<v Speaker 1>Tim Burton directed film, Believe It or Not, eight season
<v Speaker 1>in and this is our first actual That seems crazy,
<v Speaker 1>but I guess it's true. And so today we will
<v Speaker 1>be talking about Big Fish, and we will primarily be
<v Speaker 1>talking about the parent child relationship as seen in this
<v Speaker 1>movie through the characters of Edward and William. Now, this
<v Speaker 1>story's pretty simple plot wise in that it's about the
<v Speaker 1>father Edward and his adult son William as Edward is
<v Speaker 1>at the end of his life from cancer, and he
<v Speaker 1>and his son William have been a strange for several
<v Speaker 1>years following a big blowout at William's wedding. Because Edward
<v Speaker 1>is a bit of a tall tailor, he tells a
<v Speaker 1>lot of tall tales and it has become a point.
<v Speaker 6>Of contention between him and William.
<v Speaker 1>So the movie you are seeing sort of the flashbacks
<v Speaker 1>the scenes of Edward as he tells his life in
<v Speaker 1>these very fantastical, big tim burtonesque ways, and William trying to,
<v Speaker 1>I think, make peace with who his dad is. And then,
<v Speaker 1>as always, we'll talk about treatment and final thoughts. So
<v Speaker 1>we figured we would start with kind of talking about
<v Speaker 1>Edward as he is the big fish of which this
<v Speaker 1>movie speaks. So what are your guys' impressions as therapists
<v Speaker 1>of Edward.
<v Speaker 4>I think Edward tells these stories so that he can
<v Speaker 4>be validated through the way he sees himself. He's trying
<v Speaker 4>to find a way to be meaningful, and I think
<v Speaker 4>the way he grew up. I think we see a
<v Speaker 4>little glimpse of a scene that tells us what might
<v Speaker 4>actually have happened to him that created this need to
<v Speaker 4>be bigger. He talks about being in a bed for
<v Speaker 4>three years, that he started growing too fast for his body,
<v Speaker 4>that one day he was sitting in church and he
<v Speaker 4>just started growing. What did he call it, gigantification?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think he calls it that where he has
<v Speaker 1>no choice but to be bedridden.
<v Speaker 2>Which clearly is not what happened.
<v Speaker 6>Well, yeah, he's making it sound like he was growing
<v Speaker 6>up overnight.
<v Speaker 2>Which may have happened.
<v Speaker 4>I suspect he did have to grow up overnight, but
<v Speaker 4>he would have gone up in the age of polio
<v Speaker 4>or scarlet fever or all kinds of diseases that would
<v Speaker 4>have mandated that. And I my read on and it
<v Speaker 4>sounded like maybe Hannahs too is it is probably polio.
<v Speaker 5>I think that that's the one that makes the most
<v Speaker 5>sense in terms of what the age that his father
<v Speaker 5>is and what we know about how they took care
<v Speaker 5>of people with polio.
<v Speaker 2>Right iron lungs. Yeah, at that point in time.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I don't think anything else would have made sense
<v Speaker 4>for why he would have been hooked up to machines
<v Speaker 4>and having things need to move him, if anything was
<v Speaker 4>moving him at all. But the contraption he's demonstrating in
<v Speaker 4>his story or his flashback doesn't make sense, don't think
<v Speaker 4>it's real. But what does make sense is that if
<v Speaker 4>he had something that made him sick, and he was
<v Speaker 4>in fact had stuck in a bed reading encyclopedias where
<v Speaker 4>he's studying everything, that wanting to be bigger is understandable
<v Speaker 4>as the only thing you.
<v Speaker 2>Have is your imagination.
<v Speaker 4>So I suspect for him that desire to grow and
<v Speaker 4>see that whole world as opposed to some small Alabama
<v Speaker 4>town and be a folk hero a figure instead of
<v Speaker 4>the sick kid started this.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he definitely has. Well.
<v Speaker 1>What is a common threat of all his stories is
<v Speaker 1>what you're saying is that he is the hero. He's
<v Speaker 1>always coming in and saving the day in some capacity,
<v Speaker 1>and always helping people that need help and and being
<v Speaker 1>like the shiny which we're all like the hero on
<v Speaker 1>our own story, but he's like the hero in these
<v Speaker 1>very big, splashy ways and every story he tells, which
<v Speaker 1>can say a lot about, you know, if you're feeling
<v Speaker 1>constrained at a young age. And I think if nothing else,
<v Speaker 1>he definitely talks about how he felt like his world
<v Speaker 1>was too small for him, the world of his small
<v Speaker 1>town things like that, Like as soon as he turned eighteen,
<v Speaker 1>if we believe his story about finding a giant kind
<v Speaker 1>of connecting to that idea of giantism.
<v Speaker 4>Which she did. Yeah, he just wasn't as giant, yes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and needing to get out and get into this
<v Speaker 1>big world. And I do kind of wonder And this
<v Speaker 1>is a bit of a tangent, but I think it
<v Speaker 1>comes in is he's eighteen when he first finds the
<v Speaker 1>town of Specter, Right, He's like wandering through and it's
<v Speaker 1>almost like an oasis of.
<v Speaker 6>A town that he finds.
<v Speaker 3>Do you think Specter?
<v Speaker 1>I was really like ratling my brain and talking to
<v Speaker 1>a Hanna about when we're watching it on Sunday. Is
<v Speaker 1>Specter like the afterlife? Is Specter the metaphor for something?
<v Speaker 1>Is it a real place? And I'm getting in my
<v Speaker 1>head about it because later it does seem like a
<v Speaker 1>real place. But there are things that happen, especially the
<v Speaker 1>first time he becomes to Spector when he's eighteen, where
<v Speaker 1>first I was like, oh, did he try to kill
<v Speaker 1>himself when he was eighteen? Is he just depressed? And
<v Speaker 1>like Spector is sort of this like metaphor for when
<v Speaker 1>he's stuck in these depressive episodes where he doesn't want
<v Speaker 1>to be there anymore. I don't know, it seemed kind
<v Speaker 1>of like an afterlifey vibe.
<v Speaker 4>You're remembering that the woman the little girl, yeah, was real.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, which is where it kind of flies in the
<v Speaker 6>face of that. But it's so.
<v Speaker 1>But it's interesting the way that they talk about Specter
<v Speaker 1>when he's eighteen and goes there and this very like
<v Speaker 1>we weren't expecting you yet, and it had this feel
<v Speaker 1>of like is this his way of talking about being
<v Speaker 1>in like a dark time of his life and making
<v Speaker 1>it seem like something else.
<v Speaker 4>I also shared that vibe, Yeah, and I think it
<v Speaker 4>was on purpose. I think it was a director misdirect
<v Speaker 4>that we're seeing this story with through how William hears
<v Speaker 4>it without understanding that it's very much true that however,
<v Speaker 4>he came across this town and for whatever reason that
<v Speaker 4>it's real and the people in it were.
<v Speaker 6>Something about it Israel. Yeah version of it is real.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, I mean the Little Girl says that he
<v Speaker 4>and the circus came back and rescued the town from bankruptcy.
<v Speaker 6>And like bought all the land pretty much, So.
<v Speaker 2>It's real that.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, she's the first one we see that validates that
<v Speaker 4>what he's saying is more or less true, but perhaps a.
<v Speaker 2>Little less fantastical.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, you know, did he own an entire landscaping crew
<v Speaker 4>full law of twenty people? Seems doubtful with one truck.
<v Speaker 4>There's little clues in each of these scenes of where
<v Speaker 4>the fantasticalness is. He's got one truck, just one sitting
<v Speaker 4>in that scene with all the mowing on right before
<v Speaker 4>he leaves to Fine Inspector Mighty had some of those
<v Speaker 4>kids working with him, probably, But did he have an
<v Speaker 4>empire of lawnmowers making them all rich?
<v Speaker 2>It seems doubtful.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, especially at that age, right.
<v Speaker 1>And I don't remember the exact details of that exact
<v Speaker 1>part of the movie, but I remember thinking, wow, Wow,
<v Speaker 1>we couldn't. We had to accomplish so much at that age.
<v Speaker 1>We couldn't just accomplish a little. I had to be
<v Speaker 1>a lot, which I think, to me is like the
<v Speaker 1>central aspect of Edward that I find. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if I want to say the most difficult about his character,
<v Speaker 1>maybe something we'll just keep talking about as we talk
<v Speaker 1>about Edward, But how his stories, like I said, like,
<v Speaker 1>can't just be like a little more bombastic than they were,
<v Speaker 1>Like the truth of it. It's like how big they
<v Speaker 1>have to be, like so big that it discounts the
<v Speaker 1>story actually, at least with his son, as we'll.
<v Speaker 6>Talk about later, and seemingly with you. Oh yeah, hm,
<v Speaker 6>I don't like him.
<v Speaker 1>I I'm going to try to be obviously as neutral
<v Speaker 1>as I can. Well, we're talking about it, but I
<v Speaker 1>think I guess something to add up top of this
<v Speaker 1>episode is I don't know if it's because I am
<v Speaker 1>a child therapist, but I think I kept seeing it
<v Speaker 1>so much from the child's perspective, like William's perspective, that
<v Speaker 1>it did make it hard for me to like Edward.
<v Speaker 4>I think it's vital that in understanding Edward we recognize
<v Speaker 4>there's always a reason to his stories. There's always a
<v Speaker 4>seeking for validation, and people throughout their lifespan will seek
<v Speaker 4>to correct the invalidation's life has done to them compulsively,
<v Speaker 4>and they may do it forever because during their developmental years,
<v Speaker 4>the attachment to ourself and our own story becomes really important.
<v Speaker 4>And for him, if we're going with this theory that
<v Speaker 4>he was a sickly kid, which seems likely, all of
<v Speaker 4>those things he would have wanted to be, he couldn't.
<v Speaker 4>And during those years where he'd be developing and learning
<v Speaker 4>and growing, he's sitting in a bed reading stories about
<v Speaker 4>other people doing it. Those stories will always be fantastical.
<v Speaker 4>At the age he's at, the American Tall Tales would
<v Speaker 4>have been real popular, Pey Coast, Bill, Paul Bunyan, John Henry,
<v Speaker 4>all of those types of stories would have been huge.
<v Speaker 4>And John Henry was real, the guy who beat the
<v Speaker 4>steam shovel. You guys, don't You don't remember the American
<v Speaker 4>Tall Tales, African American man.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I know who Baul Bunyan is, and I
<v Speaker 1>think that's about it. And Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed, if
<v Speaker 1>those fall into the same.
<v Speaker 4>Realm, they do. Davy Crockett was also real. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 4>he was a Tennessee mountain man. Was he the Disney
<v Speaker 4>Show version seems doubtful, m hmm, But he did some
<v Speaker 4>of it and he died at the Alamo.
<v Speaker 1>But I know what you're saying, though, Like Edward could
<v Speaker 1>be of a time when this like bombastic storytelling was
<v Speaker 1>very normal and beloved, perhaps and maybe even encourage. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I've come from a family of Irish Catholics and shit,
<v Speaker 1>so I know when someone's spinning a yarn, as they
<v Speaker 1>would say.
<v Speaker 4>Of course he's spinning a yarn. It's one of the
<v Speaker 4>ways he learned to cope and to be relevant and
<v Speaker 4>to assign valued to himself. And he couldn't actually do it,
<v Speaker 4>So he's going to likely struggle with that throughout his life,
<v Speaker 4>and I think he did. But he also found ways
<v Speaker 4>to make himself the hero of the story.
<v Speaker 2>The Tall Tale.
<v Speaker 4>Much like these stories he would have read and probably
<v Speaker 4>read over and over and over for years as he's
<v Speaker 4>stuck in a bed with probably library books, and he
<v Speaker 4>might not have been able to even read them to himself.
<v Speaker 4>He might have had to have people read them to him.
<v Speaker 4>His attachment to that style of storytelling would have likely
<v Speaker 4>really encoded itself with ways to be relevant, And then
<v Speaker 4>he went and did a great.
<v Speaker 2>Deal of them.
<v Speaker 4>You see all the people at the funeral, they're a
<v Speaker 4>little less fantastical than they were represented, Like the conjoined
<v Speaker 4>twins are just twins, but they're all there, they're all real.
<v Speaker 4>Him telling his story and seeking actualization, I think is
<v Speaker 4>a really powerful way to understand how he worked really
<v Speaker 4>hard to overcome what he went through, and he really
<v Speaker 4>wants to be seen for that and have his story
<v Speaker 4>live beyond him, much like the stories of these people
<v Speaker 4>he idolized. While he's stuck in.
<v Speaker 5>A bed, I feel like Edward, I feel like I
<v Speaker 5>hear what you're saying, Ben about where what are the
<v Speaker 5>truths of his stories? And as he gets older, why
<v Speaker 5>isn't there a realization that his son wants to know
<v Speaker 5>him and not of him, He wants to know him.
<v Speaker 3>And I feel like at the age that.
<v Speaker 5>He is, like he won't even budge on his deathbed,
<v Speaker 5>he won't try to even really listen to what his
<v Speaker 5>son is saying. So I get the making meaning out
<v Speaker 5>of maybe his adverse experiences as a kid, Like that's reasonable.
