Sign in to follow this  
Jake

Important If True 36: Never Say Goodbye

Recommended Posts

Important If True 36:

Important If True 36


Never Say Goodbye
Nothing is permanent, especially not these days. You look away for a second and look back, and the world around you has changed, subtly. A TV you swear wasn't there a moment before is yelling at you about something that doesn't exist yet. Your friend turns to you, his shirt changed to a logo you've never seen before, and you think you know what he's going to say - he's going to ask you important questions about the world around him, questions like "How can you best maintain the integrity of your aging brand? What REALLY happened at the end of The Usual Suspects? Is this podcast cursed?" - but as he opens his mouth you hear, in splintering clarity, "SEE THOR RAGNAROK THIS WEEKEND," and know you can't trust him ever again.

Discussed: Happy Birthday Jake wooooo Happy Halloween!!!, Jake's curse, corn maze, terrible 20th Television production logo, La Cucaracha horn, SeamBI, SeamBI B2B, How I Met Your Mother, brand integrity, Taxi, definitely Mastercard's favorite play of the game, television without greenscreen, Ex Machina, The Usual Suspects, Beauty and the Beast, believing movies are more magical than they really are, a very gullible friend, running for high school student office, how Americans talk on the phone on TV, everything being terrible forever

Send us your questions to [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Nick's Endorsement: Polar Feet Adults' Non-slip Fleece Socks

Chris' Endorsement: Using Instapaper (or a similar read-it-later service) to always have something you've been meaning to read handy

Jake's Endorsement: Using 3D face-mapping software Facerig to inject shreds of levity into your soul-sucking mandatory office video chat experience

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is an incredible episode, like real next-level shit

 

The only thing that could have possibly made it better is if Chris had instead endorsed the 1812 Overture.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
26 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

Chris mentioned collecting slippers from hotels so that you always have free slippers around? Is this a thing? Hotels give you slippers...?

Yeah lots of them do! Slippers and robes. Most hotels understandably prohibit you from taking the robe because those are laundered and reused, but slippers are generally discarded anyway and considered expendible. Since my wife likes them, I’m always sure to take them home. They’re a fun souvenir of the places I or we have been. 

 

Because they're disposable, they generally only last a few months before falling apart, so it’s handy to have extra lying around.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 Concerning seambib2bs, I can't find the to-the-point youtube video from ~2011 where POV's apartment is littered with AR ads and then they turn the ads down for a second to see something and then they turn the ads back up and the video ends cleanly there; so instead here's 2016's 600% louder and longer version featuring the same message.

Also, you mentioning instapaper reminded me my del.icio.us account, which i am surprised to see starts (http://www.floatingsheep.org/) and ends (www.justicemap.org) with links to user generated maps.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Listening to this podcast is a dangerous pastime. I work standing at a high computer desk and I collapsed onto the floor in laughter after the story about Jake's friend's mis-reading of the ending to The Usual Suspects.

 

Which reminds me of a morning viewing of American Psycho after I stayed up all night. At the end of the film

 

Christian Bale throws a fit at a restaurant and it is revealed that his murderous atrocities are figments of his imagination. His lawyer responds quizzically to his breakdown: what's going on? You're rambling.


My tired brain however concocted something else entirely. I saw a deep web of conspiracy. Bale was an actual axe murderer, but so powerful and prestigious that even in the face of his confession, his colleagues were bending over backwards to make excuses for him: 'You didn't kill so-and-so, I just saw him in London!'

 

 

It took me a while to, begrudgingly, accept the more pedestrian, actual version.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That understanding of American Psycho is nowhere near the sort of misunderstanding Jake was talking about. That's explicitly a reading the film is inviting.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

polygon made a 'what really happened at the end of the usual suspects' video and it was very good

(obviously spoilers for the end of the usual suspects)

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

That understanding of American Psycho is nowhere near the sort of misunderstanding Jake was talking about. That's explicitly a reading the film is inviting.

 

Though that might be well and true, that is pretty dismissive of what is supposed to be an amusing story. 'How dare you tell something that isn't exactly like the other thing!'

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Though that might be well and true, that is pretty dismissive of what is supposed to be an excuse for your mistake that helped make you look more on the ball. "How dare you try to make excuses for me? Your job is to make me look as much like an idiot as possible!"

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I did the Chris Remo thing with student government in 8th grade. It was on a smaller scale, it was only for my 8th grade history class but I still defeated someone who was actually interested in being in student government by doing outrageous bodybuilding poses and declaring "a new fresh perspective to bring down the old regime" and then never once attended.

