Was he killing crows just to eat their livers?

Who would win in a fight? Jeremiah Johnson or a young predator out to prove himself? I think you're basically describing the movie Prey, which is, in my opinion, it's a great movie. It's one of the best predator movies. And everyone should watch it. We'll be talking about it soon. Oh, all right. Well, and I guess that movie is proof positive that a Native American can beat a predator. And since Jeremiah Johnson can beat any Native American on Earth, then he can beat a predator. So, I mean, yeah, Jeremiah Johnson, he whoops a predator. He takes him out every time, nine times out of ten. That's the conclusion I came to as well. Jeremiah Johnson wins. I mean, it's Robert Redford. Yeah, nothing can beat Robert Redford. Oh no, it's their actual death. Oh no. Oh wait, oops. Oh no. And to start us off, hello and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Eric, I'm here with my co-host Torvald.

Howdy. And this is the podcast where we talk about fan theories and films. And today we are talking about Jeremiah Johnson, a movie featuring the star we've been discussing. Robert Redford. I'm so sad about Robert Redford dying. I think he was such a cool guy. He's not a Hollywood guy. He just wanted to live in Park City, Utah. He wanted to live in a forest. Just start his own film festival. Well, and the crazy thing is he was a Hollywood guy, right? Like, he was. Yeah, he was huge. Oh, he just wanted to be like a survivalist. He just wanted to be like living off the land. He just wanted to be Jeremiah Johnson. He just wanted to be Jeremiah Johnson. Why do so many people watch and admire and talk about and, you know, why are they so active in the even the modern zeitgeist, all of those like Clint Eastwood movies like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for example. Why is that such a classic when Jeremiah Johnson exists?

I'm like, if you're going to watch a movie about the Old West and living outdoors and in the wilderness, Jeremiah Johnson. That's the movie. That is the movie. Yeah. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Does it have like a prologue that's just music for like two whole minutes? Does it have an intermission? An entre-acte? Yeah, an entre-acte. No, yeah. Jeremiah Johnson is a movie that knows exactly what it is, and it makes sure that its audience knows that, too, because it starts you off with a riveting three solid minutes of a still image and the text overture while they literally play an overture. And then it has the opening credits. And then it has credits. This is before the credits, before even the WB logo. You might as well do the overture during the opening credits, right? But no. No, the overture gets its own thing. Then you have the opening credits, which is just text and music, right?

Like, it's nothing special. And then a narrator starts talking, like Disney's Robin Hood cartoon-style narrator, like, explaining Jeremiah's situation, maybe whistling a tune. Well, no, no, first he's not whistling. He just explains Jeremiah's entire situation. He says, here he is. He's getting off the boat. He's doing this. He wants to go live out, you know, in the wilderness. He's going to buy a gun and stuff. He's supposed to be a mountain man. And then, out of nowhere, the narrator just starts singing. And he sings a song that is literally a song about everything he just explained through his words. He's like, and just in case any of you don't understand spoken language, here is the sung language. I'm going to sing it for you. And that song that he sings is not the three-minute overture. No, no, it's a completely different song. And it's another three-minute song. It's the greatest combined ten-minute start of this movie.

Six solid minutes. I mean, jeez. Oh, what a movie. It's so good. Well, he's not done singing, though. He sings throughout the rest of the movie. He constantly comes back in. As much as I wish that was true. Yeah, you're overselling it a bit. It's not like he never stops singing for the next two hours, which would be pretty cool. Yeah, he does fade in and out there. But yeah, the narrator is kind of omnipresent. He's always writing with a little tune, with a little di-pa-dee-da-dee-dee-do-do. Which is not the tune he sings. But when I imagine him, it is. But then, no, no, we're not done because about one hour and 20 minutes in, when a normal movie would be wrapping up. Ending. That's when we get to enjoy another minute or two of like more singing followed by three more minutes of interact and two words on screen displayed. So I know how they're spelled. It's E N T R apostrophe space. Yeah.

