QAnon Goes to the Movies
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Beat it, Barbie; outta the way, Oppenheimer—this summer’s biggest box office surprise is “The Sound of Freedom,” a low-budget search-and-rescue thriller that Hollywood doesn’t want you to see—or so the implication goes.
Guests:
Sam Adams, Slate senior editor
Will Sommer, media reporter at the Washington Post and author of Trust the Plan The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So Sam, is Sound of Freedom a good movie? |
| 0:09.8 | No. |
| 0:14.0 | It's not. |
| 0:16.0 | Very, very definitive there. |
| 0:19.2 | Sam Adams is a senior editor at Slate. |
| 0:21.4 | I called him up to talk about the summer's most unlikely blockbuster. |
| 0:26.0 | Sound of Freedom. |
| 0:27.5 | This movie opened up in about half as many theaters as Indiana Jones, but nearly beat |
| 0:33.2 | N.D. |
| 0:53.3 | The political message of Sound of Freedom is the other reason I called up Sam. |
| 0:58.8 | It's a little unclear what that message is. |
| 1:02.9 | The movie itself is about child sex abuse. |
| 1:05.2 | It dramatizes the story of a Homeland Security agent who leaves government to end his words, |
| 1:11.2 | rescue kids from human trafficking. |
| 1:14.5 | But this plot, it's become inseparable from the movie's controversial fans. |
| 1:19.0 | They're the famous ones, like Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump, and then they're the less |
| 1:24.5 | famous ones, the neo-nazis and QAnon influencers. |
| 1:29.7 | So Sam, how has this movie managed to cultivate so much alt-right notoriety? |
| 1:36.3 | You know, it is more to do with the kind of like cloud of things that's circling around |
| 1:40.6 | it, including the movie Star Jim Kovizal, who is using the press tour to like go on Steve |
| 1:46.2 | Bannon's podcast and talk about how, you know, like barrels of baby blood are being sold |
| 1:51.8 | on the international black market? |
... |
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