So, this is an old post that never got posted. It’s of a podcast I use to do called Movies Are Dumb Sometimes in which I just talked about movies.
I use to use a service called Otter AI to make transcripts from my podcasts. Below, I’ve included the transcript unedited so you can decide how good it is.
Keep in mind this is from 2022. One of my favorite things about Otter AI was that if you had multiple people, it would be able to detect who was talking and create a transcript of who said what!
On a more serious note, I know I say a couple things here that might be considered a little controversial. I think what is helpful to me, especially after hearing this a couple years later, was listening to myself trying to figure out some thoughts I was having. This is where discussion and writing is very helpful in clarifying and discovering new ideas, thoughts, and beliefs!
So please, reach out to me if you have any questions! 🙂
Here is a screen capture of what it looks like after transcription is complete. Below, every new paragraph was how Otter AI split it up. Those last few paragraphs are a bit long!!
Otter AI’s Transcription of My Thoughts on Dear Evan Hansen
One of the reasons I started Movies Are Dumb Sometimes is because I wanted to let people know if they should see a certain movie in the theater or not. Today, I talked about with a heavy heart the movie I would least suggest to see in a movie theater nowadays, Dear Evan Hanson.
I would even go as far as to consider this an experimental or art film, and probably shouldn’t have had a $27 million budget. However, I figured it needed to have been a musical if the film had been produced this way. And I was right. Dear Evan Hanson was a stage musical in 2015. But that-did that work? I don’t know. I haven’t seen the musical. Because this is Movies Are Dumb Sometimes, not Broadway is Dumb Sometimes.
There’s been a string of bad opening shots and movies lately and Dearevan Hansen. I know it’s Dear Evan Hanson, but the marquee at the theater did not space Dear and Evan. So the Dearevan Hansen brutally tore apart this movie in the opening segment on this podcast, I started to wonder how did this movie have such a good opening shot?
It simply was just a shot of Microsoft Word or whatever programming they were using to type. And it just said, Dear Evan Hanson. And I was like, wow, because that letter that he typed out, basically became the center of the movie. And without that letter, you had no movie. I mean, I don’t know if I could consider it one of the best openings ever. But though, this year, there hasn’t been very many great opening shots, and thank you, Dearevan Hansen. I have been waiting for a decent opening shot for a while now.
So as he’s typing, he started singing. The first trailer that I saw for this movie did not indicate that this was a musical. And I’m open to this movie being a musical. I know what the story is. But I didn’t think that it would actually be a full blown musical, or at least have some songs in it. Because in the part where he sings that on stage at the school, that totally made sense that he would have sang something there because he was singing at a guy’s Memorial. The guy died. And you know, I’ve been to funerals where people sing when they die, which makes sense.
But for this movie to be musical, it completely ruined it for me. This-I-don’t know whose idea was to think that a movie was such a heavy subject as mental illness. I don’t know how that’s a good idea. I don’t know how well the theater version of this story performed. But normally, I probably would have teared up in this movie, because it’s a bunch of sad stuff happening. But whenever they break down in the song, it just pulls me out of the whole situation.
Eventually, throughout this movie, I just started to like, tune out the music because even the music all kind of sounded the same. None of it was really catchy. The only really like song I really enjoyed was the one that Connor was lip synching for Evan to. That song was kind of funny. But Geez, to me, most of the songs in this movie seem pretty similar. And there was nothing really great about them.
And for half of the movie, you’re thinking, or so is he? Are they singing? Are they actually singing? Or are they just singing for us? And we’re just seeing them sing. But are they singing to each other? Like, it didn’t make that clear right away. And it just, it really took you out of this movie. Took you out of the movie – it took me out of the movie anyway about as much as people talking in the movie theater.
So I just hope they never try this ever again.
In the opening song at one point it sounded like he was going to go into let it go. Because one of the song lyrics a couple of them. He’s singing it and it’s building up to the chorus of “Let it Go.”
And I’m like, What?
And then they started singing another song. Alanna sang this song.
The parts we can’t tell / we carry them well / but that doesn’t mean they’re not heavy.