<v Speaker 5>I get the vibe about Specter in terms of it
<v Speaker 5>being the way it was lit, the way that it
<v Speaker 5>was so seemed so magical in the beginning, and the
<v Speaker 5>first time we see Specter, how magical it looks initially.
<v Speaker 5>But then also that could just be him being young
<v Speaker 5>and putting that kind of spin on the city because
<v Speaker 5>that's how he saw it. But I feel like, after
<v Speaker 5>a certain amount of time, isn't there any isn't there
<v Speaker 5>any urge or desire to want to meet your child
<v Speaker 5>where they are, or is that something that he doesn't
<v Speaker 5>have access to.
<v Speaker 1>It makes me wonder about my brain's kind of going
<v Speaker 1>in two directions. One is is I do I can't
<v Speaker 1>get on board with the idea that like Edward is
<v Speaker 1>using these storytelling as a way to deal and reframe trauma,
<v Speaker 1>because he definitely does that when he gets enlisted. You know,
<v Speaker 1>like there's a lot of moments in the movie, like
<v Speaker 1>when he's at the war, which I think is the
<v Speaker 1>Korean War. Took us Me Andhanna a long time agre
<v Speaker 1>out what war they were talking about before we realized
<v Speaker 1>Korean War.
<v Speaker 4>Do you have the North Korean flag right there, babe?
<v Speaker 3>A gun to my head.
<v Speaker 1>If you try to tell me to say any flag
<v Speaker 1>and it ain't America or something like that, shoot me down, Babe,
<v Speaker 1>shoot me down anyway. But I do see these moments
<v Speaker 1>when I do get on board with the idea that
<v Speaker 1>he is doing all the storytelling to make sense of
<v Speaker 1>his life, both like the traumatic pieces of it like
<v Speaker 1>going to war, his childhood, and also I think, and
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if, like I wouldn't use the word trauma,
<v Speaker 1>but this split that he has where he wants to live,
<v Speaker 1>this very adventurous life, and in some ways he did,
<v Speaker 1>and simultaneously he chase after, he chased after Sandra and
<v Speaker 1>with that a very simple, basic white picket fence literally life,
<v Speaker 1>and how it's almost like he tore himself in two
<v Speaker 1>with that, and he even says that too, like I
<v Speaker 1>what did he say, I'm not one for I'm not
<v Speaker 1>never much for being at home, and like Williams's later,
<v Speaker 1>like he liked his second life better. And so I
<v Speaker 1>also wonder if there's like an existentially thing happening for him,
<v Speaker 1>or that's there happened for him over his life of
<v Speaker 1>like I love Sandra and this is the life that
<v Speaker 1>can bring a certain kind of happiness, and definitely for
<v Speaker 1>that time period you're very much encouraged to have. And
<v Speaker 1>then also the part of him that wants to be
<v Speaker 1>maybe like a single free adventurer, and how you can't
<v Speaker 1>really do both well. And I think the sacrifice of
<v Speaker 1>that is his son, and not just as wilksborl later
<v Speaker 1>the you know, not telling him the truth of himself,
<v Speaker 1>but also that my biggest bugaboo with Edward is that
<v Speaker 1>he keeps William so separate from this other part of
<v Speaker 1>his life. Because the part of why William doesn't believe
<v Speaker 1>these stories is not just because they're so bananas, it's
<v Speaker 1>also because he doesn't know Dick about them firsthand, Like
<v Speaker 1>his dad has this whole Edward, this whole part of
<v Speaker 1>his life that William never meets, that William never sees,
<v Speaker 1>and so he does not believe.
<v Speaker 3>Because if you're gonna.
<v Speaker 1>Tell these tall tales and then have nothing to back
<v Speaker 1>it up in terms of the people that your dad knows,
<v Speaker 1>why wouldn't his mind go to like then what are
<v Speaker 1>you doing? Then?
<v Speaker 6>Why are you why?
<v Speaker 1>There's like a secrecy about it that I think that's
<v Speaker 1>what really shoots Edward in the foot. And I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if it's this identity existential stuff where he wants
<v Speaker 1>to keep this version of his life separate from this
<v Speaker 1>very like cookie cutter settled version of his life, because
<v Speaker 1>I think that's the part that I find so curious
<v Speaker 1>about Edward is this separation. And that's what I kind
<v Speaker 1>of highlighted in my notes is you know, why did
<v Speaker 1>Edward keep his two lives so separate? Like how powerful
<v Speaker 1>it would have been for William even from like a
<v Speaker 1>I want to raise my kid to have morals perspective,
<v Speaker 1>to like bring William to Specter when he is helping
<v Speaker 1>them renovate, introducing him to the people that live there,
<v Speaker 1>showing his son like actively how to help people.
<v Speaker 6>And he doesn't do that at all. He lets his son.
<v Speaker 1>He leaves such a vacuum there that his son's like,
<v Speaker 1>did he have a second family, Like William knows almost
<v Speaker 1>nothing real, like tangible about his dad's life. He's just
<v Speaker 1>expected to believe him and to believe these bonkers level stories.
<v Speaker 1>And then also everybody else in Edward's life and their
<v Speaker 1>life like uh, like Edward's wife, Williams mom are just
<v Speaker 1>like just believe him. And I think that's what I
<v Speaker 1>found so frustrating about Edward is It's one thing to
<v Speaker 1>like paint a tail. It's another thing to like really
<v Speaker 1>hold so much of yourself so far apart from your child,
<v Speaker 1>and not for like a tr reason for that, like
<v Speaker 1>with the Specter stuff, it's not even from like a
<v Speaker 1>trauma perspective of like I'm going to this place where
<v Speaker 1>bad things happen, or it's really difficult and I want
<v Speaker 1>to save my kid from that.
<v Speaker 6>I really don't.
<v Speaker 1>It's hard for me to understand his motivation for that,
<v Speaker 1>other than I want this life to not involve my
<v Speaker 1>wife and kid.
<v Speaker 2>I think it's.
<v Speaker 4>Something he tells us flat out throughout the whole movie
<v Speaker 4>that he wants his life to be more, and having
<v Speaker 4>the presence that he does, he probably can't resist that
<v Speaker 4>spotlight to be special. Like when he's telling the stories
<v Speaker 4>at the campfire, everything's big and his son's like, here
<v Speaker 4>we go again.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, even at like nine, his son.
<v Speaker 2>Is over it, which makes sense, And.
<v Speaker 5>I feel like the other part with William is that
<v Speaker 5>I also feel like he a part of what I
<v Speaker 5>think a part of William's experience also is is that
<v Speaker 5>he believed those stories for a really, really long time,
<v Speaker 5>and he probably experienced some shame or some embarrassment around
<v Speaker 5>peers because he's like, no, like, my dad told me
<v Speaker 5>the story, and the story is true. And I feel
<v Speaker 5>like William probably had an experience where people were like, dude, like,
<v Speaker 5>your dad tells tall tales, what are you talking about?
<v Speaker 2>He very well may have.
<v Speaker 4>I think what we see demonstrated is that Dad captivates
<v Speaker 4>people with stories. He's using the riz that he has
<v Speaker 4>to tell his stories.
<v Speaker 6>He used it.
<v Speaker 1>Ran good job, Ben I'm so proud of you for
<v Speaker 1>using riz biblically correct.
<v Speaker 4>He's clearly got constant existential crisis, having the life at
<v Speaker 4>home and then also being a traveling salesman. I'm presuming
<v Speaker 4>he's got some guilt that he's not home doing the thing,
<v Speaker 4>and also guilt that he's not fulfilling the promise he
<v Speaker 4>made to that bedridd himself that he would be bigger
<v Speaker 4>and more present and influence more in the world, and
<v Speaker 4>he clearly did and didn't, and it probably stopped when
<v Speaker 4>his son was born, which is why the story of
<v Speaker 4>his son being born has to be such a fantastical tale,
<v Speaker 4>because that moment probably marks the formation of that split
<v Speaker 4>you're talking about.
<v Speaker 2>That's probably true.
<v Speaker 4>That's probably a very difficult moment for him, and if
<v Speaker 4>he didn't accept that change, which many people don't and can't,
<v Speaker 4>he would have had to grieve something he never thought
<v Speaker 4>would be grief.
<v Speaker 5>I feel like, I don't know if he's as captivating
<v Speaker 5>as is. He takes up all the fucking energy out
<v Speaker 5>of the room, and nobody else can say anything like.
<v Speaker 5>I feel like the way like people are subjected to
<v Speaker 5>his stories at this point, like a story. Everybody at
<v Speaker 5>the wedding had heard already at least one hundred times.
<v Speaker 2>Well it could be true.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay, good.
<v Speaker 5>He just really in some ways feels like he's full
<v Speaker 5>of himself in a way that keeps you distant from
<v Speaker 5>other people because you're so much you think that you're
<v Speaker 5>so different from other people. And I like what Brittany
<v Speaker 5>said about them being so separated, like that was a
<v Speaker 5>choice that he made. Why did that have to be
<v Speaker 5>a part of the experience. If if William had had
<v Speaker 5>the chance to really learn more about his dad's life,
<v Speaker 5>this movie wouldn't have been made. It's also curious because
<v Speaker 5>Tim Burton actually this movie came out in two thousand
<v Speaker 5>and three, I think, and his dad had just had
<v Speaker 5>passed away in like two thousand. So I also feel
<v Speaker 5>like it makes me curious if Tim Burton had a
<v Speaker 5>similar relationship with his dad.
<v Speaker 2>Oh he find say he did, he did, Okay, Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Tim Burton said that him and his dad had both
<v Speaker 4>gone to film school and didn't really see much in
<v Speaker 4>each other, and there were a lot of things that
<v Speaker 4>he never got to know or get answers on. So
<v Speaker 4>you're dead on he definitely said those and you can
<v Speaker 4>see it working its way out in art because it's
<v Speaker 4>what he was trying to do. The idea of him
<v Speaker 4>keeping people walled off is almost certainly part of it.
<v Speaker 4>He's keeping people distant because I think the writer of
<v Speaker 4>the book and Tim Burton both also said something similar
<v Speaker 4>about having a dad that would keep people kind of
<v Speaker 4>walled off and going back to that, you know, protecting
<v Speaker 4>himself from trauma story. Think about who he would have
<v Speaker 4>been to the town, a tiny little town like that
<v Speaker 4>in the country, the kid that got so sick they're
<v Speaker 4>in bed and probably got sick in church where everybody
<v Speaker 4>saw it happen, and then is out of school, out
<v Speaker 4>of everything, stuck in a bed that everyone knows you
<v Speaker 4>for the wrong reason. How desperately he'd want to not
<v Speaker 4>be known for that, so he tells these stories to
<v Speaker 4>control the narrative around how he's seen. I'm not saying
<v Speaker 4>it's right. I'm not saying that the consequences you guys
<v Speaker 4>are naming aren't dead. Un just remembering there's a reason
<v Speaker 4>for every behavior and it's not always narcissism.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think I don't think it's narcissism with him.
<v Speaker 1>I think two things can be true at once, right
<v Speaker 1>and I think we're all I think we're all sort
<v Speaker 1>of on the same page with that, in that we
<v Speaker 1>can see how Edward these tales are coping mechanism and
<v Speaker 1>exactly the exact one I'm thinking of is you brought
<v Speaker 1>up earlier, so thanks for reminding me. Is his son's birth,
<v Speaker 1>and how he may have this fantastical story and how
<v Speaker 1>that is interesting, how that's like the ones story where
<v Speaker 1>you get the actual alternative version from the doctor about
<v Speaker 1>what really happened and how the doctor was What does
<v Speaker 1>he say, but the first one's better, or like what
<v Speaker 1>you prefer the first one, the more fantastical one about
<v Speaker 1>the fish, And doesn't Williams say, like not really, I
<v Speaker 1>would have liked the real one.
<v Speaker 4>And yeah, he calls his dad for not being there.
<v Speaker 4>He's like dead, you were in Wichita, Kansas. Yeah, on
<v Speaker 4>a business trip.
<v Speaker 1>And so this is what I mean by two things
<v Speaker 1>can be true at once and it makes me sad
<v Speaker 1>all like my sadness for it encompasses everyone involved, which
<v Speaker 1>is that Edward doesn't know how to stop using this
<v Speaker 1>coping mechanism and like, can't maybe examine why he's so
<v Speaker 1>attached to this coping mechanism and why it's so important
<v Speaker 1>to him that he holds onto these stories even though
<v Speaker 1>his son is telling him, do you as clearly as
<v Speaker 1>as clear as you can communicate to someone. These stories
<v Speaker 1>do not make me feel close to you. They actually
<v Speaker 1>make me feel very far from you. I just want
<v Speaker 1>to know the more like boring truths of your life
<v Speaker 1>because I want to know you. And it gets so
<v Speaker 1>bad that he basically goes like like no contact if
<v Speaker 1>you will, like well, like Midwest nice no contact, which
<v Speaker 1>is like we're around each other, but we don't talk.
<v Speaker 1>And it makes me sad that if Edward was in therapy,
<v Speaker 1>like it would be so nice to be able to
<v Speaker 1>like work through with him. Your son's asking this of you,
<v Speaker 1>Why does it feel so Why what's getting in the
<v Speaker 1>way of meeting that request and and working through that right?