A C T E. So it's not in three act. It's enter act. Whatever that means. Oh man. What a movie. Well, and that's after the intermission. On screen, there's text that shows up that says intermission. There's also an intermission, yes. So, at the point when an almost movie should have ended, you get intermission telling you you're only halfway through this movie. And the intermission is just, it's nothing. It's a black screen. Followed by the interact where the guy sings some more. Oh, man. Okay, but I have to give it credit. i gotta give credit to jeremiah johnson every single scene in this movie looks exactly like a snowy mountainscape painting that you would like hang on the wall of your house like yeah not just because of the backdrop but because of the amazing framing and camera work like the people who made this movie they knew what they were doing like they were they were very very deliberately making exactly the movie they made jeremiah johnson was filmed not just

in this gorgeous you know outback of you know rugged america but it was also robert redford's own backyard like they were they were just filming on robert redford's land because he's just that much of a badass apparently what happened was like they didn't know where they were gonna film they didn't know they were they were thinking of lots of different places um they wanted to do it on location the studio was like we can't do that on location are you guys insane you're not gonna lug camera crews up into a mountain in the winter and freeze an actual mountain and then so they were like well maybe we'll do it in spain we could like go to spain and do it but then apparently robert redford was yeah i don't i don't know why that was the answer robert redford pulled a freddy krueger and was like well right handle this bitch well right he was like aghast he was like no we're not going to film a movie about like you know rugged cold-blooded red-blooded america in spain

so he's like we'll do this on my land he's like hey guys you know i own like a thousand acres of just like straight up forest in zion national park um and he's like why don't we just film there so that's where they did they just they just filmed it on robert redford's own yeah and and also the well and also he footed the bill he was like he agreed that if the movie went over budget then him and pollock which i hope he just agreed by way of pollock yeah the director yeah sorry the director um he agreed that they would cover any overages out of their own pockets so like robert redford was just like he was so invested in this movie he was so ready to be uh jeremiah Johnson is like he was made for this role oh man a story that you told me was that this decision came about I don't know if this is true this decision came about because they were talking about shooting the scene where he splashes around in a freezing cold river and they were like where

are we gonna shoot this and he was like well I have a freezing cold river right yeah he's like i got one of those my backyard let me just splash around in it for a while no no seriously yes i and i'm pretty sure that's just how robert redford wakes up in the morning or he would wake up every morning and just go splash around in the freezing cold river and some rando would walk by just kind of stare at him like and they keep going no no it is crazy like robert redford he is actually so freaking hardcore like just you know 15 minutes into this movie robert redford the actor is standing in a massive snowbank looking at a frozen river and he just throws himself into it and starts thrashing around in there and actually catches a fish with his bare hands and then he has to let it go because the the movie called for him not to catch the fish but he like catches it and holds it up and then he's like oh i lost it oops oh man he's so cool like he's so hardcore he couldn't

not catch that fish he's like muscle memory took over like this is just how i get my breakfast oh man it's so cool yeah that was just his river he owned that frozen river and he just jumped right into it man he must have been so cold like it's crazy watching that because like with our modern eyes you would think like oh it's cgi or you know it's a set they did it in a studio right no it's on location it's his own land he paid to have himself freeze in his own river so jeremiah johnson a movie that probably most of our well no that's not true i was gonna say probably most of our listeners haven't seen our listeners but our listeners probably have seen it but um this movie is what most people know as the meme of zach galifianakis nodding but it's not zach galifianakis nodding it's robert redford nodding what i've never heard it called zach galifianakis it's not him every time i see it i think it's zach galifianakis nodding because

Robert Redford looks like really fat and it's just his beard, but he looks fat. Like, are you okay? I don't think anyone calls it Zach Galifianakis nodding. For a long time, I thought that was the meme. It was Zach Galifianakis nodding. No, I had no idea it was from Jeremiah Johnson, a movie which I had seen. I have the opposite effect. Like, I was just thinking as I watched it today, I was like, oh, you know what? That's so weird. Because to me, that meme has always been fun because it's Jeremiah Johnson, right? Like to me, having grown up, having seen this movie like as early as I know, I've read actual articles on the Internet that are talking about how no, that's not Zach Galifianakis. So I'm not the only one who thinks this. But all I can say is to me, that's why that meme was cool, because it's Jeremiah Johnson. And I'm like, yeah, look at him nodding. That's what he does. but as i watched this movie again preparing for this podcast episode i was like i had a realization

