hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0527.txt

Episode: 527
Title: HPR0527: HPR RoundTable 9
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0527/hpr0527.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 22:30:48

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just to set us up. We are having some phone issues on, you know, I guess it's our chat
room, maybe, that's giving us some problems. So if it sounds a little funny or a conversation
came to drop off into the middle of nowhere, just consider this kind of low budget
podcasting the way this was a low budget movie.
Welcome everyone to another E-Route People. This time we're discussing the very low budget
creative commons film called Infest Wisely. With us today I am lost drunk and we have
two. Hello everyone. Hello everyone. So I assume you guys have seen the movie. Yep. I've seen
it. I loved it. I loved it. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a while. I thought it
was amazing. I mean, I was well aware because they stole it that night scene and it was, you
know, you do right right away we're in low budget movie land when you catch that night scene,
but the creativity behind it, it had that outhouse look to it, but the plot was so, you
know, interesting and it actually had so many things going for it. Like I love the punk
rockers going in the reservoir, you know, trying to do it. Yeah, yeah. And the bicycles,
the bicycle scene and the cats mutating and that was all far out. It was very much made
up for any kind of lack of, you know, budget or whatever, with just great, great story.
There are several sources that say that it costs absolutely nothing to make. And I believe
that the IMDB said it cost $700 to make, which is actually still close to nothing. How could
it be? That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's never nothing because there's always expenses,
you know, I mean, what is low budget? And what is this? Clicking on that scale. You know.
Well, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, yeah, there's, there's no definition. I mean, if you
have someone over in LA and they'll say, oh, low budget? Yeah, like a million dollars, maybe
under or that's low budget, you know, because you normal people like us, you know, I mean, it's like
whatever you can scrounge together from your day job or whatever, you know, and I just, you get
the thing made. And which is interesting. I think that the way that they shot this is really,
really indicative of the fact that they are a low budget, because you notice that they didn't ever
happen to monopolize 81 actors time all the time, you know, because I mean, those actors had to go to work.
They have their day jobs or whatever they're doing, you know, they can't sit there for a 60A shoot
every day show up, you know, so they split the work load, which I thought was just
and even the directors, I mean, have seven different directors for each little episodic segment.
So that's why the episodic format was to make it possible to work around things?
I'll set you anything as well, yeah. I read an interview that Jim Monroe, the guy who wrote
the film, he wrote all the scripts, all seven parts of it, he said he specifically wrote the film
with their resources in mind, that it didn't write anything they didn't already have or couldn't
get a hold of. And I mean, if that isn't a way to hold costs, I can't think of one, you know.
Yeah, I mean, that's how independent film should be written, you know, I mean, you've got to keep in mind
what you actually have access to, because the minute you throw in, you know, the flying saucer that you don't actually have,
then suddenly the complexity of your film direction just goes up exponentially.
Interestingly enough that they still had some special effects, like they did some nice things with superimposing
to make it look like a hologram presentation. Yeah, I was, I don't know how they did that,
but I was very happy that they did that.
Well, that sort of thing can be farmed out. I mean, look at what the Blender project has been able to do
with, you know, whenever they do any other movies, you know, I mean, there's tons of people
that are donating their time, not just the people that are actually getting paid to make films,
but I mean, you saw that list of people at the end of the movie.
How many people donated stuff? I mean, there's, there are a lot of online productions.
There's series of Star Trek fan films that are out there in the site.
The special effects for them all are, I mean, they're like Hollywood-grade special effects.
I mean, they're amazing, amazing special effects.
There's all done for free. There's all done by, you know, special effects, you know, real enthusiasts in their home
who just kind of, I don't know where you find these guys, but they're out there
and they have their little hangouts. And if you can get in on them and say,
look, I'm doing a movie and I need such and such.
If you can get people excited about what you're doing, you can get tons of free special effects.
To be honest, I'm glad they didn't go far down that road through this movie.
The fact that it was human-based, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't special effects.
I mean, you could go as much as you want when it comes to nanofact.
