(phone message notification swishing)
(tapping)
- Are you seriously blowing off your
friends to watch Empire Strikes Back?
Dude, this is the exact thing
I keep telling you not to do.
- Hey, I at least made some friends
that I can repeatedly cancel on,
thanks to you bugging me.
Baby steps, I'm trying.
- [Martin] Well, you know what they say about trying.
Do or do not, my friend.
- I dunno, it's been a while and I just
really want to finish watching this, I guess.
- Man, we musta watched this fucker
30 times over the years.
- Yeah, but every age you watch a
movie at, it's a different you
watching it, you know?
30-something me has never seen this movie before.
I can't have seen it, 'cause I don't ever remember being
so rattled by it before.
- I know, Luke was unknowingly dating
his sister the whole time.
- Ha, yeah that too.
And the whole
going to the Dark Side of the Force
thing, that's definitely a keeper.
Anger being the easy way out,
however he phrased it.
- Quicker, easier, more seductive.
- Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the most
perfect metaphor that's ever
emerged from a 40 billion-dollar marketing franchise.
- Hmm, can't argue that one.
What's bothering you though?
You know I hate seeing you like this.
- I dunno, it's the Obi Wan stuff, to be honest.
I never really thought about it when we were kids.
Like, oh, he dies, and then the Force
magically lets him come back as a
blue ghost thing or a voice or
whatever, good times.
But it's like you always said--
- Movies aren't real, so you don't
need to analyze them like you'd analyze real events.
- Yeah, and I watch this movie now
just as a metaphor and the whole thing
just hits me in a different way.
He dies in the previous movie but then he's still around,
and I dunno, now it really makes me think
about what it actually means to be alive.
What is life?
It's kinda like, um, just gesturing with
my hands here, I dunno.
I dunno, maybe I don't actually have anything to say here.
- [Martin] You know what I'm gonna say, right?
- Yeah, you're gonna say that the difference
between silence and genius is self-doubt.
What are the odds of that though?
- Mhmm.
- I know, I know, never tell you the odds.
- Man, how'd you get so big eating food of this kind?
- I know, I'm working on that.
I had a vegetable last week, I swear!
Pizza is a vegetable, right?
- No, but cheeses do make one grate.
- Ugh, pfft, okay, so yeah, the meaning of life.
Um, the definition of life, anyway,
we live in an interconnected society, right?
- The Force flows through all things.
Man, did you make some visual aids?
- Well, you were always the creative one,
but I figured I'd take some inspiration.
- Ahh, I have taught you well.
- Well you're still the master.
So anyway, we're all alive in and of ourselves,
but so much of who we are is, like,
how we relate to others,
and how others see us, and how we see them,
or something, okay dammit,
this is why I made visual aids.
- Let's see.
- So, like, the internet age, right?
There are tons of people who have friends they've never
physically met or even spoken to.
They're just text on a screen,
but they're alive.
They're someone even though to you they mostly exist
in your head.
It already kind of requires a new definition of life.
- See, I told you you weren't stupid.
- Okay, and then, do you remember
that one time we thought uncle Karl was dead?
- But it turned out to just be a poorly-worded email?
Heh, yeah, that was a fun two hours.
- Yeah, so we'd see him like two days a year maybe.
He basically existed as a feeling of someone being out
there who's in your corner,
and we mean the same to him, but even back
then I remember thinking what actual difference
was there that he was dead?
I don't mean that in a bad way, like obviously him being
dead would make a difference to him
personally, but from this distance he'd be as alive as ever.
He's a set of feelings and memories and advice.
He's a hand on your shoulder, metaphorically speaking.
He's never here, but he's alive,
even when he's dead.
What is life?
- [Martin] God, "what is love" would've been so much easier.
- Good segue actually!
So, think of any song.
Shit, even think of "What is Love".
- Done and done.
- Great, now, think, how many times have you
actually heard the actual song, three?
Maybe half a dozen?
And yet you've probably heard it in your head
hundreds of times.
Songs, movies, whatever, you experience them once
or a couple times, but then the
majority of their existence is you remembering them.
They live in your head.
And, you don't remember them perfectly
so maybe the details change--
- Luke, I am your father!
- Exactly!!
Everyone remembers that line differently
from how it is in the movie, so which is the real line?
