Tron (1982) vs. War Games (1983): Part 2

<v Speaker 1>Greetings. Yesterday's name was interrupted, although primary goal has not
<v Speaker 1>yet been achieved.
<v Speaker 2>Solution is near.
<v Speaker 1>Game time elapsed thirty one hours, twelve minutest seconds festinated
<v Speaker 1>time remaining fifty two hours, seventeen minutes, ten second.
<v Speaker 2>What is the primary goal.
<v Speaker 1>To win the game?
<v Speaker 3>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 3>Be Serious podcast. We are here with part two of
<v Speaker 3>our Tron Versus Wargames series. Shall we play a game?
<v Speaker 4>I've got Gallagher that I've been paid to train myself on.
<v Speaker 4>I've got Space Paranoids, I've got Matrix Blaster. Those are
<v Speaker 4>Flynn games. Are you sitting comfortably then we'll begin.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, guys, if you haven't caught the first episode, I
<v Speaker 3>introduced Chad. He is a guy who specializes in the
<v Speaker 3>intersection between environmental conditions and national security. He has advised
<v Speaker 3>various universities. He has consulted with US departments and military ops.
<v Speaker 5>He's a super cool.
<v Speaker 3>Dude who loves eighties movies and music just like us,
<v Speaker 3>which I think is why he's here today.
<v Speaker 5>Chad, welcome back.
<v Speaker 2>Man, Thank you very much appreciate being here.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, so, the last time we were here, I mentioned
<v Speaker 3>that Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parks had this monumental, pivotal
<v Speaker 3>meeting with a guy who said, hey, have you.
<v Speaker 5>Seen computer games.
<v Speaker 3>You notice how similar they are to the NORAD screens
<v Speaker 3>and how those things might intersect. And that was a
<v Speaker 3>huge moment for them. And that guy that I mentioned
<v Speaker 3>was named Peter Schwartz. Peter Schwartz actually turns out is
<v Speaker 3>a very famous guy futurist. But after the show, Chad
<v Speaker 3>told me, Hey, I didn't want to interrupt you, but
<v Speaker 3>I know Peter, so tell us, tell us what you
<v Speaker 3>know about Peter Schwartz.
<v Speaker 2>Peter Schwartz originally worked for Rand Corporation, which itself was
<v Speaker 2>attached to the US Air Force and was a think
<v Speaker 2>tank for the US military to try to think about
<v Speaker 2>things like what would nuclear war be like. So all
<v Speaker 2>the ideas of wargames started at the Rand Corporation, and
<v Speaker 2>then Peter Schwartz and a few others started what was
<v Speaker 2>known as the Global Business Network that was associated with
<v Speaker 2>my work at the Department of Energy. So when he
<v Speaker 2>wrote one of the first papers for the Pentagon about
<v Speaker 2>intersection of climate change and national security, he met me
<v Speaker 2>a little while after that. Actually apologized to me because
<v Speaker 2>I was about to point out to him I was
<v Speaker 2>just some young guy right leading leading the steam that
<v Speaker 2>I was like, even, mister Schwartz, you're got a couple
<v Speaker 2>of things wrong here. Oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we're not experts on this. This is up to you. Now,
<v Speaker 2>this up to you. Now you take it, you take it, so,
<v Speaker 2>you know, really gracious. But yeah, we worked with all
<v Speaker 2>these futurists because I suppose that's part of my work myself.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we try to think of what will conditions
<v Speaker 2>be like in the future, what will technology look like,
<v Speaker 2>what will that effect have on the environment, and how
<v Speaker 2>to that all fit with national security and homeland security
<v Speaker 2>and just what people are trying to do.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think I saw something that you had done
<v Speaker 3>a few years ago, where you were talking about how
<v Speaker 3>they had in the nineties they had developed all of
<v Speaker 3>these rejections about Arctic conditions, and everybody had relied on
<v Speaker 3>those predictions, and then by the early two thousands, everybody
<v Speaker 3>just kind of said, well, these were all wrong and
<v Speaker 3>we have to throw them all out.
<v Speaker 2>Right. The models will only tell you what you programmed
<v Speaker 2>them to tell you, So if you don't get the models, right,
<v Speaker 2>or if you don't have the data. Right. Yeah, with
<v Speaker 2>the Arctic, they were measuring the wrong things. They were
<v Speaker 2>you know, you can get satellite photos of how much
<v Speaker 2>ice there is in the Arctic, but that's just extent,
<v Speaker 2>doesn't tell you the volume. So we were making policies
<v Speaker 2>based on conditions that we were hoping it was going
<v Speaker 2>to be a linear sort of relationship. Right, Well, tomorrow
<v Speaker 2>will be pretty much like yesterday, just a little bit
<v Speaker 2>more so. But no, things just started changing a lot
<v Speaker 2>more quickly.
<v Speaker 3>Well, and we've we're only able to look at what
<v Speaker 3>we have the ability to look at, right. That's another
<v Speaker 3>problem is that they will focus on something that we
<v Speaker 3>have the capacity to see and completely ignore something that
<v Speaker 3>they know is out there, but they have no ability
<v Speaker 3>to monitor it or see it.
<v Speaker 2>So the rooms felled the unknowns, right. But that relates
<v Speaker 2>to these movies too, right, because when you're looking in
<v Speaker 2>at early warning. For movies like Wargame, they have to
<v Speaker 2>rely upon what the radars are telling them or what
<v Speaker 2>the satellites are telling them, and if they don't see
<v Speaker 2>things from other places, they're not going to know about it. Right.
<v Speaker 2>So there's even a scene in the movie where one
<v Speaker 2>of the aids comes up to General Bearinger Barry Corbin's character, right,
<v Speaker 2>and says, General, we have this new information that the
<v Speaker 2>Russians have developed a new stealth bomber that can project
<v Speaker 2>its radar image seventy five miles away from God and
<v Speaker 2>where Jason are shadows now, right. So yeah, it's all
<v Speaker 2>based upon what we know. Is just sort of what
<v Speaker 2>we know, and that makes it really tough to sort
<v Speaker 2>of simulate things that that can happen in the future.
<v Speaker 2>So we're sort of basing everything according to, you know,
<v Speaker 2>our own assumptions and our own understanding of everything.
<v Speaker 3>So I got a couple of practical questions. First, in
<v Speaker 3>the real world, do they call them war games?
<v Speaker 2>They do.
<v Speaker 3>They don't just call them simulations. They don't get offended
<v Speaker 3>at the term war games.
<v Speaker 2>Well, if you're working with people who aren't in the military,
<v Speaker 2>then they don't necessarily like war games as much as simulations.
<v Speaker 2>But simulations tends to suggest that it's computerized, whereas wargames
<v Speaker 2>can be pen and paper kind of stuff. And that's
<v Speaker 2>a lot of what I've done in the past is
<v Speaker 2>just really simplified sort of war games. But yeah, they'll
<v Speaker 2>call them war games. There's a lot of terminology that
<v Speaker 2>actually picked up from that movie. Even the term firewall
<v Speaker 2>was picked up from war games, that no one used
<v Speaker 2>that popularly until after the movie. Can we invade the
<v Speaker 2>deep logic?
<v Speaker 4>Keep hitting a damn firewall?
<v Speaker 2>Wants to play a game?
<v Speaker 4>Then play it? Do they call it whopper?
<v Speaker 2>Only a burger king.
<v Speaker 3>I just got to say this real quick, and I'm
<v Speaker 3>kind of going off. I'm going off topic, but I
<v Speaker 3>mentioned all I mentioned a great deal of your experience.
