The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1537 - Matt Walsh Interviews Zachary Levi

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, we've got something a little different and special for you today.

00:00:03.540 I have an interview with Zachary Levi, of course, as a Hollywood actor.

00:00:07.260 And in this interview that we're about to show you, we cover a lot of ground.

00:00:10.180 It's a very interesting conversation.

00:00:11.540 We talk about Zachary Levi coming out of the political closets, endorsing RFK Jr.

00:00:16.320 And then Donald Trump and what that experience was like and what the reaction has been from Hollywood.

00:00:20.280 We talk about the state of the movie industry.

00:00:22.740 We talk about AI and what that is going to do to movies and to art in general.

00:00:27.220 Very interesting conversation.

00:00:29.140 And here it is.

00:00:30.000 Zachary Levi, how you been?

00:00:57.880 I'm well, thank you.

00:00:59.220 I'm busy, but very blessed.

00:01:00.820 How are you doing?

00:01:01.580 I'm doing great.

00:01:02.860 I last saw you at an inauguration party in D.C.

00:01:07.400 Yeah.

00:01:08.400 I was literally writing the Daily Wire coattails into that party.

00:01:11.800 I was very grateful that I bumped into you guys on the street.

00:01:14.240 I hate the events where you have to mingle with people.

00:01:17.640 It's not my deal.

00:01:18.380 Do you love those?

00:01:19.360 Are you a mingler?

00:01:20.060 No, no.

00:01:20.940 I love people.

00:01:21.760 I love socializing, particularly with my friends.

00:01:25.120 I love a good party.

00:01:26.840 And I can make do, but I'm not someone who's ever felt comfortable just like cold stepping

00:01:32.500 up to a stranger.

00:01:33.960 Even somebody that I really admire.

00:01:35.460 In fact, the people that I admire the most, I probably have even more of an intimidation

00:01:39.620 about that because I don't want to come across as someone who's like, can I get some of your

00:01:43.100 time?

00:01:43.400 I want some of your time knowing, or at least in my mind thinking they probably have that

00:01:47.360 happening all the time, you know?

00:01:48.620 Yeah.

00:01:49.280 Although I'm sure a lot of the time when it has happened, they've been super gracious,

00:01:53.180 but yeah, it's weird.

00:01:55.000 I, you know, a couple of those events, fortunately there were people that I knew I would grab it.

00:01:58.980 I always gravitate toward who I know when we hang out and we have a good time and good

00:02:01.900 conversation.

00:02:02.380 And then eventually new people, you know, will be met, but I'm not good at networking.

00:02:06.500 I've never been good at it.

00:02:07.720 I find it to be a very inauthentic type of a thing.

00:02:10.560 Would you say you're an introvert?

00:02:11.800 No, no.

00:02:13.100 Like a really hardcore extrovert, but, but the idea of networking just rings so inauthentic

00:02:21.360 and rings untrue.

00:02:22.200 It's like, we're not having just a natural organic, we bumped into each other.

00:02:27.800 We started talking.

00:02:28.740 It's like, you're at an event, the amount, particularly at a thing like inauguration weekend,

00:02:33.160 I had gone to this other event before the one that we bumped into each other at, it was

00:02:38.180 midday and it was lots of like tech people and finance bros and, and they were, and they're

00:02:45.120 all just like wanting to, you know, whatever the next deal is or the thing, you know, Sam

00:02:49.540 Altman was there and everyone's like wanting to hit him up cause he's Sam Altman.

00:02:52.880 I'm like, I don't even know what I would say to Sam Altman other than, are you about to

00:02:57.240 destroy the world?

00:02:58.040 Like that's how I feel about AI right now.

00:03:00.860 But so yeah, I don't know that that stuff is not, I mean, I'm assuming that's not your

00:03:05.060 bag either.

00:03:06.020 No, no, not at all.

00:03:07.060 Not at all.

00:03:07.460 But I, I, it's interesting you say that, uh, you don't like it because it feels inauthentic,

00:03:11.260 but that's also, I mean, acting is about making inauthentic things feel authentic, right?

00:03:17.680 So is it, does that pull on that at all?

00:03:20.800 Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying.

00:03:22.000 I think that the difference in acting is that everyone knows that it is an act, right?

00:03:30.880 Like it's, you're, you're not coming in as a person, as you, and then trying to act authentic.

00:03:36.440 You're trying to take an inauthentic thing on, not an inauthentic thing, but a thing that

00:03:42.200 you are, the whole purpose of it, the engagement of it, the craft of it is to make it as authentic

00:03:47.620 as possible while everyone understands it's a story, it's a show, you know?

00:03:51.920 So you're never starting from the presupposition that, oh no, I'm just me.

00:03:56.200 You know, it's like, no, I'm an, I'm a character.

00:03:57.960 I'm a, I'm in a story.

00:03:59.080 And the goal as an actor is to just make that as authentic as possible so that people resonate

00:04:03.840 with it.

00:04:04.420 You know, you know, you've been in Hollywood for what?

00:04:06.360 20, 25 years, 25 years.

00:04:08.280 Yeah.

00:04:08.820 What, what got you into, uh, into it to begin with?

00:04:11.900 You know, honestly, man, I, I, I'll try, I'm verbose and tangential.

00:04:17.620 So forgive me, but I'll try to make it as brief as possible.

00:04:20.880 I think around three or four, all of us as kids, we are like our, our awareness first

00:04:25.820 comes online prior to that you're alive, but you're bouncing off walls and people are laughing

00:04:28.840 and you don't know why.

00:04:30.340 And then around three or four, the movie really starts.

00:04:32.840 Like you're aware of things, you're clocking things, you're taking in information.

00:04:36.020 Also what you're, you're kind of tuning into knowing in your soul, right?

00:04:40.440 And around four years old, I knew things in my soul, not cerebrally, but I knew them in

00:04:45.540 my knowing, I knew that there was a God that loved me.

00:04:48.080 I knew that I was going to be an actor more than even just wanting to be an actor.

00:04:51.160 Although I also wanted to be an actor.

00:04:52.820 I didn't even know what an actor was, but I knew in my knowing, like I'm supposed to,

00:04:57.680 like I could, I could feel this thing.

00:04:59.500 And then a few years later, I'm watching television and I'm putting together, oh, that's what that

00:05:04.360 thing is.

00:05:04.860 That's, that's people pretending to be other people to invoke laughter and happiness and emotion

00:05:10.200 and stuff.

00:05:10.860 And at a very young age, I also knew that a smiling, laughing person felt good on the

00:05:15.980 inside and I was hooked.

00:05:17.440 I was like, I want to do that.

00:05:18.620 I feel a call to do that, make people feel good, make people feel loved.

00:05:22.760 So that all started very early, that desire.

00:05:25.400 I also knew that I was supposed to go build communities.

00:05:28.100 I think that was, you know, big kind of spark point of that was the first time as a child,

00:05:34.360 three or four, whatever, I saw a cul-de-sac.

00:05:36.220 And I remember having this massive aha moment of like, well, that, that's it.

00:05:41.740 Like, that's what we all want.

00:05:43.440 Like not that specifically, but what that represents.

00:05:45.720 And I think that's something quite literally evolutionary in us, like in our hunter gatherer

00:05:49.960 selves for thousands of years, we were tribal community people in these circular, you know,

00:05:55.040 villages or whatever.

00:05:56.520 And their strength and protection and, and sustenance and education, all those things that are,

00:06:01.500 that are right there.

00:06:02.160 And all of these things, I mean, I, I have these little specific moments, they're flash

00:06:06.560 moments, but I mean, I just kind of knew all that stuff in my knowing and then, and I really

00:06:10.940 believe that God called me to be an actor.

00:06:12.280 And I did that.

00:06:13.280 I pursued that my whole life.

00:06:14.480 I was a ham for all of my friends and family for years, much to their chagrin.

00:06:19.220 Like I didn't have a, a, an off button.

00:06:21.440 I learned that a little bit later, still working on it a little bit.

00:06:23.920 Um, and then found theater and I did theater for years in school, community theater, all that

00:06:27.640 stuff.

00:06:27.940 But, but I always knew I was called to like really do it as a profession.

00:06:31.240 And then I was very blessed that I was, I was doing a play in Ojai, California.

00:06:36.000 I grew up in Ventura, California.

00:06:37.660 Ojai is nearby community theater play.

00:06:39.900 I was 18 years old.

00:06:41.000 This woman who was a retired manager saw me in it, believed in me, got me to a manager

00:06:45.420 who got me to a casting director who got me to an agent.

00:06:48.140 And that was one of the big, best agencies in Hollywood.

00:06:51.360 I was 19 at that point.

00:06:52.800 And so for 25 years, I've just been at the television and movie grind and you know, it's

00:06:59.540 as you can imagine, and as you probably know, cause you know, other actors and people, you

00:07:03.080 know, it is not a, uh, it's not all rainbows and butterflies, but it's also very rewarding.

00:07:09.620 And I've been incredibly blessed and I've got to be a part of so many really interesting

00:07:13.180 and cool projects and things that have blessed me personally, even beyond just the fact that

00:07:18.040 I get to have the platform that I do and make the money that I do, but the ways in which

00:07:22.700 God has worked on me and my soul and the community that I've gotten to build and all of that and

00:07:26.920 ways in which I can step up and be a leader, hopefully, and stand for my cast and my crew.

00:07:32.200 And, and as you said, that, that platform led me then ultimately into feeling the need to

00:07:40.040 speak up louder than ever at this point in human history.

00:07:44.320 At what point do you declare, well, I want to be an actor as a career.

00:07:48.040 At what point?

00:07:48.760 And when you declare that people are, I imagine most people are like, yeah, okay.

00:07:52.960 Yeah.

00:07:53.600 That's, that's the reaction.

00:07:55.120 I mean, I declared it when I was four or five or six.

00:07:57.680 I mean, I was telling my parents at that young of an age, I'm going to be an actor and I'll,

00:08:03.960 you know, I can't wait to buy you a house, mom.

00:08:05.320 And all of these things, like I, like I knew it.

00:08:07.860 And my parents, I mean, I, I know that they loved me, but it was, it was a lot of head

00:08:13.580 patting and I know that's nice, you know, and no matter how much I would go and

00:08:17.780 do community theater or things and have other people, either strangers or other kids, parents

00:08:24.020 or other people in the community who would be like, you've got a real gift.

00:08:27.940 Like you need to keep pursuing this thing.

00:08:29.660 Cause you actually, you know what you're doing in this world, you know?

00:08:33.540 And I know that my parents saw a bit of that, but I also know that they were kind of struggling

00:08:38.460 through their own life and all of their own mental illness and things like that.

00:08:41.920 So I think that made it difficult for them to be more than just kind of patting me on

00:08:46.480 the head about it.

00:08:47.140 You know, what's, uh, there's no way to phrase it, phrase this without sounding super pretentious.

00:08:54.440 I am just curious.

00:08:55.720 I'm curious about the, the, the, the craft of acting.

00:08:59.180 So, so when you're, you know, when you're doing a take, when you're on set, like what's

00:09:05.340 actually going on in your mind?

00:09:06.480 Are you, this might be less pretentious and more just a dumb question.

00:09:10.580 Are you just pretending you're the guy that's in the script or are you imagining yourself

00:09:15.460 in this situation and responding emotionally as you would?

00:09:21.020 Does that question make any sense?

00:09:22.300 Absolutely.

00:09:22.780 And it's neither dumb nor pretentious.

00:09:24.660 Um, listen, I mean, what's interesting about acting, uh, being subjective, being art on some

00:09:32.520 level, right, um, performance art is that every actor has a different process, right?

00:09:38.820 Like Daniel Day-Lewis, that guy, from the time he gets the job or like decides it's go

00:09:46.000 time, he goes and becomes that person and, and insists that everyone call him that person.

00:09:52.000 So like when he was Lincoln, he, when it was go time for Lincoln, he started dressing in

00:09:58.020 period garb, he went and apparently built himself his own cabin, period cabin to go live in the

00:10:04.400 entire time they made the movie, had everyone address him as Mr. President or Mr. Lincoln.

00:10:09.680 Um, very, uh, method.

00:10:12.240 A lot of people will call that method actor.

00:10:14.060 Um, I am not that guy.

00:10:16.000 I will absolutely, um, try to inhabit the character as authentically as I can.

00:10:23.400 And so when the camera's rolling, when it's action, like I am pretending to be to the best

00:10:29.840 of my ability in that moment, as that particular person going through whatever they're navigating

00:10:36.440 in, in that moment, um, trying to feel what they are feeling, you know, and I've been doing

00:10:42.240 it long enough where it's, it's interesting.

00:10:45.620 You know, I think that our mental and emotional capacity, you can fine tune it like the must,

00:10:51.500 like the muscles of your body in that, like, if I were an NBA player playing basketball

00:10:56.220 my whole life, you know, a certain move or a certain juke or a jump or whatever, it's

00:11:01.660 so second nature and you can tap it whenever you need to.

00:11:06.020 And the same way as an actor, having done it as long as I have been doing it, I can just

00:11:11.540 get myself normally, sometimes it's more difficult depending on the situation.

00:11:16.740 Um, but normally I can just get myself into an emotional or mental state that mirrors what

00:11:21.480 is written on the script and therefore can, you know, be that character in that moment.

00:11:26.000 So you're not faking the emotions?

00:11:27.120 Are you actually feeling the emotion?

