Stay Free - Russel Brand - So This Is WHY Movies Are SH*T Now?! With The Critical Drinker - #168 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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00:00:06.000 I'm a black man and I could never be a better man on this land.

00:00:10.000 Brought to you by Pfizer.

00:00:12.000 I want to rule the world.

00:00:13.000 So I'm looking for the CEO.

00:00:16.000 I'm looking for the CEO.

00:00:18.000 In this video, you're going to see a video.

00:00:19.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:31.000 Hello there you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:32.000 Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:36.000 I'm very excited about today's show.

00:00:38.000 For the first 15 minutes I'm going to be on YouTube and that's going to be relevant to you 6.5 million Awakening Wonders over there because you surely love the critical drinker.

00:00:48.000 A man who has analysed and critiqued contemporary cinema with a perspective that you're unlikely to see in the mainstream.

00:00:55.000 I think We are definitely stuck in a rut as a culture when it comes to just relying on the past.

00:01:03.000 As you say, the motivation behind these IPs and these franchise movies is no one's willing to take a risk.

00:01:11.000 What they lack with these modern characters that they try to do is that they're not willing to take that step of have them fail and be vulnerable and have flaws and weaknesses.

00:01:19.000 We're going to talk about Sound of Freedom.

00:01:22.000 Why is this movie causing so much controversy?

00:01:25.000 I'm also going to start referring to The Critical Drinker by his actual human name, and I'm going to ask you to remove them aviators.

00:01:32.000 Not while we're still on YouTube!

00:01:32.000 Not yet!

00:01:37.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:01:39.000 See it first on Rumble.

00:01:40.000 It is The Critical Drinker.

00:01:43.000 Drinker, welcome to the show.

00:01:44.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:01:46.000 Thanks for having me on, man.

00:01:47.000 I can't believe it.

00:01:47.000 I'm sandwiched right between Tucker Carlson and Ron DeSantis.

00:01:50.000 I've got a lot to live up to on this one.

00:01:53.000 You better come up with some pretty powerful right-wing ideology right now.

00:01:58.000 It better be sliding into your reviews somehow, if you can.

00:02:02.000 Otherwise, you simply will not fit in with the roster.

00:02:04.000 Thanks for joining us, mate.

00:02:06.000 Nah, it's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:07.000 Thanks for having me on, man.

00:02:08.000 One of your most recent videos that I enjoyed watching was your analysis and review of the latest Indiana Jones movie.

00:02:17.000 It seems you kind of reached a, in a sense, a zenith of your analysis in itself, or what Lynch might call the ducks Aye, the point within the point.

00:02:29.000 It seemed to me that what you were saying is that our culture is incapable of coming up with new and novel and innovative content, and it's kind of like a Tomb Raider dragging cadavers from the soil, reanimating them, and then not even respecting them.

00:02:45.000 Is that the essence of your perspective on sort of mainstream movie franchises, and what do you think that tells us more broadly, if indeed that is your perspective, Drinker?

00:02:55.000 I think that's wildly wrong, because that metaphor you just gave me would have at least been entertaining, unlike this movie.

00:03:00.000 No, I think we are definitely stuck in a rut as a culture when it comes to just relying on the past and just digging up old ideas, like you say, bringing back old characters, old actors, and just...

00:03:16.000 We've lost the ability to create new, innovative stuff.

00:03:18.000 and trying to use them as this weird springboard to launch a new generation of characters,

00:03:23.000 but they're never any good. 1.00

00:03:25.000 They're always unlikable idiots who just bore people to tears. 1.00

00:03:30.000 And that's the fundamental problem. 1.00

00:03:31.000 We've lost the ability to create new, innovative stuff.

00:03:34.000 What we do now is just reiterate the things that have been done before.

00:03:39.000 And you can apply it to movies, TV shows, music, We're just recycling the same things we've done so many times already.

00:03:49.000 It's such a sad thing to look back on.

00:03:53.000 Generations from now, they're going to look back on this time and just think of it as the time when everyone just lost their imagination.

00:04:00.000 They lost their spirit of creativity.

00:04:02.000 It's very interesting that you take it to something as essential as the spirit of creativity itself.

00:04:07.000 I've got young daughters, they're five and six.

00:04:10.000 Their favourite band is the Spice Girls.

00:04:12.000 Like, we listened to the Spice Girls and then, like, some other kids were getting dropped off at the school, like, similar age.

00:04:18.000 They were listening to the Spice Girls.

00:04:19.000 It doesn't even... Even something in the culture, which I think at the time I would have certainly regarded as a sort of a commodity, even though it had a great deal of spirit, and there's aspects of the Spice Girls that I liked, Details I certainly won't be going into right now.

00:04:34.000 What I'd like to say is that it's odd that even something that's commercial, you know, we're not talking about like Joan Jett, we're talking about the Spice Girls, even like those kind of commodities aren't being replaced.

00:04:45.000 And also with like Glastonbury, Elton John being the sort of closing act, it makes you wonder, well, where is it going to go?

00:04:51.000 Now, do you think this is because of economics?

00:04:53.000 Do you think it's because of technology?

00:04:54.000 For example, it's been sort of oft stated that There isn't a new raft of movie stars coming through anymore.

00:05:02.000 Is that because of the culture?

00:05:04.000 Is that because of technology?

00:05:05.000 And of course, I know those two things are inextricably linked, but what do you put it down to?

00:05:10.000 Yeah, I mean, I think the last movie star that we have still active really now that's relevant is Tom Cruise, and he's got Mission Impossible coming out soon.

00:05:18.000 That's probably going to do really well this summer.

00:05:19.000 Top Gun Maverick did great last year.

00:05:22.000 But yeah, like, There's a problem now in movies, particularly, where we don't have movie stars anymore.

00:05:31.000 We have characters that people are excited to see.

00:05:35.000 Particularly with comic book movies, with all this superhero stuff, it'll be a case of, hey, we're going to go and see the new Captain America movie.

00:05:42.000 We're going to see the new Thor movie.

00:05:44.000 We don't care about the actor that's playing him, really.

00:05:46.000 It's just the character that we're going to see.

00:05:49.000 Then doesn't translate into a star who can sell movies who can get people to go to the movie theater and see his latest film.

00:05:57.000 You know, back when probably you and I were kids, the dominant forces at the box office were like, Oh, I'm going to go and see the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

00:06:06.000 I'm going to see the latest Stallone movie, the latest Bruce Willis movie.

00:06:10.000 All people like that.

00:06:10.000 They were stars that could sell films just on their star power.

00:06:14.000 We don't have that anymore.

00:06:16.000 And it's the same problem with You know, with, um, films in general, you know, we, um, we don't want to take the risk now of inventing new things, because, one, movies are massively expensive, and so they don't want to take the risk of investing 200, 300 million dollars on something that's completely unproven, and so all they'll do is say, well, what's a surefire hit?

00:06:42.000 Star Wars used to be popular.

00:06:42.000 I don't know.

00:06:44.000 Let's do that.

00:06:45.000 Indiana Jones was popular.

00:06:46.000 Let's do that.

00:06:48.000 Let's just keep recycling the things that older people remember. 0.91

00:06:52.000 And two, we don't have the talented writers with really interesting life experiences that they can translate into scripts.

00:07:00.000 And so they don't have the ability to create new things that are really interesting and cool.

00:07:04.000 It seems like Mark Hamill has almost been trying to publicly say that he don't like what the franchise has done to the character of Luke Skywalker, that he personally feels offended and affronted by it.

00:07:19.000 Sometimes it seems to me that you're driven by a kind of a love of narrative and story and almost like Joseph Campbell-like ideas of how a hero should function and what a story should do.

00:07:34.000 I've got a few things I want to run by you.

00:07:35.000 Like, I used to think, it's like a little hypothesis of mine, that American movie stars somehow embody how they regard how that nation in particular, and let's face it, it's still the nation that defines our planet, like how it sees itself at a particular time.

00:07:50.000 Like, when it was Schwarzenegger and Stallone, it was a kind of rebooted 1980s America with heft and, you know, an overt masculinity.

00:07:59.000 Adam Sandler, who I did a movie with, actually, and who I think is a really interesting and brilliant performer and comic, and he, like, at a time when we were starting to learn, for example, that there weren't actually weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Adam Sandler had this kind of, oh shucks, I didn't mean it, like, kind of mentality that aligned neatly with an America that's trying its best, and erring sometimes, Now perhaps what we have is an America that doesn't know what it's trying to sell itself anymore.

00:08:29.000 Trying to present a kind of ethical and moral face to the world while clearly being backed by commodity.

00:08:34.000 As you say, the motivation behind these IPs and these franchise movies is no one's willing to take a risk.

00:08:42.000 Matt Damon says that you'd never get a Good Will Hunting type movies no more because no one will back a $30 million movie like that.

00:08:51.000 They need to have IP behind them.

00:08:53.000 But what I want to get into just before, while we're still on YouTube, before we leave YouTube, so do bear that in mind, Drinker, that we're still in a place where censorship is possible, is how do we marry together the idea that you don't want movies all to be big, buff, white movie stars.