And I’m sitting there and like for the rest of the song I’m like, this sounds like another song that I’ve heard so many times. And right now I can’t even think of what song it was. But most of that song I was just sitting there like, what is the song sound like? I don’t know, I just this this movie should not have been a musical. I don’t understand why a sad musical – they feel was worth it. They should have just made this movie. It would have had a much bigger impact. At least on me.
Maybe I’m just – I don’t even hate musicals! I love musicals! Some of my favorite – like Westside stories. One of my favorite movies. I’m kind of worried about Steven Spielberg remaking it, we’re gonna see how that works out. But don’t ruin that movie for me, Steven Spielberg. Like he, yeah, he’s he’s been known to do that.
Anyways, no more these sad musicals, please. If somebody can point me to one, I’ll watch another one. But I don’t really want to, but I’ll be open minded and fair. I’ll give it a shot.
And then one of the next songs in the movie when Evan went to the Murphy’s house for dinner, and they’re asking him to tell a story about Connor and him or just Connor. And he gets up, he starts singing at the table, and they’re just looking at him like, okay, and you’re like, is he? Do they know, he’s singing? Like, is he singing to them, and then he gets up, and normally hit movies, you know, musicals, they get up, and they start doing a dance, or they do something. And I guess, if you did that, then you would know that he was singing to them. But I get why in this movie, that it didn’t go to that length of a normal musical, but at the same time, I’m like, it’s still, the singing still takes me out of it. So you might as well have gone with some sort of routine or choreography or something. But it took a little while for me anyway. I’m dumb sometimes I’m fully admitted.
I just was like, is he singing to them? Or is he singing to us? And I don’t think it should be that ambiguous. And like I said, the only part in this movie that should have had singing in it was when he was giving his speech that went viral. And I don’t think he’s saying there because – he did like there – nobody called it a song. It was his speech, you got to see this speech of this guy.
I will say one of my favorites shots in this movie was when they were showing how that video went viral. And they’re showing all of these other videos against a black background. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, this could lead into something that’s better lead into something. And it did it led into a portrait of Connor. And I was like, Oh, thank you. They did that right. That was really good.
Now, I don’t know about you all. And it’s not like I’m homophobic, or I hate gay people or anything at all. But I’m trying to figure out how in all of these movies, especially the high school movies, there’s always like a gay best friend, which in this movie, he is considered a family friend. There’s always like, a main character that is gay now.
And if it didn’t feel forced, I wouldn’t mind. But when it’s every movie, I feel like I see it’s, it starts to make me wonder like why why does there have to be a gay character? I get it, you want a present representation and everything. But when you start to do it every time it starts to feel pretty forced, and I had to do some research, I couldn’t find any solid numbers on how many people are actually gay.
Because if in high schools now because when I went to high school, I you know, there’s some people you think are gay, I don’t recall anybody actually being gay out of my class, it was over 200 students. I did go to high school in South Dakota. So that could be that could be a factor.
I mean, if 30% of people are gay now, then I would get it. And I was doing research. I didn’t research it hard. I did some searches. You know, like, “How many Americans are gay? How many people in the world are gay?” And I got I got numbers everywhere from 1% to 25%. But the 25% numbers were like polls, so it was just people I guess, I don’t know how they selected them. So it’s hard to tell how many people are gay.
So I went and searched – I did a little research on the musical. I didn’t find any information on if Jared, Evan’s best well, family friend is gay or not. But in the movie, he’s gay. And then I found out that the actor that plays him is gay. And when this actor, Nik Dodani, when he got the roll on Murphy Brown, he like demanded that his character was gay. And I just – think it’s, it’s I don’t have a problem with it. I just have a problem when it feels like it’s being forced on me. And it feels like it’s being forced on me.
And like, if he was good, he was funny. It just – how come it has to be that way? But and I mean, I know like Amazon has started their whole mandatory minimums of people in minority or LGBTQ community has to be – and like, a gay character has to be played by a gay actor. Like I don’t like that at all. That’s, I mean, it’s acting. And the more you take away from acting like the more what does it become acting as much as it’s just people playing characters that are like themselves?