When they inevitably remake that
movie 50 years from now I bet the
misremembered version will be the
line in the script because it lives
so much larger.
- [Martin] I would not take that bet actually.
- [Jackson] So what is life?
Something exists, but then it becomes connected
to people and it takes on a new existence.
If they erased all the copies of that movie we'd have to
recreate it using collective
memory, and we would, and that's
how stories used to exist anyway,
the oral tradition or whatever.
And you could even say that about the storytellers.
- [Martin] Oh, like the creator of Calvin & Hobbes.
- I knew you'd say that!
You used to be obsessed with that comic.
So yeah, he makes art for years and then he retires
from public life, so to us in the audience it feels
like he's dead because the art was
how we knew him.
It was how he was alive to us.
But then on the other hand,
if he was literally dead
- and knock on wood -
the work he created is still here, so it will
permanently feel like he's still out there.
It feels like he's dead
but he'll always feel alive.
What is life?
- [Martin] If a stuffed tiger is alive in your
mind, is it alive?
- [Jackson] Yeah, no kidding.
And if a comic strip or a movie feels so authentic
that you react to it with the same
emotions you'd react to real things
with, is it real?
Do artists live forever if their work lives forever?
Look at Shakespeare.
If he suddenly rose from the grave
tomorrow he'd be exactly as alive
to me as he was last week, since
I'd never meet him anyway.
His purpose was to reach an audience,
and he lives through his work and
them, and that purpose is pretty
limitless, so he's pretty immortal.
- [Martin] So you're thinking that purpose is
the key here.
Yeah, and then it's like, what if
you aren't the most famous
playwright in history?
What if you just suck and have no influence
on anyone, could you then stop
existing before you physically die?
Say you're just a loser and there
comes the point where anything
you've ever said has already been forgotten,
but you're only like 45, or 30.
It's the opposite.
You're physically still there but if you
died it would make zero difference.
- You know that's not you, right?
- No, I don't know that.
- [Martin] Then you know I'm gonna keep harassing you
into believing in yourself and trusting that you
don't suck, if it's the last thing I do.
- Yeah, I know.
I know you are, and there's so
much you'd never need to tell me
because I know word for word
what you'd say, and even when you're not
in the room it's like you're standing right next to me,
so what is life?
Art feels real and hits
you in the same way as reality, what is life?
You lose an arm and you can still feel it, and it hurts.
What is life?
We're connected to limbs and other people
and everyone, and dying can only take
your body away, and it can't take away
the love and advice and opinions
and the way people feel when they
think about you,
so what the fuck is life?
And I watch fucking Star Wars movies and I look at
old Ben Kenobi and I see this story
of someone who cares so much about
what happens to this Luke kid that
death can't silence him, and I
can't get over that.
Like, he's not literally there as a blue
ghost, it's just symbolic for how
his purpose meant he lived on.
He wasn't physically present, but he
may as well have been 'cause
Luke knew exactly what he would say
and he tried to live up to it.
If so much of who other people are is
that space they occupy in your
mind, then if we always need them
then they're always gonna be alive.
They say hell is other people,
but life is other people if you care
about them enough.
That's what life is, has to be.
I see all that stuff in Empire
Strikes Back and it just, it just rings true, I guess.
I'm glad you pushed me to actually express this.
It's stuff I think about a lot.
- [Martin] Ha, and I thought you hated those movies now.
- No, no I just hate watching them by myself,
even after all these years.
- [Martin] Yeah.
- Sorry, I know you hate me dwelling on loss and such.
- [Martin] You know I want to say something helpful, but it's just,
I never had anyone die on me
so I never feel like I have the right to say anything.
- Nah, man, I bet I even know what you'd say.
- [Martin] Then you know I'd probably at least
say that I like your theory and if
someone can live on in others it's
hopefully as the knowledge that
they cared about you enough for you
to keep going without them.
- Yeah, I just hope you know that I
care that much about you too.
- [Martin] Search your feelings, you know it
to be true.
Dude, you think you'd be talking to me otherwise?
(phone message notification sound)
Hey, your friends are here.
Promise me you'll enjoy yourself, huh?
Get drunk, tell someone you love them.
- Yeah, I promise.
See you around?
- [Martin] Always, man, I love you.
- I know.
(gentle music)