The Daily Wire's first feature film, Run, Hide, Fight, is finally here! Ben Shapiro, Andrew Yang, Andrew Clayton, Matt Walsh, The God King, and special guests discuss Hollywood and this fantastic new film.
00:45:14.940That's one of my strengths and greatest weaknesses.
00:45:17.600I, you know, I grew up in the 80s on the Jerry Bruckheimer movies.
00:45:23.800And although I wasn't around, I was very inspired by Robert Evans and, you know, reading Kids Days in the Picture and all those, and those great movies that he oversaw.
00:45:38.900And so I'm simply making the movies that I grew up loving and continue to love as an audience member.
00:45:43.340But what it has, what it, there cannot be a compromise.
00:45:48.700And so my goal is to set up the production and the financing in a way with foreign sales and a domestic deal and certain, you know, formulas on what the marketing and the budget's going to be.
00:46:01.420So that I can transfer absolute total creative control over to the filmmaker.
00:46:07.280That is, that is the way it was done, in my opinion, correctly in the past, long ago in the past.
00:46:14.280And the corporatization of Hollywood has really messed that up.
00:46:17.620So I think there's been some great stuff out of Hollywood over the past several years.
00:46:22.660But really, to me, I seek his movie, not my movie, ever.
00:46:28.540And I think that's my, that's my flag in the sand.
00:47:48.200I am a proud, openly conservative movie producer, and I never intended to be that vocal about it, but such is life, and I'm enjoying the ride.
00:48:02.780I never would make a movie for political purposes.
00:48:06.140I feel like movies have been political for generations, but I feel like when things get overtly political or agenda-pushing,
00:48:15.600I tend to believe that it hurts the artwork.
00:48:18.560So, again, my goal is to keep everything level playing field, focus on the movie itself, make great entertainment.
00:50:37.460And that's all I think real conservatives are looking for.
00:50:40.060I took a great screenwriting course, you know, 20 years ago.
00:50:43.400And the first, the instructor said, you know, write three pages about a real pet peeve of yours, something you really feel strongly about, you really hate, and you wish people would stop doing.
00:50:52.240And I think, you know, mine was on, you know, three pages on littering.
00:50:54.720And we all showed up ready to turn it in.
00:50:58.240And the instructor was like, okay, I don't even want to see them, but now write three pages about the other side.
00:51:05.000You're now pro whatever you just wrote.
00:51:07.660And, you know, the instructor was trying to teach us to, I do think it shouldn't matter.
00:51:14.280And I will never be one of those Hollywood people that talks my personal politics because I would like to be, you know, above and between them and see all sides.
00:51:24.000Because then that exercise taught me that when I had people, you should be able to steel ban all sides as a writer so that you can have people arguing and going in different, shooting off in different directions the way people do.
00:51:35.440And I'm far more interested in the gray of life, not just the, everyone is so scared of the gray.
00:51:43.360And I think we need to lean into that.
00:51:49.240The title font of the film, according to another Daily Wire member, they said was very Red Dawn, which, of course, is another iconic movie about high schoolers versus bad guys.
00:52:27.140With the Chinese, and then they went back and they revised all the footage.
00:52:29.540They thought, what if a country whose entire adult population is starving somehow invaded the life of the state?
00:52:36.500I do think, though, that, you know, first of all, I love the internet, because only on the internet does someone connect the font choices from this film to another film.
00:52:48.240And what I love about it, too, is that it's probably true on some unconscious level where we've all been informed by the art that we've consumed over time.
00:52:57.540And there is a connection between this film and Red Dawn.
00:53:22.640I tend to really cleave toward things in the 70s, and I think because the studios gave the filmmakers the keys and said, maybe you guys know better.
00:53:30.440And then, you know, in the late 70s, they ripped them out of their hands.
00:53:35.060But there's, you know, five easy pieces.
00:56:14.160But anyway, do you go back to those or that before you just think like that's another year?
00:56:18.860I mean, my wife and I, we were watching North by Northwest because it just came out on a new Blu-ray just last night.
00:56:24.440You know, so we, yeah, any, if you named some of your favorites, they'd probably be mine too.
00:56:29.440I'm not great at always having a list in my head, but how about you, Dallas?
00:56:34.740Yeah, I mean, I've done a major deep dive over this year into the late 60s, early 70s because it's been so inspiring to me and sort of building my company and brand and things like that.
00:56:46.280And there's a fascinating Criterion Collection called America Lost and Found the BBS Story.
00:56:52.200And BBS stands for three producers who made Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Last Picture Show, and so on.