00:11:28.360 Oh, I actually feel the emotions.

00:11:30.120 Sometimes, you know, sometimes it's, it, it, you're, you're trying to get there, but you

00:11:35.300 get a little bit of it or you get half of it.

00:11:37.740 Sometimes you get so much of it that it's overwhelming because you're, you're, it's, I

00:11:42.160 mean, for me, it's all about empathy and, and God's always given me a really deep

00:11:48.200 serving of empathy.

00:11:49.420 Like I have always my, and it's been difficult.

00:11:52.020 That's something that I've had to actually like, like get a handle on because empathy

00:11:57.700 without logic and without reason to kind of help govern it as we've seen in our country

00:12:04.080 and in this world, a lot of people are deeply empathetic, but they get so empathetic that

00:12:08.180 it takes them to these completely illogical, irrational places of then how do we solve this

00:12:12.640 problem to help these people?

00:12:13.760 And so I've always just always had a really deep empathy for, for human beings.

00:12:17.600 And so I just try to tap into that and just, you know, fluctuate when I can.

00:12:21.700 But like I was saying, like sometimes, you know, you're on a set, you're, you're, you're

00:12:28.240 trying to pretend to be authentically present in this moment with this other actor who's

00:12:31.920 pretending to be this other person, but you got a bunch of cameras and lights and boom

00:12:37.000 mics and crew and every, you know, even though everybody's like dressing in black and trying

00:12:41.180 not to move around, to distract or whatever, it's not, not there.

00:12:44.440 So you have to be able to kind of block all that out, pretend it's not a part of whatever

00:12:50.820 this moment is.

00:12:51.960 And sometimes it's distracting and sometimes it's not.

00:12:55.540 But you just give your all in that moment as best you can.

00:12:59.360 Have you, I haven't really thought much about this, but I just, I was talking to Michael

00:13:03.400 Knowles about this actually last week and his, his take is that acting is, it's almost like

00:13:14.060 it could be a spiritually dangerous art almost because you're, you're sort, you have to open

00:13:19.760 yourself up.

00:13:20.540 It's like, I'm probably not doing a good job of representing his viewpoint here, but let's

00:13:24.880 say you're playing a serial killer.

00:13:26.200 It's like, you know, I know what you're saying.

00:13:27.480 Yeah.

00:13:27.820 You have to almost, you have to, you have to inhabit that mentality so completely that

00:13:33.400 it could almost, it could be dangerous.

00:13:34.880 You have to, do you feel it at all?

00:13:37.380 No, no, I completely understand the sentiment, but I think that, sure, there are absolutely

00:13:47.000 people who have not done enough work on themselves who are still, I would say, more psychologically

00:13:54.220 fragile or, or traumatized or whatever.

00:13:59.760 They're just not, they don't have a really robust and strong, again, it's like if you

00:14:04.920 work out all the time and then you go and lift heavy weight because you've already been

00:14:09.000 lifting heavy weight, you're going to be all right.

00:14:11.140 If you're trying to go tap into something super deep and emotional and take on a serial

00:14:14.900 killer and you haven't done a lot of work at really working the muscles in your own emotions

00:14:19.440 and in your own spirit and soul and mind to be strong, then you might fall into some

00:14:25.180 darkness.

00:14:25.640 And there definitely have been people who have lost themselves in roles where it's been very

00:14:30.980 difficult for them to either A, not take that stuff home with them, right?

00:14:35.680 There's a lot of method actors that they, they commit to it so much and then they go home

00:14:39.780 and, you know, they're playing a dark character at work and now their family's receiving this

00:14:43.900 kind of weird, dark energy.

00:14:46.200 I just don't believe in that.

00:14:47.680 I believe that you can absolutely turn on the switch.

00:14:53.360 Like Meryl Streep is famous for this.

00:14:55.320 Meryl Streep, like everyone, all the stories I've ever heard about her.

00:14:58.760 And I consider Meryl Streep, honestly, to be one of the best actors that's ever been.

00:15:02.620 From a technical standpoint, her ability to lose herself in characters, I think, is incredible.

00:15:10.000 But famously, she's like, oh no, Meryl, she'll be having a conversation with Meryl and they're

00:15:15.400 laughing and talking.

00:15:16.240 It could be a drama that they're doing and they're laughing and talking and they're talking

00:15:18.640 about whatever's going on in the world.

00:15:19.660 It's like, oh, okay.

00:15:20.740 And action, then it's, and she's there, you know?

00:15:23.860 I mean, you might need a moment to kind of like, you know, get your mind there or whatever.

00:15:26.980 But so I think it's, maybe perhaps it can be dangerous mentally, emotionally, spiritually

00:15:32.300 for people if they are not practicing it in a way that's more responsible.

00:15:37.380 But I don't think in and of itself, it's something that one needs to fear.

00:15:43.520 More than that, I think that, you know, particularly from an energetic spiritual standpoint, like,

00:15:48.760 you know, that's work that one needs to do in order to have connection to and covering

00:15:54.740 from our creator.

00:15:56.380 And I believe that we need to be able to trust in that and not be like, oh God, I'm afraid

00:16:01.840 that if I go and do this role that somehow I'm going to be evil or I'm going to take on

00:16:05.640 the evil of that character, I mean, listen, if we were afraid of doing that, then, and

00:16:13.920 if there was some, you know, absolute truth to it of like, never play a role that's, you

00:16:19.920 know, been engaged in any darkness, well then by God, no one would play David in the

00:16:24.200 Bible, which I'm so grateful that is now actually happening.

00:16:27.460 The House of David on Amazon Prime, it's my friends over at the Wonder Project and John

00:16:33.800 Irwin and John Gunn and Jeremy Latcham and all those cats.

00:16:37.040 I've been waiting for somebody to make the story of David and a real story of David, not

00:16:41.000 some whitewashed, you know, like, oh, because there's some, you know, lovely kids kind of

00:16:45.500 versions of King David and slaying Goliath and all that stuff.

00:16:48.860 And that's fine.

00:16:49.940 But I don't think that the Bible should be whitewashed.

00:16:52.580 I think that in order for us to understand the redemptive power of God, we need to understand

00:16:56.020 the darkness that so many of these characters go through.

00:16:58.540 And in order to play David authentically, one must show those parts of his journey.

00:17:02.760 You don't have to be, like, egregious with it, right?

00:17:05.980 But you've got to talk about how he basically had a dude murdered and was having an adulterous

00:17:11.920 affair with that murdered guy's wife.

00:17:14.020 Like, that really happened.

00:17:16.220 And there, but it was still a man after God's own heart.

00:17:18.600 And so, anyway, like, I understand the sentiment, but I'm not, it's not something that I particularly

00:17:23.460 fear.

00:17:24.420 When you're on set making a movie, do you know if it's going to be good or bad in the final

00:17:28.640 product?

00:17:28.920 Hmm.

00:17:34.560 No.

00:17:35.480 I mean, yes, but no, because there's so many variables that can ultimately make, I mean,

00:17:40.860 it's, it's honestly, it's a very, like, being an actor, even one 25 years into a career that's

00:17:46.980 been reasonably successful and I've gotten to, you know, be a superhero in a franchise and

00:17:50.940 all that stuff.

00:17:51.220 Like, I'm still at the mercy of so many other people when it comes to even what my performance

00:17:57.300 is.

00:17:58.100 Like, I could, I could be giving a performance, doing what I think I'm supposed to do based

00:18:02.440 on the script and the direction or not direction that I get or whatever it is.

00:18:06.380 They'll go take all of that and all those takes and they will edit it to different timing

00:18:11.880 from what I was giving initially.

00:18:14.060 Like, so many ways that you're just at the mercy of those, you know, that are above you

00:18:19.800 in the, in the power, you know, structure and, and, and organism that is a movie or a TV

00:18:25.500 show.

00:18:26.440 Um, so like I could say, man, I think this is going to be great, but then in post-production,

00:18:32.860 they don't know how to edit it or they, they do know how to edit it.

00:18:36.300 They edit it in a completely different way than I thought what we were shooting or something

00:18:39.360 like that.

00:18:39.960 But I do think that there are some constants that you can rely on.

00:18:43.060 Like, for example, I was a recurring, uh, character on this show, The Marvelous Mrs.

00:18:48.760 Maisel on Amazon.

00:18:50.640 And that show was excellent and you knew you were making excellence.

00:18:57.060 And, and part of the reason I knew I was making excellence while I was working on the

00:19:00.100 show was in part, I suppose, cause I had seen the first season.

00:19:03.420 I came in the second season, I'd seen the first season and it was excellent.

00:19:06.040 And, and the show runners, the creators, uh, Amy Sherman Palladino and Dan Palladino are

00:19:12.560 about excellence.

00:19:13.340 They're very talented human beings and they don't suffer fools.

00:19:16.940 And they have a very intelligent way of going about how they write and direct and produce

00:19:21.780 and how they hire their department heads.

00:19:23.540 And all of that, it's not a guarantee, but you're, you're with every good choice you make,

00:19:29.880 you're giving yourself a higher probability of excellence.

00:19:32.520 So then jumping into that show, into the rhythm that they had already set, I was like, okay,

00:19:38.880 yeah, I think this is going to be pretty darn good.

00:19:41.080 You know?

00:19:41.700 I mean, I thought Shazam 2 was a, I actually liked Shazam 2 more than I liked Shazam 1 in

00:19:47.200 different ways.

00:19:47.940 I thought it would do better.

00:19:49.160 It didn't.

00:19:50.880 There's a whole bunch of reasons why.

00:19:52.880 What do you attribute that to?

00:19:53.620 Um, well, I mean, where do I start?

00:20:02.980 Um, man, the internet's just going to come after me again.

00:20:06.480 Listen, I, the, well, superhero fatigue, that's one.

00:20:11.240 Yeah.

00:20:11.680 I mean, we just were inundated with so many superhero movies.

00:20:14.520 And, and I think that after a while people are kind of like, okay, like I've seen this

00:20:18.660 and we had moments in our movie that were repetitive or had been seen in other movies.

00:20:21.980 Except there's nothing new under the sun.

00:20:23.440 Right.

00:20:24.140 Um, but we also had, I think some really fun stuff.

00:20:26.880 I did my best.

00:20:27.820 I did what was on the script.

00:20:29.160 I, I, I did the best that I could.

00:20:31.980 People wanted to tear me apart for it anyway.

00:20:33.800 Cause you know, there's a lot of people on the internet and that's all they do.

00:20:36.600 That's, that's their whole MO.

00:20:38.680 That's where they find their identity.

00:20:39.960 That's where they find their power.

00:20:41.720 It's so sad that the online, specifically social media has empowered people in that way.

00:20:47.240 Uh, cause it's so toxic and destructive for everyone involved, particularly them,

00:20:51.680 because they could be doing something much more productive with their time.

00:20:55.140 So there was a lot of that stuff.

00:20:56.620 There was a lot of, you know, DC itself as, um, as a comic book studio, you know, there's

00:21:03.960 all this weird, you know, fandom war between Marvel and DC.

00:21:08.500 And then even within each fandom, there's like fractions and factions of those fandoms and

00:21:14.540 all that stuff got really crazy.

00:21:16.160 I don't know at the end of the day, all of the pieces just came together in order for

00:21:22.180 it to be the best film, the very, very best film that it could have been, or that we got

00:21:26.900 the word out the best we could to everybody.

00:21:29.140 I don't know, you know, but at the end of the day, I just have to lean back and be like,

00:21:35.040 all right, God, if that's, if that's what you saw fit for that film and how it ultimately

00:21:41.480 hit the world, then I have to receive that.

00:21:43.740 I have to radically accept that that's what that was, you know?

00:21:47.440 Yeah.

00:21:47.720 Um, well, I mean, what you said about, you know, movies are an art form, but unlike pretty

00:21:53.680 much any other art form I can think of, there's just so many people involved.

00:21:56.820 Hundreds.

00:21:57.360 In bringing this to fruition.

00:22:00.060 Uh, which is why, you know, we, we've made, I've made two movies.

00:22:04.520 They're both documentaries.

00:22:05.200 But, um, I remember our last one, which, which went out in theaters, I was at the, uh, we

00:22:11.040 were at the premiere talking to Jeremy Boring as the CEO of the company.

00:22:14.060 And he said, uh, he said, it's, it's basically miraculous that this movie exists.

00:22:19.120 Like anytime a movie actually exists, it's, it's, it's a miracle.

00:22:22.120 Yeah.

00:22:22.680 Uh, good or bad, just because so many things could go wrong for it to not even exist in

00:22:26.460 the first place.

00:22:26.820 Oh, absolutely.

00:22:27.480 And even just getting it greenlit to begin with, you know, here it's a little bit different

00:22:31.280 because it's internal and you guys are all working together and you have an idea and

00:22:34.600 it's a good idea and it's like great.

00:22:36.180 And also from, you know, documentaries tend to be significantly less expensive than a

00:22:41.560 feature film.

00:22:42.380 So it's a, a slightly easier role of the dice.

00:22:45.280 Fewer people involved.

00:22:46.040 Yeah, exactly.

00:22:46.700 A lot fewer.

00:22:47.460 Um, but yeah, in the, in the feature world, I mean, to get an actual feature film greenlit

00:22:52.780 to go make it 20 million, even just $20 million, even just 20, I mean, 20 million is a lot

00:22:56.880 of money, but it's nothing compared to lots of other budgeted films.

