Kent and Wonder discuss the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin using the untimed birth charts of both the director, Benjamin Ree, and his subject, Mats Steen. Themes that emerge are living with a fatal degenerative disease, living a secret life, the power of connection and community to heal, and the power of new technologies to create access to the above where they did not exist before. Astrological significations include the 6th House, the 12th House, the Saturn Neptune conjunction of 1989 with the asteroid Chiron opposing.
Distribution: Streaming on Netflix
Director: Benjamin Ree
Run Time: 106 minutes
Astrological Data: Mats Steen, 3 July, 1989, Rodden Rating: X, Source: We Remember and gravestone shown in documentary.
Astrological Data: Benjamin Ree, 10 July, 1989, Rodden Rating: X, Source: IMDB
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.459] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we're breaking down the archetypal dynamics of stories. This season, we're looking at 36 different documentaries from Sundance 2024. So in today's episode, we're going to be breaking down a film called Ibelin, which was a part of the World Cinema Documentary competition and actually came away with two awards. It won the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary and also won the Directing Award that was presented to director Benjamin Ree. It was actually picked up by Netflix, which means that people will be able to watch this film, which I'm super excited about because this was absolutely one of my favorites from this year. This is the fourth of fourth in our series of looking at the promises and perils of AI and emerging technologies. So Wonder, I wonder if you'd be willing to read the synopsis for us.
[00:01:01.958] Wonder Bright: I would be delighted. Ibelin. Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world. Benjamin Ree, who directed The Painter and the Thief in 2020, returns to the festival with a heartwarming and adventurous journey through the breadth of Mats Steen's digital life and his profound impact on a community. Thoughtfully beginning with an overview of Mats life from the Steen's perspective, Ree then uncovers and revives Mats vibrant cyber-self. Narrated entries from Mats published blog introduce us to Ibelin, his charismatic World of Warcraft persona. Mats personality is revealed in a fuller dimension through reconstructed animated moments from his gameplay and interviews with people who knew him as Ibalan. Mats parents' deepest remorse was the thought of their son never experiencing love and friendships, but Rie offers an endearing and innovative portrait of Mats abundant life through World of Warcraft, underscoring how community and soulful relationships can transcend the boundaries of the physical world. And that synopsis was brought to us by Sundance programmer Stephanie Owens.
[00:02:21.932] Kent Bye: Where to begin with this film? I loved it so much.
[00:02:25.029] Wonder Bright: Oh my God, we were just clutching one another, crying the whole way through. We saved it for last because I think we both instinctively were so drawn to the story. And also we had over the holidays watched The Painter and the Thief, Benjamin Ree's previous work, and we really loved it. There's something about the way this director is looking at the world that is so unique and quixotic … almost … it’s very idiosyncratic. And because of that, he's able to keep his attention, and therefore ours, on people and stories that I don't think everyone else would be paying attention to. And if they were paying attention to it, would not be able to do so with the depth of - it's not compassion - I mean, he's very compassionate - but the experience in both of these films is of the emergence of someone's story that we wouldn't have in any other way. And I think it's got to be a testament to Ree's ability to really be and sit with his subjects in a way that allows their full-throated expression - from perspectives that I just can't imagine having heard before.
[00:03:50.152] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think the architecture of this film is so brilliant because, you know, in terms of the astrological houses, there's like a strong 12th house theme where there's like a lot of hidden information from both the family of Mats Steen, but also the community in which, that Mats is engaged with, with the World of Warcraft as this private detective kind of warrior in the context of World of Warcraft, where he's kind of like this international man of mystery where he doesn't give a lot of private information about what's happening in his life. Mostly because he's got this Duchenne's muscular dystrophy disease that is causing him to be in a wheelchair and the only way that he can actually interact in talking with these different people within World of Warcraft is through the text chat. There are guilds that he becomes a part of and they sometimes switch over to voice chat and they even come and meet with each other, but he always finds a way to not participate in those real-time communications. in those gatherings. But you sort of see in the structure of the film where it starts off with his family showing all these home videos of Mats and then you basically see the timeline of his life as they tell it. And then they post this note to his blog and then get inundated with all these people from around the world just sharing how much they were impacted and loved Mats as a friend and a community member. And they were totally blown away because they had no idea about this whole other parallel life that Mats had led in the context of World of Warcraft. And because all these text chats had essentially been saved, they were able to reconstruct all these key moments from Mats life using these YouTubers who were able to go in and do these reenactments in the context of World of Warcraft. So we get this really rich story and narrative of all these dynamics that Mat is going through in this parallel life that his family was not aware of, and that you see all these dynamics of his relationships and his friendships and all the ups and downs of that in this whole other aspect of the film that is interspersed as you are seeing these other moments from the home videos that are creating these markers of the unfolding of his life. So I just thought it was absolutely brilliant and I was in tears so much of this film. It was so profoundly moving.