And to me, the most interesting thing about actors and acting is that somebody literally can become somebody else. And now if you’re taking that whole – if you’re taking half of that – if you’re taking 25, you’re taking 5% of that away from a role from – by making requirements is like, okay, so a fat person has like The Nutty Professor, like Eddie Murphy, like, should he have been a fat guy because he was playing a fat guy? You know, it’s he’s not fat, but the role required him to be heavy.
It’s just like, where do you draw the line? And I could sit here and lie that somebody I know people will hate that comparison.
But it’s acting. It’s acting.
It’s not doing something like you’re yourself. It’s not a kind of you. It’s acting. You literally can be in some maybe sometimes acting may not be appropriate. But I mean, like blackface and stuff. And that’s, that’s still but I don’t know, to me, it depends on how you view movies and theater, I guess.
I view it as pure entertainment. And if something is pure entertainment, because people who look at movies and believe that they’re all documentaries, there’s something wrong with that mindset, because there are these films called documentaries that are based on and try to tell what’s happening in real life. But entertainment is entertainment. You don’t watch entertainment for information, you don’t watch entertainment, to be taught anything. You can take lessons from entertainment for sure. Like the biggest overlying message in this movie, of Dear Evan Hanson, is “Be true to yourself” and “Don’t lie.”
And ironically, the night before I saw Dear Evan Hanson, I saw the episode of dark side of the ring with Chris Kanyon, who it sucks, it absolutely sucks. When this guy was young, he went to talk to his priest – I think it was his priest because he went to a Catholic school and talked about how he was gay. And the priest basically said, Don’t let the devil get you. Like he was like, do not you can’t that’s no, fight it, fight it.
And then that led to him eventually having mental problems and then committing suicide and he was a generally really nice guy. But in that world of professional wrestling, which turned into sports entertainment, you couldn’t really be gay, because then you got made fun of and it affected how your career was, and that sucked.
But to tell somebody – to like, basically people who aren’t living up to their truths are the ones that seem to have the hardest times in their lives. And the more you try to hide who you are, the more difficult it will be to have the truth come out as time goes on. As you saw in Dear Evan Hanson, with every single lie that came about, it was harder for him to tell the truth.
But then it begs the question is the noble lie the right way to go? Because he was creating all sorts of good things with his noble lie and his continuous lying. But is he living his truth? Because in that, if that theory is true, then why aren’t we all lying all the time? Because then everything should be super amazing.
So anyways, back to what was actually happening in the movie. Connor, before we move on, I think Connor might have been gay and he didn’t want to come out. That is something that that easily could have been going on there.
We’ll never know because he died. And oh, that’s another thing I didn’t understand that so like he’s at school, and he runs into Evan he signs his cast. And then he goes to the printer and finds Evan’s Dear Evan Hanson letter to himself and he keeps it and then he goes out of the library and then everyone chases after him. And then he pushes me down and like the screen goes blurry – the focus is out of focus when Evans on the ground. I started to know that in this notice in this movie that there was a lot of out of focus moments. I can see how sometimes it works but sometimes I don’t I don’t like rack focus – well rack focusing is cool but when things are out of focus, and then they come into focus a lot in movies it does.
Why can’t the subject just be in focus? I can get it if there’s if it’s telling the story I can get it but like in this moment, like you fall to the ground you’re a little da-you’re dazed. You know, you could be seeing things a little blurry. I mean, this could be just the shot was supposed to be in focus, but they needed the shot for the story. And so they decided to put it in. Or maybe it was just – I don’t know.
I don’t know when there is one movie I saw one time, what was it? Juan’s gonna kill me for this. Half of the movie was just things being out of focus, and then they move into focus. The camera wasn’t follow focusing or anything and ever since I saw that movie, I started to notice it in other movies. And I don’t know if they’re just missing a focus puller, or if they just decide that being out of focus and then going into focus is the right thing to do. But I don’t like it.
And one of the weirdest moments of this film so Connor commits suicide and then there’s like a little lol and I’m not sure how much time passed from his suicide to the point where his parents decided they wanted to meet with Evan. And the way that this was done was kind of weird because Evan gets off the school bus. He walks right in front of a speaker, just ironically, that announces that he needs to go to the principal’s office.
