SPEAKER_00 0:00

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SPEAKER_04 1:02

In today's episode, we're discussing the 1989 underwater adventure movie The Abyss. I'm your host, Olin Vanderleiden, representing Gen X. Joining me today is my Gen X co-host Matthew Stockton. Hello, everybody. Representing the Millennials this week, we have sci-fi enthusiast Sean. Hello. And representing Gen Z, we have our rat rights activist Nicole. It's a good one. But that's not all. We're also thrilled to have with us today a special guest for this very deep conversation. Today we're joined by Kirk Kroc, one of the leading free diving educators and underwater performance specialists. Kirk is the founder of Performance Free Diving International, where he has trained world champions, military special ops, and Hollywood actors in the art and safety of breath hold diving. Kirk was also involved behind the scenes on Avatar, The Way of the Water, where he worked with James Cameron and trained the cast and crew for the film's groundbreaking underwater performance, Captured Scenes. Over a career spanning more than three decades, Kirk has logged thousands of dives in caves, wrecks, under ice, and at extreme depths, while also helping to pioneer modern free diving education and safety. Welcome, Kirk, and thanks for helping us break down this underwater spectacle today. We're really excited to have you on. We're excited to be here and looking forward to it. Okay. First thing I'm going to do is just introduce the movie here. So the Abyss stars Ed Harris, Michael Bean, and Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio. This movie is directed by James Cameron, and I don't need to tell you about James Cameron, the greatest revenue director of all time. But if you don't know, he directed The Terminator and Aliens before this. He went on to direct many huge blockbusters, including True Lies. Kirk, we just did True Lies and we had Peter Kent on, who was the stunt double for Schwarzenegger on that. So that was fun. James Cameron. He also did Avatar and Titanic. The tagline for the movie is a place on Earth more awesome than anywhere in space. That's kind of a cool tagline. And IMDB describes the film as a civilian diving team is enlisted to search for a lost nuclear submarine and faces danger while encountering an alien aquatic species. Sounds accurate. Sounds accurate. So what did you guys think of this movie? Just overall reaction to this before we start discussing it. Who wants to say?

SPEAKER_06 3:26

I haven't seen this movie since I first saw it. And was blown away with like how much more I got out of it and how just absolutely awesome this movie is. I loved this movie the second time around. Sean, what'd you think?

SPEAKER_05 3:44

I really liked this movie. It was a lot of fun. I was I don't know what I expected from the title, but it wasn't what I expected. That's for sure. But I I give them a lot of credit for being, I feel, quite brave with some elements of the story at the end.

SPEAKER_06 3:57

You know, and it it feels like it's like this brief moment in time where Hollywood still believed that blockbuster audiences could handle sincerity, dread, philosophy, and technical obsession all at once. Like if they pulled it all together, right? This movie has everything, in my humble opinion. Nicole, do you agree?

SPEAKER_07 4:15

I think it had a lot of really incredible moments and it had a lot of potential, but I think as a whole it fell a little flat. I think there were a few things that maybe dragged it out too much or didn't really make a lot of sense. And overall, would I watch it again maybe one day, but not. I wouldn't be like, oh, I should watch it again right now, you know?

SPEAKER_04 4:41

Actually, I watched it twice for this. I'll tell you what I think in a second. Uh Kurt, did you did you rewatch this film?

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Uh no, I've only watched it again for about the 30th time. So because I hate it so much. All right. And it's completely unrealistic. And so that's why I so I watch it like several times a year. Oh, that's great. That's great.

SPEAKER_04 5:03

Well, you know, funny, I'm I'm closest to Nicole in opinion here. So I hadn't seen this movie in 37 years. First of all, I forgot that it was about a sub. There's way more movies about lost nuclear submarines than I expected. And what I said is this is a bad movie with good ideas. I enjoyed watching it, but but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe this isn't James Cameron's best work, but I am glad he landed on his feet.

SPEAKER_07 5:28

Yeah, no, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_06 5:30

I think if this is like one of Cameron's best movies, really this is an awesome movie. Come on. All then, I'm disappointed in you, man.

SPEAKER_07 5:40

I love you. It's it's not very good.

SPEAKER_06 5:42

Do we do we just set in?

SPEAKER_04 5:46

50 called this movie. We're starting right in.

SPEAKER_07 5:50

I was disappointed. It had so much potential, and I love underwater movies like this. I love like underwater is terrifying. It's so scary. It would set it up so good to be like a good scary movie, but then there were just like so many things that dragged it down.

SPEAKER_06 6:06

You just reminded me that when I was living in Moscow in the early 90s, I got a bootleg copy on DVD of Waterworld before all the special effects were added. So their scenes were just somebody on a blue screen going like this, and and you had one Russian voiceover doing all the voice over voices, it was hilarious. Anyway, sorry, I digressed.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

So so listen, let me let me jump in here because um clearly Olin and Nicole are wrong. You're both wrong. Yeah, you're both wrong. You're way out of your depth in front of. And here's the reason why that if you're a water person, for example, you would look at the abyss, and if you're a professional in the uh a water person, you look at the abyss, and you're actually astounded compared to most Hollywood, how technically accurate it was, both in the science and what they were trying to do. Now, you know, there was a stretch, right? This is kind of you know supposed to be into the future, and there was dive, unique diving systems and things like that. But it would have been really easy for any other director to go off and to make Leviathan or some of those other movies that came along that were, you know, in my opinion, very hokey. Whereas this one was really kind of technically correct. When you look at the sets and and the depiction of what it looked like down there, you know, aliens aside, right? You know, the only thing would be for the depth they were at, there would have been breathing helium, so they would have had these super high, squeaky voices, which in real diving like that, you have this modulator that kind of you know modulates your voice down so you can you can understand each other through communications. But you kind of get how the audience wouldn't be able to sit through listening to that. So it was good.

SPEAKER_06 7:58

When you go really deep, you start to sound like Karen from Will and Grace. Yeah, yeah. On helium, right? Yeah, Karen from her on helium. Yeah, exactly. So that's really fascinating that it's technically was spot on. But you know, if you think about Karen's films for me, they're they're all they're almost always secretly about people learning how to care for each other before catastrophe wipes them out. Like that, that's a theme in so many of I feel in so many of his movies. And you know, what I love about this is the Abyss refuses cynicism. It's a movie that that believes that empathy truly matters. So so you have these great scenes and that worm water thing, which still blows me away. That was the first time we'd ever seen it, right? But you have you have empathy between husband and wife and nations and everything. I I don't know. I think it's a great film.

