The Reel Nerds address the loss of a friend before joining The Watch.
(49:08) Denver Comic-Con Fan Interview: Danny the Professional Con-Attendee
As the news came in throughout Friday afternoon I never expected that by Sunday night we’d be attending the Memorial for the Aurora victims dressed in Nightwing gear. We only met Alex Sullivan a little over a month ago because of Denver Comic Con. I keep telling people that he was our biggest fan because that’s exactly how it felt. He wrote in to the show nearly every week and we talked about him often, wondering how we could get him more involved or when we could have him on the show. He was such an encouragement to us because we knew that DCC was our chance to promote our show and get regular listeners and audience participation and Sully was the first real sign of success, somebody we didn’t know who liked us just cause. We gave him a shirt.
After we found out for sure that Sully was one of those killed, Ryan wrote an article about how we knew Sully, so I’ll not retread that ground, but I do have some things to say and clear up.
The Memorial Sunday night was really nice. It’s a strange experience to grieve for a relationship with someone that you never really got to have. And it’s somehow comforting to see a crowd like that one gathered in honor of that person.
I’d like to thank Denver Comic Con for their involvement in organizing the Memorial, the officials of the City of Aurora, Governor Hickenlooper, all the people who volunteered to form a wall around the event to block the Westboro Baptist Church (who thankfully never showed), and the church leaders for their prayers and encouragement.
After the memorial we went to get food and while talking with the waiter he said what bugged him most about the whole thing was that when the shooter was taken into custody he gave up the fact that he’d booby trapped his apartment. We decided that it seems like the move of a man who didn’t really care about hurting people but was more interested in having the police find what he’d set up for them. Like he thought we’d all be impressed by it. Sure enough, a few days later I passed by the tv at work where they were detailing exactly what traps he’d set and postulating about what he hoped would happen when they were triggered.
It’s hard not to be angry after something like this happens and it’s easy to be angry at the wrong people. But this is Denver, and we’re seen shootings like this before. Months after Columbine the news was still trying to make sense of those boys actions. They spoke with every neighbor and family member, stirred discussion about every possible cause or who should be blamed as a way to search for understanding in the midst of chaos.
This shooter didn’t choose The Dark Knight Rises because he hates Batman, he chose it because he knew it would get him attention, because he knew that he’d add a bitter taste to a great movie forever. If that’s what he wanted than that’s exactly what I don’t want him to have. This is an evil that cannot be explained and should not be understood. The biggest cheer and applaud at the Memorial was when Hickenlooper said he refused to say the shooter’s name, “In my house he’s known as suspect A.”
I’m going to work my hardest to forget the shooter’s name—I only know it because I came across it looking for news about Sully when we believed he was missing. I’ll not hesitate to go back to the theater because I wont allow this person to have any legacy of terror.
If anyone is going to have a legacy coming out of this tragedy it’s Sully. It’s clear how many friends he had who loved him, and I think we feel lucky to have been able to count ourselves among them for a short time. He’s given us new motivation for the podcast and I guarantee that we’ll remember him often. We’ll be dedicating an episode to Sully this week as well as give out information about the small fundraiser we’re going to do to help out Sully’s family. We may not have much influence but we’re going to do everything we can to help.
I would also like to make it clear that everything we’re done for the past few days we’ve done cautiously. None of us want any promotion for the podcast because of this tragedy. We dressed up for the memorial as a way of honoring Sully not drawing attention to ourselves. While we were timid about having our pictures taken or doing interviews with the various news sites that have contacted us, we chose to do so because we thought it would be disrespectful towards Sully not to share our story and pretend we didn’t know him, but we were careful to avoid ever talking about the podcast because we didn’t want any of that to lead back here. It is all our wish that we never be perceived as trying to take advantage of this tragedy because we would quickly give up the followers we’ve accumulated over the past few days to have Sully back. I don’t want to begrudge new listeners, only ask that you not follow us because you think we’ve got some insight into why this all happened, but instead like us because Sully liked us, and he was a great guy with great taste.
Thank you all for your time, support, and encouragement through all this and please stay tuned to find out how you can join us in supporting the victims. We’ll let you know as soon as we can get it all figured out.