00:23:00.160 But you know, the studios are like, I don't know.

00:23:02.360 I don't know.

00:23:02.840 You got to get this whole package together.

00:23:04.120 Who's your talent?

00:23:05.000 Who's your cast?

00:23:05.720 Who's your director, writer, dah, dah, dah.

00:23:07.780 You know, there's a lot of things, you know, involved in all of that.

00:23:11.160 And so it can be very difficult and it can, absolutely.

00:23:14.480 It is a miracle.

00:23:15.180 It's a miracle to get it started and it's a miracle to finish it.

00:23:17.740 And then it's a miracle on top of that, if it's actually successful.

00:23:20.480 You, uh, so you talked about social media.

00:23:22.340 I'm thinking about, so you've been in the business for 25 years.

00:23:24.960 So you came in right at basically the turn of the century.

00:23:27.300 Uh, the changes in the movie business in that time.

00:23:34.160 One of the big ones is, I guess when you started out that way, there was no social media.

00:23:38.900 So.

00:23:39.180 Or I started with a beeper.

00:23:41.260 Right.

00:23:41.500 So, so the difference there is, is, uh, pretty enormous because I, I guess back in the day

00:23:46.640 before social media, you put a movie out and it does well, or it doesn't do well.

00:23:51.000 You hear from the critics, but you basically don't hear from anybody else.

00:23:54.240 I mean, you, you, you know, it's a, there's no forum for everyone to tell you how much

00:23:58.200 they love you or hate you based on the film.

00:24:00.860 Uh, but now it's this instant feedback from everybody.

00:24:06.160 How, you know, what's, what's that like?

00:24:07.960 I mean, cause you, you kind of, you saw before and after.

00:24:11.180 Yeah.

00:24:11.280 Yeah.

00:24:12.020 Well, well, we're the, when were you born?

00:24:14.820 86.

00:24:15.460 86.

00:24:15.920 Yeah.

00:24:16.140 So I'm a little bit older than you.

00:24:18.500 Uh, I think, I think I recently saw something that is something like the Goonies generation were

00:24:22.860 being called the like 1975 to 85 or something like that.

00:24:26.960 Or, you know, there's other zennials and whatnot, because we're apparently the, the, the most

00:24:34.220 concentrated generation of having like solid analog life before then solid digital life.

00:24:40.080 And, and so, and that applies very greatly to the entertainment industry and, and kind

00:24:44.660 of navigating all of that.

00:24:46.300 I, man, I don't know.

00:24:48.740 Like, I think that, um, again, as somebody who really loves people, humans, uh, and, and,

00:24:56.340 and really love, uh, kind of interacting with and engaging with my fan base, um, I've

00:25:02.360 always found ways to be able to do that.

00:25:03.820 I think social media is a really cool way of being able to do that.

00:25:07.240 And I'm grateful that it allows us to do that and to tap into our, our audience.

00:25:12.460 Right.

00:25:12.820 There's a lot of really cool ways that we can engage and incentivize them now.

00:25:17.880 Um, you know, whether it's things like Kickstarter or, um, or even like Patreon and all of it,

00:25:23.760 I think that there's some really cool things that have come out of technology, social media,

00:25:27.600 the marriage of all of that and, and entertainment.

00:25:30.680 But I, I would say that unfortunately it's probably, well, I don't know.

00:25:37.000 I was going to say it's probably more negative, but, but then I realized that even like

00:25:41.020 with, with, let, let's say, you know, coming out of the political closet recently,

00:25:46.600 75% of the comments that I was getting were from people that were kind, were, were not

00:25:53.060 hateful and toxic and 75%.

00:25:55.220 Well, I would, I would say, but also, I mean, you know, I think most of the people who've

00:26:01.140 been following me, even though I wasn't fully out of the political closet, I was still being

00:26:05.560 as vocal as I could be walking that razor's edge of speaking the truth as I saw it, uh,

00:26:14.060 and being vocal about certain things that I thought were important enough to be vocal

00:26:17.200 about without going so far as to get myself canceled or, or whatever.

00:26:21.620 But I don't even know if that's, we can talk about that, like cancellation and all that

00:26:25.900 stuff later.

00:26:26.260 But, but yeah, it was, I think overwhelmingly it was, it was more positive.

00:26:30.040 The problem is, and you know, this, it, the negative can, is so much more negative than

00:26:36.920 the positive is positive because it just plays at everything in you, things that you,

00:26:44.160 insecurities that you have, or like, oh my God, did I misstep?

00:26:46.780 Like, I, you know, I'm trying to speak something that I think is right and good for this world,

00:26:50.540 but that, you know, whatever, all the things that it might play on the positivity.

00:26:54.720 Um, sometimes it's difficult that for it to outweigh the negative, but I, I would say that

00:26:59.480 it did, but I, you know, honestly, I go to like conventions.

00:27:02.400 I go to like, you know, comic cons and things like that, fan conventions, and I've been doing

00:27:07.300 it for years and I love them and I love them because other than being a great source of

00:27:14.360 ancillary income, whatever, it is actually where you get to close the loop with your fans

00:27:19.700 in real life, in person.

00:27:21.640 If I go do Broadway, I'll go after the show, after every performance, I'd go to stage door

00:27:26.800 and sign playbills and take photos and stuff like that.

00:27:28.800 Bring a speaker, play some music.

00:27:30.720 And it was awesome.

00:27:32.440 In that one performance, not just did the audience tell me what they thought of the show by their

00:27:37.600 reaction to the show, but then also the people at stage door.

00:27:40.180 So in one performance, in a few hours, I get to close the loop of what I gave the people

00:27:44.460 versus what they took from it.

00:27:46.520 Conventions allow us who work mainly in film and television to go and close that loop of

00:27:50.620 people right there.

00:27:51.920 You know, they wait very patiently and pay us very good money to scribble on pictures of

00:27:55.360 our own face and take selfies and stuff.

00:27:57.380 And really, I see that philosophically deep down.

00:28:01.340 I see the whole process as me getting paid to love on people, really.

00:28:04.980 People that go out of their way to support me and believe in me.

00:28:07.940 And I spent a lot of time watching our films and television shows and things like that.

00:28:12.740 And so I think it's a really cool way to, like I said, close that loop, see what people really

00:28:18.680 think of things.

00:28:20.820 You know, which is not to say that sometimes people aren't just being nice and saying something

00:28:24.500 nice, but most people aren't waiting that long just to come up and give you niceties.

00:28:28.440 So that's how the kind of the audience reaction has evolved over the years, or at least their

00:28:35.920 access to you basically as well.

00:28:38.900 But then the product itself, you know, if you look at the top films of the last year or the

00:28:46.220 year before that, a year before that, but going back basically this whole century, they're

00:28:50.560 almost always sequels, remakes, IP, you know, is original storytelling just dead in Hollywood?

00:29:00.600 Does it exist anymore?

00:29:01.640 Is there a future for it?

00:29:04.380 Man, I hope so.

00:29:06.140 I mean, if I have anything to do with it, absolutely.

00:29:11.060 I mean, it's one of the reasons why I felt very strongly 25 years ago when I started working

00:29:16.820 in the industry and I just saw how broken it all was.

00:29:19.240 I mean, even then there was the beginnings of this trend of, let's just go reboot this

00:29:28.440 long old series into a movie.

00:29:30.840 That was the big thing back in the late nineties into the two thousands, right?

00:29:34.540 That was the kind of the beginnings of the reboots was, well, we're not going to just

00:29:37.240 remake a movie or whatever, or, or bring back a whole TV show.

00:29:41.720 We're just going to find IP that people knew from TV and then we'll give it a new skin,

00:29:45.560 a new cast, and we'll make it a movie event.

00:29:49.240 And I remember looking at that and I was like, like, and by the way, which is not to say

00:29:55.440 that every remake or sequel or, you know, re-imagining is bad.

00:30:01.840 I think that there's some, there's been some really cool, uh, sequels and really cool re-imaginings

00:30:07.640 and reboots.

00:30:08.600 It's when that is becoming more and more, as you're saying, more and more of the well

00:30:14.060 that's being drawn from.

00:30:16.200 And I think that's because more and more, I don't know exactly when it started.

00:30:22.180 Um, you know, 25 years in Hollywood is a long time, but it's nothing compared to a lot of

00:30:26.820 the people that have been there.

00:30:27.580 Let's say 50 and who have seen this insane transformation of what the studios used to

00:30:33.200 be and used to do and who used to be the leaders of those studios and how I would say overall,

00:30:39.280 they, they had more vision, more creativity, more balls to, you know, be able to take big

00:30:46.400 swings and be like, no, we're going to go do this thing.

00:30:48.620 And they're like, but no one's, no one knows what that is.

00:30:51.060 It's like, that's the point.

00:30:52.080 We're going to go make something entirely fresh and new.

00:30:54.260 We're going to blow people's minds and we'll average, and we'll do good marketing for it.

00:30:57.900 So people understand or whatever it is.

00:30:59.440 And did some of those things blow up in their faces all the time, but they still had the

00:31:05.440 chutzpah to be like, let's go and actually try to be this industry that we, you know,

00:31:11.940 pretend to be, which is creative and, and therefore creating creation should be constantly.

00:31:20.820 If not, not, it doesn't have to be entirely, but mostly new things, new ideas, taking this

00:31:26.600 and that, maybe things that existed, but make a new thing out of those things.

00:31:30.660 And I just think that unfortunately, um, though there are some lovely and good executives that

00:31:38.680 still inhabit Hollywood, I don't know that they're in the majority.

00:31:43.100 I think that a lot of executives in Hollywood, when the lawyers and, and, and accountants started

00:31:50.360 to kind of take over when, when, when capitalism run amok kind of started really being like,

00:31:56.000 well, let's just monetize the heck out of these things.

00:31:59.640 Well, then of course they're going to start hiring a lot of executives that are more towing

00:32:03.000 those lines and not the lines that are in contrast to those, which is, no, we want to

00:32:07.480 go, we actually want to spend money a little more recklessly.

00:32:10.300 We want to go take a swing at a thing.

00:32:12.880 That's not a guarantee.

00:32:13.920 That's all just slowly kind of shifted over.

00:32:17.540 So I think that there's a lot of executives that honestly are not creative or not visionary

00:32:22.380 are, and, and are kind of scared deep down, probably are even dealing with some kind of

00:32:27.060 imposter syndrome because they're in a position where they are being asked, what's the new

00:32:31.920 big idea?

00:32:32.660 And they're like, uh, Johnson, I don't know, you know, and then they're looking around for

00:32:36.460 all the underlings and they're all scared because they don't want to say the wrong thing.

00:32:40.480 And I don't know, man, but I hope that like, you know, I'm building a movie studio in Austin,

00:32:47.760 Texas.

00:32:48.000 I'm not the only person who wants to go build an independent studio.

00:32:51.220 I think my concept is quite different than a lot of other concepts, but still at the

00:32:57.400 heart of it, I'm trying to create a place where independent artists kind of like essentially

00:33:02.060 what, what Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and all those OGs back in

00:33:05.960 the day, because Hollywood's been broken since the beginning, they knew it and they were

00:33:10.000 like, let's go do our own thing.

00:33:11.260 We don't need these guys.

00:33:12.700 Unfortunately, the way it was all set up, they actually didn't need those guys back

00:33:15.300 then.

00:33:15.740 It was a different system, but now we don't, we legitimately don't.

00:33:19.400 And I think we need to cleave off of it because trying to get a new idea, trying to get, trying

00:33:24.300 to get an idea that doesn't get so mangled in the product.

00:33:29.000 They might say, Hey, that's a great new idea.

00:33:30.500 We love it.

00:33:31.000 Uh, but we're going to change everything about it.

00:33:34.700 And it's going to start towing some agenda that we want to infuse into it.

00:33:38.720 And you're like, well, well, but that's not, that's not the story that I pitched you guys.

00:33:42.960 No, no, no.

00:33:43.220 We love it.

00:33:43.620 We love it.

00:33:43.960 We just want to change everything about it, but new thing.

00:33:46.240 Right?

00:33:47.020 So there's so many reasons why we need to get off the teat of the, of the broken system.

00:33:51.920 So you, the movie studio that you are going to start, how, how is it going to be different

00:33:55.500 from, well, I mean, first and foremost, if you look at business, any industry, whatever,

00:34:03.740 but you look at it almost like, um, like a living organism and you imagine that the,

00:34:09.820 the workers are the muscle of the organism, right?

00:34:13.420 They're very important piece of the organism.

00:34:16.880 The skin also very important.

00:34:18.580 Imagine that the skin is the money and the money that the muscle needs to interface with

00:34:24.720 in order to keep making more muscle and be healthy, whatever it is.

00:34:27.720 Well, you want a little layer of fat between the muscle and the epidermis that makes for

00:34:34.680 a healthy person.

00:34:35.600 When people are like no fat whatsoever, it's actually not so healthy, but also what you

00:34:40.400 don't want is pounds and pounds and pounds of fat that are separating the muscle from,

00:34:46.900 from that, from that money.

00:34:49.040 And that's the executive class.

00:34:50.740 That's what's going on.

00:34:51.440 I think that first and foremost, we need to create an ecosystem that is far more artist

00:34:57.700 forward, uh, like United Artists once was where you have a collective of artists that

00:35:03.700 are all, by the way, very good at what they do.

