The Michael Knowles Show - The Wokest Awards Show in Hollywood

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, this is Michael. You're about to listen to our latest episode of Daily Wire

00:00:04.420 Backstage, where I join Ben Shapiro, Andrew Plavin, and the man who will one day fire me

00:00:09.360 for real, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, for a great conversation on politics and culture,

00:00:14.800 and where we answer questions from Daily Wire subscribers. Without further ado, here is Backstage.

00:00:20.060 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 357th annual Daily Wire Backstage Awards Night

00:00:32.820 rambling conversation about lots of stuff over whiskey and cigars. Coming to you live from the

00:00:38.840 second floor of a vaguely Art Deco building near a used car lot somewhere in the valley. And now,

00:00:45.320 our hosts, extremely small g, baby k, god king of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring, hate-filled 0.96

00:00:53.600 conservative lunatic, husband and father, Ben Shapiro, an old crank who yells at the clouds,

00:01:01.300 Andrew Clavin, and finally, something or other, Michael Knowles. 0.95

00:01:07.700 Four, Daily Wire Backstage, fake laugh in three, two, one.

00:01:26.700 She ain't the boss of me.

00:01:31.520 Hey guys, I'm Jeremy Boring, the small g, baby k, god king, and whoever wrote that voiced monologue,

00:01:37.600 is now officially fired.

00:01:39.940 Go home.

00:01:42.960 Thank you for joining us here at the Daily Wire Backstage, the wokest award show in Hollywood

00:01:47.800 history, the only award show that you know recognizes good movies, more or less, if that's

00:01:54.640 still a thing.

00:01:57.600 Roll intro graphic.

00:01:58.700 Yeah, all right.

00:02:11.040 I feel like, I feel like we get worse.

00:02:16.640 And the night is young, too.

00:02:17.860 Yeah, you know, sometimes you watch the pilot of a show, after like, you're 12 seasons in,

00:02:21.960 you go back and watch the pilot, like, this thing was good.

00:02:23.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah, this thing was so fun.

00:02:25.360 This is never good.

00:02:26.000 This is like the fifth season of Law and Order, when it starts to really trend down.

00:02:31.160 I do want to take a minute and introduce the lady of the evening, not Michael Knowles in

00:02:36.140 his Oscar gown, but one lovely and talented.

00:02:40.080 Don't call her a lady of the evening.

00:02:40.140 I'm sorry, take two.

00:02:48.920 I would like to acknowledge our one and only streetwalking.

00:02:55.420 You know, my dad is watching.

00:02:56.740 Elisha Krause.

00:02:58.360 My dad is watching.

00:03:00.220 You know, he's from boomer country, so guns are still legal. 0.66

00:03:03.180 They're boring.

00:03:04.220 Watch out.

00:03:04.840 Yeah, but Elisha, he has to take a boat from where he is to here.

00:03:07.060 And California would stop him at the border and confiscate all those guns from him.

00:03:12.020 Anyway, welcome, everyone.

00:03:14.140 Do you know what's happening?

00:03:15.180 Because I sure don't.

00:03:16.220 But I do know that all of our subscribers in the evening will be able to submit their

00:03:21.100 questions over at dailywire.com.

00:03:23.880 I'm going to repeat that because Ben Shapiro is losing a lung, so don't forget to go over

00:03:28.340 to dailywire.com.

00:03:29.540 Click on the Daily Wire backstage banner at the top of the page to watch the live stream,

00:03:33.480 and then write your question in the chat box, and we'll do our best to make the guys answer

00:03:37.140 it.

00:03:37.600 Their answers will be more interesting depending on how much whiskey they have.

00:03:41.380 Also, we're going to be playing a really fun game of bingo tonight.

00:03:45.220 Head on over to the Daily Wire Twitter account, at Real Daily Wire on Twitter, where we pinned

00:03:50.420 the bingo boards for you to follow along and play with other, you know, Daily Wire fans.

00:03:55.980 It's going to be lots of fun.

00:03:57.060 There's some great options, like Ben interrupts anyone, Drew coughing.

00:04:01.360 I think that's already happened.

00:04:03.300 There's also a free space, but only after a 70% bingo tax.

00:04:07.860 I kind of wanted a hashtag backstage so white option, but that didn't make it easier.

00:04:16.900 Anyway, it'll be lots of fun.

00:04:18.880 We'll be checking in throughout the night, and I don't know, maybe next time you tune

00:04:22.100 into backstage we'll come up with a drinking game. 0.99

00:04:23.780 But tonight, play hashtag backstage bingo with us.

00:04:26.760 And finally, be sure to vote in the Facebook poll.

00:04:29.240 Well, tonight's poll question is going to be, who should have won Best Picture?

00:04:33.580 For a lady of the evening, not only does she have a heart of gold, like all ladies of

00:04:37.600 the evening in Hollywood, she's pretty funny.

