0:00
Joe Gardner gets the gig. Dorothea
0:03
Williams band, the Half Note Club, the
0:06
room that's been playing in his head
0:07
since he was a kid. He gets the call,
0:10
auditions within the hour, and the
0:11
answer is yes. He plays the gig of his
0:16
>> I thought I'd feel different.
0:19
Joe wasn't chasing the wrong thing. The
0:22
piano wasn't a lie. He was just chasing
0:25
the wrong feeling. The one that was
0:27
supposed to finally show up once he
0:30
crossed the finish line. If you've ever
0:32
gotten something you work for and felt
0:34
weirdly nothing, Pixar actually made a
0:38
movie about exactly why that happens and
0:41
how to fix it. But the answer isn't
0:43
where most people were looking for it.
0:45
Subscribe so you don't miss what comes
0:47
next. Let's Recall This.
0:55
Joe is a middle school band teacher,
0:58
part-time. He's been part-time for a
1:00
while. The kids love him, actually.
1:03
There's a moment early on where he gets
1:05
them playing together and you can see it
1:07
click. That thing that happens when a
1:09
room of 12-year-olds makes music instead
1:12
of noise. He's good at this. The film is
1:15
careful to show you that before it shows
1:17
you anything else. Because what's coming
1:20
isn't a story about a man who couldn't
1:22
connect. It's a story about a man who
1:25
could, who had everything he needed to
1:27
be present and kept choosing not to be.
1:31
But he's not here, not really. The
1:33
principal calls him out of class, offers
1:36
him a full-time position, salary,
1:39
benefits, the version of the job his mom
1:42
has been quietly hoping for for years.
1:45
Joe thanks him. There's nothing
1:46
performative about it. He just can't
1:49
receive it. It doesn't fit into the life
1:51
he's been building in his head, the one
1:54
where the gig is the only thing that
1:56
counts and everything else is the
1:58
waiting room. So, it slides off him. He
2:01
goes to see his mom right after, and
2:04
she's thrilled. And you can hear in her
2:06
voice everything she's been wanting to
2:08
say for years. All the worry she's been
2:10
carrying, all of it releasing the moment
2:15
>> After all these years, my prayers have
2:19
>> Joe listens. He says the right things,
2:22
and right there in her shop, surrounded
2:24
by the fabric and the work she's built
2:28
>> his phone rings again. It's Curly, a
2:30
former student now drumming in Dorothea
2:33
Williams [music] band. They need a
2:35
pianist tonight. Joe auditions within
2:38
the hour. He gets it. Walking down the
2:41
street, still buzzing, he doesn't even
2:43
see it coming. He falls into an open
2:46
manhole, and his body goes into a coma.
2:50
Joe lands in the Great Before, where
2:52
unborn souls develop personalities and
2:55
get assigned to a life on Earth. He's
2:57
assigned to mentor a soul named 22, who
3:00
has been there for hundreds of years,
3:02
and [music] every mentor has failed her.
3:04
Joe is absolutely certain he can fix
3:07
this. He knows what a spark is. It's the
3:10
thing you were made for. You find it,
3:12
you chase it until you get it, and then
3:15
everything makes sense.
3:17
He's about to be wrong about all of it.
3:20
That certainty, that's the thing we need
3:25
There's a version of this story that's
3:26
simple. Joe Gardner finally gets his
3:29
shot, almost dies, learns to appreciate
3:32
the little things, comes back, plays the
3:34
gig of his life, roll credits, go home.
3:38
The fish story, the helicopter seed. Cue
3:41
the Jon Batiste piano.
3:43
Except the movie doesn't let him feel
3:45
anything when it's over. And if the
3:48
lesson were just appreciate what you
3:50
have, it wouldn't need to show us why
3:52
the gig felt hollow. Here's what the
3:55
film is actually doing.
3:57
>> In the Great Before, one of the Jerrys,
3:59
the counselors who run the You Seminar,
4:02
tells Joe explicitly, "A spark [music]
4:04
isn't a soul's purpose. It's not the
4:07
thing you're destined to do. It's
4:09
something simpler and stranger than
4:11
that. It's just a sign that a soul is
4:15
Joe hears this and immediately keeps
4:18
moving. He's got a gig to get back to.
4:20
>> We don't assign [music] purposes. Where
4:22
did you get that idea?
