Midweek Mention... K-PAX

K-PAX

Sidey: We're going to talk about your nominations this week, Dan. And you kicked us off with a film I've avoided like the plague. It's called K

Dan: Yeah, have you not seen this film? Okay, right. Well, do you know what kicked this off for me? Was the UFO

Sidey: Oh, the news last week. Yeah, yeah. Progress

so

Reegs: was some pretty mad stuff that was said by people who seemed to be

Sidey: pretty, kind of confirmed that there was or this, that's how people interpreted it. I think they just said there was biological,

Reegs: one of the guys, although he later said he'd think his knowledge was secondhand, but he was reasonably high up and claimed that there were, that alien technology had been recovered

Sidey: So the plot of Transformers?

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, it really was wild and they're doing this in Congress, they're asking questions under oath and all the rest of it and they're proven to be quite high up, sort of air force people or whatever. Yeah. Yeah space one. Yeah, it's quite crazy. So it got me thinking about

Sidey: Well, that, yeah, that was in the news and of course Kevin Spacey was in the news last week. Yeah. Because he was acquitted on all counts of all the accusations which is probably more complicated than that.

Reegs: I would say. So,

Dan: yeah, it

Sidey: But we watched a film with him in Anyhow. Because he is the star and the protagonist of

Dan: Yeah, it's, it's him and Jeff are the big characters in this. But Jeff

Sidey: Yes. Jeff to his friends.

Dan: Jeff to his friends. And you're right though. This, this man appears outta nowhere

Sidey: Well, you wouldn't have recognized presumably the guy, the homeless guy who spots him first. That's cool Lester Smooth from The Wire.

Yeah. He, he's panhandling I think they call it, don't they? Yes, that's right. Well, bagging as we also know as in the subway, I think.

Reegs: The metro

Sidey: yeah. Or the train station, whatever. It's and he kind of looks away and looks back and Kevin space appeared as if

Reegs: There's like a little flash of, a little beam of sunlight pierces through the sort of ceiling glass of the train station onto the thing. And as he, a person passes in front.

Dan: phe looking scene as he, he's kind of just appears Yeah. And

Reegs: Wearing his distinctive Bono shades.

Sidey: Yes. They literally are. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Looks kind of outer place a little bit. Just the way he walks over

Sidey: place a little bit, just the way he walks over and...

Dan: Responsible, even though they're told, no he didn't do anything, didn't do

Sidey: They're still

Dan: they're still not happy with his his answers. He doesn't

Sidey: Well,

Reegs: Well, he makes a remark about, he makes a remark about how bright everything is, even though he's got these massive dark sunglasses on. And like you say, the next thing we know he's being committed.

And

Sidey: We've had quite a lot of asylum stuff recently, haven't

Reegs: we have, yeah. And they're bringing him in. I think he says Jeff Bridges, he's quipped something like, Oh, who is it this time? Jesus Christ or Joan of Arc. And they're bringing in, you know, the spaceman. Yeah.

Dan: because, yeah, he,

Reegs: they, they suspected him of being like high on hallucinogens and when they found that wasn't the case, they move him to a mental hospital.

They move him through that when they find that basically he's, you know, the premise, what's going to set up the premise of the movie is, is he suffering from a big delusion?

Dan: Yeah. And, and, and that is what appears to be the case he doesn't respond to some really kind of strong drugs and,

Reegs: At one point he, they confirmed that he has a sort of higher visual register.

This all happens very early in the movie that he can sort of see ultraviolet rays and they strongly imply that he's looking at Jeff Bridges, who's, you know, going to meet him soon properly through the one way glass.

Dan: Yeah, that's right. And it is, it is a little bit later on that he actually gets that proof of the, the light. He's already met him at that stage, but it was one of the early meetings. And Jeff Bridges is the, the psychiatrist who's going to investigate and have this guy on his on his case book. And like everyone, he's busy, thinks, oh, it's another guy going to be, you know, what's wrong with him. But the more he, he meets him

Reegs: Well he's shown, isn't he, early on to be a little bit disinterested in what one of his patients is saying. He's a little bit gone, going through the motions. He's clearly a workaholic, but he's going through the motions a little bit with his patients because Ernie's sort of not listening to him about it being a germaphobe.

So, yeah, maybe searching for something a bit different.

Dan: but, but you do get the sense that he's caring as well. 'cause he's saying, oh, right, I'll get right on that. And he, he's, he's a good psychiatrist. So he's, he's talking to who we find out is prote

Reegs: Yeah, to rhyme with scraped.

Dan: To rhyme with scrote, yes.

They never say that in the film, did they? No, but

Sidey: He'd be between the lines.

