366: Troy with Neil Laird

00:03:43:04 – 00:04:02:21
Dan LeFebvre
Before we look at some of the details of the movie, I always like to kick things off with an overall letter grade. Now, our movie today adds a little extra challenge since it’s ancient history, and that often means there’s a mix of myth and legends as well. What letter grade would you give 2004 as Troy for its historical accuracy?

00:04:02:23 – 00:04:28:04
Neil Laird
I mean, it’s a tricky one, and we’ve talked before in other podcast, and it’s easier when you’re looking at something it happens and not in the full light of history, certainly in history and the Trojan War, as we would talk about is numbers on this, though we know there’s a Troy and other things. So I would say on that level, looking at how it’s based, we say how it is, based on Homer and the story we know.

00:04:28:06 – 00:04:38:25
Neil Laird
I probably give it a C. We’d make a lot, take a lot of liberties, which we’ll get into. Again, we’re not talking about history. We’re talking about are they sticking to the source material?

00:04:38:28 – 00:05:06:19
Dan LeFebvre
Not the beginning of the movie. We see two princes of Troy named Paris and Hector visiting King Menelaus of Sparta to solidify a peace between Troy and Sparta. That piece is short lived in the movie, when parents falls for the Queen of Sparta, Helen, and brings her back to Troy with him, that understandably enrages her husband, the King of Sparta, who happens to be the brother of a Greek power hungry warlord named Agamemnon.

00:05:06:21 – 00:05:21:21
Dan LeFebvre
So that’s basically the Cassius belly that Agamemnon needs to attack Troy. Which the movie also seems to suggest is something he’s always wanted to do anyway. How much of this justification for war between the Greeks and Trojans really happened?

00:05:21:23 – 00:05:45:05
Neil Laird
Well, here’s an interesting, you know, answer to that, because some of that is based on Bronze Age life, and they get that right. Most of the stuff that you talked about didn’t happen at all in Homer. There’s this thing about the Iliad for those who haven’t read it, even though we think about the Iliad as the Trojan years of Trojan War that ends with Achilles death and and the Trojan horse and all that.

00:05:45:08 – 00:06:08:27
Neil Laird
None of that happens in the book. What happens in the book is about the last 50 days of a ten year siege. So when we open up, it’s already the 10th year. Trojans are already frustrated and tired, and they want to go back to Greece. And the Trojans are looking down and thumbing their nose. So all this stuff we talk about is really that great drama between Achilles and Hector and Agamemnon.

00:06:08:27 – 00:06:30:17
Neil Laird
Everything. So we don’t know what spurred on the war. Other than two sources, one is in the Odyssey, if you would call it a sequel, or I suppose the world’s first sequel is about Odysseus getting coming home after the war, also being lost for ten years, and then finally getting back to Ithaca and trying to get Penelope back and all of that.

00:06:30:19 – 00:06:56:29
Neil Laird
And it’s only there we get some information about how Achilles died if we talk about and also about how Paris and Helen shacked up and why. And the little he says with just a few lines is that there was some sort of of meeting in, Mycenae where Agamemnon, the, the king lived, and Paris and Hector were there, and then Helen left with Paris.

00:06:57:01 – 00:07:20:14
Neil Laird
We don’t know. Under duress. We don’t know she fell in love. Most sources suggest that, she actually went willingly. Homer is very ambivalent about it. Helen is barely a character in the play, which is interesting, even though she’s the one that launches a thousand ships. She’s rather passive, so, you know, she knows she loves, Paris. Or if she was dragged off and she’s trying to get out.

00:07:20:16 – 00:07:49:01
Neil Laird
She’s very, very much in the shadows. But conversely, how they describe Agamemnon and how they describe all the tribes of, of, of Greece is quite fascinating as a historian, as someone who loves history. That’s pretty close to how Bronze Age life was. It was very much a series of city states and the Bronze Age, you know, for those who don’t know, it was 2 or 300 years, maybe a bit longer, when bronze was obviously the key weapon.

00:07:49:04 – 00:08:15:14
Neil Laird
And that’s when you had these great empires like the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Mycenaeans, the Phoenicians. It all collapsed around 1100 BC, and Troy was part of that. So we think that the Trojan War happened probably around that around 1180 BC. Towards the end of the Bronze Age. But the way they all basically function at the time was dealing with each other, making pact with each other, and then breaking those pact and then going after each other.

00:08:15:19 – 00:08:41:20
Neil Laird
Troy was a very big city at the time. It was the gateway to the East. Mycenae was one of the biggest cities on the Greek mainland, so it’s highly likely they wanted to form some sort of pact, some sort of economic pact. And if Agamemnon’s modus operandi was to bring down, you know, the greatest empire there, then he had his he had his reasoning in Menelaus, his brother being slighted when his wife is taken.

00:08:41:25 – 00:08:54:29
Neil Laird
So although that’s all liberties taken by the film, by Wolfgang Petersen in the film and whoever wrote it, it is very true to life of what Bronze Age culture could have been. Do it.

00:08:55:01 – 00:09:15:02
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, it sounds like basically they’re just taking a few lines of text and then turning an entire movie into a few lines. So obviously a lot is going to be filled in and fictional, but that leads into something else I’ve always been curious about when it comes to ancient texts and such. Do we just assume that they didn’t have fiction writers back then, that everything that they wrote actually happened?

00:09:15:09 – 00:09:20:04
Dan LeFebvre
And when we think of movies today, there’s so many movies that are strictly for entertainment purposes.

00:09:20:12 – 00:09:37:00
Neil Laird
And in a way it’s more that in the Amazon, they say the first historian is Herodotus, and he doesn’t come around to the fourth century BCE. So people didn’t give a toss about the facts back of the day. If you look at mythology of mythologies, the Greek gods and all that stuff, they’re all crazy. They’re all they’re all fantastical.

00:09:37:07 – 00:10:03:01
Neil Laird
People did not pick up a book for veracity. They did pick up, and it did get a gut check on what life was like. So while there was no novel per se, Homer or Homer is called an epic poet. And he’s, you know, he’s he’s, ascribed to these two great pieces. But, of course, remember, in the Greek time, few years later, after Troy, you have, all of the Greek playwrights, the, Sophocles and Eurydice and all those kind of people.

00:10:03:01 – 00:10:20:09
Neil Laird
And those are all fiction. So people very much love to escape into the world of fiction, more so than fact historians and even then was a word yet. So I think when people sat there under a tree listening to Homer tell the Iliad, and it was almost all oral, which is why things changed. They weren’t looking for facts.

00:10:20:09 – 00:10:26:22
Neil Laird
They weren’t saying, wait a minute. Last time you told me that was in life, and it’s 1080.

00:10:26:24 – 00:10:30:21
Dan LeFebvre
And no historical letter grade for for them.