4:23
>> The film is flagging the
4:24
misunderstanding that has organized his
4:26
entire adult life. He built his whole
4:29
conception of what a life is supposed to
4:31
feel [music] like around an idea the
4:33
movie is telling us in the first act is
4:35
wrong. And the film doesn't just tell
4:38
him once. It shows him in scene after
4:41
scene, through person after person, the
4:44
same thing. He just can't hear it.
4:47
>> You know, lost souls are not that
4:49
different from those in the zone.
4:51
>> Joe has been in the zone for decades.
4:55
>> But when that joy becomes an obsession,
4:57
one becomes disconnected from life.
4:59
>> What Moonwind is describing [music] is
5:01
something that locks you so far into the
5:03
pursuit that the rest of the world goes
5:05
quiet around you. Not because the rest
5:08
of the world isn't speaking, but because
5:10
you stopped being able to hear it.
5:13
Then 22 ends up in Joe's body, alive, on
5:17
Earth, walking around New York in a
5:20
And here's the scene that quietly breaks
5:24
22 ends up in Joe's barber shop. Dez,
5:27
Joe's barber, someone Joe has been
5:29
seeing for years, starts talking. 22,
5:33
who has never been a person before,
5:35
who has no idea what the rules are, just
5:38
listens, asks [music] questions, finds
5:40
out that Dez wanted to be a
5:42
veterinarian, that his daughter got
5:44
sick, and he chose barber school because
5:46
it was cheaper, and that he is fine with
5:49
>> more than fine. He found his life in the
5:53
22 didn't know all of this. She asked
5:56
because she didn't know not to.
5:58
Joe knew Dez. Joe had been going to that
6:01
barber shop for years, and while Dez
6:04
talked about all of it, the dream, the
6:06
daughter, the reroute, how it [music]
6:08
turned out, Joe was in a cat's body,
6:10
right there in the shop, in a body that
6:13
couldn't [music] speak, couldn't ask,
6:15
couldn't be in that conversation at all.
6:18
3 ft away and still nowhere near it.
6:21
>> You never asked, but I'm glad you did
6:24
>> That's you never [music] asked, not said
6:27
with anger, just a fact, almost cheerful
6:30
about it. You never asked, but I'm glad
6:34
Dez isn't sad about being a barber.
6:36
That's [music] the part that stings. He
6:38
made peace with the reroute. He found
6:41
what was real in the version of the life
6:42
he actually got. Joe has been 3 ft away
6:46
from that proof for years
6:48
>> and couldn't see it because the gig was
6:50
always closer in his mind than the room
6:54
But the film doesn't stop there because
6:56
so far [music] what we've seen is Joe
6:58
missing things, passive, distracted,
7:01
absent, the kind of wound you can tell
7:03
yourself is just focus, just dedication.
7:07
He's not trying to hurt anyone. [music]
7:09
Earlier that same day, there's Connie.
7:11
Connie is one of Joe's students. She
7:13
plays trombone. She shows up at Joe's
7:16
apartment ready to quit band, done,
7:19
decided, and tells 22 she still wants to
7:22
play one more thing before she goes.
7:24
She's not asking. She demands 22 listen
7:28
and then tell her to quit after.
7:30
22 reluctantly agrees. Connie plays and
7:34
doesn't quit. Joe watched the whole
7:37
thing from inside the cat. He was in the
7:39
room. He saw a student almost walk away
7:42
from music and get pulled back by
7:44
someone willing to just stay in it.
7:46
His only thought was that they needed to
7:48
wrap this up. He had a gig that night.
7:51
He was watching a breakthrough [music]
7:53
happen inside his own apartment and
7:57
The accumulation is what gets you. The
7:59
principal's offer he couldn't receive.
8:01
[music] His mom's relief he heard, but
8:03
didn't feel. Dez's life he was
8:06
physically [music] present for and still
8:08
completely missed. Connie's almost quit
8:11
[music] that happened inside his own
8:13
home while he was watching and waiting
8:17
Each one was offering him the real
8:19
thing. He kept filing them under not
8:23
And then comes the moment the film stops
8:25
being gentle with him.
8:27
Back in the Great Before, Joe finds out
8:29
that 22 has an Earth Pass, [music]
8:31
her ticket to a life, the thing the
8:33
whole You Seminar has been building
8:35
toward for hundreds of years.
8:37
And he wants it. He tells her those
8:40
experiences weren't [music] hers, that
8:42
they were his passions, his life, that
8:45
she was just borrowing them, that she
8:47
still doesn't have a spark, that what
8:49
she collected, the seed, [music] the
8:51
pizza, the way a subway platform sounds,
8:54
that's just regular old living.