i was like whoa most people don't know that that meme is jeremiah john they don't even know who that is they just think it's a guy nodding i was like how can that be meaningful to anyone who hasn't watched this movie and seen robert redford just like throwing himself around in that water is it actually the most thorough and greatest and most uncalled for whitewashing of a horrible murderer in all of history um because i've heard some things about jeremiah johnson that i didn't know before so yeah so to introduce our theory i'm going to talk about a screenplay that one of my friends wrote and it was it was a very good uh horror screenplay set in like mountain in the mountains in the 1800s wild west times so far i'm sold this sounds good and it was called bitter root a screenplay that deals with the mythos of the wendigo and how a person who's stuck out in a survival situation might become a cannibal and then transform into a horrible creature

in this screenplay when they're talking about cannibalism they reference liver eaten johnson And I had no idea who that was. And I had watched Jeremiah Johnson growing up. And some of the things they said about liver-eaten Johnson sounded like Jeremiah Johnson. And so I looked up Jeremiah Johnson, and it led me to Wikipedia, where the entry is called liver-eaten Johnson. uh-oh why doesn't he get his real name and i'm like what i watched the movie he never ate anyone he didn't eat anyone's liver but apparently that's what he's most known for and that's crazy to me that that that everyone didn't watch jeremiah johnson as a kid i guess because i watched this movie and i know it was jeremiah johnson he's like an american folk hero you know He's not some, like, horrible cannibal who killed 300 Native Americans and supposedly ate their livers out of revenge. Well, his name was not, you know, Liver Eaton Johnson.

Apparently, his name was also not Jeremiah Johnson. His name was actually, it was John Garrison. That was his name. Yeah. And he went by John Garrison until he ditched the army. He went AWOL and then he changed his name so that he wouldn't have to answer for that. So then he went by Jeremiah Johnson after that. And when they made a movie about him, they just didn't incorporate the most well-known myth and legend, which is that he eats people's livers. So I don't know. I think that's kind of weird that they didn't include that, but probably a good choice because it's not really a movie about a guy who eats livers. I had a weird Mandela effect finally getting to the end of this movie. I thought this movie ended with him leaving the mountain and joining a war and dying in the war. And then there was a shot of like one of those military cemeteries, you know, with all the graves. Yeah. With tons and tons of graves and he was one of them.

Oh. That's how I thought this movie ended. It doesn't end like that at all. I don't remember that. He just, like, sees the Crow Chief and he just, like, sup? And Crow Chief's like, yeah, you all right, dude. You're good. Yeah. What did you confuse this movie with? I believe I was confusing an actual real-world memory for the end because I know that one time our dad drove us somewhere in L.A. when we were visiting our grandpa in SoCal. Southern California. He drove us past one of these military cemeteries in California and told us Jeremiah Johnson is buried there. Whoa. And my memory of that is kind of vague. So in your mind, you're like, that's where the movie ends. I was like, well, if he's buried in like this, he must have gone to war again. Well, dude, that's like, that's got to be true. because um after the movie came out um people sort of you know started to care about jeremiah johnson again so they launched a big campaign and there was tons of uproar about it and they

finally got enough attention and actually got his body dug up and then reburied where it should have been buried in wyoming at that funeral robert redford was the chief pallbearer so he showed up But he's like, I'm going to carry this guy because I am him. He's me. I'm like, that's a little odd, but cool. Good for you, Robert Redford. Yeah. Yeah. So it turns out he actually was buried in a veteran cemetery in L.A. Yeah. So that part is true. Later, he was moved to Wyoming in 1974. Now, I'm thinking that probably our grandpa told our dad that Jeremiah Johnson was buried in that cemetery. And I'm sure our dad showed us this movie just because his dad had showed him this movie. Yeah, probably. Right? And I'm pretty sure that by the time my dad took me to this cemetery in the 90s, Jeremiah Johnson wasn't there anymore. He was in Wyoming. They moved his body. But our dad probably didn't know that.