00:57:02.980The movie that's inspired me the most, so my favorite filmmaker of all time is Michael Cimino.
00:57:07.120Just the excess of his filmmaking, but also his storytelling and writing and things like that.
00:57:13.560He's known, obviously, for Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate and things like that.
00:57:17.240But his masterpiece is actually a very unknown film starring sort of a pre-surgery Mickey Rourke called Year of the Dragon, which is co-written by Oliver Stone.
00:58:44.920We also love our members' money and we'll get back to their questions right now.
00:58:48.080Have there been any people that are criticizing this film as exploitative?
00:58:52.020You guys kind of touched on that a little bit in the top, but a Daily Wire member wants to know.
00:58:57.960In the press that I've seen so far, I thought that that would be the number one criticism of the film.
00:59:04.040I actually haven't run across a lot of accusations of exploitation of you.
00:59:08.200I would say there's a beautiful, there's a beautiful effect of us releasing this movie with the Daily Wire.
00:59:18.080In that I think it found the audience it was always intended to find in many ways.
00:59:22.740Audience that wouldn't be offended by it, that could handle it, that didn't need a safe space to watch it.
00:59:27.620While I think we hope that more people will come to the movie and be open to it and things like that, the voices on the extreme left have not been open to the movie.
00:59:41.240In fact, they've been almost resistant to it.
00:59:44.500In reviewing, when they review it, I don't want to ever single out an individual review because I don't like it when filmmakers do that.
00:59:52.700But I saw a systemic sort of system in the reviews where it felt very much like a concerted effort to sort of review the subject matter and perceived politics rather than the actual movie.
01:00:08.240I've made 35 movies. I know I've made some great stuff and I've made some doozies and this is a great movie and to get the critical reaction.
01:00:20.240I'll say from the point of view of the political space that we occupy, if it ever seems like there's a conspiracy on the left to create a unified talking point, there isn't.
01:00:31.780Because there doesn't have to be. Because they've done such a great job of populating every single piece of the, every single institution that makes up the culture with people who think exactly the same.
01:00:43.660You know, like in the early Obama years, you'd have these listservs and every now and then you'd find out, oh, there's some listserv and every journalist in Hollywood is, or in New York is on them and they all conspire around.
01:00:55.280They just wake up, say exactly what you think and every other journalist will say exactly what you think.
01:00:59.060Well, then that's worse because then they're all thinking the same way.
01:01:01.920Oh, yeah. This is the, this is the, I'm very proud of myself because this is the first time I'm reading nothing.
01:01:05.320I'm just reading no review. I haven't read a single review. I'm trying not to read any comments.
01:01:10.240We premiered in Venice and the audience really loved it. It was a beautiful night and, you know, we're having champagne on the Lido and it was a dream come true.
01:01:18.160And then, oh, I heard some reviews are starting to drop and I just felt an arm on my shoulder. Don't read any of them.
01:01:23.920Okay. And, you know, and you can, you know, on Google, it'll say whatever, we have a 14% rotten and I, rotten tomatoes thing.
01:01:32.180And I'm like, that's just patently false. I mean, this young cast is so incredible.
01:01:39.040Again, that's one of those things on rotten tomatoes where you can really see this massive gap, particularly with films that are perceived as political between what the critics say and then what the audience says.
01:01:47.360Yeah. And you see this routinely. Yeah. I mean, you'll see it on everything from The Last Jedi where the audience really didn't like it, but the critics absolutely loved it and called fans toxic because the fans didn't particularly like it.
01:01:59.060Right. To Wonder Woman 1984, just the last couple of weeks where people were like, this is not very good.
01:02:04.060But the critics like, yeah, but it's super important. And so we're going to pretend that this movie is actually awesome, even though it's not good.
01:02:09.040The first Wonder Woman is a good movie. Wonder Woman 1984 is not a particularly good movie.
01:02:12.320But it feels the same way with regard to this film, because the film is just it is a it is a good film.
01:02:18.420And as far as the kind of accusation that it's exploitative, listen, everybody, everybody at The Daily Wire is super sensitive to the idea that anything would be done to glorify school shooters.
01:02:28.580Again, one of the things that we were we were what I was very personally, extremely early and hard on the idea that we were not going to print their names in The Daily Wire.
01:02:38.920We're not going to give them any sort of attention in The Daily Wire because that's precisely what they're looking for.
01:02:43.160One of the things that drew me to the film was that the film is making exactly that point in many ways, which is the more attention these people are looking for attention.
01:02:50.140The more attention you give them, the more of these you're going to see.
01:02:53.180And so we need to actually deprive them of attention. We need to treat them for the villains they are.
