533: Jesus Freaks

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Speaker 3 You know, Messianic Jews actually piss me off the most.

Speaker 6 So, did you just break out into a little bit of anti-Semitism?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just saying that the most of what?

Speaker 2 Because if it's of all the Jews, then we have problems.

Speaker 3 Rachel, do you remember at the beginning when we said don't rank your most and least favorite Jews? Leave it at least that's wrong. It's a letter at the top.
Put a letter at the top of the note.

Speaker 3 Nobody even fucking reads it.

Speaker 3 My least favorite Jews so far. All right, so Eli Bosni.
Jackie Mason. Someone's going to reach out to me after this.
Kanye West just retweeted you. Yeah, right?

Speaker 3 God-awful

Speaker 3 movie. Movie.
Movies.

Speaker 2 Welcome back to the Gamcast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian Cinema, despite the fact that we could not do that.

Speaker 2 I'm your host, Noah Lusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left is my good friend Heath Enright.

Speaker 3 Heath, welcome back. We got Kevin Sorbo this week.
Kay Sorbs is back.

Speaker 2 Just a little, just a tiny little bit, like a sprinkling of.

Speaker 3 You offered just not doing that, and I was like, hold on. Yeah, right? Hold on.

Speaker 3 But we got Kay Sorbs.

Speaker 2 And, of course, sitting 900 miles to my northeast is my bad friend Eli Bosnick. Eli, how are you this fine afternoon, sir?

Speaker 3 We got baby Sorbo in this movie. We do.

Speaker 2 We have so many Sorbos. There's at least four of them in this movie.
And we're also, we're excited to welcome in a pair of brand new guest masochists because lately they're coming in twos.

Speaker 2 Apparently, Rachel and Cameron are the hosts of the Cheers to Leaving podcast, a podcast about expanding horizons and embracing diverse perspectives.

Speaker 2 I feel like we're going to challenge that commitment with this movie's perspective.

Speaker 2 Cameron, Rachel, welcome to God Awful Movies.

Speaker 3 Yes, thank you. Thank you for having us.
Hi, thanks for having us.

Speaker 2 Very excited. So, tell us, Rachel, without further ado, what will we be breaking down today?

Speaker 3 Today, we're going to be breaking down the Jesus Freaks movie that came out, I think, in 2024, right? Yeah, it was last year. Yeah, with that gorgeous AI cover.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. And that gorgeous CGI work during the

Speaker 3 oh my god. I just have to say, I was like, was this woman like obsessed with like old Hollywood where they did all the fake backgrounds?

Speaker 3 Because like the unnecessary use of fake backgrounds in this movie was like driving me insane. I was like, you're in a car.
I'm pretty sure that you can just film it in a car.

Speaker 2 Right, right. It's like you couldn't, but you couldn't get the rights to gas station.
Come on, people.

Speaker 3 Or church?

Speaker 3 Yes, right. Church.

Speaker 3 I saw you at a church. Yes, the outside

Speaker 3 church. The stars, the fucking night sky.
Yeah, I was literally like, wait, couldn't you guys just go outside?

Speaker 3 Guys, do we need copyright for firmament? Is there some

Speaker 3 firmament?

Speaker 3 I don't want to pay for it. I think it might have just been laziness.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it could have been.

Speaker 3 Could have been a little of that. That seems a lot harder, actually, than just filming outside.
I think the way they stretched the budget was impressive. It's pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 They stretched the screen time. Yeah, I mean, that was

Speaker 3 the creativity that goes behind believing that you could put a green screen of the interior of a truck and just sitting three people on a bench in front of it, and that's going to fool the audience is incredible.

Speaker 3 I can't.

Speaker 2 Edward's going, come on, people, put some effort in at least.

Speaker 2 So, and Cameron, speaking of which, how bad was this movie?

Speaker 3 You know, completely unironically, I actually think it was a really good movie. Did you? Interesting.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it, like, it very obviously had a goal, and I do believe that it accomplished that goal with great fervor. All right.
All right. So, so, ironically, I think this is a great movie, right?

Speaker 2 So, like, generally, or genuinely, rather, this goes probably into my top 10 most fun to watch gam movies of all fucking time.

Speaker 3 100%.

Speaker 2 It was an absolute blast.

Speaker 3 So ironically, I agree with you. Yeah, because so often people will say like, oh, what's a bad Christian movie I should start with?

Speaker 3 No, I'm sorry, this wasn't a Christian movie. This was obviously written secularly.
Yes, that's true. It was a secular film.
That's the goal you're describing as having gone secure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, it just so accurately portrays the modern Christian. It's got fucking everything.
It's got like the self-aggrandizing circular reasoning.

Speaker 3 It decries female education by making her quit her potential law school path. Right.
No, that's fair. It's got a smattering of anti-Semitism, which I thought was a nice touch.
Yep.

Speaker 2 Honestly, Christianity.

Speaker 3 Successful. Yeah.
And it proves like without a shadow of a doubt that the biggest persecutors of Christians are other Christians. Are other Christians and their imaginations?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, you're right. And it's all about like behind the scenes church drama bullshit, right? Like it's all, it's like the work drama of churches is the whole plot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this movie might just be designed to keep us the fuck out of churches. Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 3 I 100% agree with that. I was so annoyed by the end of the movie,

Speaker 3 just to wrap it all up, like they also prove like if you just rely on establishment Christianity, it always ends in fascism. Like, that is

Speaker 3 interesting, yeah, beautifully tied together. I don't know, I thought it was excellent.

Speaker 2 All right, so is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at be the worst ask?

Speaker 3 Yeah, we already started talking about it a little bit. I'm gonna go with best worst

Speaker 3 green screen, but like specifically, best worst green screen that was so bad, it messed up the audio.

Speaker 3 y opposite screen like the audio in the movie was like what the is wrong and it's all different i mentioned this in my notes at the time but there are times where they're green screening this movie that i am 100 certain they shot it in a karaoke studio yeah yep i think you might be right 20 an hour they just get a couple pictures jpeg's right exactly

Speaker 3 sure yeah did you have a best worst for us Yeah, it was the best actual self-own I've ever seen in a movie. They're obviously trying to do one thing and do the complete fucking opposite.
Sure.

Speaker 2 And Rachel?

Speaker 3 I'm going to give this one the best worst script. Ooh.
Some of these lines. Well, first of all, like, oh, and best worst acting.
Best worst film.

Speaker 3 There was a couple actors, and unfortunately, they weren't the main ones that I was like, actually,

Speaker 3 you could have a future. But also, you could tell the people that literally just took the script word for word where they were like, oh, dot, dot, dot.
Um, dot, dot, dot. I have to go.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Right, like they almost said dot dot dot. Yeah.

Speaker 3 They almost did. They almost did.
I was like, oh, I can even picture the script right now.

Speaker 3 Some of the gaps were like, very clearly the dot dot dot was supposed to let somebody else interrupt, but then they didn't do it. Yes, right, yeah.
It was the best, how much they were off by.

Speaker 3 Did you guys see the pastor with the phone near the end teleporting around the room?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 incredible. God moved him.
Oh, that was. God moved him.
He's also some non-Euclidean blocking. Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I was going to go with best, worst blocking because through this entire, like at the beginning, I thought, oh, this is like a play that got inexpertly turned into a movie, but it's not.

Speaker 6 That is a great way to describe it.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 Because it's blocked like a high school play. People are just constantly walking in and out of the scenes in a way that has no kind of explanation within the film universe and shit.

Speaker 2 People just constantly are like, oh, hello. I was standing off screen.
Why? Why were you standing?

Speaker 2 Why are you aware of off-screen? You're in the fucking movie.

Speaker 3 Are we in Pac-Man universe?

Speaker 3 My favorite is when they're by the lake and they're like this woman walks in and she's like, oh, we should meet Buddy.

Speaker 3 And Buddy walks in from the same direction she just walked by, but you literally just walked in from the same side.

Speaker 3 I like to think that there was a terrifying and dangerous day where everyone tried an over-the-shoulder shot and like a cameraman got decapitated and they were like, no,

Speaker 3 two cameras pointing same directions opposite. No breaking the 180-degree rule is for the actors.
Yep.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's true. There were zero interesting shots.
No, I disagree. I disagree.
There were, I, you know what, there were some parts where I was like, you know what?

Speaker 3 An attempt was made, and I can see, I can see the vision. All right.

Speaker 3 It was partially the acid that I had to take in order to get into the movie, but it does help. Cameron, I said it right here in the email.
No taking acid to make the movie better. That's one of our

Speaker 3 solid rules here on you. specific instruction.
That's right. It's been on the whiteboard for a long time.
Your punishment is you have to come back on the show.

Speaker 3 You got the email from me that was like, ignore Eli's thing about drugs, right? And you did it. I'm going to go with best worst representation of a decade.
Oh my God, yes.

Speaker 3 This movie takes place in a doodle-doo back to the 1970s. The only way we know that is the Chiron that tells us people will be dressed modern.
They will use modern technology.

Speaker 3 They will speak in modern ways.

Speaker 2 There is hope, but they had four entire period cars for this movie. Okay, yep,

Speaker 3 and there was a man with a mustache, which they were pretty sure sort of locked him in. There was a very bearded man

Speaker 3 with bell bottoms, I think. So let's give credit.

Speaker 2 There's a McGovern poster.

Speaker 3 Yeah, George McGovern. Yep.
There was no 70s music, which I thought was actually insane. You have to license that.

Speaker 3 Oh, man, getting to see Kevin Sorbo's understanding of what the 70s were, because he probably grew up in the 70s.

Speaker 3 And in his head, it was like, yeah, the 70s, you know, a time for sexual modesty and support for the Vietnam War. Yeah.
That's what that was about.

Speaker 3 Spoilers, the bad guys of this movie will be the civil rights movement of the 1970s. More or less.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, and the moderate Christians of that time. All right.
Well, I'll tell you what, you're going to need goddamn yarn and push pins by the end of this to follow this movie's plot point.

Speaker 2 So we'll take a quick break while you grab those, but we'll be back in a minute with all the arcane Protestant minutiae that is

Speaker 2 Jesus freaks.

Speaker 2 Okay, what about a sweater?

Speaker 3 Nah, he's allergic to wool. Your uncle is allergic to wool? Yeah, I never told you that.
No, you did not. Hey, guys, what you doing? Oh, hey, Eli.

Speaker 3 We're trying to help Cameron and Rachel pick out some gifts for the holidays, but it's really tricky.

Speaker 2 Yeah, gift buying is no joke.

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Speaker 3 I mean, that sounds great, but my family aren't exactly tech wizards. No worries at all.
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Speaker 3 That sounds great, Elay. I just wish there was some kind of deal.
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Speaker 3 Terms and conditions apply. All right.
Thanks, Eli. Okay, what about chocolates? Nah, he's allergic to chocolates too.
Man, he's allergic to a lot. That's what we always say about him.

Speaker 3 All right, everyone. Welcome to the first Writer's Room meeting of Jesus Freaks.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 as you all know, this movie is going to be based on Joni's true life story.

Speaker 3 Yes, thank you all.

Speaker 2 So, so, Joni, why don't you tell us in your own words what happened?

Speaker 3 Yeah, tell us, Joni.

Speaker 3 Okay, well, I found Jesus in the 70s as a charismatic Christian. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then when I was on my mission trip, a pastor yelled at me. All right.
And

Speaker 3 if you think about it, that makes my experience identical to what Christ suffered on the cross. Sorry, would you say identical? Yes, I would say identical, both here and out loud in the movie.
Really?

Speaker 2 So you want to say that getting yelled at was identical to the experience Christ had on the cross? Like, how?

Speaker 3 Okay, okay. I'll be the narrator.
For the whole movie? Nope, nope, nope, just those parts. Got it.

Speaker 2 All right, so we'll start writing.

Speaker 3 Start with the part where I'm just like Jesus and write out words from there. Sure.

Speaker 3 Like Rashmon. Just like Rashmon.
Yeah. Got it.

Speaker 2 And we're back for the breakdown. And we're going to start off on the most slash least promising production logo that I have ever seen.

Speaker 2 The logo is literally covering up the tits of a classical painting. Yep.

Speaker 3 Right. That's man under the name of Renaissance Woman, the production company.
Yeah. Yeah.
Uh-huh. What makes me a Renaissance woman?

Speaker 3 How about telling my own story while censoring art from 500 years old?

Speaker 2 This is my being too prudish for 500-year-old art.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah. So we get that ridiculous production logo.
We get the musical equivalent of drowning your dinner in gravy.

Speaker 3 Music was rough. It was like you told AI, like, make music for Jesus in the photo booth at the mall while he takes pictures.
It's a weird little montage.

Speaker 3 And the lyrics just at one moment lined up with the credits, the opening credits. It was like, we don't know much.
And then Kevin Sorbo.

Speaker 3 I was like, okay. Really hit that cue.
Yeah. Solid.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Kevin and Sam Sorbo. Those are the first people we see in the movie.
But they look at each other. They pull up by this church.
And Sam turns to Kevin and goes, hold on a second. Isn't this the church?

Speaker 2 And from here, we're going to enter into like a five and a half minute bit where everybody's like referring back to the thing that happened without telling us what it is.

Speaker 3 Okay, so this is, this is my favorite part in which we get into something called non-linear storytelling.

Speaker 3 And this is where the movie movie starts playing in 5D chess and you're not even aware of it yet. Okay.

Speaker 3 I would think I felt like I was aware of it.

Speaker 3 I wasn't aware of it, Cameron. Speak your truth.
You were outsmarted by this movie. I guarantee it.

Speaker 3 Hold on, I'm spinning a top to see which level

Speaker 3 of the movie I'm in.

Speaker 2 But they go inside, they're like, is this the church? And we're like, well, I sure hope so because you're just breaking and entering otherwise.

Speaker 3 Oh, I loved how they just like came in through the back door and then out onto the stage. Yes.

Speaker 2 Entering from stage left, the Sorbos.

Speaker 3 And they run into a bunch of people that know them and are referring to the past, but we will never know who the

Speaker 3 I don't want to speak on behalf of Cameron because I do see the push pins and yarns behind him.

Speaker 3 I will never have any fucking idea who these older versions of the characters are.

Speaker 2 Oh, this is Marco.

Speaker 3 Duh. Again, you are, I'm going to need drumming and maze.

Speaker 3 This brings up a great point. This brings up a great point.
So they use exposition, rather a lack of exposition in the entire movie to get you thinking about, hmm, who is this person?

Speaker 3 And by getting those inner machinations going, it makes you start to seeing this world from like an outside perspective. And now you are no longer immersed in this movie.

Speaker 3 You are seeing it from above, much like Jesus.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Interesting.

Speaker 3 That was a stretch. So, yeah, right, right.
Did you hear that? Mind blown.

Speaker 2 So, but Marco is like, oh my God, it's Josh and Joni. And he picks up his phone and we get like one of the worst movie phone calls because nobody can make a phone call in a movie.

Speaker 3 Oh my God, yes. Thank you for bringing it up.
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 This is about as bad as it gets, right?

Speaker 3 And it also took the person five seconds to get there after he called them. Yes,

Speaker 3 they were waiting in the closet.

Speaker 2 They were stage right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 The first ring hasn't even happened. And he's like, you're not going to believe it.
You got to get over here. Get over here.
And then he's already there before the second ring happens.

Speaker 3 There hasn't been a hangup yet.

Speaker 3 yeah also who is he who is this guy not clear we never know this is jonathan sure people

Speaker 2 okay all right so apparently me and cameron are the only ones who did the homework apparently for 100 sure so i oh god and this actor's name i believe it was something like dick swingle or something like it was like very clearly a dried up porn actor or something he goes by richard swingle now but you know please please when i was a young man, I put aside childish things.

Speaker 3 Dick Swingle was a different man,

Speaker 3 a man who was in several Christmas-themed porn.

Speaker 3 Hercules, the legendary journey. Yeah, right.
I'm getting cockswingle tattooed on the back, on my back.

Speaker 3 Nice. Yes, strap stamp.

Speaker 2 But then they should. Also, this.

Speaker 2 This part, I honestly, I genuinely don't know what the fuck this is about. They're like, look at this picture of the church from where the steeple was broken off and

Speaker 2 stabbed into it as though with the hand of God.

Speaker 2 Like apparently there was some kind of natural disaster where the steeple of their church broke off in a way that defies physics.

Speaker 3 Right. 1.21 gigawatts.
So

Speaker 3 it was obviously God. The fucking Hulk grabbed the steeple of their church and then tried to kill it like a vampire.

Speaker 3 I have to clarify here that this is not something that happens in the movie. It's just something we're supposed to believe happened.
It's just continually referenced.

Speaker 3 And then after yeah even shown in the credits can i say that this guys remember this yeah this is my first genuine disappointment in this movie because i was really hoping that they were going to attempt to do this in cg and i was waiting the whole movie to see how they were going to do this

Speaker 2 in the final part of the movie i don't you know spoilers or whatever when they're at the final part of the movie where everybody's in the room and they're like firing around everything and the the big dynamon is happening and the and the kid goes oh i've got an an idea.