00:09:11.000 You want diversity.

00:09:13.000 You want good, like, as a father of daughters, I want good, strong theater.

00:09:17.000 Strong female character!

00:09:20.000 I want strong female characters in movies, right? 1.00

00:09:23.000 I do, for my girls.

00:09:24.000 I want them to watch films and not always to be it's just guys and blokes and, you know, I want there to be diversity.

00:09:30.000 But how do you marry that?

00:09:32.000 What do you think is the concession that should be made to make movies more, for want of a better word, more diverse?

00:09:40.000 Where do you stand on that, mate?

00:09:42.000 What is it like?

00:09:43.000 Yeah, interesting points you've made there, because it's like when you talk about the stars of their different eras, like the 70s was like De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, like the interesting character actors, you know, the 80s was the big buff muscle man.

00:09:57.000 It was the time of like American confidence. 0.97

00:09:59.000 We're going to kick ass. 0.99

00:10:00.000 We're going to dominate. 0.99

00:10:02.000 We're going to do awesome.

00:10:03.000 The 90s, it moved into, like, more, um, you know, ambiguous, like, slightly more, uh, vulnerable heroes.

00:10:09.000 The 2000s was very much reflective of the War on Terror, so there was a lot of, um, you know, uh, military-themed stuff.

00:10:16.000 There was a lot of, uh, thrillers.

00:10:18.000 There was a lot of, uh, secret agent things going on.

00:10:20.000 Uh, and then, yeah, you look at now...

00:10:23.000 There's nothing.

00:10:24.000 I literally just said there ain't no movie stars because the country doesn't even know what it is now.

00:10:29.000 It's in a conflict of identity.

00:10:33.000 So I think that's a self-evident point of it doesn't even know what it wants to be anymore.

00:10:38.000 So that's kind of really sad to see because as a Brit, I always looked up to America as the model of the world.

00:10:45.000 This is the country that leads us, the free world.

00:10:48.000 Um, but yeah, when it comes to, to marrying what you talked about there, like the, the, um, rather than just having straight white guys as like the movie stars, how do we, how do we include, um, people of different genders, ethnicities, all that stuff?

00:11:04.000 I guess what I would say, hey, we did it!

00:11:08.000 20, 30, 40 years ago, we just didn't make such a big deal out of it like we have to do now.

00:11:13.000 And that's the thing that annoys people.

00:11:15.000 That's the thing that turns people off.

00:11:16.000 When you make the identity of the main character, the main actor, the sole focus of everything, people are just like, well, why are you making such a big deal of this?

00:11:24.000 Why should I care about this?

00:11:25.000 They used to just do it without having to make a big deal out of it.

00:11:29.000 When we talk about the great female characters in cinema, we have characters like Ellen Ripley.

00:11:35.000 She was an alien from the 70s! 1.00

00:11:38.000 That's before I was even born!

00:11:41.000 They got this right.

00:11:43.000 You've got Sarah Connor from the 80s.

00:11:45.000 Again, fantastic.

00:11:47.000 Fantastic action hero, fantastic flawed character, really interesting.

00:11:50.000 You had Trinity from the Matrix from the 90s.

00:11:53.000 They got all this stuff right, they just didn't...

00:11:56.000 Feel the need to make that the sole focus of these characters.

00:11:59.000 They were interesting characters first and foremost.

00:12:02.000 Whether they were female, whether they were women, sorry, whether they were black, white, whatever, it didn't matter. 0.54

00:12:08.000 The main focus was that they were a well-written character.

00:12:12.000 That's the difference.

00:12:13.000 That's what we can't do now.

00:12:15.000 Yeah, it offends you because it's, in a sense, hasn't got any art or care in it.

00:12:22.000 So you're contrasting the character like Ripley from Alien or Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies with, say, an example off the top of my head, which I know will go over well on these platforms, Captain Marvel and the way that Captain Marvel was kind of presented as a hero.

00:12:39.000 It offends you, I think, Because as I've said before, I'm a fan of your content, that you don't get to see a vulnerable character evolve, a vulnerable character learn lessons, a character that is flawed and has to overcome obstacles.

00:12:51.000 In a sense, this is the function of story that precedes the medium of cinema.

00:12:57.000 We need to see that a character in position A at the start of the film is unable to achieve something but by, you know, they go through catharsis, challenges, whatever, and at the other side they're able.

00:13:11.000 And you think that this new ideology that's about presenting figures or characters in a particular way is unable to serve story and the function of story.

00:13:20.000 Is that what you're saying, Drinker?

00:13:22.000 What's the fundamental thing, like you said, that gets you to identify with a character?

00:13:25.000 Is you give a person that's somewhat likable, give them an obstacle to overcome and have them struggle to do it.

00:13:32.000 Have them lots of things that get in their way, like they fall down, they pick themselves up, they eventually overcome.

00:13:37.000 That is the fundamental essence of what makes you like a character and identify with them.

00:13:42.000 It's so easy, it shouldn't even need to be said.

00:13:46.000 But what they lack with these modern characters that they try to do is that they're not willing to take that step of have them fail and be vulnerable and have flaws and weaknesses.

00:13:56.000 Either because the writers don't know how to do it or because they've got this kind of Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of.

00:14:02.000 Prickly defensiveness when it comes to writing things like female characters where they don't want them to be perceived as weak, and so the only alternative they have is well, they just have to be great at everything.

00:14:14.000 And so they're they're brilliant.

00:14:15.000 Everything right off the bat.

00:14:17.000 They have all the skills they need.

00:14:18.000 They don't need to learn everything.

00:14:19.000 They don't really have personalities because they don't Them being amazing and being up here and the rest of the world having to learn to accept how awesome they are and eventually come up and accept them.

00:14:35.000 There's no character arc there.

00:14:37.000 It's just a straight line.

00:14:40.000 People don't find that satisfying.

00:14:42.000 That's the problem.

00:14:43.000 That's why nobody watches these movies anymore.

00:14:45.000 That's why the box office returns just go down and down.

00:14:49.000 Yeah, because when we meet, let's take the example of Sarah Connor, we find her as a waitress, drifting through life listlessly. 0.79

00:14:58.000 But down the line we see that, ah, this character is going to be a revolutionary figure that's met the challenge of

00:15:06.000 knowing that she's carrying perhaps the most sort of significant thing that a character could carry, like the,

00:15:11.000 you know, the essence or a symbol for the future.

00:15:13.000 Hey, listen, we're going to come off of YouTube now and here are the reasons you should join us on Rumble.

00:15:18.000 We're going to talk about Sound of Freedom.

00:15:20.000 Why is this movie causing so much controversy as it appears to be beating Indiana Jones in the box office?

00:15:28.000 What does it tell us about films?

00:15:29.000 What does it tell us about new funding models?

00:15:31.000 What does it tell us about the appetite of us as movie audiences?

00:15:35.000 I'm also going to start referring to the Critical Drinker by his actual human name, and I'm going to ask you to remove them aviators. 0.67

00:15:42.000 Not yet, not while we're still Not while we're still on YouTube.

00:15:45.000 They can't handle them piercing Scottish eyes of a colour that I can't even begin to conject until I've seen them.

00:15:52.000 So if you're watching us on YouTube or anywhere else, click the link in the description.

00:15:56.000 Join us over on Rumble.

00:15:57.000 If you're on Rumble now, press the red button and join us on Locals.

00:16:01.000 You get to see content live when we record it in the event that it's pre-recorded.

00:16:05.000 You get meditations from me.

00:16:06.000 You get to be a member of our community and I would welcome you there.

00:16:10.000 There's loads of great people in there.

00:16:10.000 I'd love it.

00:16:11.000 Look at old Barry John Fox.

00:16:13.000 Simply expressing himself with an emoji, even as we speak.

00:16:17.000 Zypher2000, speaking of our man Will Jordan there. 0.98

00:16:21.000 Will, get the fucking sunglasses off, mate, and you're allowed to swear now, significantly, so you can be your true... Whoa! 0.99

00:16:27.000 I wasn't ready for them brown eyes! 1.00

00:16:29.000 You're beautiful!

00:16:30.000 You've seared right into me soul there, for God's sake! 0.95

00:16:33.000 So, he's saying... What did he say there?

00:16:35.000 He's gonna get lost in his gaze, and that has happened.

00:16:38.000 That has happened in almost every sense of the word gaze, in every possible spelling of that word.

00:16:42.000 Okay, so hey Will, what do you think's happening around Sound of Freedom?

00:16:48.000 What do they object to?

00:16:49.000 Because I've heard, oh, what it is, is Sound of Freedom, because someone told me about it a little while ago.

00:16:53.000 A friend of mine actually said, you've got to see this movie, and you know, asked me if I would...

00:16:58.000 Support it, which I plan to do.

00:17:00.000 But I've subsequently seen people say, oh, it's connected to QAnon, and it's a conspiracy theory movie.