00:35:06.380 And not just that being an actor or a writer or a director or a producer, like we all understand

00:35:11.720 how to make movies.

00:35:12.500 We also all understand, understand, you know, how much a movie should cost.

00:35:17.760 And we also understand how to go lean and not pay everybody exorbitant fees in order

00:35:22.640 to go make a great thing.

00:35:23.580 And everybody can do well on the backend.

00:35:25.120 We know how to take care of our casts and our crews because we are amongst them.

00:35:29.900 We are in the trenches with them.

00:35:31.760 In Hollywood right now, we have far too many generals and, and all of us are, and they have

00:35:37.880 no idea what it means to fight in the foxholes and the trenches.

00:35:40.540 They have no idea.

00:35:41.700 They're just like, yeah, send them to Eastern Europe and feed them Cheez-Its.

00:35:45.620 And we're going to go make a movie.

00:35:46.940 We're going to save 50% on the movie.

00:35:49.680 And we're going to tell them it's really so we can give them a bigger budget.

00:35:52.860 But we're also kind of lying in our own pockets because we want to be out less money.

00:35:56.480 I mean, it's just the whole thing is it's, it's obese and it's unhealthy.

00:36:00.240 It's metabolically, metabolically unhealthy.

00:36:02.580 So changing that is, you know, I think important, but then there's other things.

00:36:07.280 Like for example, I think that one of the biggest things we've lost in Hollywood is we've lost

00:36:11.560 community.

00:36:12.120 In fact, not just Hollywood around this entire country and every industry and every state

00:36:16.920 and every city around the world.

00:36:19.020 We don't, I think most people don't understand what it means to actually have community.

00:36:24.880 Some people get their community at church.

00:36:27.680 Some people, but even that, by the way, there's not, there's a lot of churches that don't really

00:36:30.980 emphasize community.

00:36:31.920 You go once a week, maybe twice a week.

00:36:34.920 A lot of people don't connect with their church friends beyond that.

00:36:38.160 You might have community at work.

00:36:40.220 A lot of people get their community from work.

00:36:41.720 I think that's actually where most of us have always gotten community.

00:36:45.660 And that's one of the reasons why it's important to foster that.

00:36:49.240 If you're creating work environment that is actually conducive to human thriving and health

00:36:55.060 and happiness, and in order to do that, building a living community kind of into the campus

00:37:03.320 of the movie studio, which also kind of harkens back to, well, lots of things.

00:37:08.320 I mean, Hollywood used to be that.

00:37:09.740 Hollywood, if you were to go up to any of the major, you know, Warner Brothers studios,

00:37:13.100 there wasn't a wall around it originally.

00:37:14.720 It was a bunch of sound stages and offices, and I was surrounded by a bunch of bungalows that

00:37:18.240 everybody lived in.

00:37:19.180 And you would go walk there.

00:37:20.740 You'd walk to work, and you knew everybody that you worked with.

00:37:23.160 And you would constantly bounce around it because you were a studio employee, right?

00:37:26.960 So even as an actor, like, I'd show up, and I'd do a Western for a couple of weeks.

00:37:29.920 And they're like, all right, Levi, you're going to go to stage 10, and you're going to

00:37:32.580 go be an astronaut.

00:37:33.340 And you'd go down there, and you'd go work on a new thing.

00:37:36.720 And there was a lot of problems with that system.

00:37:38.580 I mean, that was still the executives at the time, the Louis B. Mayers and everybody,

00:37:43.100 just, like, screwing everyone, taking the lion's share of the money.

00:37:46.540 And, you know, that's not what we want.

00:37:48.720 But you can still find, you know, using another industry, Hershey's, for example.

00:37:52.660 Why does Hershey's Pennsylvania exist?

00:37:54.980 It's because Mr. Hershey's was making chocolate and needed a lot of people to make the chocolate.

00:37:59.720 And he was like, well, you know what would probably be great for my workers is to build

00:38:03.220 them a town where it's easy for them to get to work.

00:38:06.360 It's good for me, and it's good for them.

00:38:07.600 They can walk to work.

00:38:08.760 We can build schools here and health clinics here.

00:38:11.480 And we can make sure that they have all the things that they need to just live a decent

00:38:14.860 life.

00:38:15.840 Why not do that?

00:38:17.440 So the type of movie studio that I'm building is one that is inclusive of all of that.

00:38:21.660 It's not just a place where we work.

00:38:23.020 It's a place where people can live full-time or part-time.

00:38:26.120 It's got hospitality aspects to it because I want to give everybody who lives there a five-star

00:38:30.120 experience.

00:38:31.100 And then people, if they have friends or family or other people that want to come visit

00:38:33.700 for various events and things that we'll have there, we'll literally have live performance

00:38:38.840 amphitheaters and three sound stages all in the first phase that all can be for event

00:38:44.200 space.

00:38:44.760 So people from the public can still experience it, but in a very curated way.

00:38:49.100 People can live there and have better lives because we have literally school for their

00:38:53.820 kids that's education and not indoctrination.

00:38:56.520 We have regeneratively grown organic food because that's a real thing.

00:39:01.220 And that's a thing that I'm very grateful that Bobby Kennedy hopefully is going to start

00:39:04.440 turning around and making America healthy again and all these types of things.

00:39:08.180 But we can do it privately.

00:39:09.660 I don't need to wait for the government to start fixing that.

00:39:11.940 It's like, all right, well, let's go grow our own food and make sure that, I mean, by

00:39:14.420 the way, the Amish have had so much right for so long.

00:39:16.960 It's incredible.

00:39:18.740 But getting back to that, getting back to what it means to know and trust your neighbor

00:39:22.220 again.

00:39:23.440 You know, a lot of people live in neighborhoods and they're nice neighborhoods and you might

00:39:27.160 know this neighbor and you might know that neighbor because you happen to see each

00:39:31.340 other as you're leaving for work or maybe your kids go to the same school.

00:39:34.680 But do you know everybody on your street?

00:39:36.040 Do you all get together and have like barbecues?

00:39:38.500 Everybody, everybody in the cul-de-sac inviting everyone down.

00:39:41.260 Some neighborhoods do that.

00:39:42.660 Most neighborhoods don't.

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00:40:22.020 Not to belabor the point.

00:40:25.440 Belabor it.

00:40:26.020 Well, about the original storytelling, which you want to help bring the movie industry

00:40:33.540 back to.

00:40:34.180 Yeah.

00:40:34.640 Because I was thinking about this when I was thinking about this interview, because everyone

00:40:38.940 complains about this.

00:40:39.580 Everyone complains.

00:40:40.240 Oh, they don't make original stories anymore.

00:40:41.500 Yeah.

00:40:43.340 But then you hear other people say, well, it's always been that way.

00:40:45.300 It just, it feels, so I went back and I looked just, and this is not any kind of great shock,

00:40:51.540 but if you look at the number one highest grossing film by year for the last, let's say,

00:40:56.120 the last 10 years, 2014, it was Transformers, 25 to 2017, it was all Star Wars, 2018, Black

00:41:02.420 Panther, 2019, Avengers, 2020, Bad Boys for Life, 2021, Spider-Man, 22, Top Gun Maverick,

00:41:09.340 23, Barbie, 24, Inside Out.

00:41:11.160 So every single one is a sequel or IP or, you know, a remake.

00:41:18.400 Then I thought we'd go back to the 90s, top film of each year.

00:41:23.220 1990 was Home Alone.

00:41:24.320 91 was Terminator 2.

00:41:25.600 92 was Aladdin.

00:41:27.100 93 was Jurassic Park.

00:41:28.240 94 was Forrest Gump.

00:41:29.680 95 was Toy Story.

00:41:30.800 96 was Independence Day.

00:41:32.520 97 was Titanic.

00:41:33.740 98 was Saving Private Ryan.

00:41:34.860 99 was Star Wars, Phantom Menace.

00:41:36.880 Only two sequels on that list.

00:41:38.300 The rest are all original or based on a book.

00:41:40.200 Yeah.

00:41:42.020 So it seems like this is a very real thing that has happened.

00:41:44.780 100%.

00:41:45.100 And in fact, if you go back this past century, or not past century, but this century, starting

00:41:51.880 in 2000, there's been one movie that was the top grossing movie of the year that was an

00:41:56.360 original story, which was Avatar.

00:41:58.140 All the rest of them were this.

00:42:00.860 Is this what's happened?

00:42:01.740 I mean, you talk about the studio system.

00:42:04.260 Is it, in the current studio system, and if you were to start at the top and work your

00:42:08.660 way all the way down, people, the executives all the way down to the people that are actually

00:42:11.500 working on the movie.

00:42:13.000 How far would I have to go down the ladder before I find someone who actually cares about

00:42:17.880 the story itself?

00:42:19.520 Because I feel like probably in the executive meetings, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like

00:42:23.600 there's no one saying, well, is this a story even worth telling?

00:42:26.480 Does this story matter?

00:42:27.300 I feel like they're probably not thinking about that as much.

00:42:31.560 Is that part of the problem?

00:42:32.640 There's just not as many people involved who actually are worried about whether, forget

00:42:37.000 about whether it can make money.

00:42:38.100 Is this story, should it even exist?

00:42:40.600 Is it worth telling this story?

00:42:42.520 Well, like I was saying, I mean, I think that's part of the problem.

00:42:46.440 I think that within the executive class at this point, I think that there has been a real

00:42:53.000 changing of the guard in the mindset of what it means to be an executive today.

00:42:59.020 And this is not an indictment of who they are as human beings.

00:43:04.100 Although I think that people that allow for it are lacking in some, like, I don't know,

00:43:14.360 like bottom line, like just the integrity to say like, hey, let's not go do this.

00:43:18.260 Let's not go down this road, right?

00:43:19.580 Um, but there's pressures and the pressures are all either monetary, right?

00:43:30.320 Like that's kind of always been money, money, money.

00:43:33.320 How can we make money?

00:43:34.600 But then there's also been this insane, I don't even know what you, what, you know,

00:43:41.020 sociopolitical agenda to pressure that comes from lots of different places, but that ultimately

00:43:48.160 starts shifting cultural perception and the studios become victims of that too.

00:43:54.060 I think, I don't think, you know, a lot of people want to say that Hollywood is the one

00:43:56.840 who's pushing a lot of the agenda that they don't like, whatever that agenda is.

00:44:01.500 Certainly Hollywood is massively complicit in it, but I don't know that these agendas even

00:44:06.100 necessarily start in Hollywood.

00:44:09.060 Some of them might, but some of them are them thinking, oh, what's the hip, cool thing to do?

00:44:13.480 What do we, what's, what are we going to do so that people like us and we don't get canceled

00:44:17.180 and that, that, that, that, they're not immune to those same things.

00:44:20.080 And so you have a lot of executives who might mean well, but they're like, guys, we got to,

00:44:23.820 we got to do this thing.

00:44:25.100 We got to go make this thing because that's, what's going to comply with the expectations

00:44:31.440 of us as a company.

00:44:33.000 Otherwise people are going to think we're racist or we're sexist or, you know, whatever any

00:44:36.480 of those particular things are.

00:44:38.940 So I think because of that, it's, you're, you're drawing in an executive class.

00:44:45.060 That's going to serve those two masters.

00:44:47.060 It's money and, and agended appearance, whatever that is.

00:44:51.280 And, and in lieu of them, we used to have what, what I wish we would have in lieu of them

00:44:57.000 are, are the executives of old, which were much more about the creative and the story and

00:45:02.340 the vision of understanding what makes a great story.

00:45:05.040 This is why a lot of them, the new executives are terrified because they don't know what

00:45:09.040 to do.

00:45:09.360 And so they just go, uh, bring back that old TV show that people really liked that we got

00:45:13.720 to a point where we didn't think the ratings were good enough to even keep going.

00:45:16.960 But now because television network, television ratings are so low anyway, it doesn't really

00:45:21.220 matter.

00:45:21.560 And people like it, but they did, didn't they do a focus group, screw the focus group,

00:45:25.000 bring it back.

00:45:26.180 They're literally running scared.

00:45:27.940 And we all know it.

00:45:28.780 We see it.

00:45:29.300 We're like, what are you, you have no original ideas.

00:45:32.480 There are so many original ideas that people have every single day that are fantastic ideas.

00:45:38.120 If they just had an executive that could help that saw it and then fostered them through

00:45:43.260 the process and then believed in it all the way to the end where they're like, guys, we

00:45:46.700 know this is new IP.

00:45:47.780 We're going to put, we're going to put money behind it because it's awesome.

00:45:51.120 Or what about, what about a remake of a film?

00:45:52.860 I've been waiting for Hollywood to try this, uh, and probably never will.

00:45:58.260 But if you're going to do a remake, what about a remake of a movie that was a good idea,

00:46:04.160 but not executed well?

00:46:05.800 So then you remake it.

00:46:07.100 I think this, this is my part of the criteria of why I think remakes are actually good or,

00:46:11.560 or at least passable in some, some exceptions.

00:46:14.620 Yeah.

00:46:15.340 What, like what movie would you, would you suggest?

00:46:18.040 Oh, that's a good, good question.

00:46:19.380 Um, I'll give you one.

00:46:20.540 I'll give you one.

00:46:21.040 Okay.

00:46:21.100 My criteria for, for remakes is, is simple.

00:46:26.080 I think it's like, you look at the source movie and you're like, was it incredible?

