I will hopefully circle back to a full transcript of this as soon as I can, but I’m in a production crunch right now, so here’s the meat of this crazy story. This was so crazy that I no longer think Taliesin is an actual person, but a fiction getting written into our universe.
Wednesday Club 2018-06-06 “More on Moore”
0:38:54 Taliesin: “One of the things that often, I think, leads to people making poor choices in life is the misunderstanding that life doesn’t have a third act. Third acts are fictional. You have a first act, and you have a messy second act that’s really poorly written, and that’s it. The third act is like the worst invention of modern man because it doesn’t- The resolution is only something that happens when you sit down and write it. There’s no such thing as closure! No, there is no third act! It’s in your head!”
What’s spectacularly crazy about this story is that it is verifiable enough that it’s almost certainly true, and that it has a third act. Somehow Taliesin Jaffe’s actual life has at least one story in it that has a third act 34 years after its opening acts. And he was absolutely right two days earlier when he said that’s not supposed to happen.
1:45:08
Taliesin was in the 1984 Peter Hyams’ film “2010: The Year We Make Contact” the sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Taliesin played the main character’s son. He was 7 when the film was released. “I learned to ride my bicycle through HAL.”
Taliesin: “Oh yeah, I got to swim with dolphins. I got to swim with dolphins a lot.” They sent his to Marineland. “Marineland was basically low-budget SeaWorld. It was a Sea World except more like a carnie SeaWorld. It was a little less of like, ‘look at the amazing science!’ and more like, ‘here’s a pool where you can swim with sharks and it’s probably safe.’ […] And so, everyday I would go down and they taught me how to- ’cause the shots that they wanted they couldn’t have a trainer on screen, so they taught- I had to spend months getting the dolphins to learn to obey my whims. […] Even D&D, no job has ever been as good as this one. […] They had this giant tank, and they filled it with salt water, it’s a giant tank. They built a house set on top of the tank, because it’s that big, and the house has a pool that the dolphins would come up through. You can see it in the movie. They had this crazy camera on a crane that could go underwater so they could lift it up out of the water for this house set they built on- And at one point there’s like a four hour wait for a set, and I’m like, ‘Can I get in there? I’m in my shorts. It’s just a giant black bowl with two dolphins in it.’ And they’re like, Yeah, you’re the least of our problems. Get in there.’ And I get to do that for a while, that was nice. […] Every now and then I’ll go to SeaWorld and just be like, ‘Hey, watch this,’ and get them to come over. It’s great. Crunch and Lelani.”
Amy Dalen: “Crunch and Lelani? […] You remember the names of the two dolphins you made friends with when you were 8? That’s wonderful!”
Taliesin: “Man! You’ve somehow taken my softest story and made it softer!”
B. Dave Walters: “Dolphins live a really long time; they’re probably still out there somewhere. Crunch and Lelani, they still long for you. to click at them.”
Taliesin: “They have really long memories, I’m sure. They’d be like ‘What the fuck did you do to your hair?’”
Then they jokingly told chat to find the dolphins to reunite them with that little boy.
Erika, reading chat: “Are you a real person, Taliesin?”
Taliesin, firmly: “No! I’m absolutely not.”
Taliesin tells a story about how they needed props for a messy boy’s room in the future, and he was already into anime WAY before it had hit the US. So, he got to order a bunch of really nice toys from Japan with the prop guys, several of which he got to keep.
And while he’s telling that story, chat FINDS THE FUCKING DOLPHINS. Lelani is in Canada. Crunch is in San Diego at SeaWorld. So when they’re down there next month for SDCC, they’re going to try to arrange something to see him. And at this point everyone on the set has completely lost it because the whole thing is too good and pure to possibly be happening but it did.
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Critical Analysis 