Dan: Reading between the lines.

Sidey: Well, Jeff Bridges character's also, we see his home life, he's kind of distracted when his wife's talking to him. He's like, clearly not listening and he's got something going on with an estranged son as

Reegs: Yeah, so yeah, exactly. There's a lot of information fed in, but really the bulk of the sort of first half of the movie really is going to be dedicated to sessions of prot explaining things that he seems to know about where he's from and explaining where he's from and Doctor, what's his name?

Doctor Jeff. Doctor Powell trying to sort of gently pierce the delusion by asking probing questions for which Probe has a series of incredible answers for.

Sidey: Yeah, and that... It kind of escalates. They're trying to, like in layman's terms, call bullshit on him, and they're not able

Dan: Yeah. Well, they're,

Reegs: And he's doing all sorts of strange shit.

Like in the first one he eats an apple like completely core. I dunno, I've seen other humans do that, so maybe Okay. But he eats a banana with his skin.

Sidey: see how many times they made him do that? Like 27 times he had to eat the

Reegs: Really? 'cause he gets into that thing with gusto and he's explaining that he's traveled via fast and light travel.

He he's

Sidey: he a thousand... he's a thousand light years away. So he's from Capex. That's what the movie is called. That's where he's from this but, and he does describe

Reegs: the Lyra constellation. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. That meant nothing to me. And he's saying that you know, In eons of amounts of time, you all discover, you know, you, you guys, you're just like at the very start of your evolutionary journey, but we've learned how to travel, you know, you don't understand the power of light yet.

And he's

Reegs: And he says, Oh, we, why can't you explain it to me? And he's like, well, because it would just be a weapon

Sidey: like, you would just explode.

Dan: And, well, he's, as he gets further and further into these

Reegs: Well, he asks good questions. Cause he's like, well, how, you know, if you're a, if you're an alien, how come you speak English? And he's like, Oh, well, actually it's pretty English. It's pretty easy compared to other languages. Cause when you can like, Oh, the name of my own languages. And then he reels off, like, this string of guttural noises and clicks and stuff.

So, he's got all the answers, and he, he's got this sort of naive, slightly smug manner about him, gentle

Sidey: He kind of appears...

Reegs: and very quick to answer every question, he's not stopping to think,

Sidey: No, he's like arrogantly aloof. Yeah. Like he, he knows everything that they ask him he's got an answer for. Yeah. But also just doesn't seem that arsed about them like probing away.

Dan: like, no,

Reegs: arsed about them, like, probing away or something. No, he's not. For

Dan: That's right. Well, they come for a barbecue around his house and he says, Oh, actually I've got something in your field. And he's talking to a friend that a family and things. And he's a, he's a astrophysicist and he's got this big observatory tower.

And he says, look, is it okay? What I want to do is, as you said, side, he wants to get, get him to call bullshit on these things, but put him in a way where he can't.

Confront it.

Reegs: Well, because he's very convincing,

Dan: He's very

Reegs: if you're not an astrophysicist, the stuff he's saying is

Sidey: They literally say that line and he's the most...

He's the most convincing delusional we've ever seen at the hospital, I think they

Dan: yeah, that's right. So they, they just don't have any answers for him at the moment. And they wanna call bullshit in a way that's gentle enough for him to get his

Sidey: head. Well, they obviously need to help him if he is if he is delusional, then they you know, that's what they're there for.

Dan: they still assume that he is.

So they send some, some notebook back with some questions answers to questions that this ASIST is asked and.

next thing he's being called up and they say, look, I'm not being, I'm not joking here is somebody set you up to do this because he couldn't know this stuff. You know, he just, you wouldn't know what, what he's talking about is so obscure.

There's, there's four or five guys in the world that know this stuff. So, and they've got, you know, access into all these kind

Sidey: you know, PhDs,

Dan: so,

Reegs: yeah, they'd know each other.

Dan: he's going to Duncan put you up to this and he's going, no, he didn't.

Right, well we've got a few people that would love to meet this guy, and so they bring him in to They go out on a field trip, don't they?

There's four of them. There's

Reegs: There's a great moment where they meet and he's like, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.

Is everyone a doctor on this planet? He says to him. They're all laughing. And they take him through to an observatory, right? Yeah. A planetarium.

Sidey: Yeah, they put, they project Lyra, the constellation that he's talking about.

And then they ask him

Reegs: they ask him to draw the orbital pattern because it's a binary star system, and they ask him to draw the orbital pattern of

Sidey: the orbital pattern. Yeah, and he just goes up to it and starts tapping away and then first, it's kind of like some rudimentary like lines and then he starts writing out some equation and you can see them all looking at each other like holy and then they they kind of project what he's written.