01:02:56.680It can't be all about, you know, their tough childhoods, as you were suggesting, or the sort of crippling circumstances they went through.
01:03:02.520Look how tough life is for them. The focus in this film is really on the victims. It really, really is on the victims.
01:03:07.020The film also talks about the people who perpetrate these events in a more honest way.
01:03:13.300I mean, it's funny because it's fundamentally a piece of entertainment, right? It's a piece of fiction.
01:03:17.360It's not a documentary. And yet it has a more honest take on the people who perpetrate these crimes than most even news articles or documentaries that you see.
01:03:27.760I mean, you very, very rarely hear about the prevalence of people who hear voices.
01:03:34.460You'll find, if you go around looking on the Internet, you will find these stories.
01:03:38.160And it's in so many of these mass shootings that people claim to hear voices that it's always buried down on, like, paragraph 30 of the story.
01:03:45.040Because I think the media doesn't know what to do with that information.
01:03:48.780We have a very secular media. We have a very sort of cynical media.
01:03:55.100They don't know how to touch things that they don't fully understand.
01:03:59.780The desire for notoriety, another huge component of it.
01:04:04.140Also, the sort of cult-like draw of Tristan as a character for these weaker-minded people around him,
01:04:09.700which, all the way back to Columbine, was such a, you know, the untold story of Columbine, I think,
01:04:15.120is in some ways the power of the one shooter to really draw in the other and do his plans.
01:04:20.920So in that way, you really took kind of an unflinching look at the evil that you were saying.
01:04:25.920Yeah, it is funny. I've always thought about the fact that when people hear voices, the voices never say,
01:04:32.300you're a great guy. Go out and be nice to me. Why is that?
01:06:55.240So for me, there are a couple of things that pop out of me.
01:06:58.420So one is Isabel May's performance is just terrific.
01:07:02.200I mean, she's just first rate. And I think that for the vast majority of people who watch it, because the camera is so in love with her.
01:07:07.440I mean, she's just amazing on screen that that is the that that will be sort of the surface takeaway.
01:07:13.660But then the second time, actually, is kind of when I get more of the message.
01:07:17.520The first time you're just watching to see the plot and you're drawn into it.
01:07:19.960Now, the second time where we were kind of popping in and out tonight, like watching various scenes, there was one scene that popped out of me.
01:07:25.520And that's the scene where Tristan is asking one of the girls who's religious about free will.
01:07:32.180And she drops a little sermon about free will.
01:07:34.180And I thought that's something you will never see in any of the film.
01:07:37.440Like, really, you're not going to see it.
01:07:38.760I mean, that's the point that she makes about free will, where she says that bad people are allowed to be bad people so that they can be judged.
01:07:45.080That is as good a 30 second explanation of free will from a religious perspective as I can imagine.
01:07:51.800And it also is a theme running throughout the film, which is you're going to be judged for your own behavior and that you're going to need to be held accountable for that behavior.
01:07:59.360So I thought that that was it's a beautiful and I think will be an underappreciated scene because it's kind of off the beaten track of the film.
01:08:06.300It's not the conflict between main characters, but it really is wonderful.
01:08:09.020The film does have a sense of justice.
01:08:10.820The character Kip, it's a wonderful thing you did as a filmmaker where you let him be redeemed, but he still has to die.
01:08:19.660He did do the thing and you wouldn't be satisfied to watch him come through this.
01:09:02.200I love that she's inventive with the gas, that she's still being inventive about how to protect herself.
01:09:10.240I love that I actually thought when they're just about to obviously be in a physical confrontation, I thought this movie is about to lose me because they're about to give me the obligatory scene in which an 85 pound girl takes on a six foot two, 200 pound man and somehow beats him.
01:09:26.420And no, I mean, she gets pummeled because in boxing you're not allowed to fight someone five pounds at you because that's how the world works.
01:09:35.360And then for her father to be there in that moment, almost as a, like an angel.
01:09:40.380I mean, he's beyond her experience at that moment.
01:09:58.380And then the scene that you mentioned, I, I, I, I attend this men's spiritual men's group in Los Angeles and I'm like the youngest member by like 30 years.
01:10:07.580Uh, and that, that got brought up, you know, basically why does God allow, uh, bad things to happen to good people got brought up one night.
01:10:15.940And, and one of the guys was like free will.
01:10:17.640And I, I didn't fully understand the conversation to be honest.
01:10:27.680Can you please explain the world to me, honey?
01:10:29.380And she was like, oh, and she's like, I think, yeah, she basically just dropped that line on me.
01:10:34.080And she's like, God allows the wicked to do their wickedness.