00:46:30.480 Like incredible, truly in every way, shape and form the first time, leave it alone.

00:46:35.980 If there are aspects of it that a remake would really help.

00:46:40.760 One of those might be, Hey, it's so old that a lot of people, younger audiences are sleeping

00:46:46.540 on it.

00:46:46.880 They're not, and you can't just show them like, it's a wonderful life to me.

00:46:50.380 I love that movie.

00:46:52.000 Most people love that movie.

00:46:53.340 Even younger audiences will still, still find it because it's on television, you know,

00:46:57.600 every holiday, but the black and white version, a lot of younger audience, they kind of tune

00:47:01.220 out black and white.

00:47:02.060 They, they start tuning out even the color version and soft and you know, so I go, you

00:47:07.000 know, maybe there's something there, but it's also an incredible film.

00:47:09.560 And I, do you want to touch it?

00:47:10.520 I don't know.

00:47:11.020 It's worth the conversation.

00:47:12.340 But the other reason for a remake is absolutely great premise, really like awesome in its kind

00:47:20.080 of cheesiness or quirkiness or something that like, to me, the last starfighter was a sci-fi

00:47:25.300 movie from the eighties that the CG is so old, you know, like early eighties, bad primitive

00:47:33.240 at the time as a kid, you're like, Oh my God, this is the most amazing thing ever.

00:47:38.460 But even like a lot of the special effects and makeup effects and whatever, it's like,

00:47:42.440 you know, it's kind of like a cheesy 80s sci-fi movie, but it's so great and would absolutely

00:47:48.000 be worthy of, I think making a remake.

00:47:49.980 I've tried to go do it.

00:47:51.240 Other people have tried to go do it.

00:47:52.800 Um, I think there's a problem, like a lot of people get really weird with IP and like,

00:47:58.080 we don't want anybody else to touch it.

00:47:59.640 And I don't know, stuff like that.

00:48:01.500 Um, yeah, I mean, I, I agree with your basic, uh, philosophy.

00:48:05.340 I will say that, uh, it's a wonderful life is firmly in the don't touch category for me.

00:48:10.540 Understandable.

00:48:11.120 That's, uh, understandable.

00:48:12.580 Cause that, that to me, that is, well, like you said, if a movie is basically perfect,

00:48:16.400 yeah, just hands off.

00:48:18.620 Cause you can't, you can't make it better.

00:48:19.960 That movie is, I would put in the perfect category.

00:48:24.560 I, I, and listen, I I'm with you.

00:48:26.660 It was, like I said, it's more because I think the message is so important.

00:48:31.560 Like not to tangent too much here, but it's a wonderful life was essentially the first

00:48:37.200 movie that ever really tackled like suicide and mental illness.

00:48:42.780 And what does it mean if you, if you disappear yourself from this world and what would happen

00:48:48.300 to the people around you?

00:48:49.480 And like, like it is so powerful as a film and God's intervention and all of that.

00:48:55.840 And, oh man, it just, it, it gets me overwhelmed.

00:48:59.200 But more than that, that movie was a miracle that it was ever made.

00:49:03.640 Like it wasn't basically, it almost never happened.

00:49:07.360 Frank Capra barely got the money, barely got, uh, Jimmy Stewart to do it.

00:49:11.360 Jimmy was fighting a tooth and nail cause he had just come back from world war two and bro

00:49:15.380 had the most insane PTSD.

00:49:17.840 He was a bomber pilot in world war two and watched hundreds of his fellow airmen die.

00:49:24.840 Either falling literally from blowing up in midair, like all the things you've seen in

00:49:28.620 Memphis bell and all these other war movies.

00:49:30.460 Like he did that.

00:49:31.700 He saw it.

00:49:32.220 He almost died multiple times and he came back from war and he was so messed up.

00:49:35.800 And that movie, God literally used that movie to save Jimmy Stewart, like to help him in

00:49:42.280 his mental health to, to start working through his PTSD.

00:49:46.100 God used that movie to do it.

00:49:47.980 There's entire scenes where he was so off script because he couldn't remember his lines.

00:49:54.380 And, and Capra was like, just speak from your heart.

00:49:56.840 Just like say, and he would say stuff that made no sense, but it was like real and in

00:50:01.340 the moment and, and, and they kept it in the movie.

00:50:03.560 Like his, his scene at the bar where he's praying to God was one take and he, and he didn't

00:50:10.120 remember all the, all the words he said, what he was in his heart and he fumbled around in

00:50:14.140 it.

00:50:14.340 And the script supervisor was like, he missed all this.

00:50:16.660 And Capra was like, it doesn't matter.

00:50:18.560 Print it.

00:50:18.960 We're done.

00:50:19.880 Cause Stuart didn't even have another taking him.

00:50:22.580 Like he was, and he was looking at the, oh man, I get overwhelmed thinking about it.

00:50:27.520 He was looking at the list of these names of airmen that were like missing in action that

00:50:35.060 he was still responsible for as their like commander.

00:50:37.360 And he had written letters to their parents and stuff.

00:50:39.280 And he like pulled that out before he's going and doing this scene anyway.

00:50:43.620 And then, sorry, last bit about it's a wonderful life.

00:50:47.460 The reason why it's actually so successful around the world in all of our hearts and minds.

00:50:52.600 And this is such a great, I think, example of how God redeems things.

00:50:58.520 And we forget the power of God's redemption.

00:51:01.280 The movie failed.

00:51:03.280 It bombed.

00:51:03.880 It was not well-received, uh, critically a little bit, but it did not do well.

00:51:09.280 In fact, it did so poorly in the box office that the secretary at the production company,

00:51:15.020 I can't remember what it was at that time.

00:51:16.400 They had bought out Capra's production, Liberty film.

00:51:20.080 It was some, somebody else.

00:51:20.960 They were looking at all their IP and they were looking at what they were going to, um,

00:51:25.160 re-up their trademark or copyright on.

00:51:26.920 And she thought that it was so invaluable that she didn't even re-up their trademark or their

00:51:33.620 copyright on the film.

00:51:34.640 So it became public domain.

00:51:36.140 So the reason why we all got it on every TV station since like the 70s and why it's so

00:51:42.340 a part of our life and our culture and when God gave us this beautiful film is because

00:51:46.520 it first failed at the box office in order to then be in and put through our televisions

00:51:51.220 our whole lives.

00:51:52.100 Like, isn't that amazing?

00:51:53.220 It just blows my mind.

00:51:55.260 Anyway, sorry.

00:51:56.240 No, I, I, and I didn't know that about that movie.

00:51:58.740 Um, I, I, I, we, we watched it every Christmas, like, you know, every, every American family

00:52:04.600 does or so.

00:52:05.060 Uh, and it, yeah, it did strike me recently.

00:52:08.620 I don't know why it, one of the more recent times watching it with my kids, um, yeah, this

00:52:15.660 is pretty dark.

00:52:16.480 I mean, it's like, you got a guy that's about to kill himself and it's just something that

00:52:20.180 like modern Christmas movies would never go there.

00:52:24.100 They would never go anywhere near suicide as a plot point.

00:52:27.900 Yeah.

00:52:28.540 Uh, which I think is one of the reasons why modern Christmas movies are often quite bad,

00:52:32.640 but that's a whole other thing.

00:52:34.600 Uh, I want to, I want to talk a little bit about the political side of it, but before

00:52:37.340 we do this, there's one other, when it comes to the film industry, cause I know that you

00:52:41.180 feel strongly about this and we've talked just for a second off air about it, but, and

00:52:44.960 I do too.

00:52:45.900 Um, so AI in the film industry, is this where things are heading?

00:52:52.100 Are we heading to a point where they're just going to like type in a prompt and generate

00:52:55.720 a movie and throw it out there for the masses?

00:52:57.660 Are we going there and how do you feel about that if that's where things head?

00:53:03.960 So the short answer is yes.

00:53:08.300 Um, in my humble opinion, I, I've been banging this drum for a long time.

00:53:15.220 Um, I've always been quite nerdy when it comes to futurism, technology, like where we're going.

00:53:23.720 Um, the, the, the available technologies right now versus what they're going to be versus

00:53:29.620 what they're going to be.

00:53:30.780 Um, I, I love it.

00:53:31.980 I, I just, I love how things work.

00:53:33.700 I have kind of an engineer's brain and I love understanding all of these things.

00:53:36.960 And also because I love to engineer new ideas and things and like, oh, there's this new,

00:53:41.500 whatever, you know, LED panel and this new solar panel, but you can make this new, you know,

00:53:47.840 whatever, like things like that.

00:53:48.900 Um, so as I've been tracking it, um, my, my, uh, opinion about where we're headed,

00:53:59.500 my prophecy of where we're headed is in very short order, by the way, everyone debates

00:54:07.500 a lot of these details.

00:54:08.880 Some people debate what, I mean, you know, not for nothing.

00:54:12.200 Well, we'll get back to the, the recent Jeremy's razors commercial.

00:54:15.260 Um, Jeremy and I have very different ideas of where we think AI is going to go and what

00:54:20.640 it's ultimately going to do as far as disruption.

00:54:22.980 I believe that in very short order, AI will be so good that it will be indiscernible

00:54:29.960 from human content, meaning graphics engines will get so good.

00:54:35.740 NVIDIA graphics engines will get so good.

00:54:38.460 They basically already are right now.

00:54:40.180 It just depends on how much time you want to spend in the render and everything.

00:54:43.820 Um, but you can get short clips, video clips of human beings that are entirely generated

00:54:51.080 by AI moving and talking and doing now.

00:54:55.300 So the more compute power we start putting toward all of these AI models, which is the

00:55:00.760 arms race of today, everyone is like compute power.

00:55:04.160 They're literally, they're opening back up three mile Island reactor.

00:55:07.840 So Google can have the compute power to go build more AI.

00:55:13.700 This is where we're going.

00:55:14.700 Moore's law.

00:55:15.340 I'm sure you're familiar with the graph of like, here's, you know, technology fire, the

00:55:19.640 wheel.

00:55:19.980 It's like big spans of horizontal movement and then microchip and then what we go straight

00:55:25.980 out.

00:55:26.140 That's a vertical line of just exponential growth.

00:55:29.180 So people saying two years ago, it's going to be stupid.

00:55:32.260 Look, the picture's got like six fingers.

00:55:35.160 Then it did.

00:55:36.960 Now we're a hundred times better than what that is.

00:55:39.600 And the next step will be a thousand times better.

00:55:42.500 So if I believe that to be true, and I do believe that to be true, then all of a sudden

00:55:47.320 now you have a technology that allows anyone studios or Joe Schmo to sit at home and work

00:55:54.280 with an AI model to then creatively curate whatever you want, a movie, a TV show, a video

00:56:02.700 game, a song, just by prompt, just by saying, you know, I want these elements to it, these

00:56:09.660 types of characters, this feel, this tone, this style, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:56:13.560 blah, you know, details about it.

00:56:15.700 Enter what in moments you have a one of one of any of those types of things that you, by

00:56:22.360 the way, this also plays on people's hubris because now you are the creator, you're the

00:56:27.880 filmmaker, you're the game maker, you're all of these.

00:56:30.520 I don't need anybody else.

00:56:32.200 And I get to, and it's all, and I get to take the credit for this thing.

00:56:35.460 And by the way, rock and roll, I don't begrudge anybody, you know, activating their creative

00:56:39.840 powers to go make something cool.

00:56:41.940 The problem is I don't think anybody's thinking through truly downstream of what that means.

00:56:47.000 Because if you give everyone the power to make whatever they want, whenever they want,

00:56:52.600 they don't want what you want or what you make, not nearly as much.

00:56:56.700 And if there's, if it's indiscernible, you know, it'd be one thing if watching a movie

00:57:01.460 made by real humans, you could really tell that's real humans.

00:57:04.460 And there's a lot of people that argue you'll always be able to tell because, you know, emotions

00:57:08.960 are a human thing.

00:57:10.020 And I'm sorry, but even we are replicating what we learn and see.

00:57:15.220 We're all regurgitating some version of something that we've learned.

00:57:18.600 And once AI models, their, their computing power, thinking power is able to scan all of

00:57:25.180 these movies and see where all of these moments of tears and emotion and how those all interact

00:57:33.160 and work through a story, it will, within video graphics, it will simulate that on a screen

00:57:38.680 and you will feel it.

00:57:40.160 You will feel it.

00:57:41.800 So I think that we're all in for some really, really dire straits, to be perfectly honest.

00:57:46.760 It's one of the things that I am very, I've been, I've been trying to build a studio for

00:57:53.180 years to fix all these other problems in Hollywood, but this is like a whole new level of like,

00:57:57.760 guys, we got to build this and we got to build it now.

00:57:59.600 And I do think that when we do, we will, we will have created a place that safeguards certified

00:58:05.360 organic human made content.

00:58:06.840 And when we do that, there will still be a niche audience for it, but it'll be a niche

00:58:10.760 audience.

00:58:11.640 It's like the audience that buys vinyl right now or shops at a really nice health food

00:58:16.000 store.

00:58:16.640 Yeah.

00:58:16.860 It costs a little bit more, but it's better for you.

00:58:19.500 You know?

00:58:19.640 Well, let me say that, because I agree with everything you said about all of it, except

00:58:24.660 for the last part about it being a niche audience.

00:58:26.980 And that, you might be right.

