The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

We're fucking fucked edition.

It's, what is it?

Tuesday, June 1st, 2011?

Wednesday.

Wednesday.

May 1st.

June 1st.

Wednesday, June 1st.

A date that will live in infamy. You know what it is. Apparently, it's Wednesday. Wednesday? Wednesday, May 1st. June 1st. Wednesday, June. Okay. A date that will live in infamy. We know what it is. Apparently, it's Wednesday, June 1st, 2011. On today's program, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life with, yes, it's true, Forrest Wickman. Hey, Forrest. Hey, Steve. How you doing? Great. You nervous? I'm a little nervous. Yeah, you seem like it.

Thanks, Steve. How you doing? You nervous? I'm a little nervous. Yeah, you seem like it. Thanks, Steve. It's very soothing, Steve. I see your bedside manner has proved markedly since I went on my anyway. No, you're the spirit of, I don't even know how to pronounce it. I got corrected on this before, Zangfra. Can't we? Should we just do the fucking show? Okay.

The death of songwriter, Gil Scott Herron with Jody Rosen and David Mamet Tax Wright.

Joining me today are Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner.

Julia, as we've discussed, you are tan, rested, and totally unready, right?

Are you going to participate?

I'm just going to sit here in the corner with a glass of a nice al Dorino and occasionally say, Ola, I think, today. So people should know you're just back from your honeymoon. And I'm joined by Dana Stephen. And say, Dana, how are you doing? Hey, Steve. Pretty good. Good, good. All right. So before we natter any further, let's turn to the Terrence Malick movie Tree of Life. Maybe to help us through the discussion, Dana, why don't you first summarize the film?

Yeah, that's kind of hard to do. You guys might want to pitch in and help me, especially because you've both seen it more recently than me. But I mean, I guess if you wanted to get at it from the narrative down, this is sort of the story of a man, one man named Jack, who's played by Sean Penn as an adult in the modern day sequences and by a boy named Hunter McCrack and a really incredible child actor that Malik discovered in the childhood sequences. And this sounds so much more narrative than the movie is. But this boy grows up in Waco. He has memories of his childhood that are flashbacks. Sean Penn is having an adult.

We should say in the 19thies, very much the 1950s.

Or the very early 60s, maybe, right?

Yeah, possibly really 60s.

And so it's these very fragmentary memories of a boyhood, which we can get into later.

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