You know, through the, it

Reegs: in his numbers into some software

Dan: I'm already doing it. I'm already doing

Sidey: it looked like Windows 95.

Reegs: I'm

Dan: really excited because it looks like what he's writing down will fit the coordinates of their program. And all of a sudden the light program comes into

action,

and planets are spinning around other planets drawn on the information he's given it.

How do you know that? He goes, well, Every Capaxian knows that. Every school child Capaxian knows that. And he, through his conversations, we've learned that Capax is a very different society to Earth. Yeah. And how it might be, you know, families don't exist.

Reegs: Haxians as well are very different because they they find reproduction disgusting and painful,

Dan: That's right, yeah,

Sidey: Don't we all? But I think, I think it's... I was going

Reegs: I was gonna say, it's obviously one of my previous conquests.

Sidey: They they, his, the way he's described it is they've just evolved many, many millions of years ahead of, Where, where Earth is at that point. Yeah. And so they're baffled where how can he know all this stuff?

And whilst all this is going on, he's made loads of really good connections with the other Yeah. Patients at the asylum and also he's getting on well with the kids because they've brought him back round to the house at one

Dan: That's

right, yeah, it's,

Sidey: And he's, he's, it's all going similarly until the of July,

Dan: of July.

Sidey: the sprinkler goes off.

And he starts having a huge freak out about water.

Dan: It's also around this time or a little bit afterwards, they have a conversation in the yard about him going away and telling people in, other inmates, inmates, advice, how they're going to cure themselves.

One of them is to watch yeah, is to watch out the window for a bluebird until it appears, the bluebird of

Sidey: So I was racking my brains with him, I recognise him from something. And about two thirds of the way I was like, fucking guess it's, he's he's in Twin Peaks. He's

Dan: in Twin Peaks. Ah, there you

Sidey: he's one of the brothers in Twin Peaks, yeah. But they're all given some sort of mission to do, so yeah, he's, he's staring and...

Reegs: And even by his very presence, like you were sort of saying before, he's enriching the lives of the other inmates at

Sidey: He's like Jack in Cuckoo's Nest,

Reegs: the woman who's going to appear in the movie that we're going to see, the intern. She is in this as a lady who hasn't come out of her room for like 11 years or whatever, and like, she's waiting permanently for a date.

Sidey: Beth? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

Reegs: So, she suddenly sort of starts coming out of her room, like, magnetized almost by him. He's offering hope.

Dan: Yeah, a guy who's who's like a germophobe is suddenly outside and, and these little things aren't unnoticed by,

Reegs: and it's got Saul Williams in as well, hasn't

Sidey: it?

Yeah.

Reegs: The poet,

Dan: But he, he gets quite defensive that he, he says. You know, I'm the one that's meant to be curing him, you just sort of stick to what you want to do and he goes, Well, why aren't you doing it then, doc?

Then, you know, and it kind of wanders off.

Reegs: It's a good theme that isn't it? Like who should we look to for spiritual enlightenment? Is it like, you know,

Yeah,

Sidey: find it. Yeah,

Dan: that,

Reegs: doesn't have to be the doctor, it doesn't have to be the priest.

Yeah. It's a good theme that I like that.

Dan: And so, at one point, he takes a trip. Which he says he's gonna do. Oh, I've gotta go a trip up north.

And so he's away and there's a big

Reegs: goes to Greenland or Iceland

Dan: Well, so he claims,

Reegs: Well, he disappears for three days completely off the site.

Dan: And

he's also around giving a date where he says, that's going to be the date that I'm leaving at this time on that day. And and Dr. Powell then is trying to piece together what has happened. And he goes, something happened to him on that day.

He's telling me this is like a massive life moment. I've got to find out what has happened because something else is going to happen on this date when it comes around again, the

Reegs: Exactly. And this is when the 4th of July stuff happens that you were talking about invites him very casually back to their, their house and it's all going fine until the.

There's a moment with a sprinkler, isn't it, that triggers him massively

Sidey: and suddenly he grabs the

Reegs: the child and is screaming like, you know, terrorized and this gives Powell, Dr. Powell, the idea to pursue a sort of course of, what do they call it? Regressive,

Sidey: regression hypnotherapy or

Reegs: that's right.

Sidey: Regression hypnosis. Their first, one of his colleagues is like, no, he's not ready for that. It's not right. But they, they do end up doing it, but they're very carefully monitor

Dan: clear

when we

Reegs: coming up. And for some reason I can't remember exactly why, maybe one of you guys will remember right now, I can't remember, it was clear when we were watching the movie, but he, he knows that...