<v Speaker 3>You've also written some books. You've also got a role
<v Speaker 3>playing game.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I write for role playing games. This is what
<v Speaker 2>I did as a teenager. So for those in the
<v Speaker 2>real nerd world of role playing games. Yeah, yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>grew up in Wisconsin, so that's where gen Con was,
<v Speaker 2>which was the biggest and that's where Dungeons of Dragons created.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I got picked up when I was fifteen as a
<v Speaker 2>writer for one of these companies because they all thought
<v Speaker 2>I looked older. They all thought I was in grad
<v Speaker 2>school and I wasn't about to crack them and go guys,
<v Speaker 2>I you know I can work for you, but I
<v Speaker 2>haven't graduated in high school yet.
<v Speaker 5>I have to get a ride.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'll show up to your party, but my mom
<v Speaker 2>will have to pick me up afterwards.
<v Speaker 5>So so how many of these?
<v Speaker 3>I mean, the one that I saw was the Broken
<v Speaker 3>Arrow Chernobyl. What other ones have you got out there?
<v Speaker 2>Well, that's for called Culu, Right, I'm really especialist from
<v Speaker 2>pen Dragon, which is Arthuriance King Arthur. And I will
<v Speaker 2>tell you guys that back in the eighties. Maybe it's
<v Speaker 2>different now, but if you were a real, real expert
<v Speaker 2>in Arthurian romance literature in junior high, it did not
<v Speaker 2>help you with girls at all. Years later, all that
<v Speaker 2>experience was worthwhile because, Yeah, a lot of the experience
<v Speaker 2>I got from role playing games worked into how to
<v Speaker 2>actually construct wargames, because the whole idea of wargames is
<v Speaker 2>can you make the scenario believable? And if you're basing
<v Speaker 2>it on something that's already there. So the first scene
<v Speaker 2>in the movie Wargames, right, it's a drill and they
<v Speaker 2>don't know it, but it's all based on what they've
<v Speaker 2>been trained to do already, right, So they take it
<v Speaker 2>completely seriously and are probably pretty shaken up afterwards when
<v Speaker 2>they realized that that was only a drill. Now, if
<v Speaker 2>you create something a whole clot that's a lot tougher because,
<v Speaker 2>just like you said, you take to a simulation what
<v Speaker 2>you bring with you. So it's just like you guys,
<v Speaker 2>remember an empire strikes back when Luke is on Degoba
<v Speaker 2>and just before he goes into the cave where he
<v Speaker 2>has this fight with a sort of Darth Vader that
<v Speaker 2>turns out to be himself. Right, But before he goes
<v Speaker 2>into the cave, he asked Yoda what's in there? And
<v Speaker 2>Yoda replies, only what you take with you. Right. So
<v Speaker 2>when we design wargames, it's always based upon what are
<v Speaker 2>the participants going to get out of this, What do
<v Speaker 2>they need to know, and what do they value the
<v Speaker 2>most so that they can suspend disbelief and then think
<v Speaker 2>that this is actually real. Right, They'll feel that it's real,
<v Speaker 2>they'll feel that it's consequential.
<v Speaker 4>So everybody wint a gun and another guy and say
<v Speaker 4>turn the key, sir.
<v Speaker 2>No. But I did have a war game. This was
<v Speaker 2>spring twenty seventeen in Kosovo. I had to cut it
<v Speaker 2>short because it was starting to get it was potentially
<v Speaker 2>getting violent, and students who normally would be really quiet
<v Speaker 2>and just really good students, but they were taking it
<v Speaker 2>so seriously, and partly because part of the scenario dealt
<v Speaker 2>with refugees, and if you were that age in Kosovo,
<v Speaker 2>some of your first memories were being a refugee during
<v Speaker 2>the ninety nine war. So it hit all the buttons
<v Speaker 2>for them, and then they took it completely seriously. That's
<v Speaker 2>what's really important, and they touch upon it in these
<v Speaker 2>movies too, Right, is that in wargames they take it
<v Speaker 2>seriously because there are consequences and because this already fits
<v Speaker 2>with what they believe and to think differently. Right the
<v Speaker 2>last scene in the movie where Joshua suddenly has to
<v Speaker 2>realize the futility of all this in reality, that can
<v Speaker 2>take decades, right to go through all the war games,
<v Speaker 2>a human war game to retrain your organization, you know,
<v Speaker 2>if it's like the US military, and there are examples
<v Speaker 2>of this in the past that can take ages and ages.
<v Speaker 2>But they're just hoping that maybe if you computerize that
<v Speaker 2>and say, you know, number of players zero, maybe maybe
<v Speaker 2>you can do it in a couple of minutes while
<v Speaker 2>you're working out all the all the potential simulated nuclear attacks.
<v Speaker 2>And I think Tron does it a bit too, although there,
<v Speaker 2>it's a little bit different because like when Flynn goes
<v Speaker 2>into the computer, he knows he's in the computer, he
<v Speaker 2>knows he's somewhere different.
<v Speaker 5>Alan, where did you hear that name? Well, that's your name,
<v Speaker 5>isn't it the name of my user?
<v Speaker 2>Right? And he's just trying to get the information about
<v Speaker 2>Dillinger and get back out, which is the kind of
<v Speaker 2>classic Disney fantasy, you know, quest and so forth. War
<v Speaker 2>Games was a little scarier just because remember there was
<v Speaker 2>that one line where Matthew Broderick asks is this real
<v Speaker 2>or is this just a game?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>And the computer pauses for a second and comes back
<v Speaker 2>and says, what's the difference? And when it's computer controlled,
<v Speaker 2>that's that's chilling because the computer doesn't care. And that's
<v Speaker 2>why you always need the humans there.
<v Speaker 3>So real world, is there ever a situation where the
<v Speaker 3>participants do not know that it is a simulation, Like
<v Speaker 3>at the beginning of War Games, where I mean John
<v Speaker 3>Spencer's character, I mean he's sweating bullets.
<v Speaker 5>They think this is really happening.
<v Speaker 3>He's pointing, Michael Madsen's pointing the gun to get this
<v Speaker 3>job done.
<v Speaker 5>They had no idea that it was a simulation. Does
<v Speaker 5>that really happen?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that can happen, and sometimes it can have bad
<v Speaker 2>consequences too. So T eighteen, State of Hawaii carries out
<v Speaker 2>and emerges drill, unscheduled, unannounced drill about their emergency announcement system.
<v Speaker 2>But one of the guys working doesn't know that it's
<v Speaker 2>really a drill. He thinks it's real, right, And one
<v Speaker 2>of the supervisors had gone off script and even said, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>there's a missile in coming from North Korea. This is
<v Speaker 2>not a drill. So he actually doesn't do the drill stuff.
<v Speaker 2>He goes through the extra screens to send out an
<v Speaker 2>emergency alert, and the whole state of Hawaii everyone gets
<v Speaker 2>an alert on their phone saying there's a missile income
<v Speaker 2>in and of course they don't know that it's not real. Yeah.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, wow.
<v Speaker 4>You know, you mentioned a couple of things there that
<v Speaker 4>I wanted to talk about when we got to the
<v Speaker 4>movie portion of this discussion. So you talked about how
<v Speaker 4>writing role player games is not great at getting girls
<v Speaker 4>in high school. The moment when Matthew Broderick and Ali
<v Speaker 4>Sheety are starting their relationship is such a really neat
<v Speaker 4>moment in the movie because it's that perfect moment where
<v Speaker 4>that you're shifting from the friend zone to the relationship zone,
<v Speaker 4>and it's that moment where you like touching hands but
<v Speaker 4>not really holding hands. Is this happening? Are we really
<v Speaker 4>moving this direction?