8:57
He says this to a soul who has waited
8:59
hundreds of years to feel ready to live,
9:02
someone who had been carrying evidence
9:04
that the world was worth being in, and
9:06
someone who needed one person to confirm
9:09
22 doesn't argue. She just breaks,
9:12
throws the pass at him and disappears
9:15
into the zone. And Joe, who has just
9:17
been told by a Jerry that sparks aren't
9:19
purposes, that the whole framework he's
9:22
built his life around is wrong, takes
9:24
the pass anyway, gets back to his body,
9:29
22 stops being a soul waiting to live.
9:32
She becomes a lost soul. Joe didn't just
9:35
pass his wound on, He sharpened it
9:38
first, aimed it, and handed it to
9:40
someone who had no defenses against it.
9:43
And here's what makes it almost
9:44
unbearable. Joe won. He got back to his
9:48
body. He played the gig. He stood
9:50
[music] on that stage and did the thing
9:52
he'd been promising himself for 46
9:54
years. The room completely his.
9:57
And it felt like nothing. He thought it
10:00
was dedication. But a dependency that
10:03
runs that deep eventually starts looking
10:05
like a relationship you've been in so
10:07
long you've stopped asking whether it's
10:10
giving anything back. And when it needs
10:12
something badly enough, it takes from
10:17
Someone who's built their whole life
10:18
around one thing eventually can't tell
10:21
you who they are without it. You know
10:23
that calculation? The one you run every
10:25
time something good happens. Okay, but
10:28
this isn't the real thing yet. The real
10:30
thing is still ahead. This was a
10:32
stepping stone. The stepping stone
10:34
before the stepping stone before the
10:36
thing that will finally count. The
10:38
midnight scroll through LinkedIn. Except
10:40
you're not looking for jobs, you're
10:41
checking if other people's real lives
10:44
have started yet and yours hasn't. The
10:46
way you answer, "What do you do?" at a
10:48
party. Always with a but attached. "I'm
10:51
doing X, but what I really want to do
10:54
is" The but has been following you for
10:56
so long you've stopped noticing it. The
10:59
hobbies that quietly died because they
11:01
weren't [music] the thing. The
11:02
friendships that needed more of you than
11:04
you had left over after the dream took
11:06
its cut, so you let them go quiet and
11:08
told yourself you'd explain later when
11:11
there was something to show for it.
11:12
There's a version of yourself you've
11:14
been promising. The one who shows up
11:16
present once the thing finally lands.
11:19
The one who can sit in a room without
11:20
doing the math on whether this counted.
11:23
You've been promising that version to
11:25
everyone around you for years. Maybe for
11:27
so long that they've stopped expecting
11:29
it. Maybe for so long that you've
11:31
stopped noticing they stopped. And the
11:33
cruel part, the dangerous part is that
11:36
at some point the thing stopped being
11:38
something you loved and became something
11:40
you needed. And you can't tell the
11:42
difference anymore because you've been
11:44
at it so long that the feeling of
11:46
wanting it and the feeling of being you
11:48
have grown into the same root system.
11:51
And if the thing doesn't happen, you're
11:52
not just disappointed, you don't know
11:54
who's disappointed because you're not
11:57
sure who's left. Someone close to you
11:59
asks how you're doing. Really asks. And
12:02
instead of landing in it, you give them
12:04
the [music] update. The thing you're
12:06
working toward, the progress, the next
12:08
step. And they nod because they've
12:10
learned that's what you need to give
12:12
them. And you walk away having had a
12:14
conversation about your life without
12:16
[music] actually being in it for a
12:17
single second. You've practiced this so
12:20
long it doesn't even register as a
12:22
deflection anymore. It just feels like
12:24
talking. Joe didn't have a passion
12:27
problem. His love of music was real. The
12:29
piano wasn't a lie. What was a lie was
12:32
the deal he made with it. The one where
12:34
music owed him a feeling. The one where
12:37
everything, [music] his mom's worry, his
12:39
barber's life, his students, the
12:41
full-time job, all of it was manageable
12:44
collateral until the gig came through
12:46
and the real version of his life could
12:48
finally begin. He'd been waiting for an
12:50
arrival that kept moving. But the movie
12:53
gets him one more scene. Not the gig,
12:57
After the gig, Dorothea tells him a
12:59
story before she gets in her cab. A fish
13:02
swims up to an older fish and says he's
13:04
looking for the ocean. The older fish
13:06
says, "That's what you're in right now."