SPEAKER_07 8:51

Listen, I think it had a lot of really good moments, and I think like none of my bad parts were about the plot or what was happening or the technical details. All my bad points were like movie-making critiques. Like, I think the story was really incredible. I liked everything they were doing. I liked watching the scenes. I just think like could have been trimmed a little bit to make it make more sense, could have introduced the characters a bit more, perhaps. All my critiques are from the movie-making perspective, not from the facts and the scenes and well we'll we'll get into the details a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Before we do, I just want to take a pause and and Kirk. I want to ask you about yourself a little bit if I can. Like, how did you get into this space? How did you get into this? What sounds like a pretty specialized field? So, Kirk, were you a prairie boy?

SPEAKER_06 9:42

Yeah, originally. So Yeah, so that's what freaks me out.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Right, right. So tell us that story, man. Yeah, so I I grew up in Saskatchewan, the land's so flat you watch your dog run away for three days, but the northern half of the province is, you know, Canadian Shield and thousands and thousands of lakes. And my parents, we had a sailboat, and so we used to sail and snorkel, and at a very young age, I was put into swimming lessons just repeatedly over and over. By the time I was 15, 14, I was given scuba lessons as a birthday present. And, you know, just I was just drawn to the water inexplicably. And, you know, the story is by grade 10, I knew I was gonna be a business owner at a young age, and I knew it would be aquatics or water-based. Had no idea it was gonna go into diving, let alone my career and where it has taken me. So, yeah, from there, just a scuba instructor, then a technical diving mixed gas instructor, and then I got into free diving, and then, you know, just kind of my whole life has been in and around this. Now, the interesting thing about the abyss is it came out in August of 89. I had just become a brand new instructor in December of 88. I was just moving to the Cayman Islands when the Abyss came out. Okay. And little did I know back then that my life would probably intersect the abyss in numerous ways. You know, number one, I'd be in Cayman, because this takes place in the Cayman trough, right? Uh, number two, that I would meet James Cameron and work on Avatar for him, training his cast and crew. Uh number three, I would eventually start working for a company, Deep, that's the name of it, of which I've left several weeks ago, but that is making underwater habitats. And fourth, I was involved in a liquid breathing project, the actual liquid breathing to bring it to see if we could bring it out of the hospital setting and actually into the real diving setting where it is possible. So, you know, like 30 some years later, here I am, having kind of hit all of those milestones around this movie that for me changed my life. Because when I saw it, I was like, get me as deep as I can, let me stay as long as I can. I just want to explore from the top of the water column to the bottom of the water column. So, yeah, it's a kind of an interesting, you know, story arc for me.

SPEAKER_07 12:15

Currently, is liquid oxygen like something that is used in diving?

SPEAKER_03 12:20

So it's actually, yeah, it's actually called perfluorocarbon. So it's based on the fluorine molecule, and it's a liquid that kind of mimics plasma in a way, and it has the ability to hold more oxygen than the same volume of air does, and it can get rid of carbon dioxide, although not as good if you're working at a high metabolic rate. And so the idea is you flood your lungs with this stuff, and if you could circulate it and keep reoxygenating it, your lungs don't get compressed by pressure, and it takes care of a lot of things. Decompression sickness from the absorption of nitrogen. It takes care of narcosis, which is the high kind of narcotic effect that nitrogen can have on you. It can control oxygen toxicity from too much oxygen. So it would be this really amazing thing. And there have been people who it's been used in the hospital setting for people who have had steam burns in the lungs or a way to uh bring out uh chemical irritation and things like that. It's a great way to deliver drugs through the respiratory system, but it's never really been used successfully in dieting because the end result is when you remove the liquid from the person, there can then be these pneumonias. So, this working group I was with for three days, which had some of the experts in it and in operations, some of the engineers, the original developers, we all, after three days breaking into our working groups, out of like 37 of us, I think, 35 of us said yes, in five years with an X amount of money, we could go to 300 meters for two hours and come straight to the surface. Two people said thumbs sideways, but no one said thumbs down. And um, so that's that's where it stands. It's a real thing, it can happen. And in fact, when you see Hippie put the mouse under perfluorocarbon, that was a real scene. And I think that in trouble from the SBCA. Yeah, yeah, they they really did that.

SPEAKER_06 14:22

Yep, that's that's true. I had that in the trivia one movie. Did you ever work at Pinewood Studios, the other water stage there in the UK? Uh do you do not Pinewood Yeah. Do you do the tank work or do you do like in real water work mostly?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

No, so I worked at Leavesden studios in the UK. Yeah, yeah. And I trained Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson for Mission Impossible Rogue Nation.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

Oh, I was gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_06 14:50

Yeah, so I'm yeah, so I used to live in the UK, and and a friend of mine does a lot of set design, so I was always going to Pinewood and that tank cool.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yeah, absolutely absolutely. So I don't really work in the movie industry. I get brought in as a subject matter expert to train the casting, to train the casting crew, right? However, after two and a half years full-time on an avatar in LA and then another four years with three, four months at a time in New Zealand and back and forth, I feel like you know, I work in in Hollywood, but that's not my main gig.

SPEAKER_06 15:26

And have you seen the The Deepest Breath, The Doc? What did you think of that documentary? I I cry every time I see it.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

You know, I I have troubles watching a lot of diving movies simply because I sit there going, Oh, give me an eff and break, right? You know, just because sometimes they're so overinflated or too dramatic or whatever. The thing, a problem I have with free diving movies is it's always the tragic love story. And free diving, breath hole diving is so much more than that, but no, it's you know, what happened there is definitely tragedy.