00:58:28.460 You might be right that, that down the line when AI just completely takes over and you can

00:58:32.640 just generate a movie by typing it in.

00:58:36.040 And you're also right that if you can do that, then like, why do we need, none of us need

00:58:40.820 to make movies because they don't need to watch ours.

00:58:42.720 That's your point.

00:58:43.420 Yeah.

00:58:43.560 But, so maybe that happens.

00:58:48.840 And then people who are making actual art become, they're just playing to this niche

00:58:54.340 crowd.

00:58:55.260 Maybe that.

00:58:57.460 I am cautiously optimistic, or maybe I should say at least I want to be optimistic that it

00:59:05.020 won't be a niche audience because it'll be much great.

00:59:09.560 It'll be still a mainstream audience looking for real art because that's what art is.

00:59:13.640 You know, art is, I think there are a lot of legitimate applications for AI.

00:59:20.960 I think that it's a very impressive technology.

00:59:23.180 Sure.

00:59:23.440 Absolutely.

00:59:23.800 There are a lot of ways you can use it that are totally legitimate, but it cannot make

00:59:28.480 art.

00:59:29.020 Like, it literally can't.

00:59:30.580 It can do the thing that looks like it, right?

00:59:34.440 It can do that, but it can't actually make art because art by definition is an expression

00:59:38.320 of the human soul.

00:59:39.560 That's what art is.

00:59:40.860 It is someone conveying something that's deeply within them through an art.

00:59:47.420 That's what makes it art.

00:59:48.420 So if it's a computer, it's not art.

00:59:49.740 And so what I'm saying is that I think just as art is an expression of the human soul,

00:59:54.300 human beings have a deep yearning for art in their own souls.

00:59:57.740 And so they're not going to want to actually go watch the AI-generated movie for the same

01:00:02.780 reason.

01:00:03.060 This is the comparison I would make.

01:00:04.260 It's not a one-to-one, but it's close.

01:00:08.640 Any even slightly advanced computer can make a, right now, can make a really beautiful painting.

01:00:16.680 Like, you could have any computer can make a really gorgeous image, right?

01:00:20.860 Well, if some art museum out there said they were going to have an art show with a bunch

01:00:27.780 of computer-generated AI art, I don't think anyone would go see it.

01:00:32.280 Go look.

01:00:32.660 Maybe as a novelty, but no one's going to act, because who can?

01:00:36.460 I know that a computer can make a beautiful image.

01:00:39.860 I know that.

01:00:40.440 I'm not impressed by that.

01:00:41.900 The thing that makes the painting impressive is specifically that a person made it.

01:00:46.640 It is specifically that a human being, the brushstrokes, the statue of David is only impressive

01:00:53.940 because a human being carved that thing out of stone.

01:00:57.980 And if it wasn't that, if it was just made by a computer in two seconds, all of a sudden

01:01:02.540 it goes from being one of the great works of art of all time to being absolutely nothing.

01:01:09.300 And so that's how I feel.

01:01:11.060 I think it's apparently how you feel.

01:01:13.500 I also think that everyone kind of feels that way.

01:01:16.100 So I don't know that this can have an audience.

01:01:19.980 I totally hear all that.

01:01:21.240 I would, I would first say that I, I wonder, I posit if perhaps people have less of a desire

01:01:31.480 specifically for art and more for creation and art is a part of creation, but what the

01:01:42.040 audience is now going to be given is the power to create.

01:01:45.320 Now, this is part of the folly, which is it will make people think that they are an artist

01:01:52.840 because they creatively typed in these words.

01:01:55.920 Now, what is a book on your iPad?

01:01:59.960 It's it, somebody typed words and it's on your technology.

01:02:02.880 It's on a computer.

01:02:03.720 Would you say that's not art because it's simply on your computer?

01:02:06.660 No, you'd say that's still a book.

01:02:08.040 It's just in a different, right?

01:02:09.320 People are going to type full paragraphs of what they, I mean, it's not coding.

01:02:14.380 It's not like traditional coding, but you're coding, creatively coding by telling the computer,

01:02:20.340 this is how I want this book, this story to be represented on this computer as either

01:02:26.920 a film, television show, video game, or song.

01:02:30.820 So we're in a weird no man's land where yes, we can all kind of stand a bit more altruistically.

01:02:39.680 Those of us who stand altruistically and be like, never, I'm not going to want that more

01:02:44.080 than I want human stuff.

01:02:45.880 And I would say most people want to pride themselves as being like, no, I'd never do it.

01:02:50.560 But then they're going to be given the opportunity to go create whatever they want, whenever they

01:02:54.600 want.

01:02:57.260 And they're going to feel very creative in doing that.

01:02:59.960 But again, I think that it will be, not only will it be indiscernible, right?

01:03:10.120 But there's so many other parts of human nature that are at play that literally erode our

01:03:18.340 ability to stand that ground.

01:03:21.000 And one of those things is money, bro.

01:03:23.640 So a human made movie, 20 bucks, right?

01:03:28.400 Let's say round number, you got to sell tickets for 20 bucks to make back your money in a decent

01:03:34.940 enough way and a decent enough time to pay off the movie that you made.

01:03:38.680 Okay.

01:03:39.520 You're going to be hit with, want to go see this thing for two bucks?

01:03:44.100 And it's, again, you know, it's not made by humans, but oh my God, it looks amazing.

01:03:49.080 It's got all this IP that I already know.

01:03:52.340 It's Fast and the Furious 21.

01:03:55.520 And by the way, none of the actors even had to show up because they just use past performances

01:03:59.860 and all that stuff.

01:04:00.540 They CG'd all them in, but half that movie is CG anyway.

01:04:04.340 They're driving cars to the moon.

01:04:05.960 I mean, whatever, you know what I mean?

01:04:07.320 Like it's, it's already super surreal and out there.

01:04:09.940 But so what you're just going to fully, you'll just fully CG it and the CG will all look

01:04:13.920 better because it's next level AI CG.

01:04:16.540 And on top of that, you'll be able to, uh, you'll get a menu.

01:04:22.880 So it's like Fast and the Furious and you get to even decide which characters you want to

01:04:27.240 be in it.

01:04:28.280 Cause like maybe there's something you don't really like and something you do.

01:04:30.540 And sometimes you want to bring back that character that wasn't that, okay, yeah, it's

01:04:33.640 going to be Vin.

01:04:34.220 It's going to bring back, uh, and I want Paul Walker back and you're going to get Paul Walker

01:04:37.920 back.

01:04:38.180 And on top of that, you might be able to bring back other long dead actors that were never

01:04:43.200 in a Fast and the Furious movie.

01:04:45.300 You'll be able to go, I want Gene Kelly in this.

01:04:47.640 And because an agent and these exist, went to the estate of Gene Kelly and said, Hey,

01:04:53.920 I'll give you a couple million dollars to use his NIL in making movies and bringing them

01:04:58.040 back to life.

01:04:58.540 They go, give me the money.

01:05:00.280 So now you got Gene, Gene Kelly singing in the rain in Fast and the Furious 20.

01:05:04.860 And on top of all of that, you get to scan your face and your voice and you get to be

01:05:11.940 the star of the movie or, or your kids do.

01:05:15.240 And you telling me that if a new Superman movie or Shazam movie or whatever comes out and your

01:05:20.360 kid has the ability to go be Superman.

01:05:22.560 Maybe, but that, to me, that's all I, well, I think we fundamentally agree because we seem

01:05:27.060 to agree that this is bad.

01:05:28.540 Yeah.

01:05:29.300 Right.

01:05:29.880 Yeah.

01:05:30.140 But your point is that it's bad, but it is going to take over and people will, will just.

01:05:36.940 You think that people's humanity will hold out and it won't give AI.

01:05:40.100 I mean, it's humanity.

01:05:41.640 Yes.

01:05:41.960 But, but I think it's just as a spectacle, like that scenario you're describing.

01:05:46.660 Yeah.

01:05:47.340 Sounds like a spectacle that, and maybe it becomes its own category of thing that people

01:05:51.920 want to go see because they could go see their kid as Superman.

01:05:54.700 But it's still not, it's just, it's not what actually makes people connect with the film

01:06:01.520 to begin with.

01:06:01.980 It's, it's, it's, it's why, uh, choose your own adventure books.

01:06:07.100 Okay.

01:06:07.620 There's like the most analog version of AI, choose your own adventure book.

01:06:11.880 Those are entertaining for kids.

01:06:13.840 There's no such thing as a choose your own adventure novel that adults read because, uh,

01:06:17.680 it's like when I'm reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, I don't want to pick the end.

01:06:23.720 I want to know what the end was for, I want Dostoevsky to tell me his story.

01:06:28.540 If I'm sitting around a campfire and someone's telling me a story, now, if you're sitting

01:06:32.220 around with kids and I, you know, if you've ever told a story to a kid, they might, and

01:06:37.140 you're telling the story, they might chime in and say, oh no, we'll make this happen.

01:06:41.180 Or what, okay, well, what if a monster shows up here?

01:06:44.520 Like they want you to take their, but with adults, when we're listening to a story, it's

01:06:49.260 like, no, I want to hear your story.

01:06:50.400 I don't want to, I want to hear your story.

01:06:51.880 Tell me your story.

01:06:53.140 And so I, I think that maintains and it's why, here's, here's what I'll say.

01:06:56.700 I think the AI generated movie can only be successful if we get to a point, and I think

01:07:01.900 this might happen, where they're just not honest with us about whether this is real

01:07:06.020 or not.

01:07:06.940 So if it's so sophisticated that you can't tell, and they don't tell us that it's

01:07:11.660 fake, well then yeah, maybe it could be successful.

01:07:13.960 But if we know that, the problem is that you can go, you watch the movie and you see the

01:07:17.920 spectacle and you're very impressed with the spectacle.

01:07:20.060 But there's just no way to become emotionally invested in it because no human is involved

01:07:26.260 at all at any level.

01:07:28.000 And the only reason, you know.

01:07:29.260 Except for the person that created it.

01:07:30.580 Well, but all they did was just type it into a computer and the computer did the rest.

01:07:33.740 So that's.

01:07:34.300 Understood.

01:07:34.860 But, but to them and to everyone like them, I mean, Matt, we don't live in the world that

01:07:41.540 we grew up in.

01:07:42.240 We live in the world that our kids and younger people are growing up in right now.

01:07:45.960 And why are television viewership and even film viewership down?

01:07:50.260 It's because they all have a smartphone and they're all creators.

01:07:54.060 They're all making TikToks and YouTube videos.

01:07:57.160 This is just going to amplify that to the next level.

01:08:00.420 Now they get to go make their own.

01:08:02.200 By the way, and keep in mind, unless you tell it specifically what the ending is, it's a surprise

01:08:07.400 to you.

01:08:07.780 You're just giving it some elements and saying, run.

01:08:10.540 And then you get to watch the thing.

01:08:11.820 It's, it's, it's new to you.

01:08:13.280 You gave it a few.

01:08:14.020 You, you put some ingredients into the stew and you mixed it up, but you don't know what

01:08:18.500 that stew is going to taste like at all until the end.

01:08:20.620 And, and people will start getting just enthralled with, well, what does the AI got to do?

01:08:24.580 I want, I wonder what the end will be and I'll go what, and even just for the gimmick alone,

01:08:29.200 people will spend more and more time doing that.

01:08:31.800 If everyone, listen, if everyone only watched two movies a year and everyone chose to now just

01:08:38.540 watch half of their movies as the gimmick of AI, because, oh my God, wouldn't it be funny

01:08:42.640 to go da-ba-ba, well, now 50% of the market's already gone.

01:08:46.860 But I don't think it's even going to be half.

01:08:48.600 I think that there's going to be lots and lots of people that are enthralled with the

01:08:52.800 shininess of, and, and again, this, this, this lure, I think a false one, but that you're

01:08:59.360 the movie maker.

01:09:00.380 You're going to start seeing this all over the place, by the way.

01:09:02.800 Like the messaging's already starting.

01:09:04.480 It's like, what an amazing way to democratize filmmaking and let everyone have access.

01:09:08.440 It's like, you are going to destroy the industry.

01:09:12.540 Like it, it will not survive, it not survive in a large way.

01:09:16.240 I mean, it's, it will, I do think it will become more of a niche thing, by the way.

01:09:19.740 And I hope I'm wrong, bro.

01:09:22.820 I don't want to, this is not a Nostradamus.

01:09:26.760 I think that like, I genuinely want this to be wrong.

01:09:29.920 I want people to wake up and recognize not just for Hollywood, every industry around the

01:09:34.860 world, if we're not careful, and by the way, even if we are careful, that's the crazy thing.

01:09:40.220 Even if we are careful, it's going to start disrupting workforces all over the world and

01:09:46.480 very soon, man.

01:09:47.540 So is there, is there any way, let's say that your, your vision is correct about the inevitability

01:09:53.620 of not just the technology, but people actually glomming onto it in the way you're describing.

01:09:57.240 Yeah.

01:09:57.380 Uh, because it, again, in my view, what you're describing is just simply the death of art.

01:10:05.160 It's just, it's just the, it's just the, the, the extinction of art.

01:10:10.280 Uh, and art is one of the things that makes life worth living.

01:10:15.060 It's one of the things that makes us human.

01:10:17.220 And so in my mind, fighting against the extinction of art is, if that's not worth a fight, then

01:10:23.380 nothing is.

01:10:24.060 Uh, you, you can't just give into it and allow it to happen.

