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Matt and Sam welcome their intrepid producer and great friend Jesse Brenneman back to the third mic to talk about HBO's The Righteous Gemstones. In addition to being a wildly entertaining entry to the Danny McBride cinematic and television universe, the show perceptively explores the culture of American megachurch, evangelical Christianity—and offers your hosts plenty of fodder to discuss where faith ends and cynicism begins, the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer capitalism, cheap grace vs. real grace, whether or not people can change, the pathologies of evangelical purity culture, and much more. Plus: Jesse takes us behind the scenes of his brilliant, very funny podcast Tech Talk and its surprising connections to Elon Musk, Eli Gemstone, and others.
Sources:
John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Upon This Rock," GQ, January 24, 2004
Austin Considine, "Danny McBride Keeps It Righteous," New York Times, June 14, 2023
Doreen St. Félix, "The Lost Sheep of Danny McBride's The Righteous Gemstones," New Yorker, January 17, 2022
Matthew Sitman, "Speaking of New York: An Interview with Fran Lebowitz," Commonweal, February 7, 2019
I do find Eli's character fascinating in that what he actually believes is kind of an open question for me, you know, because there are these moments where Eli still has some propriety to him, right, where he kind of lays into the kids, where he's sort of the disciplinarian, where he holds the line. And I got the sense he probably believed more than the kids, whatever the kind of ambiguity and precise nature of his faith or lack thereof, that aspect of his character is partly what makes him fascinating. And that's something I've asked myself, even when we were talking about Pat Robertson a few weeks ago, you know, did he really believe that like 9/11 was caused by like gays and abortion? Did he really believe the New World Order stuff he was writing about, the various prophecies and times? I don't think that Eli comes across as a cynical person who says, "Haha, I got him." But I think there is a certain sense, it kind of doesn't occur to him so much did I believe it. It's like, well, but that's what the show was, you know, I mean, the question of belief is kind of off the table a lot of the time. Pat Robertson too, you know, I mean like 9/11 happened, right, and gay people are evil, right? So maybe, like, I don't have to think about it much more than that. There's something other than cynicism, like you said, the question of belief is off the table. You don't have to be cynical. Like, just functional in your relationship to truth. And that is something that the Eli character shows, while at the same time, as Matt's pointing out, kind of often revealing this potential remorse and a kind of wistfulness in his bearing and his way of talking to his children and thinking about his life. He has shame. He does. He's capable of shame. I think that that is one of the big things that the show captures so beautifully is this transition of like, Eli is not a great guy, he's a hustler too, but he still has the space for shame and for reflection, and that is the part that's stripped away in his kids. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
Matt and Sam discuss HBO's The Righteous Gemstones with Know Your Enemy producer Jesse Brenneman. Subscribe on Patreon to hear the rest!
