DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Myths are the foundation of some of our most popular stories. Think of the journey of Odysseus in Homer’s “The Odyssey,” now a blockbuster film from Christopher Nolan.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE ODYSSEY”)
MATT DAMON: (As Odysseus) No one could stand between me and home – not even the gods.
ELLIOTT: But Nolan’s film is only the latest interpretation of Homer’s epic. Numerous other films have been inspired by the tale, like the Coen Brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?”)
LEE WEAVER: (As Blind Seer) First, you must travel a long and difficult road – a road fraught with peril.
ELLIOTT: Or even the 2004 “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.”
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE”)
TOM KENNY: (As SpongeBob SquarePants) It’s the cyclops.
(YELLING)
ELLIOTT: Hollywood has mined material from myths for decades, be they from the Greco-Roman world, the Bible or other traditions. So, we wanted to dig into that with two colleagues who’ve thought a lot about this – ALL THINGS CONSIDERED host Scott Detrow and senior editor Barrie Hardymon. Thanks for coming in. Hi.
BARRIE HARDYMON, BYLINE: Hi. How you doing?
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: Good to be here on WEEKEND ALL THINGS CONSIDERED together.
ELLIOTT: A homecoming of sorts.
DETROW: Yeah.
ELLIOTT: So both of you have now seen “The Odyssey.” Scott, you even interviewed Christopher Nolan for this program. You’ve also both read “The Odyssey,” which, I will say, I have not, at least, since college. How does Nolan’s take compare? Scott, you go first.
DETROW: I hadn’t read it in decades, and I reread it before I talked to him. And I was reminded and surprised ’cause I think, like, I just forgot this that, like, actually, only the middle third of the poem is about that journey we all remember, and the rest is kind of hanging out Ithaca. I was wondering, like, what is he going to do with this? Is he going to shorten that? But no, he really does spend a lot of time, almost the same proportion, at that portion before you’re really focusing on Odysseus and afterwards when he returns and he’s scoping out the scene. And I thought it was interesting the way that he made that almost as tense and dramatic as, you know, running from a cyclops or whatever.
HARDYMON: I have to say, I found this totally thrilling. You know, one of the things about the poem that I have always loved is that it kind of gets to mean whatever it wants to to whoever reads it, you know? And this is definitely Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey,” but he did it so beautifully, and I did see new parts of it, which is sort of the trick of “The Odyssey,” is that every time you read it, every time you see another version of it, you see something else. There’s something that appeals to you in a different way.
ELLIOTT: So his was a very literal take, but other films have been influenced by the tale and do it in different ways. You know, Barrie, what do you think makes “The Odyssey” such a malleable story?
HARDYMON: You know, it is a universal story. You know, this is the story of a man who goes on his journey and thinks he is one thing and makes mistake after mistake after mistake and still finds his way home. You know, it’s quite human.
DETROW: When I talked to Christopher Nolan the other week, this is one of the things I asked about because he had said that he had been wanting to make this movie for 20 years. So I said, like, how often were you actively thinking about this story as you were making other movies? ‘Cause I think there’s parts of a lot of his movies that do have that universal “Odyssey” theme, I think “Interstellar” being the most obvious. You know, somebody’s pulled away from his family. He has to do something out of duty.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “INTERSTELLAR”)
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: (As Cooper) How long will I be gone?
MICHAEL CAINE: (As Professor Brand) Hard to know. Years.
MCCONAUGHEY: (As Cooper) I’ve got kids, Professor.
CAINE: (As Professor Brand) Get out there and save them.
DETROW: It takes decades longer than he wanted to, and he deeply misses his home. And when he comes back…
ELLIOTT: His home, the Earth.
DETROW: Yeah. I can’t be the same. Ithaca is changed by the time Odysseus gets back. But he said that this was obviously in the back of his mind. He was going back and rereading not just “The Odyssey,” but the Tennyson poem about “Ulysses” – Odysseus. And he said that deeply influenced that. But I think, like, so many – this story is retold so many different ways because it’s very universal.
ELLIOTT: Well, let’s pull out now. When you all think about other examples of myths on screen, what comes to mind? And what are they attempting to do? Scott, you go first.