-James
Every once in awhile you meet somebody that you just click with. Sully was one of those guys. It was a beautiful Colorado afternoon. The day was June 14th and the Denver Comic Con was opening the next day. Mile High Comics was having one of their great comic auctions, this one was special though. As I drove up Jason St I noticed a long line to get in. I expected this because of all the great things that were going on. As I pulled into the lot I gathered up my Reel Nerds gear, t-shirt, business cards and some stickers. I walked to the end of the line, and the young man in front of me was a big guy. He turned and smiled and said “This is so cool, huh?” I said “Ya it really is.” The tall man looked down on my shirt and said “What’s Reel Nerds?”. I was excited because our shirts got attention and the first guy I met asked about it. I told him about our podcast and gave him a business card and sticker and said my name was Ryan. Again with a big smile he said, “Hi Ryan, I’m Sully” (I didn’t find out until later that his real name was Alex but his friends called him Sully.)
So as we slowly marched towards the doors of the comic shop we got to talking. We joked about how our wives put up with our comic books and all of our other nerdy stuff. We also couldn’t believe we had wives! I mean we are nerds! He also said that his favorite character was Nightwing. I said “Sully, your favorite character is Nightwing and you are wearing an Avengers shirt!” He said “I know but the movie was badass! And I like all comics!”
We finally made it in and he said that he would say hi again but he was looking for a comic for his dad and a couple other things. I asked if he needed help looking and he said no that he wrote down what he needed but thanks. James came up to me few minutes later and said he met a really cool guy, named Sully! He was saying how nice and cool he was I said I had the same experience with him! He was the same way to two strangers, which says a lot about what kind of person he was.
The next day at Comic-Con we were frantic. We were doing interviews and setting up our booth and didn’t have time to scope things out. I will never forget when Sully came and saw us. He had a big smile(this is a recurring theme with him). He said “wow, you guys have great booth” With his smile you had to believe him, it was the most reassuring thing anyone said to me about our show. He then said that he was still on the hunt for items on his list and he would say bye before the show ended.
Sully returned a few hours later and was giddy. He said ” Ryan, check this out” He pulled out an amazing commissioned sketch of Nightwing! It was totally bad ass. I asked Sully if he wanted to be on our show. He declined but he said he would tweet and send us emails, and boy did he ever.
Sully became our number one fan(I like to think that anyways). At least once a week he would send us a tweet about movies we were seeing. A couple of times it would be at midnight and we would be waiting for the same movie, at different theaters. Here is my favorite tweet that Sully ever sent us:
@reel_nerds the movie brave and it suck ass!
Sully thought that it was “Brother Bear meets Freaky Friday”. Brilliant.
We only knew Sully for a short time but he became a friend. He was always funny and he will be missed. He helped us have another voice on our podcast by sending us funny and always great moments from movies he was at or experienced. This story isn’t about us. This is a story about a friend who was taken too early. We want everyone to remember that Sully was a great guy with an even greater smile, please remember him for that and the other 11 people who lost their lives. We were so lucky to have met him and we will continue to think of him every week we do this show.
To Sully,
Ryan Frost Host, The Reel Nerds
In the shadow of a local tragedy, the Reel Nerds rise up and witness the thrilling conclusion to the Dark Knight trilogy.
(1:02:46) Denver Comic-Con Interview with The Boy Who Loved Batman, Michael Uslan
The line outside the special Denver premiere of The Dark Knight Rises to support A Walk to Remember (the charity not the movie).
Better late than never, right? I said I was going to post my hypothesis of what “The Dark Knight Rises” would turn out to be and, a mere hours away from the premiere, I finally got a chance to write up what I assume will be the plot of this final Nolan-universe Batman film. It’s completely unnecessary at this point but… dammit! I said I was going to do this on the show and I’m going to follow through with the goals that I set! So let’s find out how well this Batman fan knows how to judge a couple trailers! And if (when) I get it wrong, people can write/call the show and make me feel like an idiot about it, regret posting this, and convince me to burn my Batman comics because I don’t deserve them. Here we go…
Shortly after the Joker terrorizes Gotham, the GCPD still hunts for Batman. Batman keeps a low profile as he continues to protect the city… until The League of Shadows returns! This time they’ve employed brains and brawn in the form of Bane. Bane storms Gotham in “Knightfall” fashion by orchestrating a prison break that draws Batman out of hiding when Gordon is seriously injured during the mayhem. When Batman tries to confront Bane, he gets bent in half and left for dead (not paralyzed, just seriously injured).
