Looper: Pt 1
Hannah Blechman, Ben Silverio, and Ansel Burch are pop culture observers/content creators/excellent friends who are a great time, but probably not as deep as your college friend made us out to be.
After a long hiatus, we have returned, and we’re bringing one of the movies we have gotten many requests for. It’s even a little bit topical thanks to Rian Johnson’s upcoming new release. So, let's all step into the too-small time-travel cubby and remember the state of time travel in 2012, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis.
Find us online!
Hannah is the co-host of the Authorized Novelizations podcast, and you can find her on Letterboxed as hsblechman.
Ben is @bsilverio20 on Instagram, and letterboxed among others.
Ansel Burch is @TheIndecisionist on IG, Facebook, Yowsa, Blusky, Reddit, and Threads.
Check out Ansel’s new TTRPG, Deck! https://the-indecisionist.itch.io/Deck
Come back next week for our full review of the movie and make sure you’re subscribed because it’s always #Time2Party
Transcript
Ben Silverio 0:05
Hey, I'm Ben Silverio.
Hannah Blechman 0:07
I'm Hannah Blechman,
Ansel Burch 0:08
I'm Ansel Burch,
Ben Silverio 0:09
and it's time to party.
Ansel Burch 0:16
We are not doctors. We don't give medical advice. Please drink responsibly. This episode was recorded on November 11 of 2025 did it? We're here. We're into the show. That's it. That's the intro. That was the hard part.
Ben Silverio 0:34
Look at us. Who'd have thought we'd be here? I'd have thought, Well, I'm glad someone did.
Ansel Burch 0:41
I knew we could. I knew we could made
Ben Silverio 0:43
it back party people, welcome back to time to party where you know stuff and things. We hope that
Ansel Burch 0:58
I saw your brain try to do the news line thing, and then last second, I'm sorry. Oh, bank, bank,
Ben Silverio 1:09
yes, party, people, it has been a bit of a time, time like the thing that we talk about, it's been a bit of time since we've been together. Sorry. Life happened. Very small update, I'm in Pennsylvania again. You know, whatever we play the hands that were dealt. I hope to make it back to LA eventually, but until then, I like staying in touch with my friends from LA, such as Hannah Blackman, who joins us today? Hi, Hannah. Hello. Hi. Hannah is the incredible co host of the authorized novelizations podcast. She is also a cinema theater and cinema enthusiast.
Ansel Burch 2:00
Oh yeah. But see, that was a portmanteau, not just a mispronunciation, I think that stays, oh geez, yeah.
Ben Silverio 2:08
And she is one hell of an analyst of all things storytelling, like we've had very long discussions about so many different things. When it comes to pop culture,
Hannah Blechman 2:21
I think deeply and I have high standards.
Ansel Burch 2:25
That's a good combo. That's a good combo of things.
Ben Silverio 2:28
Big fan, I highly recommend that y'all go check out her podcast. If you dig back a little bit, you can find me talking about surf ninjas, which was a great time.
Speaker 1 2:43
But yeah, and I do so much work for the podcast, I'd love it. If anybody listened to it, really nice.
Ben Silverio 2:52
They run a tight ship over there. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 2:55
I read a whole book almost every week, and it's killing me, so please listen.
Ben Silverio 3:02
I it is. It is great. I highly recommend it now for the thing that we've come here to do time to party. It certainly is, if you forgot, dear listener, what we do here, we take a piece of time travel media, and we break it down into three parts. The first part, we like to give some party favors. For those of you coming to our party, if you want to re watch something, we're gonna give you a little game to play while doing it. You know, it's a fun thing to do, so we give you drinking and or smoking rules, drink, what, smoke, what, whatever you want. Party favors. Party favors. That's right, you will the second part we talked about Burch poppers. If
Ansel Burch 3:53
you do poppers for every one of these rules, you will be in trouble.
Ben Silverio 3:56
On you, not on us. For part two, we review the movie, TV, show, whatever, and give you our thoughts on that cool thing that we're talking about for the month. And part three, that would be our edutainment section, where we all learn a little something through a extremely shallow dive of information. But before we get there, you know part one, the drinking, smoking game, yeah, and this month, on time to party, we will be talking about the incredible Looper from Rian Johnson. If you don't know about this movie, here's what our good friends at IMDb say about it. In 2074 when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent to the past, where a hired gun awaits someone like Joe, who one day learns the mob wants to close the loop by sending Joe's future self for assassination. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what happens IMDb, sure. I guess that's probably one of their better descriptions, right? We've had some weird
Ansel Burch 5:10
honestly, that. I mean, it's to the point it didn't lead you in the wrong direction. It didn't leave out half of it for no apparent reason.
