00:00:00.000hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with
00:00:12.640a great guest that i think you're really going to enjoy before we get started i just want to
00:00:16.900remind you that one of the ways we keep the lights on around here is of course subscriptions to blaze
00:00:21.000tv so if you want to get access to all your favorite blaze tv hosts and support what we're
00:00:26.440doing on this program, you need to head to blazetv.com slash Oren to get $20 off your
00:00:32.260subscription today. That's blazetv.com slash Oren to get $20 off today. So Disney is obviously a huge
00:00:41.680juggernaut in the entertainment industry. It's a company that has been very important in the
00:00:46.820history of animation and all kinds of other entertainment for children. But for the last
00:00:51.660few decades it has courted some level of controversy when it comes to cultural issues
00:00:56.700including lgbtq and obviously things have really blown up in the last few years after disney went
00:01:02.700to war with my governor ron de santis somebody who was working behind the scenes and understands
00:01:08.600disney at a deep level is josh dawes he is now producing great ai content as well as working
00:01:15.060at the blaze and i wanted to bring him on to talk about his time in you know kind of trenches there
00:01:20.360at disney what he saw what he observed where he thinks thinks things are going and how ai could
00:01:26.000possibly change the entire landscape so josh thank you so much for coming on man yeah thanks for
00:01:31.260having me war so you've had this podcast for a while i think a lot of people on the internet
00:01:37.040knew you uh you know through the podcast talking about christianity uh however at the same time
00:01:43.520you were working at disney a lot of people probably didn't know that that was your day job
00:01:48.080And it's a very interesting day job for a guy with your opinions, because Disney has been going through, well, let's say a little bit of a cultural revolution.
00:01:56.000It was famously at the center of a number of different cultural battles.
00:02:00.580And it's also been going through a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to its media, from a flagging Marvel franchise scenario to the problem with different remakes not doing as well.
00:02:13.680It seems like Disney has lost some of its cultural momentum and creativity.
00:02:17.800It's Disney Plus service, often seems like it might be in trouble.
00:02:21.640And so we're going to talk about all that, but I want us to get to the very beginning.
00:02:25.760How does a guy like you with your beliefs end up working at Disney?
00:02:29.700What drew you to a company like Disney in the first place?
00:02:33.720Well, I mean, I grew up going to the parks and I'm a child of the 80s.
00:02:38.320So Epcot really gave me kind of a view of the future that was incredibly optimistic.
00:02:44.500And I think that was one of Walt's gifts is he could see new technology and he would find ways to use it to entertain people and to kind of give a positive outlook on humanity and what we can do with that.
00:03:03.080And so I grew up loving Walt. Walt has always been a hero of mine.
00:03:07.440And I wanted to be a filmmaker. My brother and I worked in, directed an indie feature together.
00:03:15.680We did stuff all growing up. And then, yeah, so when I moved to L.A. pursuing that, had to have a day job.
00:03:24.300I've always been a software engineer and ended up working, working for the mouse in that capacity as a software engineer.
00:03:33.080um so i i was in the company for about 12 and a half years saw a lot of things um you know
00:03:41.120you asked about someone with my beliefs um you know i i grew up uh or i came from kind of the
00:03:48.260secret sensitive christian world for a long time worked for a large mega church that um was very
00:03:54.920big on you know it's all about evangelism we got to kind of hide what we believe and so that was
00:03:59.560kind of my approach you know inside of disney i i no one really knew what i thought about things
00:04:06.620so i found myself in a lot of um a lot of meetings a lot of you know just water cooler talk
00:04:12.400where i'm having to kind of bite my lip and kind of nod along with things i you know patently
00:04:17.740disagree with just because i wanted to keep that door open for a future possible conversation or
00:04:22.700whatever. And, and so, yeah, that was, it gave me an incredible view behind the scenes of how
00:04:31.500the company works, how people in that company think about conservatives. And so, yeah, it's,
00:04:38.440it's a, it's a very interesting perspective. That was my, you know, most tightly guarded secret
00:04:45.100with everything I was doing online, just, you know, because I was never in, I was never worried
00:04:53.700about people on the inside finding out as much as I was about people on the outside,
00:05:02.120you know, finding out and then, you know, putting that, that external pressure.