They could have had, you know, melting humans or whatever they wanted, you know.
And it probably wouldn't have cost them any more than it did.
But I don't think that would have been keeping with that real grunge look the rest of the movie had.
So, anyway, it is amazing the special effects.
But maybe we should step back and go through the plot for the listeners,
because otherwise you're just going to sound like special effects, fanboys or something.
What are you guys thinking?
Actually, why don't we step back and tell them where they can find it, you know, from the very beginning.
It's called Infest-wise Lee, and you can get it in several places.
But first, I might self-download it first from archive.org that the EP colon
last month, www.archives.org.
Let's detail, slash Infest-wise Lee.
All one word with the I and the W capitalized for no good reason, I think.
But anyway, that will get you to a page where you can download it.
You can go directly to the Infest-wise Lee website, which is Infest-wise Lee.com.
And you can find tons of current activators on there that have it.
Because it is a creative, common film, it is downloadable for free.
You can download it, you can copy it, you can do whatever you want with it pretty much.
It's all legal, so download it and enjoy it.
The website itself probably has the best basic description of the plot,
where I think it's just not going to be able to find it in time.
Basically, it's the near future.
And that's there never specific about when it is in the future, I don't think.
I don't think I ever heard anybody say a date in a movie.
But it is very far at all in the future.
It doesn't seem like a plot of a film that basically centers around consumer-grade nanotechnology
that people consume and put in their bodies for various purposes, such as taking photographs with your eyes
and curing cancer and all these other things.
It seems to have to do with the social aspect of how a technology like this can affect people in the world.
Did I capture it, do you think, or is there more?
That's a pretty good accurate description, I think.
Yeah, that's a great thought, but there's several interesting twists and turns along the way
that we can get into now, I think, too.
That's not what the X-ray had seen.
You knew I'd love that, didn't you?
Yeah, yeah, it goes right there, doesn't it?
First off, I don't think it's not x-rayed, obviously.
It would be, I guess, an R-rated scene.
It would probably be the way to describe it.
It's not clear to me why boiler here, why seamen is required to grab somebody's DNA.
Because what do they do if they're trying to feel identity in the future, by the way,
or anyone who's wondering why they would need to steal your DNA?
By this time, identity is often linked to your DNA structure, as supposedly a way to,
I guess, initially, it would be a way to confirm someone's identity.
Everyone's as IDNA is unique than this must be you, but of course,
there are always going to be the various people that are trying to steal from other people.
So there are a lot of hacks when it comes to stealing somebody's DNA,
and then identity theft clears out your bank account beforehand.
Yeah, if I may jump in here.
It's really interesting because this is bar scene in the flick,
and of course, this is all spoilers.
There's a bar scene in the flick, and people pay, they get a mouth swab that's mint flavor that they have to lick.
And that proves enough for a single critical transaction, but apparently,
in order to wipe out a man's bank account, you have to steal his firm.
And in that same bar scene, there's this scene in the man's room that's really interesting and amusing.
And they express, one thing that really set a tone for this movie that I like was the sarcasm,
and maybe it's the punk rock influence maybe brings in the sarcasm.
But they call it milking.
I just think that's so incredibly sarcastic.
I get so amused by it.
And then the guy comes out, and he happens to work in the bank,
and he's trying to get his colleagues to help him.
They're like saying emails for pictures of cows going moo and stuff.
There was a starical how they did it.
And then one girl was said, yeah, I'm saving my milk money for a rainy day,
and they had the things they did with that idea,
with just a starical, I thought.
Even my wife cracked up over it.
And it seems really realistic, because people would do that.
You know, if you had a colleague who, you know,
you're on fairly friendly terms with, that was really good,
because that tends to stage for why the nanotechnology is adopted
more readily later in the film,
because somehow, at least initially, it hits the security device
that, you know, what's going to encrypt your DNA or something
like that prevents people from stealing.
But identity theft, being completely rampant,
people are quickly adopted,
and then pictures are added to this technology in terms of earned.
