This is an audio version of a video I recorded with Robert Beshara, RC Roberts and Matthew Flisfeder about the original, 1982 release of the movie ‘Blade Runner’ on the occasion of the film’s 40th anniversary. This was recorded before the Film Conversations podcast took its present form but is very much within our wheelhouse. In the introduction, I make reference to the guests’ websites (which appeared on-screen) which you’ll find listed below.

During this conversation, we explore the film using a postmodern lens (Matt Flisfeder), from a literary point of view (RC Roberts), from the perspective of memory (Robert Beshara) and as a resurrection of the Film Noir (moi).  It was a good time.

Dr. Robert Beshara

Author of works such as a translation of Fundamentalism and Secularization by Egyptian scholar Mourad Wahba, artist and composer whose most recent music effort is an album based Horny Cricket You can learn more about Robert’s work at his website and here’s the URL

https://sites.google.com/site/robertkbeshara/home

Matthew Flisfelder

Assoc Professor of Rhetoric and Communications at the Univ of Winnipeg, and author of, among other works Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner. Here's Matthew's website:

https://matthewflisfeder.com

RC Charles Roberts, Internet polemicist, a student of the traditions of Jean Paul Sarre, Wiford Bion, Gore Vidal and HL Mencken to name some of the people who sit at what Charles calls his 'writers table'. You can read Charles' work at his Substack Ferocia Animi and here's the link

https://ferocia.substack.com

In today’s episode, which is our second, my co-hosts and I - Dennis Claxton and RC Charles Roberts - talk about two films from what’s known as the atomic age genre of science fiction - Panic in Year Zero and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Atomic age, in this context, refers to that period following the use of atomic weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the US, when fear, hope and wonder about atomic energy and weapons were right on the surface of the culture, influencing film and the form of science fiction and disaster cinema movie goers saw from the 1950s through the 1960s. Panic in the Year Zero, released in 1962 and starring Ray Milland, tells the story of a Los Angeles family who, while on a weekend camping trip, witness the destruction of their city by an atomic weapon and find themselves in a world that’s unraveling.

The Incredible Shrinking Man, starring Grant Williams, and based on a book (The Shrinking Man by is a very different film; a man is exposed to a radioactive cloud while on a boating trip with his wife that causes him to begin shrinking, losing height and mass at the rate of about an inch a week. The film, in its way, explores themes of masculinity and even human existence. This was a great conversation but you may at times notice a bit of coughing and sneezing on the audi track. Both Charles and Dennis were a bit under the weather when we recorded and I became so engaged in the flow of our chat I forgot at times to mute. Even so, I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed recording it.

Notes

Panic in Year Zero

Wiki Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_in_Year_Zero!

Film: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21x586

The Incredible Shrinking Man Wiki Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Shrinking_Man

Film: https://archive.org/details/tism-1957

Decent Cannibals by RC Roberts

 https://ferocia.substack.com/p/decent-cannibals-on-the-situation

Double Bind

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind

Jean Paul Sartre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

Sartre’s Concept of Bad Faith

https://youtu.be/UUXXmHkI-Ug

Jack Arnold on the Making of The Incredible Shrinking Man

https://youtu.be/6z4J89KF1AA

History of American International Pictures

https://youtu.be/okCZhEEqmD4

How Nuclear Weapons Changes How We Think

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NtwIcqNlUFQ

In this conversation, Dennis Claxton, RC Roberts and yours truly discuss the 1960, American film, “Inherit the Wind”. The film, based on a play of the same name and inspired by the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial of 1925, is, among other things, an allegory for the McCarthy era House Un American Activities Committee Hearings and their impact.