00:05:06.960Yeah. As somebody who worked in public education and journalism, I understand,
00:05:11.320you know what it's like to be in the trenches have to bite your tongue you know see how these
00:05:16.200people really react ultimately uh when they think that everybody's on side and nobody's watching and
00:05:21.380it certainly is a very eye-opening experience this is why i think i uh you know had a better
00:05:26.860insight into the true passion of the woke how how spiritually dedicated people were to this
00:05:32.600yeah everybody else like well you know political power maneuver it's like no guys you don't
00:05:37.040understand this is everything yeah this is a replacement religion yeah yes yeah so so when
00:05:44.100you're when you're in the when you're on the outside of that you might just think oh it's a
00:05:47.080little cookie thing they do on weekends but if you're inside the bubble you know no this is day
00:05:51.580in day out yeah just as reliably as a christian you know should read their bible say their prayers
00:05:57.320you know uh you meditate on the scripture these people are are marinating in wokeness talking
00:06:02.980about wokeness it defines every belief they have through and through it's interesting you talk
00:06:08.560about walt disney obviously this guy is an american success story uh he's a cornerstone
00:06:14.340of american culture as it grows kind of post-world war ii uh he's critical in the development of
00:06:21.640a segment of entertainment that probably didn't receive a what we would say perhaps a master's
00:06:28.340attention uh when it comes to childhood animation these kind of things you know we're seen as a
00:06:32.780an afterthought you know something to be thrown away not something to truly excel at to to really
00:06:39.080put your full effort into is obviously a very uh important visionary and was very pro-american you
00:06:45.600know somebody who uh maybe you know people wouldn't believe or agree with every single thing that he
00:06:50.980ultimately uh believed but you know saw this guy as very staunchly pro the united states pro its
00:06:56.640values pro its culture uh you know he literally built multiple theme parks celebrating the history
00:07:01.400of America, making that a central part of his entertainment. So it's hard to kind of label this
00:07:07.380guy as woke or, you know, any reflection of the modern left. However, this is not a new development
00:07:15.960in Disney. I know, you know, I have been a Southern Baptist for a long time. I remember when I was
00:07:21.280eight or nine years old and, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention was boycotting Disney because
00:07:26.440it was going to extend benefits uh to same-sex couples uh you know this was you know they used
00:07:32.120to hold this uh event uh night of joy uh where they had all the different christian artists come
00:07:38.360in and i always found it strange that for a couple years uh there was supposed to be a you know a
00:07:45.480theoretical boycott going on but pretty quickly everyone went back to kind of attending the night
00:07:51.240of joy and as if nothing had ever happened even though disney had exactly the same policy so even
00:07:56.820though we've seen a ramp up like a wild acceleration of the wokeness in disney it's always been a part
00:08:04.020or at least not always but at least for the last several decades for most of my life it has been a
00:08:08.980part of who they are they have been an earlier adopter of this and this has always been a tension
00:08:12.920with a company that is supposed to be serving families serving children you know a lot of
00:08:18.040parents want their children to grow up around Disney to you know kind of imbibe their entertainment
00:08:24.100but knowing that there's always this in the background how do you feel about the fact that
00:08:29.440this has been a part of Disney for a very long time yeah well even Walt had his had his run-ins
00:08:36.580with the leftists you know animators that would go on strike and they had communist and agitators
00:08:42.100in there you know trying to unionize his studio so walt has has been facing this and i think there's
00:08:48.420just something about the artistic you know personality that it gravitates towards the left
00:08:55.140and um you know walt to his credit you know did everything he can't could to kind of steer the
00:09:01.700ship like he had a heavy hand it's like okay we got to put up with a certain measure of this
00:09:07.700because we need artists um but he he tightly guarded like the messages we're putting out as a
00:09:14.500company like you know you look at you know some of his older content like i love um johnny tremaine
00:09:20.820just celebrating the sons of liberty and the american revolution it was a great film we watch
00:09:26.180every fourth of july and that was the kind of content that walt wanted to make like you know um
00:09:31.780And I think somewhere along the line, once, you know, after Walt, the leadership of the company just kind of lost control, started letting the creative elements, the leftist elements have more and more influence in the company.
00:09:51.400And without that strong figurehead at the top, kind of say, no, we're not going to we're not going to do that.
00:09:58.840We've got a brand to protect. I think just a failure of leadership has allowed a lot of this to come in.
00:10:05.160And then, you know, Iger comes in, I think, you know, even to a certain degree, Eisner was keeping a lot of that at bay.
00:10:13.900but but eiger is you know cultural elite he cares about you know being friends with
00:10:20.620kamal harris and all these uh crazy leftists and so he wants to be in with that crowd so that even
00:10:26.300at that point it's like the leadership at some point under eiger's reign went from um
00:10:34.700proud of the heritage that won't left to embarrassed by it and so there's been a lot
00:10:41.660of effort to kind of distance from walt you see like you know most uh one of the last things uh
00:10:47.740roy disney did uh during his tenure um walt's nephew um was he was a big champion of the walt
00:10:54.700disney treasures collection getting those out on dvd and those are my most prized possession
00:11:00.380it's a whole series of dvds that came in these nice tins it's all this classic content and he
00:11:06.300wanted to get that out there because he could kind of see what was coming with the leadership that
00:11:10.860they're gonna start shelving this stuff because they don't want people to see it because it is
00:11:14.780pro-america and it is culturally backwards you know you've got the mickey mouse club and you
00:11:20.540know there's the um one of the the adult leaders of the mickey mouse club was a youth pastor and
00:11:27.580so all of those kind of ideas and that that kind of worldview comes into the show and into that
00:11:34.060content and so um yeah so they've just distanced from that you can't find most of that stuff on
00:11:39.340on Disney Plus because they're hiding it, you know, from it.