01:10:37.280Like if he's judged and I just like, that's going in verbatim.
01:10:40.900And I, I almost fell over, um, but I do, it annoys me that even though, you know, I, I was raised as a Catholic, uh, my dad, uh, didn't attend.
01:10:51.880You know, my mom would kind of drag us every Sunday and I'd, I'd be like, I want to be whatever dad is.
01:10:56.700Cause he gets to mow the lawn and stay home.
01:10:59.360Um, uh, but it annoys me that Hollywood is, they have forgotten that this is a religious country completely there.
01:11:06.540I mean, if you put religion in a script, I have seen that, uh, Drew and you were mentioning like, oh, that's taboo.
01:11:12.060I mean, why, why is, uh, even though I'm non-practicing, I'm starting to kind of revisit the Bible and be like, uh, there's a ton of wisdom in here.
01:11:19.300And some amazing, uh, ideas and quotes and things that now are inspiring me that I'm kind of approaching it on my own.
01:11:26.240And so that is a lesson that Hollywood could learn to kind of revisit some of that stuff.
01:11:31.260And, and fatherhood, you know, back to the other scene, uh, you know, the generation in which I grew up, every single father who's been represented in my lifetime is just a doddering boob.
01:11:42.580Who's being bailed out by his wife or his children who are much smarter and much more capable than him.
01:11:47.460And I feel like Thomas Jane gives a great performance in this, uh, as a father, who's, you know, probably not been physically present for a lot of Isabel's life.
01:11:57.560Uh, and probably hasn't been emotionally present either.
01:12:00.560And yet this tragedy has almost given him the opportunity to, to be probably the father he always should be, you know, and out of that, out of that pain, he's emerged as something more complete.
01:12:55.240And all of the young cast too, when, when we knew, when we narrowed it down, I took them into another room and just gave them the speech of like, I don't know how this is going to be received.
01:13:49.920Uh, and, you know, one of the things that Ben and I talked about when we first acquired the film was, you know, if any of these kids feel like they have to speak out against us in social media, we can't respond.
01:14:02.340Like, yeah, they, they didn't sign up for this.
01:14:33.940They saw the movie get absolutely slaughtered by the critics, but absolutely applauded in the room.
01:14:44.440Uh, and they came along with us for the ride as we ended up doing a deal with Daily Wire and not a single one of them complained.
01:14:53.740In fact, I don't think they're, they're, they're necessarily, um, you know, this is, this is not what they certainly signed up for, but also they were so impressed by the way that we carried everything through together.
01:15:07.640Um, and so ultimately the movie above all, and the movie is in great shape.
01:15:14.400The movie reached more people tonight than it ever would have any other way.
01:15:19.400And it will continue to reach more people.
01:15:21.740The trailer numbers were off the charts.
01:15:23.580So this is a, this, this is a chance of a lifetime for all of us.
01:15:27.860Um, and I'll just say this about Isabel May, you know, she is a, uh, such a talented actress, but an even better human kindness and happiness.
01:15:37.940She's so such a happy person lives by this amazing strict moral code, but very private about it.
01:16:27.700You know, you, most artists are intelligent enough to go to law school or to do something else.
01:16:32.360And they're, they bet their life on what they do and what they love.
01:16:35.500And to have to also have the courage to stand up against small mindedness and censoriousness and, and, and deliver what you have to deliver.
01:16:44.220The talent that you've been given by God, that's a beautiful thing.
01:16:47.680And if you found actors who are willing to do that, then you have laid the foundation for a genuine movement, I think.
01:16:54.900Dallas, Kyle, thank you guys for spending time with us.
01:16:56.980We're going to bring Matt and Michael back on to close out the night.
01:17:00.200And Alicia, if you'd tell everybody at home how they can continue to support this film and the future entertainment projects from the Daily Wire.
01:18:58.960And be sure to submit your questions tonight and your comments, not just on social media.
01:19:03.360But another great thing about a membership is that community in the chat box that you can get to know.
01:19:07.440It's so much fun, along with discussions from Daily Wire writers and talent, like all of our podcast hosts and even little will be.
01:19:13.940So, remember to type your questions into the live chat box to the right of tonight's stream.
01:19:18.300Be a part of that Daily Wire community.
01:19:20.160Make sure you become a member because we are going to try to answer as many questions as we can because we couldn't do this and we would not be here at this exciting digital movie premiere tonight if it wasn't for all of you.
01:19:47.300I thought, just to echo everything that's already been said, really, but first of all, it's escapism.