[00:06:04.838] Wonder Bright: Yeah, and I really want to make a point of saying that the thing that is so moving about this film is not because Mats is in a wheelchair and, you know, this isn't coming from a space of pity. The thing that I personally found so moving about this film is that he has this hidden identity, like you're saying, that there's this extremely 12th house experience that Mats goes through in his life where who he really is, is something that he isn't able to express in his physical world. But he finds access in this online community to express these parts of his character that are not revealed in his physical reality. And as that gets expressed in the virtual reality, it gets to a point where he then has to ultimately come out as being disabled, as being in a wheelchair. And then his full character is really fully revealed. And the thing that was so powerful to me in this film, and then I think anyone who's ever had an experience of having to hide some portion of themselves or is not understood in the world at large, whether it's because of some physical thing or because they're holding a secret or there's some trauma in their life or some, there's just something in which anyone who has an experience where they are judged in the world for something that they have no control over, or where they have, like, any kind of 12th house experience, which I think a lot of us do, where they don't feel that their full character is available to them in an everyday context, is going to understand on some level the journey that Mats goes through and the catharsis of his deepening of self-understanding and experience of connection to people who are really truly able to see him in any of his forms. It's just, it is so moving and the interviews with his friends and his family members and how he is revealed, different aspects of his character are revealed through their reflections of him. Ultimately, it's just so beautiful. And Benjamin Ree is able to construct a whole experience of Mats through these many splintered versions of him in such a way that really does justice to anybody's desire to be known and to be accepted and to be connected to the people around them.
[00:09:02.805] Kent Bye: Yeah. So you have this contrast between what his parents knew of his life because he was in this almost exiled experience of all of his disabilities and wheelchair and all the sort of anxieties that come with how to interact with people. He was really isolated in a lot of ways. But yet at the same time, he was a huge gamer. He loved playing games. And so he found his refuge and being able to explore all these virtual worlds So he ended up living underneath his parents' home and there was a lot of ways in which that they were not necessarily aware of all the things that he was doing online. But he ended up having this really rich experience with all these friends that he would hang out with and show up for and speak with. And his parents were at great pains to see that he didn't have any friends or he never fell in love, and then when they discover that he had this whole other life, then they reveal the depths of the friendships and how many people really loved and cared for him and how he had these crushes on people and falling in love. So he had these experiences of actually having these social interactions and dynamics that weren't necessarily reflected in his physical reality. And so when I think about there's a lot of that 12th house experience, as well as the 6th house of dealing with all of his medical issues, the 12th house of that isolation and exile. But there's a strong signature, I think, of the Saturn-Neptune, which is in his birth chart, which we see on his tombstone that's shown in the film. He was born on July 3rd of 1989. And there's a very tight conjunction between Saturn and Neptune. And maybe if you want to describe a little bit about how you see that and I can read some things from Tarnas here in a bit.
[00:10:53.436] Wonder Bright: Well, first of all, I would just say if you've been listening to this series, then you'll have heard me talk about people born between 1988 and 1994, because Saturn was going through Capricorn and Aquarius at that time, and as it did so, it conjoined first Uranus and then Neptune, which it does in 89. But then as it continues forward, it just brings the full force of Saturn in a Saturn ruled sign to these outer planetary expressions. And so I think of people born in that period of time as that generation of millennials who are kind of spearheading that movement to really get us to identify different kinds of aspects of human behavior and experience that the trans-Saturnian planets might most closely be identified with, which is when we're different than our culture. And when, you know, the people from that particular era seem peculiarly able to talk about identity as being at the root of intersectionality and being able to pinpoint different things about our identities that might have seemed, like, outlandish to previous incarnations of our culture, but are actually becoming really important for us to be able to name and to point to and to say, I belong to this or that. And then the Saturn-Neptune conjunction specifically has to do with, like, different kinds of innovations in technology that were beginning to happen at that period of time. And so when we talk about the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, we're also looking at, well, you have actually talked to me more about that. You've actually explained more about that to me than I had previously really been aware of because it wasn't something I was paying a lot of attention to before, but certainly Mats being a gamer is a part of that generation that's actually beginning to think about living virtually in a way that, like, wasn't available in previous generations. And it's probably also worth pointing out that that generation belongs to the generation where their parents are shooting home movies all the time, which is potentially another Saturn-Neptune twist on things. And, this might be the perfect moment to point out that even before we saw the tombstone in the film, I was aware that Mats birthday was July 3rd because Benjamin Ree in the film makes a point of saying that he was born seven days after Mats because their parents knew one another. And so there's actually a photograph of Benjamin Ree in a playpen with Mats. The two of them are together playing because their parents knew one another. So it's not just that Mats has this Cancer Sun configured to the Saturn Neptune conjunction. But Benjamin Ree also has that Saturn-Neptune conjunction configured in his chart. So both of them are actually able to bring to life this story in a way that is really peculiar to their own generation.