00:10:30:24 – 00:10:35:11
Neil Laird
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exact. You know, in these books, man. Tell me a day. Oh, that’s a good one.

00:10:35:13 – 00:11:01:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, a couple other key figures in the movie on the Greek side are King Odysseus of Ethical, you mentioned. And then the greatest warrior in the world, Achilles. At Agamemnon’s bidding, Odysseus convinces Achilles and his elite fighting force called the Myrmidons to fight for Greece against the Trojans. And it’s not until later in the movie that we find out Odysseus is doing Agamemnon’s bidding, basically out of fear.

00:11:01:08 – 00:11:11:09
Dan LeFebvre
If he doesn’t, then Agamemnon is going to destroy Ithaca. Does the movie do a good job showing the way Odysseus and Achilles fit into the story?

00:11:11:12 – 00:11:32:15
Neil Laird
No they don’t. They do a pretty dodgy, representation. And again I say again, we talk about the film itself. I think one of the great strengths of the film that I enjoy was Brian Cox’s performance as Agamemnon. He’s this bullish little pug of a man going around. He’s funny, he’s enjoyable, and you know, you like him being a villain in The Iliad.

00:11:32:17 – 00:11:55:02
Neil Laird
He, Agamemnon, is very much full of himself, and he’s very much, full of bravado and makes mistakes, some key ones, which is the crux of the book. But he’s also a hero. He’s still one of the greatest heroes of the day. In fact, I remember when there’s one scene where Hector is asked, you can fight anybody. On a one on one, you know who who would you fight?

00:11:55:03 – 00:12:19:16
Neil Laird
He goes, well, I won’t fight Achilles, Odysseus or Agamemnon. They’re all better than me. So even in the Iliad, Agamemnon is killing men by the dozens. By the thousands. He is a he is definitely a formidable foe. He’s not quite the buffoon, the blustering buffoon that he is in the film. And there’s no there’s no suggestion in the book that Odysseus is his patsy.

00:12:19:16 – 00:12:40:09
Neil Laird
Now, Odysseus, you know, again, he has the great sequel comes up. And if you and I just we read the Odyssey just a few weeks ago, and reminded how many stupid mistakes Odysseus makes, he was often his own worst enemy. But in the Iliad he is not some sort of like patsy for Agamemnon. He very much wants the war to end.

00:12:40:11 – 00:13:05:04
Neil Laird
He wants to get the bloody hell home. And the only way to do that after ten years is to get to to get Achilles, who they cannot win without to rejoin the war. So he is doing Agamemnon’s bidding because he wants to go bloody hell, back to Penelope and he’s sick of it all. So that is kind of whitewashed in the film, and it makes it more like Agamemnon is sort of this big warlord that everybody else sort of like, you know, kowtowed to.

00:13:05:06 – 00:13:07:26
Neil Laird
That’s not quite the way it is in the book.

00:13:07:28 – 00:13:41:01
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, that might answer my next question, because that’s I was watching the movie. Something that really seemed odd to me was how clear it was that Odysseus and particular Achilles really don’t like Agamemnon. That’s why Agamemnon doesn’t go to Achilles himself, because, as the movie says, there’s only one man he’ll listen to. But all I could think of was, if Achilles is the best warrior and he and Odysseus and maybe all of these other Greek provinces conquered by Agamemnon really don’t like Agamemnon, why don’t Achilles and Odysseus lead a revolt against Agamemnon instead of fighting Troy?

00:13:41:03 – 00:13:50:01
Dan LeFebvre
Is there anything from history that helps fill in some more context around why so many who didn’t like Agamemnon would still fight for him?

00:13:50:03 – 00:14:11:18
Neil Laird
Because at the end of the day, this is the age of heroes. And when people listened to the play, it was all no, no one, you know, you know, no one’s going to go home. You know, no one is going to go with their tail between their legs and go back. So Odysseus and all the others, Nestor and all the other people, the Ajax, all these other people that are in there, none of them want to disappear.

00:14:11:18 – 00:14:37:11
Neil Laird
None of them. None of them want to end the war. They want to win the war, but they don’t want it. So despite his bluster, they’re still there. They’re on Agamemnon’s side because they want the same thing. They’re all fighting for the same thing, and they’re all heroes. Keep in mind, this is mythology. So everybody is, you know, painted in a way where they’re making great sacrifices and they’re doing it for posterity and that kind of stuff.

00:14:37:14 – 00:14:59:26
Neil Laird
So writing roughshod over the King and then going around him wouldn’t be something that a Greek warrior would do. The Greeks were together. They were a unified force, you know. That said, the key tension in the the both the I keep talking about the book, but of course, the film too is the tension between Achilles and Agamemnon, which is very personal.

00:14:59:26 – 00:15:26:21
Neil Laird
It’s all over a woman, and it’s all like two thin skinned men who can’t get on with it. Thousands die because these two people have these petty problems. So Agamemnon definitely comes across if there’s any villain in the book, like the film, and I think the film wisely chose him as a villain, it is Agamemnon because he sets the whole, slaughter of the Greeks and sets the whole tragedy in motion.

00:15:26:23 – 00:15:49:27
Neil Laird
He he’s too proud to apologize to Achilles after he slighted him. So those are all very personal things. So I think I just see us in the other just kind of want to stay clear of it. It’s going to get back to war. So I don’t think, you know, going around the king who’s who’s the leader of men is this keep call in the book would be the way to do that in a Greek play.

00:15:49:29 – 00:16:12:13
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. That makes a lot more sense because in the movie, it just kind of seems like, Achilles is in the center of it all. And whatever side he’s on, he’s going to win. So why would he bother to fight for somebody he doesn’t even like when he, you know, he can turn the tides as the greatest warrior of all to fight against Agamemnon if he wanted to, whoever, whatever side he’s on is going to win.

00:16:12:16 – 00:16:30:01
Neil Laird
And it’s true. And he is. And certainly in the play, too, they talk about how he’s a fleet footed greatest warrior of all time. He can kill a thousand with one slice. So, you know, and we buddy, you know, the, the, the whole weak army starts to die because he decides to sit the war out of. That’s how important one guy’s.

00:16:30:05 – 00:16:54:06
Neil Laird
So he certainly could take over for Agamemnon. But there’s also in terms of, you know, the one thing, the one thing the film did and it’s got a lot of controversy from, I guess, people who know the place. So well or the poem so well is that got rid of the gods, and I understand why they do. But the one thing that you get when you read Homer that is not in the films is the gods are always meddling.

00:16:54:09 – 00:17:23:01
Neil Laird
So someone is always whispering, you know, Athena is always whispering in and, and, Agamemnon’s ears do this, do that. So they’re all being spurred on by the gods and and of course, the others don’t want to piss the god off by going against their favorite. So you have that key element where all of this is the reason all of these people are the gift of men is because they have help from Mount Olympus and, you know, want to piss off Mount Olympus.