To be fair, he did have a grave there at one time. Yeah. There was one famous critic who, in her review for the movie, She infamously panned Jeremiah Johnson. So it released to universal praise. Everyone loved it. Like people, they were raving about it. It's hard to find a bad review for this movie. What? An intermission? Yes! Yeah, I don't know. They were just like, this is my jam. This is what I want. Except for one critic named Pauline Kale. And she hated this movie. She despised Jeremiah Johnson. She couldn't say enough negative things about it. She thought it was just like a disgraceful movie. She thought it was stupid. She thought it had too much action, too much brutality. She thought that it was basically justifying the main character's horrible actions by, you know, giving him a reason to do it with his with his revenge, you know, his whole vengeance story. She's like, that's dumb.

The best part is, in her review, her main criticism of the movie was she really, really went hard on the end of the movie. And she was like, I can't believe how they ended this movie after this guy, this Jeremiah Johnson, does all these bad things. And then the chief of the crows, recognizing Jeremiah's courage, makes a peace sign to end the war. jeremiah signals him back giving him the finger so she thought that jeremiah but she thought that that native american showed up and jeremiah johnson turned to him and then just stuck his middle finger up like f you f you idiot i'm coming for you next and she was like oh man oh what a horrible way to end the movie and That would be a horrible way to end the movie. Well, afterwards, she like, you know, of course, everyone was like, what is wrong with you, Pauline Kale? That's not how the movie ended. And she like, tried to blame it on her glasses. She was like, well, I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time. So I didn't know he wasn't flipping the guy.

Apparently. Robert Redford, he was dumbfounded by this. His quote was about this interview. He said, that was absolutely mind-boggling. The gesture, he's talking about what he did when he raised his arm in a gesture of peace. The gesture was an ad-libbed response to the frustration of the pain and confusion that the character was experiencing and just continuing. It indicated a respect for the enemy. It was a salute of respect, but also frustration of the knowledge that the hunt would never end. And that criticism was especially painful to me, says Robert Redford, because of my feelings and concerns for the American Indian. The remarks seem so far fetched and personal beyond the limits of responsible criticism. So I think Robert Redford really, really ripped her a new one. But the funny thing is, I actually read her original interview. And in the interview, she has put an asterisk there. And underneath it, there's a footnote where she tries to justify it.

And she actually doesn't blame it on her glasses here. She says, When I saw the film, it seemed implicit that Jeremiah was going to go on killing Indians. And the audience laughed cynically at his salute. Their laughter may have influenced my interpretation of his movement. As though the script had had him continue with the killing. The director says that he finished on the gesture so the end would be ambiguous. So that was her justification. She's like, well, everybody laughed. So I thought he was flipping the guy off. I don't know. I was like, geez, lady, do your job. Everything you wrote was wrong. What's wrong with you? Anyway. Well, I like that. I like that review. Yeah, yeah. She gave a pretty good review. That'd be an interesting ending. Okay, let's talk about the actual theory here. So what is our theory about this movie? The theory is just that Jeremiah Johnson was a murderer and a cannibal.

And we're also going to talk about the movie, which has nothing to do with the theory because there's no cannibalism in the movie. Well, there might be. I mean, I've got my own interpretation of it. Oh, okay. Well, I guess, yeah, knowing what we perhaps know about Jeremiah Johnson, we can look at the movie and see how things might be reinterpreted. the plot of this movie it's interesting because it's structured in a two-act structure and if you know anything about screenwriting and writing for movies most movies are structured in three acts i think this movie was structured in three acts i'm just gonna say well see here's the thing here's the thing it doesn't really matter if it's structured in two acts because all movies are going to have a basically the same beats as it goes through and what act they're in honestly doesn't matter yeah but um the it is interesting i think that this movie is structured in the first

act he basically becomes a mountain man and finds his family second act he goes on a vendetta vengeance basically well and i agree but i would have split that first act into two i would have said first act learning to be a mountain man second act building a family third act vendetta right like that's that's how i see it yeah no and like i said it pretty much all movies even if you say they're one two three or four acts you know they have all the same beats so basically that is the plot of this movie he wants to be a mountain man he doesn't seem to be particularly social finds a son finds a wife and then they are both killed and then jeremiah johnson kind of goes on a vengeance spree although in in this movie his vengeance is more reactionary like his first act is to go and kill the people who did it and he does that after that it's like people are coming like the predators to prove themselves by killing you know jeremiah johnson and he just