SPEAKER_06 16:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:05

So tell us what it was like working with James Cameron on Avatar. I'm really curious about working with Tom Cruise, too, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

Yeah, so working with James Cameron, that'd be like saying, So, what's it like helping Michelangelo paint the Sisting Chapel? What's it like, you know, holding Salvador Dali's uh paint easel, right? James Cameron is like an incredible artist. He's you know an incredible painter, but he has to do it through 500 plus people, right? He can't hold the brush, he he can't like pick out the canvas, he's gotta have all these people do these things. When you see him be able to paint such amazing works of art, that will stand the test of time in a way, through all of these people. It's just a fantastic process. I think most of all, what, especially from the avatar point of view for me was his dedication to the realism. Avatar is in our reality, right? This isn't the Marvel universe. People don't fly, there's no laser beams coming out of people's eyes. Avatar takes place in our reality, just in the future on another planet. So the real physics of the world apply. And so one of the things that was amazing and really says so much about James Cameron is it would have been cheaper, it would have been easier, it would have been faster to just let the computer nerds you say, this is what diving looks like, and and CGI and animate it, right? And and you could say, who would know? But you know, just like if you watch someone walking, and there's about 1200 micro movements in that walk. If you get the best person to uh try and animate it, it looks great, but you'll be like, There's something, something there, right? You you'll pick up on those 10 micro movements that don't make sense, and you can't pick them out. You just know it doesn't work, doesn't work. So he in doing the water against everyone trying to say do it faster, cheaper, he said, I'm still doing it in the water. Because he has this ethos that says you can take the person away, the audience, you can remove them from the movie one time, meaning you're watching it and you go, like, oh, that was weird, or oh, give me a break. If you do that more than one time, then you've lost the audience for the whole of the movie, right? So I recall a scene we were shooting in New Zealand. We spent five days shooting this scene, and it was about three seconds long. Like we were going to get the accuracy and the realism of that. And probably no other director would do that. But here's what you can bank on: billion dollar revenues, yeah, right? So when James Cameron says, I'm gonna make a movie, you just keep writing checks till I tell you to stop and never ask me when it's gonna be done. People line up because they know he'll produce a blockbuster. And so to work for someone like that, with all of his nuances, you know, it's an honor and just amazing to watch kind of uh artistry in action. Cool. And what what other films have you worked on or been involved in? Well, so I've done both the avatars, Mission Impossible. I worked on Suicide Squad, I trained Margot Robbie for the when the pink Lamborghini crashes into the water with the Joker and Harley Quinn, and Harley Quinn like smashes through the front window of the pink Lamborghini, and Batman punches her out and brings her to the surface. So I trained her for that scene, and and I actually that was my first ever stunt. I got to be Batman in that. Oh, cool. So uh that is that is my ultimate claim to fame. I was the Batman. Did you do Wakanda Forever? I worked on Black Panther Wakanda Forever, and in that I was really one of the bridges between the technical experts of the world's smallest submersible, which was a Newt suit, a human-looking Iron Man-like one atmosphere suit, and the movie. So kind of made sure that all worked out. And then I've done a lot of documentary work. That's great.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Okay, so you train Tom Cruise, right? That's so cool. Um, I know that, or at least I read that he could hold his breath for six minutes by the time he was ready to go for the movie. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Yeah, yeah. Uh, he did a dry breath hold with me in training that was just over six and a half minutes. That's incredible. So, how long can you hold your breath if you have to? Uh use using air. Using air. In water, I've done seven minutes. Wow. Wow. A couple of decades ago. I'm right next door to a friend of mine and an instructor of mine who uh holds his breath just shy nine minutes. Wow. Nate laser's his name, right? And hardly any brain damage at often with the attack.

SPEAKER_06 21:04

I can't even do it for 30 seconds, and I'm still brain damaged. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_07 21:10

I think the world record for holding breath underwater was just broken. I feel like I read that before.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah. Yep. There's a woman who's done 940 now, she's up to, and the men's world record is 1135. This is using air and using 100% oxygen as a breathing gas beforehand, which helps, is just shy of 30 minutes. Wow. One thing that's interesting in the movie industry that I kind of changed in a way was the directors are used to saying in action, right? But you can't be a free diver coordinated with a whole bunch of other freedivers and suddenly in action, and you're like, everyone's suddenly you have to hold your breath. So we go through a breathe up process. So in fact, we changed it where we got the whole production on a countdown clock. So in working with, you know, with Tom Cruise and all of them, but you know, especially with James Cameron, we had these massive flat screens with this countdown timer. And Jim would say to me after he briefed Kate Winslett on her scene, he'd say, Kirk, how are we gonna do this? And I tell him, Well, I'm gonna wait her neutrally buoyant and trim her balance here, and I'm gonna help her at this point, because I'm not in a dotted suit. So you don't see me. I'm I'm in every scene in Avatar Underwater. I'm just, you know, you never see me. Although I did a stunt that you you can pick me out. But then I tell him how long we need to breathe up, and then they start the countdown clock. Two minutes, minute 30, one minute, and then five, four, three, two, one. And in that timing, they have to then spool up and get everything ready to go. And action happens when we actually get to zero and we coordinate our last breath and go. So it's kind of like reversing it a little bit. So there's lots of amazing stories in trying to do that because some of those breath holds we did were over four and a half minutes long while trying to shoot a scene. Wow. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 23:09

Incredible. Well, let's talk about the movie a little bit then and some of the thoughts that I had about this movie. First thing that came to mind for me is how often do people lose nuclear submarines? Because Hollywood would have you believe that it happens a lot. But I actually looked it up, if you're curious, I looked up the stats because I thought this seemed weird. So the actual total of how many subs have been lost under the ocean is 900. 40,000 people have died in subs underwater, nine of them were nuclear.

SPEAKER_06 23:40

So they more than anyone.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

So we're losing we're losing nuclear subs all the time. And just if you guys are curious, there's 200 submarines underwater at any given time, which means there's 20,000 people that live under the ocean.

SPEAKER_06 23:54

And there's four in a shopping mall in Edmonton.

SPEAKER_04 24:01

Kirk, did you know that many actors actually almost drowned on this movie? Yeah, I've heard some of the stories from Jim himself. Oh, and did the Ed Harris story? I'm just gonna tell it for people here. At least I'll tell you what I heard, and you can tell me if you've heard different. Yep. But Ed Harris actually almost drowned on this movie. He got to the point where you know he was needing assistance. There's guys that come and assist and give you air when you need it when you're under Safety Diver. Safety divers. So he got to the point where he needed a safety diver, and then when he signaled, the safety diver got caught up in cables and couldn't reach him. And he started to panic. He almost drowned. And then the story I heard also is that Ed Harris took a swing at James Cameron when he came out because James kept filming through the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Well, you did you don't want to miss that's that's some good footage, man? Probably added to the realism. Yeah, really. Method acting.