The principal says, “Hey, Connor’s, parents are here to see you.”
And he goes in there and they divulged to him. Connor has committed suicide, and he wrote this letter to you. And part of me is like, shouldn’t Evan’s mom have been there or something because it’s not a secret that Evan is having a lot of issues emotionally, mentally. Everybody knows this about him, and just took corner him into an office with two people he’s never met before and his mom not being there, or somebody not being maybe they tried to call his mom and she was at work, because that was seemed to be half the story here as well.
But there was like, no heads up, or nothing. Just – it didn’t seem like that’s how I would hope that if you had a kid that committed suicide, and you think his best friend, like, I don’t know if the school is the right place to do it. And then that was another thing in this movie like Evan and Zoey, Connor’s sister – they’re like, oh, like, she didn’t seem to take a day off from school at all. Like, everything was normal. She was sad, but like, and I get like life moves on. But maybe you should take a little time away and grieve and maybe you know, she, she pretended to not – she, and especially in the dinner scene, she hated Connor, he was an evil person. He had done all these bad things to her. And then she just continues to go.
I don’t know. I don’t know, if you had somebody who’s passed away that was close to you whether they were family or not take a day or two because it showed in the movie that Larry – Zoey said, Larry is Larry Murphy, the dad, this step dad to the two kids. And Zoey said that he didn’t even cry at his funeral. So Larry has some issues, you know, and it until the video went viral that Evan did, his speech. Larry immediately went home and broke down.
And it’s just like that in roselli-roselli-Rizzoli, Rizzoli and Isles – that show – like one of the characters in the show died in real life. And throughout one episode for him, like each character breaks down, but like they all break down at different points. And you just, it’s something, it’s going to hit you. I feel somebody close to has past, it’s going to hit you. And you kind of probably shouldn’t be trying to function normally until it hits you. But I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so don’t take any of that information as medical advice. But that’s just what I’ve seen from life and from movies and stuff.
And one thing that happens in this movie, and it happens in a lot of movies, especially in teen movies nowadays, like a big piece of news of gossip, ooh, juicy gossip gets out. Everybody’s phone goes off at the exact same time. And it’s so, I don’t know, I mean, when I was in high school, cell phones were just coming out. And text messaging wasn’t really a big thing. You had AOL Instant Messenger on computers, but you didn’t have it on your phone in your hand all the time. And I see it in movies, especially in high school movies, just everybody at the same time knows everything. And it means it’s like, how can anybody – I don’t know, I just watched movies and stopped doing that because it’s, especially in movies.
But this movie, you don’t know if it’s real or not, because they’re singing. If this if this movie took out the singing and took out the couple times, when everybody’s cell phones went off with gossip all at the same time, unless schools have like a mass text distribution system like if the two major gossipers in the school get everybody’s numbers and mass text everybody if that’s a thing, I don’t know. But it’s never been told to me or explained to me that that’s what happens.
But this movie could have been a real tear jerker. And I even talked somebody else who said, like they cried during the movie, they say like, the tears took a while to come because of all of the singing. Like it really took – It takes, it takes, it takes you out of the moment. And especially in this is human beings, we have these deep emotions that run deep within us. And we just do what we can to not let them work. And then it’s worse when they’re replaced by confusion, I think, I don’t know.
And I think it was during “Requiem.” So Zoe’s sitting in class, and it’s like then everybody discovers her brother committed suicide. And everybody turns and looks at her like Oh, poor Zoe, or Oh, no.
And then it cuts to Larry, the dad and he’s walking into his office going to work. And everybody’s standing and turning and going, Oh, no, his son committed suicide.
And then it cuts to Mrs. Murphy. And she’s walking down the supermarket down the frozen foods, the aisle, and all the other I guess rich moms are stopping and turning and going, Oh, poor, Mrs. Murphy. Oh, no. I mean, I’m not. I don’t know about that world of rich moms that don’t have jobs. But do they all know each other at the supermarket.