Speaker 2 I'm like, He's going to rip that fucking steeple off and stab the church with it.

Speaker 3 Yes, if that's what he had done.

Speaker 3 Oh, my favorite movie. This becomes my favorite.

Speaker 3 Can you imagine how much better the movie this would have been if like the Holy Spirit had possessed some like eight-year-old child and he just hulks out? Yeah,

Speaker 3 like destroying the establishment Christians. Yeah, that'd be great.
Podcast would be canceled this year.

Speaker 3 Sorry, it was a great fucking movie. Like when I die, there would just be like a 30-second somber announcement that you should watch this movie.
And then

Speaker 3 we call it a wrap. I will also point out that at one point, and I know it's just a little moment, but I do have to talk about it.
He hands him the photo and he goes, you can keep that.

Speaker 3 We have stacks of these.

Speaker 3 I was like, what? Why? Why? Why? Why do you have a bunch of 8x11s of the time?

Speaker 3 Do you think he was just like trying to get improvi and was like, I'll add this in here? Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 This is comedy gold. Yeah, no, we got plenty.
My headshots on the back. Ignore all those porn credits from the Christmas movie.
Yeah, I'm not doing that anymore.

Speaker 2 But eventually, at long last, after all this fucking teasing exposition thing, we flashback, we doodally do back to Founders View College in 1972.

Speaker 3 Woo!

Speaker 3 Hello? There we go.

Speaker 3 Some found heads in the house. Oh, fighting monks.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But then we get young Kevin Sorbo played by.
Kevin Sorbo's real life son, Brendan Sorbo.

Speaker 3 I didn't realize that till the credits. I was like, this is fantastic casting.
Whoever did this. Yeah, right.
Yeah, it looks just like it. And then I was like, oh.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 But they're in school learning about the dude Tyndall who got burned at the stake or killed or whatever for executed for translating the Bible.

Speaker 3 His ears cut off. Oh, is that it? Okay.

Speaker 2 But they're, but so they're, they're, they're learning all about that. And after class, young Kevin Sorbo turns to young Sam Sorbo to talk about what they've just learned, right?

Speaker 2 Now, the credits are still rolling at this point in the film. So this is where we get, it comes up and it says based on a true story.

Speaker 2 Now, as savvy Christian movie viewers that we are after fucking 500 plus episodes of this show, you know that that means either get ready for some next level bullshit or nothing will happen in this movie.

Speaker 2 This is the nothing happens version, right?

Speaker 3 Well, I was going to say this is both. I was going to say.

Speaker 2 Well, no, you're right, actually. You're right.

Speaker 2 We kind of get a little of of both in this one.

Speaker 3 I swordly disagree. As above, so below, my friend, that is the moral of the entire movie.
Were you not paying attention? I was not paying attention. Clearly,

Speaker 2 not paying attention.

Speaker 3 So based on the true story called Genesis. Yeah, that's that important.

Speaker 3 Let me tell you about a little book I've heard of before. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 They said that one's based on a true story, too.

Speaker 3 These people have Humble Carpenter. They will do that.

Speaker 2 Cried Wolf about this before. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Cameron's notes are written in blood on our Google Doc. I don't know how he managed to do it.
I'm a little worried. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 So, no, so Joni needs to go to cheerleading practice. We're very quickly going to introduce her douchey boyfriend,

Speaker 3 which was super well played, by the way. It was like, what do you think of when you think of a douchey boyfriend? No, do that.
Yeah, this guy. Yeah, no, you're right.

Speaker 3 It's like a meme coin with a pert plus haircut somehow. Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 He really embodies the role, definitely.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, but he, but he invites her to the Kagger tonight. So we cut to the Kagger that night.

Speaker 3 It was it night or was it the afternoon? No, you're right. He guessed those were the keger.

Speaker 3 This was a pre-happy hour keg. 3:30 Kegger.
This was almost my best worst, was like best worst, the movie trying to describe what a keg party would be without ever having been to one.

Speaker 3 It was like nobody had ever actually been to one. Clearly, that's what the scene was.
I was like, oh,

Speaker 3 right. It's supposed to be a college, right? We're at a university of some sort, and they're hiding in the woods like it's high school.
And it's four people.

Speaker 3 They're going to drink an entire pony keg this afternoon among four people, maybe six, and the solo cups.

Speaker 2 So, they've got four people, but they do like you know how at the beginning of the sketches we do the woos and try to make it sound like there's more people in the room.

Speaker 2 They're doing that off-camera, right? There's a bunch of other people going, whoa, there's a lot of people.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and a guy with like a mustache and glasses being like, Woo!

Speaker 3 Yeah, I just can't believe they actually got Elon Musk to play the guy fist bumping in the back of the guy. Yeah, no, that's impressive.
I thought that was good.

Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 3 I liked a couple other details. They had a tablecloth for the bed of the pickup drum.

Speaker 2 Well, you don't want to be filthy to put the keg on.

Speaker 3 They're hygienic, man. Hygienic party egg.
That's important.

Speaker 3 Okay. Kegger, but make it classy.
Sustainable. You want to be able to party forever.
Yeah. No, it's green.
It's green. Can I say something, Brave? Admittedly, I was never invited to a Kegger.

Speaker 3 But what they are drinking out of does appear to be a CO2 tank for a soda machine. It's not a pony keg.
It's a pony keg. Okay, so this is a keg that I am unaware of.

Speaker 3 Okay, it's the smallest keg you've ever seen. It's a very small case.
I was really just picturing someone just taking hits at Diet Dr. Pepper and hoping we didn't notice the diet.

Speaker 3 Don't look like

Speaker 3 there was definitely no beer in there. The liquid was clear.
Oh, and the guy who drinks from it, he's supposed to be like the partier Eddie to show how hard he's going to party.

Speaker 3 And he's going to just like drink from the keg to take a big thing. But he drinks from just the tube of like the keg without pumping.
Like it's a keg.

Speaker 3 They think it's a keg with a big straw in the movie the people who made this movie were like just drink the straw you got to understand the perspective of the film writers okay these are good christian people who have been persecuted their entire lives do you think they've ever been invited to a kegger this is true do you think they have any context for what a kegger looks like ask ai i don't know that was very clear yeah yeah no shit while you're having ai make your dvd cover you also say yeah right does everyone get a hit on the straw that's in the big keg at the keg park?

Speaker 3 The layers of persecution.

Speaker 3 Please give me a hitch from the straw. Hey, a keg is like a Capri Sun, right? It's just like

Speaker 3 juicy.

Speaker 2 It's really hard to stab that straw into it.

Speaker 3 It's like a dole whip at Disney World, yes.

Speaker 2 So we get like more of this high school play blocking as people come in and out of the keg scene. The boyfriend, Pert Plus, he needs to go do some frat business, right?

Speaker 2 We meet Darnella, the TM black friend, right?

Speaker 3 The only, no, she wasn't the only one.

Speaker 2 Nope, nope. Alvita King's going to show up eventually.

Speaker 3 She's close.

Speaker 3 It's close to a very small number of black people. Yeah.

Speaker 3 This is the first time that, like, the historic context, like, not being matched very well, is very apparent because we all know that Fro would be completely round. They did her so dirty.
Right.

Speaker 3 That's very true. Absolutely.
Very true. Absolutely.
And that's the most ahistorical thing they do with the black characters in this movie, Cameron. I agree.

Speaker 3 Correct. God damn it.

Speaker 2 But Joni cannot stop thinking about that class they were talking about or where they were learning about the Bible translations, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, she's a freaky girl.

Speaker 2 Isn't she, though, at the fucking kegger? She's like, let's talk a little bit more about Bible translations.

Speaker 3 You guys want to talk about death?

Speaker 3 I'm just kidding. That's me.
That's me at a camera. Right.
Yeah. I'm Joni.

Speaker 3 That's why I was never invited.

Speaker 2 So back on campus, we encounter one of the Jesus freaks, right? One of the titular Jesus freaks. This guy, I have him down in my notes as Charles Manson.

Speaker 3 I also agree, Charles Manson. Oh, yes, 100%.
I think you're fully backed.

Speaker 3 I kind of feel like this movie also, like very, maybe not even very loosely, like half-handed, kind of trying to say that Charles Manson had a point a little bit.

Speaker 3 I think so. And I don't, and this was like set in 72 after all that.
Right, right, so that was in the 69.

Speaker 3 I think it was four-handed. I think it was like direct.
Yeah, it was like he had him at a point.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, this is a Charles Manson-looking character that ultimately leads a group of women who all believe in him, but for good, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I also want to point out here, and I don't, you know, because this movie does such a great job of like displaying and exposing names and making you remember them, but this is like the second time we see the character I'm only going to refer to as our motherfucking drip god, the guy with the kind of long hair, his fucking fits the entire movie go insane.

Speaker 3 Right. It's good to know.
All right.

Speaker 2 So we're also going to introduce another character that is going to be Joni's Jewish friend at school.

Speaker 3 Now, oh, the 90-year-old woman?

Speaker 2 That's the problem, right?

Speaker 2 This is a 36-year-old woman.

Speaker 3 I definitely thought she was a teacher.

Speaker 2 Right. Everybody thinks, why would you not think that this woman, who is clearly 20 years older than the girl playing Joni, is her friend that's the same fucking age? This is her fucking cool aunt.

Speaker 3 Her cool hip aunt. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. Not cool exactly, but hip.
So, but it took me so fucking long to put together that she's just supposed to be another fellow youth in this fucking thing.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I think it's because of how they introduced her. Like she came up to tell her that cheerleading practice got changed.
And that sounded more like a fellow teacher being like, hey,

Speaker 3 you have cheerleading practice. You need to go.
You know what I mean? It almost seemed like she was administrative staff when she did that.

Speaker 3 And so I think that that was their bad introducing that character.

Speaker 2 Well, and then when she comes up up this time, she's like, hey, don't forget you've got that thing for speech class. So I had her down as the speech tutor.
Right.

Speaker 3 Like, what are you? Sorry, it's 1972 and we don't have Siri yet. So she pays me $6.99 a month to just walk up to her and remind her calendar.

Speaker 3 I can't wait to be replaced by an Apple Watch. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Exhausting. Yeah.
And even like the whole like barfing scene. Oh, oh, oh, can I please say something about the barfing scene? I wish you would.
There was no barf. No.
There was no barf. Nope.

Speaker 3 They chickened out. Look, they're so creative, though.
Look at that framing. Oh, my God.
Hold on. Look at the framing.
All right.

Speaker 3 They don't need the vomit because they're being smart with their budget. They're really stretching the budget in there.
And they put it into the important things, like the CG and the green screens.

Speaker 2 Well, no, yes, obviously, this is

Speaker 3 the green screen audio. It's not hard to put something in your mouth and then let it fall out as you pretend to be barfing.
The Ela boss next to me. Tell Ela that.

Speaker 2 So we should also point out that while she's puking in advance of like, she's nervous about about giving her big speech or whatever at speech class, there's a big anti-war protest going on just off camera.

Speaker 3 And if you're wondering to yourself, podcast listener, what side of the 1970s anti-war movement this movie is on, it's a con. They are against it.
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 They are pro-Vietnam War in this movie.

Speaker 3 They think the Vietnam War was swell.

Speaker 3 They don't want communism spreading.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, because at this point she turns to Josh. So right now she's dating Pert Plus guy, but Josh is trying to like, you know, move in on her.
And she turns to him.

Speaker 2 She's like, hey, are you with these anti-war protesters? And he's like, oh, no, I would, my dad would never let me protest the Vietnam War.

Speaker 3 And she's like, correct answer. Right.
And when Kevin Sorbo from to Yell from off the screen, great.

Speaker 3 Got your brands now, I think. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So, but Josh and Jody decide to go for coffee.
Joni shows up for her coffee date in camouflage with a rifle.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was so confusing. Yeah.
I was like, why are you in a coffee shop with a gun? What's happening? Okay. Also, there was no coffee.
Is it this in like Utah? Is it this? Where is this? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing, though.

Speaker 3 If you would like to see the greatest comedy ever put to screen, it is that this actor is very clearly pointing this prop rifle, which is just a real rifle, at the face of the extra behind her.

Speaker 3 And so if you watch this scene, I'm not kidding, you get to watch this extra, and be like, scooch, scooch, scooch. And then she shifts her body.
Why do you keep it? And the gun points at him again.

Speaker 3 And he has the scooch back. Seriously, I did not notice.
It's the greatest thing ever put to film. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's the attention to detail that you're starting to notice about this movie, right? Yes, exactly. They're making you solve puzzles in the background, making your mind active.

Speaker 3 They're actually educating you. This whole thing is a, I can't believe it's not a leftist psyop.

Speaker 3 Art is what happens in your head while you consume it i agree there you go okay so to be clear she's on the rifle team and that's why how much has a firing gun into this coffee shop and nobody's like hey get the fuck out but she's on the rifle team okay she has a gun florida bro why is she wearing camo is it are rifle teams like war games are like other rifle teams shooting at you in florida

Speaker 3 i guess that's possible in florida it's not yeah right yeah anything is possible in florida right well there's also this great moment where Brandon Sorbo, he goes, like, hold on.

Speaker 2 I didn't know they let girls be on the rifle team. And again, high school blocking, some random person just turns around.
One of the extras turns around and says, why, she's the best shot.

Speaker 3 Actually,

Speaker 3 he just rappels down from the roof somehow to be like, best on team. Zoop right back up.
Yep.

Speaker 2 So, yeah.

Speaker 2 So they're leaving and the Jewish friend catches her and she says, hey, like, hey, you're wearing camo. You're going to piss off the Vietnam war protesters right

Speaker 2 and as if on queue the war test protesters who are on off camera but trust us there's a bunch of them they try to with her but don't worry she does a cartwheel and wins their hearts

Speaker 3 oh my god i was like so confused by that i was like wait what oh she's an expert in global diplomacy

Speaker 2 i'm gonna do a cute little cartwheel all four of you including rachel are women haters i swear to god that's true i might be because, like, genuinely, like, I looked at this and I thought my first thing I wrote in my notes is like, I'm 49 years old, and I could out-cartwheel the shit out of this girl, out of this actor.

Speaker 3 She, that was not even a very good cartwheel. Of course, you did.
Okay, can we talk about the bra burning?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 Okay, so we have an inner cut here, which is a bra burning, but but they didn't get permission to burn the bra. And also, it's not a bra.
It's like a fucking light evening top.

Speaker 3 So what we see is them gently place a bra, quote unquote, onto like some wood that is near a campfire, on a campfire, and then they loop that clip twice. And they're like, you get it, bra burning.

Speaker 3 That was the moment where I was like, oh, so we're doing bad, bad movie. We're not doing right, yeah, we're not going to be making fun of the acting choices here.

Speaker 2 Well, we will, but yes, we'll also get to make fun of the fact that they only had two bras to burn, so they just started playing that same footage again and said, You'll get it, you get it.

Speaker 3 I feel like you're not understanding the experimentation that has to go through one's mind in order to deliver a hard cut in the middle of an exposition scene. Like, you're just not.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 It's a choice. But it also felt like they were just like checking boxes of like things that happened in the 70s.
Yes, they can't do it. Because they were just making these like tiny little scenes.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, what does that have to do with the plot? No, obviously, listen, they're trying to make a modern movie. They typed in chat GPT, give me examples of

Speaker 3 things people did in the 70s, and then they just did that checking. And then they just did it.

Speaker 3 Right, right. Genius.
First, look into an AI movie.

Speaker 2 But then so she walks away, because she's like, she walks away from the war protesters, and she runs into Charles Manson, who starts giving her the creepiest I found Jesus story imaginable.

Speaker 3 It's just Charles Manson now.

Speaker 3 What's his name? No, I love it. I love it.
We should not call him anything else.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so he's just like, when I was in Vietnam, I saw the face of Jesus and then I went through literal hell and I came out the other side in literal heaven and I see demons even to this day.

Speaker 3 And she's like, cool.

Speaker 3 PTSD, bro. That is PTSD level.
You need to see a doctor. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 But of course, her friend comes up to her and says, hey, you shouldn't be seen with a homeless hippie, Jesus freak guy

Speaker 2 who has hallucinations. And she goes, but I also have hallucinations.

Speaker 3 Yep. Yeah.
When she said that, I wrote in my notes, take away her gun. Take away her gun.
I also like that he's just representing Jesus on his back, bro. Like he's just got Jesus' face printed on.

Speaker 3 It's such hard drip. It's like the second drip god in this movie.

Speaker 2 I think they're team Jesus.

Speaker 3 You know what I thought, too?

Speaker 3 When Joni keeps talking about her visions, that this entire movie is actually just Joni tripping the whole time. Oh my God, that's so winner.
That is amazing.

Speaker 3 I fucking love so much better. He's really...