Ben Silverio 5:18
Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, more of the middle of the road, I guess, for their for their quality,
Ansel Burch 5:24
for their quality, yeah, if you got low enough standards, they meet them. That's true.
Ben Silverio 5:32
That should be their new their new slogan,
Ansel Burch 5:36
pretty much acceptable. IMDB,
Ben Silverio 5:41
oh, my god, sorry. Tangent. Did I ever tell you about how IMDb got me in trouble? No one of my very early interviews as a journalist. I interviewed Alex winter of Bill and Ted fame
Ansel Burch 5:55
and ref, current Broadway star, exactly,
Ben Silverio 5:58
currently waiting for Godot, which I would love to go see. I was looking at tickets the other day, and I'm like, fuck, these are expensive, but um,
Speaker 1 6:07
get on that train. Show up at four in the morning, do whatever standing rush shit they have. It'll cost you maybe 60 bucks instead.
Ben Silverio 6:16
Yes, man, I
Ansel Burch 6:18
take a zero off of
Ben Silverio 6:19
that, all right. But I brought up something on his IMDB page, and he was like, I didn't do that. And I was just like, oh, sorry. My bad. And then he was just kind of standoffish for the rest of the interview. And my, wow, yeah. My like, at that point, I kind of blacked out, and my cameraman was like, oh, man, that was bad. And I'm just like, I'm so sorry, but I learned from it. Now I definitely do way more research than just IMDB. But it also sucks, because, like, I love Bill and Ted so much, and like, I wanted this interview to be good, and I think Alex would like hates me. So, you know, shall we get
Ansel Burch 7:04
on with our game? Yes, yes, we shall, all right. Shall we allow our guests to go first and set the table the mise en place of drinking and smoking rules?
Speaker 1 7:15
Well, I guess Sure. Should I just give like one and then we'll go around? Yeah. Okay, cool. So my favorite element of the movie is Noah. See again, and 50, at least 50% of the time he's on screen, he is crying. So I would say throw something back every time you see that man shed some tears.
Speaker 2 7:37
That is incredible. That's good. So good. That's good.
Ben Silverio 7:43
Oh, man, I feel like mine isn't as good. Now, I'm sure it's better. My first rule is, take a drink. When you see a clock face there, there's a lot up top, okay, but, you know, it starts to decrease as the film goes on. Yeah.
Ansel Burch 8:01
I suppose it would. That's interesting. Yeah, that's fun. Okay, my first rule is drink whenever Joe changes jackets. Ooh, Joseph Gordon Lovett loves a jacket. Got to live his jacket best life in this movie. And it shows, it shows that Joe got to have a hand in his wardrobe.
Ben Silverio 8:28
I hope he got to keep those jackets at least one of them.
Ansel Burch 8:32
I would, I would wager, if they didn't let him, he did anyway.
Hannah Blechman 8:37
Okay, my next one would be to take a drink anytime somebody accidentally shoots themselves, that's yes, which is not all the time, but it's enough. It is
Ansel Burch 8:51
enough, that's for sure.
Ben Silverio 8:57
All right. Well, my next rule take a drink whenever someone speaks French. Okay, you know that's fun. Probably should be Mandarin, but you know, Joe stuck on French, let him do it.
Ansel Burch 9:15
Oh, man, yep, yep, yep. We'll talk about that later. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. Time travel. Time travel. Just in my head, we're already doing it. My second rule is to take a drink every time they go through a new thing. Oh, this is a movie where they transit a lot of different kinds of spaces and kinds of modes of transport. So running through a field, going through a tunnel, going through a house, these are all different, and everyone has its own like pacing and cinematography choices, which are so much the sort of hallmark of this movie, I think so that is. That's one of the big things we want you to watch for whenever they're going through a new thing that feels
Hannah Blechman 10:04
like dangerously incapacitating as a drinking rule.
Ansel Burch 10:09
Yeah, that's a SIP rule for sure. And don't do it every time. If they've already done that thing, you don't have to do it every time when they run through the cane a second time you're good, important clarify the ill defined crop in her in her field.