<v Speaker 1>Because I get why Edward does it, and it makes
<v Speaker 1>me bummed out for him and for William that he
<v Speaker 1>can't get outside of it. He can't get perspective on it,
<v Speaker 1>like there's something obviously, there's a need met. Everything everyone
<v Speaker 1>does is because they're gonna ge at need met, that
<v Speaker 1>need met thing. He can't figure that out or get
<v Speaker 1>out from under that to the point that it it
<v Speaker 1>in some ways, Like I don't want to say ruins,
<v Speaker 1>so I don't think it ruins, but it really steals
<v Speaker 1>time away from his son.
<v Speaker 4>He steals a great deal of time from anything that
<v Speaker 4>makes him feel vulnerable. He doesn't perceive or read the room,
<v Speaker 4>the situation, anything, and anybody that doesn't already see him
<v Speaker 4>and has heard his stories, He's going to take up
<v Speaker 4>air making sure they hear the story he wants to hear.
<v Speaker 4>And some of them are true and some of them
<v Speaker 4>are a revisionist to cover up the moments of shame, guilt,
<v Speaker 4>weakness that he carries with him, like probably not being
<v Speaker 4>present for the birth of his son.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like that is something where he probably feels horrible,
<v Speaker 1>And I get why he creates like and that's what
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Like he goes right to that coping mechanism
<v Speaker 1>of making this bombastic thing about it, because what it
<v Speaker 1>distracts from the truth, which is I miss my son's birth.
<v Speaker 1>And also I think what is telling about that as
<v Speaker 1>a coping mechanism is that why do we have to
<v Speaker 1>carry shame about that moment? Like we can feel sad
<v Speaker 1>that we miss that, But you're a traveling salesman, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like there was probably always going to be a good
<v Speaker 1>chance that you were going to miss your son's birth.
<v Speaker 6>And also, like the doctor says, dads.
<v Speaker 1>Weren't in the labor and delivery room at that time,
<v Speaker 1>and also like dads were probably not expected to be
<v Speaker 1>around that much to that extent, you know, like the
<v Speaker 1>primary caregiving was done by the mom, just you know, standards.
<v Speaker 1>And so I think also it makes me wonder how
<v Speaker 1>much these stories encourage or perpetuate feelings of shame for Edward,
<v Speaker 1>because by having the story, he is perpetuating this idea
<v Speaker 1>that the truth should be kept in a box, or
<v Speaker 1>the truth should be kept in a closet because that's
<v Speaker 1>not good for some reason. Either it's too boring, it's
<v Speaker 1>too shameful, it's too something. And then we see that
<v Speaker 1>he does that's what he starts to do. Like Over
<v Speaker 1>the Top is compartmentalized, he eventually compartmentalizes his whole life,
<v Speaker 1>like he compartmentalizes into two different lives that don't have
<v Speaker 1>to be separate. I mean, I think that's where I
<v Speaker 1>continue to feel sad, is like he could have been
<v Speaker 1>an adventurer and taken William along with him like it
<v Speaker 1>bums me out. Also that he felt like these two
<v Speaker 1>lives were so diametrically opposed and that there couldn't be
<v Speaker 1>some combo, some bleeding of those two lives that would
<v Speaker 1>have felt nice, because I think it also would have
<v Speaker 1>pissed me the fuck was williamed to know that he
<v Speaker 1>talked about people with me the specter. I'm like, I
<v Speaker 1>could have met them, I could have been there, Like,
<v Speaker 1>because kids just want to spend time with you, You know that, Ben,
<v Speaker 1>your dad. Kids just want to spend time with you.
<v Speaker 1>That's all they want.
<v Speaker 2>That's all they want.
<v Speaker 1>Well, why don't we take a break here and we
<v Speaker 1>will be right back in the meantime. If you are
<v Speaker 1>a listener and an enjoyer of our podcast, the best
<v Speaker 1>way you can support us, and the freest way is
<v Speaker 1>by giving us a rating and review wherever you listen
<v Speaker 1>to podcasts. It is the best way for new listeners
<v Speaker 1>to find us, and we very much appreciate it, and
<v Speaker 1>we read all your reviews. All right, So, as we
<v Speaker 1>kind of left off this idea of how Edward has
<v Speaker 1>created these like totally separate lives where he's not involving
<v Speaker 1>his kid or his wife in this part of his
<v Speaker 1>life and how it is. Like I said, it does
<v Speaker 1>make me feel sad that he'd and maybe this is
<v Speaker 1>a product of the time, like I don't know, you
<v Speaker 1>know what I mean, in the fifties of the sixties,
<v Speaker 1>but like this fact that he felt like he only
<v Speaker 1>could go down these two very distant roads from each other,
<v Speaker 1>and that's how he kept it going, instead of instead
<v Speaker 1>of finding a way to weave those lives together so
<v Speaker 1>that he could be hopefully more satisfied and then also
<v Speaker 1>he could be closer to his kid.
<v Speaker 4>It is said that that's how he felt he had
<v Speaker 4>to be. I've seen that in people sometimes, and I
<v Speaker 4>think we all probably have that because he has this
<v Speaker 4>identity of being that sick kid. It seems likely that
<v Speaker 4>And I don't think I saw anybody from his hometown
<v Speaker 4>other than the cheerleaders maybe in that final scene, but
<v Speaker 4>that he wasn't around anybody. It wasn't his hometown ever,
<v Speaker 4>that he went back to once he left there.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think we saw him come back.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he never seems to have a home community, like
<v Speaker 1>even with no no he oh, even.
<v Speaker 3>With his wife and kid.
<v Speaker 1>It's almost like a throwaway part of the movie where
<v Speaker 1>he's like, I got this job, I got her a nice,
<v Speaker 1>big house, and then I said goodbye and I went.
<v Speaker 6>On the road.
<v Speaker 1>It's almost like that house and his wife and his
<v Speaker 1>kid felt like more of the afterthought to his story,
<v Speaker 1>and he didn't really seem to build Like he did
<v Speaker 1>build a lot of community, which is awesome. Unfortunately he
<v Speaker 1>built all this community away from where he lived and
<v Speaker 1>away from his family, and that sucks. I mean, that
<v Speaker 1>just is sad. It is.
<v Speaker 5>It makes me really curious about what Edward's parent was
<v Speaker 5>like and what and we don't get any of that.
<v Speaker 5>We don't get any information about what Edwards experience was
<v Speaker 5>as a like his relationship with his dad.
<v Speaker 2>No, just his birth story briefly.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 5>So I also feel like I wonder if a lot
<v Speaker 5>of his behavior stems from that, so from having a
<v Speaker 5>father he couldn't be close to and didn't know how
<v Speaker 5>to be close to, and.
<v Speaker 3>So he.
<v Speaker 5>So he decided that was the only kind of relationship
<v Speaker 5>that his son could have with him. Maybe that's the
<v Speaker 5>only relationship that Edward felt like he could have with William. Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>I think, I mean, yeah for sure. And also too,
<v Speaker 5>depending on what his dad was like, did he think
<v Speaker 5>he was giving William something by creating this persona of
<v Speaker 5>my dad's, like this big hero that goes away and
<v Speaker 5>does crazy, adventurous things and then comes back and tells
<v Speaker 5>me about it and tells everybody about it, as if
<v Speaker 5>Edward's like bringing books that he used to read. It's
<v Speaker 5>almost like Edward's bringing those books to his kid.
<v Speaker 1>But I'm the main character. It's not exciting that your
<v Speaker 1>dad's main character of these stories. Does he even think
<v Speaker 1>about how important he is to William in terms of
<v Speaker 1>like d today touchstone person, Like he has his mom,
<v Speaker 1>and his mom's great, and she takes care of him,
<v Speaker 1>and I got him a nice house, and like I'm
<v Speaker 1>providing for them. So maybe he never really understood how
<v Speaker 1>important actually being there for your kid is, Like being
<v Speaker 1>there and being boring is better than being away and
<v Speaker 1>being exciting.
<v Speaker 4>It definitely seems like there's a missing spot in Edward's life.
<v Speaker 4>We really don't get to see what it is. If
<v Speaker 4>I'm looking at the timeline, he is twenty one when
<v Speaker 4>he goes to war.
<v Speaker 6>I think so.
<v Speaker 1>I know he was eighteen when the Specter thing happened
<v Speaker 1>the first time.
<v Speaker 4>And then he was with the Circus for three years.
<v Speaker 4>Oh yeah, and it's after that somebody finally learns his address,
<v Speaker 4>which means he didn't go home to the Yeah, it.
<v Speaker 1>Seems like he never goes home once he's eighteen, which
<v Speaker 1>is also telling.
<v Speaker 4>Which means that in what the Korean War is what
<v Speaker 4>nineteen fifty one something like that, So that makes him
<v Speaker 4>twenty one, and fifty one means he's born in nineteen thirty,
<v Speaker 4>which means his dad very likely would have been World
<v Speaker 4>War One and would have been a dad that lived
<v Speaker 4>through the Depression and therefore would have been likely gone
<v Speaker 4>because the Depression hit the South really really hard, and
<v Speaker 4>dad may have been somebody who was out making it
<v Speaker 4>for the family and gone all the time. We don't
<v Speaker 4>know which exact version of it, but we can probably
<v Speaker 4>presume his relationship with his dad wasn't close and he
<v Speaker 4>found his meaning elsewhere in the world, kind of stuck
<v Speaker 4>in that childhood mentality he formed it ten.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it does, and now that we're talking about it, it
<v Speaker 1>does feel very telling that none of his stories include
<v Speaker 1>his dad in any capacity, even in like a very
<v Speaker 1>like fantastical way.
<v Speaker 5>I mean, none of his stories include his family at all. Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>Edward is very much a singular character in most of
<v Speaker 5>the stories that he tells.
<v Speaker 4>Correct, he's very much telling his own narrative. I think
<v Speaker 4>he's stuck in his trauma stories. And then as we
<v Speaker 4>move through all of these different phases of his life,
<v Speaker 4>they are centered on him, and some of them tell
<v Speaker 4>that kind of connection to his past in a positive light,
<v Speaker 4>but embellish and others seem like they're a.
<v Speaker 2>Retcon of a narrative therapy.
<v Speaker 4>He's trying to tell everyone else so that he can
<v Speaker 4>project the image he wants to cover up the weaknesses
<v Speaker 4>and failures that he's had.
<v Speaker 5>Do you think that there's a chance that Edward almost
<v Speaker 5>has like arrested development. I'm certain in terms of that
<v Speaker 5>whatever the illness was that he had. So he also
<v Speaker 5>has this very childlike view of relationships.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, think about how childlike it is to look
<v Speaker 4>at someone and go, she's beautiful, and I can give
<v Speaker 4>her everything she ever wanted. To the point that poor
<v Speaker 4>Roy from the office gets to play second fiddle Againdon againdon.
<v Speaker 4>I think it's telling that we don't learn until later
<v Speaker 4>in this story that that dude that Roy was playing
<v Speaker 4>is three years older than him. When we see him
<v Speaker 4>competing in every story that guy loses to Edward. He's
<v Speaker 4>worse than him in baseball, he's worse than in basketball.
<v Speaker 4>His science fair stuff is just a little bit worse.
<v Speaker 4>And then he's the one who was engaged.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's almost if that guy is just a stand
<v Speaker 1>in for every guy Edward felt contentions with, or if.
<v Speaker 4>That guy was the guy he is contentious because he
<v Speaker 4>was part of the witch story. He was one of
<v Speaker 4>the ones who was putting him up to it and
<v Speaker 4>shining him on. And then he's the one that dies
<v Speaker 4>on the toilet, which turned out to be because he
<v Speaker 4>was beating up Edward, which all seems a little tall, well.
<v Speaker 1>Very convenient, the very like tidy story, if you will.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, I mean thinking of him too is like immature,
<v Speaker 1>like arrest of development also kind of makes the Sandra
<v Speaker 1>stuff make a little bit more sense to makes, I think. Also,
<v Speaker 1>what's interesting about Edward's story is that he wants so
<v Speaker 1>much to live this like lone wolf kind of adventurous life,
<v Speaker 1>and simultaneously he like doggedly goes after her, like he
<v Speaker 1>fights for this basic ass life too. And if I
<v Speaker 1>got to work with him, as you know, as a client,
<v Speaker 1>I would be really curious about examining that point of conflict,
<v Speaker 1>you know, where he because it wasn't like Sander pursued him,
<v Speaker 1>or they fell in love really quickly and she got
<v Speaker 1>pregnant and he had to be with her, you know
<v Speaker 1>what I mean? Like, I do believe the little truth
<v Speaker 1>within his story is that he fell in love with
<v Speaker 1>her and really went after her ass in some capacity. Right,
<v Speaker 1>he fought for her and had to like break her
<v Speaker 1>up from someone else to get her, and so he
<v Speaker 1>made a lot of you'd think conscious choices. But if
<v Speaker 1>we're thinking of him more as someone who's like maybe
<v Speaker 1>stuck in a more immature mindset, was he thinking was
<v Speaker 1>he not thinking far enough in the future. Was he
<v Speaker 1>just thinking, like I love her so much, I want
<v Speaker 1>her and not really thinking about what that means in
<v Speaker 1>terms of the life he's been planning for in his mind.
<v Speaker 2>I think yes.