With Batman out of the way, Bane turns Gotham into a “No Man’s Land” by demolishing anything and everything related to Gotham’s wealthy elite, revealing Wayne Enterprises as supplying terrorists, instigating class-warfare and calling upon the have-nots to RISE up against the 1%, and exposing the GCPD cover-up of Harvey Dent’s rampage. Then it’s up to brave citizens and a few GCPD officers (John Blake) to restore order to Gotham until Batman returns. They do this under the mantle of The Bat, combating the criminals and terrorists that have laid siege to the city on a smaller scale. Once Batman is healed, he brings out the “big guns” in the form of his new vehicle, The Bat.
But during this process, he discovers Wayne Enterprises board member, Miranda Tate is Talia Al Ghul and she’s been using her position at the company to secretly fund the League of Shadows with money and weapons. From there on out it’s all out war between the heroes and villains of Gotham, which includes Catwoman, who Batman has convinced to become a reluctant ally. Batman eventually figures out how to dispatch Bane (probably by destroying the apparatus that’s keeping him alive) but dies while fighting Ra’s Al Ghul, who is shockingly revealed at the end of the film, then reminding Bruce of the League of Shadows’ plans to burn Gotham to the ground (this time through fear AND economics!) But it’s the legend of The Batman that prevails as citizens RISE to defeat Ra’s in some way that I still haven’t figured out.
Okay, so, it’s not the most coherent summary you’ve ever read for a movie, but I’ve only got pieces of trailers to work with here! Let the trolling commence…
The Dark Knight Rises comes to theaters in 11 hours and counting…
They didn’t just cut a scene out of The Newsroom, they cut the wrong scene out of The Newsroom and titled it the “The most honest 3 minutes of television, EVER…”
It’s come to my attention that a video has started passing around the internet which consists of a truncated version of the first five minutes of the pilot episode of The Newroom. In the scene Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is egged on by a moderator into having something of a breakdown on stage at a college. He gives a speech where he reveals how worn out and discouraged he is by the current state
of America. He bashes against the idea that America is the greatest country in the world, spews out statistics about where America stands in terms of math, literacy, and child mortality, and then reminisces about a time when America was a paragon of exploration, medical advances, and moral values. The purpose of the scene is to show us Will’s frustration with the way news is handled. The entire scene takes
place between two anchors—we assume they are anchors or “intellectuals” or something—who are each firmly planted on the right or the left and are fighting the way we’ve seen people on tv fight for years. Where those two people are clouded in bullshit, arguments like that America is great because of “diversity and opportunity” or “freedom and freedom”, Will becomes motivated to cut through that bullshit and simply deliver what’s important to people on his program.
Instead of viewing the show as a critique of how real life news programs have allowed political polarization to degrade and distort the facts for their own agendas, however, this video removes all of that context and views it as some kind of rallying cry for people who don’t think America’s no good no more. This is like charging into battle with the disembodied head of your leader on a stick and forgetting what it was he encouraged you to go to war for in the first place.
The title, “the most honest 3 minutes of television, EVER…” implies one of two things: either that all of what Will says is true, or that this is a moment where a fictitious television character is more honest about his internal feeling than any other character has ever been before on television. Now, I shouldn’t have to explain why I don’t think any viewer is EVER going to think it’s that second one. I’m not looking to get into a political debate, and I really love this show and I really love the Apollo program, but the disillusionment Will expresses about current political affiliations and his nostalgia for exploring space makes it seem like he’s forgotten what the War in Vietnam was doing to America at the time of that mighty achievement. The nostalgia of this speech grows from the same place as that beautiful lie we tell ourselves about the perfection of the 1950’s, of doo-wop groups, pleasant housewives in white aprons, and for Will, stand-up news anchors like Edward R Murrow. This isn’t 3 minutes of honesty because it’s not even 3 minutes of Will being honest with himself. This is a well written and well acted scene, not a definitive analysis of modern America.
This is a character moment, not a political argument, on a television show about news shows, not an actual news show, and even at that, the original poster of the video doesn’t even have integrity enough not to chop it up so he can get to the yelling as fast as possible. The motivations and the hesitance of Will McAvoy is removed along with Will’s second answer—which revolves around the Declaration of Independence and the qualities of our Constitution and mirrors the rousing second half of his speech. And without his motivations for the speech being in the video we don’t have that underlying moment of hope that’s tied with the sign he saw which read, “It’s not. But it can be.” Removing America’s potential for greatness as implied by that moment in the scene completely undermines what he’s even saying in that monologue. They’ve neutered it because they didn’t even understand it in the first place.