00:17:23:03 – 00:17:26:16
Neil Laird
So you just kind of ride it out.

00:17:26:18 – 00:17:46:24
Dan LeFebvre
You don’t want to piss off Mount Olympus, I like that. Well, back in the movie, the Greeks launched their attack, sending a thousand ships bearing 50,000 soldiers to Troy. The battle begins with Achilles and his Myrmidons landing on the beaches of Troy first, and he leads them in slaughtering the defending Trojan archers. Then they move on to the nearby temple to Apollo.

00:17:47:02 – 00:18:10:29
Dan LeFebvre
Their Achilles kills all the priests and desecrate the temple itself by cutting off the head of a statue and telling his men they’re free to take whatever treasure they want. Hector’s soldiers arrive, but they’re all killed as well, and there are only two Trojans who survive this initial battle. One is Hector, who Achilles lets go free because he says it’s too early in the day for killing Princess.

00:18:11:02 – 00:18:20:06
Dan LeFebvre
And the other is Hector’s cousin Perseus, which Achilles takes as a captive. Is that how the Battle of Troy really began?

00:18:20:08 – 00:18:37:11
Neil Laird
None of that. None of that happened. In fact, I think it’s one of the weakest scenes in the film. I can only imagine they put that in there to show Brad Pitt, you know, being strong willed to get a battle scene early on to show he almost a Troy, all muscled up, annoyed up. And he’s taken charge. Okay.

00:18:37:16 – 00:19:01:09
Neil Laird
You know, remind you again, the Iliad opens in year ten. So they’re already been entrenched in the muddy, you know, camps for ten years. But even then, it’s a very curious and I think a very, very weak sequence because a historically, it’s it’s a mess. Those are, those are Greeks, the Egyptian statues in the back there, basing them more on Egyptian myths rather than anything Greeks.

00:19:01:09 – 00:19:23:21
Neil Laird
And they’re, they’re borrowing from Abydos and, and Abu Simbel and a lot of Egyptian and messing it up with some of the Syrian stuff. They’re making it up by making it look a little Greek, but it’s very much an Egyptian motif, which is totally wrong there. And then also the whole thing just seems so crude for Achilles to come in and start killing the gods and killing the priest and everything.

00:19:23:23 – 00:19:44:02
Neil Laird
It feels like it was done by committee to show an action sequence early in the film, and it does nothing to advance the plot. None of that is is in the book. Achilles and Hector don’t meet until they’re one on one. You know, out front there’s there’s a scene that there’s no sense of that. So no. So actually none of that is accurate.

00:19:44:04 – 00:20:02:21
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, maybe it’s like you’re saying doing an action sequence right up front, for entertainment purposes. But also they just mentioned Achilles being the greatest warrior. And so they have to show him being the greatest warrior. And they also point out that in the movie, at least, they point out that clearing the beaches is this great feat.

00:20:02:21 – 00:20:05:16
Dan LeFebvre
And Achilles is basically able to do that by himself.

00:20:05:19 – 00:20:25:04
Neil Laird
That’s true. It’s a good point because you got to show if he is the greatest warrior. We got to see why early on we can’t just talk about it. But of course, all he kills is a bunch of priests in one temple. It’s not exactly the most impressive, win of all time. That’s the whole thing is is a very curious sequence that just rang hollow to me.

00:20:25:06 – 00:20:45:18
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a very, very good point. Well, after that vicious start to the battle on the beaches, Paris offers to end the war in the movie before it goes any further, he wants to fight King Menelaus of Sparta in this one on one battle for Helen. And in this fight, Menelaus gets the advantage of Paris, who then turns to his brother Hector for help.

00:20:45:20 – 00:21:04:27
Dan LeFebvre
Menelaus is about to kill Paris when Hector ends up killing Menelaus, and this just enrages Agamemnon and the Greeks, who then launch a full scale attack on Troy. But according to the movie, they’re driven back and forced to retire to their camp on the beaches. Did this battle between Paris and Menelaus actually happen?

00:21:04:29 – 00:21:30:25
Neil Laird
It did, but not. It doesn’t end the way it does in the film. And another very curious change they make. And again, I think because the filmmaker is just another doing a one off, they’re not they’re not talking about Gregory cos they’re going to be around forever. They’re making one. They’re done. So the beginning starts the way it does in the book where, where Paris, and Menelaos fight.

00:21:30:27 – 00:21:55:08
Neil Laird
And what’s interesting in the book is it’s also makes Paris out to be sort of like the dweeb he is, because he’s very much mismatched by Menelaos. And, what happens there is Menelaos is about to kill him, and I forget which goddess it is, comes and saves them and cocoons them so he doesn’t die. He doesn’t call underneath his brother’s, legs.

00:21:55:08 – 00:22:16:00
Neil Laird
But he’s he is about to be killed by Menelaos, and he survives. That’s how it ends. Menelaos does not die. In fact, Menelaos goes on and he goes back, and he’s a big character in the Odyssey. He goes back to his, his family and his wife and his Greek kingdom, and he has Helen in his arms. Helen goes back with them.

00:22:16:06 – 00:22:38:25
Neil Laird
So when the Odyssey, when Odysseus popped by to say hello, he’s there with Helen and she’s like, you know, mixing up drinks for them is kind of like just popping by. Menelaos does not die. There’s a very curious thing that they did to kill him off. And I guess it is because the characters to it, to a film audience in 2004 don’t have quite the resonance they do to a Greek scholar or something.

00:22:38:25 – 00:22:57:17
Neil Laird
So it’s like a Greek people and they make him very much. He is kind of a crass character in Homer too, so they they kind of get that right where he’s not exactly. He’s he’s not like his brother. He’s a brute. And while he’s strong, he’s not bright at all. He’s definitely a hothead, if you don’t mind. Is probably seeing him die.

00:22:57:23 – 00:23:05:17
Neil Laird
He’s a good person to kill off, but, he is not killed off the way he is. He is, in the book by Hector.

00:23:05:20 – 00:23:11:14
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, okay. It just seems a tad bit different than what we see in the movie.

00:23:11:16 – 00:23:13:22
Neil Laird
But.

00:23:13:24 – 00:23:38:26
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie, a relationship starts to form between Achilles and the Trojan priestess Perseus. That’s how they pronounce it in the movie that he captured Achilles seems tired of fighting for Agamemnon, so he orders his men to stay while Agamemnon goes to battle. But then, while Achilles is in his tent with Perseus, Achilles belove cousin Patrick List wears Achilles armor and leads the Myrmidons into battle.