SPEAKER_07 24:54

He's pretending to drown.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

The other thing that fascinated me, this is bringing some of the trivia forward a little bit, but this was filmed in a nuclear reactor in South Carolina. Uh, and that reactor housing became the largest underwater set in the world with 7.5 million gallons, which is 11 Olympic pools worth of water. So they weren't kidding around on this.

SPEAKER_07 25:16

No, ask me.

SPEAKER_04 25:17

Kirk, what is your favorite dive-based movie?

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Well, I have to tell you Avatar the Way of Water. It is. Well, in fact, uh, the both the last avatars and Fire and Ash, I mean, the the water scenes in there are absolutely incredible. And I think I appreciate them more because I know the lengths of how we got Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet and the kids. Like some of my kids, some of the cast were six to sixteen years old, of which my daughter doubled for one of them. Oh, fun. Um, for a day. And then you had the adult cast, you know, Sigourney Weaver was 69 at the time, and they just did some amazing stuff. But I mean, that aside, Abyss is the my next most favorite movie, yeah, hands down. And then you have stuff like from a freediving point of view, there's Into the Blue by Luke Basson. Yeah, yeah. Fun. Yeah. I think some people look at it and think it's kind of campy a little bit, but from a free diver's point of view, again, like if you're living it and you watch it, you can move past the campiness and you can enjoy the you know the water aspect of it. Into the blue was another great one that had a lot of breath holding and free diving in it. In fact, a really good friend of mine was the underwater DP on that. He also was the underwater P on Avatar, so Pete Zuccherini. Him and I would actually work on uh Suicide Squad together as well. You know, another great one is Sanctum. And Sanctum is just, you know, a cave diving kind of, you know, it isn't strange monsters trying to get them. It's just like, you know, they gotta they gotta keep getting out of the cave and following it because of the the weather and the flooding and all that sort of stuff, which kind of prescient nowadays in the last couple of cave things we've heard about. So though those are all really great movies, but you know, yeah, definitely the Avatar stuff and then the abyss. Cool. Cool. Okay, well, a couple other questions.

SPEAKER_04 27:21

I you'll quick you have to say something Nicole.

SPEAKER_07 27:24

No, I'm just fascinated. I'm just having a great time.

SPEAKER_04 27:27

This this is this is a great conversation, uh, and I could talk about this stuff all day. I have a couple other uh questions about this film. Sean is our nuclear bomb expert. Why are all nuclear bombs diffused with one wire? Safety. Yeah. You you don't want to make it a little trickier so people can't just diffuse them that easily?

SPEAKER_05 27:48

I don't think they tend to be uh they tend to be launched when they're sent at someone, so I'm not sure it matters. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 27:56

What if they're launched really slowly underwater?

SPEAKER_05 27:59

Like what's the I don't think it was designed for that. Though I do actually I am curious how they would actually be diffused, because it probably isn't as complicated as you would think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:10

The one wire thing always makes me laugh. Nicole, why did Bud keep his wedding ring in the toilet?

SPEAKER_07 28:16

See, I was wondering about that as well, because he didn't flush it down the toilet. Does that mean every time he had to use the toilet, he went and he took his wedding ring out and he put it on the counter, and then he used the toilet and then he put the wedding ring back in.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

Like No, no, no. Hang on, hang on. You're you're missing it. Okay. Am I? He got mad he got mad at Lindsay, right? Yes. And then he ran to the toilet and threw it in and then went to walk away, and then realized ah, he still loves her. And then he has the blue arm for the rest of it. I okay.

SPEAKER_07 28:47

I was wondering about that. One of my favorite scenes, though, was when the wedding ring saved him by catching in the door, and then it didn't cut off his fingers, and it kept the door popped open. That was an awesome detail.

SPEAKER_05 28:58

Good callback. I actually have a friend whose hand was saved by his wedding ring when an engine fell on his hand when doing mechanical ring.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Oh no wow.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

See, I'm the opposite. I wear rubber because I've seen too many people get their fingers ripped off from wedding rings. Yeah. Also a thing that happens. Yeah. Okay, so should we roll right into best parts of this movie? You guys want to talk about that? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 29:23

I haven't.

SPEAKER_04 29:24

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 29:25

And you know.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

I uh I have two.

SPEAKER_07 29:27

I have way more best parts than I have worse parts.

SPEAKER_06 29:30

Okay, somebody go. Best parts. So so the CPR scene is one of the best scenes in a in a camera movie ever because it's brutal and it's messy, and he's trying to save her life, and it feels it that that scene feels horrifyingly real to me. I agree. And then I love and then when she like insults him as soon as she wakes up, it's great. And then my other best part is that water tentacle scene because like I can remember when I first saw that was the first time any of us saw CGI like that, and it was like the coolest thing in the world, and it still looks good. So those are my two.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Although, although in that scene I had a worst part, which was tasting an alien. She sticks her finger in and tastes him.

SPEAKER_07 30:13

Why did she do that?

SPEAKER_04 30:14

That's that's hot.

SPEAKER_06 30:16

Well, it's well, you would, wouldn't you? No, right?

SPEAKER_07 30:19

When I see something weird that I don't understand, my first thought is not I should lick it.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Okay. If it kills you, it kills you. Best parts for me. I had the submarine chase, you know, sort of the crash up derby with the submarines. I thought was fantastic. I love that. And then the jumping off the cliff scene for me still haunts me with at the end when he's jumping, like just Kirk, not for you, but for lots of people, water is terrifying, right? And just the idea, that vision of him just going deeper and deeper and deeper. I don't know, to me that was terrifying. And then I just said kind of the claustrophobia that they created in this whole movie.

SPEAKER_07 30:57

They did a great job setting the tone.

SPEAKER_04 30:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:00

One of my favorite scenes was when the rigs started, like when it fell and then it started filling with water. Yep. Watching everyone rush around as a team trying to like like close off areas so they don't all drown. Like the way they were rushing around and everyone was just panicking, it really it felt realistic and it was really scary. I thought it was cool.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

Sean, what's your favorite part of this movie?