<v Speaker 4>I think Jehannah's point and to what you're tying to
<v Speaker 4>is that fantastical version of what love is that he's
<v Speaker 4>attached to. You can assume that in his stories that
<v Speaker 4>he was reading, Robin Hood rescued Maid.
<v Speaker 6>Marian right like he found his damsel, correct.
<v Speaker 4>And whether or not it was his damsel in distress
<v Speaker 4>or just the beautiful princess that was destined for him
<v Speaker 4>because he's the hero of the story all the time.
<v Speaker 4>So all the stories where the hero did that, he's
<v Speaker 4>now replicating in an arreested development kind of way, where
<v Speaker 4>I have to be the one who does these things
<v Speaker 4>because it's my story and she's the most beautiful one
<v Speaker 4>I've ever saw, and he attaches to the idea of
<v Speaker 4>her more than the practical side of it, and it becomes,
<v Speaker 4>you know, the manic pixie dream girl thing we talked
<v Speaker 4>about so thoroughly in the Five Hundred Days of Summer episode,
<v Speaker 4>combined with the same thing that we really hit on
<v Speaker 4>with our dear friend bats in the Mask of the Phantasm,
<v Speaker 4>where not the karate in the garage, the.
<v Speaker 3>Proposal scene, it's disgusting.
<v Speaker 4>But more in why is this man torturing himself with
<v Speaker 4>a childlike idea of what his parents would have wanted,
<v Speaker 4>which is really just a projection of his own egocentric
<v Speaker 4>problem solving that he is stuck in arrested development and
<v Speaker 4>never quite escapes because that's how he found actualization. He
<v Speaker 4>desperately wants to escape the narrative that exists of him
<v Speaker 4>as that sick kid with the dad who didn't care,
<v Speaker 4>I assume or wasn't able to for whatever.
<v Speaker 2>Dad wasn't present and whatever.
<v Speaker 4>His relationship with mom didn't validate his story, and neither
<v Speaker 4>did anyone in the town because they always saw him
<v Speaker 4>as the sick kid. So therefore his story in that
<v Speaker 4>town can't ever validate him. So specter that was waiting
<v Speaker 4>for him and maybe heard from it heard of him
<v Speaker 4>as that sickly kid that got so sick and wasn't
<v Speaker 4>that far away that maybe they didn't hear from him
<v Speaker 4>or the poet told them, but somebody had their story,
<v Speaker 4>and he arrived as already a legend version of himself
<v Speaker 4>that this kid is trying so hard, but everyone's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>but you're still like that sick kid though, bro, So
<v Speaker 4>he can't be there and be the tall tale version
<v Speaker 4>of himself he created in his head through dissociation to
<v Speaker 4>escape being sick in a bed because there was nowhere
<v Speaker 4>else to go but deeper into his imagination where he
<v Speaker 4>could find any escape from miserable existence. So we see
<v Speaker 4>that then become arrested development and play out through his
<v Speaker 4>life as his most tried and true method of problem
<v Speaker 4>solving that he so desperately wants to not be seen
<v Speaker 4>as that sickly kid, that he doesn't let anybody know
<v Speaker 4>the real him because the real hymn can never match
<v Speaker 4>his stories. But as long as he controls that narrative,
<v Speaker 4>they'll ever see it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it just develops into this level of avoidance I mean,
<v Speaker 1>and I think this shows up in real world ways
<v Speaker 1>where people get so stuck in like a defense mechanism
<v Speaker 1>that came from we We talk about this all the time, right,
<v Speaker 1>like people get stuck in coping mechanisms that help them
<v Speaker 1>survive at one point in their life. But if they
<v Speaker 1>can't let go of it, or if it becomes a
<v Speaker 1>part of their identity as they see themselves, which I
<v Speaker 1>think is what happens with Edward, they can't get out
<v Speaker 1>of it. They can't stop doing it. Once it's outlasted,
<v Speaker 1>it's use. And I think, like I said, with Edward,
<v Speaker 1>it did out in my opinion, did all lost his
<v Speaker 1>use because it got to a point where, like I said,
<v Speaker 1>he didn't have to keep this life separatistart to really
<v Speaker 1>get in the way. Like as we talk about when
<v Speaker 1>we are meeting clients and assessing them, is some part
<v Speaker 1>of what's going on fucking with your functioning, And for
<v Speaker 1>him it's his relationship to his kid. And it is
<v Speaker 1>kind of like miraculous that Sandra is so happy with
<v Speaker 1>him still and seems to be in love with him still,
<v Speaker 1>Like he got really lucky in finding a woman that
<v Speaker 1>seems to really eat his shit up given everything.
<v Speaker 4>He got very lucky and she sees him and understands
<v Speaker 4>him and lets him be the version he needs to be.
<v Speaker 4>But the son can't because his son's needs are not
<v Speaker 4>getting met. And the son, like you said, desperately wants
<v Speaker 4>to know something true, something real, to the point that
<v Speaker 4>he becomes a journalist. He's working out his own shit
<v Speaker 4>through his career where he's he could never learn the
<v Speaker 4>truth from Dad, so he's now becoming a fact finder
<v Speaker 4>and a journalistic writer, where he's becoming known and famous
<v Speaker 4>for telling the truth. He is becoming the opposite of
<v Speaker 4>Dad and being so good at investigative reporting that it's
<v Speaker 4>his truth telling that's validated by the world, not his
<v Speaker 4>fantastical stories.
<v Speaker 1>And I think that leads me to such a good
<v Speaker 1>example of where William Edward keep missing each other is
<v Speaker 1>Edward says, one point to try to like connect with
<v Speaker 1>William Ish is like we're both storytellers, Like isn't that cool? Basically,
<v Speaker 1>Like isn't that beautiful that we both that's what we
<v Speaker 1>have in common. Missing the point that you just made, Ben,
<v Speaker 1>which is, h you're very different. That's you know, you're
<v Speaker 1>very different storytellers because you're right like his son chose
<v Speaker 1>the version of storytelling that is the most rooted in
<v Speaker 1>like ethical realism, like ethical truth. Cannot you cannot do
<v Speaker 1>tall tales and be a respected journalist.
<v Speaker 4>Correct, you can't. You have to do the opposite. And
<v Speaker 4>because that's his deepest need, Dad's.
<v Speaker 2>Not seeing him.
<v Speaker 4>And yeah, he says in that speech you're talking about,
<v Speaker 4>isn't it so cool that I tell stories with my
<v Speaker 4>mouth and you tell them with your writing? Basically, And.
<v Speaker 2>You're so right that he just utterly missed.
<v Speaker 4>The mechanism that he uses to tell the stories is
<v Speaker 4>the polar opposite. And it's because of your failures as
<v Speaker 4>a dad to not ever tell me anything true, but
<v Speaker 4>to make sure everybody knows the version of you you
<v Speaker 4>want them to. Even though more of it was true
<v Speaker 4>than William ever believed, it wasn't true to William because
<v Speaker 4>he saw through that he saw the cracks in the
<v Speaker 4>story enough to know that ain't it. That can't be it.
<v Speaker 4>The way you're telling it is not the full truth,
<v Speaker 4>but you're making everybody believe it is.
<v Speaker 1>And maybe William would have believed your stories more if
<v Speaker 1>he saw you more. So it's like also the combination
<v Speaker 1>of these tall tales and being gone so much so
<v Speaker 1>you're creating this vacuum for your kid, where like you
<v Speaker 1>were saying, he's like fiending for details about you, for
<v Speaker 1>closeness to you, and so maybe if you were around
<v Speaker 1>more William, you know what I mean, It's just like
<v Speaker 1>Edward's just like he's missing it, Like I think it's
<v Speaker 1>what's also like, just like sad about the movie is
<v Speaker 1>I keep saying in this relationship, is that they're both
<v Speaker 1>decent people. They just cannot find each other. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I wrote in my notes because I guess I was
<v Speaker 1>feeling poetic. Edward was William's big fish that he couldn't catch,
<v Speaker 1>like that is William's big fish is his dad.
<v Speaker 6>And I couldn't get you.
<v Speaker 1>And even when I thought maybe I got you on
<v Speaker 1>the line, you and then even till the very end
<v Speaker 1>of the story, he never got his dad, which is
<v Speaker 1>an interesting choice narratively that his dad died still being
<v Speaker 1>like ten toes down about these fantastical stories and keep
<v Speaker 1>insisting to William to the very end, like no, that
<v Speaker 1>was the truth, and yeah, so William never caught.
<v Speaker 4>Him, except that he did because he's I only saw
<v Speaker 4>him in a way that allowed them to connect. When
<v Speaker 4>he tells his dad his own tall tale of his
<v Speaker 4>dad's passing that allows the dad to feel like he's
<v Speaker 4>been seen and heard and connected. If the Sun is
<v Speaker 4>showing this empathy and connection, and did the Sun ever
<v Speaker 4>get from Dad that truth that he was asking or Dad,
<v Speaker 4>I just want to know what's true. The dad insisting
<v Speaker 4>that what I told you is true is about as
<v Speaker 4>validating as Obi Wan sitting with Luke in Return of
<v Speaker 4>the Jedi after Yoda dies, going well, they told Jules
<v Speaker 4>true from a certain points of view, which rings so
<v Speaker 4>fucking empty when I watch it as an adult.
<v Speaker 3>What's that accent?
<v Speaker 2>He told me I'm allowed to do one episode?
<v Speaker 3>That's that accent?
<v Speaker 6>Did we That's an accent?
<v Speaker 2>It's a really bad one.
<v Speaker 6>I mean for sure.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I'm good at a lot of things, accents is
<v Speaker 4>not one of them.
<v Speaker 3>And it really is. I've never claimed to be good
<v Speaker 3>at it.
<v Speaker 1>And yet it persists, it persists, and nevertheless he persists.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, exactly exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Oh my god.
<v Speaker 2>The thing is it amuses me how bad it is.
<v Speaker 2>So I know, yeah, I know. I'm not trying to
<v Speaker 2>be good at it. I'm not claiming it.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think you could try to be. I don't
<v Speaker 3>think you have a chance of being good at it.
<v Speaker 3>Not to be a bitch, but.
<v Speaker 4>I don't think being a dialect period actor is probably
<v Speaker 4>in my future at forty years old. Yeah, I'm okay
<v Speaker 4>with that. I would be, you know, more like Seth Rogan,
<v Speaker 4>when he took on the role of Donkey Kong, told
<v Speaker 4>the directors.
<v Speaker 2>Like, I don't do accents. This is just my voice,
<v Speaker 2>is what I do. I do this one thing, and
<v Speaker 2>that's what I do.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, you and Chris prompt.
<v Speaker 1>So why don't we keep putting him in animated movies?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. I don't know.
<v Speaker 4>He does different voices that are still the same, more
<v Speaker 4>than Seth rogen does.
<v Speaker 3>Did you what you just said?
<v Speaker 6>The different voices that are just the same.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, his Mario and his Garfield were different, but
<v Speaker 4>how different is not much?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but they were Mario.
<v Speaker 4>Had a little bit of like really really really bad
<v Speaker 4>New York accent.
<v Speaker 3>Too to me, Christ Jesus well AnyWho I do. I
<v Speaker 3>don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like me and Hannah were eyeballing each other
<v Speaker 1>while you were talking, Ben, because I had to had
<v Speaker 1>a different read on that part of the movie in
<v Speaker 1>that I don't know if he I think he came
<v Speaker 1>to terms with the fact that he's never gonna get
<v Speaker 1>what he needs from his dad and that his dad's
<v Speaker 1>fucking dying, and so why not just give him this
<v Speaker 1>story to send him off. I don't know how much
<v Speaker 1>of it is.
<v Speaker 3>Him.
<v Speaker 1>I think he's got to have work later post movie
<v Speaker 1>in terms of coming to terms, maybe also when he
<v Speaker 1>becomes a dad, right, like coming to terms with.
<v Speaker 6>The stuff with his dad.
<v Speaker 1>But I viewed that part of it is more of
<v Speaker 1>like he's letting go and giving his dad a gift
<v Speaker 1>as his dad like leaves the planet, and not so
<v Speaker 1>much him. I don't know exactly how you said it,
<v Speaker 1>but like like being in agreement with his dad.
<v Speaker 6>I know it's not exactly what he said, but no.
<v Speaker 4>Not what I meant either. What I mean is he
<v Speaker 4>is reaching a point of acceptance like you said that
<v Speaker 4>in order to give my dad this gift so he
<v Speaker 4>can go in peace and be given the thing that
<v Speaker 4>the one thing that he couldn't have and probably perpetuated
<v Speaker 4>this story to your point is that he never did
<v Speaker 4>connect with me. But we can connect here. But I
<v Speaker 4>have to do it. I have to connect to Dad
<v Speaker 4>in the way that Dad connects to the world, which
<v Speaker 4>is him giving himself a gift and giving his dad
<v Speaker 4>a gift and like a last one of being seen
<v Speaker 4>I got. This is the last chance I have for
<v Speaker 4>my dad to feel seen by me, his son. The
<v Speaker 4>only person who can carry on his story and his legacy,
<v Speaker 4>which is what he wanted more than anything, was to
<v Speaker 4>live on after his death, to be bigger than his life.
<v Speaker 2>And the only way I can guarantee that for him.