00:23:38:27 – 00:23:57:17
Dan LeFebvre
They think it’s Achilles that they’re following, and then when these soldiers fight their way to Hector, Hector ends up killing the man they all think is Achilles until taking off his helmet, and it’s revealed that it’s Patrick was. So that’s how the movie shows Achilles ending up recommitting to the fight against the Trojans to avenge his cousin’s death.

00:23:57:19 – 00:24:00:08
Dan LeFebvre
How much of that is based on real history?

00:24:00:10 – 00:24:17:14
Neil Laird
That is a very, very key point in the book, and that’s very close to what happens. The emotional core of the book is just that. It is it is, and and they say brass, brass. This is different ways of saying it. But essentially the whole plot of the Iliad in nutshell is in the 10th year of the war.

00:24:17:21 – 00:24:39:11
Neil Laird
They’re sitting around, they’re trying to bring down Troy. And one way to do that is to do a bunch of raids and attack the villages and fill up the, the gates with, refugees and then take a bunch of war brides and then, you know, have their way with them. Brass actually comes in that she’s not related in any way to anyone inside the, Troy that is, Achilles.

00:24:39:13 – 00:25:02:25
Neil Laird
War booty from from a recent raid that happens off camera. And, at the same time, Agamemnon gets his own. I forget her name. What is it? Christmas? Or I forgot to say it. And, her father come by and and he’s he’s a priest of Apollo and says, give her back. And he says, as we joke, and I’m going to kill you if you don’t leave right now, I need I need my daughter back.

00:25:02:25 – 00:25:32:24
Neil Laird
I will give you everything I own. Just give me my daughter back. So she’s the daughter of a priestess, not a priestess herself. Agamemnon. And his bluster sends him out, says, I will kill you if you don’t leave now. And as he leaves, he curses them and says, you will regret this. And they do so as soon as the priest leaves, he he calls out to Apollo, who sends a plague down and wipes out half of the Trojans or half of the Greeks, and kills them until his daughters return.

00:25:32:27 – 00:25:56:06
Neil Laird
Agamemnon refuses for a while and then eventually says, oh, you know what? I’ll give her back. I’ll take I’ll take Achilles war bride instead. So he takes braces, brass as as his, as his concubine instead. And that pisses Achilles off so much. He sits out the war, he stops and that’s when things go to shit. So basically, that is all of the unity is really about these.

00:25:56:12 – 00:26:29:10
Neil Laird
These two men and these two women and and these women are pretty powerless. Unfortunately, in the book. But because his, his war bride or his war booty with her car has been taken away, Achilles refuses to fight and they start to suffer a they come and they beg him and they beg him. And it’s only when Patrick class who and in my book and in many other, in many other, historians believe it was, was, Achilles real lover.

00:26:29:12 – 00:26:49:29
Neil Laird
He’s his fucking cousin, but also his same sex lover and they say, well, we have to get them out there if you will not fight. How can we get the Greeks to go out there and fight as if you are? They need to believe you’re with them. So he and Patrick Kless form a, you know, major decision.

00:26:49:29 – 00:27:13:15
Neil Laird
You go out there, you wear my armor, and they think it’s me and they will win. And I still won’t fight because he’s that. He’s because he’s a petulant child, too. Unfortunately, Patrick isn’t as strong as them, and he goes on and gets slaughtered by Hector. So all of that happens. And then then, then when Achilles finds out that his beloved has been killed by Hector, he rejoins the war effort.

00:27:13:15 – 00:27:16:05
Neil Laird
And then Troy falls.

00:27:16:07 – 00:27:22:26
Dan LeFebvre
So many people killed just because of these yes egos.

00:27:22:28 – 00:27:43:04
Neil Laird
It all comes down. These two, these two arrogant men who just refuse to think about anybody but themselves. First, Agamemnon let thousands die because of a plague. Because he won’t give up some random chemical. You got ten women in his tent, and then Achilles watches all his brethren die because they took away this woman who he barely has any relationship with.

00:27:43:06 – 00:28:00:21
Neil Laird
If they’re in love, Homer doesn’t suggest it as much more love, even in Homer between him and Patrick, less than it is in him and her. So it’s a very it’s a very it’s a very strange thing that he just sits out the war and lets thousands and thousands of people he grew up with die because of one woman.

00:28:00:24 – 00:28:24:24
Dan LeFebvre
It almost sounds similar to what we were talking about before, with Agamemnon using the slide against Menelaus as an excuse to do something he already wanted to do attacking Troy. It sounds like maybe Achilles might be doing a similar thing, and using just this minor slight against a woman that maybe he didn’t even really care that much about to do something he didn’t want to do anyway, which is set out to fight.

00:28:24:24 – 00:28:29:11
Dan LeFebvre
Or, you know, he didn’t want to fight, so he’s just going to do that anyway.

00:28:29:13 – 00:28:50:19
Neil Laird
Well, there was there’s one other. And again, the Greek, the Greek writers wouldn’t say this because I think the age of the other hero wouldn’t allow it. But some other people have interpreted his sitting out the war memory as a very early scene in the film where Julie Christie as as his mom, comes and says, if you go to Troy, you will die.

00:28:50:21 – 00:29:14:28
Neil Laird
It is, you go to try, you will live forever, but you will die. Or you can not go to Troy. You will be anonymous and you will have a full life. So? So some have speculated maybe when the reason he sits it out as he realizes, why do I want to die? I’d rather anonymity and live like a human being, then be a hero and then die at age 18 or whatever the hell he is.

00:29:15:00 – 00:29:51:08
Neil Laird
You know that that is not in Homer, but certainly there is. The book is shot through with this idea of everyone becoming immortal. So just by him being there, he will die just by him partaking, because everything is written by the gods. So you could argue that maybe one of the reasons he did it, if you’re if you’re adding some elements and maybe you human but necessary in the Homer original is that he’s sitting it out again because he’s decided that, you know, living forever isn’t worth it.

00:29:51:09 – 00:30:21:10
Neil Laird
There’s a wonderful scene in the Odyssey where, Odysseus is looking. Has he go to Hades? I forget the reason why he goes to Hades, looking for his way home or something. And he meets all the people who died after the war, including Agamemnon and, Achilles. And Achilles says quite famously, I’d rather be a beggar to some man up above than the king of the gods down below.

00:30:21:12 – 00:30:45:01
Neil Laird
And it’s. And then that basically said he’s regretting dying. So when he’s in Hades, when you basically you live forever, but you’re no longer human. He regrets that he would rather be up above being a nobody than down below and being a hero forever. So that is something is very much a theme throughout all of Homer. This idea of destiny, this idea of fate, fate is really what it is.

00:30:45:03 – 00:30:58:02
Neil Laird
And he is fated to die. And if he had one chance to do what it would have been then by sitting at the war. It isn’t until his lover is taken from him that he realizes he has to see his fate through.