00:17:06.000 But of course, the plot of the movie is about a former Homeland Security agent who's rescuing children from child sex trafficking.

00:17:13.000 What's the issue with that, Will?

00:17:16.000 Why has it caused such controversy?

00:17:17.000 I mean, honestly, you'd think it would be a no-brainer.

00:17:20.000 I think we can all Come to the same conclusion that children being sold into child sex trafficking is a terrible thing and should absolutely be stopped at any cost.

00:17:31.000 And so a movie about trying, you know, a main hero who's trying to prevent that is trying to rescue children from the most horrifying situations imaginable.

00:17:40.000 Wow, that should be the sort of thing that you should really have no qualms about supporting.

00:17:44.000 And the fact that so many people in the mainstream media are against this, Wow, it really makes me question what their values are.

00:17:53.000 I do not understand it at all.

00:17:56.000 Yeah, I don't, because I... Look, we're all familiar now with, like, the Jeffrey Epstein story, and it does appear that paedophilia is, let's say, more popular than I'd imagined it was as a young man, blessedly.

00:18:10.000 But it's odd that a film like this, where, as far as I can understand it, the only roots for saying that there's a connection to QAnon or conspiracy theories is that once maybe Jim Caviezel, am I saying his name right, the lead actor, Yeah, Caviezel, I think it is.

00:18:25.000 Caviezel.

00:18:26.000 Caviezel.

00:18:26.000 He commented on that slightly wacky wardrobe manufacturing story where they were saying it was a front for paedophilia.

00:18:34.000 He maybe commented on it.

00:18:35.000 Maybe the lead actor commented on it, and I know it's funded by the same people that made The Chosen, and I knew the guy that played Jesus in that.

00:18:43.000 The guy that played Jesus in The Chosen, Will, body doubled for me, I think, in Ballers, an HBO show that I did.

00:18:51.000 Jesus is my body double!

00:18:53.000 That's my new catchphrase, man!

00:18:55.000 I'm taking that down!

00:18:57.000 My stigmata!

00:18:58.000 So, you know, do you think, this is a question I want to put to you as an expert in movies, or at least an authority on movies, do you think that what actually, you know, of course there's the idea that, oh wow, is there actually, is there something to hide around all this paedophile network stuff?

00:19:13.000 Let me know in the comments, guys, I know that's a subject you lot get into.

00:19:16.000 Or is it, or additionally, is it because of this is a funding model and a distribution,

00:19:22.000 not necessarily distribution model, but a PR model that's bypassing a lot of the gatekeepers?

00:19:27.000 You know, they're going on podcasts, they're, you're promoting it.

00:19:30.000 Tim Pool, I've seen talking about it, but you know, it doesn't seem to have to go through

00:19:35.000 the, I don't know, green tomato, red tomato, fresh or whatever stuff.

00:19:39.000 What do you think about that?

00:19:40.000 I mean, it's twofold, really.

00:19:42.000 Like, first of all, the movie doesn't try to make any connections to some, you know, ring that's, like, operating at the top levels of American society or anything like that.

00:19:52.000 It's very much like, this is stuff that's going on in Colombia, Mexico, that sort of thing.

00:19:57.000 It's just a guy trying to rescue kids from a hostile situation, you know?

00:20:01.000 And that's really the limit of it.

00:20:03.000 So it's not trying to make that connection at all, which is so weird that people seem to be getting

00:20:07.000 so defensive about that.

00:20:09.000 And two, it's a cheap movie.

00:20:12.000 Like it was made for like well under $20 million.

00:20:15.000 This isn't like an Indiana Jones job where it's like 300 million plus,

00:20:19.000 God knows how much on marketing and stuff.

00:20:21.000 And so they don't have the budget to do TV commercials and all the fancy advertising that you can ask for.

00:20:28.000 They do this grassroots stuff where they just make themselves available to talk to podcasters and stuff and sell the movie on its own merits.

00:20:38.000 Imagine that.

00:20:39.000 Imagine a movie that's just actually good and people watch it because, hey, it's actually a really rewarding experience and it's tackling an important issue that we should learn more about.

00:20:48.000 Imagine that.

00:20:50.000 It's almost like that's foreign now to us.

00:20:53.000 Yeah, therefore it's an example, isn't it, of it's quite guerrilla and quite radical because it doesn't have to go through the processes that typically a movie would do.

00:21:05.000 The amount, as you've described, that's typically spent on advertising.

00:21:08.000 And you know, you work in independent media, I work in independent media, and sometimes what I start to feel, and I wonder if you feel the same, is they're attacking the content.

00:21:17.000 They don't agree with my ideology, but Actually, I'm starting to think what they don't agree with is us existing at all.

00:21:23.000 That it's more like an economic problem.

00:21:25.000 Oh no, this is where people are going to spend advertising. 1.00

00:21:27.000 Shit, we can't keep up with this. 0.99

00:21:29.000 What do you think about that? 0.99

00:21:31.000 Well, I mean, put it this way, like when I work here making my videos that I do, it's me in my office at home.

00:21:37.000 I got 0% overheads.

00:21:40.000 I spend zero dollars on anything, but I get millions of views because people are interested to hear what I've got to say.

00:21:47.000 And that's the thing that they hate, where you've got news networks and you've got studios with dozens if not hundreds of employees, they've got huge expenses that they go to, and they get a fraction of the viewership that people like us get because people just don't care about them anymore, because they know how fake they are.

00:22:05.000 I've heard it said before, it was a very smart man named Robert Meyer Burnett who said, the currency of our current age is authenticity. 0.96

00:22:13.000 And it's so fucking true.

00:22:15.000 People care about presenters, whoever it is, who care about the subject matter they're talking about, who actually are authentic. 0.96

00:22:23.000 They might not be as polished, they might not have the big production values, it doesn't matter.

00:22:26.000 They're talking about things that they care about and that they're invested in.

00:22:30.000 That's what people want, honesty.

00:22:32.000 Yeah, in a sense, that's the Joe Rogan superpower, isn't it, Will?

00:22:36.000 Like, whether he's talking about mixed martial arts, or whether he's talking about politics, or psychedelics, or hunting, or diet, or supplements, or whatever, you get the impression, because in my opinion, it's true, that he's saying what he believes, and he's saying what he cares about, and that seems sufficient to stand up against, you know, clear attempts to take him out around the Ivermectin horse pace time, which, again, similarly, like, I reckon as well, there.

00:23:02.000 They just don't want that.

00:23:03.000 You know, Carlin famous, George Carlin says it's like a, you know, you don't need conspiracy where convergent, where interests naturally converge.

00:23:10.000 And the mainstream media don't want powerful, independent voices that are able to just bypass their models.

00:23:17.000 Because like you say, you've got zero overhead, you can operate on your own.

00:23:20.000 And plainly, you're in a position where if you like a movie, you say you do.

00:23:24.000 And if you don't like a movie, you say that even more.

00:23:28.000 Yeah, and nobody pays me to do this as such.

00:23:32.000 I don't have relationships with studios that I can damage by slagging off their movie, and that's the thing.

00:23:36.000 I can just be honest about it.

00:23:38.000 But I always try to be fair.

00:23:39.000 That's what I always want to be.

00:23:40.000 I don't want to just hate on a movie because it's made by a director I don't like.

00:23:44.000 Whatever.

00:23:45.000 Be fair.

00:23:46.000 That's all I expect from what I do.

00:23:48.000 And hopefully people understand that.

00:23:52.000 And that's why they watch my videos, because I'll give you an honest opinion about things.

00:23:56.000 In the Indiana Jones one you listed movies where you sort of where you're you were wrong you said like I thought Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't be any good and you were wrong about that and I feel like even some of the Disney TV shows you've sort of gone oh actually that's pretty good and you've you know so you've like I guess that to your point about authenticity being the currency and in fact this is a broader point we find ourselves continually making on our channels you need principles if you If you have a principle, then sometimes that principle is going to cost you, sometimes it's going to support you, but it remains consistent.

00:24:26.000 When you're just like, oh, when I'm talking about this, you know, when cluster bombs, here's an example from the news this week, when cluster bombs are being used by Russia, they're bad.

00:24:34.000 When cluster bombs are being used by America, they're good! 1.00

00:24:37.000 Or Ukraine, sorry, via America.

00:24:39.000 You know, so that means, you know, that is the opposite of what you're discussing in terms of veracity and an ability to trust.

00:24:45.000 Yeah, humane cluster bombs.

00:24:47.000 I like that idea.

00:24:48.000 But yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, sometimes I'll watch the trailer for a movie.

00:24:53.000 I'll give my thoughts on it and, like, make some predictions about what the film's going to be like.

00:24:56.000 Sometimes I'm right, or most of the time I am, but sometimes I'm wrong.

00:24:59.000 And, like, I'm happy to admit that.

00:25:01.000 If a movie, I go and watch it and it's better than I expected, I'm a happy man because I got to watch a good movie.

00:25:07.000 So that's okay, as far as I'm concerned.

00:25:09.000 So yeah, for me, there's nothing wrong with admitting that occasionally you call it wrong.