<v Speaker 4>Is to tell this story that he feels seen and
<v Speaker 4>relevant enough by me that I heard him over all
<v Speaker 4>these years. So he takes care to use his fact
<v Speaker 4>finding to say, all of these people that I've heard
<v Speaker 4>you tell, all these stories, all of them are here.
<v Speaker 4>When we're doing this visualization exercise of validating your whole life,
<v Speaker 4>I'm letting you know I heard you, I see you,
<v Speaker 4>I know who you were, and I know who you
<v Speaker 4>were or not, and I know how you would want
<v Speaker 4>to be seen after you're gone. So I'm going to
<v Speaker 4>give you that so you hear it and feel reassured
<v Speaker 4>that all of these things that made up who you
<v Speaker 4>needed to be are seen and will carry on.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I really feel like that.
<v Speaker 5>I really feel like William is giving his father a gift.
<v Speaker 5>I think William is in a place that really what
<v Speaker 5>both of you are talking about right now, in terms
<v Speaker 5>of William coming to the conclusion to himself in some
<v Speaker 5>way that he can't give me what I need. I've tried.
<v Speaker 5>I've tried a couple times while I've been here. I've tried.
<v Speaker 5>Maybe other times in his life he also tried, and
<v Speaker 5>I think he does it have some acceptance at the
<v Speaker 5>end of the only way of maybe this is the
<v Speaker 5>best way I can say goodbye to him is by
<v Speaker 5>telling him that I heard him when he said all
<v Speaker 5>those stories, and I know the big players in his
<v Speaker 5>stories that he's told. And so I think that's one
<v Speaker 5>of the beautiful moments in the movie that I think
<v Speaker 5>that's why I love this movie so much, is because
<v Speaker 5>even though William still isn't getting his need met and
<v Speaker 5>will definitely need to go to therapy probably as soon
<v Speaker 5>as he has that kid that he was able to
<v Speaker 5>just let his own guard down and be like, this
<v Speaker 5>is the only way that I'm gonna this is the
<v Speaker 5>last connection I'm ever going to be able to have
<v Speaker 5>with him.
<v Speaker 3>Is it that big of a deal if I.
<v Speaker 5>Have to say it back to him the way that
<v Speaker 5>he said it to me for so long?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think you're right in that it's having a
<v Speaker 1>good goodbye, you know.
<v Speaker 6>And I do that work.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure we all do that work with clients where
<v Speaker 1>it's like what hill are you gonna die on? Basically?
<v Speaker 1>And is that worth it to you? Is it gonna
<v Speaker 1>be worth it to push, push push on this until
<v Speaker 1>your dad fucking dies, you know what I mean? Like,
<v Speaker 1>if I was working with William, I would say, like,
<v Speaker 1>if you feel like you need to do this, you
<v Speaker 1>can keep harping on this until the end, and.
<v Speaker 6>Like, what how will that feel?
<v Speaker 5>You know?
<v Speaker 1>Do you think to be so stuck on this or
<v Speaker 1>are you able to like let go of some of
<v Speaker 1>that's you can have good last memories of your dad,
<v Speaker 1>especially because if he's not if he's not getting with
<v Speaker 1>the program by now, like on his deathbed, he ain't,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean?
<v Speaker 6>And whatever thing's going on in there.
<v Speaker 1>That makes it so important to him to like keep
<v Speaker 1>this story going, that's there, you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 1>And it's not gonna change in the last like month
<v Speaker 1>of his life or week of his life, and he
<v Speaker 1>probably doesn't know how. Also, if you're sticking to this
<v Speaker 1>kind of shit until you're this old, my assumption is
<v Speaker 1>is you just don't know how to do it any
<v Speaker 1>differently William. Also, like you said, Ben of like giving
<v Speaker 1>William giving himself a gift too, It's like, is that
<v Speaker 1>how you want your last moments with your dad to be.
<v Speaker 4>Which becomes a gift you can give to yourself. Because
<v Speaker 4>something I think for William that is in the way
<v Speaker 4>is realizing even though his dad can't, like he said,
<v Speaker 4>he's not going to he can't. He can't because he
<v Speaker 4>hasn't told that version of the story to himself. And
<v Speaker 4>the weaker he grows, the less likely he's going to
<v Speaker 4>be to do it. Because the whole mechanism that he's
<v Speaker 4>been avoiding his whole fucking life is being sick, and
<v Speaker 4>he's sick, So the likelihood he's going to spontaneously conquer
<v Speaker 4>that demon and slay it on his deathbed, when that's
<v Speaker 4>what's slaying him on his deathbed is none.
<v Speaker 2>But what he can get.
<v Speaker 4>Is realize that his dad, while he didn't really ever
<v Speaker 4>see him, he did, in his way frequently tell these
<v Speaker 4>versions of stories that he was trying to communicate meaning
<v Speaker 4>and purpose and lessons to his son about how to be,
<v Speaker 4>how to conquer the world, how to conquer yourself. Unfortunately,
<v Speaker 4>it's all done from this arrested development standpoint. That's his
<v Speaker 4>dad is the main character, and you're my son, so
<v Speaker 4>you can be like me, which isn't how that shit works.
<v Speaker 4>It can be important to connect to people and provide
<v Speaker 4>relevance and acknowledgment to their stories by connecting stories to it,
<v Speaker 4>but expecting them to be able to replicate your stories
<v Speaker 4>not how that works, and can feel like a barrier
<v Speaker 4>to being seen and connected. And Dad never sees he's
<v Speaker 4>never going to, but William being able to see that
<v Speaker 4>Dad taught me a lot of things about life. That
<v Speaker 4>one of them I need to see right now is
<v Speaker 4>that story about I don't remember what Roy's name is,
<v Speaker 4>so he's going to be Roy. But over and over
<v Speaker 4>he's trying to tell me that you can, in fact
<v Speaker 4>stress yourself out so much by being so angry and
<v Speaker 4>so unhappy that you can die early on the toilet
<v Speaker 4>in an embarrassing way while hoardling a nudie book. Right, like,
<v Speaker 4>probably none of that would actually happened.
<v Speaker 5>So embarrassing, so embarrassing. But also I think you're absolutely right.
<v Speaker 5>I think that Edward just made that whole part up
<v Speaker 5>because it's too perfect.
<v Speaker 3>It's too perfect to be true.
<v Speaker 4>He beat my ass for stealing his girl, and then
<v Speaker 4>he died on the toilet while reading a porno book.
<v Speaker 4>The story, The point that his dad probably learned through
<v Speaker 4>all life is you can actually die from stressing yourself
<v Speaker 4>out to the point that you activate something in your
<v Speaker 4>body you didn't know was there through stress and being
<v Speaker 4>a miserable fuck. And you're being a little bit of
<v Speaker 4>a miserable fuck right now, son, and maybe recognize that
<v Speaker 4>could kill you, instead of having an adult conversation where
<v Speaker 4>you communicate that directly and meet his needs. Because your
<v Speaker 4>son is not the same as you, and the fantastical
<v Speaker 4>side of things doesn't.
<v Speaker 2>Register with him at all.
<v Speaker 4>He likes the boring, the details, the unknowing, and you,
<v Speaker 4>as a dad, are failing by not seeing that is true,
<v Speaker 4>but his son also recognizing my dad loved me in
<v Speaker 4>the way he could as a gift he's giving himself,
<v Speaker 4>even if there's going to be therapy to need to
<v Speaker 4>be done later about how it felt to not have
<v Speaker 4>your needs met the whole time and not see that,
<v Speaker 4>or not having your dad see that the way you're
<v Speaker 4>trying to connect with me is not the way that
<v Speaker 4>connects with me, no matter how many times you try it.
<v Speaker 1>It actually makes me think of how when I worked
<v Speaker 1>with teenagers and their parents, I would every once in
<v Speaker 1>a while.
<v Speaker 3>Have to do.
<v Speaker 1>The lecture lecture, the lecture spiel with the parent, and
<v Speaker 1>I never did in front of the kid because I
<v Speaker 1>didn't want into some power the parent. Like that is
<v Speaker 1>when I would tell parents the way that you're communicating
<v Speaker 1>with your kid via lecturing, which I could make of
<v Speaker 1>the parallel with Edward of like via stories, it's not
<v Speaker 1>working in terms of like if there's an outcome, because
<v Speaker 1>when parents lecture, it's because they're thinking that there's this
<v Speaker 1>outcome in their mind of like this will turn my
<v Speaker 1>kid around or keep my kid from making this bad choice.
<v Speaker 6>Whatever, you know, they're trying to teach their kid a.
<v Speaker 1>Lesson, And what I have to figure out how to
<v Speaker 1>artfully tell the parent because I would get nervous every
<v Speaker 1>time I had to give this speech, because no one
<v Speaker 1>wants to be told they're being a lecturer and that
<v Speaker 1>it's not good and that it's also for them and
<v Speaker 1>not their kid.
<v Speaker 3>And so what I would have to figure how.
<v Speaker 1>To tell the parent when you're giving these big speeches
<v Speaker 1>to your kid. But what's the objective here? And usually
<v Speaker 1>they had a very earnest one, you know, like I
<v Speaker 1>don't want them to make the same mistake excited, I
<v Speaker 1>want them to not do this stuff whatever, And I'd say,
<v Speaker 1>is that working? And if they were seeing me, that
<v Speaker 1>means it wasn't. And so I would say, okay, So
<v Speaker 1>if it's not working, if it's not having the outcome
<v Speaker 1>you want, and it's actually maybe even becoming a barrier
<v Speaker 1>in your relationship to your kid, it's becoming a net
<v Speaker 1>negative perhaps, and why are we still doing it?
<v Speaker 3>Then?
<v Speaker 1>And so then the parent has to kind of come
<v Speaker 1>around if they can with me to the idea of like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>is lecturing something I do for me? If it's not
<v Speaker 1>actually having the outcome, and I keep doing it like
<v Speaker 1>it's an emotional thing I'm doing then, not a rational
<v Speaker 1>thing I'm doing. And so with the Edward thing, I
<v Speaker 1>think it's the same idea, right if I got to
<v Speaker 1>work with them, which is edward, if your objective is
<v Speaker 1>to make your son Field type way about you or
<v Speaker 1>feel closer to you, He's saying, Babe, it's not working,
<v Speaker 1>So why are we still doing this? And can you
<v Speaker 1>acknowledge that this is for you? And if you really
<v Speaker 1>want this outcome with your son, we have to be
<v Speaker 1>open to a different way of doing it. And you
<v Speaker 1>need to You need to manage and figure out with
<v Speaker 1>your own stuff how to rein in this behavior that
<v Speaker 1>is for you. But parents, I mean adults with do
<v Speaker 1>this all the time, where we do something that we
<v Speaker 1>think is for the kids in our lives, which really
<v Speaker 1>it's for us.
<v Speaker 6>It requires a.
<v Speaker 1>Little bit of an ego death right. And that's what
<v Speaker 1>I knew I was asking those parents in the moment. Wich
<v Speaker 1>is why I alway kind of hold my breath, like
<v Speaker 1>brace myself for a slap, if you will, because because
<v Speaker 1>I know that I'm asking them to really like practice
<v Speaker 1>humility in that moment in front of me of like,
<v Speaker 1>you're not doing this really for your kid. You think
<v Speaker 1>you are, but this is an emotional thing you're doing
<v Speaker 1>and it's not working. And I think similar to him,
<v Speaker 1>he'd have to have that come to Jesus thing of like,
<v Speaker 1>even if you think this is the language you speak
<v Speaker 1>and so you're wanting to be the language to your kid,
<v Speaker 1>it's not connecting.
<v Speaker 6>And so it's it's for you.
<v Speaker 4>It's very important if you have a parent who is
<v Speaker 4>let's say religious.
<v Speaker 6>That's a great comparison.
<v Speaker 4>And the child who isn't, especially like later in either
<v Speaker 4>teenage years or adulthood years, where you know it's going
<v Speaker 4>to become a little bit more clear that you know,
<v Speaker 4>the whatever religion the family is a kid, maybe you
<v Speaker 4>know not so much if you keep trying to connect
<v Speaker 4>to the kid using the religious fables, which is more
<v Speaker 4>or less what Edward is doing is telling life lessness
<v Speaker 4>through fables. Is you keep doing it through a context
<v Speaker 4>and a narrative which has been rejected by the child,
<v Speaker 4>and you can keep going like, well, I mean in
<v Speaker 4>Jesus's story, da Dad or Daniel did this?
<v Speaker 2>Think about David and Goliath.
<v Speaker 4>Then the person who is not religious in his rejected religion.
<v Speaker 4>Maybe religion has even harmed them some way, shape or form.
<v Speaker 3>Ding ding ding ding ding. That's usually what it is.
<v Speaker 4>What millennials and later have turned away from religion and
<v Speaker 4>shocking droves because they're like, hey, remember how this hurt
<v Speaker 4>me or was used to tell me I'm not good
<v Speaker 4>enough for my sexuality or whatever else was wrong? What
<v Speaker 4>that's the cause of it. People have been using that
<v Speaker 4>as a cover for white supremacy. What what what?
<v Speaker 2>No way? And it's just nodding at me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I agree.
<v Speaker 4>And that's not all religion has been used for. For
<v Speaker 4>religious folks that get it. There's religion has done many
<v Speaker 4>good things, but to not acknowledge the things that it's
<v Speaker 4>done to harm is really blind and unfair to the
<v Speaker 4>people that have been very, very harmed by it. But
<v Speaker 4>looking at if you're trying to connect to a child
<v Speaker 4>through just religious fables over and over, and that's not
<v Speaker 4>a thing that they see the world through.