00:30:58:05 – 00:31:21:10
Dan LeFebvre
I could see that too. You mentioned this scene in the movie with his mother where he’s, you know, talking about living in immortality. But, you know, in that moment before the fighting actually begins, especially being that young, you might think, oh, this is such a great thing, you know, living in immortality. And then once the fighting begins, you might have a change of heart.

00:31:21:12 – 00:31:26:03
Neil Laird
And keep in mind for what, at the end of the day, they’re all fighting so one guy can get his wife back.

00:31:26:08 – 00:31:30:21
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And yeah, not even fighting for yourself. You’re fighting for somebody else? Yeah.

00:31:30:24 – 00:31:52:10
Neil Laird
So there’s a bunch of boorish, brutish men that really should just get over it, you know, that he’ll go over and spend ten years and die. And certainly there’s a lot of sequences in the end, home or where people are already sick and they want to go home, and it’s very unpleasant. They’re living in rain among rats and and pestilence, and they’re living in the boats and tents along the shore.

00:31:52:17 – 00:32:06:24
Neil Laird
And, you know, it’s is an ugly existence. They’re away from home. They’re all dreaming about their wives and their families. Most of them don’t make it. So certainly it’s not a rosy picture, what life is like and what war is like in the Bronze Age.

00:32:06:27 – 00:32:31:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we can go back to the movie as soon as Achilles finds out his cousin has been killed, he races to the Trojan city walls and yells for Hector to face him in one on one combat. Hector complies and goes out to face Achilles, and it’s a valiant fight between two great warriors. But Achilles is the better warrior, so he kills Hector and then drags Hector’s body from his chariot in front of the city walls for all the Trojans to watch.

00:32:31:15 – 00:32:37:25
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if this fight between two legendary warriors happened? The way we see it in the movie.

00:32:37:27 – 00:33:05:12
Neil Laird
It happens that way in the book. They got that right and you call right or wrong again, it’s not. They have to be gospel when it comes to interpreting a 3000 year old. You take liberties that they want, I suppose much, you know, but that is very much what happens. There’s a very strong sequence in the chapter in the book, and by that point it’s very interesting because what what Homer does is he has created sympathies on both sides.

00:33:05:19 – 00:33:25:02
Neil Laird
Hector is a man of honor. And they kind of they kind of do that in the film. They make they make, Paris much more of a dweeb, which maybe he is. But certainly Hector, in both the film and in the poem, is very much the strongest man in Troy, and he is obviously meant to take over from King Prime, his father.

00:33:25:09 – 00:33:46:12
Neil Laird
So his loss would be a great thing. So it is a it is not an evenly match because Achilles is Achilles, but Hector is a very strong and formidable opponent, and he has a lot of people on his side who respect that. So, you know, it is probably the one of the most powerful scenes in the play, or an example in the, the poem.

00:33:46:12 – 00:33:50:25
Neil Laird
Because because you have sympathies on both sides. You really care about the characters.

00:33:50:28 – 00:34:08:05
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that leads you to another question I want to ask about at this point in the movie, because at this point, we’ve seen a few one on one fights, right? And the movie starts with Agamemnon calling on Achilles to fight the Thessalonians champion a guy named boy Grace. Then later, there’s that one and one fight between Paris and Menelaus that we already talked about.

00:34:08:11 – 00:34:17:21
Dan LeFebvre
And now there’s this one on one fight between Achilles and Hector. Historically speaking, were these one on one fights that we see sprinkled throughout the movie? What they common.

00:34:17:23 – 00:34:40:19
Neil Laird
Historically know was certainly in ancient literature. They’re a trait. They were much a trope, like any book you read today. Like any rom romantic comedy, whatever has their own tropes, an ancient ancient story had their troubles and one on one because it’s mano a mano. The first one in the film doesn’t happen at all. Where, Achilles fights whoever that character is, I think it’s only fictional.

00:34:40:22 – 00:35:01:11
Neil Laird
And then you think about it, probably the most famous 1 or 1 fight and all literature, certainly if you read your Bible growing up is David and Goliath. So you have that one that’s already then that’s probably what that was based on. They probably would steal it from that. But then you also have, even in the very obscure Egyptian text called The Tale of Sin, you’re about a guy who leaves Egypt and tries to come back to die.

00:35:01:18 – 00:35:26:18
Neil Laird
He has a one on one battle with an Egyptian, warrior to get in Romulus in the in the Roman legend fights, this warrior name Akron to to bring supremacy, to bring the tribes of Rome together is a trope. And it’s all about kind of like it shows the prowess of one man up against the best and winning.

00:35:26:20 – 00:35:41:27
Neil Laird
So certainly. And you have two of them in the Iliad. And the first one, of course, goes against Hector, and he kind of becomes a, a slobbering dweeb. But the other one is a very emotional crux of the entire, story arc, where you take the two biggest characters and bring them together.

00:35:42:00 – 00:36:08:11
Dan LeFebvre
I could see that, and we even see that in movies, too. If you think about it, you know, you think of these movies with the huge epic battles of thousands and thousands on either side. It’s really hard to honestly care about these huge, just numbers of people on either side. And so you focus in on just a few people on either side, whether it’s ensemble or, you know, composite characters or just these one on ones.

00:36:08:12 – 00:36:13:10
Dan LeFebvre
And so I could see if that’s the case in movies, that would be the same thing in writing two.

00:36:13:13 – 00:36:30:01
Neil Laird
You read The Iliad and, and I recommend everybody. Sure. Because there’s some beautiful stuff in there and it can be very dramatic. There’s a slog to where they go on and on and talk about somebody killing somebody, killing somebody from a small town in eastern Turkey. You don’t know who they are. And it’s boring because yet no emotional connection with them.

00:36:30:03 – 00:36:53:14
Neil Laird
Like any Marvel movie, it’s when the hero fights the villain is that when you think of the classic end of good, the bad and the ugly, where the good, the bad and the ugly have a Mexican standoff and a bunch of close ups and all their eyeballs back and forth. That’s what you want at the end. You want all the noise to go away, and you would have come down on the most primal, which is it’s mano a mano fight to the finish.

00:36:53:17 – 00:37:03:04
Neil Laird
Look me in the eye. And that’s certainly something that goes all the way back to again, David and Goliath and these ancient texts that still resonate today.

00:37:03:07 – 00:37:26:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, back in the movies storyline, after Hector is killed, the Trojan king Priam sneaks into the Greek camp to ask Achilles for Hector’s body. They remain enemies. The movie makes it clear, but Achilles seems to have respect for both Hector and Priam, so he grants the request. He turns over the body and offers a 12 day peace because, according to the movie, the Funeral Games lasts for 12 days.

00:37:26:10 – 00:37:38:15
Dan LeFebvre
That’s both an Achilles country as well as Priam’s, and so there’s a peace for 12 days. Was there really a 12 day piece during the Trojan War for the funeral of Hector, like we see in the movie?