01:10:28.640 I completely agree.

01:10:30.020 So is there, is there, what, is there anything that can be done in your, uh, somewhat darker

01:10:36.300 vision of the future?

01:10:37.160 Is there anything that can be done to, to, to stop that and to preserve art in a real, in

01:10:41.720 a very real sense in the culture?

01:10:43.740 Absolutely.

01:10:44.880 So, and again, I'm biased, but this is part of what I'm trying to do in the process of

01:10:53.860 creating Wildwood studios, which is this vision that God gave me many, many years ago.

01:10:58.200 It's not just build a movie studio and it's not just build a living community within that

01:11:01.660 and taking care of people and giving people better lives, right?

01:11:03.540 That was already baked into it.

01:11:05.880 But what's dawned on me is that as we move into this new world where AI will in fact start

01:11:14.240 to displace everyone in every industry.

01:11:18.580 I do believe eventually how long per industry, I don't know.

01:11:21.820 I think Hollywood is, we're the canary in the coal mine basically, but there's a lot of

01:11:27.420 jobs we don't want and never wanted, right?

01:11:29.140 Like a lot of grunt stuff, a lot of like, you know, being in a factory and doing some

01:11:34.880 monotonous thing or pushing a lot of paper.

01:11:36.760 And so I think collectively we'll be, it won't be great for people that are done now looking

01:11:41.900 for a new job, but like as a society, we will be able to start to minimize jobs that

01:11:48.960 are not ones that are, you know, help people flourish in their happiness or whatever it

01:11:53.800 is.

01:11:54.200 And then as I, as I was kind of breaking that down, I go, well, what, where do we flourish?

01:11:58.900 What do we require as human beings?

01:12:01.280 Like what did God create us to do?

01:12:02.980 And I think there's two general fields that we are suited for, that God created us for,

01:12:09.480 that we thrive in when we're doing it well and with other people that help us to thrive

01:12:13.440 in it.

01:12:13.920 And that's creation and discovery.

01:12:16.980 And to me, that's basically all of the arts and sciences.

01:12:19.980 So what we need to do is figure out ways to create actual places, campuses, if you will,

01:12:25.800 that are fostering, safeguarding, uh, strengthening as many jobs within the arts and sciences as

01:12:34.460 we can and continuing to give humans more opportunity in those places, because those are

01:12:41.080 all the jobs we're ultimately going to filter down to.

01:12:43.360 I think they're the only ones that make any sense to me because AI will, you'll want, every

01:12:49.580 industry is going to replace people with anything that's this or anything that's just nothing

01:12:53.620 but thinking and computing and like all of it immediately.

01:12:56.160 It's all happening right now.

01:12:57.300 The faster Elon makes cars and actual robots that are awesome.

01:13:01.860 And the faster those get AI in them, that's even more awesome.

01:13:05.300 The faster every job gets replaced.

01:13:07.260 Why would you have anyone hammering anything or, or, or cleaning toilets?

01:13:12.340 If you can have a robot do all of that stuff, right?

01:13:15.780 Like this is where we're headed, but forget all of that stuff.

01:13:19.400 Like, let's help people to just stay within these fields and be like, go create, whether

01:13:25.340 it's art, by the way.

01:13:26.980 And, and I think that they're both linked to the arts and sciences because you are creating

01:13:30.540 new things while you're discovering new things and you're discovering new things while you're

01:13:34.640 creating new things.

01:13:35.480 And so all of these are kind of very Venn diagram together.

01:13:38.780 That's what I intend to do.

01:13:40.440 I hope other people go and do the same thing, but I like, I'm about to welcome my first child

01:13:46.300 into the world, the beginning of April, and I'm so excited to be a dad at long last, but

01:13:51.840 there's not a chance that I would ever think that they're going to go to some traditional

01:13:56.740 school at this point.

01:13:59.600 I already have a lot of issue with traditional, not even just university, but like traditional

01:14:04.420 school as it is right now.

01:14:05.960 And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, whether you want to call it conspiracy or whatever

01:14:09.620 with Rockefeller and how all that stuff was set up in order to just kind of make factory

01:14:13.160 workers, I mean, make kids do the thing exactly at the right time and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

01:14:17.300 So we're already, we've been, we've been crushing, I think our children's spirits for a long time

01:14:21.640 when it comes to being outside, particularly young boys, like let them go run around and

01:14:25.100 get all that stuff out of them.

01:14:25.960 That's not just ADD and all of that stuff all the time.

01:14:28.420 That's them being a boy and let them learn about the earth and learn about making a fire

01:14:32.320 and, you know, whatever.

01:14:33.860 Um, and girls too, whatever.

01:14:35.540 I mean, allow them to go create and discover, create and discover, and their educations will be just

01:14:41.900 fine if we focus on those things.

01:14:45.240 Freedom runs deep in our nation's DNA.

01:14:47.340 It started when we stood up to unfair British taxes and their overpriced tea.

01:14:52.100 When they tried forcing us to pay, we threw that tea right into the Boston Harbor.

01:14:55.260 And you know what?

01:14:56.340 It worked out pretty well for us, I'd say.

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01:15:46.700 Well, I only got a couple minutes left and I wanted to talk about, we ended up talking about AI,

01:15:54.860 which to me, we could talk about that for five hours.

01:15:57.900 Oh, man.

01:15:58.240 I find it to be not only fascinating, but perhaps the most important, one of the most important

01:16:04.520 subjects at the moment.

01:16:05.600 But I do want to ask you just a little bit about this because you've mentioned, referenced

01:16:10.400 it a couple of times, sort of coming out of the political closet.

01:16:14.220 You came out and endorsed RFK Jr., right, first?

01:16:18.140 And then Donald Trump.

01:16:20.980 What propelled you to do that?

01:16:24.620 So, I've always been very politically, I don't know, like aware or tuned in or savvy, but

01:16:39.700 you know, like trying to track what's going on enough that I know what's going on, right?

01:16:46.300 There's so many things as we're now learning with Doge, like the amount of just layers and

01:16:52.140 layers of obfuscation and corruption that, personally, I've known about my whole life

01:16:58.440 because my parents, one of the great things they taught me and my sisters was to have

01:17:02.100 a healthy level of distrust for the government and for all large industry because absolute

01:17:07.340 power corrupts absolutely, and that's absolutely what we've been seeing, unfortunately, for a

01:17:11.980 really long time.

01:17:12.560 So, I've looked at every administration through a lens of like, well, what is really going on

01:17:18.760 here, right?

01:17:19.260 This isn't just red versus blue because the reality is there's people on the red and blue

01:17:24.640 that actually are decent human beings that actually do want a better world.

01:17:28.160 They disagree on how to get there, but there's decency within them, and there's people on

01:17:31.560 the red and blue who are not decent people, who are absolute swamp monsters, and who are

01:17:36.600 pulling secretly together toward these other agendas and, you know, whatever all that is,

01:17:42.640 loads and loads and loads of corruption.

01:17:44.220 And so, because of that, I haven't really found any presidential candidate to be all

01:17:52.440 that inspiring all of my adult life.

01:17:56.720 I was intrigued by Trump in that he wasn't a career politician, but I had enough about

01:18:03.180 him and his brashness and kind of bulliness and, you know, the things that most people take

01:18:07.520 umbrage with.

01:18:08.260 That I was not a fan of and, you know, other things that he has said or done or his style.

01:18:13.580 I was like, no, this isn't, when I imagine a president of the United States in every way,

01:18:18.760 shape and form, you know, not that we ever get a perfect one, but like we have our standards

01:18:23.000 and we have these things that we look for.

01:18:24.700 That's not the guy that I was looking for, but it certainly also wasn't Hillary or Biden

01:18:29.320 or Kamala, um, because I think that while they might, you know, be more eloquent, I guess,

01:18:38.720 I mean, you know, one, one could say that Hillary was a more eloquent candidate, maybe

01:18:43.100 even Biden before his decline.

01:18:44.480 I don't think Kamala was very eloquent at all.

01:18:46.260 Lots of word salad there, but that whole apparatus, the, the underpinnings of that whole

01:18:53.160 party, you know, had Bobby Kennedy run as a Democrat, I would have absolutely voted for

01:18:57.160 a Democrat in, in this last election.

01:19:00.060 Um, because to me, Bobby was finally at long last, not a perfect human being, but somebody

01:19:06.240 that I absolutely believed was a decent human being who had gone through a lot in his life

01:19:12.060 and was very honest about what he had gone through in his life and genuinely has a heart

01:19:16.120 for wanting to not just make America healthy and save this country, save it from itself, save

01:19:22.920 it from the corruption that he saw firsthand in the democratic party, which is what ultimately

01:19:26.460 kept him from being on that ticket in the expedited primary that nobody voted in to put Kamala

01:19:32.600 in that spot.

01:19:33.400 And then for them to just shut him out, but they shut him out because they knew that he

01:19:36.860 could not be a puppet.

01:19:37.800 He would not be a puppet.

01:19:38.640 He would not be controlled in that.

01:19:39.800 He actually has integrity.

01:19:42.120 Tulsi Gabbard as well.

01:19:44.520 So I was like, listen, I don't know where this is going to go.

01:19:49.620 We, an independent candidate hasn't won since, I mean, was it Lincoln?

01:19:52.840 Right, right.

01:19:53.180 Or something like that.

01:19:54.100 Something crazy.

01:19:54.840 I don't know.

01:19:56.020 I think it was Republican.

01:19:58.100 He ran as a Republican, but he started as an independent or something, I thought.

01:20:00.900 Anyway.

01:20:01.400 It's been a long time.

01:20:01.900 Yes, it's been a minute.

01:20:04.660 But so just from a human standpoint, right?

01:20:07.200 Didn't agree with everything, but agreed with a lot, particularly when it came to a lot of

01:20:11.420 the health stuff and things that I think we all need to be very concerned about.

01:20:14.980 And it's very real.

01:20:15.820 At the very least, at the very least, we should all have full transparency.

01:20:20.720 Let us see all of the studies and all of the data about all of these drugs and all of these

01:20:24.940 vaccines and all of these food additives and everything.

01:20:27.500 Why is that so hard to see?

01:20:30.240 Because of lots and lots of corruption.

01:20:31.920 So I'm like, okay, I'm all in with this guy.

01:20:33.940 Like wherever he's going, I'm going.

01:20:35.440 And I had the pleasure of meeting him and talking to him enough and knowing people around him

01:20:40.480 very personally.

01:20:41.880 And I was like, he was vetted.

01:20:43.620 He was vetted to me.

01:20:45.060 He was who I really fully believed would have been the best president this country has ever

01:20:48.280 seen, probably since his uncle.

01:20:51.440 And who also had his own foibles.

01:20:54.560 But then the Democratic Party made that impossible for him, suing him to keep him off ballots and

01:20:58.180 then suing to keep him on ballots and all of the chicanery.

01:21:01.100 And then Trump is nearly killed.

01:21:03.660 And there, I think all of us on, on, in every party, on every level, every end of the spectrum,

01:21:10.600 that was a massive, massive moment for Trump particularly.

01:21:16.440 But in that massive moment, I and many others like me saw this incredible, I think God inspired

01:21:24.820 shift.

01:21:25.280 I think that was a miracle that Donald Trump lived.

01:21:28.360 I think that there is no doubt the, I mean, like, it's crazy to think about.

01:21:33.660 But just that, just that.

01:21:36.820 And like, wow, wow, wow, wow.

01:21:39.680 But it brought a humility to Donald Trump that I don't think existed in him before, at least

01:21:44.860 not on that level.

01:21:46.180 And that's something I need in a leader.

01:21:48.380 I need somebody who has at least some kind of humility to recognize that they are fallible.

01:21:52.000 They are, they are completely human and killable and deadable and that we have an opportunity

01:22:01.720 and a responsibility as leaders in this country to make this place better, to make other people's

01:22:07.500 lives better.

01:22:08.460 Not just our own vanity, not just our own riches, which I feel like in the first one, in his

01:22:12.620 first, you know, run, there was a bit more of that.

01:22:17.880 And I don't think that's happening.

01:22:19.340 I think he recognizes that a lot of people saw in that and saw him do it like, dude,

01:22:23.900 why weren't you more effective?

01:22:25.120 And there was a lot of things against them, understandably.

01:22:27.020 But this time he's like taking no prisoners and he's signing orders and he's like taking

01:22:32.060 charge and he's doing what he promised he was going to do.

01:22:34.800 And when was the last time any president really went in that hot and was like, we're doing

01:22:39.540 it.

01:22:40.040 And he's not, he made promises to the Maha people and that whole, for Bobby to go and

01:22:45.840 join him.

01:22:47.080 I trusted Bobby.

01:22:48.700 So Bobby said, I've said, I, and I talked to, I said, have you talked to him enough to

01:22:52.560 ask him and Tulsi both?

01:22:53.720 Have you talked to president Trump enough to have vetted, to know that this is real?

01:22:59.100 This isn't just some play.

01:23:00.200 This isn't just some political move.

01:23:02.360 Like he means what he's saying.

01:23:03.740 And they're like, he means it.

01:23:04.800 I'm like, great.

01:23:05.440 Well, then if that's, what's happening, then I will vote for that man and I will do everything

01:23:08.680 that I can in order to get him into office because the alternative to me was not an option

01:23:18.480 in the way that I know a lot of people on the other side felt the same way about Donald

01:23:21.860 Trump.