<v Speaker 5>You know?
<v Speaker 4>And they're feeling each other out for are we boyfriend
<v Speaker 4>and girlfriend? That type of thing, And to have the
<v Speaker 4>world go into disarray at the exact moment you're trying
<v Speaker 4>to figure out if you've got a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
<v Speaker 4>I just found that moment neat this time around in
<v Speaker 4>the movie that I'd kind of forgotten about.
<v Speaker 3>I'm I was going to be on TV next week.
<v Speaker 2>Whoops. It was such great chemistry between Ali Sheety and
<v Speaker 2>Matthew Broderick there, Yeah, because because it's it's just sort
<v Speaker 2>of unspoken, especially when they're when they're in the bedroom
<v Speaker 2>the first time, right and they start the game. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he scenes obviously trying to show off and change your grade. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I could be useful for you. But but it was
<v Speaker 2>more than that. Later.
<v Speaker 3>That was the first scene because obviously they were very
<v Speaker 3>nervous after Martin Bresk got fired. They were worried about
<v Speaker 3>their jobs as well, and so that was the first
<v Speaker 3>scene that John Badam filmed with them, and he said
<v Speaker 3>that we did take after take after take, and they
<v Speaker 3>were just so stiff. And he said, I realized in
<v Speaker 3>reading this that there was that if I was a
<v Speaker 3>kid who had the capacity to change my school grade
<v Speaker 3>by using a computer, and I was showing it to
<v Speaker 3>a girl I liked, I would be freaking out and ecstatic.
<v Speaker 3>I wouldn't be all dark and mysterious. And he said
<v Speaker 3>he had to shoot this thing over and over again
<v Speaker 3>to get them to finally relax and have fun. But
<v Speaker 3>once they once they broke through, they really did. They
<v Speaker 3>Their chemistry was spot on.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and then you mentioned the moment where she traps
<v Speaker 4>him with her legs. Yeah, there's some sexual overture there
<v Speaker 4>that I didn't catch in the fifth grade or whatever.
<v Speaker 4>It's just kind of teasing, you know, flirtation, but it
<v Speaker 4>catches that moment where you like, you're trapping me with
<v Speaker 4>your legs right around my crotch.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but then you mom intervenes to yell at you
<v Speaker 2>and come down. That's right, take out the garbage.
<v Speaker 4>Your little friend can stay for dinner.
<v Speaker 5>Her eye roll and laugh is so it is. She's
<v Speaker 5>so cute.
<v Speaker 4>The moment when they're in class together and the teacher
<v Speaker 4>says he's talking about asexual reproduction, and he leans over
<v Speaker 4>and tells her a joke and she starts laughing, and
<v Speaker 4>the teacher's like, all right, lightman, what is it? Can
<v Speaker 4>you tell me who had the idea first for asexual reproduction?
<v Speaker 2>All right, lightening, maybe you could tell us who first
<v Speaker 2>suggested the idea of reproduction without sex?
<v Speaker 4>Your wife. He delivers it spot on number one. But
<v Speaker 4>when you listen to the movie, you can tell there's
<v Speaker 4>tons of adults laughing in the background, and that was
<v Speaker 4>a spontaneous moment and a lot of people laughed out loud.
<v Speaker 5>In the crew. Funny moment.
<v Speaker 4>That's great, By the way, the moment at the end
<v Speaker 4>of the movie. I wanted to talk about the tic
<v Speaker 4>tac toe moment, the climax of the movie, the learning
<v Speaker 4>that is going on right there by Joshua. When I
<v Speaker 4>watched it this time around, you know, they put tick
<v Speaker 4>tactoe up and they hope that he'll learn quickly.
<v Speaker 5>Seems like he should have.
<v Speaker 4>If all he does all day long is play computer
<v Speaker 4>simulation games, wouldn't that be something that he would already know.
<v Speaker 5>He'd never played himself, okay, playing.
<v Speaker 2>But I had this idea. Why why didn't Falcon think
<v Speaker 2>of that? Why didn't Falcon at some point in his
<v Speaker 2>career think, hey, Joshua, you should play yourself.
<v Speaker 4>He thinks about about two seconds when the whole thing's on.
<v Speaker 3>The line, I'm gonna get on my phone and ask
<v Speaker 3>chat GPT to play itself a game of tictac Co
<v Speaker 3>and see what happens.
<v Speaker 4>Zero players.
<v Speaker 5>The only winning move is not to play. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I do want to mention for that last scene the
<v Speaker 2>computer graphics. I mean, that was sort of simple vector graphics.
<v Speaker 2>They're only using three colors. That still I think holds
<v Speaker 2>up today. I mean, the whole visual of seeing all
<v Speaker 2>the all the simulations suddenly play out all at once
<v Speaker 2>and all these sort of bright circles with nuclear impacts
<v Speaker 2>were that that really didn't age all that well. I
<v Speaker 2>mean maybe younger people look at it and they'll say, oh,
<v Speaker 2>that that looks really cheesy, right, But I think that
<v Speaker 2>was pretty remarkable. And I did want to give Badam
<v Speaker 2>credit for that because they spent so much money on
<v Speaker 2>that set. They spent like a million dollars on that
<v Speaker 2>nor Read set to the point where the Norrid officers
<v Speaker 2>when they saw the movie went back, why does an
<v Speaker 2>our control room look as good as that? But I
<v Speaker 2>also think Badam, I mean Badam had been in the
<v Speaker 2>Air Force, and he was such a big fan of
<v Speaker 2>Stanley Kubrick. And if you look back at a movie
<v Speaker 2>like two thousand and one, two thousand and one, you know,
<v Speaker 2>Kubrick was so good at again as a futurist of
<v Speaker 2>thinking what will computer interfaces look like? And if you
<v Speaker 2>go back at that movie and you'll see all these
<v Speaker 2>liquid crystal flat touch displays, you know, stuff that didn't
<v Speaker 2>actually exist for decades. And you compare that to any movie,
<v Speaker 2>any other science fiction movie up until about the mid nineties,
<v Speaker 2>right where you take like Mother from the movie Alien,
<v Speaker 2>which just like so antiquated nowadays, right, But I think
<v Speaker 2>it was part of that influence, and so he actually
<v Speaker 2>influenced what Norad. Nor Ad control room looks more like
<v Speaker 2>the Wargames movie today than it did back then.
<v Speaker 4>Hey, not only that, Not only that President Reagan watched
<v Speaker 4>Wargames at Camp David, like the day it came out,
<v Speaker 4>and the next day at the meeting with the chiefs
<v Speaker 4>of Staff, he's like, hey, guys, can people break into
<v Speaker 4>our computer system and they realized, hey, this is actually
<v Speaker 4>a vulnerability to the United States. This movie impacted the
<v Speaker 4>actual defense of the United States.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, so the cybersecurity defense really really took a
<v Speaker 2>step up with this movie. I'm not sure if the
<v Speaker 2>whole hacking community was happy about that.
<v Speaker 4>But all they need to do is type in the
<v Speaker 4>word pencil and they can get ready.