Speaker 2 Charles Manson, it turns out it's the end.

Speaker 3 Yeah. She's actually one of the women.
For some reason, Charles Manson haunts her dreams. She took that gun and killed families.
No, this is a Charles Manson.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, right, right. No, this is is a pre-charles man.

Speaker 2 It's 1972. It's so close to lining up, but it doesn't quite.
So then, okay, so now we get Josh. That's Brandon Sorbo.
Josh shows up at Joni's window, Romeo style.

Speaker 2 Now, earlier in the movie, she like gave some shit for wearing boring clothes just like everybody else. So now he's dressed.

Speaker 3 I didn't even remember that. I had no idea why he showed up with those clothes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he shows up in silk pajamas.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 Because who fucking cares about anything in this world?

Speaker 3 And if I can speak to Cameron's point of view of the masterful filmmaking, it happens to be the kind of pajamas that he's wearing earlier when he's Kevin Sorbo. Oh, I see.

Speaker 3 I think that's a really astute observation. Well done.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 I'm sure they're setting up why you would dress like an asshole later on in his life.

Speaker 3 I love it. Do you think they saw Kevin Sorbo show up to set dress like an asshole? And they were like, hey, Brandon, I am so sorry.
Can you go to...

Speaker 3 Can you go to Spencer's Gifts and buy a hippie rapist costume and come on back? Okay, so here's the thing.

Speaker 2 So I did watch this movie with my mother who grew up in the 70s and she in this scene said this is the only thing i've seen so far that actually looks like it's from the 70s yeah right yeah right so okay so now her friend darnello we cut to black friend darnella she's with her granny and her granny is alvita king if you're not familiar with alvita king she's like what is she the daughter or granddaughter of martin luther king i believe she's his daughter yeah But she's, she's a conservative anti-abortion activist, and she's just a terrible, terrible person in every imaginable way.

Speaker 3 But she's always kept it to anti-abortion previously whenever we run into her, right?

Speaker 3 Whenever we run into her, she always sort of like nods at the civil rights movement, doesn't really talk about it, but if she does, she'll just be like, I think what my grand, my father was doing was just like aborted babies.

Speaker 3 And we're like, boo, lady who has a bad opinion. This movie, she does not chime in on aborted babies.

Speaker 3 This movie, she's here to chime in on how perhaps her dad didn't give segregationists enough credit

Speaker 3 yeah that was weird it's so fucking awful.

Speaker 2 So, like, Darnella comes into the coffee shop that Josh and Joni are in. It's like, hey, have you seen my grandma? And the other guy's like, hey, you can't be up front.
You have to go to the back.

Speaker 2 You can only eat in the back. Your kind can't eat up front.
So he sends her to the back. And we have what's supposed to be this like solidarity moment with all of the

Speaker 2 young white people, except. Except they stay at the same diner.
They just go around back.

Speaker 2 Like they still give this guy money. They just go to the back of the diner.

Speaker 3 Anyway, yeah.

Speaker 2 so they and then darnella sits down with grandma and she's like hey why would you eat at a place like this that makes you sit around back and and that's when she's like well i think we've got plenty of civil rights at this point

Speaker 3 yes she says they make a good sandwich

Speaker 3 she might as well explain to her granddaughter that the hand of the free market will work this out

Speaker 3 also

Speaker 3 White people don't make a good sandwich. I think that was bad narrative.
That's true.

Speaker 3 I was a little distracted in this scene because she picks up a napkin from the basket while she's talking and then just holds it and stares at it. Yeah, what was this?

Speaker 3 I was too distracted to like actually hear anything she was saying because I was like, the is she doing?

Speaker 2 So I was honestly, is she talking to the napkin?

Speaker 3 And so I was distracted.

Speaker 3 Oh, there you go. She's like, oh, what's this? And then, and then Darnell's like, grandma, did you take your meds? Yeah, right.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, but I was distracted by the dripped them into my eyebrows. The McGovern for president signs that they've slapped on the back wall here to make this movie more of its time.
Yes, right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, not in real life.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. But they would never.
So McGovern posters. So to be clear, the segregated diner is anti-Nixon and pro-McGovern for 72 people.
Yeah. Yes, clearly.
I'm a fiscal voter. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so at this point, Darnella catches Josh staring dumbly at Joni,

Speaker 2 and she turns to him. She's like, so you sweet on Joni? He's like, yeah, I'm going to marry that girl.
She doesn't know it yet.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh, what a very healthy basis for an ostensible friendship.

Speaker 3 What a cool, chill thing to say about a person who's real and has their own will. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I was too distracted again with the blocking in this scene to actually comprehend anything that anyone was saying. Oh.
I was like, where are you, first of all?

Speaker 3 And why are there so many people trying to get past you? That's fair. Over and over again.

Speaker 3 I literally couldn't handle it. I had no idea what they were talking about.
I just kept being like, where are they?

Speaker 3 Are you fools under the assumption that you are supposed to know what is going on at any given moment in this movie? Well, yeah, right. I mean, why else would I watch a movie?

Speaker 3 No, you need to think of a higher mind. You need to think of a higher mind here, okay? They fool you into thinking you're supposed to know what's going on in this movie, right?

Speaker 3 They're trying to disorient us. Yes, they are 20 kids.
It's a flashbang. It's a psychopath.
It's a flashbang. Thank you.
It's a fucking psyop. I actually do agree that this movie is a flashbang.

Speaker 3 You know those posters that are like the magic eye? You got to watch the movie like that. Yeah, you got to go look through it.

Speaker 3 You got to squint your ears and eyes and just kind of like broadly bring in the movie just as a gestalt.

Speaker 2 So, I have to point out one thing that's going on in the scene.

Speaker 2 So, what's supposed to be happening right now is that all the people are moving to the back in solidarity with their black friends or whatever.

Speaker 2 And so, they're bringing chairs back there to like set up to have more space.

Speaker 3 That makes sense.

Speaker 2 But they don't actually, for whatever reason, they don't actually have chairs.

Speaker 2 So, they have them moving high chairs as if all these college students are going to sit on high chairs.

Speaker 3 No, I have to.

Speaker 2 I want that visual. I think they cheated us of that visual.

Speaker 3 Just a bunch of people like squished, cut in half in between the chairs.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so now it's the next day. Joni's back on campus when a character that I just have down as friend number three.

Speaker 3 The drip god, my guy. Oh, the drip god.
This is Cameron's drip god. I literally found and replaced a drip god.

Speaker 3 No, I don't know if anybody was paying attention, but he is in almost every scene after he is first introduced as an extra.

Speaker 3 He is on or like just off to the side in the background in every fucking scene.

Speaker 3 Oh, why not? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So in this scene, he starts off by like remarking on all those violent peace activists, right? And how unsafe he feels around them.

Speaker 3 Hey, everybody.

Speaker 3 I know we just had Alvera King say that the civil rights movement was a little bit too much of a much, but we just wanted to bring a white actor out here to just condemn them sort of whole hog.

Speaker 3 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 You know what side of the movie we're going be on yeah so he but he's got some some drip god has some some jesus words to say and then pert plus shows up i have the jesus words to say he's got he says you know he's like hey babe sorry i was missing for the last few scenes but that's just how this movie's blocked you know

Speaker 2 hey i'm not quite sure what this movie is about but i think for this scene i'm a part of it yeah um all right he turns to the the in the background here we've got charles man like speaking to his flock or whatever and Alex is just like, oh, those Jesus freaks are such a bunch of losers, Alex being pert plus.

Speaker 3 And he actually, he doesn't say that they're losers. He says that they're weak.
Yes. And she's deeply unimpressed by it.
And he's like, no, no,

Speaker 3 thus spoke Zarathustra.

Speaker 3 Get your ready. Get you around.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So she storms off, but mid-storm off, she comes across Darnella

Speaker 2 and some of the Jesus freaks having like a Bible study. And this is where she starts to get roped into their cult, right?

Speaker 2 Because she's like, oh, wow, I've never heard people talk about God as though he was a real thing.

Speaker 2 Like, what?

Speaker 2 Like, this is supposed to be somebody who grew up in church. Yeah.
Right. So, so they must have winked after they said it, right? God sent his only begotten son, right?

Speaker 3 Why don't we get a chance to see that other church? I want to see the church where they're like, and praise the Lord or whatever.

Speaker 3 This actually brings up a good point. I want to ask everybody a question here.
So

Speaker 3 we will later be introduced to the whatever denomination of church that is persecuting her and the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3 Have you guys ever

Speaker 3 heard of a denomination like that? I have not. No, I assure you.

Speaker 2 One that hates all things Jesus in this way? No.

Speaker 3 Yes, yeah, no. It feels a little fabricated, I'm not going to lie.
Anyway, continue. I mean, there are 30,000 denominations, so.

Speaker 3 Yes, we're going to get a pastor who yells at this character being like, the Holy Spirit, fuck

Speaker 3 you. What the hell are you talking about, Bastor?

Speaker 3 That's blasphemy. Right.

Speaker 3 Wait, what? You mean Vishnu?

Speaker 2 But then they invite her to like super Bible study. Like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Everything has Bible study, right? Because everything they do is Bible study. So they're like, well, this is a Bible study, but come to real Bible study on Thursday, right?

Speaker 2 And she's like, what denomination are you? And they're like, there's no denomination in our teaching, just a...

Speaker 2 a few very strictly Baptist teachings that no other part of Christianity would agree with.

Speaker 3 When you said there's no denomination in the body of Christ, I wrote in my notes, oh, yeah, you got a lot of Catholics. Yeah,

Speaker 3 a lot of Eastern Orthodox.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so now she's at Bible study too when her nerd friend, who will eventually in Act 3 be named Debbie, comes by and tells her, hey, whatever you do, don't get up and look over to the left.

Speaker 2 So she gets up and looks over to the left.

Speaker 2 And damn it if she doesn't catch Pert Plus flirting with some other girl.

Speaker 3 Whatever you do, don't look over in that direction. There is no man behind the curtain.

Speaker 3 And I want to point out how poorly constructed this movie is, Cameron, I apologize, because they have that scene.

Speaker 3 They cut to him and the new girl flirting and then they cut to the same shot, but it's supposed to be later when she's explaining why he cheated on you, or she speaks in a weird past participle tense for no reason.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but we establish here that Pert Plus is stepping out on her because she won't fuck him and some of these other college girls will.

Speaker 3 As he should. Right.

Speaker 2 So now we're going to show up at Bible study. Get ready for me to say that a lot for the rest of this fucking review.
This is Bible study at Drip God's House.

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is where we see Eddie. Remember the guy who's drinking through the Kegger straw earlier? He's been born again and isn't a partier anymore.

Speaker 3 Yeah. He's been fixed.
They fuck up the, it's not a religion, it's a relationship line here, right? He goes, we aren't religious, we're relationship

Speaker 3 bus

Speaker 3 something like that. This definitely does look like a polycule, especially when they like all stand up.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 welcome, pretty blonde girl.

Speaker 3 It's not enough board games.

Speaker 2 So, and then there's also this amazing moment. Thank you.

Speaker 2 There's also this amazing moment here where she's like, you know, they're like trying to get her to say that she's not part of their particular cult. And she's like, Do you know Jesus?

Speaker 2 And she's like, Yeah. And they're like, But have you accepted him as your personal Lord and Savior? And she's like, Yeah.
And they're like, are you saved? And she's like, yeah. And they're like, fuck.

Speaker 2 Are you baptized by the fire in the name of the Holy Ghost? And she's like, okay, no, I don't, I don't know that one.

Speaker 3 Emo, do you mind coming out here and finishing the joke? She's not yet.

Speaker 2 But she's like, yeah, no, in my denomination, we weren't even taught to read our Bibles.

Speaker 3 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 She's a member of the Catholic Church in the eighth century. Right.
Yes. She's time trapped.

Speaker 3 They go, can we lay hands on you? And she goes, does it hurt?

Speaker 2 And they go, quite the opposite. And I'm like, oh, God, you're getting fucked, girl.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 that's what I'm saying. It is a polycule.
It's a cultist polycule. They're all fucking the same man.
Charles Manson, as it turns out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, this is the cultiest possible thing they could do without a human sacrifice when they all lay hands on her. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we should put it so it, so everybody comes around her and they like pray Jesus all over or or whatever. So it already has a Bukaki look to it.

Speaker 2 But then they say, these two lines actually get said at this point. One says, fill Joni with your Holy Spirit.
And afterwards, another person says, and I fucking quote, you got Jesus all over you.

Speaker 3 That felt, can I say that felt like a nod to us? Yes. And I don't mean like atheists.
I mean us, God offers you. Five of us, yes.
Like a prank. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I feel like Kevin was walking around the trailer and he was like, what's that fat Jewish kid like to say?

Speaker 3 There you go, that's for you, Ellie, or whatever your name is.

Speaker 3 Can we, can we, did anybody else not, did anybody else see in the background all of these random ass movie posters in this dude's house in Drip Cod's

Speaker 3 Mac McMillan or something like that? Oh my god, I spent so much time trying to track. I tried to find Mac McMillan, they're not real, they're not real.

Speaker 3 They may be real, and I was like, Oh, it's very clearly really bad CGI. Why did I look this up?

Speaker 3 Right, are they are they not other Renaissance Renaissance girl productions? That's what I came across. Really?

Speaker 3 I thought maybe the AI was trying to trick me. Who knows? Oh, yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2 And then out of fucking nowhere, half an hour into the fucking movie, she's like, oh, so I'm the narrator of the film. And she starts narrating shit to us.

Speaker 3 Hi, it's me, me.

Speaker 3 Hello. She starts telling us.
I said to myself. Right.

Speaker 2 She starts telling us how she saw spirits and demons. And I'm like, okay you're having a schizophrenic episode and people told you it was religion

Speaker 3 yeah right yeah it was like thanks to being born again just now i had an insane psychotic break and end of act one yes like that's that's where the movie went insane yeah all right well i need a minute to encourage this young woman to get some help but we'll be back soon with even more

Speaker 2 Jesus freak

Speaker 3 okay

Speaker 3 what if we change the name of the show to God awful Leaving? This is literally the first time we've met. Yeah.
Dude, I told you they wouldn't like it. Well, we wouldn't know unless we tried, Heath.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, what's going on?

Speaker 3 I think Eli and Heath are trying to sell us your podcast.

Speaker 2 Damn it, guys, not again.

Speaker 3 Okay, first of all, we were just talking about the title at first. And second, me and Heath are really short on cash.
Everything's so expensive these days.

Speaker 2 Well, guys, if you want a better way to manage your money without selling the title of our podcast, you should really try Rocket Money.

Speaker 3 What's Rocket Money?

Speaker 2 Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings.

Speaker 3 Well, how do they do that?

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Speaker 2 Rocket Money has saved users over two and a half billion dollars, including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone.

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Speaker 3 All right, Noah, I'm sold. Where do I sign up?

Speaker 2 Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies today.
That's rocketmoney.com slash awful movies.

Speaker 2 Rocketmoney.com/slash awful movies.

Speaker 3 All right, Noah. Thanks.
Okay, what about cheers to movies? Ooh, okay, I kind of like that one. Rachel.
Now we're talking. Almost at a deal here.

Speaker 3 Joni, this is Craig and Chris, your host family. A pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 3 Can't wait to meet that Joni we're hosting. Me neither, dear.
Mom, dad, can I go over to Evan's house? Well, sure. He is the pastor's son, after all.

Speaker 3 So, how does your dad feel about that Joni coming to town? Okay, I guess. As long as she doesn't bring any of that crazy charisma stuff into the church, mail delivery.
Thanks, Mr. Mailman.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 2 I'm just a

Speaker 3 mailman, not really involved in the movie.

Speaker 2 You're still here.

Speaker 3 I'm in some Dickens right now.

Speaker 3 Pretty good.

Speaker 3 Pretty good.

Speaker 3 Pretty.

Speaker 3 Pretty.

Speaker 3 Pretty good Dickens.

Speaker 2 And we're back for the anti-Semitic portion of the film.

Speaker 3 Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 Because this is where Debbie, who is Jewish apparently, shows up to invite Joni to a seder.

Speaker 3 And this is how you can tell this movie is not based on a true story because a Jewish person would never expose anybody they like to a seder.

Speaker 3 It's the weird. Whatever your most anti-Semitic friend thinks Jews are like, Seder is weirder.
Listen, I hate to know and you, but I love the Seder's I've been to. They're awesome.

Speaker 3 What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 I never went to like a serious, serious one, like Orthodox style. I just went to one with like my friend from high school who had a really good bunch of food at Seder, and it was the best.
Okay.

Speaker 3 I feel like the Slotniks just had nice food. It was like really good brisket.
And that's like, that was the whole thing. My church growing up used to celebrate Jewish holidays.

Speaker 3 So we would do the Seder meal every fucking year. Really? No.

Speaker 3 That's inclusive, surprisingly. Yep.
Like it was a bunch of like white non-Jewish people who were like, oh, but we love Jesus. Shouting down on

Speaker 3 the Jewish religion. So, but we would have a packet and we'd walk through it.
So I actually know all about this.