kills them all in self-defense so he went after them and then he slaughtered every indian in that party except well he let one go and he was hoping they would send more after him right like that was his plan he was ready for it he he did it on purpose he's like go tell your tale so it's sort of the lazy man's vendetta he's like i'm not coming after you but you can come and get me after me yeah exactly so i just thought it was interesting that i think if this movie was done now or if it was done by like tarantino or even if it had been done then but by clint eastwood which is who they originally i think yeah i was gonna say they originally cast him as clint eastwood I think they would have done it in three acts, and the end of the first act would have been his family gets killed, and the rest of the movie would have been the vendetta. Yeah, fair. I agree. They probably would have had the killing of his family happen a lot earlier.

They did it more in a slice-of-life kind of way with Sidney Pollack, the director. First and foremost, I want to say it's clearly a product of its time, right? It's a very 70s movie. 70s movies love doing that they love having just long long stretches of like this is the life of the character and and that's all like you know 40 50 60 minutes of the movie is it's just you getting a feel for how the character lives there's a lot of movies that came out in the 70s that do that so yeah i agree i think nowadays yeah whoa i mean kind of yeah i was thinking more like silent running i'm i'm actually like a huge fan of that style when a movie just like decides like it's not just slow it's like purposefully slow it's like aggravatingly slow like when a movie looks you in the eyes and says i'm gonna punish you for watching me that's my kind of movie right that's what you like i love it man i'm like this is now this is a movie i can get down with when a

movie doesn't know it's punishing me when a movie thinks it's actually good but it's not that's when i get mad right when a movie knows it knows that it's just dragging its feet then i'm happy i love that the first major event that happens in this movie we've got the setup right he rolls into town he moves into the into the mountains for unknown reasons and that's okay right we don't need to know what happened to jeremiah johnson before this and i think that's cool i think it's fine he's a man with no name no flashbacks he's just doing his thing if disney did this movie it would have started when jeremiah was born whoa no it would have started now and then we would have immediately like 10 seconds later had a flashback of when jeremiah to when he was born probably a flashback within that flashback too but jeremiah johnson he has chosen for whatever reason he has chosen that he's gonna live in this mountain he's gonna live here he's not good at it he doesn't

know how to do it but he wants to live here and he sees crazy old bear claw chris lap and he sees this crazy senile gun waving old man and he's like his eyes grow wide with adoration and he's like that is what i want to be that's who i want to be like he sees his the ideal man in front of him and he's like i aspire to be you and then he just he's that's what he does he spends months just hanging out with crazy old bear bear claw chris lap and learning everything he knows well Well, for the most part, I remember all the scenes where something happens, but I just don't remember the long sequences in between. It's so weird that my brain edited a version of this movie that is better than the movie itself. And I wish that I could somehow get that version. I mean, it's like when you're driving, you know, you don't remember the driving. You remember where you were and you remember where you are, but you're not going to think and be like, and then I drove and then I drove and then I drove and then I drove.

You edit that part out. This time, though, when I watched it as an adult, I was like, oh, and then I drove, and then I drove, and then I drove. Uh-oh. Wow. So, I very vividly remember the scene where Chris Lapp comes running into the house and jumps out the window with a bear chasing him just because he wants Jeremiah Johnson to kill this bear for him, which presumably Chris Lapp does all the time. Yeah, yeah. He must kill bears. he's mad he's mad at jeremiah johnson and he's making a joke because jeremiah johnson was cocky jeremiah was like he said i can skin almost anything no he said i can skin anything chris was like hey you know can you skin a bear and then he's like you bring me a bear i'll skin it and then chris is like all right i'll bring you a bear i'll bring you one he brings him a live bear and he's like you skin that jeremiah johnson i'll bring you more he's a funny guy but it's not a good joke because it's a grizzly bear right in most situations jeremiah johnson