<v Speaker 5>In no problem.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they were really relying upon a lot of the
<v Speaker 2>real hackers for technical expertise, but it's still had to
<v Speaker 2>be a movie, so they couldn't go through all the
<v Speaker 2>login screens and you know what it would actually take
<v Speaker 2>to get into the Heights Cool telnet. Otherwise it was
<v Speaker 2>it was fairly accurate.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm trying to think of situations that are similar.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think, I mean, and probably they would be
<v Speaker 3>kept secret at this point anyway, But I don't think
<v Speaker 3>that I've heard of a situation where someone is hacked
<v Speaker 3>into the government's computer system and caused some real trouble.
<v Speaker 3>I kind of remember a few years ago, maybe five
<v Speaker 3>six years ago, the movie The Interview, the Seth Rogan movie,
<v Speaker 3>where it was the idea was that Korea had hacked
<v Speaker 3>into something and was they were going to like bomb
<v Speaker 3>the theaters that were that were showing this movie because
<v Speaker 3>it was a strong anti North Korea movie. But it
<v Speaker 3>turns out it was just a disgruntled employee from Sony.
<v Speaker 5>Do you remember who had hacked into it?
<v Speaker 3>Now, that's that's the kind of big scale hack thing
<v Speaker 3>that I remember from the recent past. But are you
<v Speaker 3>aware of chat Are you aware of any like big
<v Speaker 3>hacks that have occurred? Well?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean the Chinese government hacked into the Office
<v Speaker 2>of Personnel Management for the US government and basically stole
<v Speaker 2>the identities of every American. I mean potentially every American
<v Speaker 2>who had a security clearance, which is not something the
<v Speaker 2>US government likes to talk about a whole lot, but
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's out there. It happened. So you're talking
<v Speaker 2>about digital identities, you know in tron it's also possible
<v Speaker 2>to go in and steal those and for people to
<v Speaker 2>have those information. The same thing happened with some of
<v Speaker 2>the credit agencies like Experience, right, and all that information
<v Speaker 2>had been stolen. But a lot of the back doors
<v Speaker 2>these days look a little different, right, It's not just
<v Speaker 2>the sort of one person sitting there hacking in and
<v Speaker 2>oftentimes these are done by worms or you know. So
<v Speaker 2>there was just in the news there was a Russian
<v Speaker 2>worm that was called Snake that was finally shut down
<v Speaker 2>and been operating for years. There was one called Solar Winds,
<v Speaker 2>which had compromised a lot of US government computers to
<v Speaker 2>the point where they don't even know exactly what was taken.
<v Speaker 2>A number of years ago, you had not Petya, which
<v Speaker 2>the Russians had written to try to take out hospitals
<v Speaker 2>in Ukraine. This is about twenty twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen,
<v Speaker 2>but turns out it spread because you can't exactly tell
<v Speaker 2>a worm where to go, and it ended up knocking
<v Speaker 2>out a lot of the global logistics companies for a while,
<v Speaker 2>so Federal express and ups caused billions of dollars of
<v Speaker 2>damage for those companies. So yeah, these things do happen.
<v Speaker 2>And a little more cinematically, just two months ago, there
<v Speaker 2>were hackers that broke into Russian state TV and basically
<v Speaker 2>started a nuclear alert, told everyone that a missile was
<v Speaker 2>in coming, take cover, and so a lot of TV
<v Speaker 2>viewers in Moscow and Stutlosk saw that, and then the
<v Speaker 2>Russian government had to quickly fall up and say no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>that we were just kidding. We're just kidding, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And I didn't see who actually hacked did the hacking there,
<v Speaker 2>but a lot of creative hackers in Ukraine. A lot
<v Speaker 2>of Ukrainian hackers actually worked for the Russian FSB before
<v Speaker 2>the war, usually not willingly. FSB would usually come up
<v Speaker 2>to hackers and say, hey, guys, we know who you are,
<v Speaker 2>we know what you do. We're we're going to just
<v Speaker 2>keep letting you do what you do, but you know,
<v Speaker 2>just don't attack the Russian government. And sometime we're going
<v Speaker 2>to come up and ask you for a favor or two,
<v Speaker 2>and if you ever tell on us, we'll expose you
<v Speaker 2>to the Ukrainian authorities or the FBI or whoever else.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, there's plenty of that that goes on. But no, no,
<v Speaker 2>the government and corporations don't like to talk about it
<v Speaker 2>very much because it's bad for business.
<v Speaker 4>It's awesome and scary all at the same time. We
<v Speaker 4>have doctor chadbriggs On here to give us the behind
<v Speaker 4>the scenes stuff on actual war games and these crazy
<v Speaker 4>incidents that happened in history and the time we almost
<v Speaker 4>got our titslit up by Russia in nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 4>And I'm here to tell you that the tunnel that
<v Speaker 4>they used in the movie War Games, they actually.
<v Speaker 3>Used in Back to the Future Part two. They also
<v Speaker 3>used it in Who Framed Rout Your Rabbit?
<v Speaker 4>There you go, that's what I'm famous.
<v Speaker 5>Famous tunnel.
<v Speaker 4>It's at a park in Los Angeles.
<v Speaker 5>Have you been there? Nope? All right, put it on
<v Speaker 5>the to do list, yep.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, can we talk about the Tron video game for
<v Speaker 4>a second?
<v Speaker 5>Do it?
<v Speaker 4>Okay, I've got some pretty cool stuff on this all right?
<v Speaker 5>Excited?
<v Speaker 4>So in nineteen eighty two, bally Midway released the Tron
<v Speaker 4>video game. But in nineteen eighty one, Disney went to
<v Speaker 4>bally Midway and said, hey, you want to make a
<v Speaker 4>game for this movie coming out. Here's the deal. It's
<v Speaker 4>fall of nineteen eighty one. We got to have it
<v Speaker 4>by summer of nineteen eighty two, so you better get
<v Speaker 4>on it right this second. Well, this guy named Bill
<v Speaker 4>Adams was the programmer. He almost didn't take the job
<v Speaker 4>because it was such a tight window. They wanted him
<v Speaker 4>to play six different games inside the arcade game, but
<v Speaker 4>because of the time crunch, we only got four.
<v Speaker 5>Right, So you get.
<v Speaker 4>The light cycles, which is super fun. You get the
<v Speaker 4>battle tanks, which is similar to like.
<v Speaker 5>Combat and Atari exactly.
<v Speaker 4>You get where you fight the spiders or the grid bugs,
<v Speaker 4>and then you've got the part where you destroy the
<v Speaker 4>MCU that's rotating through and each time you level up
<v Speaker 4>it gets a little bit harder, a little bit faster,
<v Speaker 4>a little more tanks, and is tremendous amount of fun.
<v Speaker 4>Another game you allude to earlier, the discs of Tron,
<v Speaker 4>came out in nineteen eighty three, about eighteen months after
<v Speaker 4>the movie came out, but that was during the great
<v Speaker 4>video game crash of nineteen eighty three, so it did
<v Speaker 4>not do as well. I remember playing this game like
<v Speaker 4>you're not even talking about. It was actually a like
<v Speaker 4>a full embodied game where you sit and you have
<v Speaker 4>a surround sound and playing a disc war against a
<v Speaker 4>different guy. The Tron video game made forty five million
<v Speaker 4>dollars in quarters, which was more than the movie itself.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, they they did everything right. The outside of
<v Speaker 3>the game had all of the lights and lines from
<v Speaker 3>the movie that just lit it up more than virtually.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you just think about games like that are great,
<v Speaker 3>like Galaga, Donkey Kong and mizpac Man and all of
<v Speaker 3>these other games. Great games, but the cabinet was all
<v Speaker 3>pretty much the same, with just a different picture posted
<v Speaker 3>on the side.