But it was about halfway through the movie that I just started turning out the music, tuning it out and turning it out. I – it’s too much of the music sounded similar, too much of the music sounded like other music that I’ve heard and none of it was really memorable. Like, every musical I’ve seen has some music in it that is catchy or is memorable at some way or another. But all the music in this film, it was just all, it all felt the same.
And I don’t know if that was on purpose because of the content of the movie. Or if it just that’s just how it turned out. Ah, like I’m sitting here trying to remember more than a line or two to any song. And the only song that had any real emotional impact on me was a song that wasn’t sang. Well, I was sang, but Evan was singing it but it turned out to be Connor song. And that was nice.
But like I said, like if this movie wasn’t plastered, like that could have worked in the movie along with Evan’s speech, like those two would have worked. But the 10 other songs could have been removed, we would add a shorter film that had a bigger impact and wouldn’t have wasted our time. I mean, honestly.
There is one song where Ilana is talking to Evan about starting the Conner Project. And she’s like, she says, like people like us. And he’s like, What the f word completely different. And then it turns out, she has some issues with her mental health. And she goes into a big song, and she gets her song which had a vertigo shot in it. And I was like, that’s where you choose to use the vertigo shot, you could have saved that for a much more interesting place. But that’s how I think about film.
So she’s sitting there, it’s all her for three minutes doing her song doing her thing. And then it cuts back to the playground where they’re sitting on swings. And she’s looking away talking. And then she turns and I was like, please don’t be there, Evan. Like,
I was like, oh my gosh, if Evan isn’t there, that would be the funniest thing ever. But that’s where I think in this movie, where the music just totally took me out of the movie. And I’m sitting here thinking of comedy spots. And like, she’s sitting there talking about how she’s so life is so hard and then as a guy, you know, like, stereotypical guy be like, Oh, why? Why are you talking to me about this right now? I barely know you. And like if he when she turned and he was just gone and that swing was just slowly swinging left and right. Like, can you hear this the the swing? It just would have been funny. But like I said, it would have been funny if it wasn’t a comedy and probably I probably would have laughed my butt off here if it happened in this movie because it is at the point like I can’t take it as a serious drama. With all this music in it. Zeid trade comes in a little glass vial, a little glass vial, a little glass file and the little glass vial goes into the gun like a battery battery and the gun goes somewhere against your anatomy. Hmm Hmm. And when the gun goes off it sparks and you’re ready for surgery surgery. See like kudos to you if you know where that’s from. But I missed a couple words in there but like I haven’t seen that movie in yours and I’m able to just pull that out of my butt. I don’t know why I just decided to sing that for you and I’m sure I probably horrendous I’m pretty sure I horrified you years with that performance but I’m just saying like right I just saw dear Evan Hanson last night and I can’t think of like nothing sticks out at all to me other than the time when I thought he was gonna start singing let it go. And then there was that other part with that other song that I thought was another song. And a lot of song here. It was like a song just finished a minute ago and we’re going into another song already. And then I was like why not just make this a? What do you call it? A Lin Manuel Miranda production. They just have Songs like continuously. And like I enjoyed in the heights. You want to go listen to that podcast. I mean, I didn’t. There’s a lot of things, outside things about the movie I didn’t like. But as a musical I thoroughly enjoyed the musical it made a lot of sense, but I’m sorry if I’m really ragging on this movie, The story was good, and the acting was good. But the music part of this just ruined the whole movie for me. And speaking of high school students, I know like, kids are mean and high schools, some people experience the worst of their years of their lives in high school, which makes me question like, why do we even have high school because we don’t really need it. But when Evan starts to fail at giving his speech at the Conner project Memorial, or the memorial for Connor, half of the students start pulling out their cell phones, and they start like recording this guy, it’s in his weakest moment. And nobody stands up for this guy. And I’m just thinking, like, Is everybody this mean? Like, I don’t know, it just the stat, the things the stack seem to be to push up against Devon In this scenario, the thing, the real, the real, the real failure in our education, is if you watched, and I don’t think I saw one, not one kid on their cell phone, had the video properly exposed. All of the video had Evans face blown out. Okay? How did none of these kids know how to film with their phones, there had to have been at least one film kid there. And while he would have been up on stage probably, probably would have gotten highs angle as possible. So we could feel sympathy for him because he’s messing up, because everybody else shoot from a low angle. And that’s the wrong type of angle that you’d want to use here. Because there’s absolutely no power you can give him in this moment until he starts singing then maybe. But my main thing is the exposure of the video from all these kids, nobody had their video properly exposed. And why aren’t we teaching kids how to do that? Because that’s more important than learning like, function, statistics and trigonometry. If you asked me, because I took function, statistics and trigonometry. And I don’t think I use that once in my life, because I had no interest in it.