00:37:38:17 – 00:37:57:17
Neil Laird
What’s interesting is that’s also how the book ends. The book ends right there. That is the last scene of the Iliad, and I think it’s probably the best scene of the movie, too. It helps the a Peter O’Toole in there who can act up a storm. Right. And everybody else have these veterans in there that just by walking in the room, you’re interested in them because they have such presence.

00:37:57:19 – 00:38:03:26
Neil Laird
You know, I wish there was a more prime and maybe less of of, who’s the cipher of the played pairs.

00:38:03:28 – 00:38:08:07
Dan LeFebvre
Orlando Bloom, Legolas from Lord of the rings. Yeah.

00:38:08:10 – 00:38:26:23
Neil Laird
Let’s move forward more. O’Toole would have been my review. That’s very much how it ends. And is also, it finally shows Achilles breaking down because he’s brooding and angry. The entire he can’t get over Patrick Bliss’s death. So, you know, find. And then that’s why he kills Hector. But this man comes to him and I think it’s the best line in the film.

00:38:26:23 – 00:38:45:27
Neil Laird
I forget how it is. It’s kind of I’m paraphrasing again, but it’s something like, Achilles says, if I do this for you, you’re still my enemy tomorrow. And O’Toole’s character, Prime says, you’re still my enemy tonight, but we can still be human or something like that. It’s what so wonderful scene. And I wish there was more of that emotion in the film.

00:38:45:27 – 00:39:09:16
Neil Laird
I think that reminds you of the Achilles. Could have been a real character, as opposed to this sort of pin up, you know, greased up muscle boy. So I think that that suggests to what the film could have been. But yes, there’s very much how the book ends. And in terms of the 12 days, whether that was a whether that was, typical in Bronze Age culture, I don’t know, but that is what they say in the Iliad.

00:39:09:16 – 00:39:26:22
Neil Laird
It is 12 days. And the book ends with Prime getting up, thanking him, taking his boy’s body. And then there’s a paragraph after. Then what? You you hear them burning, you watch them burning Hector’s body and people watching it. And that’s how the book ends.

00:39:26:24 – 00:39:54:27
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, okay. Well, the movie keeps going, so we’ll keep going to, It’s not too much of a surprise at this point in the movie that Agamemnon is just furious when he finds out that Achilles agreed to a 12 day piece without his approval. But then again, the movie also points out that Troy was built to withstand a ten year siege, so it’s not like they can do a lot to get past the city walls anyway, at that point is the movie’s claim of Troy’s city walls being built to withstand a ten year siege.

00:39:54:27 – 00:39:56:27
Dan LeFebvre
Historically accurate.

00:39:57:00 – 00:40:15:11
Neil Laird
I mean, ten years seems outrageous for any kind of war, certainly any war that took place back then. Again, it’s kind of like, you know, 40 days and 40 nights and all these kind of cliches. You Alexander’s 40 thieves. There are some numbers that just fit. And ten year, it’d be a nice long chunk of time where people get a bit miffed.

00:40:15:13 – 00:40:43:19
Neil Laird
So there was no true. I mean, certainly some cities can withstand with withstand sieges forever. Others will fall straight away depending on duplicity or or a crack in the in the wall. So it’s hard to know what the Troy, prime was like. Now, you know, they have found, you know, as we were talking earlier, Troy, we do know Troy exists because, archeology just named Schliemann, found in the 1880s, is some turkey, and you can go there.

00:40:43:19 – 00:41:03:09
Neil Laird
Today is a very disappointing site because it’s all denuded and ripped apart. There’s nothing except for really cheesy, wooden horse in the car park, which is 1970s y, like some Turkish filmmaker making a TV movie. It’s even got a little window. It looks like something out laugh. You know, it’s so cheesy. Got big knobs on it, the stairs going up.

00:41:03:11 – 00:41:28:02
Neil Laird
It is not is not the authentic thing. But Troy stood for a thousand years at some point of Troy up 8000 years now. What level was the Trojan War at? Was probably somewhere in the lower third, maybe like the fourth or fifth layer. They have different strata and I forget right now which one it is. So Troy itself lasted a very long time and Troy was rebuilt after, prime time.

00:41:28:05 – 00:41:51:26
Neil Laird
So it’s, it’s we don’t know how strong it was then. There’s there’s actually Roman ruins there too. So it’s still around in Roman times, so to say that it can withstand a siege X years long, I think is impossible to say. And of course, they saw that. Anyways, with the Trojan horse through duplicity, by getting those doors open, which is one of the most, it’s hard to believe anybody falling for that ever happened in ancient times.

00:41:51:26 – 00:42:01:27
Neil Laird
It’s like, oh, he’s a enormous, enormous wooden horse outside my door. Let’s bring it inside the gates that we’d kept closed for a decade.

00:42:01:29 – 00:42:20:17
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, we still have people filing for Trojan horses today with computer viruses. But that leads right into my next question. Because if we head back to the movie, we’re at the point where we see perhaps the most famous part of the war, the Trojan Horse. The movie shows this idea coming to Odysseus as he’s watching one of his soldiers carve a wooden horse for his son back home.

00:42:20:23 – 00:42:40:20
Dan LeFebvre
And then after the 12 day funeral for Hector, the Trojans come out and they find the Greeks are no longer on the beaches. Instead, they just find some dead bodies with what they think is the plague. That’s something that the Trojan priest there says is retribution from Apollo for the way the Greeks desecrated the temple, alluding to the attack on the beach that Achilles did.

00:42:40:20 – 00:43:00:09
Dan LeFebvre
We talked about earlier when they first landed, when the Greeks first landed. And then they also find this huge wooden horse which they think was built by the Greeks as an offering for Poseidon to grant the Greeks a safe return home. That same priest convinces King Priam to take the horse to their own temple of Poseidon, and that brings the horse within the city walls.

00:43:00:09 – 00:43:14:19
Dan LeFebvre
And then that night, Odysseus, Achilles, and maybe a dozen or so Greeks sneak out of the horse, kill the sleeping guards, and open the city gates for the waiting Greek army. Does the movie accurately portray what we know of the Trojan horse now?

00:43:14:19 – 00:43:35:13
Neil Laird
I mean, again, we don’t even know if the Trojan War happened. And and so you’re asking, asking my reporting on a thesis that’s already flawed. It’s hard to imagine a Trojan War happening, isn’t it? Something torn from met. And it was quite interesting. Otho is definitely the most famous thing from the Trojan War. That and maybe the heel.

00:43:35:15 – 00:44:03:08
Neil Laird
It only gets about 3 or 4 lines. Not in the Iliad, but in the Odyssey, which is asking Odysseus and one of his islands where he’s stuck. How did you get away? And he chose them over like a, like a lamb or whatever. What happened? It’s like a paragraph long. It is a cliff note. So it’s very interesting that, it becomes the most famous name for it because it’s so dramatic and so cinematic and it’s it’s a great ending.