13:08
The young fish looks around and says,
13:10
"This? This is water. What I want is the
13:13
ocean." Joe goes home and sits at the
13:16
piano. Nobody's there. No audience, no
13:19
credential waiting on the other side of
13:20
this. He just plays. And something
13:23
happens in this scene that the film
13:25
barely announces. Joe enters the zone,
13:28
the same zone he's been chasing his
13:30
whole life, the same state Moonwind
13:32
described. But this time, there's no gig
13:35
on the other side of it, no Dorothea
13:37
watching, no proof being manufactured.
13:40
He's just playing because the piano is
13:42
there, and his hands know what to do.
13:44
And for the first time in maybe his
13:46
entire adult life, the music isn't in
13:49
service of anything. It's just sound
13:52
moving through a quiet apartment [music]
13:53
going nowhere. That's new. For Joe
13:56
Gardner, that is genuinely new. And the
13:59
film shows us what 22 collected while
14:01
she was inside his life. A helicopter
14:03
seed she caught from a tree, a lollipop
14:06
from Dez, a spool of thread from his
14:08
mom's seamstress work. Small objects,
14:11
things from a Tuesday, things from the
14:13
days she was living in his life more
14:15
fully than he had been. He goes back,
14:18
finds 22 in the lost soul spiral he put
14:20
her in, uses the seed to break through,
14:23
holds it out so she can see it, so she
14:25
can remember what it felt like to catch
14:27
it from a tree and just be amazed that
14:29
something like that exists. And when she
14:31
comes back, he gets her the Earth pass,
14:34
hers, the one he took. He puts it in her
14:36
hand and walks her to the portal, holds
14:39
on for as long as he can, then turns
14:41
toward the Great Beyond. [music]
14:43
He's made his peace. He doesn't have a
14:45
plan for what comes after because there
14:47
isn't an after. He chose her life over
14:50
[music] his. A Jerry stops him. They
14:52
tell him he inspired them, that what he
14:54
did for 22, for the whole You seminar,
14:57
earned him another chance. Joe takes it.
15:00
He doesn't have a speech, he doesn't
15:02
have a plan. He just says yes. And when
15:05
Jerry asks what he's going to do with
15:07
it, he says he doesn't know, but he's
15:09
going to live every minute of it.
15:11
>> I'm going to live every minute of it.
15:15
>> I think about that a lot, actually.
15:17
The not knowing. Because the movie could
15:19
have ended with Joe having figured
15:21
something out, some insight that made
15:23
the gig finally [music] worth it or made
15:25
the emptiness make sense or reframe the
15:27
whole thing into a lesson he could
15:29
carry. It doesn't do that. He just
15:31
decides he'd like to find out what
15:33
happens next. That's the whole move.
15:36
That's all the film asks of him. I sat
15:38
in a parking lot once after a work thing
15:40
that had gone well. Genuinely well. The
15:43
kind of outcome I'd been pushing toward
15:45
for months. And I didn't go inside for a
15:47
long [music] time. Engine off. Nobody
15:49
waiting. I kept expecting something to
15:52
arrive and it wasn't arriving.
15:54
I don't know what I thought was supposed
15:56
to show up. I went in eventually. Made
15:58
dinner. That was it. I don't know what
16:01
Joe plays when he sits at the piano at
16:02
the end. The film doesn't show us. He
16:06
What changed was the deal. It collapsed
16:09
and when it did, what was left wasn't
16:11
nothing. There was a Tuesday, a
16:13
helicopter seat, a barber who wanted to
16:16
be a veterinarian, a mom who makes
16:18
suits, a student who called him about a
16:20
gig. He'd been standing in the ocean
16:23
looking for the water. The relationship
16:26
wasn't with music. It was with later.
16:28
With the version of himself waiting at
16:30
the finish line. The one who was finally
16:32
allowed to be present. The one who would
16:34
show up once everything was sorted. Joe
16:37
let him go. He didn't know what came
16:39
next. For the first time, that felt like
16:41
enough. If something in this one sat
16:44
somewhere uncomfortable, if you've been
16:46
waiting for your real life to start or
16:48
filing things under not yet, [music]
16:50
you're already in the next one. Because
16:52
Joe Gardner isn't the only one. There's
16:55
another character who got everything he
16:56
was supposed to want. A kingdom, a
16:59
title, a princess, and still couldn't
17:01
stop treating the whole thing like a
17:03
transaction. Lord Farquaad never wanted
17:06
Fiona. He wanted what she represented.
17:08
And the film shows you exactly what that
17:11
cost the person on the receiving end.
17:13
Subscribe so you're there when it drops.