would die well i mean this is the ultimate test right i do very vividly remember the scene where he finds the gun he always wanted in the hands of a frozen man sorry i did gloss somehow he gets his legendary gun yeah he has this legendary gun he really wants he didn't quite get the one he wanted and then he finds a frozen man just up in the mountains who has the legendary gun and not only that who wrote a note and pinned it to himself saying hey take my gun me this is your gun it's so good well and that gun is legit legendary because then later when he meets like straight out of like dungeons and dragons kind of moment like you you found the magical weapon that you wanted he meets another guy just because you searched through an old skeleton and the guy sees the gun and recognizes it and he's like whoa hey ain't that old hatchet pete's gun it's like it's a legend people know that gun it's so good maybe this is the first steps of his

descent into madness and into doing some stuff that he wouldn't normally do and this is where he learns to survive by eating human livers right so uh to me i kind of saw this scene as a little bit uh almost metaphorical like jeremiah johnson he's having a hard time surviving he can't catch a fish he can't do anything he's literally starving he can't he's got nothing then he meets this old man they have a conversation i think that whenever they say the word grizzly uh they really mean the word human and this is just like jeremiah's brain blocking out the word that he doesn't like yeah there's no proof for that though they're definitely referring to grizzlies right? He doesn't say like there are no animals here or anything. Well, that's the thing is the very first conversation he has with this guy, Jeremiah Johnson, he's talking to him and he's like, what are you doing out here? There's no animals in this entire valley. And then old man

Chris is like, nope, ain't been on for nigh on five seasons now. And then he turns to Jeremiah and he's like, but that's not what I hunt. I hunt grizzly. And I think that's where Jeremiah's brain kind of replaces the word he doesn't like with a word he finds more morally acceptable, right? I think maybe Chris Laff has been surviving out here where there are no animals by hunting the passerbys, by hunting the humans. It's very telling to me that in a movie about a historical man who is known for eating livers, right? Jeremiah Johnson goes into Chris's cabin. He sees all these grizzlies skinned and chopped up and hanging everywhere. They're all over the cabin. a serial killer's cabin exactly well that's kind of what it feels like right like he meets this crazy old man out in there and the old man's like come to my cabin come on we'll see what happens and the old man's like make yourself at home jeremiah i'm gonna go do some chores and then

jeremiah just runs over to a raw hanging grizzly liver and grabs it and starts chomping on it like he's just he's just eating this raw grizzly liver maybe it's clearly a liver go watch that scene it's not a haunch like it doesn't have a big bone sticking out of it it's a big chunk of dark spongy meat maybe he then hung out with chris lap and chris lap taught him to survive eating human livers i don't know to me it was symbolic when he burned his cabin down after his family died he's like i don't care about thriving anymore i don't care about anything i'm just gonna kill whatever person i find and eat them kind of and i think he becomes a livery and johnson after that and i think this is shown when um at the very end of the movie after all this time he randomly runs into chris lapp again it's like what the heck what's chris lapp doing here isn't he dead by now he's an old man so i don't know i think this is kind of his way of saying

his past came back to haunt him and he fell back into his old ways and and the conversation they have at the end is very um i mean they're not they're not talking about eating humans but they are talking about regret. They're talking about, you know, if you read between the lines, their whole conversation is just about the regret they have in their lives. And Chris is like, basically, Jeremiah, you don't have to do this. You don't have to be here. And then Jeremiah just shrugs it off. And his only comment is just like, what year is it? Is it March or April? I think it's April. And then Chris is like, no, no, it's March. You know, it's nicer down there in March, But some people don't like it nice. And that's it. And to me, that's kind of just Jeremiah Johnson, like completely losing track of everything. And he's just he's he's done. He's he doesn't know what year it is. He doesn't know what month it is.

He doesn't want any of the good stuff in springtime he could have back down in town. He's just here to eat livers. And that's it. So that scene where he meets Chris Lapp again toward the end of the movie is the only scene that hints that he might be eating human flesh. And you pointed this out to me. Ooh, I did? Yeah, you did. You sent me the clip. And you said, dude, he does talk about being a cannibal. Because Chris Lapp walks up to Jeremiah Johnson, who's cooking something on a stick. And we don't know what it is. But it's on a stick over a fire. Could be anything. And Chris Lapp says, what's on the spit? And then Jeremiah Johnson says, go in particular? Yeah. As like, what? You don't like eating humans anymore? Yeah, exactly. Or are you picky? Go in particular. And then Chris Lapp says, not about feeding, just the company I keep. Meaning, I'm not particular about what I eat, but if you're a cannibal, I don't want to sit down and eat with you.