00:25:13.000 That's okay, as long as you're honest with people.

00:25:16.000 I think that's all they want.

00:25:17.000 What about, do you sometimes get a bit, let's say, supercharged by the Like, you know, if something isn't, for want of a better term, woke, do you think, oh my god, do you think it almost gets an extra bit of juice because of that?

00:25:30.000 I'm talking about films like maybe, you know, Maverick or even the Mario Brothers movie, just by virtue of the fact that it's not pushing that message.

00:25:40.000 Or do you think that by not having the kind of gravitational lag The wokeness can apply because it prevents, to use but one example, a character from having a meaningful arc because they're already presented as perfect on the basis of identity, which shouldn't be what's presented at the center of a film.

00:26:00.000 And if it's freed of that, it's a little bit better.

00:26:03.000 Or do you think that you're sort of like, oh, thank God, bloody Mario Brothers isn't doing that, and you get a bit excited? 0.92

00:26:08.000 There's the initial emotional reaction of like, hey, wow, this movie doesn't fucking hate me because I'm like a straight white man. 0.72

00:26:14.000 Like, that's a change of pace. 0.95

00:26:14.000 That's nice. 0.95

00:26:16.000 But, you know, you try to be, you try to break the movie down, like into its component parts and say, well, okay, this one I enjoyed.

00:26:24.000 Why did I enjoy it?

00:26:25.000 Like, was the plot good?

00:26:26.000 Were the characters good?

00:26:27.000 So you try to be a bit more objective about it.

00:26:27.000 Whatever.

00:26:30.000 But it's also possible, this is an interesting discussion about, it's possible for something to be woke by the normal standards, but also be good if it's well written.

00:26:40.000 The example that I've given before is a TV show called Arcane.

00:26:44.000 Which puts forward a lot of what we would consider to be woke politics, like an extremely diverse cast, gay relationships front and center, a class struggle at the heart of the plot that's driving it forward, very strong female characters, all that stuff.

00:27:03.000 That might be considered woke in other movies because it's badly handled, but it's extremely well integrated into a really good story in that TV show.

00:27:11.000 And so I was happy to say, hey, this is an example of, say, progressive politics or progressive ideology done well.

00:27:18.000 It can be done, but you've just got to write it well.

00:27:21.000 That's what we look for, a good story.

00:27:23.000 Right, don't use it instead of structure.

00:27:26.000 I suppose another film like The Matrix, Matrix is a good example, I'm talking about the first one obviously, of how sort of different ideals and identity transcendent of homogeneity and heterodoxy is presented as aspirational and cool and then the Wachowskis of course, Wachowskis, I can't remember their name no more, Like uh like they had a sort of uh obviously they changed gender during like you know the trajectory of those movies like that maybe that's something for you to touch upon but i also like again with my personal uh position as a father of girls and also as a person that do i do believe there should be stories for everyone there should be stories for everyone but i think i agree with you as a aesthete or as a critical thinker you know to sort of use the phrase from which your name is derived

00:28:16.000 Like, I want things to reward me and to make sense, I suppose.

00:28:20.000 So, um, would you touch on, like, you know, sort of the Matrix and the Wachowskis, if I'm saying the name right, and also what films would I direct my girls to?

00:28:29.000 Because I don't even like it.

00:28:29.000 Sometimes if I watch an old Simpsons and Bart goes, girls are shit, or whatever, I'm like, oh, I don't want my daughters watching that, you know what I mean?

00:28:36.000 So, sort of touch on that sort of side of it as well, if you could. 0.99

00:28:38.000 Yeah, I mean, in terms of, like, if you're looking for movies with good female role models, like, damn, where do I begin? 0.97

00:28:45.000 Like, you've got the Terminator movies, I suppose.

00:28:47.000 Like we mentioned before, you've got, um, uh, you've got Ripley from the first two Aliens films.

00:28:54.000 You've got Marion from, um, from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

00:28:58.000 Uh, you've got Trinity from The Matrix.

00:28:59.000 You've got, um, Geena Davis from Long Kiss Goodnight. 0.99

00:29:03.000 Like, all of these, these are very interesting characters that, that kind of, You know, they've got flaws, they've got weaknesses, they've got problems along the way, but they overcome those things.

00:29:13.000 So yeah, there's been movies all throughout cinematic history that have given us this stuff.

00:29:20.000 It's just, really, in recent years, in trying to highlight this stuff and in trying to correct a problem that didn't really exist in the first place, they've made it infinitely worse.

00:29:30.000 That's the problem.

00:29:31.000 What about that analytic tool, like I only know because I saw it in Rick and Morty, where they say, like, an analysis of a feminist, a movie from a feminist perspective is, are there two female characters that have names that are talking about something other than a man?

00:29:47.000 Like, and also like, There is an imbalance between films that, uh, don't you think?

00:29:52.000 Do you agree?

00:29:53.000 Like, that are sort of built around, like, let's call them, you know, white males or whatever.

00:29:58.000 There is a... Do you think there's an imbalance that could be addressed?

00:30:01.000 And what do you think about, like, why is it a critique like that emerged?

00:30:05.000 Like the one that I learned on Rick and Morty that's got a proper name.

00:30:08.000 Someone tell me in the post.

00:30:09.000 It's a proper technique.

00:30:10.000 It's called the something test.

00:30:11.000 Yeah, the Bechdel test.

00:30:13.000 It's funny, because the Bechdel test was actually created as a bit of a joke.

00:30:16.000 Is it a 4chan thing or something?

00:30:20.000 No, no, it was created by a woman, but she just did it as a bit of a laugh. 1.00

00:30:25.000 And it was meant to poke fun at the feminist critique of movies and stuff. 1.00

00:30:29.000 So it was never meant to be taken seriously, but it's become the benchmark across the industry for how movies are rated.

00:30:35.000 And so, OK, it's a meme that became reality, I suppose.

00:30:41.000 But yeah, in terms of...

00:30:45.000 How do you square that up?

00:30:48.000 I suppose part of the reason is, like, it depends what genre of movie you want to look at and how mainstream you want to go, because the biggest movies at the box office tend to be action movies, they tend to be superhero movies, all those kind of things, but they're generally very male-oriented movies, and so the natural result is you tend to get a man in the lead, because that's what guys look for.

00:31:11.000 But if you're looking for other stuff, you just have to go into different genres.

00:31:16.000 It could be dramas, it could be romance, it could be historical epics, whatever you want to be.

00:31:21.000 There's plenty of movies with characters like that in it.

00:31:24.000 They're just not the big blockbusters.

00:31:26.000 Get it.

00:31:27.000 Hey, I get it.

00:31:28.000 Because what it is, is it's not like, hey, we really love white men.

00:31:32.000 It's economic.

00:31:33.000 It's economic.

00:31:33.000 They just, these movies will sell well.

00:31:36.000 That's all.

00:31:37.000 They don't care at all.

00:31:37.000 They don't care.

00:31:38.000 Like the Bud Light thing.

00:31:39.000 They don't care if you're blue collar. 0.99

00:31:41.000 They don't care if you're trans. 1.00

00:31:42.000 They don't give a shit. 1.00

00:31:43.000 They just want to sell you Bud Light. 0.99

00:31:45.000 So this is the same thing with movies.

00:31:47.000 And so maybe this is what perhaps, and this is a question, Like maybe what offends you is like they still want their cake of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, a powerful IP from the 80s or 90s, but they also want to sort of attack, you shouldn't have these figures as the dominant figures, so they sort of live out their own dilemma almost in the movie of attacking and deconstructing the archetypes that they resent but rely on.

00:32:14.000 Is that a good bit of made-up analysis?

00:32:16.000 Yeah, what they want to do is use them as a springboard to launch their own new characters.

00:32:22.000 But it's like trying to take a character that, you know, you've bonded with over a period of years, if not decades, like you grew up with and stuff, like Indiana Jones being a great example, or Luke Skywalker, for example.

00:32:35.000 Characters that you've really come to know and love, and then what they'll do is present them as old men who are Sad and lonely.

00:32:45.000 They've given up on life.

00:32:46.000 They are broken down and they're kind of pathetic now, and they use that as an excuse to say, Hey, they were never that good in the first place. 0.98

00:32:52.000 And then what they'll do is they'll bring in a new diverse female replacement 1.00

00:32:56.000 who is stronger than them, smarter than them, more capable than them,

00:33:01.000 doesn't have any of their weaknesses.

00:33:03.000 And it's like they're trying to say, hey, see this guy that you really liked?

00:33:07.000 Well, we've got a new and improved version here, so you have to like them even more now.

00:33:11.000 Of course you do, because that's how human emotions work.

00:33:15.000 People don't think that way.

00:33:16.000 And so the more you try and slot these, like, fake pod people replacements in to, like, supplement these classic characters that we loved, the more people reject it. 0.97

00:33:28.000 And that's why Indiana Jones is fucking tanking at the box office. 0.82

00:33:33.000 This movie cost $300 million to make. 0.98

00:33:36.000 It needs to make, like, $900 million just to break even.