Speaker 2 Loving these locks.

Speaker 3 Why is this night different from all the other nights? Yep. And then we'd hide questions, hide the Afikomen.
Bread for the children. Yep.
The Afikomen.

Speaker 3 Nice. I forgot about that word.
I haven't been in like 10 years, but yeah.

Speaker 3 Hey, I'm the only Jew and I feel like I wish Moishi was on because I feel like I'm the only kid whose dad tortured the officer out of him. I feel like it was going to be fries,

Speaker 3 but that's for another program

Speaker 3 another day. I was definitely the guy who didn't get it, though.
At one point,

Speaker 3 at one point, I think it was the first time I went to a seder. My friend's dad walks in and he's got a piece of matzah, which, but like, you know, the really large one, like the oversized one.

Speaker 3 And I was like, that's a huge cracker. Oh, my God.
I started laughing at me. And one of them was like, you're a huge cracker.

Speaker 3 Nice, nice.

Speaker 3 Got that one.

Speaker 3 Now, I do want to point out what this section of the movie is, though, because it's going to help you, podcast listener.

Speaker 3 Because I was watching this part of the movie and thinking to myself, what the fuck does this have to do with her finding charismatic Christianity? And the answer is nothing. And let me explain why.

Speaker 3 This movie is divided into thirds. We are in the second third.
In the first third, she finds Jesus. In the third third, she gets mildly yelled at by somebody.

Speaker 3 But here in the second third, she just tells us everything that happened to her that summer so that she had an hour and 43-minute movie, absolutely.

Speaker 2 So, this movie is hamstrung so often by its based on a true storiness, right?

Speaker 2 Because any mildly competent person trying to write this story would have combined several of these characters together, right? So, there's one friend we can follow the whole fucking way or whatever.

Speaker 2 They would have left out certain parts, added other parts, made certain other parts relevant in some way. This movie makes no attempt to do that whatsoever.

Speaker 2 That summer, she went to a fucking seder and asked her friend why Jews aren't Christian yet, right? So that made it into the fucking movie.

Speaker 3 Anybody got some horns I can get a grip on? I just want to see.

Speaker 3 Hey, don't talk at the Seder when we get there. Oh, got it.
Please don't. Got it.
Okay. Just real quick, and then I'll shut up.
I promise. What? Don't grab the hard-boiled egg and eat it right away.

Speaker 3 This food has baby blood in it. I know what has baby blood and what doesn't have baby blood.
It all does.

Speaker 2 So, and then we get what I can only describe as a Jewish establishing shot, right? When she gets to the Seder.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And the music seems to think that Hava Nagila is copyrighted because it was like,

Speaker 3 you get it.

Speaker 3 No, no, I don't get it. Can you continue? Can you keep going?

Speaker 2 So, yeah, it's the two of them sitting around a table with a bunch of octogenarians. And two seconds in, Joni is like, So have you guys heard about this Jesus guy? He was one of y'all.

Speaker 3 He was one of Jesus fella. I thought I told you not to talk talk at the Seder

Speaker 3 yeah she goes Jesus was Jewish you guys must be so proud

Speaker 3 of weird line there's a lot there's a lot left on this bone this shank I'm gonna eat it I'm gonna grab this I'm gonna grab this

Speaker 2 yeah Jesus comes from your block why is there salt water I'm dipping so yeah but she says do you guys love Jesus and then a lady says I love cheeses and starts listing the various cheeses that she loves

Speaker 3 dementia awareness they're making listen they're doing a service to the public. That's right.
It does happen. It happens a lot more than you're.
I'm sorry. This entire scene was unnecessary.

Speaker 2 Had nothing to do with anything. Yep.
Should have been cut. We should have cut it from our nose.

Speaker 3 Well, they did need to shoehorn the anti-Semitism. And it wasn't.
But yeah, they did.

Speaker 2 It had to go somewhere.

Speaker 3 You know, Messianic Jews actually pissed me off the most.

Speaker 3 Sure. I feel like that's what they were referencing here.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 6 Did you just break out into a little bit of anti-Semitism?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just saying that the most of what?

Speaker 2 Because if it's of all the Jews, then we have problems with you.

Speaker 3 Christians who pretend they're Jewish. Oh, I see.
I see. Rachel, do you remember at the beginning when we said, don't rank your Jews? Don't rank your

Speaker 3 most and least favorite Jews.

Speaker 3 It's a letter at the top. Just put a letter at the top of the note.
Nobody ever fucking reads it.

Speaker 3 My least favorite Jews so far. All right.
So Eli Bosnick, Jokey Mason. Someone's going to reach out to me after this.

Speaker 3 Like, hey. Kanye West just retweeted you.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 So sometime later, we've got Josh now, Brendan Sorbo, asking why she's been hanging out with those Jesus freaks so much, right? And she's like, well, they're just Christians.

Speaker 2 And he goes, well, look, I'm a Christian, but I'm not a fucking Christian, you know.

Speaker 3 Fucking weirdo. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 And she's like, no, I have a relationship with Jesus. And he's like, have you even tried any of the other religions?

Speaker 3 Oh my God, I loved this line. I'm like, that's a solid question, right? I loved this line.
I was like, they did something here and they don't even know that they they did it. I'm telling you.

Speaker 3 And her response is, no, I found, you know, you said, why would you keep looking at it?

Speaker 3 I'm totally happy.

Speaker 2 If I like these pierogies, why ever eat another food?

Speaker 3 I've found the truth. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But then, but he's like, he's like, well, you know, actually, I had a weird experience the other day. And then, so he doodly do's back to his weird experience, right?

Speaker 2 And he's dousing for the correct religion, right?

Speaker 2 And the way that we're going to try to do that is that he's set out four holy books and he's going to hold his hand out to see which one, you know, feels true to him.

Speaker 3 Hold his shit hand over the holy books, yes.

Speaker 2 Exactly. But here's the thing: this cheap-ass movie could not be bothered to buy a Quran or a translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Speaker 3 They weren't going to touch those books with their hands.

Speaker 2 That might be it. That might be it.
So he's got a Bible, and then he's got three, like, you know, of like, it's like a classics collection book, right? It's, it's fucking Treasure Island.

Speaker 3 It took me a long time to figure out what was happening with Brandon

Speaker 3 as well, because the only book I recognized was the Bible. And then he just started hovering his hand and I was like, what is he doing? Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 3 So I think the reason they didn't use other holy books for this scene is they were worried Brandon Sorbo would just like start shaking over the Quran and they'd be like, God damn it, Branton.

Speaker 3 But also, I want to point out that in the scene, he's doing his little dowsing thing. He gets over the Bible.
The music goes, oh,

Speaker 3 and then he does it again. And can I say, I admire his skepticism?

Speaker 2 Right. No, yeah, he moves the Bible to a different spot.
He's like, well, maybe it's just the book on the far right that's getting the aw.

Speaker 3 Oh, I don't want to be far right. Yeah, no, don't.
Just probably just pareidolia that time. I'm going to move it.

Speaker 2 There we go.

Speaker 3 Bro, this is definitely one of those genuinely beautiful scenes for me.

Speaker 3 The fact that he has to hover over and base on vibes has no idea, quote, or like hint, hint, wink, wink, no idea where the actual Bible is.

Speaker 3 And then he puts his hand over and was like, that was too easy. I need to be scientific about this.
Yes. And then just switches, switches with his eyes

Speaker 3 to a point

Speaker 3 just right next over and then closes his eyes with no object permanence. It's like, all right, I got this.

Speaker 2 Well, and it's not like they're all like similarly sized books even or anything like that. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 So, but then the second time around, the Bible sort of blows open a little bit because they've got a fan just off camera there.

Speaker 2 So that's how, but, but amazingly enough, after two successful Bible douses,

Speaker 2 he still doesn't quite become Christian yet, right? We undoodily do.

Speaker 3 He might as well like pull up the bar with the time of the movie from the bottom of the screen and be like, nope, I guess I'm not Christian yet.

Speaker 3 Hey, look, a true skeptic, I got to respect the man for it. He's doing his research.

Speaker 2 Right, yeah, absolutely. So, okay, so now we've got Darnella and Debbie.
They're about to leave and talk about a fucking scene that should have have been left out.

Speaker 2 This whole fucking sequence here is so bizarre. Joni runs up to Debbie and she's like, hey, my Christian group is going to do a thing at the lake tomorrow morning.

Speaker 2 Would you like to bike 40 miles with me to Libby's place so we can spend the night close to the lake?

Speaker 3 As she talks from the car. Yeah.
And the friend says yes, which is yet more evidence that she is not really chewing.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so but they're biking along and they come across a river and they're like, oh, how do we get across? And again,

Speaker 2 hamstrung by the fact that it actually had to stay true to this idiot woman, Jodi says, all right, well, what we need is some motivation.

Speaker 2 I'll throw my shoes to the other side of the river and now we have to get there.

Speaker 2 So she does that.

Speaker 3 You could just, you could just want to. You could just want to, yeah.

Speaker 3 You could just motivate yourself by wanting to. Those shoes may actually help you get across, actually.

Speaker 2 Really, honestly, if you think about it, shoes are real handy.

Speaker 3 Rick pulling the pin out of a grenade. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 why did you i don't know what's happening so but then she throws her shoes over and then a guy there's a guy there that's fishing and he's been sitting there as they have this entire conversation as she throws her shoes over and he's like by the way that river is filled with moccasins and alligators Now, I'm not a fisher person.

Speaker 3 So quick question. Does one mumble to oneself like you're masturbating to pictures of an intimate family member while you fish? That is most of fishing.
Yes,

Speaker 3 that's pretty much the whole thing that's all that's all that fishing is okay okay good accurate what i also like though is this actor is like cosplaying as an old man because he's clearly not an old man no yeah right was like spray painted 24 he's trying to act like an old man being like crusty and stuff he's doing like old man mouth yeah yeah

Speaker 3 he's like clearly not an old man and i was like why was this hard to find an old man why couldn't you just make it the character 24 and out fishing yeah Well, Debbie's like 90, so he has to try to like get

Speaker 3 that said. Well, he's he's very clearly supposed to be representing like an ancient demon, right? Like they very clearly portraying him as this very clearly evil.

Speaker 3 And I really don't have to say how heavy-handed this is under a certain context, and I'm not going to.

Speaker 2 You can't make him.

Speaker 3 We tried.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is Pazuzu or something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, so we also have to point out that this river that's supposedly filled with poisonous snakes and alligators is like fucking a foot and a half deep, right?

Speaker 2 So like maybe snakes, but there's no fucking, you'd see the alley, they'd poke out. It's not deep enough for an alligator.

Speaker 3 It's also like jumping distance. Like, I could backflip over that pretty easily.
Right, yeah. It's like an alligator in a folding chair in the middle of right, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's how I got to school when I was in elementary school, actually. But it was uphills both ways.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I grew up in the 80s, so we had to jump from one alligator to another three at a time and then swing on vines to get there. I feel for you.

Speaker 3 Were you also like riding your dinosaur too? Was that a lot of pitfalls Yeah, we didn't have a lot of money growing up.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 and we liked it. Yeah.
And there was one black guy. You guys didn't hear it, but I made a super sweet pitfall joke.
I got it. I got it.
Bro, Skype skipped.

Speaker 3 Otherwise, you all would have been busting up super hard.

Speaker 2 There's no such thing as Skype anymore. So then we have to do it.

Speaker 3 Skype.

Speaker 3 We have the company didn't go under. Skype's real.

Speaker 3 So, um, hey, everybody, I'm sorry I'm not in the rest of the podcast. I'm going to be furiously googling Skype to see if it's

Speaker 3 MySpace page.

Speaker 3 Pimping your space.

Speaker 2 So, but now here's the thing is that like

Speaker 2 the very next scene, they've now gone the long way around to the nearest bridge and they've come around and got the shoes. So like nothing happened other than time was taken up.

Speaker 2 So it could have just been that they got lost. In fact, they're going to get lost.

Speaker 2 Right. So this scene serves no purpose whatsoever.
Also, the old man Batman's away when they get to the other side of the river, right? Disappears.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this movie has a lot.

Speaker 3 Again, this second third has a lot of like, and then maybe I had an encounter with Jesus, but like, she didn't have the fucking guts of her convictions to say like, no, I actually met Jesus.

Speaker 3 So she just has a bunch of like, I don't know, was he? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so this is the first, like, I think this is the first truly egregious use of the green screen here. And we'll get a lot more from here on out.

Speaker 2 This is where they're supposed to be at a gas station.

Speaker 2 but they've just green screen like and it doesn't even have to be a gas station right it could just be literally anywhere in any town any town USA, baby, right? But they've green screened it.

Speaker 2 That's all they needed was outdoor location.

Speaker 3 It's an atmosphere, they are crafting an atmosphere. What are you not getting, bro?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, they sure are because Jodi goes, Come on, it's getting dark, and it's like it's four in the afternoon. Like, you're green screening, why not green screen in an evening?

Speaker 3 I think you guys missed the first egregious use of green screen is when they're looking across the river and they just like cut from a park bench in the middle of the river so you can see the grass underneath the bench.

Speaker 3 How do you blow past that, brother?

Speaker 3 Genius.

Speaker 3 Cause in you.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so then a random guy walks by and Debbie goes, excuse me, passing stranger. Can you give us money and aid? And he's like,

Speaker 3 I don't know about all of that, you know?

Speaker 2 But he explains to him that they've actually gone 40 miles in the wrong direction and he can drive them out to where they need to go.

Speaker 2 Now, Debbie has some obvious questions. She's like, what if he's a murderer? You know, and I feel like that's a good question.

Speaker 2 I would wait until he was out of earshot, but that's a reasonable question.

Speaker 3 She would survive in a horror movie, probably. Well, especially in the context of what was going on at that time, this is like, sorry to be a historical nerd here, but like Manson just happened.

Speaker 3 Like hitchhikers were dying all the time.

Speaker 3 Excellent point. And this guy's like, I'll drive you in my van.
Here's some candy from my pocket. Here you go.
Would you like to get into the van? And they were like, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'll get in the van.
Yeah, that sounds good.

Speaker 3 Real quote from them: lock yourself in the back.

Speaker 2 And they're like, Oh, nice.

Speaker 3 We'll be safe and cozy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, so, okay.
So, first of all, before we get to the lock them in the back bit,

Speaker 2 she's like, Jodi's like, Well, what if God sent him? I have peace about this. And I'm like, This is dangerous bullshit.

Speaker 2 Because, but the thing is, though, she looks at the truck, and the name on the side of the truck that's been CGI'd sloppily under the side of the truck is Angel contracting. I did not see that.

Speaker 3 So there you go. It's a marked van.
It's not even unmarked. It's going to be

Speaker 3 angel. Come on.
I want to point out another excellent budget saving strategy that they used here. You call it CGE.

Speaker 3 However, you will notice if you look at the scene again, that it is actually just a photo of a truck. And it's just a Photoshop edit, not actually any kind of video CG.
No C involved. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 They didn't need to like hire somebody to CG that. They just did it themselves.
Genius.

Speaker 2 They might as well have just taped it on top of a photograph. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 2 But so, okay. So Buddy gives him a ride and then they start asking questions about him and he's being super cagey.
Now, the reason he's being super cagey is because he's an angel, right?

Speaker 2 But his answers are identical to what they would be like if he was also, you know, a murderer.

Speaker 3 Or Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Speaker 2 Or Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. The man himself.
So sometimes we'll do like listener meet and greets and people will try to get too specific about Heath's life and this is how he reacts.

Speaker 3 It's like, so do you have family around here?

Speaker 3 I have a family, correct. Yeah.

Speaker 3 All over.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so now they get to, they get to Heath's best worst. They get to the lake and they're green screened in the lake and the audio is.

Speaker 2 So much fucking worse. It's like in a live show when the audio drops out and Morgan has to like use the audience audio for a second or whatever.
It's like that happens to the movie.

Speaker 3 I love that. Oh, as a as a production nerd, I can tell you what happened here.
Oh, really? Yeah. What's up? Did the MP3 get scared about the green scene?

Speaker 3 No, so for whatever reason, when they were filming that scene, they either didn't get the audio originally or lost it. So they like had to dub over their own voices.

Speaker 3 So they ended up having to watch their own mouths and try to match on a completely different microphone setup, which is why it sounds like that.

Speaker 2 And I think it was just like their laptop mic. Yes, yes.
Oh, this was ADR because they fucked it up. It's just like the impossibly bad.

Speaker 3 All right, guys, everyone gather around my AirPods. Now, they are AirPods Pro,

Speaker 3 so this will be a professional production.

Speaker 2 These were not AirPods Pro, bro.

Speaker 3 Okay, so they green screened a lake behind them, and the green screen that they used, whatever, it's the water's moving a little bit in the lake behind them.