<v Speaker 5>Right.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but the Tron game, you had a backlit Tron
<v Speaker 3>logo up at the top. You had all of these
<v Speaker 3>computer lines going through. You had a very shiny display
<v Speaker 3>in front of a unique gaming system.
<v Speaker 5>Because what o their games?
<v Speaker 3>Did you get both aviator style joystick buttons and a
<v Speaker 3>spin knob?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>I mean you got spin knobs on some and joysticks
<v Speaker 3>on the other, but not both of them together at
<v Speaker 3>the same time that you have to use in conjunction.
<v Speaker 3>Plus you've got a trigger on the joystick.
<v Speaker 4>I mean it was plus we talked about earlier the
<v Speaker 4>fantastic soundtrack. You're getting Wendy Carlos blown at your ears
<v Speaker 4>every time you play Tronto, and it was awesome.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I'm gonna use that opportunity to segue into Wendy Carlos.
<v Speaker 5>Okay, So Wendy Carlos. You mentioned I think in.
<v Speaker 3>Our last episode that she had she'd have been involved
<v Speaker 3>with the shining, she'd have been involved what was the
<v Speaker 3>other movie, oh, Twork Orange. Yeah, so you remember the
<v Speaker 3>soundtrack from those movies all very heavy on electronic style music.
<v Speaker 3>She was a pioneer in the field. She put out
<v Speaker 3>an album I think in maybe in the sixties. Even
<v Speaker 3>it was a computerized synthesizer version of Bach music, which
<v Speaker 3>was unheard of at the time. I mean, people playing
<v Speaker 3>with computer music were making beeps and bops like you're
<v Speaker 3>surrounded by eighteen different computer games. She took it and
<v Speaker 3>played branden Berg concerto. I mean, it was amazing what
<v Speaker 3>she did, which is why she got involved with the
<v Speaker 3>Shining and why she got involved with blockwork Orange. You know,
<v Speaker 3>again Stanley Kubrick seeing the future of entertainment, but you're
<v Speaker 3>on it. But she had been trained as a classical composer, like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I'm good at making electronic music, but I also can
<v Speaker 3>create real music, and that's.
<v Speaker 5>What she got the opportunity to do with Tron.
<v Speaker 3>The only problem is they gave her two days to
<v Speaker 3>come up with both, and she had this intention to
<v Speaker 3>have of you know, living orchestra music for the real
<v Speaker 3>world with the electronic music or the computer world. And
<v Speaker 3>she's having a cram all of this into a couple
<v Speaker 3>of days. So ultimately you get a bit of overlap
<v Speaker 3>because she.
<v Speaker 5>Had to go in and fix problems that.
<v Speaker 3>Occurred with the live music by sampling in computer music
<v Speaker 3>to overcome mistakes where the microphone is too far away whatever,
<v Speaker 3>and what you get. I mean, it's just amazing that
<v Speaker 3>she accomplished this in such a short amount of time,
<v Speaker 3>because it is, I would say again one of the
<v Speaker 3>most memorable aspects.
<v Speaker 5>Of the environment.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I think the music with the visuals was just
<v Speaker 2>so intoxicating that I just didn't even pay attention to
<v Speaker 2>the story until I don't know, years and years later,
<v Speaker 2>and it was, you know, okay, well, evil guy in
<v Speaker 2>a three piece suit, I don't care about that, but
<v Speaker 2>wells to the music right, right, right right, and tying
<v Speaker 2>it into the arcade, right, because all the other arcade
<v Speaker 2>music up until that point was just sort of bells
<v Speaker 2>and whistles kind of stopped right and you'd get some
<v Speaker 2>things that you could remember, like the Donkey kongt I
<v Speaker 2>personally think that that influenced a lot of later computer
<v Speaker 2>games to this day. Where you get the music track
<v Speaker 2>is so important, you know, and computer companies invest a
<v Speaker 2>lot into making sure that they get the music right.
<v Speaker 4>And like I said, anytime I entered the arcade, but
<v Speaker 4>your ears out tron is in the back corner because
<v Speaker 4>I can hear Wendy Carlos.
<v Speaker 5>Following my ears yep to the soundtrack yep. Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So with War Games, composer was a guy named Arthur Rubinstein.
<v Speaker 3>He'd done a great many shows before he ended up
<v Speaker 3>doing Stakeout, which you know one of your favorites. Love Stakeout,
<v Speaker 3>did The Nick of Time and a few others. I
<v Speaker 3>told Jason when I was watching this. When I started
<v Speaker 3>the movie, I was like, Okay, this this movie is
<v Speaker 3>kind of going to be stuck in the eighties and
<v Speaker 3>it's going to be kind of forgettable because he's got
<v Speaker 3>a eighties style synthesizer playing. But what happens once they
<v Speaker 3>get into the full thick of the adventure he moves
<v Speaker 3>into frustration. And I told Jason, I think it's on
<v Speaker 3>par with John Williams. Just think about how many times
<v Speaker 3>you have a camera rotating around the whopper computer that
<v Speaker 3>I mean, literally nothing is happening except lights are going off,
<v Speaker 3>but because you have that intense music behind it, you
<v Speaker 3>are petrified that the bombs are about to fall, right.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it is just so well done. Now they
<v Speaker 3>also enlisted the help of several music artists to come
<v Speaker 3>help them with this movie, but it ended up being
<v Speaker 3>bad timing because once they had developed their whole library
<v Speaker 3>of songs to pick from, they get a new president
<v Speaker 3>of the studio who meets with them and he's like, oh, no, songs,
<v Speaker 3>they don't ever help a movie. And John Badam's like,
<v Speaker 3>Saturday Night Fever. God, I don't know if you remember
<v Speaker 3>it or not, it's one of my movies and pretty
<v Speaker 3>important to have the beg's on the soundtrack on that one.
<v Speaker 4>First of all, that guy is dead wrong. Obviously, soundtracks
<v Speaker 4>in the eighties were humongous business, huge, but you're talking
<v Speaker 4>to the guy who directed Sadaight.
<v Speaker 3>Fever, right, we don't need any songs coslutely. So they
<v Speaker 3>had to scramble, and he Arthur Rubinstein had to come
<v Speaker 3>up with more music to fill the spots that they
<v Speaker 3>had planned to put popular music in. And so he's
<v Speaker 3>he's thinking, Okay, well what do I do here? You
<v Speaker 3>know what am I going to stick in this scenario?
<v Speaker 3>And he says, how about a harmonica? So the harmonica
<v Speaker 3>that's playing whenever you see John Wood, whenever you see
<v Speaker 3>Stephen fulcan flying the pterodactyl around. That is last minute,
<v Speaker 3>let's throw it together. Here you go, and it's one
<v Speaker 3>of the most memorable sounds from the movie.
<v Speaker 4>Hey listen, that guy did a great job, that composer,
<v Speaker 4>and the music is spot on. But I would like
<v Speaker 4>to visit the alternate universe where we get like the
<v Speaker 4>Jay Giles band playing a song called wargames or something
<v Speaker 4>like that. Yeah, you know, I get a couple of
<v Speaker 4>popular songs. Nineteen eighty three is MTV huge? Be kind
<v Speaker 4>of fun at least.
<v Speaker 2>Closing credit by Duran Duram.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. Yes, let's let's talk for a moment about what
<v Speaker 4>doesn't work for you guys on these movies.