00:04:39.360 It's pretty great when you book Julia Roberts to do our backstage. 0.99

00:04:42.100 That's fabulous.

00:04:43.220 So guys, we didn't all get dressed up for nothing.

00:04:46.020 The Academy Awards for last night.

00:04:47.920 Oh, we actually got dressed up for nothing.

00:04:49.580 Pretty much.

00:04:50.300 Pretty much.

00:04:51.020 The Academy Awards for last night, and we're going to talk all about who won.

00:04:54.780 I'm hoping one of you guys knows, who should have won, and then probably just talks of

00:04:59.740 politics.

00:05:00.920 But first, someone recently said in the Twitter comments on one of our shows that they only

00:05:06.060 tune in to hear me clumsily segue into ad reads.

00:05:09.660 That's the only reason I come here.

00:05:12.000 So something, something, something policy genius.

00:05:14.120 That's exactly right.

00:05:15.060 So I'm here tonight against my will. 0.87

00:05:17.160 I'd like to die.

00:05:18.220 And if I do die, then the good news is I know that I'm covered and I have life insurance.

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00:06:19.680 comfortable in your own death.

00:06:21.260 You know, I remember right when I started working here, one of the first things Ben said to

00:06:24.980 me said, hey, Knowles, get life insurance.

00:06:27.700 Get life insurance right now.

00:06:29.200 The best thing about it is you know your dependents will say, he wasn't so bad.

00:06:35.000 My favorite thing about Policy Genius, though, is that they keep us on the air.

00:06:38.000 Yeah, that's good.

00:06:38.720 They're great sponsors of the show, and the other people who keep us on the air are actually

00:06:43.220 the fans. So if you're not a subscriber, we'd like for you to become one over at dailywire.com.

00:06:47.880 Okay, let me explain this. Here's the deal. I have been here for hours today. Hours.

00:06:52.980 I did my podcast this morning.

00:06:54.540 At what time?

00:06:55.400 At 6.30 this morning. Then I went and I did Dr. Phil's show, which is going to be on Wednesday,

00:07:00.140 so you should tune into that. Then I did two more hours of my show live, and now I'm here

00:07:03.320 for two more hours with these jackasses. So if I have to be here, the least you can do, 0.92

00:07:07.520 you ungrateful, all you can, $9.99 a month. That's all we ask from you. And if you spend

00:07:12.820 $99 a year, which is cheaper than $9.99 a month, do the math. You can. I know AOC has

00:07:17.600 trouble with this, but if you can do the math, $99 a year, cheaper than $9.99 a month, you'll

00:07:23.000 find this is true. Then you get this. The very greatest in all beverage vessels, the leftist

00:07:26.560 tiers, hot or cold tumblers. So go check it out, and please subscribe right now to keep us

00:07:30.240 on the air and provide us some incentive for the love of God to continue doing shows like

00:07:34.560 this, because I will tell you, I am this close, this close to not. I have a pretty good time.

00:07:42.460 I was about to say, it was good to see you. So last night, not the worst Oscars of all

00:07:47.840 time. I actually have to say, and I think that at least tens of thousands of Americans

00:07:52.460 will agree, certainly not millions, because the ratings were actually up slightly last

00:07:56.540 night. Were they? Yeah, they were up slightly last night. Well, that's because three people

00:07:58.540 watched last year, four watched this year. No, an Oscar, an Academy Awards with no host

00:08:03.240 is more popular than an Academy Awards with Jimmy Kimmel host. No, scientifically proven.

00:08:10.760 Last night was the best host the Oscars have had since Steve Martin. No, in 10 years, that

00:08:16.120 was the best host they've had. No host. The show wasn't bad. I disagree with this. The

00:08:20.440 best host they've had was Ricky Gervais. He was good. You know why? Because what I actually

00:08:24.940 want, if I were going to waste my life watching the Oscars, what I would have wanted was a host 0.99

00:08:29.320 who was just going to crap all over everyone in the room, because the truth is they crap 0.98

00:08:32.820 all over us. I mean, that's what that show was. The entire show, as always, was a three 0.97

00:08:37.520 hour long ode to themselves, with Lady Gaga walking and wearing a $30 million diamond,

00:08:41.860 I kid you not, and not one article in the woke blogosphere about income inequality after

00:08:46.080 she wears a $30 million diamond to the Oscars. You know, Jeff Bezos can create a billion

00:08:50.680 dollar company that employs hundreds of thousands of people, and he's a bad guy. Lady Gaga sings

00:08:54.400 some songs and wears a $30 million diamond, but income inequality is of no consequence whatsoever.