00:11:42.280They want you to believe that, you know, oh, Disney's always been a progressive.
00:18:57.540way oversaturated the quality has dropped
00:19:00.100drastically we're seeing superhero fatigue in general and so disney in this weird space where
00:19:05.280it kind of went back and bought all of these companies in the hopes of uh kind of extending
00:19:10.760its reach buying their creativity buying that juice it worked for a while as you say they now
00:19:16.280own so many different franchises but simultaneously it seems like almost all of them are doing poorly
00:19:22.040you know not now the first couple disney remakes of their animated movies did okay but they keep
00:19:27.520getting worse and worse uh little mermaid's black all that kind of stuff everything is ridiculous as
00:19:32.740you think it is and as bad as the stuff has been there doesn't seem to be any course correction
00:19:38.120right they're still putting out super feminists you know race swap uh you know homosexual uh stuff
00:19:43.980in all of these categories across the board they also now have to fill so much time with all of
00:19:49.960these different properties and products they have to fill up disney plus everything else it seems to
00:19:54.440really hurt the quality of work and so that creates an interesting scenario because these
00:19:59.980huge studios like the reason they were so dominant was that hollywood had become dependent on this
00:20:05.020blockbuster model you know you needed to have these no no more 30 40 million dollar movies for
00:20:11.440adults everything needed to be a 300 million dollar movie uh you know that appealed to the
00:20:17.020entire world and and international markets and so what do you think about the direction disney
00:20:22.760is heading at the moment because it seems to have blown out its creative back on its own material
00:20:27.520it can't make disney material anymore to sufficient quality but it also seems to have run down the
00:20:33.580quality of every other promising studio that it's acquired and this puts it in a very precarious
00:20:38.660place yeah there's a lot there i think there is um have you ever read um uh what is it failure
00:20:46.840of nerve by edwin fried friedman uh it's a great leadership book that really i think kind of
00:20:55.400describes what's happened at disney over the last couple decades um it talks about uh how
00:21:02.600failure at the top to deal with problems below uh just because you're afraid of you know upsetting
00:21:08.760the apple cart how it leads to all these problems so it's it's where um i think it's one of the
00:21:15.000first places to kind of write about that kind of suicidal empathy idea my friend michael foster
00:21:20.360recommended it to me but um but reading that it was very clear that like this is what's going on
00:21:25.320at disney because i would say even now i would say the vast majority of people that work at disney
00:21:31.000they just want to make cool stuff they like disney they came in because they had the fond memories
00:21:36.040of it they want to make cool stuff but there is a really loud vocal minority there that it feels
00:21:43.640empowered and and it was it i was in 2020 i was uh we had slack uh channels that were open so you
00:21:53.960didn't have to join a slack channel to watch a slack channel so disney pride channel is a channel
00:22:00.680i lurked in quite a bit because it was bonkers it was basically watching a coup unfold live
00:22:07.560um because they're they're making lists of demands of how they want you know lgbt representation and
00:22:15.720this was all during that don't say don't say gay um kind of uproar um and so but but watching that
00:22:23.400because this was i think this was when um uh the other bob came in um not eiger jpeg um so this
00:22:32.120like right during his his the start of his tenure and he had the the opportunity to say no guys
00:22:39.160i'm not going to listen to you and and he just folded to everything they demanded and so it was
00:22:43.800at that moment it was like all right this company is captured it really is and it's not going to
00:22:49.320change until um until the leadership and i don't know if josh tomorrow the new ceo is the is the
00:22:56.520guy i don't know that he has that nerve to say no to this um but that's what it's going to require
00:23:04.680and that's that that failure to say no it affects all the things you're talking about because it's
00:23:11.720like it's not just um oh yeah we're running this content into the ground which is part of that
00:23:17.640it's who they're getting to make this content you're you're seeing showrunners that have no
00:23:23.400business you know show running a star wars show like they're they're they're picked because they're
00:23:30.200a woman because well we got to make the force female we've we've we've got to do this and these
00:23:35.480are these demands that they these this activist class of employee is making like oh it's about
00:23:40.440time we have women you know leading this and so they don't pick the best person for the job
00:23:45.720and and and even when they do have you know someone like a john favreau you know brought
00:23:51.080in to to lead something he's he's still gotta tick those boxes and so you're you're not uh
00:23:57.960you know the best time in disney recent disney history was early pixar where you had this boys
00:24:05.240club of you know their their brain trust is all dudes and that was a problem we got to fix that
00:24:13.640and so they brought in all these voices and these voices want to tell their story so it's very
00:24:17.880personal i i need to do a self-insert into the story and and instead of like you know early days
00:24:25.000like oh what if we had a superhero family and you know just cool ideas that you could really kind of
00:24:30.200hang some big ideas on they they become these you know like what was turning red like a metaphor for
00:24:37.640girls getting their periods like who wants to watch that like that that's bonkers but they greenlit
00:24:43.240that because they didn't have that nerve to say no this is a bad idea we're not going to do that
00:24:50.040and i i'm i'm hopeful that they're gonna start feeling that because at the end of the day
00:24:58.600profit matters um i'm hoping that they're going to see a turn we did see some changes recently
00:25:04.920at pixar where they they took out some storylines uh pete doctor who um is running the studio now
00:25:12.280now made a statement about how, you know, our films are not your place to work out your therapy
00:25:17.560things. We're going to make fun movies. So we'll see. Again, it's once the pressure,
00:25:23.860you know, increases and the heat comes on, do they have the strength to say no,
00:25:29.360to, you know, say we're going to make entertaining content. I don't care,
00:25:33.460you know, about ticking boxes anymore. And we'll see. I don't know.