<v Speaker 2>If I could start with tron, I think, like I said,
<v Speaker 2>maybe I mentioned in the last episode, the story just
<v Speaker 2>was a little convoluted. Oh that is visible, let's grow
<v Speaker 2>beyond itself, extend into the realm of the invisible, right,
<v Speaker 2>And it was kind of hard for people to follow.
<v Speaker 2>And I think back then it was almost impossible for
<v Speaker 2>people to follow, you know, because you're talking about these
<v Speaker 2>abstract ideas of apps and users who are really the
<v Speaker 2>programmers and the sort of master control. And as a
<v Speaker 2>kid watching it, I'm just like what Glynn already lives
<v Speaker 2>in an apartment above a video arcade. What more does
<v Speaker 2>he want? Right?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, girls taking his sweaty shirt from him and telling
<v Speaker 3>him they'll catch up with him later.
<v Speaker 4>It's all in the risks, Glynn.
<v Speaker 6>How'd you know.
<v Speaker 2>It the movie when he got the high score on
<v Speaker 2>his own video game? Right? And then one thing that
<v Speaker 2>just kind of bothered me when I watched it again
<v Speaker 2>was that at the end, you know, Jeff Bridges, he
<v Speaker 2>gets to Master Control and he gets the proof that
<v Speaker 2>Dillinger had stolen his programs, and he prints it out
<v Speaker 2>on a dot matrix back in the real world, and
<v Speaker 2>that's enough.
<v Speaker 5>What that's it.
<v Speaker 4>That's all the game over.
<v Speaker 5>There's no way to fake this.
<v Speaker 2>No no, of course, which completely goes against what we
<v Speaker 2>all understand now, which is if it's digitalized, you can
<v Speaker 2>fake it, right, and just having a print out doesn't
<v Speaker 2>mean anything. In terms of war games, I would say
<v Speaker 2>that a lot of it still generally holds true. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>the whole idea of war dialing, where you just sort
<v Speaker 2>of randomly dialing numbers to try to find computers, that
<v Speaker 2>was all that was completely real. The idea about possibly
<v Speaker 2>having a backdoor into the DoD that could happen, right,
<v Speaker 2>because there is this idea of remote work, so you know,
<v Speaker 2>they're always sort of backdoors, and it was good that
<v Speaker 2>they actually had the scene to kind of explain that
<v Speaker 2>to people.
<v Speaker 3>Those by the way to nerds, the two Hacker nerds,
<v Speaker 3>those guys were fantastic casting.
<v Speaker 2>Potato had.
<v Speaker 4>Hey, you remember when I told you you're being annoying?
<v Speaker 5>That was one of those times.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how you would get from Colorado to
<v Speaker 2>some small airport in Oregon on whatever sort of salary
<v Speaker 2>that Ali Sheety's character had, you know, from from her
<v Speaker 2>high school. So that always kind of bugged me a
<v Speaker 2>little bit. It's like, wait, how would she afford that?
<v Speaker 2>But that was just sort of a minor thing, and
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, the tic tac toe of thing always
<v Speaker 2>bothered me just a little bit. I know it needed
<v Speaker 2>to be there for the story and it led into
<v Speaker 2>what was what was really visually and in terms of
<v Speaker 2>the music and the tension, everything striking where they're showing
<v Speaker 2>all the different simulations playing out. But there was just
<v Speaker 2>something a little hokey about playing tic tac toe and
<v Speaker 2>having the computer do that and then having officers say,
<v Speaker 2>don't put X in the center square. But he did
<v Speaker 2>a pretty good I mean, like I said, Adam was
<v Speaker 2>in the Air Force, so he did a pretty good
<v Speaker 2>job in representing what Air Force officers were like and
<v Speaker 2>what it would actually be like there. I mean, my
<v Speaker 2>grandmother used to work at NORAD, I should say, in
<v Speaker 2>Colorado Springs. She never really told me much about it,
<v Speaker 2>and I never got to go visit it, but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it was. And missile command officers they're kind of a
<v Speaker 2>different breed and you kind of got to be. Maybe
<v Speaker 2>it's like some mariners, but if you if you spend
<v Speaker 2>twenty four hours down in a little concrete bunker with
<v Speaker 2>a key that can kill thirty million people, that takes
<v Speaker 2>a different psychology. I worked with some of them. They're
<v Speaker 2>great guys, but it's it's a different wow, They're they're
<v Speaker 2>different people.
<v Speaker 3>So are we talking like ice water in their veins
<v Speaker 3>or we talking about screws that aren't fighting all the way.
<v Speaker 2>It's more like the dark, dark humor that they have
<v Speaker 2>to have to survive their work. And so they will
<v Speaker 2>joke about like missile mishaps, you know, mishaps, which means
<v Speaker 2>that a missile exploded uh, and and and talking. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I remember when that when Atlas missile blew up and
<v Speaker 2>you know, the warhead got thrown off like three hundred
<v Speaker 2>meters and we didn't even know if it was gonna
<v Speaker 2>blow it. Yep, Oh my gosh, which actually happened? That
<v Speaker 2>did actually happen? And was it Missouri or Arkansas ran
<v Speaker 2>around nineteen eighty. There's a whole there's a whole TV
<v Speaker 2>show in Arkansas. Well, it's good, you're still here. But no,
<v Speaker 2>it's it's just the Gallows humor that they would have
<v Speaker 2>about things. And so I'm kind of glad that War
<v Speaker 2>Games at least inserted a little bit of humor, because
<v Speaker 2>the original idea for the you know, for the movie,
<v Speaker 2>at least from the first director, you know, Breast, he
<v Speaker 2>went to make it more like Faan Saite and it
<v Speaker 2>took Badham to come in and sort of insert a
<v Speaker 2>bit of humor in there. And I think it was
<v Speaker 2>the same thing with Doctor Strangers. Look, Kubrick wanted that
<v Speaker 2>to be a really serious movie. Although once you cast
<v Speaker 2>Peter Sellers and Slip Pickens, I don't know what you're
<v Speaker 2>expecting to happen.
<v Speaker 4>What in the wide wide world of sports, Well, what
<v Speaker 4>about you? What didn't work for you?
<v Speaker 3>I tend to agree with what Chad said about Tron.
<v Speaker 3>The dot matrix printer print out just did seemed I
<v Speaker 3>mean immediately I was like.
<v Speaker 5>What this is the proof?
<v Speaker 3>This is what that comes from the fact that I
<v Speaker 3>now know how all those things work. Back in nineteen
<v Speaker 3>eighty two, I had no idea.
<v Speaker 5>I mean I didn't. I mean I didn't get.
<v Speaker 3>The joke of that his little his yes no responder
<v Speaker 3>guy is named bit and that his yes no responses
<v Speaker 3>are binary.
<v Speaker 5>I didn't understand any of that.
<v Speaker 3>I just thought it was a cool little graphic and
<v Speaker 3>it said yes no, no, yes, yeah, positive and negative nine.
<v Speaker 3>You're a bit.
<v Speaker 5>Well, where's your pro isn't he gonna miss yet?
<v Speaker 3>I'm your program got a mouth sheet. So my big
<v Speaker 3>problem with Tron is that once Flynn defeats the villain,
<v Speaker 3>he becomes the villain. Like, the next scene is him
<v Speaker 3>in this high power business suit flying in on a helicopter.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, what, this is what you did with it?
<v Speaker 3>You just took his place. You didn't like do something,
<v Speaker 3>you know, rebellious and exciting. You just became another suit.
