Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Padman.
Hi.
Today, we have a very handsome and rugged, yet sensitive and sweet man.
Yeah.
Joel Edgerton.
Yes.
God, he was a delight.
He really was. This was... I didn't know much about Joel, and so I was really happy that we got to know him, and his project is incredible.
It is. So, of course, you know him from Loving, Warrior, The Gift, Bright, Dark Matter, but he has... You know, I don't go out on a limb. I don't. I'm telling you right now, this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Yeah. It's just sat with me since I've saw it. I keep thinking about it. Train Dreams, which is out on Netflix on the 21st. Just in time for Thanksgiving.
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Chapter 2: How does Joel Edgerton describe his relationship with his wife?
Yeah.
So, yes, Joel Edgerton, he's great. I also want to say that my heart is broken for Cleto and his family and my friends, the Kimmel's. And, boy, that's such a bummer. And I send all my love to everyone. Me too. Yeah. Please enjoy Joel Edgerton. Armchair Expert is proud to have Alexa Plus as our presenting sponsor. The all-new Alexa Plus is your smart, proactive AI assistant.
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He's an armchair expert. Hi.
Hi. Nice to meet you. How are you, dude? Good.
Hi. Nice to meet you. How are you? Welcome.
Where should I sit? Right there. Well, you look very cute in this outfit. You look very relaxed, playful, beach vibes. Yeah, it's a good outfit. Let me see your watch really quick. I like the Daytona-esque dials of it all. My wife bought this for me. Oh, wow. It probably hasn't been well. It's gorgeous. It was made in the year I was born. That's cute. 74. 74. So it's a very old watch.
I love old, like I was in Budapest and I bought a bunch of old watches from markets. I thought I'd wanted to go and get a really fancy, expensive watch. And I did and I barely wear it. And the watches I love... These watches I got for like 50 bucks. These Budapest watches. World War II, old German and Russian watches. I have one very nice watch too, and I don't wear it ever.
Why don't you wear yours? I feel like it makes me seem like a show-off. Uh-huh. I was in Tokyo for two days. Someone had told me you could get really good deals on really fancy watches, and so I went shopping for watches. I've worn it a handful of times, but I do feel like I'm a bit of a show-off when I'm wearing it. You get self-conscious.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Joel share about masculinity?
And the quietness that descended as they were painting him and making sure that it didn't go beyond a certain point. talking about how long and what the process and who was going to bring the fire blanket. And I remember just being terrified. I would have felt culpable. Yeah.
That's a good thought process for all of us directors to think about when we're asking people to do stuff like, what if my brother was doing this? Do I have the same opinion about this? Yeah. I mean, that's a whole interesting conversation about... the pursuit of creating life is more important than fiction, taking care of each other on a set.
It's amazing how much people suddenly kick bollocks, scramble on a set. And we all know the big stories that have made the headlines about people losing their lives or becoming brain damaged. And I had a cinematographer recently in Chicago and there's this big scream and the wind was kicking up. And he just kind of kicked off in this really assertive way and said, we don't need to be doing this.
And everyone first was like, well, is this guy getting all curmudgeonly? And then all of a sudden you realize, I think he'd been involved in a situation before where someone had got hurt. And everyone then was like, good for you. No one needs to have something fall on their head. It's very Javier Bardem.
What do we think it is about... men and women, but we got to be realistic, mainly men being very attracted to stunts.
It's rites of passage. I'm fascinated by this. And when my blood boils, when I see red, you know, that sort of cliche expressions, but My inclination is to be very peaceful, and I like to think I could handle myself in a fight, but I feel the inclination sometimes. I always shy away from it.
But I'm really interested in the world we live in now where there's sort of almost this line we don't cross. We're all part of society. We like to be civilized, and we know that to step over that line means we do something that's uncivilized. But it's crazy watching what I call middle-class rage in their car. Yeah, we live these very safe lives.
So fight or flight gets triggered by the most benign things, being late to a meeting or somebody cutting you off in the traffic. Road rage is a big thing. And indignation of what happens with humans lining up to do things at a fun park or in a shop. Suddenly they're all kicking off and the trigger is loaded up. by compression of financial situation, marital, whatever's loading the bow.
And then someone hits the hair trigger and it kicks off. And it's like this primal rage that exists, particularly in a lot of men who don't know how to manage it. And it's almost like a blindness comes over them with this sort of feeling. I'm fascinated by it. I love thinking about it, but it's a weird thing. I think we have tons of vestigial stuff that we have no application for anymore.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Joel share about his character in Train Dreams?