Well, yeah, the movie is really, really, actually.
I mean, I'm sure we've all seen hacker movies before,
and that there just laughed at them.
This movie actually does, I thought, a really good job of dealing
with all the technology on a very realistic kind of level, you know.
I don't really know when it was produced or whatever,
and obviously as time's going,
it will continue to be more and more dated in terms of what they're calling,
you know, the future and stuff like that.
But overall, I felt that they clear,
someone clearly knew what they were talking about enough,
enough at least to write a script about a lot of, you know,
security, concerns, and new technologies or soul technologies,
stuff like that.
The hacker that we open up with, the computer programmer,
is using, like, a homemade computer that keeps in a,
you know, he built a fiberglass,
socks, a keyboard, and stuff,
and he's using this old technology,
and these old discs that the new people who were searching
in the apartment after his death didn't even recognize as media.
You know, they didn't even recognize it as a storage media,
because it was so old, they just didn't know where the floppy disk was.
And you know, that's actually a next-foot cigarette collect,
because this character, the hacker's name is Digger,
and he's, you know, a, it's interesting.
Even though he's a hacker, just this, like Ted Kaczynski
is Gludite anti-technology bent,
he doesn't like the modern technology,
which is why he has that old computer, right?
But it turns out that he was working on a technology
that would inoculate people from the nanotechnology threat,
if it ever got out of hand.
And he seemed to comply his genius on many levels.
From the viewer's point of view,
you just see this guy who's one step away from being rainman,
and we don't understand, necessarily,
at least at first, what his issue is,
but we find that later, you know,
it really, we find that much later in the movie,
just how brilliant this guy must have been,
that he could have devised
if it would have been sort of a shooter code
or a hack at some time on the basic structure
of the nanotechnology and the reading between the lines
it seemed like he didn't even design it for that.
He designed it as sort of a generic thing
that is so usable that you could apply it
to something like this.
It's ethnologically great and interesting,
but then all of a sudden, it's like he disappears,
and it's like a big conspiracy,
and people are stenciling bigger with push.
Well, what do you think he was pushed in your opinion?
Yeah, I think he was pushed.
Yeah, I think he was knocked off.
He himself didn't even see a threat.
I mean, he was afraid of everyone in general,
but he didn't see a specific threat of any kind,
like this.
He just thought that they were after him, you know,
that sort of thing.
But if you ever meet people who are like deep hacker types
or even if people say hack and non-computer type,
sometimes they can be oblivious to things in their own room
or they're going through the gyration.
So I really appreciate this because I felt it was like,
wow, he was so into his computer
or so into his photography at night out his apparel.
Whatever he was doing that, he was oblivious to the guy,
the real threat, who was about to take him down.
I thought that was amazing.
Yeah, and we never see it happen completely off camera.
In fact, by the time you find out that he's dead,
he's been dead along current.
And yet they open up, the opening shot of the movie
is something falling down from a great height.
So, collect two.
You must be a recent expert on this one
where I want to go next, which is the punk rocker.
Why would I be the expert?
Oh, I thought I read something in your Wikipedia article
about your punk background.
I wish I had a copy of that Wikipedia article.
I took it down.
It said straight edge thing was related to
with the punk rock and so.
You're correct.
I mean, I did enjoy punk way back in the day
when I was a wee lad, but I didn't get into it
on any heavy level, so.
Sure.
So, but this movie features punk rockers?
Well, yeah, and I think it has a punk spirit, too.
I mean, it's got a, you know, the good guys are the rebellion.
There's the math pricing list.
I know that must have been not math capacity
with the other, what's the bicycling groups
that bicycles around and tries to block traffic?
I cannot think of the term.
I, I don't know.
Yeah.
Now, do you guys have heard of this?
No.
I thought it was totally invented by the movie.
No, this is, I'm sure that this is a group that they probably got.
They probably had friends doing this math.
Hold on.
I have to find this term now.
The film was made in Toronto, is there a group like,
are these group bike groups like all over the place?
Yeah, I mean, it's big in San Francisco.