00:33:39.000 It ain't gonna get to $500 million.

00:33:41.000 No way!

00:33:42.000 There's a really funny line from Seinfeld that reminds me of you.

00:33:48.000 There's an episode of Seinfeld where his dentist converts the Judaism Seinfeld offers so that it affords him to make Jewish jokes. 0.65

00:33:58.000 And Seinfeld's rabbi says to Seinfeld, does this offend you as a Jew?

00:34:04.000 And he says, no, it offends me as a comedian.

00:34:07.000 That's what's offensive about it.

00:34:08.000 It's almost like that you're offended as a cineast and as a cinephile that the movies that you adore and love are being dismantled and deconstructed in ways that's clumsy and not even artfully done that there could be a version.

00:34:24.000 And also I think it's important what you're saying about like that kind of hate for their own audience because I think this has broader social connotations.

00:34:30.000 I think the movements we've seen like you know and I'll expand this out like the emergence of Trump, the emergence of Brexit, is the sense that people feel like the professional and media class hate them and don't do not represent them whether that's politically or through the cultural content they provide this is something i talked about sort of like for a while with uh the filmmaker adam curtis who i very much admire that and it's been something i've learned more and more about over time is that you have a professional class in journalism now that don't speak respectfully of this for one of a better phrase working class people working class culture there's a kind of

00:35:03.000 There's a sort of an antipathy and loathing towards them.

00:35:06.000 They don't like working class people or in America blue-collar people.

00:35:11.000 There's a kind of condescension and a snobbery and it seems like in a sense this is one of the narratives that's playing out in film.

00:35:18.000 I also want to mention like in South Park when they did and that was with the last Indiana Jones movie you know like where they went like they had I think Kyle coming out of a movie theater puking.

00:35:27.000 Oh my God, what did they do to Indy? 0.89

00:35:29.000 I can't believe what they did to Indy!

00:35:32.000 And like, what about that Imaginationland one, where they were like, um, these characters are more real to you, like, you know, whether it's Jesus, and, you know, I'm religious as it turns out, I figure you might be an atheist, but I believe in God and all sorts of stuff.

00:35:46.000 But, like, they're saying, like, that these characters are more real to you.

00:35:49.000 Luke Skywalker's more real than, like, maybe your teacher, or people that, you know, these are people that you know, and that you're, they've been vessels for your own personal development, and your own understanding of your own darkness, and your own aspirations, and to see those things commodified, when perhaps they don't even care about identity issues anyway, it's, um, insulting, maybe?

00:36:10.000 Is that a good way of describing it? 0.95

00:36:12.000 Yes, and it's, uh, I best described it as, like, a lot of these franchises are things that have been created by geniuses and inherited by morons. 0.97

00:36:21.000 And that's the problem, because they don't have this creative skill to be able to make stuff like this by themselves. 0.99

00:36:27.000 Like, if you wanna make a shit movie with shit characters, like, eh, fine, I don't care. 0.99

00:36:32.000 Like, maybe you're just not very good at this stuff. 1.00

00:36:34.000 I'm not gonna get offended by it, though. 0.97

00:36:36.000 But if you want to cannibalize These existing characters that were made by someone way more intelligent and way more creative than you, and humiliate them and try to use them to launch the shit things that you've made, that's when I've got a problem. 0.92

00:36:51.000 Because you are exploiting someone else's work. 0.98

00:36:55.000 You are raping someone else's creativity.

00:36:59.000 That's what you're doing, but you're not adding anything productive to it.

00:37:02.000 You're creating something worse to try and replace it.

00:37:05.000 As a writer, as a storyteller, that really offends me because I hate to see other people's work get taken advantage of.

00:37:12.000 Yeah, nice one, mate.

00:37:14.000 We've got some good questions.

00:37:15.000 This is some stuff from our community.

00:37:17.000 Donny Jep, question for The Drinker.

00:37:19.000 Do you think there'll be a time in the future when Hollywood is making great movies again, or do you think that that time has passed and something else like gaming will take its place?

00:37:27.000 I think we're going to see a lot of gaming adaptations.

00:37:30.000 The Last of Us was a real benchmark for that.

00:37:32.000 I think we're going to see a lot more, yeah, movie or TV show adaptations of video games because it's a massive, massive market.

00:37:39.000 But I think also the time of this sort of mega blockbuster that costs $300 million is coming to an end.

00:37:45.000 And I think we're going to see a lot more smaller things that they take more risks on.

00:37:50.000 And yeah, they're going to have to start making better stuff.

00:37:52.000 Otherwise, they will just go bankrupt.

00:37:54.000 Yeah, that's interesting because that's almost like decentralised, localised movie audiences, the same way that everything is perhaps becoming federalised in that way.

00:38:03.000 This is from Barry John Fox.

00:38:06.000 Alright Critical Drinker, what are your top five films and have you seen all of David Lynch's films?

00:38:11.000 I have not seen all of David Lynch's films now, but he does.

00:38:14.000 He does some good stuff.

00:38:15.000 But like, yeah, he goes down some disturbing roads with his things.

00:38:19.000 Top five films.

00:38:20.000 It's definitely not going to be done in terms of artistic merit or anything, but probably Terminator 2, Big Trouble in Little China.

00:38:31.000 I think probably The Menu.

00:38:33.000 I really love that.

00:38:38.000 Probably Nightcrawler and yeah, I'm not sure what my last one would be.

00:38:41.000 I'll come back to that one in a minute.

00:38:42.000 The menu, the recent movie, The Menu.

00:38:45.000 I ain't seen that.

00:38:45.000 Yeah.

00:38:47.000 That's really good.

00:38:48.000 Really interesting.

00:38:49.000 It's a very good critique of how we understand art.

00:38:52.000 Are you gonna do a video on My Arthur remake?

00:38:57.000 My Arthur?

00:38:58.000 My Arthur!

00:38:59.000 My Arthur!

00:39:02.000 When I remade the film Alpha.

00:39:05.000 Now, maybe not Alpha.

00:39:06.000 What about Get Him to the... I want to see a video by you on Get Him to the Greek or Sarah Marshall.

00:39:12.000 The last thing I want to see is Alpha.

00:39:14.000 Maybe I don't even want to see the... My Alpha!

00:39:19.000 Like, when you were saying that stuff about reboots, I was thinking, oh man.

00:39:22.000 Like, because I love Dudley Moore.

00:39:24.000 I loved ARFA, the original film.

00:39:26.000 And I see, actually, in a way, I've got an inside scoop on how that stuff happens.

00:39:30.000 Like, you know, I've done a few successful movies in Hollywood.

00:39:33.000 They recognize that there's a window for me, a moment for me.

00:39:37.000 Like, they've got the rights to ARFA.

00:39:39.000 It's cheap.

00:39:40.000 To do it, then they say, you know, generally what I found out afterwards is that they were going to make, before Dudley Moore done Arthur, they were going to make it with Belushi, with John Belushi, like, and I thought, like, after, when it was too late, when the, you know, when the damage had been done, I found, I was like, oh, That's the version of ARFA you want to do.

00:39:57.000 It's an 18 or R-registered version.

00:40:01.000 You can see another take on that.

00:40:03.000 But because it's economically motivated, they want it to be PG.

00:40:08.000 It gets softened to the point where you can't even show him drink driving!

00:40:11.000 And at the time I'm thinking, this ain't gonna work.

00:40:14.000 And also, someone should have told me, don't do that voice.

00:40:17.000 Those two things could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble.

00:40:22.000 I'm not going to push you to make videos on films that I've done.

00:40:26.000 That's mental.

00:40:26.000 I can't even believe I brought it up.

00:40:27.000 I'm crazy.

00:40:28.000 Vulcan Liv says, Critical Drinker, I'm more excited about this than Dorsey, Tucker, or RFK.

00:40:33.000 And then TNBaseGirl says, his eyes look blue to me, but Russell said brown.

00:40:37.000 Oh, maybe they are blue.

00:40:38.000 Yeah, they are though.

00:40:38.000 Yeah.

00:40:39.000 Hold on.

00:40:40.000 Oh, you've got the eyes of a husky. 0.99

00:40:43.000 Pure killer! 0.95

00:40:47.000 Oh, but this from Thomas Beard.

00:40:48.000 Getting to the Greek is like fine wine.

00:40:50.000 It gets better with age.

00:40:51.000 What film that I've been in or done are you willing to be nice about?

00:40:56.000 It might be Getting to the Greek, actually.

00:40:58.000 It got a chuckle out of me back in the day.

00:41:00.000 So, yeah, it's been a good long time since I've seen it, but I do remember quite enjoying it.

00:41:05.000 Well, you better watch it again.

00:41:06.000 Let's try and build a relationship here.

00:41:06.000 Come on, mate.

00:41:08.000 Instant Drinker recommends.

00:41:11.000 Um, okay.

00:41:12.000 So what do you think about stuff like, um, the re-editing of the Roald Dahl books and the sort of conversation around, like, life of Brian and change and stuff like that?