00:44:03:08 – 00:44:22:08
Neil Laird
It’s a great ending on no matter how ridiculous it is. And as you described it, is as how it’s described in the Odyssey. That pretty much is how they do it. I don’t know if it’s a plague. They say they leave, but they wake up and the Greeks all hide behind a, a, promontory out in the bay.

00:44:22:08 – 00:44:39:25
Neil Laird
All the ships, and they act like they’ve left. And they left. They’ve left this, wooden horse behind. Not for the Greek for for Apollo to say, you know, sorry. We’ve been mucking up the earth and mucking about with things. And when we’re out of here and Prime thinks that it’s for them, and he takes it in and they sneak out.

00:44:39:27 – 00:45:06:11
Neil Laird
So yes, that happens as described, in the Odyssey. Did it happen in real life? I think I could hazard or no. We know we don’t know any of these people existed. You know, Neeleman also claimed he found a, the city of Agamemnon. He calls it Agamemnon’s mask in central, Greece. My senior. But we don’t know if it’s Agamemnon.

00:45:06:11 – 00:45:19:16
Neil Laird
He very much wanted to be Agamemnon. These are mythological characters that might have been based on fact. But they were heroes. They were. They were, you know, touched by gods. So they could be as real as Apollo and Athena and all the others.

00:45:19:18 – 00:45:35:00
Dan LeFebvre
Sounds a lot like to, you know, characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood. You know, these stories that there might be fragments of truth here and there, but they’re just built upon for thousands of years that it’s really hard to separate fact from fiction, or how much of it is actually fact at all.

00:45:35:03 – 00:45:54:13
Neil Laird
It could have been an amalgamation of several different people, and they could have been totally invented again, the Trojan War. So, I mean, if you look at the ruins of Troy, it was destroyed many times and burnt, and they think they found the or when Troy of Priam’s Priam’s Troy collapsed. But we don’t know how or why and all those kind of things.

00:45:54:13 – 00:46:04:15
Neil Laird
So it’s impossible to say it happened because of a ten year war of the Greeks. Or it was just spurred by because someone had a space heater out overnight.

00:46:04:17 – 00:46:11:05
Dan LeFebvre
It was the Trojan horse you’re talking about with the window. You know, the sun going through the glass and everything, causing the fire to ignite.

00:46:11:07 – 00:46:14:18
Neil Laird
Anything could have,

00:46:14:21 – 00:46:37:06
Dan LeFebvre
Well, at the very end of the movie, we see the Greek soldiers within the city walls. And once they’re inside, it’s all over for Troy. The city is burning. When Achilles searches for Perseus, she ends up killing Agamemnon when he tries to take her captive. But then Achilles kills the Greek guards to rescue her. And then Paris shows up and he hits Achilles in his heel with an arrow.

00:46:37:08 – 00:46:57:02
Dan LeFebvre
Achilles gets up and Paris ends up hitting Achilles with four more arrows in the chest, but Achilles isn’t quite dead yet. He manages to pull the arrows out of himself, and then Paris and Perseus follow the path that Hector, his wife in drama, shows them out of the city into the island deeper in the island where the Greeks won’t follow.

00:46:57:04 – 00:47:12:09
Dan LeFebvre
And then once they leave, we see a bunch of Greek soldiers showing up to find Achilles die, and the only arrow left because he pulled the others out of his chest. The only one left is the one stuck in his heel. How much of the way the movie ends holds up to historical scrutiny?

00:47:12:16 – 00:47:38:18
Neil Laird
None of that happens except for Paris does kill Achilles with an arrow to the. And I think it is off. It is off camera as well, or off the page. And again, this is from the Odyssey, not from the Iliad, I think. I think maybe when he does, I think when Odysseus goes to Hades and he’s talking to his dead friends, that’s when Achilles tells them, oh, I was I was duped by that little snot, and he killed me.

00:47:38:21 – 00:47:52:08
Neil Laird
But everything else it was didn’t happen. And then, particularly Agamemnon does not die there. Agamemnon is killed, I think, by brass who who kills him in the film.

00:47:52:10 – 00:48:02:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah. It’s Perseus. Yeah. Because Agamemnon was going to take her as his own prize. And then she had, like a dagger head, and she ends up pulling it out and stabbing him. Yeah.

00:48:02:19 – 00:48:24:04
Neil Laird
Yeah. And that when he lives and he goes back to, Mycenae. And of course, it’s a very famous great play about that, where he’s killed by his wife and her lover. She’s with someone else for the last ten years. So when he comes back, he’s coldness tub, I believe, by his own wife and. And his wife’s new lover.

00:48:24:04 – 00:48:28:27
Neil Laird
So he goes all the way back to his homeland, only to die that ignoble death.

00:48:28:29 – 00:48:44:28
Dan LeFebvre
I guess I shouldn’t laugh at somebody dying, but, you know, we think of this guy is responsible for how many thousands of deaths because of his own ego. And just the way all the deaths caused. And then he goes back and dies that way, kind of gets what’s coming to you.

00:48:45:00 – 00:49:04:07
Neil Laird
And it is like it happened that way. APT. We’re just kind of like, you know, slipping on a banana. Pause. You’ve taken on the whole world. But all those characters go on to have sort of sequels. Again, as I mentioned, a lot of them show up in The Odyssey, but but other plays are mentioned about some of the survivors after the fact.

00:49:04:07 – 00:49:26:02
Neil Laird
Now Helen disappears from history. Perseus disappears from this. You all the women, women tend to do that. Achilles is dead. Except for his cameo in Hades. Odysseus goes back and becomes a hero, but Priam and even now Prime dies. We assume Priam dies. I think in the book he’s killed by Agamemnon. Doesn’t happen in the book.

00:49:26:09 – 00:49:29:04
Neil Laird
So we can only imagine if a city falls. So does the King.

00:49:29:06 – 00:49:34:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, he kind of got the idea of, you know, the captain going down with the ship was the impression I got from the film.

00:49:35:02 – 00:50:02:26
Neil Laird
And the reasoning that you have on. There’s people leaving at the end sneaking out. Paris wasn’t among them. We don’t know if he left, but there was a very famous, Roman play by Virgil called The Animate. And that is basically trying to connect themselves to the Greeks and saying they are the descendants of the famous Greeks. But one could be the one comes to us and starts the Romans, you know, so a hero from Troy.

00:50:03:01 – 00:50:18:13
Neil Laird
So basically when them leaving, that’s pretty much how the army begins. It begins. It begins with them, with with them leaving and picking up the story from the fall of Troy. So that’s sort of setting up for if there was a sequel would have been that the Roman version of what happens next?