00:25:36.680yeah i gotta say i'm i'm a little um pessimistic on the idea that they're going to be able to
00:25:43.980write that ship for a couple of reasons you know one of them seems to be uh the accuracy with which
00:25:49.180conquest third law politics has basically predicted all of these institutions behavior you know that
00:25:56.060that they all seem to be run by a cabal of their enemies yeah i've obviously talked to you i've
00:26:01.700talk to guys like marty o'donnell from halo you know from from uh that studio and the stories are
00:26:08.140always the same it's you know you you have this small team of really talented pretty much entirely
00:26:14.340like super driven guys uh who are willing to sacrifice anything and had a clear vision
00:26:19.840and then you know they sold to some kind of larger owner they brought in a bunch of consultants they
00:26:25.300brought in a bunch of managers uh the bureaucratic bloat began and once that began you started to get
00:26:30.760the attachment of you know girl power and lgbtq and we you know the whole race communism thing
00:26:37.240had to sweep through until you had entire departments that were basically devoted to
00:26:41.600just maintaining the ideological conformity to race communism and all of a sudden it's impossible
00:26:47.320you know you had 150 guys make halo and now you got over 2 000 people and they can't remake halo
00:26:53.960Yeah, they simply have lost the ability to produce anything. And so you are in a scenario where even if they cut a few storylines, even if Disney recognizes at some level the need to course correct, they've literally lost the ability to do so.
00:27:10.200They have turned over all of the parts of their staff that ultimately would have been
00:27:15.080able to make that change, would have had the level of competency to produce that, would
00:27:19.240have had the vision, would have had that singular ability.
00:27:22.320And what CEO is going to walk in there and say, yeah, we're cutting the staff down to
00:27:37.880And, you know, that's simply not a message that's allowed anywhere in the industry.
00:27:43.380So there's bad news, of course, there.
00:27:46.960You have a beloved property and so many beloved properties that are, I think, just going to get eaten alive.
00:27:52.520And as sad as it is to see them go, I think at some point it's healthy.
00:27:57.300You know, it's healthy for us to recognize that we cannot just live in the nostalgia of competency and that we have to have our own moment.
00:28:06.100we need our own generation of new uh talent you know bringing real projects forward now again the
00:28:13.480the advantage of course of these major studios was always the infrastructure that they had right like
00:28:19.440they had the animators they had uh the film connections they had the sets they had the
00:28:24.740equipment they had the experts they had the distribution rights they had the reach and the
00:28:29.360name the platform everything necessary to make these movies happen it was just literally impossible
00:28:34.680to put together a serious production and we've seen this issue with many conservative studios
00:28:40.980obviously the writing has been a problem in many cases you know these smaller explicitly christian
00:28:47.100you know movies are notoriously uh bad in some instances when it comes to uh the you know the
00:28:52.360level of writing but even when we get good writing which does exist you know there there have been
00:28:57.300ones that i think are are of high quality they simply don't have the production value you know
00:29:01.360They don't have the ability to put out those really high-quality movies.
00:29:05.760However, recently, as we see giant blockbuster bombs from Supergirl, Batwoman gets shelved, the studio pretends it was never even made, Marvel movies start to turn in $100 million box offices when they cost $300, $400 million to make.
00:29:26.900When you start to see those hits, it's obviously clear that Disney can't sustain that forever.