00:08:59.140 And so, you know, honestly, what they should do, if they were smart, is they would have

00:09:02.460 somebody come in and roast the room. They used to do this. Bob Hope used to do this. Bob

00:09:05.400 Hope used to actually do this every year. Bob Hope used to do it. He was actually funny when

00:09:09.040 he did it. And that would have been good. But I did, right before the show, I was telling

00:09:12.640 the guys that I do have a foolproof method of picking the best picture. And I knew who was

00:09:15.860 going to win best picture this year. I knew who was going to win last year and the year

00:09:17.960 before. I've been right three years in a row. Let's hear it. Let's hear it.

00:09:21.080 It's called the woke-a-thon. So here's how it works. All you have to do is pick 0.80

00:09:23.940 the most intersectional candidate among the candidates for best picture this year. So

00:09:27.400 this year, the various nominees were Black Panther about black folks, Black Klansmen 0.57

00:09:31.120 about black folks, the favorite about lesbians, Bohemian Rhapsody about a gay guy. And then 0.90

00:09:35.300 you had, and those were the four intersectional candidates. And then you had A Star is Born,

00:09:39.720 which was non-intersectional. And you had Roma about a Latina. And then you had Green Book,

00:09:43.480 which is about a gay black guy. Done. That's the entire thing. Done. It wasn't gay. It 1.00

00:09:47.840 wasn't black. It was gay and black. Go back to the year before. 1.00

00:09:50.140 But you left out Republican Bad, which was the other film that was nominated.

00:09:54.200 Yeah. Well, yeah. Sorry. I forgot about Republican Bad, but Republican Bad is still about white 0.98

00:09:57.000 people. So that's not a thing. It's not intersectional. Again, not a thing. And then

00:09:59.780 if you go back to last year, you'll recall that the movies that were nominated, if you

00:10:03.700 can recall any of them, it was a bunch of random sort of, there were some that were intersectional.

00:10:10.280 There were some movies about black folks and some movies about gay folks. The one with 0.96

00:10:13.880 Armie Hammer was nominated last year, which is about gay folks.

00:10:17.180 Armie by your name. Right. And then there was a, I'm trying to remember which other,

00:10:19.880 there was a movie about black folks last year as well. Get out. 0.93

00:10:22.320 I think Hidden Faces. Hidden Faces. Hidden Figures. Hidden Figures. Hidden Figures. That

00:10:26.120 was nominated last year. But the one that won was about a gay black guy, right? It was Moonlight 0.98

00:10:31.320 that won. Sorry, it was The Shape of Water that won that had a black person and a gay person 1.00

00:10:34.880 and a commie. And a fish. And a fish. And a person stooping a fish, which is like, boom, done. 0.99

00:10:40.580 Oscars forever. If you have like an NCAA bracket of Oscar winners, that one comes in like

00:10:46.500 seeded one. And then the year before was Moonlight, right? Which is a gay black story. So next 1.00

00:10:51.540 year, all you have to do if you want to win an Oscar is just check the most intersectional

00:10:54.540 boxes. It's like the 2020 Democratic primaries. This is all you have to do if you actually

00:10:58.740 wish to win an Oscar. Because the truth is, the best movies of last year, not a single

00:11:02.900 one was nominated. Not one.

00:11:04.560 Well, that's a good question. What should have been nominated?

00:11:06.840 Okay. I think we'll all agree. I recommend it to all of you, so you have to agree by law.

00:11:10.540 But the best movie of last year, and in my opinion, of the last five years, was The Death of a

00:11:14.320 Stop. It was an excellent movie. Which is phenomenal. And it got no attention. The critics

00:11:19.340 liked it. It got 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is hysterically funny. It is dark. It is

00:11:23.960 really witty. And it's almost exactly true. Every moment of it is almost exactly true.

00:11:27.980 But Left Winger Bad is not an Oscar computer.

00:11:30.580 Yeah, that's not right. That's right. So it didn't even get a single nomination, not

00:11:32.920 one. And everything in that movie is better than anything in any of the movies that were

00:11:36.440 nominated this year. That was my pick. And I know that, Jeremy, you had another movie that

00:11:40.060 came to mind. I thought A Quiet Place. I agree with this. That's what I was going to say.

00:11:42.800 Yeah. Absolutely. They'll never nominate a horror film in this day and age.

00:11:46.180 They did. They nominated Get Out last year.

00:11:47.800 Yeah, that's fair. I stand corrected. But Get Out was way woker than A Quiet Place.

00:11:50.600 Correct. It's a woke movie. And A Quiet Place is not a woke movie.

00:11:53.140 That's right. And it was a real movie movie.

00:11:55.500 It was an inventive movie. It was inventive. It was deeply dramatic and terrifying.

00:12:00.660 Yep. But it was also creative in a way that it was a high concept film.

