Episode 194: God Has No Mother (with Chris Matheson)

The experiment was perfect. It was corrupted by our pettiness.

You, the greatest has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man.

I'm a very good man.

Good man. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamela Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, we have a most excellent guest coming up in the second segment. How would you describe him?

Bodacious. Most bodacious.

Can you say most bodacious?

I don't think you no, no, just bodacious. I shouldn't have. But my real answer is that he's a super nice guy. We should say who we're talking about.

Yeah, we're talking about Chris Matheson, who is probably most well known for being one of the writers, along with Ed Solomon of the Bill and Ted movies, bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, and a new movie coming out later in 2020 Bill and Ted face the music. So we had a good conversation with him. We just talked to him yesterday. We recorded it. And actually, a lot of what we talked about was his book. We had both read The Story of God, which was a book of his that came out in, I think, 2015 It was a great conversation. It was about religion. It was about comedy and the role of comedy in the world. And, yeah, I'm excited for our listeners to hear it. And in honor of Chris Matheson and the Bill and Ted franchise, we thought we would have a first segment about stoner movies listing our favorite stoner movies, talking about what makes a stoner movie. So yeah. And Dave, you're a little bit at a handicap.

Yeah.

Not being a stoner.

I'm not a stoner. I've definitely smoked weed and watched things. But I think that well, you could tell me if I'm right or wrong about my picks, because I guess there maybe is a GeneSiC quad to a stoner movie, or maybe there is a list of necessary and sufficient conditions of what a stoner movie is. And I will honestly say that even thinking about this, like, pondering my list really made me kind of want to smoke again, which I haven't done in years.

Take edibles. You might like edibles.

Yeah, as long as I know the dose. Because you do fuck around with that. Yeah. Now you can buy them. You don't want, like, that piece of brownie that had all the weed in it.

As someone who like four months ago collapsed on the sidewalk in Telluride, Colorado. I know that you have to be careful with the dosage.

Well, as someone who for the one and only very bad Wizards meetup ended.

Up not remembering, I don't seem to learn my lesson. But yeah, no, I figured out my dosage and I think you would like it. I mean, things have changed since you used to smoke bot.

Seriously. They have, yeah.

Before we go into our picks, how did you interpret, because we haven't talked about this at all, a Stoner movie. What was the way that you understood.

That category there's to me, kind of two kinds of things that I consider stoner movies. One is a movie that directly references pot smoking in a way that's like super pot friendly, where the characters are clearly they're like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Right. They're just potheads. And those are usually, I think, comedies.

So they're actually smoking pot in it.

Yeah, it's either clear that they're pot smokers or it's heavily hinted at in times past, I guess, that they're pot smokers. And those I think, capitalize on the giggles. What's? The Chappelle movie. Baked.

Half Baked.

Half baked, like that kind of movie? Is it's like just meant for Stoners or like Pineapple Express? That kind know?

Yeah, exactly. That is meant to be watched. Stoned. It was designed for that.

The other thing that I think is just a trippy movie, like the kind that really the aspect of weed that stretches time or distorts time and also makes you make loose connections, the slowness and the visuals. It capitalize on that aspect almost. And that's what's hard. What I was going to ask you is somebody who has not done psychedelics. That's what's hard to distinguish the kind of movie that would be made for more like a psychedelic trip than a weed trip, but everything trippy like that I consider kind of a stoner movie.

I would say that it's a good question. I think the psychedelic and stoner movies, it's a subclass of stoner movies are also good for psychedelics. But I definitely have a category and I'll just spoil that. 2001 a Space Odyssey is a great example of this, where it's not that it's a stoner movie in any sense that it's about drugs or that anybody in it looks like they're doing drugs. It just enhances the experience when you're stoned or and I've never seen 2001 on psychedelics. I don't usually watch movies on psychedelics. The one movie I watched, which was the funniest thing that I've maybe ever experienced was Willy Wonka on mushroom. Absolutely. Just like it just blew me away.

Yeah, it's probably not psychedelics. Aren't you're almost wasting psychedelics if you watch movies?

I think I think so, yeah. But yeah, there is this kind of movie that is not in that first category that you were talking about. It's not stoner characters or stoner like characters, it's just you go into the movie. And it's like you're surrendering yourself to the experience of that movie in a way that being stoned helps you do.

Right? Like your senses are heightened. Although 2001 must feel like it takes three days to watch if you're stoned. That movie is long. On my most sober day.

Well, no, yeah, it's long, but you're just so enveloped by it that it doesn't like, time is not a thing, really. And even those long, slow scenes in the spaceship where a guy's giving a really boring it's purposely boring and mundane, a lot of those scenes, but you're just still so in it. That we saw recently, me and my whole family, actually, it was at an Alamo draft house and the guy gave a little speech because it was part of some series they were doing beforehand.

Just was it in the original, like, what, 70 millimeter?

It wasn't no. I had a lone experience seeing that. The unrestored version that Christopher Nolan did. I think I've talked about that on the podcast. I saw it in New York. That was incredible. I was just, like, kind of alone in this massive movie theater and I was just, like, in the front row of a balcony by myself, just watching it. And I was totally very stoned. But the guy who was giving the introduction, first of all, just made a joke about how many people have prepared to watch it and then said that apparently when they released 2001, it didn't do well at first. And then they switched the marketing up to make it clear that this could be a good movie to see on something. And it had this resurgence of popularity. Once they did that, they did a whole roadshow of it. And then all of a sudden, because it's like, what, 68, 69 So all these stoners and people on acid are just coming to see it religiously at that point. And then it did, and then made a lot of money after that.

That's so funny. We haven't done a Kubrick movie, have we, for a movie episode?

Yes, we have.

Clockwork Orange. What did we do? Oh, Clockwork Fuck.

Which did not make a list of mine, but it definitely could. Although it might make you just too upset.

Yes. Rape scenes are not good for stoner movies. All right, should we start our list?

Yeah, let's do it.

We came up with three. Your assignment was three.

Yeah, I might have more than three. I have three categories because I also did categories where one was what you said that kind of it enhances the experience to be stoned because your senses are heightened and swallows you up. So I've talked about 2001 Should I just start the other one in this category that I wanted to highlight or two other ones? Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, which is also kind of in that zone that you talked about. It's definitely a movie where almost everybody is stoned and it feels like you're stoned watching it. But it is one of those experiential movies. It's not like a Cheech and Chong movie where it's like the point of it is for you to be in it and kind of not know what's going on. Just like the Stoned character, the detective, Joaquin Phoenix, doesn't know what's going on. And it's