00:29:31.140they've got deep pockets but nobody's got pockets that deep over time something's going to give
00:29:35.980there at the same time we're seeing movies like backroom we're seeing uh you know these movies
00:29:42.240that come from youtube creators or people who are entirely outside the system they're making
00:29:48.160for very low amounts of money and they're making huge profits the kind of movies that used to always
00:29:53.400get made you know it was very common for someone to spend a few million dollars and yeah oftentimes
00:29:58.140those movies made 10 million and you know you made a profit great uh but you did you didn't fund
00:30:03.200entire studios off them you know you weren't you weren't doing the big bet every time uh and people
00:30:09.060have kind of rediscovered that oh yeah i do want movies that are made by people who have a real
00:30:14.000creative force who you know don't need trillions of dollars to put out a movie and you have started
00:30:21.040a project with artificial intelligence you're a big promoter of ai when it comes to creativity
00:30:27.740and i was wondering if you can tell people a little bit about why you started that and
00:30:32.560you know how this could ultimately point towards a future for conservatives or other you know
00:30:38.520alternative creatives who didn't have access to that studio system but now have this entirely
00:30:44.280different path forward when it comes to content creation yeah oh man i i am so excited about the
00:30:50.160opportunities we have before us um disney's struggling to to just struggling in general
00:30:57.660has given the right um such a good opportunity and it has coincided with the development of ai
00:31:06.700to a point where we can create pixar disney level animation with um one hundredth of the budget like
00:31:18.320fraction of the budget um and so the project you're talking about is the continuing adventures
00:31:23.340of mary sue um that is began as just a 15 second little experiment i was uh running about two
00:31:31.280months ago and so i was just playing with the new video models i was laid off from disney back in
00:31:36.920april which gave me plenty of time to play with technology so that was uh uh that was fun but
00:31:42.640yeah uh their latest trailer dropped uh hexed which again disney leaning into the witchcraft
00:31:50.820things very odd but they are um yeah it was just it it got a bunch of just kind of a collective
00:31:59.160meh from the internet because it looked like the same tired girl boss that we've seen a thousand
00:32:03.740times before um learning that she's really awesome and all this stuff and so i um i had been talking
00:32:10.480with my son who's uh 17 and interested in writing and we were talking through kind of um the dramatic
00:32:17.120argument and how you want your characters to have false beliefs and then they encounter reality and
00:32:22.240those false beliefs are challenged and then you you begin to realize the truth and so i was thinking
00:32:29.840about that with regards to disney heroines they get to a point where they believe a bunch of lies
00:32:36.400that i'm already awesome i just need to believe in myself um you know i don't need a man you know
00:32:42.560that's the whole thing of anna learns in the uh and elsa you know i don't need a man
00:32:49.440uh just all of these like modern tropes the mary sue tropes are all fundamentally lies about
00:32:55.520reality that that you're the main character of every situation all these things and so i thought
00:33:00.400what would it be like to start the story at that point where the heroine has these false beliefs
00:33:06.920and then confronts reality and so it began with just a quick 15 second short just trying out the
00:33:13.480the video model and it was uh mary sue uh the character um is there with outside of the cave
00:33:21.240of a dragon with the wizard the wizard says you know if you want to face the dragon you need to
00:33:26.260be trained and she's like i don't need training i just need to realize how awesome i already am
00:33:30.480and so she waltzes into the um the dragon's cave and then instantly big uh fireball she comes
00:33:37.400flying out and asks the wizard do you have any uh are you taking new students and so it was just a
00:33:43.760quick you know she learned a lesson and so that led to um you know i did a second one that i spent
00:33:50.820weekend on and then i did a third one that i spent a week on and then this latest episode um i really
00:33:57.780wanted to push and see how far i could go uh cap cut stepped up they wanted to make this um wanted
00:34:03.860me to make something for them and i said how about mary sue four they loved it and uh made it ended
00:34:09.620up making a 10 minute full-on disney pixar action set piece with a villain who is everything mary
00:34:18.100aspires to be strong confident woman and uh it takes on the trope of the um the misunderstood
00:34:25.460villain which couldn't be more timely with the whole lindsey clancy um situation so that um yeah
00:34:32.420that's just been doing incredible numbers uh released about a week ago but it it it firmly
00:34:38.100convinced me that we're at an inflection point where conservatives can make entertainment at
00:34:45.620the disney level quality um we just have to we just have to do it for a fraction of the budget
00:34:52.660and so that's the thing that was always great about the old studio system is that production
00:34:58.340hadn't yet skyrocketed in cost and so they were able to get those reps so you look at john ford's
00:35:04.420filmography and it's like you haven't heard of like his first 50 films you know they're the the
00:35:10.420once he was you know producing one a week for the the studios and then he gets you know um stage
00:35:16.340coach and then it's like masterpiece that wasn't his first film it's because he had all those reps
00:35:21.860and now and that's the i think that's been the problem with conservative filmmakers
00:35:25.700it is such a herculean effort to make to get a film made um that that it we just don't have that
00:35:34.260deep bench of people who've been at bat over and over and over. And now with AI, I'm encouraging
00:35:42.420my kids, make a short film this weekend. We can make things that look good and get that experience.