SPEAKER_05 31:24

I mean, there's a lot of scenes I really liked, and a lot of them have been named. I really enjoyed the uh crane falling into the ocean. They did a really good job of the suspense of just like, well, really hope that doesn't hit us, and then it potentially dragging them over the side. I just I thought that was very well done.

SPEAKER_07 31:46

Like most of it felt very realistic. It was it just looked incredible. I loved it visually.

SPEAKER_05 31:53

And it's a bit more general, but I really like the atmosphere in this movie, and they did a really good job, I feel like, of building up the feel. I it felt isolated in the beginning, and then the hurricane hits and they get disconnected from the surface, and they do such a good job of just making them feel so isolated and trapped. Agreed.

SPEAKER_04 32:14

Kirk, what was your favorite part about this movie?

SPEAKER_03 32:17

Oh there's so many, right? That when when you see them climbing around, they don't have fins on, and they're like climbing around on stuff. I had just worked at West Edmonton Wall Mall as a diver, and we used to go climb on the rocks where the subs went without fins on, right? Sometimes for fun. And we climb around the sub. So like that thing came out, and I was like, oh my god, I've done this. And so I kind of, you know, I really enjoyed that part of it because I could relate to it. I want to get back to the to the CPR scene. That thing looked authentic and real uh in a way. You know, some people say, well, the CPR maybe didn't look, but you can't actually compress a person's chest. So, you know, there's that component there. But one thing about that scene that annoys me though, being a freediver, is and if we can go to the thing we don't like, um, is they're in the sub, it's flooding, they have one helmet left, and he's gonna give it uh, you know, she's Lindsay saying, Virgil, you gotta wear it because you're the better breath holder, and blah, blah, blah. And the the cold will put me in the hypothermia and slow my heart rate down. Like all that is tech, you know, that's great, technically correct. So he puts the helmet on, and then he sits there watching her slowly drowned, and then slowly drowned, and he's holding her for minutes upon minutes. And as the free diver in me, I would be like, Okay, while you got in airspace, she should be breathing up, hold her breath, and then he'd have grabbed her and made a swim for it, right? Right instead of drowning, like you could have he could have knocked off minutes of the drowning and got straight to the rescue. So there's that point of me where I was like uh the real Virgil Brigman in that situation would know to start that breathing now, and we're gonna do a breath hold for as long as we can. So I did that's a technical point from an expert.

SPEAKER_07 34:16

I did have watching your wife drown on worst parts, so I got to agree with you. I was like, why aren't they just starting now? Why is he sitting still and watching her drown instead of like taking her back?

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Yeah, but you needed that dramatic effect of exactly that watching your wife drown before you. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

See, and I was just too distracted by the unpleasantness of thinking about watching your wife drown, but it didn't dawn on me.

SPEAKER_07 34:44

You'd be bad in a in a free diving crisis.

SPEAKER_04 34:48

I okay, so I had under worst parts, not not bad part of the film, but just a terrifying part is fire on a sub to to be in that underwater facility and how fire must be terrifying.

SPEAKER_07 34:59

But there's so much water around to put out the fire.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

But Kirk, you you talked about the idea of things that take you out of the film. You know what took me out of this film was Chris Elliott in a serious role.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:11

I love Chris Elliott.

SPEAKER_06 35:13

Like to see him in a serious role. I'm like, no. But Ed doesn't Ed Harris give one of the greatest exhausted man performances of all time in this film. Like he he he he like plays the exhausted man from life, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:27

I think because they were. They were. And that's method acting, right?

SPEAKER_06 35:33

Yeah, it's like it is hard not to think about the production trauma behind this when you watch the film sometimes, right? Like, like it's especially if you've once you've heard a few things, it's because the film's about human compassion and and like the the danger and the how people were pushed psychologically and physically, you're like, holy crap, right? This was a yeah, this would have been a difficult movie to make.

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Yep. Absolutely. So imagine being imagine being the cast, and there you are in the water for eight hours at night, basically, because it's a dark set, you know, you do get cold, and they did get cold, and the chlorine was having effects on their skin and everything. And after months later, it's not that hard to fake exhaustion, right? It just shows on your face and everything. So, in a way, that lent to the atmosphere of it, I think.

SPEAKER_04 36:23

Uh apparently the cast of the film referred to the film as the abuse while filming. And Ed Harris to this day refuses to talk about his experience on set.

SPEAKER_07 36:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Well, I think there's I think there's a great there's a great quote by Ed Harris. He said, The abyss was many things, fun was not one of them. But Ed, you made an excellent movie one.

SPEAKER_06 36:47

Maybe you have to suffer for our symptoms.

SPEAKER_05 36:50

Yeah. I'm gonna miss a best part and a worst part together because I think uh an important best part is I don't know how to say his last name, but Michael Boin, the guy who played Great Mustache, Michael Bean, the guy who played Lieutenant Coffee. Absolutely amazing job playing a person going crazy.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:10

It was very convincing, and I really, really liked his job of it. But on the other end, the uh military villain angle is very common, and even in the military, I feel like that guy drifted into Crazy Town so far that his men would not be following anymore long before they actually started questioning. Actually, which I appreciated.

SPEAKER_07 37:32

One of my worst parts they did, but one of my worst parts was an already unstable paratrooping man having the sea crazies and access to a nuclear weapon.

SPEAKER_06 37:42

Am I the only one who constantly mixes up Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio and Amy Irving? Am I the only one? Especially in the 80s and the 90s, they kind of had the same hair. And like whenever I saw them in whenever I saw them in movies, I'm like, which one is it?

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Yep. Um, still on Sean's point here. I just wanted to say in Best Parts, I had Michael Bean's mustache. I knew you were gonna put that.

SPEAKER_06 38:05

Olin often does the mustache score on movies. Um Kurt just so I'm a fan of 80s mustaches. All right.

SPEAKER_07 38:13

I I also just remembered and I want to tell everyone because I we watched it together, me and Olin. We um we were sitting and we were watching it, and we're we don't talk when we're watching them because we want to save our thoughts for the podcast. But we're sitting there silently, he just went, I hate that everything's so wet.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

Yes. That was what that was one of my worst parts. I'm sure it's realistic, but on that underground facility, like just everything's dripping all the time. I found it quite unpleasant. So is that is that your favorite line?