Hannah Blechman 10:24
I think you should take a drink every time the Joseph Gordon Levitt, Bruce Willis, makeup makes you go. It's not quite right. Sometimes I was like settling into it. It looks like a person. And then I kept getting jarred by the uncanny valley,
Ansel Burch 10:44
certain lighting and angle just did not work for it.
Hannah Blechman 10:48
Is it better than what they would do today, of course. But looking now, I mean, I hadn't seen this movie since it came out, and I was like, oh, it's not quite as good as I remember it being. Is it?
Ansel Burch 11:00
Yeah, I was just about to say, it's no Henry cavill's mustache, yeah.
Ben Silverio 11:03
I was about to say, at least it's not AI, yeah. For my next rule, we here at Time to party, like to pay respects, you know, because there are plenty of people in this industry that are worthy of our respect, and in my opinion, one of them is Jeff Daniels. So take a shot when you first see Jeff Daniels in his bad guy glory,
Ansel Burch 11:27
that's, that's a good one. That's, I was debating who I wanted to propose for a shot rule, and Jeff is the right choice.
Ben Silverio 11:34
I think I tell you who my my second choice was
Hannah Blechman 11:38
Garrett dilla hunt. It. It
Ben Silverio 11:41
was not
Hannah Blechman 11:42
silence crickets from the crowd. He's nobody else excited about Garrett de LaHood, okay, I see how it is He.
Ben Silverio 11:50
He wasn't my second choice for the shot. My second choice was Piper parable, because Coyote Ugly. Hell, yeah. I just really like that movie. It's fun. I respect that, sure. Yeah, okay,
Ansel Burch 12:07
that guy, yeah, yeah. That guy does a great job.
Hannah Blechman 12:13
That guy, I did not take a shot every time there's a guy that pops up in this movie that you go, Oh, that guy. There's like, four of them.
Ben Silverio 12:21
That's very true.
Hannah Blechman 12:23
Garrett, Paul Dano. I think Jeff Daniels of that guy, honestly,
Ansel Burch 12:29
oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Paul Dano is definitely a that guy for me. I mean,
Hannah Blechman 12:33
it's, I recognize all these people, and I know all their names, of course, because I respect them. But it's a movie where, like, every 25 minutes, you're like, oh, a new face, I know, which feels good.
Ansel Burch 12:45
It's definitely of that like, community of actors too. Like there's a there's a clear, like, shared oeuvre for these particular people. I'm just trying to make up for not knowing that guy's name.
Ben Silverio 13:02
It wasn't interesting, because before re watching this, I was thinking about re watching Raising Hope. And I'm like, Oh, I haven't seen that in a long time.
Hannah Blechman 13:12
And you should, and now we all should, right? I definitely should, yeah, drink
Ben Silverio 13:18
whenever somebody says, Gat. Oh, geez, drinking a lot,
Ansel Burch 13:23
that's another sip. It's less than you'd think,
Ben Silverio 13:27
though, true. I was waiting for a lot more slide words for guns, like, yeah,
Ansel Burch 13:38
when they introduced blunder busses at the beginning, you really think they're setting something up?
Hannah Blechman 13:43
Yeah, it's really just shotguns and pistols. They got a different word for shotguns and pistols. Okay. Guys, okay. Ryan, yeah,
Ansel Burch 13:51
not a special name for sub machine gun, nope, assault rifle, whatever the heck that thing was.
Hannah Blechman 14:02
Nobody's using a funny little Uzi, like, have we lost our visions of the future? No tiny Uzis, come on, yeah.
Ansel Burch 14:09
What? What is the this? Actually, this should be in the next episode, so I'm going to save it, but put a pin in that, because, yeah, the gun design in this movie week. Johnson,
Hannah Blechman 14:20
yeah, Ryan, I
Ansel Burch 14:22
don't know who the prop master is, but he spent all the time on that dumb car
Hannah Blechman 14:28
and that funny Star Wars motorcycle. Don't think I didn't realize that's a Star Wars motorcycle.
Ansel Burch 14:32
Ryan, absolutely Star Wars motorcycle. I saw it. We caught you. We thought we wouldn't notice, and we did.