There's a moment where my character stares at a chainsaw in the movie and he can't seem to get it to work. And it's like me thinking about, do I download ChatGPT? Right. I still haven't done. The one time I played with it on another friend's phone. He goes, look, just type something you want to see. And I was like, I want to see a dog giving a lecture in the 1950s in a university hall.
I don't know why I chose that. Sure.
Chapter 5: How does Joel reflect on the impact of technology on human connection?
And then I changed the type of dog and it blew my mind enough to make it terrifying for me to go, I'm not ready for this. But I know I have to engage. But I remember the first time I pointed a video camera at my grandmother and she froze because she was like, well, this is a photograph.
Right.
I'm like, no, you're allowed to move. Just thinking about her generation, which is my character in the film, is like the telephone. And she started her life without electricity. And then you're right. It would have blown her mind, the pace of things. Now look at us.
My very favorite thing about the early years of the video camera, when you watch anyone's early home videos, for some reason, everyone thought they needed to narrate what you were already seeing. Here's Jenny opening her present. That's so true. We got a present from grandma. Jenny, let's see the present. Oh, it's a cabbage patch. Every time I see it, I'm like, why did we think we were seeing it?
I don't think we really realized yet that they would be seeing it. We used it as an audio recorder. okay here's glenn on his new bike wave this is glenn yeah fuck yeah we know it's glenn he's your son in this home video okay going into the study now yeah it's the study dad I still have this old video of me being a goalkeeper in a soccer match when I was like six years old.
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Chapter 6: What themes of kindness and community emerge from Joel's experiences?
I saved the goal and then the striker from the other team, he comes up and tries to kick the ball while I'm holding it. I got winded. Like it knocked the wind out of you? Yeah. And I'm just lying on the ground. It's so scary when you're little. And my dad, who's probably holding the camera, he's like, you know, like a refrigerator on his shoulder.
And you can just hear his voice yelling, get up, Joel.
Get up.
Oh my God. Well, okay. The line in the movie that just fucking sent me was on that spring day when he had misplaced a sense of up and down, he knew finally that he was connected to it all. And I was like, yeah, dude, that's one of the best lines I've ever heard. There's something about the wisdom in the movie.
One of the things that you can pull out of it is this idea that at the end of the day, it's all been worth it or it's all okay. And that Robert as a character, for all of the things that he's gone through, is reconciled to something that there's a comfort in all of it.
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Chapter 7: How does Joel discuss the complexities of masculinity and vulnerability?
And I do believe that occasionally when I do stop doom scrolling or something pulls me out into my own sense of self and retrospect. is looking at the snapshots of life. In some way, there's a journey. Or every now and then, there's a fractured memory of life from any period of your life. Even talking today with you, I have images in my head of times with my brother and my father.
And life is beautiful. And life is not going to all be beautiful. Every now and then, you get brought to your knees. But that's all of us. And I spoke to this lady last night, and we were talking about kindness. Just when a stranger does something generous and particularly after the fires in California, it's sort of resonant in train dreams.
I talked to her about kindness, which I've experienced many times in my life where I'm like somebody selflessly does something so simple, but it means the world to you in some way that helps you bring yourself back into the world. And she just sort of broke open because she was talking about the strange little things that popped up from people that
after the fires, suddenly open the front door and there's food there for her and her family. And someone sent some clothes for her kids. And I believe at the core of us as kids, until we're corrupted, that we are actually wired to look after each other. Even if we're not family, we don't really want to hurt each other. I like to think that's our core human value.
And I think we'd like to see that reflected in its own way in stories as well. Because we know there's a lot of awfulness out there. And the awfulness is within us in the wrong situation like we talked about. Our rage is always there. But I think our beauty and our love is also there. And I can be compassionate to our rage because at the very core of all rage is deep, deep fear. Yeah.
We get scared a lot. I agree with you. I think that's what motivates righteous fear, protectiveness and mistrust. And it's a culture that leads us to that. I also feel I'm getting back to your ape. Chimp empire. Don't you think that most alpha males are actually just sort of fearful people hiding in plain sight too?
It's like the fear of having to emulate or project or be something that may be deep down. No one feels like they're a superhero and unbreakable. I think we all hate alphaness in some way because we see it as like, oh, this person has to be the ruler. But for me, it's like, no, no, I'm paying attention. There's lots of fucking threats and no one else seems to be and I need to get involved.
I noticed this with a lot of people I met during Warrior who were fighters. The people I thought were the real alphas were the kind of quietly stoic people. guys who didn't puff themselves up, didn't presume to kind of cajole people or kind of push people around. The ones who didn't brag about themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was the ones just to the right who kind of puffed themselves up a little bit. It was like, you're almost alpha, but you've got to remind us how alpha you are, which means you're no longer alpha to me.
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