01:23:22.120 I get that, you know, based on the way that the media has been working and operating and

01:23:26.320 propagandizing for so long, I understand why people, a lot of people were made to fear

01:23:31.400 another Trump presidency and are still made to fear another Trump presidency.

01:23:37.320 And that's why I felt like it doesn't matter what happens to me.

01:23:41.300 It doesn't matter what happens to my career.

01:23:42.980 If I save my career, but Kamala gets into office and we continue down this death spiral to the

01:23:53.560 bottom that I fully believe that we were on.

01:23:56.400 And I knew that I just sat on my hands because I was afraid I might lose this movie or that or

01:24:03.020 whatever.

01:24:04.000 I was like, I can't.

01:24:05.080 God did not build me to do that.

01:24:06.500 God built me to fight.

01:24:08.580 God built me to lead.

01:24:09.660 God built me to, to sacrifice if need be.

01:24:12.580 Far too many people make way too many decisions nowadays for self-preservation.

01:24:16.860 I get it.

01:24:17.740 We should be smart and not do stupid things.

01:24:20.000 We want to preserve our life and go live it as long and healthy and strong as we can.

01:24:25.000 But damn it, man, this country is literally built on people that said, I might die today.

01:24:30.960 And then they made it through that day and they said, I might die today and today and today and

01:24:35.840 today.

01:24:36.540 And I'm like, what good is my faith in God if I'm not trusting that, let's say my whole

01:24:40.720 career in Hollywood goes away.

01:24:42.160 Well, I'll find other work.

01:24:43.560 There will be other things, but I am not going to go to bed.

01:24:46.960 And if I went, if I sat on my hands and she got elected for the rest of my life, I would

01:24:51.720 be kicking myself.

01:24:52.680 And more than that, I would feel like those, I'm sure, very well-meaning Germans in 1930s

01:24:57.420 Germany that were like, you know, maybe it's not going to get so bad.

01:25:00.720 You know, it's very yelly, but maybe it's all good.

01:25:04.120 You know, like, don't say anything.

01:25:05.220 Don't say anything.

01:25:05.460 We don't want to, like, I'm sure there were very good Germans that were like, this is,

01:25:10.200 it's not going to go totally off the rails.

01:25:11.660 And it did.

01:25:12.300 And it happened because enough of them didn't actually just stand up and go, no, no, no, sorry.

01:25:16.520 No, not going to happen.

01:25:17.560 So what has happened?

01:25:18.780 It's been, it's been, it hasn't been that long, but maybe to feel the full effect, but

01:25:24.400 have you been canceled?

01:25:25.980 I mean, what's happened to your...

01:25:27.060 No, I mean, I, I, I haven't been canceled.

01:25:29.680 Try as some might, I haven't been, you know, canceled, canceled in whatever that traditional

01:25:35.300 sense of the word would be, where it's like, I, my agents have dropped me, you know, like

01:25:38.880 I am in very good standing with everyone on my team.

01:25:41.640 I let them all know when Tulsi called me and was like, Hey, would you do this?

01:25:46.520 You know, uh, town hall with me and Bobby as they were endorsing Trump.

01:25:50.940 I was like, can I think and pray on this for a second?

01:25:53.020 Cause this is fully crossing the Rubicon.

01:25:55.180 And I felt that, I felt that conviction from God.

01:25:56.880 And I was like, okay, let's go do this.

01:25:58.680 So, um, you know, that, that I told my team, I said, I'm probably going to go do this and

01:26:04.840 I need you, I need to, I need to let you know.

01:26:07.320 And I'm hoping that you are going to support me in this.

01:26:09.760 And I said, listen, it, it's probably not the best career decision and that it, there

01:26:15.620 will probably be some blowback, but we will support you in whatever you feel like you need

01:26:18.860 to do.

01:26:19.360 And I'm very grateful for them for that, you know?

01:26:21.860 Um, because I'm sure a lot of other agents and managers would have been like, no, no,

01:26:25.440 no, that's, you know, not just career suicide, but how dare you go and whatever it is.

01:26:29.560 So my team's all with me.

01:26:30.920 I still have very good relationships with lots of people in the industry.

01:26:33.460 I've lost some friends.

01:26:35.600 There are people that stop following me, stop, stop following me on social media and

01:26:40.040 don't return my calls and stuff.

01:26:42.220 And it's a bummer, but I still love them.

01:26:44.840 You know, again, I, I am, I empathize with a lot of people on the other side who I think

01:26:49.820 have been lied to for a really long time.

01:26:51.440 And if I, if I know they have, like, how can I be angry with them?

01:26:54.780 Because they might be believing something that I know to be not true.

01:26:57.820 Have you heard from other actors, people in Hollywood who agree with you?

01:27:01.460 Oh yeah.

01:27:01.680 Kind of whispering.

01:27:02.600 Oh yeah.

01:27:03.180 Yeah.

01:27:03.520 Yeah.

01:27:03.760 Lots actually.

01:27:06.260 And, and, you know, no doubt there are others.

01:27:08.380 I know that there's a lot of people in Hollywood that voted for Trump, but they didn't and couldn't

01:27:12.520 say anything or felt like they couldn't.

01:27:14.000 And, and again, and I don't, I don't begrudge any of them.

01:27:16.700 Like everyone's got to do what they feel God calling them to do.

01:27:18.940 And, and I knew that I had to do that for myself.

01:27:22.480 I don't know if, like, I don't know where I stand in this.

01:27:26.620 I'm sure there's plenty of casting meetings that are going on where they got a list of names

01:27:30.760 like you normally do.

01:27:31.820 And they're going through the names and some, my name will come up and somebody be like,

01:27:35.520 no, that guy.

01:27:36.420 Sorry.

01:27:37.900 Uh, uh, no, not that guy.

01:27:40.020 You know, he's a Trumper or he, you know, he believes in wackadoo Bobby Kennedy.

01:27:44.100 No doubt.

01:27:44.840 There are people that feel that way about me and they're going to keep me from getting

01:27:48.120 hired in those rooms, but that's okay.

01:27:50.720 There's, I, I still have plenty of other jobs, film and television and some podcast stuff

01:27:56.480 that's coming up and building the studio.

01:27:58.100 And I got my baby on the way and, you know, I'm, I'm busy and blessed and grateful.

01:28:03.840 Not just that I followed the conviction that God put on my heart, but that it wasn't ultimately

01:28:08.140 in vain.

01:28:08.920 And we actually did it, man.

01:28:11.020 Like I remember I was shooting a film in the Republic of Georgia while the election

01:28:15.860 was happening.

01:28:16.700 And I was on my phone.

01:28:17.800 We were up, you know, hours before everybody else in the States.

01:28:20.160 And I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, oh my gosh, like, like we actually are going

01:28:25.760 to do this.

01:28:26.140 We're actually going to avoid going off the cliff right now.

01:28:30.200 Is there still a lot more work to do to keep like, we're back paddling right now.

01:28:33.920 You know, the, the waterfall's still up there, but we're getting away from it.

01:28:36.920 We're getting away from it.

01:28:37.800 We got to keep back paddling and get over to shore.

01:28:41.220 But I feel so much more inspired and, and it's all worth it to go fight for what's right.

01:28:46.900 And speaking of everything you have going on right now, one of them is the new film,

01:28:50.540 The Unbreakable Boy.

01:28:51.500 Yes.

01:28:52.360 Yeah.

01:28:52.740 Yes.

01:28:53.100 The Unbreakable Boy comes out February 21st.

01:28:56.480 Man, I'm, I'm proud of everything I've done on some level.

01:29:00.440 Very grateful for everything I've gotten to do, but I am particularly proud of this film.

01:29:04.220 It is a very grounded slice of life film, no superheroes, no big, you know, bang and anything

01:29:11.200 like that, but it's a true story.

01:29:13.380 It's about a family.

01:29:15.540 The husband and wife on their third date, get pregnant.

01:29:20.000 They're like, oh my gosh, what do we do?

01:29:21.520 And they're like, all right, well let's, let's keep it.

01:29:23.520 Let's do this.

01:29:24.080 Let's, you know, let's see this through and let's, we'll figure out our relationship as

01:29:28.100 we go.

01:29:28.460 And they did.

01:29:29.040 And it was hard and learning how to love themselves and love each other and then love

01:29:33.120 their two sons that came into the world.

01:29:34.580 The first of which Austin, when he was born, like just was crying incessantly, like far

01:29:40.700 more than a regular, you know, situation.

01:29:42.860 And they, at like two years old, they hadn't tested and he had brittle bones disease, osteogenesis

01:29:49.420 imperfecta.

01:29:50.040 And that was already a massive curve ball for the family, as you can imagine.

01:29:53.240 And they're kind of navigating that.

01:29:55.580 They had a second son.

01:29:56.500 He's good.

01:29:57.720 No, no health ailments or anything.

01:29:59.300 But then a few more years goes on and Austin starts presenting in a very atypical way.

01:30:04.360 And they're like, what's going on with this?

01:30:05.720 And so they take him to another doctor and the doctor's like, and this is, you know, 30

01:30:08.780 or let's see, Austin was probably, so I don't know, 20 plus years at this point ago.

01:30:15.600 And the doctor's like, your son is, is on the autistic spectrum, what we call autism.

01:30:19.500 And so, you know, this is going to be his life and another big curve ball, particularly

01:30:24.340 for Scott Lorette, who I play the father and husband, who is a, you know, just an example

01:30:31.700 of someone who is fighting, fighting, accepting the life that God has given you and trying to

01:30:40.080 numb it in self-medicating through booze.

01:30:43.520 And his wife's also going through self-medicating through like, you know, retail therapy and

01:30:48.760 they're at odds and the kids are struggling.

01:30:51.540 And, you know, so it's, but it's got so much love and so much heart and so much redemption.

01:30:57.720 And it's honestly, I've never heard of or seen a film that tackles autism, maybe at all,

01:31:05.960 but I know they're out there, but certainly not as, as authentically and as beautifully

01:31:09.940 as we had the opportunity to in this film.

01:31:13.580 And listen, autism is ubiquitous at this point in our lives, right?

01:31:16.400 Like either we have it, our kids have it, our friends' kids have it, or, you know, whatever.

01:31:22.920 And I think that to the extent that we can be telling a story that does shine a light on

01:31:28.040 that and also honors those who do have it and shows the beauty in this kid and how this kid

01:31:36.260 really saves his dad's life.

01:31:38.320 And that through Austin's eyes and his heart that he has this big, beautiful heart, Scott

01:31:45.400 learns how to love his own self and love his own life and love his family better.

01:31:49.680 And, you know, there's faith underpinned through all of it.

01:31:52.360 It's a beautiful film.

01:31:53.600 Bring some, some, some clean air.

01:31:55.240 I don't know if you ever get teary-eyed at movies.

01:31:57.760 You seem very stoic, but if you do, then bring some Kleenex.

01:32:01.560 And I would love for anyone out there watching, please go see it.

01:32:04.260 And if you like it, tell your friends.

01:32:06.040 It's, it's, it's the little movie that could.

01:32:07.760 We shot it like four and a half years ago and it's been sitting on the shelf and finally

01:32:11.200 we get to get it out to the world.

01:32:12.440 So very excited about it.

01:32:13.500 Is it going to be in theaters?

01:32:14.920 Yes, in theaters, February 21st.

01:32:17.000 And that's the best place to go see it.

01:32:19.240 You know, aside from supporting us as a film, that's always a big thing for us as a film.

01:32:24.040 But I do think that movie theaters, I, there's something that's, that, that's special about

01:32:31.720 them that I think a lot of people don't talk about, which is we used to go to big communal

01:32:38.460 things, right?

01:32:40.700 Like a movie theater was one of those things.

01:32:43.260 You're sitting in a theater full of a bunch of people that are not you, that are not like

01:32:46.100 you, that believe in completely different things.

01:32:47.820 And you know that.

01:32:48.840 And yet you all laugh at the same jokes and you cry at the same moments.

01:32:53.120 And it shows that, oh yeah, we actually are more alike than we're not alike.

01:32:57.820 The more we go sit at home and don't go to movie theaters, the less we're conditioned,

01:33:02.560 I think, to, to feel that empathy with our neighbor and people that are different from

01:33:06.100 us.

01:33:06.260 So I just think that there's something beautiful about that in a movie theater as well.

01:33:10.460 Well, I don't want to take up any more of your time, but it's a fascinating conversation.

01:33:14.000 And thank you, man.

01:33:14.620 Really appreciate you having me on.

01:33:15.780 Yeah.

01:33:15.940 Thanks for stopping by.

01:33:17.000 Thanks.

01:33:23.700 Hi, this is Andrew Klavan.

01:33:25.340 If you like American flags and automatic weapons and shaking your fist at homosexuals while

01:33:30.360 fighter jets fly over in formation, come to the Andrew Klavan Show.

01:33:33.940 We don't have any of that, but we will be making fun of idiots and praising God and laughing

01:33:37.760 our way through the fall of the Republic.

01:33:39.220 It's like an insane asylum for happy people.

01:33:41.520 That's the Andrew Klavan Show right here on Daily Wire Plus.

01:33:45.680 Here we go.

01:33:46.480 Here we go.

01:33:55.080 We're going to...

01:34:07.400 Here we go.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 14, 2025

Ep. 1537 - Matt Walsh Interviews Zachary Levi

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