[00:14:07.594] Kent Bye: Yeah, so Richard Tarnas, a lot of his work is looking at these outer planet cycles and how they repeat throughout the course of history. And, after he wrote Cosmos and Psyche, there's a number of his students that created a whole journal called the Archai Journal, which was carrying on that type of research of looking at these outer planet transits. I actually published an article in the Archai Journal that was called The Archetypal Cycles of Virtual Reality that started to identify the Saturn-Neptune as being a key part of emerging virtual reality immersive technologies, starting with the Game Boy in 1989, with the conjunction between Saturn and Neptune, And then the first quarter square was around when the BlackBerry started to come out. And then 2007 with the opposition coming into full bloom, that's when the iPhone launched. And then coming in between 2015 and 2016, the third quarter square of Saturn and Neptune, you have the launch and release of all these virtual and augmented reality headsets. That's around the time in 2014 when Mats had actually passed away. But then in 2025, we're going to be coming up with a conjunction between Saturn and Neptune at zero degrees Aries that is sort of kicking off this next cycle. So we're in the midst of having more and more of these companies looking at these VR technologies. So for anyone that wasn't aware, I have a whole podcast where I've been covering the emergence of VR for the past decade and published over 1300 interviews. But one of the things that I just want to point out is that there's this connection to immersive worlds, virtual worlds, and virtual reality technologies that are really kind of like kicking off in 1989. It was actually a whole second wave of VR that started with VPL and all these kind of like emergence of VR and the larger consciousness with the enterprise technologies. There was like all these games that were being VR arcade experiences and whatnot. But I just wanted to read a couple of the passages from Tarnas that describe both the Saturn and the Neptune, because I feel like there's so much of this film that is exploring these boundaries between Saturn and Neptune that I think it's worth unpacking a little bit more. So, in terms of Neptune, Tarnas says in Cosmos and Psyche, “in the century and a half since Neptune's discovery, astrologers have come to regard the archetypal principle associated with the planet as both all-encompassing and vanishingly subtle in nature. It is considered to govern the transcendent dimensions of life, imaginative and spiritual vision, and the realms of the ideal. It rules the invisible and intangible ground of experience, shaping awareness beyond the usual causal mechanisms. Its characteristic influence is one of dissolving boundaries and structures, merging that which was separate. It favors the unitive over the divided, the timeless over the temporal, the immaterial over the material, the infinite over finite. And so Tarnas talks about Saturn as this principle of both limit, structure, contraction, constraint, necessity, hard materiality, concrete manifestation, that which burdens, binds, challenges, fortifies, deepens, the tendency to confine and constrict, to divide and define, to cut and shorten, to negate and oppose, to experience difficulty, decline, deprivation, defect and deficit, defeat, failure, loss, alienation, and pessimism, inferiority, inhibition, isolation, oppression, and depression. Those are just some of the phrases of Saturn, and so you really see the hard materiality and the constraints, constrictions that he's facing in his life also with this blending and blurring of those limitations and being able to transcend them into this ideal representation of who he is in the context of these virtual worlds that allow him to speak to the essence of his identity.
[00:17:50.107] Tarnas has a whole section that... Wonder Bright: Before you go into it, I just want to mention that, like, underscoring the fact that the Saturn-Neptune is in Mats's chart, on July 3rd, the Sun was actually at 10 degrees opposite that Saturn-Neptune conjunction exactly. And it was the day of a new moon. So, because we don't have the time of Mats's birth, we don't know what degree the moon was exactly, but it was within the orb of the new moon. So this is, like, a really prominent feature of his chart.