Speaker 3 Four frames a second, but they're, yeah, right, right. But there's also a boat on the lake that is completely still and not moving at all.
Yes.

Speaker 3 It's the best.

Speaker 2 And we should point out that the green screen, like the edges between them and the green screen are kind of fuzzy. It's like a background on Skype was, you know, back when Skype was a thing.

Speaker 2 So, but they get to the lake. There's nobody there.
And Buddy's like,

Speaker 2 I'll tell you what, I'll stay guard all night. You lock yourself in the back of my truck.
You'll be fine. Yes.

Speaker 3 Sounds good to me. Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 No, it's like, yep, that's what they say. So that's what they do.
And then the next day, their friend shows up, you know, that they're supposed to be there praying with or whatever.

Speaker 2 They sloppily introduce her to Buddy. This is the part that Cameron was telling us about earlier where, like, she and Buddy will both show up from the same fucking place.

Speaker 2 So, and then we cut to like the sunrise prayer thing or whatever it was that she was supposed to be doing. And Josh is there.

Speaker 2 So she's now trying to convince Josh that she'd met an angel the night before.

Speaker 2 And he gives her this like takes one to know one line that he's way too proud of. Right.

Speaker 3 Sorry, you think you met an angel who had candy in a van? Is that the story you're telling me? Yeah, yeah, and we slept

Speaker 2 in his van all night. Don't worry.

Speaker 3 His name was Buddy. Nothing.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And she goes, I mean, have you heard of a more perfect name for an angel? And he was like, why would Buddy be the perfect? Yeah, no, there's all things.

Speaker 3 They're named angels. Because he's your buddy.
Is that part of the lore? That buddy is like one of the nicknames of Christ or of an angel or something? Nope. Yeah, Archangel Buddy, Buddy.

Speaker 3 What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 i actually thought that they were just doing like a buddy the elf buddy oh buddy the angel yeah obviously clearly now i'm picturing god up in heaven just not knowing all the angels names and so giving them the nickname buddy

Speaker 3 champ hey what's up this guy chancellor big doe wouldn't it have made more sense to choose like one of the archangels or something like michael right yes exactly that's what he said yeah an actual angel written in the bible you know kind of a famous list of them yeah right yeah yeah there's quite a few so i think genuinely because later on there's going to be another buddy who's also maybe this angel or whatever.

Speaker 2 And he has got a name tag on that time. I think they chose that name based on what name tags they had access to.

Speaker 3 And they didn't know a Michael who worked at Huddlehouse, right? And they knew they were a buddy. They were at Michael's and they were like, so you're saying this one comes pre-printed with buddy?

Speaker 3 Thank you very much. Do you have any vomit? We don't have money for you, right?

Speaker 2 So now we're in a Bible study again, and Charles Manson is showing them flyers about missionaries. Now, I got to be honest.
So I don't come from a church background.

Speaker 2 I don't know what the fuck this is.

Speaker 2 Is this like a missionary, but like to a different church? They're going to turn that other church Christian?

Speaker 3 No, it's a missionary program.

Speaker 2 What does that mean?

Speaker 3 Like, I think she's supposed to be training to be like a missionary or something, but like, all these old things. That's not really what happens.

Speaker 3 Like, I think she, it's like a three-month thing where you do it at church. Okay, all right.
So, she's, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I, I, honestly, it was very vague, and I don't know if they know themselves of what they were trying to refer to.

Speaker 3 It's like a junior semester abroad at Oxford, but like at the fucking North Florida church of whatever the fuck is. And that's the church she chose to go to for some fucking reason.

Speaker 3 Do you know why she wanted to go there?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And she goes like an hour away.
So it's like an exchange student thing for people who aren't really into others.

Speaker 3 Like Mormon missionaries who get sent to provost. Yeah, right.
God damn it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, but, but then at this point,

Speaker 2 they're telling her all about this missionary thing, and they explain that the old guard doesn't like all the speaking in tongues and being baptized in the fire of the Holy Spirit or whatnot that they do.

Speaker 2 This is the plot of the movie, guys.

Speaker 3 The mainstream church is trying to keep it still. That is the plot of the movie.

Speaker 2 But then she's like, but I think all of the churches that I've been to sort of agree on this whole Jesus thing. And he's like, oh, yeah, ask them if the, I genuinely, I can't even make sense.

Speaker 2 She's like, ask them if the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today and you manifest them. And I'm like, what are you even saying?

Speaker 3 I have played Warhammer 40K and I was like, real deep in the lore here, people.

Speaker 2 Too much lore.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So then we get her at her childhood church and they're trying to show that her childhood church is not.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know, accepting of her new type of belief or whatever, charismatic beliefs.

Speaker 2 So the way that they represent this is that they're all singing a hymn, and she's holding her hands up to the sky like an insane person, and no one else is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she's singing along. As someone who actually grew up in a charismatic church, I was very disappointed in this scene.
Oh, were you? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wait, do you, do you all not lip-sync like very sexually along with the hymns the way Joni was? Oh, no, we don't. That's like a bad portrayal.

Speaker 3 That was a good portrayal. That was a good portrayal.
I think think her hands didn't even go all the way up, first of all.

Speaker 3 Nobody was screaming yes in the back. Well, that's

Speaker 3 right. Nobody fell over.
So you're saying not sexual enough.

Speaker 2 Nobody shook around.

Speaker 3 Nobody started screaming. Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 It was not realistic at all. Nobody had ever been

Speaker 3 in the Bethlech Church who made that movie.

Speaker 2 So honestly, that could be some fucking next level comedy.

Speaker 2 If you really committed to the bit and had somebody act like they act in a fucking Pentecostal church in the middle of this Methodist church that she's in.

Speaker 2 That could be some comedy gold, but no, they just have her raise her hands up a little.

Speaker 3 She raises her hands like that.

Speaker 3 And then, because this is this woman's insane persecution narrative that she invented about herself, we have a scene where an old lady at the church goes, Hey, don't raise your hands while you're praying.

Speaker 3 That was fucking weird.

Speaker 3 And to be fair, it was.

Speaker 2 Yes, it was. She's right.

Speaker 3 I need you guys to hear me out because this is the first of many times that I'm going to sit you guys down and genuinely ask you to think about the possibility that Renaissance lady or whatever this studio is called

Speaker 3 giant fucking bit or psyop.

Speaker 3 Because clearly these people whoever wrote this movie have never been to these churches, right?

Speaker 3 And a lot of the things that they are portraying are like obvious characteristics that you can just get from the internet of Christians. Yes.

Speaker 3 I think they really are like this, though.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Interesting. Let them come.
I'm rolling with you. You're thinking psyop.
Yes. In favor of

Speaker 3 the Church of the Riz, of the charisma.

Speaker 3 Yes, I actually think this is they're attempting to use this as a de-brainwashing tool by representing these people as such ridiculous caricatures of things they've heard about that they're trying to deprogram fence sitters.

Speaker 3 Also, Heath, I told you, if you want to try and make Church of the Riz work, you have to introduce it naturally. You can't

Speaker 3 everybody thought that was smooth, right? Yeah, tell Eli you thought that was smooth.

Speaker 2 No, I thought it was, I thought it was pretty smooth. So, okay, so, but now they've posted the mission area assignments that we introduced eight seconds ago.
And she's going to be a missionary.

Speaker 2 And all her friends are really disappointed because they're like, hey, didn't we make a bunch of plans together for this summer? And she's like, oh, right. Fuck you.

Speaker 3 Literally. She's like, well, that sucks.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right. Sucks to be you.
I got shit to do.

Speaker 3 And then like genuinely does not like validate their feelings at all. Like she's just like, well, I'm sorry.
This story is about me.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 True True friend kind of has a moment where she's like, well, I guess if Jesus is your new boyfriend, you should wear his pin. She's like, what? And she's like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I'm not in the rest of the movie. This is my way of exiting.
It's good to see it.

Speaker 2 But her boyfriend at this point, she's like, he's like, you know, all you ever do is Jesus stuff.

Speaker 2 I'm getting a little tired of it. And I'm like, well, didn't you douse the Bible earlier? I guess he was still unconvinced even after that.
So he storms off, right?

Speaker 3 He just doesn't like that she has made it her whole personality. And to be fair, that is the most annoying thing about Griffith.

Speaker 2 It really is, yeah.

Speaker 3 Accurate description. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's amazing to me that we actually haven't really drilled in on this, but we should, we should emphasize that this is a movie that was written, directed, and I believe produced by the same woman, right?

Speaker 2 And it is, you know, her story. It is her persecution, but

Speaker 2 so now we get to that time that she got that sharpshooter award. And it wasn't even just the best in the school.

Speaker 3 Guys, she got the best score in the whole fucking world. Okay.
okay the whole world okay

Speaker 3 okay so this was insane this was truly insane eli you were saying she won something she won a scholarship to

Speaker 3 law school to law school you law you of law

Speaker 3 the school of law some guys just like thanks to the sharpshooting That's a thing for law schools. You get a full scholarship to the law school.
Almost exact words. Yes.
Yep. Truly insane.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just to law school. The law school of your choice, or do they think that there's a school named law that all the lawyers go to, like the fucking unseen university, but for lawyers?

Speaker 3 I just don't think that it was in detail that they thought that anyone would care about.

Speaker 2 I guess, right, right. They're like, like, like our audience knows about colleges.

Speaker 3 And I also think that like, this is the part where she had to lie about her story. Cause the truth is, right, she was like probably on the rifle team and the cheered team.

Speaker 3 There's no way she received a full scholarship to law school. So she was like, oh, damn, people will look it up if I say I had a scholarship to Harvard.

Speaker 3 So I'm just going to say, and there was a scholarship to law school as well.

Speaker 3 Prager. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 So what she got is she got a fucking $800 scholarship to fucking the Brooklyn School of Law or wherever my cousin Vinny went or whatever. That's the true part of this, right?

Speaker 2 But the point is, though, now she's got to decide, does she want to go to missionary thing, you know, missionary camp, or does she want to have fun with her friends, or does she want to to go to law school?

Speaker 3 Go to fucking law school.

Speaker 2 Obviously, you would go to fucking law school.

Speaker 3 It's like truly evil. Every single character from here on out who isn't like, oh, this is insane.
You have to go to law school. You got a full scholarship to the law school university.

Speaker 3 That's the name of it. That's good enough.
Whatever. It's better than being a missionary or whatever the fuck you're going to do here.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But then we cut to her. She's gotten a letter now, and it's not very complimentary.

Speaker 2 Apparently, the pastor of the church that she was assigned to go to missionary school in does not want her there because she's a filthy charismatic.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he wrote her some hate mail. He wrote her pen and paper hate mail in calligraphy.

Speaker 2 We see a little bit of it. It was pretty fucking handily written up.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But okay, so, but she runs to a church to figure out what to do, right? She goes to see her pastor who this stupid idiot fucking movie has not even bothered to introduce us to yet.

Speaker 2 And this character, now, I'm going to save you a ton of confusion.

Speaker 2 This character's name is Pastor John, but the movie keeps calling him Pastor Bart because later there will be a character named Pastor Bart and the actors involved in this scene forgot that wasn't him.

Speaker 3 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. But it says Pastor John on the door.

Speaker 3 It could be to Pastor Bart. It says Pastor John on the door to his office, though.

Speaker 2 And they just taped it up there, right? Like they put it there.

Speaker 2 So, but yeah, but Pastor John assures her that they're just scared of all her version of Christianity's faith. Right.

Speaker 3 It's also worth pointing out that Pastor John Bart, this guy who's assuring her right now about the hate male, we didn't see him in the earlier church meetings, right? No.

Speaker 3 Charles Manson was the one who introduced her to her brand of charismatic Christianity.

Speaker 3 So now there's this pastor who apparently she's been worshiping with, telling her that she's being persecuted the way Christians have always been persecuted for 2,000 years. Yep.

Speaker 2 out of fucking nowhere.

Speaker 2 So then we're at, we're at like Sunday service at her, at her old church, and they're lauding all the people that have been selected for like the missionaries thing, whatever the hell this is, including Joni.

Speaker 2 I wrote my notes up this point. I'm like, I don't understand church minutia enough to tell you what's happening at this point.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 Right. But they tell, they congratulate her.
And then these two very child molesty looking, crusty old white guys, they want to talk to her about her missionary assignment. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Don't worry. We're never going to have it clarified for us who these men are, what they want, why they don't want her to work.

Speaker 3 What we know is they are working against her being a missionary at the church she's about to visit. Yes.

Speaker 2 And they're telling her, you know, like, hey, maybe you should go to law school and back off this missionary thing. And she's like, this isn't about me.

Speaker 2 It's about this meaningless sliver of Jesus Minushi,

Speaker 2 which apparently it is. So then those crusty white guys, they go to conspire against her with the actual pastor Bart,

Speaker 2 who will be the movie's main villain from this point on.

Speaker 3 Right. And they're like, send her more hate mail.

Speaker 2 Well, that's what we think. It's actually not going to be hate mail in this point.
But then we even follow Pastor Bart home, right? So that he can tell his family about the last scene.

Speaker 3 Oh my God, this movie just kept getting more and more obtuse. I eventually thought we were just going to lose track of all the characters entirely, end up in a different 1970s movie.

Speaker 3 Forrest, Gump, and Jenny are at their dinner table.

Speaker 3 I want you to notice something, too, because I don't know if you guys know this, that this movie was filmed over 13 days. And

Speaker 3 it appears that they blocked it out. So like the first week was like one set of like extras and characters, and then the second half was a different set.

Speaker 3 Like a lot of people from the first half of the movie are just gone.

Speaker 2 I think you're right. Oh my God, that explains so much about this fucking movie.

Speaker 3 Well, guys, Chris has a peanut allergy, so we're going to shoot all his scenes on days one through two. Also, days seven through 13, we're going to rest like in Jesus.
Like Christ. Yes.

Speaker 2 So yeah, so, but he sends another letter.

Speaker 2 And so then we cut to like Josh shows up to apologize to Joni for the too much Jesus fight they had a couple of scenes ago.

Speaker 3 Well, it wasn't just a couple of scenes ago. It was infinite scenes ago, right?

Speaker 3 So when they were having this conversation, I literally thought he was the rapey boyfriend from earlier in the movie and they had forgotten which character was playing who.

Speaker 2 But she's like not quite ready to forgive forgive him but sort of and she's like hey i got another letter from the guy who wrote a fuck you letter in calligraphy to me earlier can you read this one and tell me if it's bad but it turns out that no actually he's apologizing for being so mean with the last letter and now she can show up and he'll be okay with it he promises wink right

Speaker 2 so but then fucking pert plus shows up and and josh fucks off because of the high school blocking of this movie and then we got the greatest scene i've ever seen in my goddamn life.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 So this is the scene where we get artsy about Joshua's search for Jesus.

Speaker 2 This is the part that Rachel talked about earlier where they couldn't get the rights to the night sky.

Speaker 3 So fucking gassed. So gassed.

Speaker 3 Off on guard to a T, bro. It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 But here's the thing, though, is that he's sitting on grass, right? So he's outdoors. Is he?

Speaker 3 I believe he is.

Speaker 2 And they put a green screen up to project the outdoors that he's already in. He must be in an outdoors.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry. It's so fucking weird.
The only thing I could think about this entire scene was Mufasa.

Speaker 3 I was just like, is bro having a Mufasa movie?

Speaker 3 Is having a Mufasa movie?

Speaker 3 Remember who you are.

Speaker 3 Oh my God. You know, that is what they should be sued for.
They did not get right suit seen from the Lion King. Fuck off.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 Lion King of kings. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so, but he sits there flickering in his green screen and he's like, Jesus, I need a sign. And so he looks up in the sky.
And we see their first real effort at CGI.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, baby.

Speaker 2 So we get some poorly animated dancing stars. And then Jesus throws down a tractor beam

Speaker 3 of some sort or a spotlight and then personally invites him to be that religion.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, we hear Jesus's voice say, walk in the light always and follow my son.

Speaker 3 And it happens a little too loud and the actor gets scared by the

Speaker 3 invisibly in the movie. I wanted him to ask for another sign in the next scene.
He's just like, Lord, I'm pretty sure now I want to come on, Jesus.

Speaker 3 What's it going to take?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this was the point where, like, after they did the $11 worth of becoming a true Christian CGI, I declared this a gam classic in my notes for the first time.

Speaker 3 Oh, 100%. So, okay.

Speaker 2 So, but now he's going to show up at Joni's window having, you know, like to tell her about his Jesus thing.

Speaker 2 And this descends into a montage of them getting along real good.

Speaker 3 Yep. Which ends with him proposing.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 This was fun because there was a weird segue in and out. So he's like, babe, babe, come to you.
I did a montage and I learned about Jesus. And she pops out of the window.

Speaker 3 And then he's like, okay, we're going to, we're actually going to both now be in a montage. We're going to keep the montage rolling, but now we're both in it.
And they have to like get into that.