The lie that this video is going to tell viewers is that honesty and facts are the same thing. That all the statistics Will McAvoy says are fact. Viewers may assume that none of Aaron Sorkin’s real life politics are going to shine through—which is, of course, impossible. Just as Hemmingway couldn’t right many great female characters because he was a man, despite how much he tries Sorkin can’t write very convincing conservative arguments because he doesn’t understand a conservative’s arguments.
Local radio host and economist, Mike Rosen, spent some time recently deconstructing this monologue on his show. And while I don’t agree with some of what he says and while I’m frustrated by the fact that he didn’t watch the entire episode I think he makes some strong arguments against this being the most factual 3 minutes of television EVER…
Note that for my purposes there’s little reason to listen beyond 19 minutes because then he takes calls about it.
Rosen’s interpretation of The Newroom’s leftist slant is exaggerated and uninformed but this clip is good because of how he tears down the statistics that McAvoy quotes. It may be that Sorkin believes all of what he wrote in the scene, or that he misquoted some statistics, or that his sources were not solid enough, or that Rosen’s sources are wrong—I’d like to point out that he doesn’t argue against the math or literacy statistics because seventh isn’t that shocking and number twenty-second in literacy seems understandable when we already know that’s one of the things we should work on. Shit, look how many times I’m misused commas and semi-colons in this article, and I was an English major; it’s almost like they taught that garbage doesn’t matter and I should make it up as I go along. But the derailed point is that it doesn’t matter if these facts are right or wrong because that’s not the function of this scene nor is it what this show is fixated on criticizing. If you’re pulling all your facts out of a piece of fiction you’ve already missed the boat on being well-informed. I do a podcast where I talk about movies and I joke that everything I learned I learned from movies but I don’t vote democrat because I really like Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of Independence Day and I don’t fear stem cell research because I saw the movie Splice.
If you believe everything in this show is real than Olivia Munn has four years of pretending she’s into nerds to sell you.
Still I think that it’s important that people hear things like Rosen’s argument about how manipulative a statistic like infant mortality is when used in this context.
Let me also say that Rosen’s argument that The West Wing is overly biased because the best lines go to the liberals and the republicans all get stupid lines is simply false. I really like that show, too.
Youtubers taken a piece of fiction out of a show about public ignorance and biased news and in doing so they cut out all the meaning until all they were left with was the flame war. They’re literally doing the thing that Will McAvoy is frustrated by in the show. Aaron Sorkin’s political affiliations aside, watching this video and thinking that now you know something is perhaps the most insane and ignorant thing I’ve seen the internet do since it trolled Boxxy.
If you like the idea of someone saying that America isn’t the greatest country in the world than be honest with yourself and ask why. I know that the reason I like that argument is because I like when Will says that we didn’t used to “beat our chests so much.” I like the idea that even if we are the greatest country in the world we don’t need to tell ourselves that, instead we need to look for the ways we aren’t and strive to be better. Maybe that’s what can make us the greatest country in the world; a little humility. But that’s just why I like it.
And not to beleaguer the point, but then entire first episode of The Newsroom is free online here, so instead of watching it butchered on Youtube, you could just watch it and actually know what it’s about.
Maybe I’m just in my mid-twenties slump, feeling like there’s too many numbskulls for politics to ever work right in this country again—and maybe that’s why I love The Newsroom so much—but at a moment like this I think maybe Will is right. We’re the “Worst. Period. Generation. Period” EVER…
-James
With no desire to watch the new Ice Age movie, the Reel Nerds present their interviews with comic book artists Rebekah Issacs, Georges Jeanty, and Zach Howard.
Denver Comic-Con Artist Interviews:
(1:08:33) Rebekah Isaacs (Angel & Faith)
(1:31:00) Georges Jeanty (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The American Way)
(2:03:13) Zach Howard (The Cape)
The Reel Nerds wield great power and great responsibility as they attempt to record an entire show about “The Amazing Spider-Man” without using naughty words.
(53:46) Denver Comic-Con Fan Interview: The Spectacular Spider-Kids
Not Literally are tearing it up online! You should check out their “Sorted This Way” video. It’s awesome! Soon we can look back and say we interviewed them on our podcast before they got all famous and stuff! Don’t forget about us Dana and Ginny!