SPEAKER_07 38:45

My favorite line, not for the movie, just from you.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 38:48

It's just so funny because they're underwater.

SPEAKER_04 38:51

I want to tell you guys how this film did, but do you have any favorite lines you want to throw out there before I move on?

SPEAKER_05 38:56

I have a few that I'll throw out there. I like Lindsay's line of we all see what we want to see. Coffee looks and sees Russians, he sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that. I like the messaging behind it. I like the line. On the humorous side from Lindsay, also, I liked these guys are about as much fun as a tax audit. That's an insult I'm gonna remember. And then from a story perspective, early on, I like Virgil's line of she didn't leave me, she just left me behind. It's a simple line that I think can phase their relationship and their challenges very well.

SPEAKER_06 39:32

And my favorite line was they want to know if we're worth saving. Because it makes you very good. Wonder if we really are.

SPEAKER_07 39:40

This makes all my favorite lines feel very shallow.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

You are who you are.

SPEAKER_07 39:45

I because I also had that guy don't know his butt from a rat hole.

SPEAKER_04 39:50

Okay, well, I am gonna tell you guys how this did, and Kirk, maybe you know already, but when we do the podcast, I tell everybody not to research it. We can reveal this stuff live. But according to box office mojo worldwide, the abyss was the 24th biggest earner at the box office in 1989. So this is the year that Batman was the biggest earner at the box office, and it was gigantic. It was a competitive year for movies. So The Abyss was beat by Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Back to the Future 2, and Christmas Vacation. But 24th isn't so bad. Uh, in a year like this, the Abyss beat out uh a bunch of great movies, Star Trek 4, Black Rain with Michael Douglas, and my favorite film of all time. Anybody? Rambo Roadhouse. Oh Miss Daisy was the Oscar winner this year, and The Abyss actually won for Best Visual Effects, beating out Back to the Future 2. Yeah. So I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_06 40:44

Was this the same year as Honey I Funk the Kids? The one we just did. It is. Okay, because this will help me figure out the money. Because I was gonna say, I was gonna say the amount of money uh which was about Honey I Schunk, but uh it's way lower than Honey I Funk the Kids in terms of box office, so it's making me rethink.

SPEAKER_04 41:00

Well, you can guess the budget for this was $70 million. So what do you think it did the box office?

SPEAKER_07 41:06

100 million, 150. Yeah, I don't think it was crazy, crazy 24.

SPEAKER_05 41:12

I for the time I'm gonna guess a lot.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

24. 24. It it did 90 million, so it uh yeah. Yes, I won. That's not really uh a moneymaker because of course they put money into promotion over top of the budget. So you know, maybe it's maybe it's been more appreciated uh in the day. So, Kirk, my favorite part of this podcast, we like to play the Rotten Tomato game. I'm sure you're familiar with the Rotten Tomato scale, right? Yeah, it's just we call it tomato, we call it tomato tomato. Matthew does, nobody else. Basically, it's how many people out of a hundred said that this was you know good enough to go see. Critics and audience, do you know the scores, Kirk? I don't know. Okay, so you can you can do this too. I know it wasn't I know it wasn't well liked. Okay, how many out of a hundred, how many critics do you think liked this movie, Kirk? And out of a hundred, how many regular people do you think like this movie? You can take a guess first.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

I would say critics that liked it 30%, public that liked it 50%.

SPEAKER_06 42:13

Kirk obviously hasn't played this game very much. Throwing him under the button. Okay, Olden, I am going to say it's one of these odd ones where usually when some audience loves a movie, I hate it. But I'm gonna say I'm gonna give critics and audience equal 89%. Oh, this is a good movie, guys, and and you can't say it's not. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 42:39

I'm gonna give critics we're gonna call it 60. I think it's gonna be somewhere around there, and I think audience will be a bit higher in the 70s, so let's do 71.

SPEAKER_07 42:47

I'm closer to Matthew. I feel like an 80, 85.

SPEAKER_04 42:51

So the answer is critics 75% of critics said this was good. Get out and see it. And 83% of the audience.

SPEAKER_06 42:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 43:00

So Kirk, you're a lovely person, but you got a 78, which is the losing score here. Low score wins.

SPEAKER_06 43:07

You're deep in the bottom there.

SPEAKER_04 43:08

Uh yeah, yeah. So what we address with your score. Sean got a 27, Matthew got a 20, and Nicole, you got a seven. You win. Okay, so just a couple of facts on this. I've told you about a lot of the facts already, but just a few others. Very few stunt people were used in the film. So all of the actors became certified divers to do this film. That's impressive. That's very um the CGI effects were some of the first ever used, and they were reused in T2 for the liquid metal. So that was really groundbreaking CGI. Oh, yeah. I totally see that. 40% of the movies underwater?

SPEAKER_07 43:43

That's much less than it would work.

SPEAKER_06 43:44

I thought 90-90% was underwater. Literally bodies. Oh, I see. Okay. I'm like, we're on a boat a few times.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

That's the last thing that's interesting to me, anyhow, is the scene where they fired the machine. Machine gun into the pool, they use live ammunition. Wow. Wow. So hope there's no cameraman down there.

SPEAKER_07 44:06

God, I hope so.

SPEAKER_06 44:08

Or stun coordinated.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

So woke or joke, Kirk. We have a category where we just say anything that hasn't aged well. I have one. Po for it. Making a live rat breathe liquid oxygen.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 44:24

Because as you said, Kirk, they really did that. Like it's the real thing, and they really did it on the rat, and he really survived.

SPEAKER_06 44:30

You know, when I was watching that, I'm like, how did they do that? Right? Because it's it that's not a CGI rat. I was like, how did they do that? Did they like make get another one wet and make it look, you know, it's so that's just really the worst parts before I knew it was a real rat.

SPEAKER_07 44:46

Now that I know it's a real rat, I'm even more upset by this.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

I don't think you can get away with that today.

SPEAKER_07 44:50

I I don't think that guy needed to do a demonstration either. I don't think he needed to snatch some guy's beloved pet off his shoulder and be like, let me drown it for you for a second. Do you want to watch your lovely pet drown?

