Dead Eyes

EPISODE VI

RYAN JOHNSON'S STAR WARS PREQUEL RUMORS

It is a period of hope: the late 1990s!

A student at the Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts, CONNOR RATLIFF is tasked with creating a web page to promote himself as an actor.

This leads to the unlikely creation of a fictional character with a name that would someday become legendary in ways that even a Jedi master could not have predicted.

Meanwhile, half a world away, veteran stage actor HOLMES OSBORNE's career is ascendant, thanks to an opportunity given to him by TOM HANKS in his feature film debut as writer/director, That Thing You Do! Soon enough, he would be revealed to the world as DONNIE DARKO'S FATHER.

Little do they know that a young man named RIAN JOHNSON has just begun a 7-year journey to make a movie of his own, the success of which would set in motion a chain of events that would transform him into one of the most powerful filmmakers in the galaxy...

More than two decades later, a mysterious podcast reveals the ways in which these seemingly unrelated figures are connected. Connor, obsessed with his firing from Band of Brothers, enlists his friend, Syfy's JACKIE JENNINGS, to help him unpack the myriad ways that their fates are entwined, in his unending search for ANSWERS...

Episode Transcript

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Singer-songwriter Aimee Mann learns how she unwittingly provided the soundtrack to Connor's entire Band of Brothers experience.

Listen to Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo and the rest of Aimee's catalogue on Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever else you get music.

Follow Aimee on Twitter @aimeemann

Watch Tom Hanks present at the Academy Awards as Toy Story's Woody.

Episode Transcript

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Connor imagines an alternate timeline with the help of Saturday Night Live alumn Bobby Moynihan, who played a major role in one of Tom Hanks's late-career triumphs: David S. Pumpkins.

Watch the Haunted Elevator sketch that gave the world David S. Pumpkins.

Episode Transcript

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Connor doesn't trust his memory.

Actor, comedian, and showrunner of Adam Ruins Everything Adam Conover explains that, without a doubt, Connor is misremembering the details of his experience on Band of Brothers. At least some of them.

Award-winning illustrator Maëlle Doliveux critiques an autobiographical comic that Connor wrote and drew about being fired.

Connor has an overdue conversation with actor Adam Sims, his replacement on Band Of Brothers. The two discover their respective stories share more in common than they'd anticipated.

For Maelle's full analysis of Connor's comic, check out the Dead Eyes YouTube channel.

Episode Transcript

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A 10-year-old Connor acts onstage in a 1985 production of Oliver! and has a seemingly disastrous first television interview. Years later, a 17-year-old Connor stars in a production of Ordinary People across from Emmy-winning actor Jon Hamm (Mad Men, The Town, Baby Driver), who was a senior in college at the time.

Connor and Jon look back on their time working together and recount their highs and lows in various audition rooms.

Plus, a recreation of Connor's Band of Brothers re-audition scene featuring Nicole Drespel (UCB, Broad City, 30 Rock), and a candid conversation about the audition process with a real New York City casting director.

• See 10-year-old Connor's appearance on KRCG-TV's Showtime.

Episode Transcript

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Follow the show @deadeyespodcast

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In the year 2000, actor Connor Ratliff is fired by Tom Hanks from the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers for supposedly having "dead eyes". Two decades later, Connor talks about it with his friends D'Arcy Carden (The Good Place, Barry) and Zach Woods (Silicon Valley, The Office, Avenue 5).

Episode Transcript

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Follow the show @deadeyespodcast

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A quest to solve a very stupid mystery that has haunted comedian Connor Ratliff for two decades: Why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers.

Subscribe today and catch the first episode, launching 1/23!

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