<v Speaker 3>That was a little lame.
<v Speaker 5>For me, I actually very much.
<v Speaker 3>Liked the Tic tac toe storyline for War Games. I
<v Speaker 3>thought that was a brilliant way to segue the computer
<v Speaker 3>into determining that there are no winners when it comes
<v Speaker 3>to a global thermonuclear war. The one problem that I
<v Speaker 3>actually had with the movie was something that a whole
<v Speaker 3>lot of people liked, and it was this scene they
<v Speaker 3>thought they had to stick in there, and it was
<v Speaker 3>the scene where Ali Sheety is talking to Matthew Broderick
<v Speaker 3>about I was going to be on TV and he's
<v Speaker 3>saying I was going to learn how to swim, and
<v Speaker 3>this whole kind of you know, sad we are not
<v Speaker 3>going to see next week, We're not going to see
<v Speaker 3>our dreams come true because the world is about to end.
<v Speaker 3>And it was a last minute decision to put it in.
<v Speaker 3>And they had Tom Mankwitz Diamonds for Forever, the guy
<v Speaker 3>who probably really wrote Superman. They said, hey, can you
<v Speaker 3>come up with a scene and give it to us
<v Speaker 3>by tomorrow, and of course Macowitz delivers his payment. By
<v Speaker 3>the way, was a washer dryer set. But I don't
<v Speaker 3>think that that scene was necessary for the movie. I
<v Speaker 3>think they could have conveyed the same idea without having
<v Speaker 3>that scene in there. But other than that, I thought
<v Speaker 3>it was a wonderfully executed movie and I got really
<v Speaker 3>nothing bad to say about.
<v Speaker 5>It at all.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, none of us have mentioned yet the
<v Speaker 2>corner of the cop scene, which the staros brilliant in
<v Speaker 2>its own way. Yeah, it doesn't need to be in
<v Speaker 2>the movie, but I would not take it out because
<v Speaker 2>it's one of the most memorable scenes.
<v Speaker 3>It gives those two parents some personality.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, So for me, I have a little bit of
<v Speaker 4>problems with Tron because I know for sure when I
<v Speaker 4>was a kid and I saw it in the movie theater,
<v Speaker 4>I was expecting more Star Wars like action. The light
<v Speaker 4>cycles were amazing, but they're only in it for just
<v Speaker 4>a couple of minutes throwing discs, you know, having a
<v Speaker 4>disc battle like the Gladiator style disc battle I am
<v Speaker 4>all on board for, and they do it a couple
<v Speaker 4>of times. So for me, I just I wanted more
<v Speaker 4>of that action. I love the world that those guys created,
<v Speaker 4>but uh, less talkie talkie and more walky wucky. That's it.
<v Speaker 5>That's it.
<v Speaker 2>Did you ever try doing the disc fights in real life?
<v Speaker 2>You know with frisbees?
<v Speaker 6>Oh oh, yeah, brother, Yeah, yes, and war games everything
<v Speaker 6>works for me except for one thing, and it's kind
<v Speaker 6>of what you were talking about ched where there's a
<v Speaker 6>timeline and they're just wasting time blind.
<v Speaker 4>You know, here and she picks him up there and
<v Speaker 4>the whole time, the clock is ticking and I'm sure
<v Speaker 4>that there's enough time. But he escapes from nora Ad,
<v Speaker 4>you know, he outsmarts the US military, sneaks out with
<v Speaker 4>the bus people from Birmingham, you know, he takes a
<v Speaker 4>fly here, she drives in there, they go to talk
<v Speaker 4>to doctor Falkon. All of this is happening while the
<v Speaker 4>Whopper is getting ready and loading the launch codes, and
<v Speaker 4>I'm sure there's enough time. It just seems like there's
<v Speaker 4>a lot of wasted time there. But otherwise I thought
<v Speaker 4>these are both great movies, and Wargames especially strong. So okay,
<v Speaker 4>so before we get to final judgment, there's a couple
<v Speaker 4>of things I want to throw out to you guys.
<v Speaker 4>Wargames was nominated for three Oscars. They thought they had
<v Speaker 4>a pretty good movie. When they screened it in San Antonio,
<v Speaker 4>the audience stood up and cheered. You remember the last
<v Speaker 4>time we talked about a movie that was screened in
<v Speaker 4>Texas that had a very resounding audience approval.
<v Speaker 5>No Jaws.
<v Speaker 4>Jaws was screened in Dallas.
<v Speaker 3>The guy walks out, throws up, and walks back in. Right, Yep,
<v Speaker 3>that's right, that's right.
<v Speaker 2>Oh. I just wanted to mention with Jeff Bridges, like,
<v Speaker 2>not only was he so good at Bean Flynn just
<v Speaker 2>the sort of laid back big Lebowski stuff you'd see
<v Speaker 2>later with Cowen Brothers, but because the movie kind of
<v Speaker 2>portrayed this idea of reality and unreality and virtual reality,
<v Speaker 2>I think that he portrayed that in some of the
<v Speaker 2>later movies, like dealing either with trauma or with you know,
<v Speaker 2>just dealing with the reality of the world. So with
<v Speaker 2>movies like Fearless and Fisher Kank with Jeff Bridges is
<v Speaker 2>both in the lead and and I think those are
<v Speaker 2>brilliant movies in their own way. But I can also
<v Speaker 2>see when I watched Tron again, now, hey, that's the
<v Speaker 2>same Jeff Bridge we.
<v Speaker 4>Just did Big Lebaski not too long ago. He's great
<v Speaker 4>in that it's a completely different characters.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, I don't know that I'd say completely different.
<v Speaker 3>I got the feeling that Flynn was smoking some ty
<v Speaker 3>Stick before before he started playing Man.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, Lobatron or whatever the name of the game was.
<v Speaker 4>He has a rug that he likes to tie the
<v Speaker 4>whole rim together.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah. I was gonna say, did you see his apartment? Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>other than the big Tom Hanks's.
<v Speaker 3>Apartment from Big, that's the apartment that I would have
<v Speaker 3>wanted to have.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, the one right above the arcade.
<v Speaker 3>Right above the arcade, all the hot girls with the
<v Speaker 3>Flynn's T shirts on. I would really like to have
<v Speaker 3>a FLYNS T shirt. Legitimately would Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>By the way, have you ever seen somebody get so
<v Speaker 4>sweaty playing video games? He literally comes in peels it off.
<v Speaker 4>It's like dripping with sweat.
<v Speaker 5>Gross.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, come on, but maybe he did that. You know.
<v Speaker 2>They put actual video games, arcade games on the set
<v Speaker 2>so that they could practice with him. And apparently Jeff
<v Speaker 2>Bridges loved playing battle Zone, which was one of my
<v Speaker 2>favorite games.
<v Speaker 4>By the way, battle Zone really vector.
<v Speaker 2>Green, vector graphic.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, all right, are you ready for final judgment?
<v Speaker 5>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 4>Who's going first, Chad? Do you get to go first?
<v Speaker 5>Man? All right?
<v Speaker 2>I gotta say war games, you know, Tron was inspirational,
<v Speaker 2>It was revolutionary. But it just didn't age or influence
<v Speaker 2>me personally in the same way. And there was so
<v Speaker 2>much to not believe about the movie when it came out,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because you're sitting there thinking, oh, come on,
<v Speaker 2>a talking computer, really, you know, I mean, that's not really.
<v Speaker 2>But now we've got phones that'll talk to us.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 2>I've got alexisiting in my desk and she'll talk to me.