00:41:22.000 Where do you stand on that, mate? 0.98

00:41:23.000 It makes me fucking sick. 0.94

00:41:24.000 I hate this idea of, uh, we need to, like, soften and we need to start altering these movies from the past without the permission of the people who made them, uh, just to make them more palatable to modern audiences. 0.97

00:41:34.000 Because God forbid someone might get offended by them somewhere. 0.98

00:41:37.000 Uh, no, leave them the fuck alone. 1.00

00:41:40.000 As far as I'm concerned. 1.00

00:41:41.000 Yeah, they should.

00:41:42.000 These are works of art.

00:41:43.000 They should be left alone as they were intended to be shown. 0.99

00:41:45.000 Yeah, both with like in the case of Roald Dahl and in the case like because I know that people well, Roald Dahl has in interviews outside of his fiction said some like overtly anti semitic stuff like you've sent some mad shit.

00:42:00.000 But like I mean, but like within the work, he doesn't say that in like Matilda or like Charlie in the chocolate factory like that, like an Again, it's what people like, they want.

00:42:12.000 I tell you why, do you know why that happened?

00:42:13.000 I think.

00:42:14.000 I think Netflix did a deal and bought the Roald Dahl estate. 0.96

00:42:17.000 Netflix was like, oh shit, we live in this sort of territory where those things are monetized and mobilized, i.e. 0.96

00:42:25.000 issues around identity. 0.98

00:42:26.000 Let's push for the Roald Dahl estate to reissue those books with Edits and stuff and I feel like I even like you know when I'm I would never use the n-word I would never make a racist joke.

00:42:39.000 I'm against racism.

00:42:40.000 I'm against hatred.

00:42:42.000 But like I feel like you know like Enid Blyton books and in a sense these are artifacts of their time.

00:42:48.000 It's interesting because this cannibalism we talked about earlier like that they have to use IP in order to keep their economic models going is in a sense what the culture is doing Anyway, it's what the whole culture is pulling itself apart.

00:43:02.000 It's pulling itself apart without recognizing, actually, what you're going to have to do if you continue down this line is you're going to have to have a totally different set of principles almost around everything.

00:43:11.000 You can't, you know, like the royal family, our whole class structure, everything is predicated on colonialism, imperialism.

00:43:18.000 You'd like, in a sense, you, as Kehinde Andrews, who's a sort of a professor of black studies that I've spoken to, is that once you start this conversation, I mean, I'm not a big fan of trying to erase history or trying to alter it to make it more palatable to people because it's like you're trying to pretend that things like mistakes that were made in the past didn't actually exist.

00:43:46.000 And so it's like you can't There's like the good and the bad that comes with it, and I think you should just be honest about this stuff, and it filters through to movies and things like that.

00:43:56.000 Like, you can look at movies that were made like Gone with the Wind or whatever back in the 30s and 40s.

00:44:02.000 Yeah, they don't align with our current standards or our current, like, cultural zeitgeist.

00:44:09.000 But they're not meant to because they were made in a very different time, but we respect the time in which they were made and we can look back on them now and say, well, yeah, OK, that's that's changed since then.

00:44:17.000 But it deserves to be shown because it's an artifact from when it was made.

00:44:22.000 Mate, thank you so much.

00:44:24.000 It's pretty plain that all of your work comes from a place of genuine love of cinema and storytelling and, as you say, the currency of authenticity.

00:44:24.000 You're quite right.

00:44:33.000 Thanks so much, Will, for joining us on the show.

00:44:36.000 I really hope we get to do some more stuff.

00:44:37.000 I'd love to come on your show if you'll have me.

00:44:39.000 Thank you so much for making time for us.

00:44:41.000 Absolutely.

00:44:41.000 Thank you, man.

00:44:42.000 It's been a pleasure.

00:44:43.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:44:44.000 See it first on Rumble.

00:44:46.000 We can't make our wonderful content or put on events like Community without our wonderful sponsors.

00:44:51.000 Mudwater is a coffee alternative with four adaptogenic mushrooms and Ayurvedic herbs.

00:44:57.000 Plus, it contains only a fraction of the stinking caffeine in a dirty old cup of coffee. 0.99

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00:45:11.000 I don't just put things in for a laugh.

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00:45:30.000 It tastes like masala chai and cacao made a really healthy lolly baby.

00:45:35.000 Mud water is Whole30 approved, thank God.

00:45:37.000 100% USDA organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan and kosher certified.

00:45:45.000 Mud water donates monthly to the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics as they believe the country is in a mental health epidemic and see psychedelics as a useful tool tool for individuals with depression, PTSD, anxiety and

00:45:57.000 other mental health experiences.

00:45:59.000 To get 15% off go to mudwater.com forward slash community.

00:46:03.000 Use the code community15.

00:46:05.000 Delicious.

00:46:06.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:46:08.000 See it first on Rumble.

00:46:10.000 We have got a massive week next week.

00:46:13.000 Oliver Stone and Ron DeSantis all on the show.

00:46:16.000 Hit the red button, sign up to our locals community where you've got access to new interviews for the first time.

00:46:20.000 You can join us live for the Ron DeSantis if you want to.

00:46:23.000 Live for Oliver Stone, as well as meditations, behind the scenes stuff, all sorts of things.

00:46:27.000 Now, this weekend, I am going to Community, which is our festival where Vandana Shiva, Wim Hof, Callie Means, Hiran Gracie, Brilliant thinkers come together to talk about new ways to organize society.

00:46:41.000 Decentralized, democratized, and free.

00:46:44.000 We'll be posting content from it on this channel.

00:46:46.000 Please watch out for it if you're not joining us on person.

00:46:49.000 So, I'll see you next Monday, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

00:46:53.000 Until then, here's the news. 0.99

00:46:55.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:46:58.000 Thanks for accusing Fox News. 0.99

00:46:59.000 Here's the news. 0.99

00:47:00.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:47:03.000 RFK says he's glad that Donald Trump likes him. 0.99

00:47:07.000 Yet, CNN say that they would never do a town hall with RFK like they did with Trump.

00:47:13.000 So, is RFK officially more dangerous to the establishment even than Donald Trump?

00:47:21.000 Donald Trump likes RFK.

00:47:24.000 RFK welcomes his endorsement even though he disagrees with Trump.

00:47:28.000 And of course these are two figures from different political perspectives, different political parties.

00:47:33.000 Certainly CNN are not willing to house RFK.

00:47:37.000 And my personal experience of RFK, just to be plain, is that I believe he's the very kind of figure we need inside the establishment, the very kind of candidate the Democrat Party should be endorsing.

00:47:49.000 But if they shut down Bernie, making the decision they'd rather lose against Trump than win with Bernie, how are they going to treat a figure like RFK, who says he wants to end the forever wars, heal the cultural scars of America, bring people together from across We interviewed him recently on our show, there's a link in the description if you want to watch it, and we posted on Twitter a pretty innocuous clip of his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, just talking about spirituality and being married.

00:48:27.000 Nothing controversial, nothing weird, and yet when it was reposted by another source, this graphic appeared.

00:48:33.000 Like, look at the graph in itself.

00:48:35.000 Extreme, left, left, centre, least, biased, right, centre, right, extreme.

00:48:39.000 Who in the world has got the right to tell you how that graph works?

00:48:44.000 Hello, I'm God.

00:48:45.000 Here is the absolute graph of where extreme is on both sides and where the middle is.

00:48:50.000 And to control that, it's Twitter.

00:48:51.000 Twitter and social media.

00:48:53.000 So I think it's a good sign that you have a dyed in the wool Democrat figure from the 0.91

00:48:56.000 Democratic aristocracy, a man who confessed in our interview with him that he is part

00:49:01.000 of the establishment elite by the virtue of his Kennedy surname, but that he doesn't share

00:49:05.000 the values of elitism, he believes in a new form of populism.

00:49:10.000 The fact that he welcomes Trump's support, or at least goodwill, is interesting and I

00:49:14.000 think something we should investigate.

00:49:16.000 You say that you're a Democrat, but you're getting a lot of support from a lot of leading

00:49:20.000 voices on the right, like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, former President Donald

00:49:26.000 Trump.

00:49:27.000 Many Democrats fear that you're a spoiler in the race, that you will damage President Biden in the primary and grease the skids for former President Trump to return to the Oval Office.

00:49:37.000 Even that aspect of the question is strange, like the assumption that the best thing to happen is for Biden to have an uninterrupted path back to the presidency.

00:49:45.000 He's the kind of president that deserves to face a challenge from a man with integrity, who's authentic, who has some views like anyone I agree with, some views I don't agree with, welcomes the opportunity to bring people together from across the divide.

00:49:57.000 This is what politics is crying out for.

00:50:00.000 Radical change.

00:50:01.000 Not more of the same.

00:50:03.000 Radical change.

00:50:04.000 This week, former President Trump said about you, Kennedy is smart and he's a common sense guy.

00:50:11.000 What kind of man do you think Donald Trump is?