It's going to be five years back from

the 27th of July.

Dan: it's going to be five years back from 27th

of

Reegs: Oh, I got here four years and nine months, blah,

Dan: He gives a very exact date, that's right.

Reegs: that's right. So yeah. So now he knows that there was an incident in his past that he wants to investigate through this trauma therapy.

Sidey: Yeah. And through his questioning. They're very carefully monitoring his, his vitals, and they can see that his blood pressure, his heart rate, everything's like going up as the questions get more, you know, on target

Reegs: he's become very childlike as well. Very childlike in the,

Dan: he gives away a few little tidbits of information which allows him to begin a search for what might be a big abattoir or something close to a river. But. Over America. They have no idea where. It's like the search is that big.

Sidey: they're able to, he

Dan: three or

Reegs: one of the sessions he drops the pencil and it's got the area code that's right of the Salvation Army that he eventually works out.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: And, and so they're able he's able to, and the clock is ticking, I think, again, towards this date still, it's only

Reegs: it's only a four or five days away,

Dan: yeah and he's, he's managed, he wakes up in the middle of the night

Sidey: Well, he's also said he'll take someone with him. He's, he's basically running a competition

Reegs: an essay competition.

Sidey: for them to, to find a,

Dan: going back to yeah. SPRO Sprott Pro t in Grot in the in the asylum. He's made friends with everyone, and everyone well assumes they're coming. He, he hasn't,

specifically told anyone's come and he just said, I can only take one. But through each conversation, each of them believes it's going to be them.

And they're all having now a writing competition to to put together their argument on why they should go. And yeah, it's then it cuts to this. kind of other scene where Dr. Powell is in this town and they've managed to locate through old newspapers this tragedy happening and it turns out that his family were gunned down one day before he was at work and

Sidey: yeah, he did work in an avatar, well they call it a knocker.

Dan: yeah, as a

Sidey: Sounds like a pretty

Dan: and he was meant to be a big old strong guy like and he came in and killed this guy and then went down to the

Reegs: His wife and daughter were, were killed and attacked,

Dan: and there was a sprinkler there near a swing and all these kind of trigger

Reegs: And he came back and caught, caught the guy and killed him and then walked off into the river committing suicide.

Dan: And disappeared. Yeah. That was it. And they called it he bent, went down to the sheriff who said, yeah, he's drowned. He's gone.

Reegs: They never found the body, did they? But they

Dan: they never found the body.

Yeah.

Reegs: But they get a photo, crucially, they get a photo of him from his yearbook. And it sure as shit is Kevin Spacey

prote.

Dan: Yes. Yeah. And and then so the next meeting, the yearbook is on. The table as pro comes in and starts discussing just everyday kind of stuff for the same kind of

Reegs: Well, he's, he's talking about how he's going home

Dan: and how you're going home.

Yeah, they

Reegs: Oh, they have a great, actually, 'cause he talks about, he talks about all the different species on earth and how much it's full of life more so than anywhere else in the universe.

And then he says something about It's something about, he senses that he'll be missed when he leaves this place. That's a new thing for

Dan: That's not what they do in, in K Pax, they don't miss anyone, it's, it's all gone. And, and so, you're starting to piece together now that this guy has had a, a massive trauma and has taken the

Sidey: Doesn't power. Show him the pho, the yearbook photo. he, and he just kind of like, looks a bit, sort of, well look after him. You think? He says, you better look after him now he found him or something like that.

That's right. That's

Dan: the kind of part in shot, because at 5. 30 in the morning then, or 5. 51, there's some random time,

Reegs: This really pissed me off because, right, you know to the minute when this is going to happen, and he has a really late night and then falls asleep and doesn't set an alarm on

Sidey: I know it's fairly

Reegs: I would have been awake for about four hours before that, just staring at the monitor, but it's fine. He runs at the last minute through the hospital powel as the beeper goes off and we see the people are watching on the security footage.

There's like a burst of electromagnetism, some light in the room, the cameras go, and then when they come back, the room is empty. And then pow! Bursts through the door, and you see Robert Porter on the floor,

Sidey: the bed. Under the bed. Catatonic.

Dan: The bed

Reegs: catatonic.

Dan: Yeah. Sort of, shriveled up and, and and that's it. All the life seems to have gone from him, and as they're wheeling him out, the other patients are all gathered in the hallway and as he goes by, they go, who's that?

Yeah. Who's that? That's, that's not him. That's not, that's clearly. Him. They, they just get no sense of, of feeling

Sidey: Yeah, but also it's Bess, isn't it? Bess is not there.

Reegs: Well, inexplicably bes does seem to have disappeared.