<v Speaker 2>So it's almost like the movie caught up to the
<v Speaker 2>real world. And like we discussed this movie, it didn't
<v Speaker 2>so much foreshadow because stuff was happening that we just
<v Speaker 2>didn't know about, right, but life was imitating the art
<v Speaker 2>in wargames.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I didn't.
<v Speaker 3>Honestly, when we started this project, I did not think I.
<v Speaker 5>Would pick what I'm about to pick, because.
<v Speaker 3>I think that it is a movie that of the
<v Speaker 3>two movies, it has just aged better. I love both
<v Speaker 3>of the movies when they first came out, but as
<v Speaker 3>a little kid, Tron was more fascinating to me because
<v Speaker 3>it had the light cycles, it had all of the
<v Speaker 3>cool games, it had the video game associated with it.
<v Speaker 5>I mean, it was all the stuff that I.
<v Speaker 3>Was completely into in nineteen eighty two, and war games
<v Speaker 3>was I mean it was really kind of more of
<v Speaker 3>a grown up movie that had a couple of teenagers
<v Speaker 3>in it. Now, forty years later, I'm a grown up
<v Speaker 3>and I'm going yes, not only is it a grown
<v Speaker 3>up movie, but it is better pacing, better written, it
<v Speaker 3>is better executed. The only thing that Tron wins out
<v Speaker 3>for me, hands down on is the soundtrack. Tron's soundtrack
<v Speaker 3>far and above warga soundtrack, which I still think is great.
<v Speaker 3>But movie to movie, no question. For me, war Games
<v Speaker 3>is better movie. Jayson, Wow, Well, I hate.
<v Speaker 4>To make it the hat trick, but for me, Wargames
<v Speaker 4>is better acted. It's a better paced, the plot is compelling,
<v Speaker 4>it's it's a better movie. I mean, war Games is
<v Speaker 4>just flat better Now. Tron is visually stunning, it's fascinating.
<v Speaker 4>The use of computer graphics early on is really cool.
<v Speaker 4>Soundtrack is amazing. I gave us all this great. It
<v Speaker 4>really gave me a great universe to play in with
<v Speaker 4>the discs and the tanks and the light cycles. By
<v Speaker 4>the way, no guns in this at the insistence of
<v Speaker 4>Steven Lisberger. That's why there's no gun of any kind.
<v Speaker 4>So I love the universe of Tron, but movie to movie.
<v Speaker 4>It is not even a contest. Wargames is far superior. However,
<v Speaker 4>Tron the video game number one, Wargames number two, Tron
<v Speaker 4>the movie number three.
<v Speaker 5>What about war games of the game game there was, dude.
<v Speaker 3>They came out Yeah, yeah, they came out with like
<v Speaker 3>a an Atari style really aims.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah you're not county, miss command.
<v Speaker 5>No, I am not counting miss Yeah. It didn't fare
<v Speaker 5>as well as the Trunk.
<v Speaker 4>I don't remember that.
<v Speaker 5>One at all.
<v Speaker 4>Chad, thank you so much for joining us.
<v Speaker 5>Man.
<v Speaker 4>I hope you had a great time talking about this
<v Speaker 4>with us.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this is this has been great, you know, And
<v Speaker 2>I do encourage all your listeners, you know, sign up
<v Speaker 2>for his Patreon and you know, become part of the project. So,
<v Speaker 2>and I will say my favorite episode that you guys
<v Speaker 2>ever did was the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. I still remember
<v Speaker 2>listening to that well well, biking through Anchorage and just thinking,
<v Speaker 2>oh my god, this is just crazy when I'm learning here.
<v Speaker 2>And so even the music that I don't agree with,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I never knew anything about White Snake or
<v Speaker 2>def Leppard or whatever. It just wasn't my thing and
<v Speaker 2>in junior higher high school. But I'll listen to those
<v Speaker 2>episodes because it's it's history, right.
<v Speaker 5>Thank you. Yeah, we truly appreciate that. Man.
<v Speaker 3>It has been such an incredible pleasure having you on
<v Speaker 3>the show. I knew that we were going to learn
<v Speaker 3>a ton and I was not let down at all
<v Speaker 3>that you have exceeded my expectations.
<v Speaker 5>Thank you very much.
<v Speaker 3>Do you have any parting words for the Shirley fans
<v Speaker 3>other than plugging us obviously? Is there anything that we
<v Speaker 3>can tell them to go check out of yours? I mean,
<v Speaker 3>obviously you're an entirely different world than we are, but
<v Speaker 3>does it help you at all if they're playing your RPGs.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you can look up my name under the uh
<v Speaker 2>miscotonic repository, so it's called Cthulhu. I have two scenarios out,
<v Speaker 2>but I offer them for free because I was I
<v Speaker 2>was getting paid handsomely by universities and US government, so
<v Speaker 2>I thought I'd just give those to the world. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I do have a book called Disaster Security, which talks
<v Speaker 2>extensively about wargames and how we create them and what
<v Speaker 2>goes into them. So yeah, I definitely look for that.
<v Speaker 3>If you want fantastic We've got to figure out another
<v Speaker 3>time to get you back.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, hey, I would love to do Labyrinth.
<v Speaker 4>Labyrinth.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, interesting actually now that I think about it. Very
<v Speaker 3>early on Chad was suggesting the Peter Gabriel album so
<v Speaker 3>and I said, oh, hey, maybe we could compare that
<v Speaker 3>to Phil Collins and No Jacket Required and knows.
<v Speaker 5>Maybe that's the episode to have you back for it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I mean anything related to Genesis, especially if
<v Speaker 2>you go back to the Genesis of Genesis.
<v Speaker 5>The Peter Gabriel days. They were weird.
<v Speaker 4>We talked about Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Really, well, you guys saw my top five for nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty eight, right, so you know I'm living in a
<v Speaker 2>different world. If I put Susie in the band, she's
<v Speaker 2>right up at the top.
<v Speaker 5>That's right there, you go.
<v Speaker 4>Tatia what was the girl's name, Tatiana or something rather.
<v Speaker 2>Takarum.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, never heard of her.
<v Speaker 2>No American American audiences just don't know her. But she
<v Speaker 2>was in the top ten in the UK. Huge, huge,
<v Speaker 2>still in Norway.
<v Speaker 5>Awesome.
<v Speaker 4>Give us a song to listen to of hers?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think her first album is still one of
<v Speaker 2>the best. So Valentine Heart Twisted My Sobriety was her
<v Speaker 2>best known but if you want something really soft and
<v Speaker 2>darkly poetic Valentine Hart has. That's really one of the
<v Speaker 2>most memorable for nineteen eighty eight.
<v Speaker 3>For me, I'm putting it on Spotify Q as I
<v Speaker 3>drive home today. Chad, thank you so much, man. It's
<v Speaker 3>been a great time having you on here. Love talking
<v Speaker 3>these things with another eighties nerd like us.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you, guys.
<v Speaker 4>Thanks Chad, good to meet you, buddy.
<v Speaker 3>Schirly fans, be sure and come and check us out.
<v Speaker 3>Our next episodes are going to be our Clint Eastwood
<v Speaker 3>episodes any which way you can, versus every which way
<v Speaker 3>but loose Karen Clyde, the.
<v Speaker 4>Clint and Clyde episodes in the seventies.
<v Speaker 3>Be sure and hit that subscribe button or that follow
<v Speaker 3>button so that you don't miss any of those episodes.
<v Speaker 5>We will see you guys next week.