<v Speaker 2>It's not a lens that connects with them.
<v Speaker 4>They're rejecting everything else you say, because the entire premise
<v Speaker 4>you're trying to use to connect with them is invalidating.
<v Speaker 4>And that is where Edward is missing.
<v Speaker 2>William.
<v Speaker 1>And also it reiterates this idea that I am not
<v Speaker 1>interested and I don't mean this like intentionally on the
<v Speaker 1>parent's part, but what it also communicates to the kid
<v Speaker 1>is like, I'm not interested in you, like in what
<v Speaker 1>is meaningful to you, in what you care about. I
<v Speaker 1>only want to see you through the lens in which
<v Speaker 1>I like to see the world. And that's also where
<v Speaker 1>like it's kind of when we talk about like Imotaster,
<v Speaker 1>mister Fox. That was coming to mind when we were
<v Speaker 1>talking about like the speeches the dad gives is, like
<v Speaker 1>William says in the beginning, even at my own wedding,
<v Speaker 1>I don't get to be the center of attention. How
<v Speaker 1>Edward is so locked into the story the religion that
<v Speaker 1>is I am a hero, I am the center. And
<v Speaker 1>so because that means something so great to me, it
<v Speaker 1>most means something to you. And how egocentric that is,
<v Speaker 1>I mean really egocentric in our way.
<v Speaker 6>That's a rusted development. If we're positing that.
<v Speaker 1>It's very possible that Edward is stuck in a developmental
<v Speaker 1>stage where you are egocentric.
<v Speaker 4>I think it's the best explanation of his behavior. We've
<v Speaker 4>talked about that a lot. So I'm not going to
<v Speaker 4>reiterate a bunch of stuff. But I don't see narcissism
<v Speaker 4>in him where he needs to be connected to the
<v Speaker 4>biggest and the best in all this stuff. I see
<v Speaker 4>it more as childlike egocentrism, where this has been my story,
<v Speaker 4>but I need validation through it rather than I'm not
<v Speaker 4>good enough and you all aren't good or I'm the
<v Speaker 4>best and you all are you know second because you
<v Speaker 4>haven't had my life. He's not seeking to make other
<v Speaker 4>people less than he's seeking validation.
<v Speaker 3>Other than that guy in high school.
<v Speaker 6>He's not very competitive. He just is ecocentric.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, absolutely, And I think that's what makes it as
<v Speaker 5>we've been talking about it today, it really makes it
<v Speaker 5>makes the story make a lot of sense that that's
<v Speaker 5>where his dad is coming from, this place where he
<v Speaker 5>has to be the hero in order to communicate what
<v Speaker 5>his experience was like.
<v Speaker 4>It's almost like he's dressing like a bat to take
<v Speaker 4>on all the crime.
<v Speaker 1>You've been raally on the niest buddy. With all these
<v Speaker 1>two references, at least that seems like one Star Wars
<v Speaker 1>one and an accent, you're really someone close to the edge,
<v Speaker 1>butge the absolute edge On that note.
<v Speaker 2>In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Well, on that note, we'll take another break
<v Speaker 1>here and be back shortly. Is there there anything more
<v Speaker 1>we want to say? I know we didn't exactly go
<v Speaker 1>into a section of William, but we did end up
<v Speaker 1>talking a lot about William obviously and talking about Edward.
<v Speaker 1>But is there anything more specific about William that we
<v Speaker 1>want to make sure to highlight and discuss before we
<v Speaker 1>move on to treatment and final thoughts? Yeah? I think
<v Speaker 1>the only thing I want to say about William is
<v Speaker 1>I want to give him credit as a character in
<v Speaker 1>that he still holds and practices a lot of kindness,
<v Speaker 1>even with how disappointed he is with his father. They
<v Speaker 1>have that one big fight at the wedding, which I
<v Speaker 1>understand because that felt like a breaking point for William.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure William was telling himself like maybe, but I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure at my wedding he'll be cool, and then he wasn't,
<v Speaker 1>and then he freaked out, which he crashed out, as
<v Speaker 1>the kids would say, And I understand that, but I
<v Speaker 1>would say, like, as soon as he realizes his dad's sick,
<v Speaker 1>he drops everything. He shows up, he's very kind, he
<v Speaker 1>still calls home even though he doesn't talk to his
<v Speaker 1>daddy all doesn't fight with his dad, and he kind
<v Speaker 1>of does this weird like thing where they use the
<v Speaker 1>mom as the intermediary. So I do want to give
<v Speaker 1>William as a character credit that as much as he's
<v Speaker 1>feeling this deep pain, he doesn't get caught. He doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get caught in his ego throughout this, Like even the
<v Speaker 1>kind of picking at his dad he does in the hospital,
<v Speaker 1>I understand. I get his final like hail Mary of
<v Speaker 1>like maybe now he'll tell me something fucking true. But
<v Speaker 1>even then he doesn't go too hard at it and
<v Speaker 1>he drops it as soon as it doesn't seem like
<v Speaker 1>it makes us like it's worth it anymore. So I
<v Speaker 1>think that says a lot about how mature William is actually,
<v Speaker 1>And it makes sense then why we see the little
<v Speaker 1>scene when he is his kid later and he's telling
<v Speaker 1>the stories like that he's kind of come to his
<v Speaker 1>own growth, because he can grow, and I think we
<v Speaker 1>see that even in the small bits of him we see,
<v Speaker 1>whereas Edward can't. And I think that's a good juxapas
<v Speaker 1>of these two characters, which also might say something to
<v Speaker 1>like the times they're in. William is modern as of
<v Speaker 1>the making of the movie, and so probably has more
<v Speaker 1>access to things like therapy.
<v Speaker 4>He does deserve credit, and in particularly he deserves credit
<v Speaker 4>for making peace within himself that his dad was in
<v Speaker 4>fact telling him a lot of truth, just in a
<v Speaker 4>different way, and some of those truths are actually worthy
<v Speaker 4>of carrying on and seeing him correct the kid who
<v Speaker 4>is like, your grandpa couldn't have done all that and
<v Speaker 4>like Dad, Nope, true, you know, just kind of letting
<v Speaker 4>it be wiped, Like nope, that is one what.
<v Speaker 2>Happened whatever way.
<v Speaker 4>He says that with a little bit of a smile,
<v Speaker 4>because that kid didn't hear the story from anybody other
<v Speaker 4>than William. That was a story he chose to tell
<v Speaker 4>and kind of honor the memory of his dad and
<v Speaker 4>keep what was good while sorting what wasn't and choosing
<v Speaker 4>which version of a loved one who's died we keep
<v Speaker 4>alive doesn't always benefit us a whole lot. To keep
<v Speaker 4>alive all of the not good parts of a person
<v Speaker 4>we need him selectively, of course, but choosing ultimately which
<v Speaker 4>schema a person falls into, whether they were largely a
<v Speaker 4>good or largely a bad presence or were they mixed, right.
<v Speaker 2>It's part of a gift.
<v Speaker 4>You can give yourself a self validation of this is
<v Speaker 4>who I'm going to choose to see my dad ass
<v Speaker 4>even though I may not have been able to get
<v Speaker 4>everything I needed from him.
<v Speaker 3>Well.
<v Speaker 1>And also he's doing a good job of not passing
<v Speaker 1>down his shit to his son. He's letting his dad
<v Speaker 1>be this person to his son, like, be this fun character,
<v Speaker 1>not like passing down his whole resentment and all that stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Your grandpa was a bullshitter, you know what I mean,
<v Speaker 1>And your grandpa talk about trash like he could have
<v Speaker 1>definitely presented that version. So I think it's also very
<v Speaker 1>sweet that William is letting that go like you're saying,
<v Speaker 1>and also just letting his son have a fun idea
<v Speaker 1>of who his grandpa was instead of instead of William
<v Speaker 1>needing his son to know what his grandpa was to him.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I agree. I think one of the hopeful parts
<v Speaker 5>about the film in general is that William can be
<v Speaker 5>a different man than his father, and he can certainly
<v Speaker 5>be a different kind of father to his child, and
<v Speaker 5>he will need therapy when his kid is born, because
<v Speaker 5>in my experience with siblings and with clients, and is
<v Speaker 5>that when you have.
<v Speaker 3>Your first child and you feel that.
<v Speaker 5>Unconditional love for or this little being that you and
<v Speaker 5>your partner made together or whatever. That realization of how
<v Speaker 5>much love that you experience in those moments and being
<v Speaker 5>confused about why why your parents did what they did
<v Speaker 5>and acted the way that they did, and sometimes that
<v Speaker 5>can become very real in those moments of after having
<v Speaker 5>your own child, even like hours, even days.
<v Speaker 4>From the second you see the heartbeat on the monitor,
<v Speaker 4>maybe from the second you see the plus on the
<v Speaker 4>pregnancy test, those things activate one thousand percent where you
<v Speaker 4>realize that love and you has started in a way
<v Speaker 4>you never felt about anything than the questions.
<v Speaker 2>How you comes You're right they do.
<v Speaker 4>And we've all had many sessions with people about those
<v Speaker 4>and you guys aren't parents and I am, And the
<v Speaker 4>moments you hold your child and go now, I would
<v Speaker 4>do any goddamn thing for these kids. How the fuck
<v Speaker 4>did we get to the point that that wasn't true
<v Speaker 4>for me? Although you do also get the other side
<v Speaker 4>of that of going, oh that meme from returning the
<v Speaker 4>Jedda Eats were on a team today where parents have
<v Speaker 4>made it where it's not until you become a parent
<v Speaker 4>where you understand why Yoda just rolled over and died
<v Speaker 4>because he got tired of answering Luke's questions.
<v Speaker 1>I used to carry around a yellow pad legal pad
<v Speaker 1>because my mom's an accountant, and I would write questions
<v Speaker 1>in it that I would then make my mother answer
<v Speaker 1>like a tiny reporter.
<v Speaker 3>It's incredible, that's truly incredible.
<v Speaker 1>You would put answers and then she'd have to circle
<v Speaker 1>the answer to the question.
<v Speaker 6>While she's doing laundering stuff. I'm just like popping up
<v Speaker 6>on her ass, like, excuse me.
<v Speaker 3>Missus Brownfield, I have some questions for.
<v Speaker 2>You, quirky kit alert, like something Ava would do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, on that note, we'll take a break here
<v Speaker 1>and be back with treatment. So, Ben, Hannah, which one
<v Speaker 1>of you two want to go first for treatment?
<v Speaker 3>I'll go first.
<v Speaker 5>So when I was thinking about treatment for this film,
<v Speaker 5>I was really thinking about even though we don't get
<v Speaker 5>a lot of information about the mom, I was really
<v Speaker 5>thinking about the different roles that are in this family
<v Speaker 5>and how doing family therapy. Clearly, before Ibird dies in
<v Speaker 5>this semi story, he's not dead yet, where everybody is
<v Speaker 5>playing a role in this dynamic right, we have the
<v Speaker 5>mom being.
<v Speaker 3>The peacekeeper in a lot of different ways.
<v Speaker 5>Yes, yes, we have Edward being the.
<v Speaker 3>Star of the show for lack of a better way
<v Speaker 3>to say it.
<v Speaker 5>And then we have William who is trying to communicate
<v Speaker 5>effectively but can't because he has to go through his
<v Speaker 5>mother in order to get the information to his dad.
<v Speaker 5>So something that I would really want to do with
<v Speaker 5>them is just talk to them about their roles, like
<v Speaker 5>what do you feel like your job is in the family,
<v Speaker 5>what do you feel like you're responsible for, and really talking.
<v Speaker 6>About that with all of them.
<v Speaker 5>And I'm also thinking about William being an adult, so
<v Speaker 5>this is an adult This is adult family therapy and
<v Speaker 5>allowing them to not only understand their roles, but to
<v Speaker 5>understand how their dynamic was created, so that maybe we
<v Speaker 5>can create a dynamic that feels more comfortable but also
<v Speaker 5>more equal and truly more communicative. And helping them understand
<v Speaker 5>their roles also helps them gives them more awareness. Something
<v Speaker 5>I learned more and more as a therapist is that
<v Speaker 5>giving people the chance to have increased awareness about pretty
<v Speaker 5>much anything.
<v Speaker 3>Is really really helpful.
<v Speaker 5>They can say, oh, I know what this is, I
<v Speaker 5>know what this feeling is, I know where this feeling goes.