[00:18:22.506] Kent Bye: Yeah, and what Tarnas says specifically about the combination of Saturn and Neptune in Cosmos and Psyche, he says, “a characteristic motif of Saturn-Neptune eras is a heightened tension and dialectic between ideals, hopes, and beliefs on the one hand, and the hard realities of life on the other”. And later he says, “yet the same archetypal complex also tends to constellate a strong impulse to unmask deception, to reveal the illusion, to cut through the denial, to confront the dark reality behind the surface image.” In 1999 is when The Matrix came out, which was a first quarter square. which is all about unmasking these deeper layers of reality and Plato's philosophical ideas of idealism versus the physical reality. So there's a lot of these themes of virtual reality and these virtual worlds being about deconstructing the boundaries of the constraints of our physical reality and creating these virtual experiences that allow people to tap into the ideal realm of these types of interactions and conversations that up to that point were not really even possible in the context of Mats's life. But in this virtual world, he was able to have this full expression of what it meant to be a member of this community in this guild.
[00:19:34.286] Wonder Bright: Yeah, and picking up on that theme that is explored in the Matrix series so profoundly, there's a real question of, like, who are we really, right? Like, if reality itself can be questioned, then who are we and who do we become when we imagine a different reality for ourselves? And, who are we when that construction is stripped away from us also? And that is so on point with the theme of Ibelin, the film, of Mats life. And you can see how that signature is at play in Mats life. And this film really hues closely to that signature in the way that it tells the story of Mats life. So, it allows us to experience the virtual worlds that Mats lived in, because Ree worked with YouTubers who were able to animate the sequences that Mats actually played because the chat logs of the gameplay that Mats engaged in with his friends is there and available for people to make these animations from. And so they were able to do that. So there's this way in which the film itself kind of seamlessly blends the interviews of the friends of Mats in, quote, real life with the lives that they experienced in World of Warcraft with him.
[00:21:04.586] Kent Bye: And I would just butt in to say that David Chalmers makes the argument that virtual experiences are genuine experiences. And so the quote-quote in real life creates this hierarchy between saying that our physical reactions are actually more important than our virtual reactions. And he's trying to fight against that and saying that these virtual experiences are just as real and just as meaningful. And so rather than saying in real life, I prefer saying in physical reality rather than in, the quote-quote, real reality because Wonder Bright: But in my defense, I did say, quote, in real life. Kent Bye: Yeah, I know. I know. I just want to point that out.
[00:21:38.749] Wonder Bright: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you doing so, because that's why I said, in quote, real life. Because this film, because of the way that Ree has constructed it, so that we're actually living in the reality that Mats was able to create for himself, we're actually able to experience it with a fidelity that Mats really probably wasn't. But because Mats was bringing his whole soul to it, and he was bringing the creation of himself to it, we have an experience of it that we wouldn't have in the absence of those chat logs and in the absence of the YouTubers that Ree worked with to create this virtual space. And so, Ree has created a story of the story that Mats created for himself that is also itself a Neptune-Saturn conjunction expression. And it's a wonderful thing because he is both deconstructing Saturn, this reality, and he's constructing it with all of the Neptune bias that could be brought to bear.
[00:22:49.861] Kent Bye: Yeah. There's a documentary theorist named John Grierson who defines documentary as the creative treatment of actuality. I think in this film what we see is a lot of different techniques that I haven't seen a lot of other documentaries really deploy because he's got the home video footage of Mats, but then he's also got these chat logs of these conversations and interactions that happened in the context of his guild in the world of Warcraft. And then he's able to transmute those chat logs into these cinematic depictions that are really able to dive into some of the nuances of the emotions and interactions and the events that were being referred to in the course of these interviews that he's doing with Mats's friends. But you also have these blog posts that Mats had written starting in 2013. For a lot of his experiences in the World of Warcraft, he was the international man of mystery. No one really knew much about him and his personal life. He was very, very private and didn't share much about anything about his life. But then eventually throughout the course of the film, as it's revealed in the film, he disappears for a little bit because he has medical issues and people are really concerned about him. And then he realizes that he really should tell his community what's actually happening in his physical reality, and he starts to write a series of blog posts. And it's from those blog posts that we get to hear some of the first person narratives that are also woven throughout the course of the film. His musings on life that you get to kind of seamlessly interweave. What ends up feeling like this autobiographical film where he's talking about his life, but you're also seeing what the virtual life was like for him in the full complexity of these relationships that he had in these reconstructions from those chat logs. And so there's a certain amount of rigor in keeping to what had actually happened in these situations and able to kind of reconstruct these different scenes in a way that It feels like we're taking these forms of documentary and starting to apply all these mediated technologies with virtual worlds in a way that we're able to really dial into the subtle nuances of someone's embodied experiences in the context of their ups and downs, their highs, their lows, their romances, their mistakes, and all these explorations in these virtual worlds that you really get a nuanced sense of how full and rich of a life he was able to have.