00:50:15.000 Well, you know, here's what I'm not going to do in this race. 1.00

00:50:18.000 I'm not going to attack other people personally.

00:50:22.000 I don't think it's good for our country.

00:50:24.000 And I think, you know, what I'm trying to do in this race is bring people together, is to try to bridge the divide between Americans.

00:50:31.000 And so I'm proud that President Trump likes me, even though I don't agree with him on most of his issues.

00:50:38.000 Because I don't want to alienate people.

00:50:40.000 I want to bring people together.

00:50:42.000 Let me know in the comments if that's exactly the kind of political conversation you think your country needs.

00:50:49.000 A open-heartedness, a willingness to talk to people you disagree with, good faith conversations.

00:50:54.000 I mean, what's the alternative?

00:50:55.000 Just flinging mud at one another from across the aisles.

00:50:59.000 Where is that going to get any of us?

00:51:01.000 The complication comes when the establishment wants to harness the views that a divisive polarising figure like Trump brings, but still wants to condemn him as an outlier and a maniac.

00:51:13.000 If Trump is dangerous but can be platformed in order to get views, what is the reason for not giving RFK his own town hall? 0.94

00:51:22.000 Are they saying that RFK is more of a threat to the establishment than even Donald Trump, who I thought was the worst human being that ever existed, he should be killed, put in prison, hanging's too good for him, and yeah, oh, get him on the television, he's quite good, bravo, bravo! 0.64

00:51:37.000 Woah, look at the revenue, it's flying baby, we're relevant again, thank you Trump! 0.94

00:51:42.000 So what do they think about Do you think on the democratic side you would do a town hall with someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

00:51:47.000 I wouldn't.

00:51:47.000 because he's done things like win court cases against Monsanto.

00:51:51.000 The condemnation of RFK requires all sorts of contortions of thought and it amounts to

00:51:56.000 we just don't like this guy because he's anti-establishment.

00:52:00.000 Do you think on the Democratic side you would do a town hall with someone like Robert F.

00:52:03.000 Kennedy Jr.?

00:52:04.000 I would not.

00:52:05.000 Okay.

00:52:06.000 Because he spreads dangerous misinformation.

00:52:10.000 In 2005 was when he began, in earnest, his anti-childhood vaccine campaign.

00:52:16.000 He wrote a story for Salon.com that was jointly published with Rolling Stone, both of which have since retracted the articles, and Rolling Stone just completely disappeared it.

00:52:27.000 It was like it never happened.

00:52:28.000 That's always a good sign when media start disappearing information.

00:52:32.000 How about people are allowed to have opinions and views and share them and discuss them and decide for ourselves?

00:52:38.000 Wasn't one of the things that troubled us during the pandemic the fact that legitimate voices were shut down and debatable and even true information was censored?

00:52:46.000 And I'm quoting there Mark Zuckerberg.

00:52:49.000 I asked for a bunch of things to be censored that in retrospect ended up being more debatable

00:52:53.000 or true.

00:52:54.000 Anyway, I just dealt with him and he was so dishonest in that experience and since then

00:52:59.000 he lies about the experience frequently as an example of how the media is co-opted by

00:53:05.000 Big Pharma.

00:53:06.000 That lie that the media's been somehow co-opted by Big Pharma.

00:53:10.000 I mean, if only there was like some evidence that they'd been like, I don't know, sponsoring them or something.

00:53:19.000 As you know, we did a censorship industrial complex event with Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi, two hardcore journalists.

00:53:26.000 Matt Taibbi used to write for Rolling Stone.

00:53:27.000 That's not possible now because Rolling Stone are an establishment publication and Matt Taibbi is an anti-establishment journalist.

00:53:34.000 What I mean by that is he tells the truth and if you tell the truth that will be antithetical to establishment interest because the world has become centralised and authoritarian and has gone out of control.

00:53:41.000 Here he describes what the Virality Project is.

00:53:44.000 The Virality Project was a cross-platform information sharing program led by Stanford University through which companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook shared information about COVID-19.

00:53:53.000 They compared notes on how to censor or de-amplify certain content.

00:53:57.000 The ostensible mission made sense, at least on the surface.

00:54:00.000 It was to combat misinformation about the pandemic and to encourage people to get vaccinated.

00:54:04.000 When we read the communications to and from Stanford, we found shocking passages.

00:54:09.000 One suggested to Twitter that it should consider as standard misinformation on your platform stories of true vaccine side effects.

00:54:16.000 Hmm.

00:54:17.000 How can true vaccine side effects be misinformation?

00:54:20.000 True posts which could fuel hesitancy?

00:54:23.000 Well, that just means anything that's not positive.

00:54:25.000 We're starting to move closer to propaganda, aren't we?

00:54:28.000 As well as worrisome jokes.

00:54:30.000 Well now it's actually gone beyond propaganda into mind control.

00:54:34.000 Like a worrisome joke!

00:54:36.000 I don't even know how to define a worrisome joke.

00:54:38.000 Any joke could be worrisome because it's sort of disruptive.

00:54:41.000 Hey, what bees make milk? 1.00

00:54:42.000 Boobies! 1.00

00:54:43.000 Hey, that's a bit worrisome.

00:54:44.000 What are you saying? 0.97

00:54:45.000 That boobs and bees? 1.00

00:54:47.000 There's nothing that's not worrisome if you investigate it for long enough.

00:54:51.000 Or posts about things like natural immunity.

00:54:54.000 It's conflated scepticism, inquiry and curiosity with unacceptable non-compliance and propaganda

00:55:02.000 in order to advance its own agenda.

00:55:05.000 That's what Matt Taibbi reveals.

00:55:07.000 That's why it's necessary that figures like RFK say, yeah, yeah, Trump supporters, Trump,

00:55:12.000 cool, we're not going to see everything the same way, but critiquing the establishment

00:55:15.000 is necessary.

00:55:16.000 That's why a figure like Jake Tapper saying, oh no, we can't have RFK on.

00:55:20.000 But hold on, I think I've seen stuff on CNN that's not true.

00:55:24.000 Like I feel like you said a bunch of stuff about Russiagate and I feel you didn't report

00:55:29.000 on the Hunter Biden lab story.

00:55:30.000 And isn't there something about either mectin being horse-paced or vaccinated individuals

00:55:35.000 contracting COVID-19 anyway?

00:55:37.000 But vaccinated individuals did contract COVID-19 anyway.

00:55:40.000 That's just true.

00:55:41.000 This is straight out of Orwell.

00:55:43.000 Instead of having ambiguities and shades of meaning on COVID-19, they reduced everything to a binary.

00:55:50.000 Vax and anti-vax.

00:55:51.000 That's dangerous.

00:55:52.000 We don't all need to agree with one another.

00:55:55.000 We don't need to.

00:55:56.000 It's okay.

00:55:57.000 We can all get along with one another.

00:55:58.000 You can have strong views about a subject, as long as you're alright with me having strong views on a subject.

00:56:02.000 We can't say if you don't have the same opinions on medical matters that I do, particularly when the science, it appears, was somewhat ambivalent when we were told it was certain.

00:56:12.000 Do you see how certain conclusions were rushed to?

00:56:15.000 Certain sides of the conversation were shut down.

00:56:18.000 I wonder if we can see the outline of an ideology by tracking these factors.

00:56:24.000 They eliminated ambiguities by looking into the minds of users.

00:56:28.000 In the Virality Project, if a person told a true story about someone developing myocarditis after getting vaccinated, even if that person was just telling a story, even if they weren't saying the shot caused the myocarditis, the Virality Project just saw a post that may promote hesitancy.

00:56:43.000 So this content was true, but politically categorised as anti-vax, and therefore misinformation.

00:56:49.000 Untrue.

00:56:49.000 Think about that graph again.

00:56:51.000 Who has the right to say this is extreme right, this is extreme left, this is acceptable, balanced information?

00:56:58.000 Who?

00:56:59.000 You could only ever aggregate that from a variety of sources, through consensus, through democracy.

00:57:04.000 There's no one point of fallibility, a phrase I learned from Jack Dorsey, that should be afforded that ability.

00:57:10.000 A person who talks about being against vaccine passports may express support for the vaccine elsewhere, but the Virality Project believed concerns about vaccine passports were driving a larger anti-vaccination narrative.

00:57:22.000 So in this way, a pro-vaccine person may be anti-vax.

00:57:26.000 They also wrote that such concerns inspired broader discussions about the loss of rights and freedoms.

00:57:32.000 Also problematic.

00:57:33.000 We don't want to be inspiring conversation about the loss of freedom.

00:57:37.000 Because we're taking away people's freedom.

00:57:37.000 Why's that?

00:57:39.000 And if they discuss that, they're going to be pissed off.

00:57:42.000 That's what led us to the ridiculous situation where people who were pro-vaccination in so much as they had invented vaccines, taken vaccines, were banned from speaking because they were anti-vax.

00:57:53.000 That doesn't make sense unless you create new systems of meaning and And then use those new systems to censor the public space.