 

The high school in media thing I never understand is the trope of a group of complete assholes "ruling the school" and being super popular despite being nasty and treating everyone like shit all the time. At my high school the popular people were the friendliest most out-going people who did the most extra-curricular activities. Also "ruling the school" was not an actual thing and I don't know what that would even entail.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My husband went to Oklahoma's Boys State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys/Girls_State) and the attendees elect a governor. The year he went a boy ran on the platform that he was Australian, did a terrible australian accent during all of his campaigning and said he had boxed a kangaroo. He was, of course, elected. When everyone found out that he wasn't actually Australian, they felt so betrayed that they impeached him - making him the first ever Oklahoma Boys State governor to be impeached.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The post-production on this episode is incredible.  I made an account specifically to commend the continuation of bleeping out what I have to assume is "sack of shit", uttered by Jake at the end of the Warby Parker ad read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, spunkycomics said:

The post-production on this episode is incredible.  I made an account specifically to commend the continuation of bleeping out what I have to assume is "sack of shit", uttered by Jake at the end of the Warby Parker ad read.

 

Haha, thank you. This was a fun edit for sure.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also want to chime in that I enjoy the post production flourishes. The informational drop ins are great. I also have been extremely amused by the musical backdrops to various bits. Very fun stuff!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re. the never saying bye on the phone thing, Dan and I wrote a short script when we were 16 or so, which listed some movie cliches (gussied up as the Ten New Commandments, all directed at Hollywood scriptwriters). The phone thing was one of them! Here's the full list (it's all pretty obvious/tired observational comedy, but hey we were only 16 and also the ten commandments conceit caused us to scrape the barrel a bit):

 

 

 


Thou shalt not show a character’s surprise by having them say "What the…?"

Thou shalt not ‘trick’ the audience by revealing a character is in fact talking to themselves in the mirror

Thou shalt not build tension by having a character drop their keys while being chased

Thou shalt not convey the character’s thought processes by having them speak them out loud.

Thou shalt not use repetition in dialogue for cheap dramatic emphasis. (e.g. "She’s alright, man. She’s alright…")

Thou shalt not have characters convey astonishment with a high-pitched, slowly descending whistle:

Thou shalt not engineer an extra fight scene by having a character needlessly yell “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” when attempting a stealth-attack.

Thou shalt finish telephone conversations properly by saying ‘Goodbye’, like in real life.

Thou shalt find some way of highlighting relevant information other than a close-up of a finger tapping on it

Thou shalt not attempt high comedy by surprising a character to the point where they spit out liquid.
 

 

 

Also, what is the deal with airline food?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re: never saying good bye. Recently I was working on a voice over project that involved a telephone dialog, and it originally included "good bye" lines. Eventually they were edited out for brevity. I was amazed that the trope was naturally arrived at.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, plasticflesh said:

Re: never saying good bye. Recently I was working on a voice over project that involved a telephone dialog, and it originally included "good bye" lines. Eventually they were edited out for brevity. I was amazed that the trope was naturally arrived at.

 

It totally makes sense even though the reality that's painted as a result is absurd. The phrase "good bye" or "bye" is simply never going to be as punchy and impactful and thematically relevant to the film's contents as a line that is intentionally written for that character at that moment. "Good bye" is a generic phrase that appears commonly regardless of context, so at best it adds nothing and at worst it deflates the more interesting line that preceded it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the most natural solution is to just cut to a later time when the character has hung up. The weird thing to me isn't not hearing "goodbye" but rather that you linger on the character silently hanging up the phone.. Just show me the reaction to whatever impactful thing that was said and then cut! Cut away, end scene (or, if this is David Fincher, cut to dramatic wide shot of character alone in his kitchen contemplating the impactful words, with a bottle of whiskey and moody lighting)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That makes sense. There is also specific instances of desiring brevity, but also having a situation where editorial cutting and implied time travel is not desired, e.g. making several phone calls in the same wide shot without having any cuts. Thus producing the trope.

 

And to be needlessly argumentative, what's natural about lots of cuts? Real life doesn't cut. Unless I black out, maybe from loss of blood do to a cut. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, plasticflesh said:

That makes sense. There is also specific instances of desiring brevity, but also having a situation where editorial cutting and implied time travel is not desired, e.g. making several phone calls in the same wide shot without having any cuts. Thus producing the trope.

 

And to be needlessly argumentative, what's natural about lots of cuts? Real life doesn't cut. Unless I black out, maybe from loss of blood do to a cut. 

 

I think he means natural in the sense that it doesn't actually contract the "natural" way to end a phone conversation, it just doesn't show it—it implies it happens during the cut.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

True, thank you, I understand. I agree that works especially well at the end of a scene, or even as a match cut within a scene of relatively contiguous time usage.

 

My pun about cuts being unnatural was catty and unnecessary, and I think assuming that the cuts were fringe style jumps instead of more common 2 shots and match cuts. Also I'm still hinging on experiencing the trope occurring in a static wide shot scene without cuts. Pedanticism abounds. 

 

What's fascinating with all of this is watching 1920s and 1930s films, where these film language conventions have not been established yet, and not only do people say good bye on the phone, they need further action to end the scene, such as an unnecessary fly swatting or sipping of a drink before the slow fade to the next scene.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this