[00:25:18.368] Wonder Bright: Yeah, and especially because one of the main trajectories of this film is about his quest for his own identity and his own sense of belonging in the world. This film could easily have been in the first house of identity because it is a mythical journey. It is an adventure. And it is every bit as, like, on the edge of your seat as any action adventure could be, because the stakes are so high for him. So there is just this riveting tension throughout the course of the film, because he really is on a sacred quest. And his character, as depicted in the role of Ibelin, is so synonymous with mythical fantasy adventures in the realm of, you know, like, comic books or cartoon films. And his character is so like, you know, like, the classic, like, Fabio-esque blonde dashing, like hero in some fantasy adventure, that the whole film just feels like an edge-of-your-seat action-adventure film even though what's being depicted - no, maybe - I mean, for me personally, especially because what is being depicted is his search for identity and self-expression, and being connected to the people around him and his community and being able to be seen fully for who he really is and what he offers the world… and, so, to be able to go on that adventure with him is - it's just incredibly moving, you know, because I think that’s, like, at the heart of what we all long for - is to be seen, to be known, and to be loved, and to be connected to one another.
[00:27:13.331] Kent Bye: Yeah, and he's transmuting his 12th house experience of really being exiled in society and really finding his friends in his community, this 11th house experience. So this film could also very well fit into our section on the power of the collective on movements and friendships because so much of this film is the friends that Ibelin is able to cultivate and make along the way. in all the different ways that he's able to show up for people and to really deeply listen and to provide counsel and reflection and be someone to talk to. So lots of different examples of how he was able to really show up as a friend. And I think one of the sad parts is that once all of his community and friends realize all the stuff that he has had to endure in his physical life, that they didn't know sooner that they could be able to show up even more for him as a friend because he was so terrified of rejection that he opted to continue to exile himself and to keep a lot of those details about his 6th house medical issues private so that people just were not aware. But yeah, just some really moving scenes near the end after he does end up passing away and he has a lot of his friends come to the funeral and to really speak into the character of who Ibelin was, who Mats Steen was to his friends, and how they were able to really bear witness to a whole dimension of Mats that not very many of his existing friends and family even knew about.
[00:28:46.697] Wonder Bright: In his physical world.
[00:28:47.858] Kent Bye: Yeah, in his physical world, right.
[00:28:50.338] Wonder Bright: I don't think any of them were.
[00:28:52.039] Kent Bye: Yeah, no.
[00:28:53.402] Wonder Bright: Yeah, so it's a it's a really powerful film. It's just, it’s, it's going to stay with me and it's going to be probably one of the number one films that I recommend people watch.
[00:29:09.864] Kent Bye: Yeah, well deserving of the Audience Award and the Directing Award and to be picked up by Netflix I think is also a testament for how strong of a piece that is and I'm excited that this will be generally available for folks to watch because I think it's just one of my favorites from Sundance this year for sure.
[00:29:25.419] Wonder Bright: And it feels like a good one to end on because it really does capture so many of the things that we've been talking about throughout our entire journey. You know, it touches on all the houses, really, because it picks up on so many of the themes that we've been talking about. And then really draws you in to that element at the core that I think is why any of us ever might create anything or ever get out of bed to begin with, which is to just be connected with one another, and to be visible and to be seen by our family, by our friends, by our community and by our cultures.
[00:30:06.943] Kent Bye: Hmm. So if you think about Ibelin in a remedial context, then who would you prescribe this film to?
[00:30:15.034] Wonder Bright: I think this is a really good film for people who want to understand the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and to start asking questions about what it might mean long term for us that we are beginning to create technologies that allow us to interrogate reality so thoroughly, and what are the ramifications of doing so. This is our final film in a section that we've entitled The Promises and Perils of New and Emerging Technologies. And I think this film really offers us some real promise and gives us some solid intel in terms of what that promise might be able to deliver in the real life bodies of people here on the earth.
