
Episode 46 Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty
Explicit content warning
09/25/09 • -1 min
Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty
Hi, welcome to episode 46 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from episode 132 of No Agenda.
This episode, I'll talk about three of my favourite movies. Stand by Me, a coming of age flick, Contact, starring Jodie Foster and centred around aliens, and American Beauty, which is like a grown up Ferris Buellers Day Off.
First, Stand By Me.
Heres the trailer,
Stand By Me is a movie a lot of people will have seen before, and forgotten about. Its truly a classic. The movie, based on a Steven King book, came out in 1986. It has a lot of fairly well known scenes, the young boys walking along train tracks for most of the movie is quite memorable.
I'll read from the Wikipedia summary.
The film is narrated by an adult Gordie LaChance, known as "The Writer" (Richard Dreyfuss), writing the memoir about his youth. Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in September 1959, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), and his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) learn from their friend Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) that the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower, who was struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods, has not been found. While under his porch looking for his buried jar of pennies, Vern overheard his older brother talking about finding the body while in the woods with a friend. The boys then embark upon a two-day journey across the woodlands near Castle Rock to see and find the body in hopes that the discovery will make them all famous.
Each boy has a physical and/or emotional burden. Gordie is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for telling stories and writing, rejected by his father following the death of his football-star older brother Denny (John Cusack) in a Jeep accident. Chris is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and, despite his intelligence and desire to break the generational curse, he is usually stereotyped accordingly. Teddy is an eccentric and physically deformed after his mentally-unstable father (whom Teddy sees as a war hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy") held his ear to a stove and nearly burned it off, thus forcing him to wear a hearing aid. Vern, overweight and timid, is easily scared, and thus often picked on.
Through the boys' misadventures and conversations, the viewer learns about each character's personality. Each of the boys, for varying reasons, lives in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers. Gordie's talent for storytelling pegs him as the most likely of the four to have a promising future.
Heres a clip of Gordie telling a story.
Stand By Me is a great movie, its been mentioned in pop culture a few times, such as the scenes of the adult writer reminiscing about his childhood friends. By the end of the movie, we hear him mention how he moved away from his friends, and the terrible fates that awaited each of them. Its terribly sad, to hear how they all end up.
The next movie is Contact, about finding a radio signal from outer space. Contact came out in 1997. Jodie Foster's character has been into radio all her life, and now she works with radio telescopes listening to signals from space. Eventually, she and her team manage to decode one such signal, and find out it has information inside, instructing them to build a machine.
Here is the trailer for contact.
I forget the total cost of the machines, but its actually quite low by todays standards, less than the US auto bail outs for example. A machine, or two, to teleport us through space, to meet aliens, and they cost less than keeping American cars around.
This is unrelated to the cost of the machine, but here is a clip of Jodie Foster asking for more funding.
Contact has a really interesting character, a ultra rich man near the end of his life, he shows up in a lot of interesting scenes, such as one as he floats inside a space station to prolong his life. Near the very end of the movie, as a question about him is brought up, we see his fellow space station friends put him in a body bag.
An interesting thing about Contact, the signal, and aliens, are from Vega, a star. When you mention this star , people from Vega are called "vay-guns". So, in the movie there are some GREAT clips to be made, as it sounds like they are saying Vegans! Observe.
Arnt they great?
The last movie is American Beauty. I love this movie, it features Kevin Spacey as the main character. American Beauty came out in 1999.
Reading from Wikipedia,
Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela . His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals. Lester is informed he is to...
Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty
Hi, welcome to episode 46 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from episode 132 of No Agenda.
This episode, I'll talk about three of my favourite movies. Stand by Me, a coming of age flick, Contact, starring Jodie Foster and centred around aliens, and American Beauty, which is like a grown up Ferris Buellers Day Off.
First, Stand By Me.
Heres the trailer,
Stand By Me is a movie a lot of people will have seen before, and forgotten about. Its truly a classic. The movie, based on a Steven King book, came out in 1986. It has a lot of fairly well known scenes, the young boys walking along train tracks for most of the movie is quite memorable.
I'll read from the Wikipedia summary.
The film is narrated by an adult Gordie LaChance, known as "The Writer" (Richard Dreyfuss), writing the memoir about his youth. Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in September 1959, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), and his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) learn from their friend Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) that the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower, who was struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods, has not been found. While under his porch looking for his buried jar of pennies, Vern overheard his older brother talking about finding the body while in the woods with a friend. The boys then embark upon a two-day journey across the woodlands near Castle Rock to see and find the body in hopes that the discovery will make them all famous.
Each boy has a physical and/or emotional burden. Gordie is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for telling stories and writing, rejected by his father following the death of his football-star older brother Denny (John Cusack) in a Jeep accident. Chris is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and, despite his intelligence and desire to break the generational curse, he is usually stereotyped accordingly. Teddy is an eccentric and physically deformed after his mentally-unstable father (whom Teddy sees as a war hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy") held his ear to a stove and nearly burned it off, thus forcing him to wear a hearing aid. Vern, overweight and timid, is easily scared, and thus often picked on.