But everybody takes videos. Why not have everybody take good videos at least? Maybe then we can get these super low quality videos of supposedly supernatural things happening. Maybe we can actually get some high definition videos of that once but anyways, dang. And then like, about at the end of the movie, when when Evan won that it was about three quarters of the way. When Evan and Zoey start to like date. I was thinking, wow, what if this whole thing was just Evan trying to get with Zoey? Who, then he’d be a real evil man. And I don’t know anything about taking off casts. I’ve never had a broken bone before. But I just figure when you cut the cast open, like there, it would be gross. But when they cut his cast open, it was like, clean. Like it was clean. And then the second moral from this story is wow, single moms. So that’s what Evan pretty much was trying to portray here that he had to go find another family because his mom was never there for him. Burn but then Julianne Moore got to sing her part of the story. And that was a nice little scene. Music could fit there. It still takes away from the emotional impact. But I felt they should have focused more on Evan here because the movies about Evan. I mean, we really don’t see his mom a whole lot throughout the film, to be honest. So when she’s explaining what, like her position and what she’s been through, it’s not about her. This movie isn’t about her. It’s about Evan and we see Evan, but we see her and Evans kind of in the dark. That’s just me. That’s just how I would have shot. It’s not saying they made a bad decision. I’m just saying they didn’t make the right decision. And then at the end of the movie, Zoe and Evan are walking through the orchard that they finally raised the money after I’m not going to say how Evans lice came out because that kind of caught me off guard and I don’t want to give everything away if you haven’t seen the movie, but don’t see it in the theater. See at home. You don’t need to see this movie in a theater. But they’re walking in the park and Zoe’s like so what are you going to do now? after they graduated high school and Evans like, Oh, well, I’m gonna take a year off, but I’m gonna go to community college. I’m like, dude, that’s not taken a year. off, let’s go into community college. He’s like, I’m going to get a job or something. And I was like, Oh, good, he’s taken a year off. If he takes a year off, you know, he could go discover that he actually enjoys doing something, and maybe school isn’t for him yet. Maybe he can go to college after he finds out what he wants to do with his life. So he doesn’t waste his time in college. But he’s still in college, though. He’s just going to community college. I was like, so is Community College not considered actual college anymore. Like at all if all the I mean if all the credits transfer, and it’s a lot cheaper, it’s the smarter it’s the actual smarter thing to do. But what do I know, I went to film school. So as I said before, the big Moral of the story in this movie is to tell the truth. If you’re going to lie, you just got to keep lying and it just delays the inevitable. And I think the most important thing is to be true to yourself, tell your truth to the world, so that the world doesn’t have to spend its time trying to figure out your truth. If especially what you’re doing doesn’t make sense to who you are what you’re doing like it’s just tell the truth. And with telling the truth I truthfully can tell you I would appreciate it. If you went to move their Facebook comm slash Movies Are Dumb Sometimes or to Twitter at Movies Are Dumb Sometimes, or go to the YouTube page. Movies Are Dumb Sometimes where I’m going to start uploading these podcasts onto there soon as I will one day get back into making videos but time constraints. Allow me just to talk right now. Or you can just go to anchor.fm slash Movies Are Dumb Sometimes find it on your iTunes on Stitcher. Leave me a voice message at the anchor.fm page. I still haven’t gotten one. So the first one I get I’m gonna play it say whatever you want. I might have to believe out something. But I appreciate it. And until next time,
shut your mouth and the movie theater please
Wow, that was a lot!
Do you think Dear Evan Hansen should’ve just been a drama? Would it have made the movie more impactful?
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