00:50:18:16 – 00:50:26:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, maybe that’s where King Arthur comes into it, because I know there’s, thought that he might have actually been a Roman centurion. Then led to the the myths that we know now.

00:50:26:08 – 00:50:31:09
Neil Laird
Yeah. If anybody wants to be Roman because they were the top dog for so long.

00:50:31:11 – 00:50:47:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the movie does talk about it being like 30, 200 years ago. And you talked a little bit here and there about the Trojan ruins and then talked about some other ruins that obviously you’ve been to as well. Do you think the movie does a good job transporting us back in time 30, 200 years?

00:50:47:22 – 00:51:10:24
Neil Laird
You know, it’s funny, because I’m writing a book about Troy. I talked to some archeologist who’ve dug there, and they put me on to a book. I think it was by Michael Woods, who is an archeologist. An old book back in the 80s. Did a bunch of BBC docs you might have seen back in the day, British Guy, and they said, we all, kind of look at him as being the perfect example.

00:51:11:00 – 00:51:32:02
Neil Laird
He created mock ups of what Troy might have looked like, and the filmmakers must have got that same book because it looked a lot like that. So I think the sets are quite nice, I think, except for mixing up the gods. As I mentioned the first scene, and anytime you see ancient history, those of us who were snobs with that and I’m no archeologist story and I’m a filmmaker and a novelist, do spend a lot of time with those people.

00:51:32:05 – 00:51:50:00
Neil Laird
You see a bit of a Hittite, a bit of Egyptian, a bit of a Phoenician, whatever is cool looking, winged, all the Syrian winged bulls, you know, next, next up ball and all this stuff it all makes are exotically ancient. But I thought in terms of how the walls looked and how the city looked, it captured it quite a nicely.

00:51:50:00 – 00:51:54:21
Neil Laird
It transported me. I wasn’t sort of like sniffing my nose at it.

00:51:54:23 – 00:51:57:10
Dan LeFebvre
It’s whatever looks good on camera, right?

00:51:57:12 – 00:52:03:20
Neil Laird
Yeah, it has epic. It has to look epic. And I think they did that. Yeah.

00:52:03:22 – 00:52:21:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned you’re writing a book and this is just been a lot of fun to dig into the myths, legends and history behind Troy. Now, before I let you go, I think anyone who is a fan of historical stories that we talked about today would love to read your historical novels. So can you share a little bit more about those?

00:52:21:09 – 00:52:29:24
Dan LeFebvre
For anyone watching the video version of this, I am holding up Prime Time Pompeii. But you also have prime time travelers. And could there be a prime time Troy on the way?

00:52:30:00 – 00:52:33:14
Neil Laird
Maybe.

00:52:33:17 – 00:52:59:06
Neil Laird
Yeah, it’s a series and it’s not hard. You know, I have a TV producer by trade. I’ve been to the last 30 years making historical documentaries for BBC, National Geographic right now, working for the History Channel. So I work for all of them. And my bailiwick has always been history archeology. And I’ve been to some 70 countries and, you know, after traveling and all, doing all these footnoted scripts, that it were all the, all the facts had to be exact, like we’re talking about right now.

00:52:59:09 – 00:53:14:26
Neil Laird
I’m doing exactly the same thing the filmmakers are trying to do, and I’m making shit up. And I wanted to have some fun with what I know. So Prime Time Travelers is about a TV crew, kind of, you know, fairly cheesy, ancient aliens, like TV crew who find order to the past and it allows them to tour the ancient past.

00:53:14:26 – 00:53:33:22
Neil Laird
Hopefully to win an Emmy, and they get sucked into the great events of ancient times. The first book is them going back to ancient Egypt during the times of Ramses the Great, and they have to find a mummy in the Duat, which is the 12 hours of hell, before the sun rises. So I get all the mythology of Egypt.

00:53:33:22 – 00:53:57:01
Neil Laird
I was able to bring in there and recreate ancient Egypt in that the New Kingdom under Ramses the second book, they time travel back to Pompeii and the eve of Pompeii. With that, with a snooty, TV host, you know, along with that, you just can’t wait to die. And I won’t do it anyway. Yeah, well, let say let’s just say, you know, things happen.

00:53:57:03 – 00:54:19:21
Neil Laird
And when I mean, in the third book, which I’m writing right now, prime time Troy, they go back to ancient Troy, with the invite of Achilles, and they set up there is exactly what I’m talking about before Achilles realizes, oh, you people can change history. You can make documentaries, make people live for forever without being in a without being in an epic poem.

00:54:19:28 – 00:54:26:13
Neil Laird
I don’t want to die. And I will give you a ringside seat to Troy if you figure out how to let me live.

00:54:26:15 – 00:54:34:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay? And that’s like living forever. Like, literally living forever or like living forever throughout legend.

00:54:34:08 – 00:54:50:25
Neil Laird
So he wants. He wants it. He wants to become a human being used to go for Patrick and live a life of happy the Patrick list. So. But but he’s also, you know, a hero of the book and he basically wants them see if you if anyone can change the past the time travel TV producers can because you’ve done it twice now so that the hope and see it.

00:54:50:25 – 00:55:14:14
Neil Laird
Of course he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, but you can’t quite trust him. So basically all these books are in a way to kind of have fun with the past, with mythology, with history, don’t screw with time and all that stuff. But I also it’s I just want to be able to take all this stuff I know about the ancient world around Greece and Egypt and just get people excited about it was not a heavy treatise on,

00:55:14:16 – 00:55:31:07
Neil Laird
And, you know, you don’t have to read Homer. My book is you get a reading, Homer, let’s just say. And it’s fun, it’s comedic. So obviously it’s if you skewers television as much as anything else. So it definitely is a lighthearted way of time traveling to, very violent, distant times.

00:55:31:09 – 00:55:43:28
Dan LeFebvre
I imagine maybe thousands thousand years from now, you know, people will take just a few lines from your book and make another movie similar to what they did with Troy and with Homer’s writings from thousands of years ago.

00:55:44:01 – 00:55:51:27
Neil Laird
Or, oh, this is the only thing he survived. And I assume that time travel was real and that the gods are really a bunch of TV producers. The cameras.

00:55:51:27 – 00:55:54:07
Dan LeFebvre
Yes, yes.

00:55:54:09 – 00:56:09:12
Neil Laird
Yes, the incidents of history are amazing. It’s I love like what survives and what doesn’t. And that’s all sometimes we know about entire culture because one papyri, you know, was, was, was, you know, saved underneath a falling pillar. So that’s all we know about an entire culture.

00:56:09:14 – 00:56:25:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. I sometimes it’s just luck. Right. Well, I make sure to add a link to all your books in the show notes. So that we can increase the chances of it living forever. Thank you again so much for your time, Neal.