SPEAKER_06 45:02

Kerica, I have a question for you. So when I was a kid, so so I I was one of these kids that could probably swim before I could walk, right? So we we lived in southwestern Ontario, had a cottage on Lake Huron. And from a very early age, I loved blowing all of the air out of my lungs and sitting on the bottom of Lake Huron and just looking up and looking around. Did I miss my calling? Yeah, possibly. In fact, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:29

I also love doing that. I was always a water girl.

SPEAKER_04 45:32

I've always been a water boy too. I love swimming, swimming in the ocean, swimming underwater, swimming deep. Moving on the category, so reviews. However, you guys felt about this movie. I promise you there's others who liked it more or less than you. For this movie, there were 123 10-star reviews out of 578 total. That's pretty good. Just a couple of quotes. The most ambitious underwater film ever made. Do you do you agree, Kirk? At the time, yeah. James Cameron's most underrated film, Matthew. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think this is his best film, frankly. One of the greatest endings in science fiction. We haven't talked about the ending.

SPEAKER_07 46:07

Because there is an extended version which has even more stuff going on in the ending, but we didn't watch the extended version.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:16

I watched it later on YouTube, but I didn't watch it. Like I watched the parts that were cut out, but I didn't watch it as a whole.

SPEAKER_04 46:23

I watched the non-extended version twice, so that's how I extended it. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 46:29

The movie was so long already that I didn't know that that wasn't the extended version until I went to talk to my cousins about the movie after, because they love this movie. And they were like, Yeah, what'd you think of like the huge tsunami thing? I was like, What? What do you mean? They're like, Well, you watched the extended version, right? I was like, Well, it was super long, so I assumed uh I was wrong.

SPEAKER_05 46:51

The base version is not super long at two hours and twenty.

SPEAKER_07 46:55

That's that's a pretty long movie.

SPEAKER_04 46:57

Well, Kirk, one thing we've noticed about the younger generation on this show is that generally they like everything to be tight 90. 90 90 seconds, you mean?

SPEAKER_06 47:07

You just you disagree, but you disagree, but you always say they were too long.

SPEAKER_07 47:13

I always say they were too long when I have other complaints about the movie. My favorite hoopie of all time is Lord of the Rings, and I watch the full extended versions while sitting through all three. So I'm not complaining about length of movies unless there are other issues.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

Well, when we have Will on, definitely. Does it bother you when you're at a theater watching it and you can't do this?

SPEAKER_07 47:35

No, because I bring my crochet and I crochet.

SPEAKER_04 47:38

Yeah, she crochets while she watches movies.

SPEAKER_07 47:40

I crochet or I bring a fidget toy, and I love sitting and watching a movie.

SPEAKER_04 47:46

So, to be fair, I just want us to hear from the people who didn't like it. 13 people to be fair gave it a one-star review, and here's what they had to say: a spectacularly expensive scuba diving argument. Boo. It's like alien underwater except slower and wetter.

SPEAKER_07 48:02

Sounds like your your comment.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

Uh, two hours of panic attacks followed by the aquatic close encounters. For a negative review, that's a pretty backup.

SPEAKER_07 48:13

It's probably like I don't agree with the rating, but I do agree with their plot summary.

SPEAKER_04 48:17

And the last comment the ending feels like Spielberg hijacked a submarine movie. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 48:24

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 48:24

Well, let's consult the professional Siskel and Ebert. Do you guys think they liked it or not?

SPEAKER_06 48:29

Probably.

SPEAKER_04 48:30

You think they both liked it? All right. Two two thumbs up. Siskel said he enjoyed the claustrophobic underwater tension, but thought the alien storyline was weak. He gave the movie a thumbs up and he gave the alien a thumbs down. Ebert said the alien was fun and the movie was fun. He said it had great special effects and he enjoyed it a lot. He gave it a thumbs up. There you go. Thank you, boys. Maybe I'll ask Kirk this question. Kirk, do you think they should remake this? Or do you think there should be a sequel coming for this film?

SPEAKER_03 48:59

You know, some things you just don't want to touch, right? It'd be like trying to remake Star Wars The New Hope. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think we should. I mean, there's a part of me that thinks, oh, that you know, the way you could technically do it now and the the future of diving would just be that much more incredible. But I don't know. I I'm gonna say no. I I just love it the way it is.

SPEAKER_06 49:23

Imagine trying to ask Ed Harris to do it again.

SPEAKER_05 49:31

I don't think you should touch it in terms of remake. Make a different story if you want to remake it. There's lots of underwater stories you could tell. In terms of sequel, this one is strange because it would have to be a different genre. Like you would have you'd have to be very contrived to do a sequel that had the same feel as this movie, especially considering, you know, the aliens reveal themselves. Like the state of the world is so different at the end. It would be a totally different sequel in terms of feel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 50:00

Do you guys think they're aliens in the ocean?

SPEAKER_04 50:03

You know, that's that's a really hot topic these days. There's lots of people talking about all these alien ships that they see going super fast in the ocean. Octopuses.

SPEAKER_06 50:11

Octopus. That they're aliens in the oceans.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

So Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who was also involved in NOAA, he's a big proponent of saying that there's in fact, and he knows that there's aliens under the water. And this past November, I actually toured him the Vanguard underwater habitat when I worked at deep. So I had a lot of like questions I wanted to ask, but wasn't the appropriate time then to do it. So I would tend to say probably, yes. If you believe in that sort of thing, the best place to hide, right? Definitely.

SPEAKER_07 50:48

I think if you believe in aliens, I mean they're probably in the ocean.

SPEAKER_05 50:52

If you have interstellar travel, you don't need to be in the ocean to hide from us. And if you just live on in the ocean, then are you alien anymore? Isn't alien like someone that's foreign to your area, so foreign to your planet in this case? So if they live in the ocean, they're not alien.

SPEAKER_07 51:10

But what if they settled in the ocean, they were from space, and then they were like, ooh, we like the ocean.

SPEAKER_03 51:15

They're no longer alien. Guess you're assuming they're alien from the first place. Right. Maybe they've always been there.

SPEAKER_07 51:21

Maybe. I don't know. It's a very common conspiracy theory, so I'm always curious about people's thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

Well, you know, I have to say the ocean is just such a great subject for a movie because it is sort of claustrophobic and scary, and it's like a sci-fi like space underwater. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_06 51:39

Actually, the best place to hide would be in Shea LeBeuf's career.