Hannah Blechman 14:42
I think I'm basically out of rules, except that that I don't think the Time Travel makes sense, and so I would be taking drinks every time. I'm like, Well, what does that mean for the world of time travel? You're changing things on me all the time.
Ansel Burch 14:56
I mean, hey, let's put that in there. What? How do you mean?
Hannah Blechman 14:59
Um. Um, so again, I hadn't watched this movie since theater, so it's been, like, 1213, years, and watching it this time, I was like, Okay, so like, your loop gets closed. That means, you know, you survive 30 years so you can do whatever the fuck you want for 30 fucking years. Is this world? Yeah, but Paul Dano doesn't get to do that like he did have 30 years. But then time can change. And the idea that time can change or it can't change, I think, is, like, really used in inconsistent, confusing ways. If you think about it a little too hard in this film, I'm just like, What is time linear or not? Is it locked or not? Ryan, and I don't think he actually, like, determined that within his own world. And so there were a number of times. And I was like, Wait, so what does that mean? Enough times to drink, you know.
Ansel Burch 15:55
Okay, so drinking. Rule, drink whenever you're confused about the mechanics. And let's talk about that in episode two, because I have thoughts,
Ben Silverio 16:03
great, sorry that I can't help myself but say a bunch of stuff,
Ansel Burch 16:08
not at all. It's called teasing. We're doing this on purpose. We're professionals.
Ben Silverio 16:14
My last rule is to take a hit whenever Old Joe's memory is altered. Because, you know, his memories taking a hit.
Ansel Burch 16:29
I did think that didn't happen as much as I thought it should.
Unknown Speaker 16:33
I agree say that
Hannah Blechman 16:35
another, I guess I'll save it. I guess I'll save this thought. No, that's it's correlated. I'm learning, I've learned that.
Ansel Burch 16:47
All right, anything else we want to talk about before we close out our drinking and smoking rules?
Ben Silverio 16:52
So you're gonna say, close the loop.
Ben Silverio 16:55
Shouldn't we all be drinking every time he does eye drop drugs?
Ben Silverio 16:59
I thought about that. I did think about that, but it only happens like I also thought about smoking
Ansel Burch 17:07
drugs. Yeah, yeah.
Hannah Blechman 17:11
Well, if you think there's enough future movies that have eye drop drugs in them, we, we, as a culture, should be developing eye drop drugs. I'm shocked we don't
Ansel Burch 17:21
have eye drop trucks, frankly, or maybe we do, and I just am too
Ben Silverio 17:26
scared. Same episode, I
Ansel Burch 17:29
guess if people were putting heroin in their eyes, I wouldn't know.
Ben Silverio 17:33
Episode there's a,
Ansel Burch 17:36
oh, I'm now worried that we have the same topic for episode three. We'll find out. We'll find out.
Ben Silverio 17:44
Well, that'll be fun, but before we get there, we got to finish this episode. Party people, clearly, we have way more to say. So join us, won't you? For episode two of Looper here at Time to party. You can find us on the internet. I'm at B Silverio 20 on Instagram, X letter boxed. You know, I'm places. Whether I want to be or not, I'm mine places,
Hannah Blechman 18:22
oh, sure. I can also be found online in various places, at h, S, bleckman, B, L, E, C, H, M, a, n, letter box is where I'm most active, I guess. And you can't contact me there, so that's perfect.
Ansel Burch 18:36
That's nice. You can go see Hannah's opinions, but not respond,
Hannah Blechman 18:41
you can comment and I just probably won't say anything back, and you can just know in your heart that I'm sitting there reading it, going like, why would you say that to me? I don't care about that.
Ansel Burch 18:54
So Real. Find me at indecisionist or at the indecisionist on all the social media platforms that anybody cares about, anybody anymore. And you can find all of my work@indecisionist.com including my monthly free online gaming event, TTRPG pickup con. I hope to see you there. This has been an indecisionist production, so you can find the podcast there as well, including all of our show notes and transcriptions if
Ben Silverio 19:22
you want to join the conversation and you're still on a platform that uses hashtags, you can use the hashtag time to party. That's time the number two party, as
Ansel Burch 19:31
well as time the number two party. All spelled out. Thanks to Warwick.
Ben Silverio 19:35
All right party. People join us again while we continue to close our loop on Ryan Johnson's looper. Until then, they're excellent to each other
Ansel Burch 19:46
and party on dudes!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