[00:31:14.161] Kent Bye: Yeah. And when I think about what I want to bear witness to, I really want to bear witness to Mats and his whole community of people that he was embedded with and all of his friends that he was able to cultivate, just because you get this sense of he's a real gentle soul and really, like, a deep listener and deeply compassionate to all the people that he's able to encounter. And it's really a coming of age story in a lot of ways, this kind of time period of third quarter square of Saturn and a first quarter square of Uranus. You have this moments where he's really making some mistakes and being a little bit rash and his community is able to really rally around him and help to give him feedback in a way that it feels like he's able to really live and grow within the context of this community in a way that he never really had access to in his day-to-day life. And that's a large testament to what Ben Ree, which I also I guess want to bear witness to, just the way that he was able to give us access to all these dimensions of his life in a way that we're able to really get immersed into the story in a way that I've never seen before. So, yeah, I was just really quite blown away with the whole experience. And like I said, I was in tears throughout so much of this movie, just feeling so moved to hear the impact that someone can have on people and just reflecting on what's it mean to have a legacy and to see how many of his friends and community wanted to really make sure that his parents knew about the legacy of what Ibelin meant to them in their lives.
[00:32:49.582] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I want to bear witness to the power of the wounded healer. Because I was not aware until I started looking at Mats chart and Benjamin Ree's chart that Chiron was configured to that Saturn-Neptune conjunction by opposition. And while in Mats chart, Chiron has conjoined his Sun, in Benjamin Ree's chart seven days later, it's actually Mercury that has conjoined Chiron opposing the Saturn-Neptune. And Chiron is called the wounded healer because the asteroid Chiron tells the tale of the mythical centaur Chiron, who was born to a nobleman, but rejected by him because he turned out to be a centaur. So he's half man, half horse, and his noble father was repulsed by him. So he banished him to be raised by his tutors, but Chiron became a master healer and a musician and an artist, and he ultimately created a school for the Son of Nobleman, where he could then teach them all the things that he had learned from his tutors, and he could then father them. So the tale of Chiron and where we find Chiron in someone's chart speaks to where we're wounded and where we need to heal ourself. And when we heal ourselves, we have the power to heal others. And I don't know where Mats Steen's Sun conjunct Chiron lay in his chart, but it's very clear that his journey is a healing journey for himself. And I felt healed watching this film. And that only happened because Benjamin Ree, with his mercurial powers, was able to tell the story of this wounding and this healing and therefore share it with the world. And I just want to bear witness to that transmission.
[00:34:53.659] Kent Bye: Well, Wonder Bright, this is the end of our journey of season two of Story All the Way Down, where we watched 37 documentaries at Sundance and have recorded now 37 podcast episodes about those. Wonder Bright: Oh my gosh. What were we thinking? Kent Bye: It was… uh, I have, I have a lot of editing to be - Wonder Bright: I do not envy you. I will be bringing you yummy food and lots of tea. So hopefully, you know, if you're listening to this, we have completed the journey of editing all the podcast episodes. But I had just an amazing time just watching the films at Sundance, but I get so much out of this conversation of just being able to unpack what archetypes I'm seeing, what you're seeing, and I just really appreciate being able to talk about these films in these ways. This idea of astrology as a narrative theory is still very nascent, but I feel like even if it doesn't go anywhere, I feel like it helped me appreciate how to watch and parse and understand and unpack some of the other dynamics of these stories in this conversation throughout the last couple of weeks that we've been recording these podcasts.
[00:36:10.672] Wonder Bright: I love talking to you. This has been so much fun. And it really amuses me that earlier today, we recorded an episode that wasn't on our slate to begin with. And that would be God Save Texas, where you were really able to convince me that astrology might be a narrative theory. So it took all these weeks of us doing these conversations for me to get to that point. But you win. I surrender, Dorothy. Um, yeah, and I look forward to doing this more with you. This was really fun.
[00:36:54.740] Kent Bye: Yeah, we, we, you know, to be seen how future seasons will come. We have lots of ideas, but you know, if you do have any feedback for what you'd like to see as we move forward, we would like to cover some films that are a little bit more accessible than Sundance. Sometimes it's a little bit hit or miss as to how many of the films that we've been talking about over the last 37 episodes or will even be available to watch. I know in the first season of Story All the Way Down, it ended up like a year later that maybe 75 to 80 to maybe 90% of those films were available over the course of the year. That's to be seen for how many of this season will be available. But moving forward, we definitely want to make sure that what we are talking about is more widely available so that folks can watch some of these different films and then we can start to pick the themes and the seasons based upon whatever Wonder is waking up and really thinking about. She's got lots of ideas. So we'll see how this goes. And if you want to provide some feedback, please do sign up for our newsletter. So yeah, that's all that we have for today. And I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Story All the Way Down podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider signing up to the newsletter at storyallthewaydown.com. Thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thanks so much.