00:12:04.260 And it also said something to me. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but it said something

00:12:07.660 to me about outrage culture. Open your mouth and they'll come and kill you. 1.00

00:12:10.680 Yeah. That's right. Okay. The other movie, I don't know if you guys saw this one. It won 1.00

00:12:15.220 Best Animated Flick, but it should have been nominated for Best Picture, was Into the Spider

00:12:18.480 Verse. Yeah, that was good. Okay. Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture. Okay. It was

00:12:23.400 fine. Like, I watched it. Oh, it was so much worse than fine. I thought it was okay. I mean,

00:12:27.500 I've seen virtually all the Marvel movies. It was like a B-Marvel movie. Fine. It was like

00:12:31.400 the fourth best superhero movie of the last year. Forget the last five years. The last year,

00:12:35.400 I can name three that are better off the top of my head. Name them. Okay. I will. Into the

00:12:40.300 Spider Verse was a better movie. Infinity War came out this year. That was a better movie. It was a

00:12:44.100 better movie. And here's the controversial part. I'll go with Aquaman over Black Panther. Guys,

00:12:48.640 I'm literally shaking from the racism right now. I am literally shaking. But according to Shape of

00:12:55.360 Water, fish are good. The amazing thing to me- Into the Spider Verse is better than all of

00:13:01.300 these. Well, certainly. Into the Spider Verse is terrific. It's interesting, because I watched

00:13:03.540 Black Panther this week. I hadn't seen it when it first came out, because I wasn't sure if I was

00:13:07.280 allowed. You got the Halloween mask. Yeah, that's right. There's all the controversy. And it was

00:13:12.620 apparently just, you're not supposed to. You're not allowed. That's it for you. So I watched it this

00:13:16.980 week. Is it not a racist movie? It's a racist movie. By the way, I don't mean racist like in the

00:13:21.480 way that the left is racist. No. Because they actually want people to be segregated into

00:13:26.240 different race groups. Yeah, yeah. I mean racist like old school white racism. Yeah. Like,

00:13:31.220 isn't today an old school white racist movie? Well, it's based on a comic that was written

00:13:34.700 in the 60s. I mean, it's- Yeah, and they're using tropes in Africa that seem like they're

00:13:38.660 straight from- These really African tropes that are- Yes. And not only that, the whole idea of the movie

00:13:43.320 was, oh, we could have had European culture if only a magic rock had fallen on us, which is like,

00:13:48.520 first of all, it's degrading. It's degrading to the black people in American culture who have

00:13:52.960 contributed enormous amounts. It's just like, they should be ashamed of their culture, which is 1.00

00:13:57.760 just not true. And we all came here to try and save our lives. It also happens to be not true.

00:14:03.540 There is a magic rock in Nigeria. They have an amazing mineral well in Nigeria. Right. Cobalt is a

00:14:08.380 blue magic rock that exists in Nigeria, and it is not a well-governed place, and so it's a bad place.

00:14:12.960 And it's a very small-minded idea of what culture is. Also, they wanted to build Trump's wall,

00:14:16.760 right? I mean, the whole place exists inside Trump's wall. If you have no dealings with the

00:14:22.260 outside world, if you don't deal with any of the outside world, the idea that colonialism would

00:14:26.140 have corrupted this place just like it corrupted all the others, except they guarded this place,

00:14:29.760 that's not accurate either, because there are places in Africa that were not really touched

00:14:33.040 very much by colonialism, and they're some of the worst places in Africa, too. I mean, like-

00:14:36.500 The only thing that struck me about every single movie is every movie was basically about people

00:14:41.340 my age. You know, they took place in the 60s, the 70s. They were based on movies that were made

00:14:47.620 first in the 1930s. A Star is Born, the Black Panther is Born. Did you see A Star is Born?

00:14:52.940 I saw it, yeah.

00:14:53.540 Okay, so I want to get your opinion on it, because I saw the one with Judy Garland and James

00:14:58.120 Mason, which is an amazing film.

00:14:59.340 Great movie.

00:14:59.840 And Judy Garland is unbelievable. 0.99

00:15:01.240 And the one that's based on with Frederick March is a great movie.

00:15:03.980 Right. So the first two are really good. How is this one?

00:15:06.600 It's mediocre. I mean, Bradley Cooper has now replaced Denzel Washington as the best actor

00:15:12.600 who's also a leading man, and Denzel's kind of aged out of that role, and he's so good

00:15:17.760 that he makes Lady Gaga look bad, and she's not bad. She's just a singer doing an acting

00:15:24.000 turn, so she looks really bad, and they have a lot of ad-lib scenes in which she's just obviously 0.75

00:15:28.180 going off the reservation, doesn't know what she's doing. The music is nice. There's nice

00:15:31.820 music in it, but basically, it's mediocre.

00:15:34.720 And then Romo was nominated, right?

00:15:36.140 I watched Roma this morning.