Speaker 3 And it was kind of like, you know, like badly stepping onto the airport belt thing. If you don't

Speaker 3 babe, I feel a montage coming on. Do you want to join me for it? Yeah, right.

Speaker 3 Well, to provide some context for you, the pacing of that relationship actually is pretty military Christian. Yeah, no, pretty Christian.
Yeah, no, that's true. That's true.
That is true.

Speaker 2 You get one goddamn montage. At one point in the montage, like he puts a lampshade on her head, literally.
And I'm like, what is our job here even anymore?

Speaker 3 You know, it's like those friends who met on Grinder, right? And so whenever you ask them how they met, they have to do that weird eye exchange and be like, for party.

Speaker 3 I saw you do that. Grinder? Yeah.
Is it Grinder?

Speaker 2 So now, so Joni is heading off to missionary camp or whatever. She's at the bus and everybody's seeing her off.
This is where we first learned Debbie's name. This is also the last scene she'll be in.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 And so the crusty old white guys show up and they're like, can we get a word with her? And Debbie's like, fuck you.

Speaker 2 This is my last scene. I'm going to have a moment here.
I'm going to give her a necklace.

Speaker 3 My big moment.

Speaker 2 And a whole thing. This is where she says, Joni says to Debbie, Jesus loves you even though you're still Jewish.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing. I promise you, the lady who insisted on writing this movie actually said that to a friend and it's like, we never spoke again, but I know how much it meant to her.
Yes, right.

Speaker 3 I think we should call it. How hard she punched me in the stomach.

Speaker 3 Did you guys know Jesus was a Jew? A Jew? Jew, so brad. I'm going to say hard J one more time.
Jew. Jew.

Speaker 3 She's saying it out the bus window as she drives away. Can you believe it? Gets hereditary.

Speaker 2 Mouthing it.

Speaker 3 It's hereditary. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 So, okay.

Speaker 2 So, but then so she finishes her conversation conversation with Debbie and the crusty old white guys come in and they're like, hey, you know, I'm sure glad Pastor Bart sent you a note of apology.

Speaker 2 We just want your assurance that you're not going to talk about all this weird Holy Spirit stuff when you get to our church.

Speaker 2 And she's like, no, I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want for the remainder of the movie. And they're like, well, damn it.

Speaker 3 God damn it. I can't believe we extended our trip to this town an hour away to once again approach and talk to a teenage girl.

Speaker 3 Truly, is this a real conflict in any circles of Christianity?

Speaker 3 This is like some kind of absurd feud that's being adjudicated throughout this movie, like rumors by Fleetwood Mac, but it's like for Christianity and tiny little differences between saying the phrase Holy Spirit or not.

Speaker 2 Right, but they've killed each other over this, right? Like what we're talking about is two different denominations.

Speaker 3 So the conflict for the rest of the of this movie is that she's going to be going to a church that is denomination A, preaching the teachings of and theology of denomination b right that's the entire rest of the movie and that's the conflict at the at the heart of it but if the movie ever admits that it kind of shows what an asshole she is right so they have to dance around it as though it's just like no this isn't about denominations it's about the thing that denominations are made of yeah it's like you know when someone tells you a story about what a jerk someone else is and it's very obviously their fault yes that's what this whole movie feels like right like if you take any of her actions and you describe just the things she did everyone's reactions to her seem incredibly reasonable but she just says no it's because they didn't like that i was bathed in the fire of the holy spirit right yeah you know yeah that i fucking tried to take over the church like louis the 14th right this whole movie is am i the asshole yes yes right right

Speaker 2 so okay so they get on the bus and then fucking alvida king shows up to lead them in music a little bit more.

Speaker 3 She says, we're one or two hours away from our next stop. And I wrote in my notes, I need you to be more specific.

Speaker 2 Weirdly imprecise on a bus. You know, we're not going to be

Speaker 3 seven hours from stopping. So shit your pants.
Right.

Speaker 2 So, but then they're like, Joni, I sure hope you have your testimony ready. And she's like, what's a testimony? Right.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Can I just say what a fucking bizarre like, because I obviously was not going to relate to Joni and Joni's quest to be the most Christian of Christians.

Speaker 3 But if you are going to devote your life and give up law school and completely abandon everything, including the plot of the goddamn movie to be a charismatic Christian, do you think you'd learn the fucking lingo, wouldn't you?

Speaker 2 The very most basic things about the religion? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. And everybody's like, how the fuck can you not? No Illusions knows what a fucking testimony is.
How the fuck can you not know this, right?

Speaker 3 They're all visibly uncomfortable, right? She thinks it's this like wacky thing where she's like, I don't know what a testimony is.

Speaker 2 And here I am, a great teacher of men.

Speaker 3 And they're like, I don't know, maybe do a little research.

Speaker 3 Click googs. Click googs before you start preaching.

Speaker 2 And then for like, for no reason that I can discern other than she wanted to stick it somewhere in the movie, Joni has a flashback to being a kid and not having a dad and someone at her church saying, but you do have a heavenly father.

Speaker 2 And that making it all right.

Speaker 3 I didn't realize that was a flashback.

Speaker 2 That makes it damn confusing.

Speaker 3 She's on another movie just cut in on Tubi. Yeah.
Oh, there's a girl with a dead father. It was pretty unclear.
Also, the girl had brown hair. Right, yeah.

Speaker 2 Given the non-linear shit that we've been watching at this point,

Speaker 3 exactly.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Tarantino-esque in that way. All right.
Well, this movie is on the bus now, which suggests some movement at least. So we're going to take a quick break right after I give Act Three the hard sell.

Speaker 2 What is the plot? Will the central conflict of the movie be introduced two-thirds of the way through? Will Will we ever see Darnella, Charles Manson, Drip God, or Debbie again?

Speaker 2 Find out just how bad these motherfuckers really are at filmmaking when we return for the Exposition Rising Action Climax Falling Action at Resolution. That is the third act of Jesus freaks.

Speaker 3 Drip God.

Speaker 2 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Speaker 3 And then you just turn to him and you got to be like, get on over it now.

Speaker 3 I really don't think we should.

Speaker 3 Hey, guys, what you doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah, what's with the whiteboard?

Speaker 3 Oh, I was just helping Rachel guide their listenership through the process of deconversion. Are you?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just walking through them. Is it a big deal? It doesn't sound like it's a big deal.

Speaker 3 Right, Eli, there are lots of tough things that come up in life, deconversion being one of them, but those should be worked through with a licensed mental health care professional in therapy. Therapy?

Speaker 3 I thought that was just for people who went,

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Speaker 2 So, no awkward therapist breakups?

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All right, Keith, thanks.

Speaker 3 So do you still want to learn sounds like drama for your mama? Still very much no.

Speaker 3 Okay, well, offer stance.

Speaker 3 Joni, I am so excited that you've been baptized in the Holy Spirit. I can't wait to hear your testimony tomorrow.
What's a testimony? Oh,

Speaker 2 it's where you tell everybody about your relationship to Jesus and how you were saved.

Speaker 3 Oh, totally. Yeah, I can't wait.

Speaker 3 That and to lead other people's children in Bible study.

Speaker 3 Okay, Joni, you like just became a Christian. You might want to wait before you literally attempt to lead a worship service.

Speaker 3 What now? A worship service?

Speaker 3 It's like church. Oh, yes, that.
I want to be in charge of one of those. Sorry, Joni? Yes, Craig?

Speaker 3 We are so psyched that you're into Jesus, and we love that you're saved, but it seems like you might be moving a little fast. What can I say? I'm moved by the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 3 Right. Good.

Speaker 2 It's just how moved by the Holy Spirit can you be if you don't know anything at all about the religion you're joining?

Speaker 3 Look, guys, I'm not going to pretend I know everything, but I know I felt Jesus in my heart today, and I am saved by the Lord.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, sure.
Praise his name. Praise whose name? Jesus.
Oh, nice. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 And we're back for still more of this shit. Unfortunately, Rachel had to leave.
She underestimated just how much bullshit there was in this movie and how long it was going to take to dig through it.

Speaker 3 Rachel found Jesus Christ. Yes.

Speaker 3 We really insulted her with our blaspheming. We did not pay enough attention to your guys' podcast before we end you on.
I am so sorry.

Speaker 2 So with a quick happy birthday to Rachel's mom and a quick apologies for making her late, we'll carry on.

Speaker 2 We're going to rejoin Joni arriving at the church that she's going to be missionarying at or fucking whatever.

Speaker 2 This is, by the way, where any remotely competent filmmaker would start the story.

Speaker 3 Yeah, a new movie starts. Just imagine we're in a new mildly boring Christian movie.
Right.

Speaker 2 And all that needs to have been established is that this girl is a new charismatic Christian and she has has a boyfriend named Josh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But so she's trying to get out of doing the testimony thing, right? She's still nervous because we know from before she pukes at the thought of public speaking.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 And Tom and Martha, the people that are picking her up, they kind of actually want her to fail because they don't want her charismatic stuff catching on in their church.

Speaker 3 So they sort of set her up for failure here a little bit. Yeah, they have a moaha moment.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is where, by the way, we meet Marco, and it had been so long since we met Marco Marco in the pre-flash book.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 I was proud of myself for remembering who that was, right? When they're like, this is Marco. I'm like, I remember that name vaguely.

Speaker 3 I remember from long ago. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But she's on in 20. She's got just 20 minutes to get ready for her testimony.
But first, she has to meet her new best friend, Mary.

Speaker 2 Totally new character. This is the other missionary that's at this church.
And she's a little nervous to be on camera

Speaker 3 i felt so sorry for this actor the entire time this girl was scared to death to be in front of a camera but yes a hundred percent in this movie that is about a character having stage fright there is a side character literally having that stage fright the actor of mary is just like

Speaker 3 doesn't know what to do with her hands

Speaker 2 hey you guys still need some puke

Speaker 2 But so she's like, hey, let's pray that you do good with your testimony. And so Joni starts praying in tongues and Mary is

Speaker 3 wet about it. Oh, yeah.
Mary is a big fan.

Speaker 3 Again, the fantasy of this completely non-realistic movie is that everybody that Joni will talk to about Jesus will be like, wow, you are as wise as you are beautiful.

Speaker 3 I convert to the religion of Joni. Okay, to be fair, have you ever heard a woman speak to you in tongues? It does something to you.
Okay.

Speaker 3 This is something I missed out on. All right.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 it is pretty charismatic. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 3 I guess a lot of riz unless that is some kind of uh unless that is some kind of code for analingus i don't know about my answer is it is a code that you now know about and all right

Speaker 2 so and and but then so mary says hey are you speaking in tongues and she says oh yeah that's my prayer language and then mary turns to her and says she goes like in the voice of somebody asking if your guy can get mushrooms she says Can you give me baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Speaker 3 You're going to need that. You're going to need that?

Speaker 3 any more of that you got any more are you mumbling just say okay I'm gonna leave the Holy Spirit in a McDonald's bag in this trash can and give me something

Speaker 3 the money shake my hand shake my hand I got the Holy Spirit in my hand don't be fucking weird about it shake the goddamn hand it to me I don't want to go to the Holy Spirit dispensary what do I do with my hands crumble it up and throw it on the ground

Speaker 2 now it doesn't count but now it's time for Joni to testify so she steps up to the pulpit and she's learned something here today right she goes I don't know what I'm doing I'm like, solid start.

Speaker 2 The music rises behind her.

Speaker 3 I have these blank index cards. I'm just going to throw them away.
I'm just throwing them away. I'm going to go live.
I'm going to roam.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 and then so she just starts saying,

Speaker 2 so she just, she starts saying, you know, the boilerplate Jesus words, right? Things that we've heard.

Speaker 2 a million times on godolphal movies, things that are so goddamn common and banal within Christianity that you're like, why do you need people to tell you these things yeah anymore right you could sing along with them like your favorite

Speaker 3 song okay so here's the thing right this this goes to my theory from earlier in the movie which is that this the actual quote-unquote true story that this is based on is that this girl decided instead of being a hippie she was going to be a charismatic christian terrible choice and so she went to this new church for this three-month missionary program instead of going school and learning things instead of going to a law school with a full scholarship right exactly but so instead on her first day where she was supposed to tell us that she enjoyed cheerleading and shooting rifles she did an altar call and the pastor was like hey don't do that don't that's not my church and she was like i'm gonna make a movie someday about how you're the antichrist and he was like what and she was like nothing yeah

Speaker 2 right so she like she she does the standard Jesus words and then she's immediately she goes and by the way you guys are all doing Christianity wrong let me do an altar call for a different denomination and the pastor's like fucking what no no And she's like, I'm the pastor now.

Speaker 3 Dude, that is one of the most incredible chump checks of all time. She's like, no, this is my podium.
Let me show you how it's fucking done. Yes.

Speaker 3 The guy in the chair in cuck porn is like, streams a little march. Has everyone got safety tools in place? Yes.

Speaker 3 I'm Jerry Falwell Jr.

Speaker 2 He goes, like, do you even go here? And then we cut to like, we're at this post-church house party now.

Speaker 2 But we learn here that, so there's like this clumsy whisper chain blocking with this locked down camera in a way too crowded room.

Speaker 2 But we're learning that all the kids want to do Bible study with Joni, but Pastor Bart thinks they should Christianity a little bit less.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 So they're, they're setting up to have like secret moonlight Bible study.

Speaker 3 Instead of doing ping pong, they're going to do secret Bible study.

Speaker 3 And I just want to point out what a very specific one-way fantasy this obviously is right where you where you show up and tell another person how to do their religion because nobody involved with this movie would be like and then a brave young catholic stood up during my church service and took over and i loved it right right exactly so okay so now marco takes joni to to meet the host family that she's going to be staying with not to be confused with the other family that she was introduced to getting off the bus no or the other family that's the pastor's family.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, we need new characters now. This is Mr.
and Mrs. Johnson.

Speaker 3 You see how much this movie makes you check in and like try to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 3 Yes,

Speaker 3 Tennant and Jesus freaked out. It's beautiful.

Speaker 3 It's like a mental exercise. Like, just fuck the gym, bro.
Just do this. You don't need to go to school.

Speaker 2 It was a mental exercise. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Exactly.
Okay. So, just to be clear, though, this is like a foreign exchange program between Protestant and slightly different Protestants.
Other Protestants.

Speaker 3 From like middle Florida to northern exotic exactly, yes, and it's a huge deal. It's the conflict of the movie.
Yep. Yep.

Speaker 2 So now we're having Bible study with Joni with all the kids. This is where she explains that she used to be a flannel board Christian.

Speaker 3 Oh, did you go down this rabbit hole? I did. Do you know what that means? Okay.

Speaker 3 So what it means is a popular Bible story teaching tool is those flannel boards that you put like the Velcro figurines on. Already lost.

Speaker 3 And so it's like a derogatory term term that means like I only had a basic understanding of Bible stories. Now, I want to be clear.
Joni's not a religious scholar. She has not learned anything else.

Speaker 3 She's not studied ancient Hebrew or Greek, right? She's not sitting in class next to Dan McClellan copying off his paper, right?

Speaker 3 This is just a girl who has been bathed in the fire of the Holy Spirit, who is now telling a room of children the same age as her or older that she has a true understanding of the Bible now. Right.

Speaker 2 So the entire idea behind this branch of Christianity that she's talking about is that you can commune directly with the Holy Spirit and he can tell you what the Bible means.

Speaker 2 So you don't need no stinking preacher. Right.
Right. And that's what she's trying to explain to them.
And Pastor Bart is mad.

Speaker 2 And of course, because the woman that this is based on is the one that's writing and directing it, they can't have Pastor Bart say, hey, look, that's not how our denomination works.

Speaker 2 And you're coming in here like a Catholic, you know, standing up in the middle of a Protestant sermon or whatever.

Speaker 2 So he can only be mad that, damn it, this is basketball playing time and they're not playing basketball. So he comes in to get all mad about that.

Speaker 2 There's a part where he talks to his son Jonathan about, you know, how she's going to split the church in half.

Speaker 2 And I only bring that scene up because on the way out of his office, Jonathan shoulder checks an old lady.

Speaker 3 Oh, so hard. It's so funny.
It's my favorite part of the movie. As he should, as he should.
Go off.

Speaker 3 First of all, there will will never be any come up ins for this. There's never anything that happens.
We just watch him absolutely shoulder tackle this 99, real 99-year-old woman into a wall.

Speaker 3 And you know, she was like, I'm going to be in the church movie. My church is making, oh, God.
Oh, my hip and my rib.

Speaker 2 Yes, right.

Speaker 3 I was expecting to see a replay with John Madden narrating fucking

Speaker 3 contacts. Circling her, yeah.

Speaker 3 You just circle right around here. And here's a 99-year-old who exploded when she got hit with that shoulder check she's dead now

Speaker 2 so we cut back to yet another fucking bible study where they're saying more nonsense bible wars this is the part where she's like she's explaining to the kids that she had an experience where her bible started glowing or that's how it's represented right she's like i had a mystical experience that we doodally do back and represent it by showing her bible glowing so and then Pastor Bart comes in and yells at him for not playing some damn basketball again, right?