I don't want to eat with you. Exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. And I don't see how that could be anything but them implying their only reference to the liver-eaten-Johnson thing. Yeah, it's true. There's no reason for Chris Lapp to be asking, what are you eating? And is it okay to sit down with you? Right? Unless they're implying he's a cannibal. Especially when if you look at what he's eating, it is very obviously a rabbit. And Chris Lapp would know that because he's lived on these mountains. He's eaten rabbit. It's obviously a rabbit. He just wants to tell Jeremiah, I've heard about what you've been doing. If they made a movie about George Washington chopping down trees and they never say what kind of trees they are, I think the implication is that they're cherry trees, right? The one thing he's known for, the only thing, and nothing else, is that he chopped down a cherry tree. I don't know what else he's known for, but that's the one thing I know that he's known

for. No, I don't know. I think if if if you make a movie about a person who is known for one particular thing and then you don't address that thing specifically, you know, but you leave the interpretation, you know, there like he's still killing people. He's still killing Indians. There's a few scenes where, you know, they question the things that he's eating. I think it makes sense. I think you I think they didn't want to necessarily put it out there in the open that he's a cannibal, but they did want to maybe, you know, leave a little reference in there. The Wikipedia article for Liver Eaton Johnson, as far as I can tell, seems to follow the movie pretty accurately. Yeah, there's a story that the Blackfeet captured him because the Crow Native Americans had put a bounty on his head. The Blackfeet captured him, and when they were holding him, he chewed through the rawhide handcuffs and then beat up the guard and then cut off the guard's leg and then ate it.

It's like trail mix to keep him going as he went after more crow. And he was like stripped naked when he did all this. Yeah, you don't need no clothes. The story you told about him escaping, being prisoner. The Wikipedia page says that sometimes that story is attributed to Boonhelm. Oh. And so I was like, who's Boonhelm? Yeah, who's that? And I followed the link and Boone Helm, sometimes known as the Kentucky cannibal, was an actual serial killer who lived around the same time period. And this guy was crazy. Like he basically was just killing and eating people his whole life. And it's confirmed way more than than for Jeremiah Johnson. And he even confided in several people. He's like, yeah, pretty much every person I killed, I probably ate a little bit of them, too. Oh, no. Jeez, Boone Helm, what's wrong with you? Oh, no. And he escaped from, like, being hung so many times. Eventually, justice caught up to him.

Yay. But what I found odd was that his Wikipedia article is titled Boone Helm, not the Kentucky Cannibal. Yeah, what? For some reason, Jeremiah Johnson's Wikipedia article is Liver Eaton Johnson. That's ridiculous. One thing I did notice in the movie is that any time the crow tribe is about to show up, you hear a crow. Whoa, that's cool. I just think that's kind of odd. They're not actually crows. You know that, right? No, they are. They control the crows, I think. I don't know. He does hear a crow shortly before he runs into the crazy lady whose family was murdered. And then her surviving son, she gives to him and that becomes his son. He calls him Caleb. Who knows what his real name is because he does not talk. Although later on in the movie, and I didn't notice this as a kid, he always moves his mouth like he might be talking or whispering or something, but you can't hear him. But Jeremiah Johnson actually understands him when he does that.

So, I mean, like, that's one thing I like about Jeremiah Johnson. I mean, he gets his family, his son can't talk, and his wife doesn't speak English. So he makes that joke about like, oh, you guys don't go bothering me now when neither one of them is going to say a word. But then we flash forward several years after they've become a real family, and he can speak flathead to his wife, Swan. And also he understands his nonverbal son, Caleb. So I just thought that was kind of cool. Jeremiah was a good father and husband. Way to go. So Josh Albee, who is the actor who played Caleb, he talked about actress Alan Ann McCleary, who played his mother, the crazy woman. He said that she never, ever broke character, even off camera. She was a method actress and her thing, Her thing in Hollywood was she was always the crazy lady. Like, that was her character. Well, she did it very well. She did. She was good at it.