I'm sure, yeah, it's everywhere.
So, it was big in LA as well, actually.
I had a lot of friends who rode in it,
but they would, they would go on a midnight bike ride.
So, you thought that they didn't have LA.
I guess in San Francisco, they'd do it during the day.
And they're one of their goals that be among the people I knew.
I don't know if it was the official goal of the group or, you know,
what they would say to this, if I was advertising and doing this,
but it was the block traffic, block train, block the bar, you know,
stuff like that.
If we bring the automated traveling systems to a halt with their annual traveling system.
And they did that quite well.
They do it quite well.
So, yeah.
So, Bill Singer, the punk rock band, is actually a love technician.
And she gets this feature of her voice.
It's like, good news, the cure cancer.
Now you're fired.
Yeah, yeah.
So, if you're getting singing against the man at the end of the midnight,
and she puts masking tape on her mouth,
because, like, she's afraid they'll get in there.
And, like, next thing you see is all these punk rockers dancing
with tape over their mouth.
It's like a spontaneous mass movement.
It was so well done the way they did the scene in the movie.
I was just so impressed with it.
Well, the whole world was just built so, so fully.
I mean, just from the terminology, like, oh, you got milk and stuff like that,
to, yeah, like the spontaneity of sort of how the anti-man-no technology groups
get started and stuff like that, I just, it's really cool.
The world building is so detailed, because even inside the comments,
I mean, at one point the teacher assistant is telling his student,
no, you have nanotechnology above your neck, and therefore you're a plate,
you're cheating, and you're kicked out.
And that's the policy of the college, and it's just like,
even just that detail in that background conversation,
I was like, whoa.
Critical mass.
That's the group, by the way.
Critical mass.
I mean, I think it's very true to the punk ethos.
I mean, the whole film.
I mean, it's very, obviously, it's no budget, so that's punk right there.
It's raw.
It's true to itself.
It's rebellious.
It's hardcore.
It presents it realistically.
And there's people doing what they need to do to change things.
That's really cool.
It's not like the sort of Hollywood punk rock, you know.
I was really impressed with the writing.
I thought the script was really well done.
Structurally, you know, the fact that it was in seven parts,
but you have characters carry over from one part to another.
It makes the storyline glow.
That's kind of a classic way of doing that sort of thing.
But it's so rarely done.
It was smart.
You know, the commentary was just very realistic.
I mean, just the way people spoke to each other,
it was like regular dialogues,
but they were talking about things that don't exist.
It was structurally really well done, because it goes full closely.
We start with digger, and we end with digger,
or his influence anyway.
Well, his legacy.
It kind of all centers around digger kind of represents, at least for me,
the concept of someone, you know,
basically for me, he represents the fear of change
and how in the end, change will come no matter what,
but we don't necessarily have to take it blindly.
You know, I like the fact that digger is magic code.
At the end, it's stated, this is not going to stop.
Nanite.
This is not going to, you know, get rid of Nanite.
It just changes the playing field.
He gets some competition.
And that, even in and of its pulses,
is so realistic.
How many stories get at the end of a big chase scene?
You know, they get there and they press the button
and get the code in just the last time
and the world is safe, you know?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
That never happens in real life.
So it can't happen.
It can't happen at all.
What?
In real life, you always have this layering effect
of all the old things build up to a new thing
that goes forward.
And so you kind of bait things,
but you can't get rid.
You know, it's kind of like saying, you know,
it's kind of like when publishing happened
and books were printed and they were like,
they didn't know what to do about the people
who wrote the Hancock books.
They could never go back.
You know, you can never go back in a way.
I, you know, what are the things I like to say?
They don't even...
The film isn't necessarily anti-nanotechnology either.
They don't really take a chance saying,
this is terrible.
I mean, they talk about the amazing things
that are...
You know, cancer is here.
You know, they sure can't see Santa.
I mean, no one can argue that that's a bad thing.
The movie itself is focused on it.
It's just focused on the people who are experiencing it.
Yeah.