Speaker 3 Okay, so I know it's supposed to be him like being offended that she's taking over his church, but in the first like six scenes of this conflict, he's always just going to be mad that they're not doing a sports activity.

Speaker 3 And so I kept wanting it to flash over to him like with his personal ping-pong battle in his ping-pong gloves, being like, God damn it, she wants to come play with me.

Speaker 3 I feel like you're being like, you're like making a joke about that. Like it's not a serious thing.
It's just called preparedness. It's called professionalism.

Speaker 3 Nobody understood what you just said.

Speaker 3 Idiot. This is why Rachel left.

Speaker 3 Hey, go off.

Speaker 3 You're spitting some facts there, brother.

Speaker 2 So, but then once again, they miss a golden opportunity for some fucking comedy because then all the kids have to go in and play basketball all harumfully, right? Because

Speaker 2 they would much rather be studying the Bible with Joni, but they don't, again, they don't commit to it. So, okay, so now Joni has to introduce the Johnsons to her fiancé, Josh.

Speaker 2 And they have a like a, boy, everybody sure agrees with Joni, the person representing the writer of the film moment where the Johnsons wish that Pastor Bart was more receptive to her brand of Christianity.

Speaker 3 And they're having everybody over for Bible study that night. And there's a quote here.
So, this scene is identical to all the other scenes, right? Joni is teaching the Bible, Pastor doesn't like it.

Speaker 3 Except, the reason I bring it up, and don't just skip over it, is because a woman in this scene says something that I will think about every day for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 She says, There are so many people here, I have to add more water to the stew. And I wrote in my notes, yum.

Speaker 3 Hell yeah.

Speaker 3 So fucking stretching the stew when more gas. Hey, man,

Speaker 2 this entire movie was stretching the stew.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 This is stretching the stew the movie.

Speaker 3 It's a resourceful movie. They were really thinking in fucking multiple dimensions.
All right. Eli's a rich kid.
Yeah, right. Damn, it's true.

Speaker 2 So there's this convoluted moment where they have to borrow bread from the pastor's wife, and then she returns the bread and that's how he finds out about the moonlight Bible study they weren't supposed to have.

Speaker 2 It's just so clumsy and stupid.

Speaker 3 He goes, she's inserting herself behind my back. And I wrote in my notes, the Eli Boss next door.

Speaker 3 Okay, all I noticed from this entire scene was this Pastor Bart angrily yelling about all this stuff and the bread and the convoluted plot, but he touches the boiling pot of stew.

Speaker 3 He burns his hand like he's fucking so bad mike pence at nasa touching the spaceship that says don't touch the fucking spaceship and they kept it

Speaker 2 just reaches out they kept the whole moment whatever you're picturing it's more exaggerated than that and they kept every inch of his podcast they sure did at one point like jonathan is getting mad at his dad for being so pissed off about all the bible study and he says you know the bible says such and such And the dad goes, don't you quote scriptures to me?

Speaker 2 Why would he not want him to

Speaker 2 quote scriptures at him?

Speaker 3 He's a pastor. Really makes you think, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 Leave work at work. I get it.
Want to have a work-life balance? I guess. Yeah.
That's a thinker.

Speaker 2 I guess.

Speaker 2 So that Sunday, there's this. So Pastor Bart's giving a sermon that Sunday, right?

Speaker 2 And he's got the Holy Spirit coming all over everything or whatever. And apparently,

Speaker 2 that's what he talks about.

Speaker 3 Damn, a woman leaves the room and it's just all goes out, huh?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Honestly, he's saying Christian words that I can't decipher, right? Because I'm not that deep into the fucking cult.

Speaker 3 Fair, fair. Well, and it's also, it's such a weird plot move.

Speaker 3 So to get sort of meta for a second and explain what's happening here, the pastor is saying the things Joni says so that Joni will like stop saying them, right?

Speaker 3 But it makes no sense and he doesn't continue doing it. And he goes right back to yelling at her in the next scene, right?

Speaker 3 It's like one of those terrible teen movies where all of a sudden the mean girl pretends to be friend with the main character and the main character falls for it.

Speaker 3 It's like that, but it's about religion and it sucks.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't go anywhere.

Speaker 3 It's such a beautiful analog for like actual Christian nationalist behavior and logic. She is like,

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's just so well done. It's so tasteful.
It's like

Speaker 3 I am standing up at my desk, by the way. Oh, good, good.

Speaker 2 It's a standing desk. That's nice.

Speaker 3 I'm doing an oh, Captain, my captain on top of the desk.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 2 And he's more committed to the bit.

Speaker 3 I'm under the desk in case there's a new listeners. Join us.

Speaker 3 Do you hear the peel oh captain my captain

Speaker 2 so but then we've got we're at the after sermon handshake line and joni is just all kinds of horny about this new direction she thinks the church is taking but then one of the girls like two these two girls come up to tell the pastor that they're sure happy they don't have to play stupid ping pong anymore one of the girls is weird al by the way yep and she goes you know wow like joni's so much more engaging and interesting when she talks about the bible than you ever have been, Pastor.

Speaker 2 You kind of suck and should die. Anyway, bye.

Speaker 3 Bye.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so now we have Pastor Bart commiserating with Jonathan about his plan to take Joni down once and for all.

Speaker 3 The big villain of the movie.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is a fucking wily coyote-like obsession at this point, for those of us who don't understand the minusia enough, right?

Speaker 2 And then, so then we get this scene that's shot on a completely different quality of camera than the entire rest of the movie,

Speaker 2 Right. This is where Joni leads everybody to the park to take a missionary trip.

Speaker 3 Oh, it's an iPhone at a barbecue. 100%.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. I guarantee you that like the tweens that made this movie were like, guys, we're here at the park.

Speaker 3 What if Tyler filmed us on his iPhone 7 and we actually gave out some chick tracks and we cut it every time someone told us to fuck ourselves?

Speaker 3 Yes, we would absolutely cut it every time someone told us to fuck ourselves.

Speaker 2 And then, and I'm actually, you know, I miss having Rachel's commentary and all that but like i'm actually kind of glad she's gone so that we don't have to explain to a woman why all three of us wrote let me tell you about my penis in our notes at this point that's why she let she got she knew this was coming so got out early yeah right so on our on our sister show the scathing atheist eli's wife parodied the song let me tell you about my jesus as let me tell you about my penis and if you're a uh fan you know if you go to our live shows you've probably heard her do that at a live show before i've heard this song a hundred times as Let Me Tell You About My Penis, but only once as Let Me Tell You About My Jesus.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it was a fun one to watch. So we listened to her telling everybody about her penis.
And during this scene, we get to watch a guy pretending to cry at a chick track.

Speaker 3 Hey, dad, we told a bunch of people about our chick tracks and we handed them to him. And one of them, a fat Jewish kid, told me that I couldn't prove anything that I thought.

Speaker 3 And so I cried and threw up on him. Can you pretend that that I handed it to you and you are really moved by it for this and the next season? He's like, all right, fine,

Speaker 3 fine, but only because this counts as my visitation for the year.

Speaker 3 Tell your bitch mother that we had fun.

Speaker 3 I don't want that lady in the room when we hang out anymore.

Speaker 3 Go get me my cigarettes. Molest your daughter one time.

Speaker 2 Cameron gets it. So yeah, so, but no, honestly, when this guy started crying at this chick track, that was when I moved this into my top 10 bad Christian movies of all time.
Oh, right.

Speaker 3 It's incredible. As you should, as you should.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So now the church is all full.
And Pastor Bart's really excited until he realizes it's because Joni's been teaching all this charismatic shit at the park. Right.
He's had enough. So

Speaker 2 the weepy chick-track guy shows up to tell him it was Jodi, right? To figure it rolls right over on her.

Speaker 3 So he takes her to his office to scold her for filling up his church with, I'm assuming, you know paid parishioners or whatever but damn it he's assigning her to the kindergarten class now and can i say literally the only thing more terrifying than this obviously psychotic young person taking over a church is the psychotic young person taking over early education right right listen i really i really respect this scene to be honest because they really are trying to go for like a like a severance house of cards situation like they're really trying to go for yeah they're like he's menacing right he's scheming he thinks he's getting one over on her and there's like drama happening in the background it's cerebral you know what i'm saying i do i don't know okay he's afraid of your truth but just speak your truth you're the joni of this podcast thank you and he's the terturo he's rachel's the jewish friend yes

Speaker 2 yeah right leaves choosers away no it's thematic that we have a completely different cat exactly we kicked her off so

Speaker 3 she begged to stay she could only film the first week and then we had to get her something else

Speaker 3 it's the nut allergy. So, okay.

Speaker 2 So, then, so, but then Joni goes to meet with Marco about her new duty, and it turns out that they've just gonna, they're just gonna stick her in a garage spray painting chairs for the rest of her time.

Speaker 3 Okay, and again, I just want to lend the translation of reality, which is that it's very clear this girl went to her new mission thing and was like, I'm the pastor now.

Speaker 3 And they were like, Why don't you paint some chairs? And she was like, You're feeding me to the lion.

Speaker 3 Very much like a carpenter would, by the way. She's working on chairs like a carpenter would.
Oh,

Speaker 2 interesting.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, and then we get her at,

Speaker 2 oh, sorry, we get Mary trying to do Bible study, but she sucks.

Speaker 3 She's not terrible.

Speaker 3 Boom.

Speaker 3 Boom, Mary.

Speaker 3 But here's the thing about Mary supposed to be sucking at the Bible study, right? Mary sucks at existing in front of a camera. Mary is having a panic attack.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Like Marco Rubio trying to sneak a sip of water in. So her doing bad is just me being like, oh, they caught the moment on camera where she quit the fucking movie.

Speaker 2 And it plays very well.

Speaker 3 That's why they cast her in.

Speaker 3 And it elicits emotion, right?

Speaker 3 Mary's a Daniel Day-Lewis type. Exactly.

Speaker 2 So we have a quick scene where the crusty old white guys come in to congratulate Pastor Bart on neutralizing the charismatic threat with the chair gambit.

Speaker 3 Yeah, good job, guys. I don't know why you took a day trip down to where she lives to try to convince her in two different ways not to come here.

Speaker 2 We can just make her paint chairs, it turns out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you could have just made her paint chairs.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so, but then the Johnsons show up to her chair painting job to commiserate with her. This is the family that she's staying with, and they're on her side, damn it.

Speaker 2 And so we should point out that they're shooting these chair painting scenes from like inside a dark barn looking out into a bright yard.

Speaker 2 So it's like, it's as bad as one can do in terms of lighting, right? Like, if it had just been a black screen, at least that would be a statement.

Speaker 3 Right. If there had been finger puppets, we would have probably tried to interpret something from it.
Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 So, but you know, Mr. and Mrs.
Johnson come in, they sit on a couple of the tiny little kindergartner chairs to have a one-on-one with her. This is where he said, Mr.

Speaker 2 Johnson says, it's time for you to get off the backside of Medeon and talk to the Pharaoh. And I'm like, God damn it, just use English.

Speaker 3 It's incredible how serious they're trying to make this like really non-consequential scenario. Yes, 100%.
Yes. This is nothing.
This is someone else's summer camp drama of the movie.

Speaker 3 And you're like, oh, I'm being compared to Jesus on the local level, I guess, but clearly not globally. Yeah.

Speaker 2 She's like, but I don't know what to do. I wrote in my notes.
I bet it's pray. And then they prayed.

Speaker 3 And then they prayed. They do pray.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they get up to leave off the little chairs. I wanted her to walk away with green asses again.

Speaker 3 Oh, that would have been beautiful.

Speaker 3 You should have been in the writings. I'm missing an opportunity.
Why does she have green paint all over her face? She tried to hang herself with one of the chairs. They cut it from the movie.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's fair. Because people weren't ready for it yet, but she tried to million-dollar baby herself for about 26 minutes.

Speaker 3 Hillary made it look so easy.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we cut to Josh and Drip God. Thank you.
They're studying the Bible, and Josh realizes that he has a fucking vision,

Speaker 2 a sense.

Speaker 3 Swank, not Clinton, for everybody.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 Too long a distance to her.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she threw herself in a chair, too. It was for a totally different reason.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, can I just, I hope you guys are looking at the frame right now because he is tripped out, man. He looks

Speaker 3 beautiful. Yeah, he's tripped.

Speaker 3 I have, I will say, as we have reviewed this movie, I am seeing all the different shots of him in different outfits, Cameron, and I really am appreciating it. It gets better.

Speaker 3 Like, he starts off kind of like homely, and then it just progresses. It's beautiful.
No, he's the girl in the little red coat of this film.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. absolutely so

Speaker 3 schindler's list yeah yeah thank you yeah

Speaker 2 swank support small but telling thing in this scene too like they're supposed to be there studying the bible as everyone is in every goddamn scene of this movie but the other books that are on the table with them

Speaker 2 that they're using are the other books same books yes from his dousing experiment earlier where like they're the same fucking treasure island classics or whatever that they have it's also the same book from around the the like bible study they were doing outside.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the same exact books.

Speaker 2 Right, right. They've got four goddamn books that they own between them, and they're using them, man.

Speaker 3 Saving on the budget. Yeah.
They're so resourceful. It's beautiful, man.
This was a $200 movie, and it's amazing. Yes.
This is, no, this is the Florida project of Christian Sanders.

Speaker 2 Yep, there you go. It's even about Florida.

Speaker 3 Oh, by the way, Renaissance Girl is a 501c3, by the way.

Speaker 3 Of course, Sandy.

Speaker 3 Hey, Cameron, while we've been podcasting, are you suing the makers of this movie? You have to tell us. I can't talk about it.
You have to tell Heath's wife. She's our lawyer.

Speaker 3 I can't talk about the ongoing case. Yeah,

Speaker 3 talk about it right now. Okay, understandable.
Or is it?

Speaker 2 So, okay, so, but at this point, Josh realizes that Joni needs him. So he borrows Drip God's car, and Drip God's like, my car will never make it the whole way.
But he's like, I'll try anyway.

Speaker 2 So then we come back to Joni. She comes back to Bible class.
She gets the norm greeting, right? Like from cheers. Everybody's so excited that she comes in.

Speaker 2 Now, we haven't mentioned her yet, but Pastor Bart's daughter is in like the background of all of these scenes, just sitting there harumfully spying on all the charismatics.

Speaker 3 It's such a hard name. It's such a, it's such a like, if you're going to lead people, that's a name you go with, the charismatics.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 that's the way to go for sure.

Speaker 2 Right. It's like calling yourself pro-life.

Speaker 3 Feels like a subclass in D ⁇ D. That's exactly what I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, so, but then we get a very brief moment of her return to the Bible study. Again, small moment, I have to mention it.

Speaker 2 She's like, girl number three points to her Bible and she says, You know, we're looking at Paul's letters, but she's nowhere fucking near the epistles in that Bible.

Speaker 3 She's not even to Psalms, right?

Speaker 2 She's not even in the right testament for them to be talking about Paul's fucking letters. God,

Speaker 2 if there's anything a Christian movie should get right, it's the goddamn Bible, right?

Speaker 3 It's where in the thickness their Bible verse should be.

Speaker 3 Are you not familiar with the history of Christian cherry-picking? Yeah, well, no, you're

Speaker 2 yeah, it was a 501c3, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 So then we cut to a cop pulling Josh over for driving too slow in his hippie van, and the cop's name is Buddy.

Speaker 3 Oh, shit.

Speaker 2 We can tell from the huddle house name tag that they have attached to him that looks nothing at all like something a cop would wear.

Speaker 3 Attention to detail, man. I'm telling you.
This movie.

Speaker 3 You have to figure that out. You see what I'm saying? Yeah.
Exactly. I don't argue with people on the internet anymore because it broke my brain to try.

Speaker 3 But I used to have moments where I would be arguing with an idiot person on the internet and they had realized they'd lost.

Speaker 3 So they would just say something with a very final tone in the hopes that I would be like, well, you said it in a final tone. I guess I lose.
That's how this movie is plotted.

Speaker 3 It's plotted like someone slapping their thighs and going, well, I think we've all learned something today. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So then we have Josh like talking to the cop.
The cop's like going to help him out. He's like, you know, I'll give you a ride the rest of the way and I'll make sure your car gets fixed.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, a helpful cop. Well, that is a miracle.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that shit would only happen to a white man for sure. Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe too.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Right.
To a short-haired white guy.

Speaker 3 Cops are so nice to me.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's crazy. They're so helpful.
Yeah. You're one of us.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, but we're cross-cutting that with her doing Bible study. The pastor's daughter's getting angry and angrier.
They're like, can you lead us in prayer, pastor's daughter?

Speaker 2 And she's like, fuck you.

Speaker 3 Pastor's daughter was my favorite character. She was awesome.