DETROW: I’m going to give a shoutout to my favorite high school English teacher, Mr. Carney (ph), who was obsessed with the idea of, like, the myth, the monomyth and the Joseph Campbell idea. Joseph Campbell, the mythology expert who popularized the idea that every story is the same story when it’s boiled down, you know? And I think – I feel like I have to mention “Star Wars” here because George Lucas read Joseph Campbell and studied Joe Campbell and thought about the same idea and the way, you know, like all of those classic mythical beats are there of Luke Skywalker being orphaned, being on his own.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE”)
MARK HAMILL: (As Luke Skywalker) I want to come with you to Alderaan. There’s nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi, like my father.
DETROW: Leaving what was comfortable, testing himself, having to conquer dragons, kind of fighting a father figure and coming out of the journey changed. And I think, like, “Star Wars” is basically like a modern myth that we all riff off and reference in that way.
ELLIOTT: OK. Barrie?
HARDYMON: So one of my favorites is a Greek movie. It was made in 1977, and it is a film version of the Euripides play “Iphigenia In Aulis” It’s directed by Michael Cacoyannis.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “IPHIGENIA”)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, speaking Greek).
HARDYMON: And it tells that story of Agamemnon that we see sort of briefly in the movie, where he sacrifices his daughter for a fair wind to Troy. Very different Agamemnon than the one that we sort of saw as an avatar for violence in Nolan’s film. But it is a beautiful story about a man trying to balance his need to go on that hero’s journey with family and, you know, making quite a terrible decision. But it is just so beautifully made. So I would say “Iphigenia.”
DETROW: I love that. I was like, “Star Wars,” and Barrie is like, here’s a niche Greek indie film (laughter).
ELLIOTT: That nobody’s ever heard of. Thank you, Barrie.
HARDYMON: I mean…
ELLIOTT: I’ve added it to our list.
HARDYMON: I’m sorry. I can…
ELLIOTT: Don’t be sorry. So now I’m going to get into some tricky territory because I know you guys have differing opinions, let’s say, on this – this whole idea that the U.S. in particular has its own myths, say, the Western or the Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man.
HARDYMON: Well, so I will say that, for me, mythology as a subject, is something that sort of goes beyond country. You know, we’re talking about the Bhagavad Gita. We’re talking about the Bible. We’re talking about the Scandinavian myths. They have to have a cosmology to them. And so I think there are American movies that reference the idea of a revenge tragedy and whatnot, which is certainly part of Greek mythology, Roman, all of these things. But I wouldn’t call them American myths. Scott?
DETROW: To me, if a myth is something that a culture looks at to tell it about itself, to tell it where it came from, what it represents, then, to me, I think the idea of, like, the cowboy and settling the West and the frontier and the independent person, I think that is so baked into what Americans like to think about themselves and what they like to think the country is. So I feel like, like, a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood Western movie…
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “EL DORADO”)
JOHN WAYNE: (As Cole Thornton) Go ahead and pull that rifle if you want to. But you better speak to your boss before you use it ’cause he’ll be dead before I hit the ground.
DETROW: I think that does check the box, because that is so far detached from, like, the actual cowboy experience, but it’s its own thing, and you watch it, and you feel like – you feel these big ideas
ELLIOTT: You’re a part of something bigger.
DETROW: Yeah. So I don’t know. I think counter.
HARDYMON: I hear you. I mean, I think, in some – I mean, maybe this is just another one of my annoying, pretentious takes where I’m like, but it’s actually Greek mythology. But I think…
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: You know, one of the things I think that sort of defines also mythology is this idea that the supernatural is somehow helping you or hurting you. And I guess maybe I’m going to argue on your behalf now, now that I think about it. I guess you could argue that the fact that there is often in these movies, no actual fantastical supernatural, right? There is no, you know, “Unforgiven.” Like, Clint Eastwood is like – you know, he’s a certain kind of dude that you might not meet in real life.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “UNFORGIVEN”)
CLINT EASTWOOD: (As Bill Munny) I’ve killed women and children, killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another.
HARDYMON: But maybe there is something uniquely American in that our mythology might not even – we don’t even need the supernatural.
DETROW: Do it yourself. Yeah.
HARDYMON: Do it yourself. Screw you, Zeus.
(LAUGHTER)
ELLIOTT: That’s NPR’s Barrie Hardymon and Scott Detrow. Thank you both for being here.
DETROW: Thanks for having me.
HARDYMON: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