<v Speaker 5>I know where it comes from, and I feel like
<v Speaker 5>sometimes giving people just like psycho education about the situation
<v Speaker 5>that they're currently in can be really helpful, and I
<v Speaker 5>think with their family, that's what I would want to do,
<v Speaker 5>is help them understand their roles and also help them
<v Speaker 5>see and fit into different roles that are more comfortable
<v Speaker 5>for everyone, where we don't have to have this disconnection
<v Speaker 5>between especially as adults, don't have to have this kind
<v Speaker 5>of like the dad is the dad, and he's he's
<v Speaker 5>in charge, and whatever he says goes like that kind
<v Speaker 5>of shit where you have to listen to Edward and
<v Speaker 5>you have to do what he says and all of
<v Speaker 5>these different pieces everything revolves around him and really shifting
<v Speaker 5>that not necessarily to be where William is the spotlight,
<v Speaker 5>but certainly where it's more fucking equal, because I feel
<v Speaker 5>like the mom also doesn't in a lot of ways,
<v Speaker 5>and I know, again we don't have lot of information
<v Speaker 5>about her, but I feel like in a lot of ways,
<v Speaker 5>the mom is also not having the relationship that she
<v Speaker 5>wants to have with William because she has to be
<v Speaker 5>the peacekeeper, which means in some ways she is on
<v Speaker 5>the dad's side no matter what.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she feels like she's so caught up in how
<v Speaker 1>in love she still is with Edward, which is great
<v Speaker 1>for her and Edward.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that she is.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, you're right, like not on not meeting William Moore
<v Speaker 6>where he's at either.
<v Speaker 4>There's a reason he went to Paris, and that is
<v Speaker 4>probably a significant part of it. That he could not
<v Speaker 4>ever correct the dynamic and split them.
<v Speaker 1>Can feel validated, Yeah, absolutely absolutely, even though he was
<v Speaker 1>the ones with his mom all the time. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>his dad was the one that was leaving, which probably
<v Speaker 1>also felt like a betrayal.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, almost certainly.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, absolutely, So that's what I would want to do.
<v Speaker 5>That would be my treatment for the family.
<v Speaker 4>Sounds like a very sound treatment plan that would probably
<v Speaker 4>produced some change and hopefully produce some space for William
<v Speaker 4>and be like, so y'all never saw me at all.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, exactly. A lot of this shit is unconscious. Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>this role stuff isn't like you wake up today and
<v Speaker 5>say I'm going to be the peacekeeper in the family.
<v Speaker 3>This is like I have.
<v Speaker 5>Had to be the go between for these two numbskulls
<v Speaker 5>my whole friggin' adult life. Yep, And I and because
<v Speaker 5>I can't be in a different role, I also can't
<v Speaker 5>have the kinds of relationships that I want to have
<v Speaker 5>because I'm so caught up in the role that I
<v Speaker 5>have to play in order to keep them.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, and I am over that shit. Yeah, I'll read
<v Speaker 4>letters from my mom and correspond with her, but emotional
<v Speaker 4>closeness between him and any of them is quite clearly absent.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 4>And he's I deliberately sought someone foreign to him, different culture,
<v Speaker 4>different accent, different place. None of it sounds all single
<v Speaker 4>thing lock Alabama. Yeah, Oh damn, I did it again. Okay,
<v Speaker 4>apparently I'm going next. I would pick William. I think
<v Speaker 4>William would be someone who's going to need quite a
<v Speaker 4>bit of therapy time, as we've all pretty well established,
<v Speaker 4>and I think we've covered the reasons why, so I'll
<v Speaker 4>talk more about what I think he would need to do,
<v Speaker 4>because I think William's going to struggle a lot with grief,
<v Speaker 4>and I think what he's going to need to be
<v Speaker 4>able to do is work through the resentment he has
<v Speaker 4>towards his father for not being who he wanted him
<v Speaker 4>to be. I think this idea, I have kind of
<v Speaker 4>a spot a little bit through this podcast is quite
<v Speaker 4>empathic of Edward, and I think William would need to
<v Speaker 4>be able to move through his resentment to get to
<v Speaker 4>the point I'm at with it of seeing there's always
<v Speaker 4>a why, always, and it's always a big why or
<v Speaker 4>small one, but there's always one. And sometimes when people
<v Speaker 4>have a persistent, pervasive block on being able to see
<v Speaker 4>their own shit, it means that whatever they're showing you
<v Speaker 4>is a cover to what they went through that they
<v Speaker 4>don't want seen, and they no longer want to define them.
<v Speaker 4>People will really firmly seek to cover up their weaknesses,
<v Speaker 4>especially from their children, when they don't want something that
<v Speaker 4>wants to find them to continue doing so. The problem
<v Speaker 4>for William has likely been that his dad's persona is
<v Speaker 4>so big and needs to take up so much air
<v Speaker 4>that he probably wasn't seen, and he found v in
<v Speaker 4>when other kids are asking him.
<v Speaker 2>Did your dad really do that? Is that all really true?
<v Speaker 4>His value came from telling the truth and telling the
<v Speaker 4>real story, which becomes so pervasive in him that it
<v Speaker 4>becomes his career and he may experience an existential crisis
<v Speaker 4>not only when his own child is born and realizing
<v Speaker 4>that thing you were talking about Hannah, but on a
<v Speaker 4>more positive side of no parent wants their child to
<v Speaker 4>see them as anything other than the hero. I want
<v Speaker 4>to come home and have my kid throw her arms
<v Speaker 4>up and say Daddy's home, and not see what a
<v Speaker 4>roiling piece of shit I have been at some points
<v Speaker 4>in my life, just like everyone else, has done some
<v Speaker 4>shitty things, and my kid doesn't need to know that
<v Speaker 4>truth yet, that every one of us is the villain
<v Speaker 4>in somebody's story. She doesn't need to know that version
<v Speaker 4>of me because I killed that when she was born.
<v Speaker 4>At least the best I could go still fucked up.
<v Speaker 4>I'm a human, right Her mom and I get into arguments.
<v Speaker 4>I get in arguments with her. The best side of
<v Speaker 4>me does not always show up. But the version I
<v Speaker 4>would like her to see as often as possible is
<v Speaker 4>the version of me that's a superhero to her. While
<v Speaker 4>she's little enough that that's what she needs when she
<v Speaker 4>gets older, I need to adapt that and change that
<v Speaker 4>and show her more of the things that William didn't
<v Speaker 4>get right. William didn't get someone to show him at
<v Speaker 4>the vulnerable ages he needed. Nobody is a fucking superhero.
<v Speaker 4>Every one of us fucks up and teenagers need that
<v Speaker 4>guidance from parents that help them see mistakes are made
<v Speaker 4>and we need to learn from them. So for William,
<v Speaker 4>helping him work through the resentment, the anger, the points
<v Speaker 4>where he probably will blame his dad for his mistakes
<v Speaker 4>because dad didn't teach him what not to do, at
<v Speaker 4>least not directly enough that he understood it at the
<v Speaker 4>time he needed to understand it in the way he
<v Speaker 4>needed to understand it.
<v Speaker 2>I think what he makes.
<v Speaker 4>Peace with through his big Fish story and then seeing
<v Speaker 4>how he tells stories of his dad to his kid
<v Speaker 4>that his kid then tells and he doesn't correct them,
<v Speaker 4>is he's sorted through some of that resentment, but it's
<v Speaker 4>still there, and he's going to need to work on
<v Speaker 4>making sure that isn't the only story he tells. That
<v Speaker 4>maybe a story he needs to tell later when his
<v Speaker 4>kid is old enough to hear it. But while his
<v Speaker 4>kid is little telling stories of his family, he needs
<v Speaker 4>to be able to sort his own shit enough that
<v Speaker 4>he can tell his kid a story of his grandpa
<v Speaker 4>that's a fun, light story that makes his son pow
<v Speaker 4>to be part of their family. Going to be able
<v Speaker 4>to do that if he's dripping with resentment and anger
<v Speaker 4>from what he didn't get, so being able to help
<v Speaker 4>him process what he didn't get so he can make
<v Speaker 4>room for what he did, and that he can be
<v Speaker 4>mixed appreciative and upset at what he got and what
<v Speaker 4>he didn't get, and can hold space for both equally
<v Speaker 4>without needing one to dominate the space. The same way
<v Speaker 4>he saw his dad do his whole life, and I
<v Speaker 4>think the messaging I would be working on with him
<v Speaker 4>is understanding your dad did all those things for a
<v Speaker 4>reason we need to not repeat. Because whatever things your
<v Speaker 4>dad did that he told stories about covering up, you're
<v Speaker 4>telling the truth about other people's stories your whole life.
<v Speaker 4>And part of the reason of that is because dad
<v Speaker 4>did not tell you that truth, and we need to
<v Speaker 4>find a way to make peace with that. That that
<v Speaker 4>became important to you saw the value without it being
<v Speaker 4>a compulsion you have that's based on the obsession that
<v Speaker 4>I need to know the truth in order to be okay.
<v Speaker 4>I think you realized with telling that fish story of
<v Speaker 4>your dad, you don't have to know the truth to
<v Speaker 4>have heard the truth, to have been told the truth.
<v Speaker 2>But we have to make space for our.
<v Speaker 4>Anger that we didn't get what we needed when we
<v Speaker 4>needed it before we can see that. So you have
<v Speaker 4>to continually reprocess, recategorize, reform, britting you were talking about earlier.
<v Speaker 4>You have to be able to emotionally digest things, but
<v Speaker 4>sometimes you have to assign a new emotion to it
<v Speaker 4>to digest it in a different way. The value of
<v Speaker 4>therapist telling us things in different ways or thus that
<v Speaker 4>was you, Hanna that said that, but one of you
<v Speaker 4>were talking about that. Some of the value of therapy
<v Speaker 4>is that sometimes people can sit with you and tell
<v Speaker 4>you a story in a different way. Then you hear
<v Speaker 4>it and it penetrates your armor and you can feel
<v Speaker 4>a different way about it because it was reframed different.
<v Speaker 4>This needs to go through that same process so he
<v Speaker 4>can heal.
<v Speaker 6>So I think a term that I want to.
<v Speaker 1>A term I was hearing you not quite used, but
<v Speaker 1>I want to throw out there is dialectical thinking, like
<v Speaker 1>that's a big part of that work with William Wright
<v Speaker 1>is and I've done that when I've worked with people
<v Speaker 1>that have had not great relationships with their parents, and
<v Speaker 1>they kind of do that thing where honestly, sometimes they
<v Speaker 1>go to the other end, which is they're so empathy,
<v Speaker 1>they're trying to be so empathetic towards why their parent
<v Speaker 1>did the things they did to them, that they're like
<v Speaker 1>negating their experience.
<v Speaker 6>And so the dialectical thinking it.
<v Speaker 1>Allows you to be like, yeah, my dad maybe did
<v Speaker 1>the best he could and he still mistreated me, and
<v Speaker 1>he wasn't enough and he he hurt me, and how
<v Speaker 1>like you were saying, like, we get stuck in this
<v Speaker 1>binary idea that one of those messages has to like
<v Speaker 1>dominate the narrative. So if I have empathy for my parent,
<v Speaker 1>then it negates my experience of them, or if I
<v Speaker 1>really articulator, if I really in more extreme cases, if
<v Speaker 1>I identify my childhood experience with my parent as abuse,
<v Speaker 1>then I'm negating maybe the trauma they went through or
<v Speaker 1>why they were so angry and abusive all the time.
<v Speaker 1>And so a lot of that work that you're talking about,
<v Speaker 1>Ben is like teaching people to think dialectically that two
<v Speaker 1>things can multiple things can be true once, not just
<v Speaker 1>two things, and multiple things can be true once. Your
<v Speaker 1>dad could have been a very likable person and he
<v Speaker 1>wasn't good enough for like he wasn't what you needed.
<v Speaker 1>Something me and Hannah talked about when Riffy watched the
<v Speaker 1>movie together, is how part of that dialectical that William
<v Speaker 1>needs drop his head around is this kind of tails
<v Speaker 1>into what I'm going to go into is how do
<v Speaker 1>I make peace with a parent that everyone liked so
<v Speaker 1>much that I didn't and the mind fuck of that alone.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, And I'm not.
<v Speaker 4>I would never describe myself as a DBT oriented therapist,
<v Speaker 4>but dialectics is an ancient idea. It's a Greek word.
<v Speaker 4>Dialectical thinking is probably not language that I would default to,
<v Speaker 4>but it is an ancient idea that holds the idea
<v Speaker 4>that all of our parts we form have experienced something,
<v Speaker 4>and each of them forms a perspective, and all of
<v Speaker 4>them are valid because they're all part of us, all
<v Speaker 4>encoded through our senses. So multiple viewpoints of the same
<v Speaker 4>story can be true. Which one registers is going to
<v Speaker 4>be different depending on what we needed to learn from it.
<v Speaker 1>And also, to practice dialectical thinking, all you really have
<v Speaker 1>to do is substitute and where you would put butt
<v Speaker 1>when you're telling these stories to yourself to other people,
<v Speaker 1>and it's a good habit to use anyone listening. I
<v Speaker 1>used to work at a place where we were very
<v Speaker 1>into DBT, and so it was almost like a religion
<v Speaker 1>that all of us clinicians who work there, we like
<v Speaker 1>we were almost like trained out of saying butt and
<v Speaker 1>saying and instead. And I will admit that it does,
<v Speaker 1>it has and it still does, like change the way
<v Speaker 1>I think about things. And how now when I do
<v Speaker 1>catch myself saying but, it almost feels like ooh, that's
<v Speaker 1>not healthy, you know, switch it to and and it does.