00:35:53.060Okay, why didn't that work? Okay, well, the opening sequence was a little boring. Okay,
00:35:59.460how could we get into the action faster and so it we've got this technology now that it's not like
00:36:05.940oh yeah we're gonna spend 15 000 to go shoot a short film so you can get some experience
00:36:11.940no nobody can afford that but you know 50 bucks on some credits sure knock yourself out you know
00:36:19.620and so i think we're at this moment where the technology is converging with the weakness of
00:36:25.700hollywood where we've got a really golden opportunity to kind of step into it and start
00:36:30.080making the entertainment we want to see yeah there is this very bizarre thing where you know many
00:36:37.660again many people have discussed this at length but the cgi and computer animation and movies
00:36:43.040they have more people working on it than ever they're spending more money on it than ever
00:36:47.320it looks worse than it ever has uh you know the shorts that you're producing look great uh you
00:36:52.240know they look professional quality i think if you hold them up to most people and played you know
00:36:56.780a minute of that and the latest pixar movie people would have a lot of difficulty telling
00:37:02.240the difference uh which is a great credit to the work that you're doing and so that really of course
00:37:07.700gives you this moment where you know if you on a weekend can produce at least 10 minutes of the
00:37:14.180same quality of product as an entire team you know spending hundreds of millions of dollars
00:37:20.480then you have a true asymmetrical kind of warfare.
00:37:23.560Not to turn things to dark current events,
00:37:26.340but this is the drone warfare of entertainment right now.
00:37:31.280You can take on enemies that are far, far larger than you
00:37:35.180and actually do a really competent job
00:37:37.460because they simply weren't designed to fight a battle on this plane.
00:37:42.580Now, the classic question for conservative content
00:37:46.820is that of preaching right i i've enjoyed your shorts i think that you did one where she like
00:37:55.000finds out that children are actually good i think i remember that one yeah being my favorite uh so
00:38:00.160like there you know there's good messages in it it's it's entertaining uh but there is this danger
00:38:04.860of the message is too central in the way you know in an inversion of the left right the left has made
00:38:11.840the entertainment bad by making it preachy you know there's nothing subtle there no one's allowed
00:38:16.360to have alternative opinions there's never things that happen unexpectedly everything goes exactly
00:38:21.500the way that the message tells you it's got to go and so the conservative response to say well
00:38:26.420i'm going to make the same thing and preach my same values you know in the same manner obviously
00:38:31.060the mary sue is a short form you're you're you know you're the very name itself is a play on
00:38:36.500uh that leftist ideology and so it's going to have a message it's going to have a counter message
00:38:41.340But how in general do we keep people from falling into this issue? Because obviously, you know, you want to have a message. Every piece of art at some point is having a message. It's conveying a worldview, an idea, a theme, an aesthetic.
00:38:57.340However, if you're if you're just beating down the door of Hollywood with exactly the same level of kind of bare ideology that they are laying out there, it feels like you could quickly fall into the same trap. So how do we avoid this?
00:39:11.340Yeah, I think it comes down to learning the skills of storytelling.
00:39:16.780It's like a message is not necessarily bad.
00:39:20.700You want artists who have something to say, but we don't want preaching.
00:39:26.060That doesn't come across well in the film medium.
00:39:33.440It feels preachy and nobody wants to sit there and listen to that.
00:39:37.380um and that would be the mistake is to be like well they're preaching it out so we're going to
00:39:41.140preach back at them no no we want to tell stories that are primarily entertaining but how do we do
00:39:48.660that we do that by figuring out what is our central dramatic argument what is the story
00:39:53.460trying to tell and then how do we what do we throw at our characters to get them to learn that those
00:40:00.820lessons without you know having them come to the you know big tent revival and you know receive
00:40:07.700a message and take a break from the narrative for 15 minutes while they deliver a mini servant um
00:40:13.860and and we've seen this like so many of the films we grew up like just a study of the films we grew
00:40:19.540up watching we see that that was kind of second nature that a a good storyteller kind of gets
00:40:25.940this intuitively i always use the example of die heart like that's a movie about the importance of
00:40:31.620marriage but they don't at any point in that talk about hey john you really need to take you know
00:40:38.740fight for your wife it's it's told through the visual meeting medium of storytelling and and
00:40:45.860where the characters are where they grow to and and it's all told through subtext you know even
00:40:51.780like a visual subtext like she's presented um like the the the yuppie guy at the beginning is
00:40:59.780like show him the rolex she got for the the deal that represents her career she got this fancy
00:41:04.260rolex and then at the end of it what is is hans hanging on to he's hanging on to the rolex and so
00:41:12.020she has to release that and and and i think it's john that actually releases that it's like he's
00:41:18.260got to rescue her this girl boss from her career in order to save the day so it's like all these
00:41:23.540layers of meaning that we can bring to storytelling again we just have to to learn the craft and
00:41:30.020that's what i'm so excited about is now there's this technology that allows conservative kids
00:41:35.700today to make really good looking content that will let them become the next curry barker who
00:41:43.940you know has made all this content on blender but now there's even other cool tools and and then you