Through the boys' misadventures and conversations, the viewer learns about each character's personality. Each of the boys, for varying reasons, lives in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers. Gordie's talent for storytelling pegs him as the most likely of the four to have a promising future.
Heres a clip of Gordie telling a story.
Stand By Me is a great movie, its been mentioned in pop culture a few times, such as the scenes of the adult writer reminiscing about his childhood friends. By the end of the movie, we hear him mention how he moved away from his friends, and the terrible fates that awaited each of them. Its terribly sad, to hear how they all end up.
The next movie is Contact, about finding a radio signal from outer space. Contact came out in 1997. Jodie Foster's character has been into radio all her life, and now she works with radio telescopes listening to signals from space. Eventually, she and her team manage to decode one such signal, and find out it has information inside, instructing them to build a machine.
Here is the trailer for contact.
I forget the total cost of the machines, but its actually quite low by todays standards, less than the US auto bail outs for example. A machine, or two, to teleport us through space, to meet aliens, and they cost less than keeping American cars around.
This is unrelated to the cost of the machine, but here is a clip of Jodie Foster asking for more funding.
Contact has a really interesting character, a ultra rich man near the end of his life, he shows up in a lot of interesting scenes, such as one as he floats inside a space station to prolong his life. Near the very end of the movie, as a question about him is brought up, we see his fellow space station friends put him in a body bag.
An interesting thing about Contact, the signal, and aliens, are from Vega, a star. When you mention this star , people from Vega are called "vay-guns". So, in the movie there are some GREAT clips to be made, as it sounds like they are saying Vegans! Observe.
Arnt they great?
The last movie is American Beauty. I love this movie, it features Kevin Spacey as the main character. American Beauty came out in 1999.
Reading from Wikipedia,
Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela . His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals. Lester is informed he is to...
Previous Episode

Episode 45 Earthlings
Episode 45 Earthlings
Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This episode, I'll talk a tiny bit about Earthlings. I have two fairly long pieces of audio that will make up the majority of this episode. My intro is an old Australian news story of an animal who tried to escape from a zoo.
Earthlings is a very important movie to me, I think it says almost all that needs to be said on the side of veganism. Earthlings shows basically all the ways animals are used in todays society. It has graphic footage, from well known animal welfare groups such as PETA, and is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, who is vegan. Instrumental music throughout the movie is performed by well known vegan musician Moby.
This is a few minutes of audio from Earthlings.
I first saw Earthlings because Elizabeth Collins, of NZ Vegan podcast told me to. I was lent the movie by an Invercargill SAFE member, who hadnt watched Earthlings because they had heard how graphic it is. Its true, Earthlings has a lot of violent imagery, but I think its our duty as human beings to see what we have done, and continue to do to the world. To talk a little bit about Earthlings, here is Elizabeth, in a clip she recorded literally MONTHS ago for me :)
I'd like to thank Elizabeth for taking the time to add to this episode. Its taken me long enough to make this episode, but its finally done! You can find Elizabeth on iTunes by searching "NZ vegan", or at nzveganpodcast.blogspot.com as well as NZ Vegan Podcast on Twitter.
Thank you for listening. My outro is a Seinfeld clip.
You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to [email protected], j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.
Have a super happy day, bye.
Next Episode

Episode 47 My New Animal Rights Podcast
Episode 47 My New Animal Rights Podcast
Welcome to an extra short episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast.
My intro was my latest mention on No Agenda, although Dvorak got my podcast wrong, I DO NOT own the NZ Vegan podcast :) I do enjoy telling people to search for "NZ Vegan" when they look for my podcast on iTunes, because searching for "NZ Vegan" shows up all the New Zealand Animal Rights podcasts. I almost uniformly love each and every one of the results.
I just wanted to let everyone know, I've decided to do all future animal rights, and Vegan related episodes under a separate designation. This will make it easier to just listen to the episodes you are actually interested in, if you want to only hear me talk about NZ news or movies, or if you want to only hear vegan topics. Or, ideally you could subscribe to both!
The name of my new podcast, chosen by my friend Sam Tucker, is Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I asked for help on Veganzchat, an email group, with a starting point of " living with animals ", asking for it to be improved upon. Sam kindly came up with Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I like it very much, although it is a long name. You can find that blog at Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.blogspot.com. I'm not sure how often I'll update each podcast, just when I feel like it most likely.
To make up for this being a short episode, Im going to include some of my favourite outro clips. I have the autotuned Glorious Dawn, using clips of Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer, an american church which has banned Pepsi, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, on the iPhone before it were released.
Just to make it clear, you can find Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals on iTunes, by searching for it by name, although it shows up just fine if you search for " jay wont dart ", both my podcasts will show. You can also find the blog at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com.
Thank you for listening.
You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to [email protected], j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.
I hope you check out Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals.
Have a super happy day, bye.
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