Wow.
It's much more compelling.
It's not terminating about the future.
You know, they're not trying to sell us
poor or against the, you know,
fantasy technology.
I mean, who cares?
I mean, it would be ridiculous
to try to be anti-nanol, you know, in real life.
It doesn't really exist.
At least the way it portrays the movie
doesn't exist at all.
I like the fact that you know of.
Well.
Yeah.
It would be great if I had some myself
and I was going to live forever,
but, you know, I can tell you right now that's not true.
The fact is, maybe someday it could happen
at that standpoint, you can see this as a cautionary tale.
But I...
And I think it is.
But not for nanotechnology.
It's a cautionary tale for all new technology.
Anywhere there's something new that changes the world.
And things do come along vocationally and do that.
You know, the internet is one of those things.
Cell phones, I believe, are one of those things.
It just changes the fundamental way the world works.
Things happen, but people don't change.
And how do we fit ourselves into this new world?
I think it's because of the humanness of the situation,
because they don't have the foresight to see
that they have to protect...
They admit the technology, but they don't secure it.
You know, it comes as an afterthought.
And so, this thing that was just supposed to go on your bloodstream
and just secure cancer has now affected you the way your brain works.
And yeah, I think that's very human.
Getting back to the punk rock thing for a second.
I like the fact that we don't just see anti-nanopunct.
You also have a militant reaction on the other side.
People that are very, very pro-nanol to the point
where maybe they're not thinking with their own minds anymore.
The application being that it and I can take over animals
and make attention, perhaps they can do it to humans
and change them and change the way they think.
You know, and our humans now battle for the nanite
to bring that question off, I think.
I don't know.
I thought it was very well-written, very insightful
about the human reaction to change.
The social change is technological change.
And I thought it was one of the smartest movies I've ever seen
done, you know, as focusing on that.
You know, as opposed to someone who's just a piece of blossom
on the sweeping tide to change, you know, the world is a war
and we just follow this person as they have for various adventures
or have it.
This was about real people trying to live this world, not just provided.
Well, that's the strength of most science.
Our good science fiction, I think, is that it creates the world.
So just as if who was it that said the best sci-fi
shouldn't treat itself as something unique.
You know, it shouldn't say, look, we're in the future.
And this is so cool, it should just be a normal story
except it is the future and that's what the story was.
Although I can't see the story being told
without the science fiction element of the nanite,
which is cool.
I mean, that means it's like real sci-fi.
It is.
It is.
Every...
The world is so real that it's integral to the actual tale
that's being told.
We look at this film, right?
Zero budget.
Nothing.
Nothing going for it whatsoever.
They can even get a theatrical release or a DVD release.
They had to go and post it on archive.org for crying out loud.
And this...
I mean, nothing but the bad thing.
But just go with me on it.
And it's an incredible story.
It's got such originality.
Compare that to something like Avatar, $500 billion.
And all they could do was retail dances with wolves
except in 3D, credible contract.
Like, good sci-fi versus Hollywood trash.
You know, it's incredible.
Well, let me ask you this.
So, what do people want out of their science fiction?
Seriously.
I mean, we're in agreement.
What do you like about science fiction?
People want.
They want, they want, they want, they want things they don't...
You know, they don't want to take.
They want to see.
You know, they're entertained and mindless.
That's why we don't say sci-fi anymore.
It's among the aleteness of, you know, like us.
We say secularism is a fiction.
You can say SFS.
I think that you're right about, you know, that didn't get a wide release.
You know what?
One of their world premiere was that Defton 15 in London.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's cool.
I mean, it's perfect.
You know, it's perfect.
More important.
He really did know something about computers, huh?
Oh, hi.
That's some pre-cert.
Jim and Rosa is also a science fiction author, as well.
And he had a novel.
So, if I haven't read any of them, but it's given him,
he's pre-reported, with me.
So, I'll release under Creative Commons, apparently.
So, he gets the whole technology thing,
and he also gets the Creative Commons,
and the free change of ideas.