01:19:52.580So, it's a movie that you watch and it's just entertaining and you feel like you're in it and you forget that you're watching a movie, which is what movies are supposed to be, but so often they're not these days.
01:20:00.800And I also like that, you know, the bad guy, Tristan, was a really interesting character, but he's not the most interesting character because it's so hard, it seems like, to write a good guy who's also compelling and who you want to know more about.
01:20:18.960And there's layers to the good guy or good girl in this case.
01:20:23.400It's a movie where there's virtue and heroism and the good guy wins, but the good guy's also interesting.
01:20:28.960And it's just a compelling, compelling film.
01:20:32.400You know what I like about it is that the quality is good.
01:20:36.060And I know this seems like a basic thing, but how many of us, how many, we know a lot of people in Hollywood and we've seen a lot of movies that were made on a shoestring and, you know, they'll say, well, look, yeah, maybe the writing was bad and the shooting was bad and the acting was really bad.
01:20:50.140And, you know, the editing was god awful, but, you know, the idea was really good.
01:21:02.420Very often, you know, acting can suffer.
01:21:06.240I thought the acting was really, you know, and it's like, I'm sure, Drew, when you watch movies, you watch it, I imagine, largely for the writing.
01:21:19.740Particularly the protagonist performance was just stellar.
01:21:23.680You know, it was just a really excellent performance.
01:21:25.720And I'm just so pleased after, you know, there's a lot of schlock that's come out of Hollywood and even out of people who want to do something in culture.
01:21:33.980And I just felt this was really, really strong quality stuff.
01:21:37.500Yeah, to be honest, when I heard about the movie, I was terrified that it would suck.
01:21:40.780Like, I was really worried that we'd have to pretend to like a movie that was bad, especially doing this right now.
01:22:51.920And so to be able to be a part of something that is great, that is both a quality film and a film of quality, it has quality values, it has a quality story, and it was delivered with quality is a pretty special thing.
01:23:06.000Every time that anyone pulls off a film, even if it's a terrible disaster, in some ways they just have my, if nothing else, they have my sympathy, because it's such a brutal thing to produce a film.
01:23:19.380I imagine that when you see a woman with like five kids, and you know that after each and every one, she thought, I am never doing that again.
01:23:27.580But in the end, having a kid is so much better than having a kid.
01:23:34.660Like, having made a movie is so much better than making a movie, which is just like fire and brimstone, desolation coming your way from every direction.
01:23:43.060Anybody who makes it through has a certain amount of my respect, but to make it through and actually deliver something of quality, it's an incredibly special thing.
01:23:50.840Listen, we're the ones who, you know, are in on the film, so what our audience thinks is actually what matters, and so once again, we're going to tell you that if you really enjoyed the content, if you want your friends to know about it, if you want your family to know about it, then we would really appreciate your membership and joining the broader cause of getting us into the entertainment business so we can compete with the much bigger players who will spend literally 100 times the budget of this film on making a movie that is 100th the quality and also hates your values.
01:24:16.740You know, the other thing that you said that is actually important is if you're completely disappointed in this film, if you don't like it at all, if you object to it, shut up.
01:24:32.380I believe in speaking your mind, but as you just said, when you're going up with your friends, you do something kind, you know, and you don't lie, you don't say this is a great movie.
01:24:42.000But if you love this film and you had objections to it, that's great.
01:25:41.400It is true that we've taken quite a risk here.
01:25:43.100Not only a risk of money because it's quite expensive to get involved in a project like this by the economic standards of a company our size.
01:25:50.600But we've taken a risk with our audience because we are challenging them.
01:25:52.900We're challenging them to actually watch art, to watch entertainment from their side that they would readily accept from the other side.
01:26:04.920And this is one of the problems that you often run into when you speak to a largely ideological audience.
01:26:11.660They will not give us the same level of grace that they will give people who hate them.
01:26:18.120So they'll all go watch Marvel movies that have themes that they don't like or that have language that they don't like.
01:26:24.060But they don't care because they don't feel invested ideologically.
01:26:29.380They'll watch something that we produce.
01:26:31.180They'll say, oh, it had bad language or it had nudity in it or it had violence in it.
01:26:35.880And they will feel that somehow that was a betrayal of them when watching something even...
01:27:12.760They recognize exactly what the challenge is.
01:27:14.740And they recognize that if nobody moves into the space, then the space will remain unoccupied, but not for long, because it's being occupied by the left.
01:27:49.740I made a piece of content one time, and somebody ideological came up and said, I'm so disappointed that you had this bad language in your film.
01:27:58.220And I thought, you just don't know me at all.
01:28:01.380How could you possibly be disappointed?