They were trying to film a scene, and it was supposed to be snowing in the scene, but the snow kept stopping. And every time the snow stopped, they would have to yell out, cut, and then they'd stop and reset. And I guess Robert Redford was getting frustrated. And he's like, ah, he turns to the kid, and he's like, hey, let's run lines together. And then they were just riding the horse around and he's going to run some lines while they're doing that. And then apparently he says he just laid out this chuckle like Jeremiah Johnson would and goes, hey, I just remembered you ain't got no lines. I'm like, whoa, let's run lines with the kid who has zero lines.

i feel like you could make a really cool anime about him just like a tv show about him he feels like an anime protagonist like accidentally becoming this avenging warrior and gaining a wife and a kid purely by accident like he didn't want them but now he's stuck with them and his wife is a total uh tsundere she's like complete like oh i don't like you oh i don't care about you hear how have some of this disgusting food i made right yeah idiot yeah exactly she pretends to ignore him all the time and he hates the food but he has to pretend he likes it that crow indian that he leaves alive and the the hunting party they tracked down so he kills them all he's about to kill that last indian that last indian gets up on his knees and starts singing a war cry or whatever he's doing and then and then that that that guy that native american must think that his voice has magical powers because from his perspective it just makes crazed insane savage

johnson go turn around lay down and fall asleep he wants to be like wow my voice did that are you Are you telling me his voice doesn't have magic powers? Well, maybe it did. I don't know. That's how I watched it. It sure seems like it. I also, I really loved one of the final confrontations he has with the crow brave where he gets hit and then he takes the hit and falls down like he's dead. And then he lays there and literally watches the brave, the crow approach him in the reflection in his horse's eye. So that he can see him getting closer. He knows exactly when to turn around and shoot. And I was like, whoa, that's so anime. That is so cool. That is hardcore. And he still gets hit anyway. Like he kills the guy, but he gets hit. Jeremiah Johnson's a fantastic movie. And Robert Redford was one of the greatest actors of our time. I just think he's a cool guy. And I'm sad to see him go. But his legend will live on forever.

And I got to say, I got to give credit to Robert Redford because he may not have known it. In fact, I am 100% certain that he didn't know it and he would not have cared if he did know it. But Robert Redford is actually personally one of the contributing factors for us starting this podcast. Oh, that's true. Yeah, he did not know that. No, yes. And he wouldn't have cared if he didn't know. No, one of the movies that led to me wanting to sort of do this podcast, after watching All is Lost, which is Robert Redford's 2013 survival movie, I had a theory about that. We did an impromptu podcast before we had a podcast. Yeah. No, I had a major theory about that movie. And honestly, I 100 percent believe my theory about that movie, especially going by the title of that movie. But it's a great movie. If you want to watch a true like tough as nails survival movie, I'm not talking about like survival horror. I'm not talking about like survive because a grizzly bear is going to kill you or because the wolves are going to kill you when you fall off of your ski lift.

i'm talking about just like this movie shows bad things that could happen and it shows what would happen if you actually tried to survive those bad things um that is all is lost that is a great movie is the the honestly probably the best survival movie i've ever seen um i love that movie it's it's very grim though but anyway at least my interpretation of it is very grim it's a good movie though i like it was he liver eating johnson was he eating livers and taking names and also livers and eating them i mean i guess yeah he wouldn't lie to me so all right uh hey if you liked it remember we got a patreon you can subscribe you know throw a little bit of support our way it means the world to us if you do you can watch all kinds of hilarious outtakes We've got entire episodes up there of never-before-seen content, so go subscribe, give it a listen, it's fun. And always remember, the popcorn isn't real.

Popcorn isn't real

Chasing clues through the silver screen wishing for this hazy spiel the popcorn isn't real

Caught in a moment that will never heal The popcorn isn't real The craft of fiction within fiction's mind Searching for secrets we'll never find Every clue, just a future we steal The popcorn isn't real We whisper theories, but they all fade. A fleeting ghost in a midnight parade. Holding on to that surreal appeal. The popcorn isn't real. Behind the curtain, there's nothing to feel. The popcorn isn't real. Caught in a moment that will never heal. The popcorn isn't real. We'll see you next time.