Speaker 3 Because i thought because this movie was very clearly setting her to have like a i've been won over by joni moment never fucking never happens

Speaker 2 she goes to the grave hating joni

Speaker 2 flips the bird over the closing credits of this film it's the best she's the real hero honestly i think that's what's relevant here so all right so the cop drops josh off we do a super close-up on his name tag just in case anybody missed that subtle clue about his identity and then we have joni going into the pastor's office right He's called her in there.

Speaker 2 And as she's going, and she knows it's going to be bad because as she's going in, the old lady that got shoulder checked earlier tells her, I'm sorry, honey.

Speaker 3 Amazing recovery. Okay.

Speaker 3 So this scene is boring and there's nothing to discuss, but there is one very important thing about this firing scene, which is that the table arrangement is the craziest thing I have ever seen.

Speaker 3 She's been called into this room. It has a long table down the center.
All the people firing her are facing each other, like fucking Last Supper style.

Speaker 3 They're just on each side facing each other and all looking down to her at the end of the table like she's going to give a bridesmaid's toast. It is batshit levels of insane.

Speaker 2 Well, it's even crazier than that because she's sitting at the head of the table and Pastor Bart has got one side to himself. Everybody else is on the other side fucking Last Supper style.

Speaker 2 And Mary is also sitting at the head of the table. So they have two people sitting at that.
Yeah, it's fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 Okay, you got to think about who's this scene really about, right? Is it about Joni and Mary? No.

Speaker 3 Really, we can get up close and personal with this shot, right? Because we can see this weird bob-haired woman, real emotion. She's right there, right? And she's obviously the most affected by this.

Speaker 3 I don't care about Joni in this scene. Yes.

Speaker 2 So I will say that extra was absolutely going for it, right?

Speaker 3 Like every facial expression.

Speaker 2 She was like a theater of masks with her fucking facial expression.

Speaker 3 She's the drama teacher at the local Christian school. She's rushing it.
She's rushing it.

Speaker 2 She was awesome. But so, so she's in there getting fired, right, for teaching the wrong form of Christianity.
And outside, Josh says, I have an idea and he runs away.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to tell you what the idea was yet.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Listener, I'm going to make you wait because it is fucking delicious. You will learn where in the movie we learned, but just know that Josh had an idea and ran away.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 So we cut back into the pastor explaining to her that she's the theological equivalent of some guy who watched a YouTube video and is now lecturing the climate scientists. Right.

Speaker 2 And then Joan is and he yells at her to get out of his church and she smacks the table, which is the only thing he does wrong. He raises his voice, smacks the table, shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 2 Everything else, he's in the right. But then as she's leaving, Joni condemns them.
She's like, you know, but what if the Holy Spirit manifests within you?

Speaker 2 And we're like, fucking what?

Speaker 2 What are you even talking to? Are you saying you have magic powers at this point?

Speaker 3 I don't even know. She's like the guy who gets bit by a zombie.
He's trying to convince everybody it's fine. Yes.

Speaker 3 What do you think the Holy Spirit is, dude? Yeah. That's exactly what that is.

Speaker 2 He's a zombie that can bite you.

Speaker 3 Duh. Yes,

Speaker 3 obviously.

Speaker 2 And then she yells, a house divided cannot stand after spending the entire movie dividing the house.

Speaker 3 Trying to divide said house has entered. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But then she decides that she's the narrator again, and she's going to start wallowing in self-pity. for that time that she was kicked out of her church for fucking up their religion thing.

Speaker 3 Okay, I like that she was like, all right, who's coming with me?

Speaker 2 And nobody.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes okay no just me and the people waiting outside she doesn't even get the fish yeah but but everybody gathers to the church to see her off i'm like i bet that did not happen in the true story part we literally see her on a cross

Speaker 2 Right like the way she's like I was being persecuted for my beliefs just like Jesus and there's like this overshot of her at it like this this cross fade to her with a fucking op on a cross and shit might as well be get a subtitle underneath the glowing cross that just says get it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 2 But then just as this scene is sort of fading out, one of the girls says to another, Josh ran around the church seven times like Jericho.

Speaker 3 Okay, you guys expected this is the moment when the steeple turns itself upside down and does the thing. Here's my theory.
Can I hit you with my theory?

Speaker 2 What's that?

Speaker 3 I think that was the plan. And then someone showed them in Spider-Man Movie Maker, which is how they made this movie, what that was going to look like.
And they were like, okay,

Speaker 3 maybe they just look at a picture of what happened earlier in the film. They really should have committed.
That doesn't hold up to our standards from earlier when we used the clean.

Speaker 3 It's no Joni on the cross.

Speaker 2 Yeah, right, right. God, that's honestly the only thing that makes sense.

Speaker 3 I respect them for it. They're so committed to quality that

Speaker 3 they can't sacrifice the viewers' attention. It's like leaving out the Java scene.
This is their Schenectady. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So, meanwhile, so we cut to the crusty old white guys.
They're all meeting about how they're kind of still worried that Joni, even though they kicked her out, is having a huge influence.

Speaker 2 And they proceed to have an insane conversation that no one acknowledges as insane.

Speaker 3 Oh, where they wonder whether or not it was a demon instead of the Holy Spirit? Yes.

Speaker 2 Where they're like, what if there were demons speaking through her? And I'm like, yeah, man. What if she was a fucking zombie and bit somebody?

Speaker 3 Valid point. Let's drag the movie to a halt.
It's been seven and a half hours. We're here at the fucking end of Koyana Scotsi.

Speaker 3 Let's just back and forth about whether or not one of the underground minions of the devil has actually been working for Joni.

Speaker 3 Because you know, Joni at one point, like someone was like, that's the work of the devil.

Speaker 3 And she was like, well, when I make my movie, which will not be less than an hour and 35 minutes long, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 I will explain why it couldn't have been a demon because demons don't lead Bible study. Yeah.
Right. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's also a very important thing that happens in this scene in that everyone's in agreement in the room. When they're having this discussion, they're like, Joni is a problem.

Speaker 3 We need to deal with her. And then out of nowhere, one of the guys is like, actually, Joni is fucking based and has a point.
And then they all just turn. Come on.
All just like, yep, that's cool.

Speaker 2 Everybody just picks up a pitchfork and starts going right after Pastor Bart. You know, you know what? Jodi's got a point here.

Speaker 3 Hold on.

Speaker 2 Then we go back to, we go back to the Johnsons where Jodi is now, she's got like equally large piles of supportive mail and go fuck yourself mail from the various people in the congregation.

Speaker 3 Okay, this is her great at what cost moment.

Speaker 3 And I have to point this out, right? That this makes no sense whatsoever because she saved the souls of children. So even if the cost had been something real, it wouldn't have mattered.

Speaker 3 But she's holding these two equally sized packets of love slash hate mail and she's like, was it worth it?

Speaker 3 Tell me, remember the thing at the end of Saving Private Ryan where he's like, tell me I'm a good man.

Speaker 3 She's doing the tell me I'm a good man, saving private Ryan because she received several letters that disapproved of her religious outviews.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she's like, it hurts so much because I've never actually gone through anything hard in my entire life. And I'm writing about this as an adult.
So apparently I never will.

Speaker 3 Oh.

Speaker 2 Guys, listening to this review is the closest this lady has ever come to hardship. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 Except for Cameron Sparts. She's probably really enjoying Cameron's contradiction.

Speaker 3 She's like, at least somebody gets it. Gets a sand label.
I'm representing her. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, but then Mrs. Johnson, as written by the person this is based on, explains that she suffered equally to Jesus.
She and him are now tied for martyrdom.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, okay. Is the movie over?

Speaker 2 No. No, we still have to undoodly do and check in with the Sorbos.

Speaker 3 Here's what this movie was at this point. So my son is five, and he has decided that at bedtime, he would like to call us upstairs and talk to us forever until the morning sun rises.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And the way he does that is he just sort of word salads whatever the last word was of the sentence where we get to say goodnight and tell him to go to bed into a new sentence.

Speaker 3 That's how this movie is written. It's like, and speaking of.
Are you doing a weird description of the phone calls I have with you sometimes?

Speaker 3 That's what I need to do. I need to put my son and Heath on the phone.
My son not wanting to go to bed. Heath on the phone.
I've solved my problem. There you go.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Solve two problems.

Speaker 3 Tylenol.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so, and, and okay, so we cut back to Kevin and Sam Sorbo.

Speaker 2 And Kevin Sorbo's character apparently was supposed to have just run around the church seven times, like, you know, for old time's sake.

Speaker 3 You guys think they tried to shoot Kevin? Okay, Sorbo very clearly tried to do seven laps. It went very crazy.

Speaker 2 I honestly, I think he went seven times because he looks about ready to die when he walks into this church, right?

Speaker 2 I think this was the one time in his whole stupid bullshit life of an actor where he's like, got to go method on this one.

Speaker 2 And everybody just sat there as he like, because because he hurt his ankle on the first lap. And so

Speaker 2 he's like, run fat boy running his way around for the last six. He's like, nope, I'm going to do seven.

Speaker 3 I got seven.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I. That's it.
That's five.

Speaker 3 It's only three, Kevin.

Speaker 2 But then they start bringing in all the characters from earlier in the movie, but all grown up.

Speaker 3 Right. So we don't recognize any of them.
It's just

Speaker 3 none of them even had names.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So it's just like, oh my gosh, it's you.

Speaker 3 No, it's you. It's you.

Speaker 3 I just figured it out. The guy with the comb over is drip god.

Speaker 3 Oh, is that him? Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 No, it's supposed to be Jonathan. It's actually supposed to be the son.
Yeah, it's supposed to be Jonathan.

Speaker 3 Yeah, who is Jonathan?

Speaker 2 Jonathan is, yeah, right. Exactly.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 2 But Jonathan is Bart's son, the one that shoulder checked the old lady. Because he says at one point, he's like, my father left the church shortly after or something like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I believe this, if I'm not mistaken, this is also Dick Swingle, Captain Combo.

Speaker 2 So, okay, so now, so it's, it's post-reunion or whatever, Kevin and Sam Sorbo, they, they go outside and they talk about how much Jesus really nailed it and how this movie all really did come together in the end.

Speaker 3 So really, really brought it home.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They decide that they want to help rebuild the church and maybe like live here now.

Speaker 2 And again, like I would leave this out because we've gone way over time. We've gone so far over time that Rachel left like half an hour ago.

Speaker 2 But fucking, there's a moment here where Kevin Sorbo is looking over the blueprints. And this is, it's so poorly done.

Speaker 2 One of the guys gives what I think is the greatest effort ever to improvise technical speak. He points to the blueprints, which are very obviously blank, and he says, and I do fucking quote,

Speaker 2 now this part's got to be done right. If it's not done right, you're going to have a lot of problems.

Speaker 3 See, it's the fucking bad. You got to build the building good on the part with the building here.
I almost went best, best vamp. Yeah, it's worth it.

Speaker 3 So good.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, but then they, they, this is blue.

Speaker 3 No, yep, stupid.

Speaker 2 So, but then they rededicate the church and now they're going to build a second home near it.

Speaker 2 And again, I would love to leave it out, except that as they're building their second home, Kevin Sorbo checks in on Sam Sorbo and catches her dremeling Bible verses onto the underside of the bar that they're about to install in their basement.

Speaker 3 Just absolutely batshit insane.

Speaker 2 That is get back in your jacket levels of insane.

Speaker 2 But then, oh, so sorry, then we get the grand opening at the church, right, where Pastor Comover gives us some, I guess, charismatic preaching. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But then we get, just in case this movie wasn't high art yet, we get an ending so great that after I watched the movie, I sent a message to Eli saying the ending scene is better than you can possibly imagine.

Speaker 2 And then I tried to unsend it before each scene because I was like, yeah, just I was like, I don't want to ruin it for him. I don't want him to be expecting anything here.

Speaker 2 This is so fucking good because with two minutes left in the movie, we cut to post-tribulation.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they've been raptured. I remember them referencing.

Speaker 3 The Sorbos have been raptured, and the christians hiding under their floorboards find the bible verses she dremeled into them yes after being caught with a copy of jesus freaks the movie the movie yep the self-reference the dvd with them on it

Speaker 3 with them on it well this movie movie was this part in the dvd that they had i don't yeah guys kevin sorbo is standing right behind me i don't know how that happened yeah but he seems to have jumped up his own ass get him a mic get him a mic, please.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right. I have some questions.

Speaker 2 But then all the Christians, when the ex squad comes in to get onto him for having, you know, Christian movies or whatever, all of the Christians hide under the bar and they see the Bible verses that Sam Sorbo carved in there, which means that either Sam Sorbo or the woman that this movie is based on actually did carve that shit into the underside of her bar.

Speaker 2 And this last little bit of the movie is her going, see, it does make sense. It will matter.

Speaker 3 Also, did you all notice that all of the feds were just carrying flashlights, like almost completely non-threatening?

Speaker 2 Oh, were they?

Speaker 3 There's no weaponry. They were just holding flashlights.

Speaker 2 Fantastic. Well, they were wearing all black and

Speaker 2 their eyes were visible.

Speaker 3 Terrifying. So, okay.

Speaker 2 So then we close on a Bible verse as we always do. And we see a video of the guy that Kevin Sorbo was supposed to be playing in this movie telling us the tractor beam story during the credits.

Speaker 3 Listen, the credits came on. I just wrote absolutely not.
Oh, I loved it so far. I thought that there were more people who wrote more notes.
And I was like, nope. Okay.
No.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 these credits were goddamn incredible, right? Because first of all, this guy's telling this incredibly stupid, boring story about Jesus putting a cosmic spotlight next to him.

Speaker 2 And secondly, because they're so poorly done. The very first credit in this goddamn movie is listed as older Joni Sam.
Joni Sam has one word. And the person who played older Joni Sam is Sorbo.

Speaker 3 Sorbo.

Speaker 3 Sorbo.

Speaker 2 The very first name in the credits. And they were like, ah, fuck it.

Speaker 3 It's good enough.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I had to end on that. All right.
Well, I think we can all agree that this is one of the six greatest things that ever happened. I mean, like, I loved it ironically.

Speaker 2 Cameron loved it unironically, but we all fucking loved it. That's the important thing.

Speaker 2 So, Cameron and, you know, Rachel, like through you, thank you so much for hanging out with us and suffering through this incredibly long fucking record today.

Speaker 3 Yeah, happy to. That was a great time.
Thanks for having us on.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you bet. And hey, if people are listening and they're like, hey, I got cheated out of a whole bunch of Rachel, where can they find more of you guys?

Speaker 3 Yeah, just look us up pretty much anywhere at Cheers to Leaving. You can find us anywhere podcasts are and on all socials.
Awesome.

Speaker 2 And of course, we'll have that linked on the show notes as well. And well, that does it for our review of Jesus Freaks.

Speaker 2 That's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to stumble back just as we reached the summit. So Eli, tell us what's on deck.

Speaker 3 The story of Lindsay, a high school girl who loses her opportunity for a college scholarship to a transgender athlete.

Speaker 2 Oh, God damn it.

Speaker 3 In her father's fight for fairness, he learns that even finding an attorney to take his case is a challenging.

Speaker 3 And getting that case to trial is an even bigger obstacle. The case takes a faith-based twist when his attorney gets the judge to accept God and the Bible into evidence.

Speaker 3 And God made man, that's the name of the movie, sorry I didn't end this way, stars Dean Kane and Kevin Sorbo and artfully tackles the science and faith involved in this political hot topic.

Speaker 3 End of the IMDb description of this movie. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Okay, so with that to let's say look forward to, we're going to bring episode 533 to Immersible Glows. Once again, a huge thanks to Cameron and Rachel for helping out today.

Speaker 2 Be sure to check the show notes for a link to their stuff. And an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors that helped make the show go.

Speaker 2 If you'd like to cut yourself among their ranks, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash godolphel and thereby earn early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

Speaker 2 You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms.

Speaker 2 And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, The Scanning Atheist, Citation Data, DND Minus, and The Skeptic available wherever podcasts live.

Speaker 2 If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions, you can get about GodAlphanMoviesandGmail.com. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media.

Speaker 2 Our theme song was written and performed by Ryan, Salt and Government on Mars. All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clerk and was used with permission.

Speaker 2 Thanks again for giving us a chunk of your life this week. For Heath Enright, Neil Bosni, Commun Illusions, promised to work harder to earn another chunk next week.

Speaker 2 Until then, we'll leave you with the American Graffiti Close.

Speaker 3 Kevin Sorbo went on to be a spokesman for the American Vitality Store,

Speaker 3 selling a cardiovascular medicine asterisk called Liberty Heart.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 3 It's made with bergamot and sugar cane. It's basically, it's a mojito without the rub.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 3 For your heart.

Speaker 2 Marco grew old and died fussing with those same fucking chairs at that same fucking church, apparently.

Speaker 3 42 more characters were introduced just after the credits for this movie.

Speaker 2 This content is can-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

Speaker 2 The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in a Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025, all rights reserved.

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