Is This Thing On?

I could be wrong about that.

But if you haven't seen Is This Thing On?

Right

... it's, it's so good.

I'm your host, Jimmy Berners-Kinney, and this week we are talking the romantic comedy from last year.

Is this thing on? This is a film from last year, so it's not a particularly recent or old one, but I only got around to seeing it a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was so relevant to some of the ideas that we've been talking about in the show over the last couple of weeks.

It's about a couple that gets divorced, like in the first few scenes of the film.

And then they find each other again after Will Arnett, who's the husband, starts doing stand-up comedy.

So it's called Is This Thing On? It's sort of like a double, the double meaning of, you know, is this microphone on? But is this relationship still on? Because they get back together again quite soon after saying they're going to break up.

Okay.

telling everyone that they've broken up so as i said a second ago why is this uh relevant to what we've been talking about it is also interesting it's based on a true story uh by the uh comedian uh is he named john bishop um and um what I think is a very, I only say that because I like it when things are based on a true story, because it's like, you know, the, the ideas of like a film like this, I mean, not, not a biopic, but like a film where it's like, it has a narrative structure and it feels like a real movie, but it was based on a real story.

In the same way that you cannot understand a work of art without reference to the artist.

We watched a film last night called Is This Thing On? about a marriage proposal.

coming back together based on the life of John Bishop the comedian and actually I don't think you can really understand the film without knowing John Bishop's story and there's little subtle references the whole way through it and that's the whole point and this is where atheists and humanists get it all wrong because they're basically you have to have some form of reference for how you understand yourself and once you remove God from that reference you're then like well what is my reference point So if you understand yourself properly, you have to have some form of reference to God.

So, I mean, there's lots of things that you might want to think about as a result of what's being said there from Genesis.

And then, you know, John...

John, around the time, the beginning of like this movie is this thing on, which was like loosely based around his life.

You know, he was doing a lot more stuff in the States.

So we were spending more time together over here and John was gigging in the States.

Yeah.

I mean, people, obviously so many people here know yourself.

They also know John Bishop, but I guess they got to know him a bit more or certainly his story through the movie that came out with Will Arnett playing the role based on John Bishop's life called Is This Thing On? And you had a sort of a sideways entry into that world.

Tell us about that, your relationship with that film.