00:15:38.300 I'm still watching it.

00:15:39.260 I know, yeah, it's still on. I woke up very early to watch this stupid movie, because 1.00

00:15:43.940 Drew's a sadist, and I had to do it on his show. And I watched that whole thing. I mean, 1.00

00:15:50.440 you got through the first part.

00:15:51.680 First 20 minutes.

00:15:52.360 The first five minutes is a puddle. It's a shot of a puddle.

00:15:55.000 Correct.

00:15:56.140 Roma actually typifies everything that is wrong with Hollywood. They say that nostalgia is history 1.00

00:16:04.180 after a few drinks. It is this nostalgic, self-indulgent, pretentious tripe. It is a

00:16:10.520 movie about nothing. It is pointless. In so much as it has a point, it's a sort of bland,

00:16:16.680 bourgeois movie. It is just, it's the sort of movie that people who have never seen a good movie

00:16:22.140 think a good movie is supposed to look like. You know, because it's in black and white,

00:16:26.300 and it's really slow.

00:16:27.300 I mean, he's right that there is legitimately a three-minute establishing shot of water washing

00:16:31.820 over cobblestones in the beginning, followed by another three-minute establishing shot of a

00:16:35.600 small plaza no bigger than the size of our combined offices. Really. And it's not like,

00:16:39.900 it's not like an establishing shot like the beginning of Pinocchio, where it swoops through

00:16:42.980 the entire city. You're like, wow, this is really cool. It's an established shot of a door,

00:16:46.280 and they turn the camera, and it's another door, guys. And then they turn back, it's still,

00:16:50.480 the first door hasn't moved. It's actually still there. It's unbelievable. And this is great

00:16:54.420 direction. That one, by the way, the best Oscar winner last night was Bohemian Rhapsody for best

00:16:59.200 film editing. That is absolutely hysterically funny. Have you guys ever, have you seen any of

00:17:04.040 the clips? Just not even the movie. I saw the movie. Okay, so it is the worst edited film in the

00:17:08.520 history of film. So literally, go back, there are a bunch of people who have posted, like film

00:17:13.440 editors have gone on and posted little clips on Twitter of the movie. There's one scene where

00:17:18.140 the band is sitting around a table, and they're being talked to by the manager or something. And

00:17:21.940 it's just random cuts of reaction shots that don't even make sense. It's like they filmed all of the

00:17:27.400 people with various cameras, and they had a monkey with a toggle switch in back, just trying to do,

00:17:32.040 like it was, it was. Not to mention that the, I know a little something, something about movie

00:17:36.140 making. I haven't been around Hollywood a day or two. I am almost certain that the entire first act

00:17:42.780 of Bohemian Rhapsody was altered in the edit bay, which actually causes the film, the characters

00:17:50.680 to be slightly more sympathetic, which I think is what they were going for. Yeah. But makes the

00:17:54.120 movie not make any sense. There are scenes that I'm certain are happening out of the sequence of

00:17:58.200 the screenplay, which, listen, that happens in Hollywood. But when it's done well in editing,

00:18:04.260 you don't know about it. Right. Whereas in Bohemian Rhapsody, it was pretty, pretty evident.

00:18:07.700 This was one of my favorite things of the night, was Bryan Singer completely disappearing.

00:18:11.520 Oh, they disappeared Bryan Singer. So Bryan, they were winning technical awards,

00:18:14.280 and everybody would go out there and be like, and I'd like to thank everybody down to the grip.

00:18:18.080 And the director is just like in the back going, what about me? Like, you were molesting the people.

00:18:23.340 It was literally, literally the Oscars were the end of Death of Stalin.

00:18:28.720 That's exactly right.

00:18:29.600 You want to hear something said? I happen to be reading a book that is about the friendship

00:18:33.140 between Henry Fonda and James Stewart. In 1940, James Stewart won the Oscar for Philadelphia Story

00:18:38.340 to make up for the fact that they hadn't given it to him for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the year

00:18:43.020 before. And when he won, he felt he had stolen it from Henry Fonda for Grapes of Wrath. Those movies

00:18:48.200 are still, you watch those today, and they are as modern as they were at the time. It's like 80 years

00:18:52.800 ago now. The movies then, I mean, it's not exaggerating. The number of people who will watch these movies in 80

00:18:56.040 years is exactly zero. Zero number of people who will watch them. I mean, you can't name the ones that have won in the last

00:19:00.820 three. Yeah. When's the last time you picked up a movie that, the last movie that I saw where I've

00:19:05.620 actually picked it up since it was nominated for anything was Whiplash. That was, I think, four

00:19:09.340 years ago. Yeah, you like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but, but the number of movies that you will actually,

00:19:13.020 The Pianist, I think, was the last, the last winner that I actually watched. Every year at Christmas

00:19:17.420 time, I take in a showing of Crash. This was, this was my favorite part. There were a bunch of articles

00:19:23.900 about how this was the worst, best, best picture winner since Crash. And I thought, did anyone see

00:19:28.580 Shape of Water last year? Yeah. It was the worst movie I have ever seen. I mean, forget about the

00:19:32.120 worst winner. Except it had Nick Searcy in it. The international film. Well, that's different,

00:19:35.780 right? I mean, that's right. But Nick Searcy was in, Nick Searcy was also in every single movie last

00:19:39.680 year. Yeah, I know. Every movie. He was in three other films. I want to tell you guys a funny story

00:19:43.560 about international film and television star and Peabody award-winning actor Nick Searcy.