00:41:49.220know if we're doing our job and raising our kids with the right worldview and teaching them to you
00:41:54.500know um learn the arts and learn the craft um i'm i'm just excited about what the future of
00:42:01.860entertainment is going to be and because it's also as we start telling truthful stories they're going
00:42:09.140to resonate with people more like the whole premise of modern storytelling is that they have
00:42:15.060a false worldview it's fundamentally false and so any everything in this story has to support
00:42:23.780that that worldview and and the the stories can't hold the the weight of that it doesn't have a
00:42:30.820solid foundation and so they just kind of crumble and so that we don't resonate with them the way
00:42:35.700way we used to so we start telling stories with a solid worldview that is built on truth beauty
00:42:43.640you know goodness i think those stories are just going to connect with people yeah i mean one of
00:42:50.480the big reasons that i think these preachy movies fail is that they don't tell you or they don't
00:42:56.720show you the lies of the characters they don't show you their connections they don't show you
00:43:01.840what makes them who they are they just stand up and say the thing they believe or the other they
00:43:07.140they produce the most trite situation in which they can give some kind of speech about what they
00:43:12.700want to under what what they want you to understand when as you say good storytelling is revealed you
00:43:19.340know speaking of john ford movies one of my favorite movies of all time is the man who shot
00:43:22.940liberty balance and you know that movie is beautiful because at no point does anyone ever
00:43:28.880need to stop and tell you this movie is about the transition from the wild west to civilization this
00:43:35.060you know i represent you know real manhood and this guy who's coming in he represents you know
00:43:41.560taming everything and turning it all like those characters all manifest that from who they are
00:43:48.100their mannerisms the way they treat other people the things that they value there's no time where
00:43:53.380they have to give some kind of deep speech about you know laying bare of everything though there
00:43:58.320are some speeches made in that movie obviously because it's about a politician in many ways
00:44:01.980uh but ultimately everything you need to have conveyed to you about the tension in that story
00:44:08.220is just portrayed in the first meeting where you know uh jimmy stewart's character is beaten
00:44:14.120with a whip and john uh uh i can't remember an actor all of a sudden thank you uh yeah
00:44:21.040somebody might have heard of john wayne before you know a mildly mildly known actor but you know
00:44:25.680When John Wayne shows up and all of a sudden it's, well, you need a gun, you know, in this town to have any actual justice.
00:44:31.920Like in that moment right there, the entire conflict is perfectly, perfectly portrayed.
00:44:36.620And no one needed to lay out, you know, the worldview of any of these people to ultimately have you capture all the nuances.
00:44:43.980So I think that there is the ability, as you say, for conservatives to learn this craft because now you can practice it in a way that doesn't cost you so much.
00:44:53.320As you say, you don't need a couple million dollars from an investor to go out there and see, okay, what would it be like to make a 30-minute short?
00:45:01.320And as a guy who started writing 500-word columns in local news to learning how to write a book, you do it through repetition.
00:45:12.060I learned how to write something that was 500 words, and I learned how to write something that was 2,000 words, and then I learned how to write something that was 20,000 words, and then I ended up writing something 60,000 words.
00:45:21.660and learning through that process each one of learning how to do that is just time and of
00:45:25.680course the nice thing about words is it doesn't cost you anything uh movies are very very different
00:45:30.060now i think that obviously the technology you're using for the mary sue is very appropriate because
00:45:36.500animation obviously lends itself especially computer animation already looks this way you
00:45:41.780know it basically produce ai produces a almost one-to-one of what you would expect to see in
00:45:48.320your modern animated kids movie so it's kind of the perfect format for ai to create however
00:45:54.500obviously other forms of movie making are not so natural to ai you can't just throw ai everywhere
00:46:02.240and create it easily and so do you think that this is a revolution that could only really happen
00:46:08.000in the area you are applying it to directly or do you think that the quality of ai production
00:46:14.160will be such that you could make fully live-acted movies this way
00:46:17.980or have it heavily subsidized AI to bring down the cost radically
00:46:22.700because we look at what something like Daily Wire was doing
00:49:16.980Yeah, but it's going to be, yeah, I think the hybrid workflow, there's some really interesting stuff happening there.
00:49:25.680Well, I have a lot of reservations about how artificial intelligence is going to impact society, but this is not one of them.
00:49:33.440This is one of the areas where I am hopeful that artificial intelligence has the positive impact.
00:49:39.120One of the things that obviously conservatives are running up against from business to entertainment to government is just the bloat of bureaucracies, the deep state, the nature of these institutions, and that they're insurmountable in many ways and hard to infiltrate.
00:49:55.840And so the extent which AI can strip away, you know, that disadvantage and create the ability of conservatives to be insurgent from, you know, making money to making Hollywood productions, that's the good part of AI.
00:50:09.940And so I'm definitely glad that guys like you are out there trying to make a difference with it.
00:50:14.840I do hope that it has the impact that you are predicting.
00:50:19.360I do think the Mary Sue is a very good proof of concept.