Yeah. Bess, who has had precisely one line of dialogue in the whole movie. She says something you like. You are the blue Jay to him.

Dan: yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, because she is kind of...

Not catatonic. Which is a mute after her traumatic event. I think her house had burnt down and so she had never spoken and so she, yeah, she has that one line. So then, yeah, she's gone. Pro is gone. Robert Plant is now in,

Dan: Yeah, he's now in a wheelchair and he's being pushed around by by Jeff Bridges who still visits him now and again and updates him with, with news of the other inmates and how Ernie's been getting

Sidey: And he's kind of smirking. I don't know. He's got a sort

Reegs: He's got a sort of smirky face anyway,

Sidey: he does.

Reegs: Kevin Spacey? We still

is.

Sidey: anywhere. The camera kind of draws in. I always thought he

Reegs: really, I mean, at the end of the movie, it's still like, you know, the central question of was he delusional or

Sidey: first, Powell, Powell goes off to, to resolve his relationship with,

Reegs: relationship with, with Aaron Paul?

Sidey: Yeah, with Jesse Pinkman.

Reegs: Yeah.

He didn't resolve it that well. 'cause he turned into a meth method.

Sidey: know, yeah,

well, it should have been a better role model.

Dan: we? But yeah, he was, that's right.

Through this, he'd also been having this kind of running issue with

Sidey: That he was a bad dad.

Bad dad.

Dan: Proate was able to help.

Sidey: But there's like it's unresolved for the for the audience, you know, it's then it's up to you to decide I think you know How do you how you feel?

Reegs: I feel the evidence, in the movie at least, I think, is that he probably was from K Pax, especially

Sidey: Oh, a

Reegs: three or four other books as well on the very same subject.

Did you like, you hadn't seen this before, had you?

Sidey: No, it was much better than I expected. It was kind of sedate. You know, it was fairly gentle. I think they added that thing about Jeff Bridges nearly missing thing because it needed a little bit of

Reegs: Like tension. Yeah.

Sidey: because it was, you know, it was nice. But it was fairly casual.

It sort of stumbled along at a fairly slow pace.

But, to me, I thought they were, I was, he was definitely a Cape Axean, the, the scientific knowledge stuff,

Dan: I loved all that. I loved all

Reegs: strong arguments for

Sidey: too, it was too compelling to be some

Dan: love the fact that he knew the lyra constellation and he could draw it out in front of all these you know physicists and you know

Sidey: So some, so a Cape Axian had come along and through the light effectively possessed, used his body as a vessel and then gone away and left him behind. And that's why he was saying look after him, etc.

Reegs: So you've got that whole, it's a great, really ambiguous ending that obviously provokes this kind of conversation, but also there's loads of cool themes going through this as well.

Like I said, about where you look for spirituality and what form it comes in. And yeah, just it. Yeah, gentle. You said about this as well.

Sidey: Yeah, I would say

Dan: Yeah. I mean, that's right. It wasn't ous seat anxiety filled

Reegs: No, it's about hope and that sort of

Dan: it was a gimme

Sidey: some stuff. The content that we had this week, I felt like it was a good antidote to what went on last week.

Dan: Well, yeah. Well, we wanted something different and hopefully this, this delivered it a little bit.

I've seen this a a couple of times before I watched it this week.

Sidey: I think we would all say we're all big Jeff Bridges fans.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: he's a

Dan: Yeah. Jeff

Sidey: and he'd take all the complicated shit around Kevin Spacey out of the equation.

Like he's a fantastic actor, you know, and he was good.

Reegs: he's great in this. It's such a good character for him because he, the character, it was either written as, or just because Kevin Spacey is, but smug as fuck, but really vulnerable as well.

So like, a really interesting combination.

Sidey: And you mentioned it Reeves, but yes these were Bono shades and he like was very particular about they must come back to me in like perfect condition etc.

What a prick. Fucking prick. Yeah 27 times Kevin Spacey had to eat the banana with the skin on.

Dan: That's, you couldn't make him do that, could you?

Really? Fucking

Sidey: Signed up, do as you're fucking told. But it was gonna originally be Will Smith.

Reegs: Yes. Yeah, that's right.

Sidey: Kevin Spacey.

Reegs: Spacey is Jeff

Sidey: As Dr. Powell, yeah.

Dan: interesting. I like the way it works. I always like to see Jeff Bridges. I love these sci fi kind of films where you're dealing with somebody really smart and mysterious and

Reegs: I like it when it's

Dan: out how

Reegs: it's sci fi, but it's no like spaceships and lasers and stuff. It's just big ideas.

Dan: it's a

Reegs: Yeah, strong recommend.

Sidey: Agreed.