00:19:48.180 He followed me on Twitter today. Wow, this is big. He knew you were doing this show. You wanted to get

00:19:54.140 good. So we got to get to another one of our sponsors. I can't even pretend to do it. I'm

00:20:00.720 now in my head about these ad rates. They got to you. They got to me. Yeah. You should never read

00:20:04.760 Twitter. Never read the comments, you guys. Bravo, company manufacturing, Ben. So when the founders

00:20:08.960 crafted the constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual

00:20:12.140 to share their ideas without limitation by the government. The second right they enumerated was the

00:20:16.180 right of the people to protect that speech and their own persons with force. I believe in that.

00:20:20.020 Everybody in this room believes in that, except for somebody back there. But in any case,

00:20:23.360 Bravo company manufacturing was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago to

00:20:27.900 build a professional grade product that meets combat standards. BCM believes that the same level

00:20:31.960 of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether they're a private citizen

00:20:35.660 or a professional. They are not a sporting arms company. As I have said many times, a gun is not for

00:20:40.520 going hunting. A gun is for protecting your life. It is protecting your civilization, protecting your

00:20:44.860 family. That's what it's about. If you can go hunting with the two, fantastic. But BCM is manufactured,

00:20:48.280 so if you're in a life-threatening situation, the gun is going to work. Each component of a BCM rifle is hand

00:20:52.960 assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standards. And BCM works with leading instructors

00:20:57.560 of marksmanship from top levels of America's special ops forces who can teach the skills

00:21:01.660 necessary to defend yourself, your family, or others. To learn more about Bravo company

00:21:05.480 manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com, and you can discover more about their products,

00:21:10.500 special offers, and upcoming news. That is bravocompanymfg.com. If you need more convincing,

00:21:15.700 go check them out at YouTube. They have a YouTube channel, youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa. Meet the people

00:21:20.460 behind the company. It really is fantastic. I know the people who run Bravo company USA. Great folks.

00:21:24.980 Check them out at bravocompanymfg.com or youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa. They're doing important work

00:21:30.320 and you should join them. Yeah. So, I think I took you to buy your first gun. You did. You did. I still

00:21:36.320 have it somewhere. I took you to buy your first gun. You did. Yeah, you've got a real track record. Yeah, it

00:21:42.100 really is a thing that I've done because I'm from Texas, as you know. Once I moved to LA, I realized that no

00:21:47.220 one owns a firearm. And I thought, well, I'm going to make it, you know, like some people help the

00:21:50.680 poor. Some people help the widows. I'm just going to help people ammo up. Back then, I didn't even

00:21:57.440 know I was a conservative. That's a true story. It was during the Bush-Gore election. It was the

00:22:02.700 first presidential election I ever voted in. You know, like George W. Bush had been my governor

00:22:07.280 for eight years, and Al Gore had been my vice president for eight years. I kind of didn't want

00:22:11.240 to see either one of them go. I thought, you know, one of these guys is going to lose. Go off his rocker,

00:22:15.880 grow a great big burly beard, say that the sky is falling, and become a billionaire. And I just

00:22:20.520 didn't want it to happen to old George, so in the end, I'm going to lose. Thank you. I didn't need a gun,

00:22:24.860 though, because I live next to one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and one of the biggest anti-gun

00:22:29.280 activists, and there were so many guards with guns in her house that they would call me up. They 0.79

00:22:34.300 would call me up and say to me, we're watching your house, too. Don't worry. That's not true. I don't need to.

00:22:37.700 That's true? That's absolutely true. Oh, yeah. Absolutely true. So her armed security. She had so much

00:22:41.780 armed security that they were watching my house. They were watching your house. Yeah, so I didn't need a gun.

00:22:45.880 Well, the most heavily armed person left in our office since the last person went on to have

00:22:52.120 babies, which is a good thing, is one Elisha Krause, who, Elisha, what do you got for us over there?

00:22:58.860 Well, you know, I might like Miss Congeniality over here. Got holsters everywhere, and no one can tell. 1.00

00:23:05.900 So the celebrities last night went home with, you know, these swag bags that were upwards of $100,000.