00:50:22.460uh so if people have not seen that i certainly encourage them to do so if people do want to
00:50:27.200check out your stuff josh where should they go yeah uh you can find me on x at josh dawes um
00:50:33.700or i've got a youtube channel where you can find mary sue as well fantastic and it looks like we
00:50:39.600do have a few questions from the audience so let me grab those over here uh bobby bob the nabob
00:50:45.700says checked out the mary sue thing uh quickly the visuals are incredible definitely look like
00:50:50.740old dreamworks stuff yeah like i said you really have a hard time uh you know looking at 10 minutes
00:50:56.680of that and 10 minutes of the average animated professional you know big studio movie and telling
00:51:02.040a difference so uh excellent work there and i think that is again the beauty of using this
00:51:08.820style first is it's it's exactly the type of production where you you can't tell the difference
00:51:14.400and you really could see someone making a full hour and a half two hour movie out of that and
00:51:19.660having it be you know fully professional grade no problem and zilla says possible solutions boycott
00:51:27.500what you can make a parallel institution infiltrate enough people to make changes these guys will
00:51:32.000never respond to fiscal pressure too much ideological capture yeah i think that that's
00:51:36.960largely true uh i i've said many times i you know i don't think the woke can be put away i think it's
00:51:42.620impossible to put the woke away i think the left will never abandon it ultimately uh and so as you
00:51:48.400say, your options are, I tend to avoid giving money to people who hate me where I can, though
00:51:54.200that's almost impossible in certain scenarios, as we already pointed out. But you have the dual
00:51:59.620task of making parallel institutions and infiltrating institutions that you can. A lot of
00:52:05.200people will argue over whether you should do one or the other. The answer is obviously you should
00:52:08.360do both. You should win where you can win. So where you can take over, you should take over,
00:52:12.440and where you can't take over, you should build parallel institutions. And even if you can't take
00:52:16.060over still build a parallel institution just in case because it might be hard to hold on to it
00:52:20.600so i think the answer is all of the above and not anything uh where we have to choose one or the
00:52:25.260other but what are your feelings josh i would say where you're already at we've got to be better
00:52:31.660about being vocal where we can like that was the thing my brother and my brother left disney before
00:52:36.960i did and i left and we both had the same experience once we left disney and we're kind
00:52:42.080of out about oh yeah we're conservatives we both um had friends that worked there that one on the
00:52:50.480the left were like horrified i cannot believe we were i was working for a left or with a conservative
00:52:56.360for so long but then there's the other phenomenon of the conservatives come out of the woodwork
00:53:01.760oh my gosh i didn't know you would believe those yeah me too i thank you for what you're saying
00:53:06.600and all this stuff and it's like we've got to start being more vocal and i think that's where
00:53:11.300a lot of the the christian uh discipleship has gone wrong that that kind of idea that we got to
00:53:18.020be quiet so we can protect our witness and all this it's like no our boldness is our witness
00:53:22.620you know if if christians had spoken up when they started introducing this stuff there it would have
00:53:28.840been an alternate voice saying well maybe this isn't a great idea and that we will you know piss
00:53:33.820off our audience if we do this but instead we stayed quiet and it just happened well and you
00:53:39.360and i think very importantly to piggyback off your point there christians need to organize it's not
00:53:44.640enough to simply like yes say what you uh say what you believe but also the left doesn't just
00:53:50.640stand out there and say crazy stuff they get together they organize with people they apply
00:53:55.360pressure they work together firsthand right yeah you of all people like you said you're watching
00:54:00.240that that chat and watching the revolution from the inside and so christians need to and this is
00:54:05.760is just true of republicans conservatives christians across the board we need to stop
00:54:10.020selling our self this idea that one person stands up and makes the winning speech and wins the day
00:54:15.680no you need to be working together you need to you are stronger together you are stronger
00:54:21.180organized the organized minority always beats the disorganized majority you need to work with
00:54:27.480people don't just stand up alone stand united as a group and as you say if you had you know
00:54:33.100a hundred christians in that company the minute that stuff started who put their foot down
00:54:37.880immediately applied pressure you know threatened if we don't see reform something bad you know
00:54:42.720if you had that right away probably would not see disney going where it is the reason
00:54:47.040that these ceos are so completely feckless is they are afraid to stand up to the organized
00:54:53.380leftism in their own environment you don't get that that you can't just ignore that fact you
00:54:58.940have to bring alternative pressure of the same kind so don't it's not enough yes speak out you
00:55:04.720know raise your voice but be actively looking for others who are ready to do the same and organize
00:55:09.940to apply that pressure protect yourselves protect your positions help each other out it's okay it's
00:55:16.000not nepotism it's not cheating actually maybe it is nepotism i don't care nepotism is great do that
00:55:20.940but but but work work together stop thinking of yourself as just an individual fighting you know
00:55:26.880We all have that idea, the individual fighting the collective, but actually you need collective