And I think everybody who worked as a film definitely did.
So, it looks like we're giving it three thumbs up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll give it two thumbs up and a nanosome up as well.
But is that really your thumb that's going up?
Or a nanite just making you say that?
Of course, I can't really ask that question,
because there's tape on my mouth.
Oh, one last question.
Talking cat, I think you funny or painful to watch.
Funny?
Yeah.
I was a two-mind buckler talking cat,
because I looked at him and said,
oh, okay, here's our talking cat.
Isn't this great?
You know, it's kind of a little cheesy,
the concept of it.
But the rationale kind of was really, really sound and really cool
within the internal office of the movie.
Like, you know, if things can settle into the brain time
of an animal living feature,
and their art network can actually speak over Wi-Fi,
and you have some two in your own body,
why couldn't they do this?
You know, it was kind of very interesting.
And so I watched and I said,
you know, I could do a little, you know,
I'm not sure the English accent worked for me,
but you know, it is just a minor knit take.
It's like, I may as well shut up now.
It's like, I think once you watch it that much,
you're at the point where you realize on the special effects
you might have to go on a path here and there.
Well, I mean, I'm personally, I mean,
I don't love special effects.
I'm not like, I'm not a, usually,
if I see a special effect, I have an adverse reaction to it.
So the fact that this does not have
a fancy special effect was a really, really bonus point for me.
But I think that, you know, I mean,
if they tried to get special effects for this thing,
I think it would have ended up just looking
like they were trying too hard or something.
You know, it would have taken away maybe from the grittiness of it
or something.
So I didn't miss any kind of lack of,
I don't know, a cat that was CGI or anything like that.
Yeah, I think they hit like a good happy medium
around the head when they,
they just had just enough.
They had like a superimposed here,
you know, a shot of imaginary nanites
in the microscope there.
And they never tried to overwhelm you.
It certainly wasn't something that was like,
ooh, this film wasn't shot entirely in Blue Matt, you know,
and everything else was superimposed.
It certainly wasn't that.
I don't think, I mean, honestly, I do not see how
anyone could have done this film better.
You know, I mean, the story was,
is a great story, I think,
producing it in any other way
would really start to take away from the story,
in my opinion.
So I was really glad that it was a no-budget film.
I thought it was very appropriate.
I'm glad it was no budget.
I'm glad everybody in the film wasn't unknown,
at least because it didn't distract me.
I didn't look and see, oh,
it's George Clooney playing digger, you know.
Right.
Man, he would have been a disastrous digger.
Yeah.
Jack Black getting milk or something.
You know, I mean, you don't have that,
you know, these are people you don't know.
And, you know, you can go with that, you know.
And they were pretty.
There wasn't anybody good looking inside the movie.
They had somehow set ass to it, you know?
Yeah, because they're real people.
That's what we were playing.
Well, I should have had one quick question
for lost and lost.
So how did you say you found this film?
Like what?
You just stumbled across it.
And I don't have that in your world.
But I believe I saw some of the references
that lost hands on one point.
I think it was about three years ago, two years ago.
Maybe.
And I didn't find it right away.
I actually had to go look for it right away.
I must have saved the link and then I was going
to my bookmark some time later.
And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, let me go take a look at this.
And, you know, I downloaded it and watched it
more late one night.
And I was blown away.
I was like, why haven't I heard more about this?
Why are people making a bigger deal out of this?
It was really quite a thing.
So, you know, I kept it in mind.
And I actually had made a copy of it.
And I looked around and I couldn't find it anywhere.
So I actually had to download it again to do this review.
You know, I want to see it, you know, again,
because there's a lot of stuff I didn't remember
and I'm glad I got it again.
But this time I actually made the copy
so I know where that is.
I'll be able to watch it whenever I want.
Well, I guess that's it for us, right?
I highly recommend it though.
If that didn't come across,
he'd been listening to this and go see the film.
This is highly, highly recommended.
Yeah, it really is worthwhile.
Yeah, but they don't have to go see it.
Correct.
Exactly.
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