SPEAKER_07 51:44

I mean, I love the ocean. It's one of my favorite things in the world. It's also terrifying. I don't I don't think anyone anyone who really loves the ocean also has to have a respect for how scary it could be.

SPEAKER_04 51:57

So so Kirk, we didn't ask you what is the coolest dive you've done and what's the deepest you've dived?

SPEAKER_03 52:03

On scuba, I've done 550 feet, so about 178 meters, 68 meters, yeah. 558 or 550 feet. On breath hold, I've done, it's funny, I know meters and diving and and meters and free diving. And free diving, I've done 115 meters on breath hold. Wow. That's amazing. That's very impressive. Amazing. And what's the what's the coolest dive you've ever done? That's a hard question. But one of the most amazing places I've been diving would be in Indonesia, where it's like the rest of the oceans were 50 to 100 years ago. I mean, largely untouched. The the biodensity and the biodiversity there is just absolutely incredible. And you can sit in one spot and just watch this world's best aquarium go by if you didn't want to have to swim. So it it's weird. It's also a little depressing because the rest of the world kind of used to be like that, and now it's only there because of all the effects we're having on it.

SPEAKER_06 53:06

Yeah. It's so sad. Well, I it's really interesting, Kirk. Like I'm about I'm on the 40th floor, so that's about 550 feet when I'm looking down. And when you think in terms of air, it doesn't seem too far, but then when you're like water, suddenly it's way deeper, right?

SPEAKER_03 53:24

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that dive on Scuba was only 15 minutes long, so it took me five minutes to get down there. Wow. I was there for 10 minutes, so a total of 15. Then it took me six and a half hours to decompress. Wow. So doing starting my first stops at 350 feet and then 340 and then 330, da da da da da. And my last decompression stop was at 15 feet, and that was 93 minutes.

SPEAKER_06 53:52

I would take down chapters of a book and read them, and you know, at least if I stepped off my balcony, I have a feeling I'd be down there for a lot longer. Right. Did you really bring a book?

SPEAKER_03 54:04

No, not the whole book, but I'd take only what I could read because once you flip the page, it turned into pulp, right? Yeah. So I was reading Mario Puzo, The Last Dawn.

SPEAKER_07 54:20

Yep. At the decompression stops. That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Nowadays they have Game Boys and things on their computers they can play with. Of course.

SPEAKER_07 54:27

I do have one more just technical question about this movie. At the depth that Bud went, it was what, like 17,000 feet, like four miles or something. Could a person even dive that deep without the water pressure killing them?

SPEAKER_03 54:44

Yeah, that was the whole premise of liquid breathing. So if all of the air spaces are now filled with liquid, liquid functionally being incompressible, then you don't have to worry about some of the effects of partial pressure of gases, of compressing gas spaces or air spaces. But what ends up happening is physically the meat and tissue of you are still getting compressed. So part of the thing they talked about was HP and Us high pressure neurological syndrome. And uh we usually think of that from the high partial pressures of helium causes, kind of nervous irritability, things like that, tremors and shakes, which you see in coffee, right? You know, he's like paranoid and he's a little shaky all the time. But even in liquid breathing, the physical compression on the myelin sheath between the synapses would stop things happening. So, really, to do it, it's more of a biopharmacological. What would be the Parkinson's type drug that you would take at depth that on the surface would probably adversely affect you, but at depth actually works in your favor. And then on your way back up, how do you decompress off the drug? How do you wash out that so you can come back to the surface? So, yeah, whether we could do that ultimate depth, I would expect probably not. Simply your tissues just get compressed too much.

SPEAKER_07 56:11

Because even like the submarine exploded at at a much higher depth. I was curious about that.

SPEAKER_04 56:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 56:18

Because I was expecting him to not survive that.

SPEAKER_04 56:21

That was uh hands down. My favorite scene is just him seeing him slowly sinking down into that trench. It's kind of cool. Would you have to wrap it up with is this movie too old or pure gold?

SPEAKER_06 56:34

So it swings at something enormous. I wrote this down the idea that empathy is more advanced than violence, and it does it inside an underwater sci-fi thriller made by man willing to drown nearly half of Hollywood to achieve realism. And that combination will never happen again. So it's pure gold.

SPEAKER_05 56:54

That's a lovely way to put it. Um, to me, this movie is pure gold. I I love what the story is trying to say. I love the message of the story. I love that it's so much underwater. I've always loved the water as well, and I think that's so much fun. I think they actually do a pretty good job with the aliens, uh, maybe a little shallow, but I like what they're doing. Again, I like the message. I like what it's saying, and the acting is so good throughout the whole movie.

SPEAKER_04 57:20

It's good. So there's a lot of fun stuff in here, just the whole underwater part and what it took for them to pull this film off for me makes it makes it pure gold. And of course, I love talking about it with you, Kirk.

unknown 57:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 57:33

I originally settled on too old, I think, or I thought with a little bit of like tweaking and editing, it could very well be one of the best movies, like pure gold. But I just think there were a few little flaws. I have been convinced by this talk to go watch it again and see if I think differently now that I know how realistic it is. But we'll see. I'll report back.

SPEAKER_06 57:54

Kirk, can you take Nicole's notes to Cameron, please?

SPEAKER_03 57:58

From my point of view, pure gold, pure platinum, and in James Cameron Avatar World, pure unobtanium. That's great. Nice. Just the realism from a diver's point of view. Yeah, you just hit it on the head. Kirk, it was really exciting having you on this episode.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

Thank you, Kurt. Such cool stuff learning about your career and learning about diving. Thanks so much for joining us. Do you want to tell us about your business before and how people can find you before we let you go?

SPEAKER_03 58:26

Yeah, well, I'm transitioning into consulting from having worked at Deep, and I'm still involved in Performance Free Diving International. And another company I work with is Aquatic Survival International, which is more the institutional military type training that we do. So yeah, you can find me um kirk.croc, K-R-E-C-K, at performancefreediving.com or performancefreediving.com. Thank you. And and good luck with the dive today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 58:56

Appreciate it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

This was great.

SPEAKER_07 58:58

Oh, it's incredible. You had some really great stories. It was really fun to listen to you.

SPEAKER_02 59:03

Okay, and I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. Favorite guest ever. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07 59:11

Thank you so much.