00:23:11.660 Well, tonight, the guys are going to be going home with a much cooler but less expensive swag bag.

00:23:17.840 Wow. We want to be sure that everybody heads over to Amazon, because we've got some really great gear,

00:23:22.200 including these little pop sockets that people put on their iPhones, especially for us ladies. 1.00

00:23:28.220 This is actually, thank you, Patriarchy, for creating these, because it makes it easier to text with our small hands.

00:23:35.800 And it works really well.

00:23:38.140 That was tiny, delicate little hands. 0.52

00:23:41.960 Elisha, I think it's unfair of you to just assume that because men invented literally every damn thing,

00:23:47.300 that they also invented pop sockets.

00:23:48.820 That you also invented these?

00:23:50.340 Yeah, I didn't see a pair.

00:23:51.160 My favorite thing is that...

00:23:52.240 Hold on, I'm sorry, Jeremy, I just looked it up.

00:23:53.960 Men also invented pop sockets.

00:23:56.800 But you know what?

00:23:57.600 You didn't invent Spanx, and thank God for those.

00:24:00.200 And also, thank God for our amazing Daily Wire subscribers.

00:24:04.420 We do have some subscriber questions.

00:24:06.240 Guys, Elisha, she's on fire today.

00:24:08.780 We should just go. 0.99

00:24:10.680 All you had to do was call her a prostitute, and you changed everything. 0.99

00:24:14.740 It's the baby I have. 0.99

00:24:16.100 Yeah, somebody knocked her up. 1.00

00:24:16.960 We've got two levels of creativity going on here.

00:24:19.660 Two girls ready to take you guys down. 1.00

00:24:22.560 All right.

00:24:23.680 But we have some awesome subscriber questions, all related to the Academy Awards last night.

00:24:27.780 This first question comes from Philip.

00:24:28.960 He says, people seem to look for moral and philosophical leadership from famous people,

00:24:33.900 like actors and politicians, or Michael Knowles.

00:24:36.980 Do you think this is part of human nature, and should we try to do something to change this?

00:24:41.900 Well, I'll take a crack at it and say that for people who haven't visited Hollywood before,

00:24:47.260 there really is like a Babylonian motif that Hollywood deliberately steers into.

00:24:52.780 Like, if you go down to the Hollywood and Highland Center, which is where the Academy Awards take place,

00:24:56.540 that's the home of the Dolby Theater, is right down the block.

00:24:59.460 It's literally a block away from the Roosevelt Hotel where the first Academy Awards took place.

00:25:04.140 And its complete aesthetic is Babylonian mysticism, right?

00:25:08.840 So, in other words, my point is that idolatry is a sort of winked at, if not openly celebrated, aspect of Hollywood.

00:25:17.920 And so, yeah, the stars are a kind of modern idol.

00:25:21.900 And it's kind of funny to call them modern because one of the things that the Academy Awards really brought home to me last night

00:25:26.460 is that Hollywood is dying.

00:25:28.580 The movies in particular, TV's kind of in a golden era, the movies are dying.

00:25:33.260 You know they were this close to basically writing themselves out of existence.

00:25:35.720 If Roma wins Best Picture, they're toast. 0.88

00:25:37.660 Because Roma only appeared in theaters for purposes of Oscar bait.

00:25:41.280 Roma is on Netflix.

00:25:42.420 That's right.

00:25:42.800 If Roma had won, then the streaming services would have produced the best movie in Hollywood.

00:25:47.020 And streaming services would have completely been on the path to what they still are.

00:25:50.380 They are basically on the path to wiping out theater movies.

00:25:52.780 Yeah, but I think that before, we discussed on the show before what happened to Hollywood,

00:25:57.720 so we don't have to relitigate the whole thing today.

00:26:00.120 There were the two really ill-conceived writers' guild strikes that happened right in a row

00:26:04.980 at the beginning of reality television, at the beginning of YouTube.

00:26:08.000 But the result of those things is that the movie star, who historically was an idol,

00:26:14.320 just like, you know, 10 years before, the rock star, who was also an idol figure, you know,

00:26:19.420 was diminished by Napster.

00:26:22.120 And then the two writers' guild strikes and a few other bad decisions in Hollywood

00:26:25.240 brought the movie star low.

00:26:27.460 So the funny thing is, I don't think people look to movie stars

00:26:29.960 to be their intellectual, philosophical, and religious idols anymore.

00:26:33.320 I think they did for about a century.

00:26:35.000 I think one of the things that Hollywood hasn't tuned into yet

00:26:39.060 is that people don't care what they think in the way that they...

00:26:42.600 Hollywood used to be able to move the needle. 0.90

00:26:44.500 Well, Stalin tried to and maybe even succeeded at taking over Hollywood. 0.84

00:26:50.040 That's what gave us Ronald Reagan.

