Second Breakfast with Cam & Maggie
Oct 13, 2026 · 57 min · 12 segments
Digger is far and away the most thought provoking movie of the year. Ignore the critics and the box office, find the biggest screen you can, and make up your own mind. In this episode, we're focusing…
when you say you want to talk about the satire of this movie, that's immediately another rabbit hole because the movie's an onion, and what do onions have, Maggie?
Layers.
Exactly.
[laughs]
So which layer of the satire do you want to focus on or privilege above all the others? That question is in itself impossible.
Right.
Because there's the play within the movie, and you could spend hours and hours just talking about Fossil Fools being a parody of current America, or you could talk about the layer of the satire that is the way the ending of the movie frames the near future of our world.
Or you could talk about the meta second story about the play within the movie, about the actors, about the parody, about satire, about propaganda, the more self-aware layer.
But there's a layer even past that.
[laughs]
The more meta reflections on Inarritu's career or Tom Cruise's career that's kinda baked into every scene of this movie.
And then there's one more layer.
There's this unprecedented third meta layer of the movie, which is the conversation that it inspired.
Mm.
It's the weeks of ridiculous, infuriating articles about box office and critical reception.
That's five layers.
[laughs]
So when we're talking about satire, we're not talking about one thing.
We're talking about five things, and no one has clarified which of those five things they're talking about at any one moment.
I think that makes total sense, and maybe that explains why s- there are so many different opinions about this movie and so many people disagree with each other.
And that's also just, like, the nature of a provocative work of art.
But those layers are adding a whole other level of confusion I think.
It's also a movie that doesn't beat you over the head with the answers to the questions-
No, and thank-
... that it poses in a really provocative way.
when you say you want to talk about the satire of this movie, that's immediately another rabbit hole because the movie's an onion, and what do onions have, Maggie?
Layers.
Exactly.
[laughs]
So which layer of the satire do you want to focus on or privilege above all the others? That question is in itself impossible.
Right.
Because there's the play within the movie, and you could spend hours and hours just talking about Fossil Fools being a parody of current America, or you could talk about the layer of the satire that is the way the ending of the movie frames the near future of our world.
Or you could talk about the meta second story about the play within the movie, about the actors, about the parody, about satire, about propaganda, the more self-aware layer.
But there's a layer even past that.
[laughs]
The more meta reflections on Inarritu's career or Tom Cruise's career that's kinda baked into every scene of this movie.
And then there's one more layer.
There's this unprecedented third meta layer of the movie, which is the conversation that it inspired.
Mm.
It's the weeks of ridiculous, infuriating articles about box office and critical reception.
That's five layers.
[laughs]
So when we're talking about satire, we're not talking about one thing.
We're talking about five things, and no one has clarified which of those five things they're talking about at any one moment.
I think that makes total sense, and maybe that explains why s- there are so many different opinions about this movie and so many people disagree with each other.
And that's also just, like, the nature of a provocative work of art.
But those layers are adding a whole other level of confusion I think.
It's also a movie that doesn't beat you over the head with the answers to the questions-
No, and thank-
... that it poses in a really provocative way.
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