00:58:01.000 It makes you wonder what the intention was.

00:58:03.000 And even if it wasn't an intention achieved through conspiracy, it was an intention delivered through momentum, through a convergence of interest.

00:58:11.000 It was the same with someone who shared true research about the efficacy of natural immunity or suggested that the virus came from a lab.

00:58:18.000 It might all be factual, but it was politically inconvenient, something they called malinformation.

00:58:23.000 In the end, out of all these possible beliefs, they derived a 1984 binary, good and un-good.

00:58:29.000 They also applied the binary to people.

00:58:31.000 This was new.

00:58:32.000 Old school speech law punished speech, not the speaker.

00:58:35.000 We saw NGOs and agencies like the FBI or the State Department increasingly targeting speakers, not speech.

00:58:41.000 The Virality Project brought up the cases of people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

00:58:45.000 The posts of such repeat offenders, they said, are almost always reportable.

00:58:50.000 They encouraged content moderators to make assumptions about people, And not to look on a case-by-case basis.

00:58:55.000 In other words, they saw good and un-good people, and the un-good were almost always reportable.

00:59:00.000 The filmmaker Albert Maysles once told me, You know from your own life that you have complicated motivations, that you have flaws, that you're not always perfect, that you've made mistakes.

00:59:12.000 But you know you, right?

00:59:13.000 You know you're trying your best, that you err.

00:59:16.000 Sometimes you have to do a little recalibration or a re-correction.

00:59:19.000 All human beings are like that.

00:59:21.000 There's not another class or caste of human beings that are exempted from that in politics or media or social media regulation.

00:59:27.000 That's why it's dangerous to grant authority to any set of individuals.

00:59:31.000 That's why, in a way, democracy is the only game in town.

00:59:35.000 And the more local that democracy, the more controlled by the people affected by it the electoral process is, the safer it is.

00:59:43.000 The last thing any of us need are centralised authoritarian models where discussion is shut down, where freedom of speech is controlled, And you mustn't fall into the trap thinking, well, on this issue, I happen to disagree with that person, so I'm glad that their free speech is being shut down.

00:59:59.000 For them, you must fight all the harder.

01:00:01.000 That makes you a person that has principles.

01:00:04.000 That means it stays straight.

01:00:06.000 And I don't think that this set of values, graphs with extreme on either end, determined by AI or a guy, are the way to move forward.

01:00:16.000 That's why figures like RFK and Donald Trump are interesting.

01:00:18.000 They are anti-establishment figures.

01:00:20.000 Even if you're not into Donald Trump, even if you're not into RFK, they are people from outside the establishment.

01:00:25.000 I believe the establishment is a greater threat than anti-establishment voices.

01:00:29.000 That's what I personally believe.

01:00:30.000 That's why there are new alliances forming.

01:00:32.000 That's why RFK says, I'm not really a fan of Donald Trump, but I'm proud that he likes me.

01:00:36.000 And that's why it's interesting to hear Barack Obama, who at the time when he was elected in 2008, I thought, this guy is a hero.

01:00:43.000 This is what America needs.

01:00:44.000 This is a man of color with principles, integrity, he was a good speaker, but now he's saying there's no serious threat to Joe Biden.

01:00:51.000 That's code.

01:00:52.000 That's like, don't take any of these other people seriously.

01:00:54.000 And then when you learn that Barack Obama has taken advantage of tax laws that while in office he said should be shut down, you recognize, wow, Maybe that guy wasn't as great as I thought he was.

01:01:05.000 So that's why it's interesting that Barack Obama's saying, no, Joe Biden's the only possible option.

01:01:09.000 Well, that's the best.

01:01:11.000 And that's why I dislike most of all about the neoliberal establishment that claims to be on the side of the people.

01:01:16.000 Do you know what they're basically telling you?

01:01:18.000 This is as good as it gets. 1.00

01:01:20.000 Shut up. 1.00

01:01:21.000 Shut up and vote for Joe Biden. 1.00

01:01:23.000 You don't deserve any better. 1.00

01:01:25.000 Take what you're given.

01:01:26.000 I think Joe Biden has done an extraordinary job leading the country through some very difficult times.

01:01:33.000 I do not think that there's going to be any kind of serious primary challenge to Joe Biden.

01:01:38.000 No, because we'll shut it down like they did with Bernie Sanders.

01:01:41.000 When there is a serious threat or a serious challenge, when someone comes along saying, I'm not sure that the party should be funded in this way or, hey, could we do this better around Big Pharma or do we need these forever wars?

01:01:51.000 Yes, we bloody well do need these forever wars.

01:01:54.000 They're good for business.

01:01:55.000 I think the Democratic Party is unified.

01:01:57.000 You know, there was a lot of talk.

01:02:01.000 You'll remember when he was first elected, because Bernie Sanders had run, that somehow there was this huge split between progressive Democrats and more centrist Democrats.

01:02:10.000 And the truth is, is that partly because of how Joe has governed, those divisions have been bridged.

01:02:19.000 The example he's used is what demonstrates exactly what's wrong.

01:02:24.000 There was an alternative voice within the Democratic Party, and that voice was ignored.

01:02:29.000 It's not been bridged, it's been shut down.

01:02:31.000 And what they're trying to do with RFK, whose rhetoric at least, and in my view he means it, is even more anti-establishment than Bernie's, The reason he's appealing to people on the right is because all of us, regardless of these sort of almost made-up affiliations to Republicans or Democrats, basically want to be left alone, don't want the state all over our lives, don't want big business to have so much power that democracy becomes worthless and pointless and futile and facile, and are willing to get along with people that are different as long as they leave us alone.

01:03:00.000 So what's worse?

01:03:01.000 Harmful misinformation like, for example, RFK's views on a variety of subjects.

01:03:07.000 Remember, this guy's a lawyer that's won cases against big agri-companies that's fought for the rights of rivers.

01:03:12.000 Aren't they supposed to care about that, the Democrats, the environment and stuff?

01:03:16.000 Oh yeah, we care about it.

01:03:17.000 Until a train falls over in East Palestine and spills toxicity all over the land, then we don't care as much, then we don't turn up. 0.88

01:03:23.000 What I'm starting to think is they're not willing to deliver and that the Democrat Party has been like that for quite a long time.

01:03:28.000 And by the way, I don't think the Republican Party is any better.

01:03:30.000 This is by Robert Reich, writing in Right Wing Magazine, The Guardian.

01:03:33.000 In the first two years of the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

01:03:39.000 Yet both Clinton and Obama advocated free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who consequently lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.

01:03:48.000 Clinton pushed for NAFTA and for China joining the World Trade Organization, and Obama sought to restore the confidence of Wall Street instead of completely overhauling the banking system.

01:03:58.000 Both stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class.

01:04:03.000 They failed to reform labour laws to allow workers to form unions with a simple up or down majority vote, or even to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated labour protections.

01:04:12.000 Clinton deregulated Wall Street before the crash.

01:04:14.000 Obama allowed the street to water down attempts to re-regulate it after the crash.

01:04:18.000 Obama protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout that allowed millions of underwater homeowners to drown.

01:04:27.000 Both Clinton and Obama turned their backs on campaign finance reform.

01:04:31.000 They also drank from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans.

01:04:35.000 Big corporations, Wall Street, and the very wealthy.

01:04:38.000 The most powerful force in American politics today continues to be anti-establishment fury at a rigged system.

01:04:44.000 Heroes of the Democratic Party like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama created and doubled down on this problem, turning the Democrat Party into the party of Big Finance, Big War, Big Agra, Big Pharma.

01:04:58.000 Anti-establishment rhetoric, whether it's from Trump or RFK, terrifies them.

01:05:03.000 They would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie.

01:05:06.000 And RFK, they don't even want in the picture at all.

01:05:09.000 That's why they're denying he's a threat.

01:05:11.000 That's why they want you distracted.

01:05:13.000 That's why they're creating machinery for censorship. 0.99

01:05:16.000 In the United States, in all anglophonic countries, in the EU, because they don't want figures like this rising to political prominence Insisting we have a conversation.

01:05:26.000 Insisting that they are confronted when they offer us propaganda that amounts to wishful thinking and expedient ambition for those already in power.

01:05:35.000 There can be no real change without real conversation because we all have to be included.

01:05:40.000 So conversation is going to be part of it.

01:05:42.000 They know that.

01:05:43.000 That's why they're trying to shut conversation down by saying this is extreme, that's extreme, this is just right. 0.51

01:05:48.000 RFK, extreme left nutter. 0.99

01:05:50.000 Donald Trump, extreme right nutter. 0.98

01:05:52.000 We'll handle it right down the middle.

01:05:54.000 They got you in their sights down the barrel of a gun called establishment thinking and anyone who dares to question it becomes a target.

01:06:01.000 But that's just what I think.

01:06:02.000 Until next time, stay free.

01:06:14.000 Switch off.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - July 14, 2023

So This Is WHY Movies Are SH*T Now?! With The Critical Drinker - #168 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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