<v Speaker 1>It's so interesting from like a seco linguistic perspective, how
<v Speaker 1>that little shift in a three letter word can really
<v Speaker 1>change the way that you think about something. Yep, it can,
<v Speaker 1>and the way you communicate and are heard by other
<v Speaker 1>people too. Like a butt carries a lot of power
<v Speaker 1>with ourselves and with other people. And that power is
<v Speaker 1>like we're canceling out something and the and allows both
<v Speaker 1>things to exist. And it's such a tiny linguistic change
<v Speaker 1>that carries a lot of power. And to the point
<v Speaker 1>that my clients, God love them, they now will catch
<v Speaker 1>themselves saying butt in sessions with me and they go
<v Speaker 1>and and I'm like, good job, I'm training them all.
<v Speaker 2>Well, this is also what you know.
<v Speaker 4>Our dear friend, cognitive scientist doctor Jordan from i SU
<v Speaker 4>would say when we were on the panel with him
<v Speaker 4>about Ted last So he made the point to that
<v Speaker 4>live audience, you should never say butt because of the
<v Speaker 4>psycholinguistics and kind of the inherent encoding we're all taught
<v Speaker 4>of don't shoot on yourself.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like once you say but, you're kind of canceling
<v Speaker 1>out whatever was said before the butt.
<v Speaker 4>Which means you're invalidating. Yeah, the validation you're providing and
<v Speaker 4>the person who's listening you is going to stop.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Why I wanted you and Hannah to go before me
<v Speaker 1>is because what I wanted to bring up is pretty supplemental.
<v Speaker 6>There isn't as we've talked about.
<v Speaker 1>It really only is two main characters, two fleshed out
<v Speaker 1>characters in this movie. And I figured, Hannah, you would
<v Speaker 1>do the family therapy part, and then I figured you
<v Speaker 1>Ben would want to do William. So what I wanted
<v Speaker 1>to add was a book that I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>it actually ever brought up on this podcast before, but
<v Speaker 1>this is the first time I'm like formally bringing it up,
<v Speaker 1>which is a book called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature
<v Speaker 1>Parents by lendsy Gibson, and it is an easy read.
<v Speaker 1>It's like one hundred some pages. It's not written academically,
<v Speaker 1>which I really appreciate. So what I like about it
<v Speaker 1>is it's very much written by a working clinician, and
<v Speaker 1>a lot of it's like testimonials and like anecdotal stories
<v Speaker 1>of her clients. But it's something that I think and
<v Speaker 1>something that I think would be really helpful for someone
<v Speaker 1>like William in that it kind of helps you figure
<v Speaker 1>out how to engage with deal with a parent that
<v Speaker 1>you can't compromise with, that you can't reach. And emotionally mature,
<v Speaker 1>I know, isn't the nicest term, and she does a
<v Speaker 1>good job in the book of articulating how emotionally immature
<v Speaker 1>isn't just like parents who are abusive are aggressive, but
<v Speaker 1>also in the way that we've been talking about Edward,
<v Speaker 1>which is someone who is kind of stunted. They have
<v Speaker 1>their own coping stuff that they get stuck in and
<v Speaker 1>you can't reach them, and sort of the main component
<v Speaker 1>of whether you have an emotionally immature parent is how
<v Speaker 1>lonely you feel, and how lonely you felt as a child,
<v Speaker 1>and how lonely you might you may still feel, even
<v Speaker 1>if you come from a family where everyone is quote
<v Speaker 1>unquote close, and so for William kind of we're saying before, like,
<v Speaker 1>when you have a parent that's so well liked and
<v Speaker 1>who probably does talk about you a lot and seems
<v Speaker 1>to be a family person, why do I still feel
<v Speaker 1>this way? I think this book could be able comfort
<v Speaker 1>for William, putting into words his experience, so I would
<v Speaker 1>I also like about the book is it has a
<v Speaker 1>lot of what actions you can take without holding your
<v Speaker 1>breath for the parent to change. You are only in
<v Speaker 1>control of yourself. You aren't in control of your parent.
<v Speaker 1>You can't make them change. You can try stuff. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>it would work, but it also could become a big
<v Speaker 1>mess and keep you stuck in a loop. But she
<v Speaker 1>talks a lot about how, like what are my boundaries?
<v Speaker 1>What are my objectives? If I'm going to go see
<v Speaker 1>my parents and I know that my dad can bait
<v Speaker 1>me into a fight, maybe my goal is to not
<v Speaker 1>get baited and to use coping skills instead, or to
<v Speaker 1>take a break, or to not drink or you know
<v Speaker 1>what I mean, Like, what's within my control? So that
<v Speaker 1>if I'm going to decide to stay in this parent's life,
<v Speaker 1>that it's as not unpleasant. What's the best it could be?
<v Speaker 1>Basically the best of a bad situation. I think that
<v Speaker 1>could be helpful for someone like William or anyone listening
<v Speaker 1>who feels like seen by what we've been talking about is.
<v Speaker 1>I really liked how accessible the book was, how example
<v Speaker 1>forward the book is, and how it does talk a
<v Speaker 1>lot about recentering our control in this situation.
<v Speaker 6>What can you let go?
<v Speaker 1>And not for your parents' benefit they might get the
<v Speaker 1>benefit of that, but for your benefit. Why are we
<v Speaker 1>banging our head against a wall waiting for it to
<v Speaker 1>be come adore?
<v Speaker 6>It's not.
<v Speaker 1>And if we still want to have these people in
<v Speaker 1>our lives, how do we want to go about that
<v Speaker 1>in a way where we're not like torturing ourselves and
<v Speaker 1>also accepting that they're never going to be like the
<v Speaker 1>fantasy that you have in your head about who they
<v Speaker 1>could be or their potential or whatever. So I just
<v Speaker 1>want to throw that book out there as like supplemental reading.
<v Speaker 1>I'll say it one more time. It's Adult Children of
<v Speaker 1>Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsey Gibson, and you can find
<v Speaker 1>it everywhere. I think we'll take one last break here
<v Speaker 1>and be back with final thoughts. All right, So back
<v Speaker 1>with final thoughts. I can go first. I really like
<v Speaker 1>this movie. I think this is the first time I've
<v Speaker 1>watched in a long time. I think I watched when
<v Speaker 1>it first came out. It's not my favorite Tim Burton movie,
<v Speaker 1>just because I like his more like whimsical, high concept movies.
<v Speaker 1>And I think I also was so like about Edward
<v Speaker 1>the first time I watched it too, So watching it
<v Speaker 1>again for the second time, like years later, I was
<v Speaker 1>really curious how I would feel. And I think because
<v Speaker 1>we're watching it for the podcast, I had my therapist
<v Speaker 1>hat on, and so I think it made it didn't
<v Speaker 1>help how I felt. Also already felt about Edward, kind
<v Speaker 1>of viewing him from the viewpoint as like a child therapist.
<v Speaker 1>But I would say, like, it's a very beautiful movie.
<v Speaker 1>It's a little emotionally manipulative, and that I wanted to
<v Speaker 1>cry at the end, even though I wasn't really invested
<v Speaker 1>in Edward. But I think it's like a classic movie
<v Speaker 1>if you like stuff like that, if you like Tim Burton.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if I'll ever seek it out again,
<v Speaker 1>but it's definitely something visually like maybe I would keep
<v Speaker 1>it on the background while I was doing other stuff
<v Speaker 1>around the house, so that's how I feel about Big Fish.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, I'll go next. I guess because I think this
<v Speaker 4>is a Hannah pick, and I think Hannah loves it.
<v Speaker 4>Watching this movie again, it's the first time I watched
<v Speaker 4>it in a why I definitely have watched it many times.
<v Speaker 2>I love this film.
<v Speaker 4>I think there's a lot of value in it about
<v Speaker 4>understanding family, understanding self, and realizing that resenting people for
<v Speaker 4>who they can't be can cause you to miss who
<v Speaker 4>they are and were, and realizing that people don't often
<v Speaker 4>tell the truth anyway. Expecting them to always tell you
<v Speaker 4>the exact truth of who they are, what their stories are,
<v Speaker 4>who they've ben can really invalidate and wall you off
<v Speaker 4>from having genuine connections with people. And sometimes just letting
<v Speaker 4>people have their thing and be their story song as
<v Speaker 4>it doesn't intrude on your validity is important. If their
<v Speaker 4>stories always have to make you less than that's crappy,
<v Speaker 4>and if everything becomes about them all the time, they
<v Speaker 4>need to take a look in the mirror and work
<v Speaker 4>on themselves. But this movie does do a beautiful job
<v Speaker 4>of realizing or helping kind of tell a story of
<v Speaker 4>parents are whole people.
<v Speaker 2>They had a whole life, just.
<v Speaker 4>Like anybody else in your life, and creating space for
<v Speaker 4>them to tell you which version of themself has produced
<v Speaker 4>the successful adult version that you know. But letting people
<v Speaker 4>kind of have their own tall tales and be a
<v Speaker 4>legend in their own life is a gift you can give,
<v Speaker 4>and this movie kind of reminds you of that. But
<v Speaker 4>it also has enough masterful storytelling that Tim Burton sneaks
<v Speaker 4>just a few things that I didn't catch until this
<v Speaker 4>time watching of like there's just a few things that
<v Speaker 4>tell the kernel of truth through shots, And I think
<v Speaker 4>it's a beautiful movie that deserves to be watched more
<v Speaker 4>than once throughout someone's life, because as we age and change,
<v Speaker 4>we're going to encounter this with our own parents.
<v Speaker 2>So I think it's a beautiful way to kind of
<v Speaker 2>examine that.
<v Speaker 5>I've loved this movie since the first time I saw it.
<v Speaker 5>I was also in the process of grieving people myself,
<v Speaker 5>and so being able to and experience and seeing the
<v Speaker 5>kind of end of life experience that you have with
<v Speaker 5>someone who is on hospice, and so being able to
<v Speaker 5>see William tell that story at the end really gave
<v Speaker 5>me hope that I did the best that I could
<v Speaker 5>with these people that I loved in my life. And
<v Speaker 5>so I love this movie and I and I haven't
<v Speaker 5>actually I haven't actually watched it in a long time.
<v Speaker 5>I don't really know why I always cry at the end.
<v Speaker 5>I've never watched this movie and I cried at the end.
<v Speaker 5>And also I love Ewan McGregor, so that always helps.
<v Speaker 3>But I just I really, I just really.
<v Speaker 5>Enjoyed this movie and I always have and I think
<v Speaker 5>and I didn't even notice the things that Ben are
<v Speaker 5>talking about. So now I'm definitely gonna watch it again
<v Speaker 5>and try and find the things that Ben are talking
<v Speaker 5>about because I've seen that movie way too many fucking
<v Speaker 5>times and not have noticed any of that shit. I mean,
<v Speaker 5>like I probably know the fucking dialogue to this film.
<v Speaker 5>Like I watched this film or on repeat for maybe
<v Speaker 5>like three years. So yeah, so I think it's something.
<v Speaker 5>It's just kind of a beautiful film. And I think
<v Speaker 5>that no matter where you are, what your experiences are,
<v Speaker 5>that you'll enjoy kind of seeing the fantastical parts of
<v Speaker 5>the story because it's really entertaining.
<v Speaker 4>It is it is really entertaining, It's beautiful, there's so
<v Speaker 4>much in it. Curious to hear what you think of
<v Speaker 4>it when you like rewatch it and catch those little things,
<v Speaker 4>because they really caught me when I was rewatching just
<v Speaker 4>some parts today, I was like, I see it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>the gold colonels, I see him, and it's fantastical. I
<v Speaker 4>also realized as you're telling that, realizing my own dad
<v Speaker 4>tells to has had some tall tales. That there's one
<v Speaker 4>I wanted to share real quick as there's a time
<v Speaker 4>where my brother's teacher had called my parents and like,
<v Speaker 4>you know, he's having some trouble with some of the
<v Speaker 4>other kids because he's talked about times his dad ate
<v Speaker 4>cuddlefish and snake and tried some other weird things. And
<v Speaker 4>my mom had to sit down to the teacher and
<v Speaker 4>be like, yeah, no, that's real.
<v Speaker 2>He did that.
<v Speaker 4>His father's in the Navy and once a year goes
<v Speaker 4>to Korea where they have strange foods to Americans. But
<v Speaker 4>he definitely has done all those things. That's all true,
<v Speaker 4>and the teachers like, oh so. Realizing sometimes the tall
<v Speaker 4>tales of life can also be true and things that
<v Speaker 4>make people like interesting about their family. I think it's
<v Speaker 4>important that people see that and reconsider the narratives, like
<v Speaker 4>you know, the world's a big place. People's parents have
<v Speaker 4>done a lot of things. Maybe don't immediately think kids
<v Speaker 4>are lying to tell a fantastical story. Maybe they're just
<v Speaker 4>telling when they were told and maybe that just me
<v Speaker 4>it was mostly true.
<v Speaker 1>Well, on that note, we will wrap up here as always.
<v Speaker 1>If you are wanting to find us and tell us
<v Speaker 1>the weird stories your parents told you growing up, you
<v Speaker 1>can email us at popcorn psychologygmail dot com. You can
<v Speaker 1>also find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok at popcorn Psychology,
<v Speaker 1>and like I said earlier, if you want to support us,
<v Speaker 1>you can monetarily by being a Patreon patron or by
<v Speaker 1>buying our merchantee public. You can also support us for
<v Speaker 1>free by leaving us a rating interview wherever you listen
<v Speaker 1>to podcasts. We always appreciate it, and everybody try to
<v Speaker 1>go out there and like, find your big fish.