Hello and welcome to the second installment of our Stocktober Podcasts where we're looking

at the Stalker video games and the works that inspired and shaped it. Today we're covering

Andre Tarkowski's 1979 classic stalker, the film that probably established the aesthetic

language for the series and stands as a landmark sci-fi classic in its own right. I'm

your host, Rob Zachini, today I'm joined by Gita Jackson. Hello, I'm Gita. Patrick Kleppek.

How do I? He's not doing an accent, folks. He was just, he was taking a sip of coffee.

I thought I had it. I was like, I'm not sure if he's going to go to Kato where he first

I'm going to gamble on a Kato and I gambled, I gambled wrong. I should have thrown

a bolt ahead of me attached to a towel. And now belatedly, our producer, Ricardo Contreras.

Hello. Hello. So was that an accent? Was that an accent? No, no. Did I say it weird?

I just said hello. It's a little bit weird. It's a little hollow.

This is a hot, it just was a hot. I appear. So last week we discussed the Sturgaski's

roadside picnic and of course they are credited here as writers on the film as well. But

while this isn't adaptation of roadside picnic, it's not exactly a faithful one. Gita,

you mentioned this is something that strikes you about this film, which is the direction

that Tarkovsky takes this inspiration from what we encountered in the novella.

Well, yeah, the production history on this story is truly incredible. But I mean, one of the

most interesting things about how this is adapted and how the adaptation works and functions here

is that this was a movie made in like the early 80s in the Soviet Union and it's shot on film,

shot largely on location, almost entirely on location, I would say. And it is going for a visual

approach that I think is pretty common in Soviet films of this era, which is very naturalistic,

very, very cinematographer, very much trying to use the actual place where they've shot to their

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