00:26:51.940 Because Hollywood was so influential.

00:26:53.640 And I really think to now, today, Maya Rudolph walks out to give the opening jokes,

00:26:58.740 can't help but immediately take a crack at the audience, the people who watch the movie.

00:27:03.020 64 million people.

00:27:04.080 And I think everybody just yawns.

00:27:05.660 I don't think anybody really cares what they think.

00:27:07.080 I think there's something else going on, too.

00:27:08.080 And I totally agree with you, obviously, about the idolatry.

00:27:10.160 The truth is that what social science tends to show is for the same reason that if you...

00:27:15.520 There's a great experiment, one of my favorite social science experiments.

00:27:17.960 If you take somebody and you put them out on a street corner,

00:27:19.920 and you just have them look up, like at nothing, like just have them look up,

00:27:23.240 then within five minutes, there'll be a crowd of people standing around that person looking up

00:27:26.260 because that's just what we're geared toward.

00:27:27.840 We're geared toward sensing both threats and things we feel like other people are looking at.

00:27:31.740 So if somebody starts to gain a level of fame,

00:27:33.320 everybody starts to look at the person who is famous.

00:27:35.760 I don't think that it's a matter of Hollywood stars are no longer relevant.

00:27:39.600 I think it's that there is no such thing as a Hollywood star anymore.

00:27:42.820 The only way that fame existed before was we all knew the people who were on our movie screens

00:27:47.320 or we knew the people who were on our TV screens.

00:27:49.080 There's a whole level of fame that I would say that virtually no generation above the age of 25 knows about.

00:27:53.960 YouTube stars are stars, right?

00:27:55.240 YouTube stars are actually the new movie stars.

00:27:57.200 There are people with 98 million followers on YouTube,

00:28:00.640 and those people actually are change and tastemakers when it comes to this sort of stuff.

00:28:05.020 But going all the way back to the Bible and Saul being selected

00:28:07.600 because he was a head taller than everybody else,

00:28:09.800 there has been this idea that the movie star matinee idol has something to do with all of it.

00:28:14.640 It is a difference, though, that it used to be when the actors came to town,

00:28:18.140 you locked up your daughters. 0.71

00:28:19.120 They were disreputable.

00:28:20.060 They were the lowest level.

00:28:21.000 Like Knowles.

00:28:21.720 Like, you know, for instance. 0.98

00:28:22.980 For all the history of the arts, actors have been lumped in with prostitutes. 0.98

00:28:27.380 Well, really. 0.82

00:28:28.000 And now the fact that they...

00:28:29.400 I think people still feel the same way about them,

00:28:31.300 except that they also worship their beauty and they worship their style.

00:28:34.520 I'm not sure if people ever listen to their opinions.

00:28:36.480 I think movies move the needles.

00:28:38.500 I'm not sure movie stars ever do.

00:28:39.900 Well, I think that's true. 0.98

00:28:40.480 They worship their beauty and their prostitutes. 0.95

00:28:43.420 Alicia, do you have one more question for us? 0.92

00:28:45.280 Jeez Louise, taking a heart on the chin today, Alicia. 0.99

00:28:47.120 I'm sorry I'm standing between you guys.

00:28:49.060 I have a feeling that some prostitutes probably make a lot more money than I do. 1.00

00:28:56.500 Wow, she's owning it. 0.77

00:28:57.900 Oh, man.

00:28:58.320 This is amazing.

00:28:59.420 Also, the MSRP of this ain't much, folks.

00:29:02.440 So you can head over to Amazon right now and check out our gear.

00:29:05.040 Next question comes from Mike, who's a subscriber, by the way.

00:29:08.760 He thought it was worth spending $99 so he could get a leftist-tier tumbler and ask you guys a question.

00:29:13.560 We thank him.

00:29:14.400 What was the last best picture that you actually felt deserved the award?

00:29:18.880 Oh, jeez.

00:29:19.880 Now I need to look up a history of those pictures.

00:29:21.020 Yeah, you have to look up.

00:29:21.660 I've got to Google them.

00:29:23.080 That is the problem.

00:29:24.420 I mean...

00:29:24.920 I don't even remember.

00:29:26.620 Gone with the Wind one.

00:29:27.460 Yeah, but The Wizard of Oz is a better movie.

00:29:31.040 The Wizard of Oz is a great movie.

00:29:32.380 But Gone with the Wind is a great movie.

00:29:33.920 I think The Wizard of Oz is the greatest achievement in the history of Hollywood.

00:29:37.100 I think there's a solid case to be made for it.

00:29:38.560 I think The Wizard of Oz is the best Hollywood ever.

00:29:39.580 I think it's a great movie, and I wouldn't even argue.

00:29:42.580 I mean, I think it's Casablanca myself, but even so...

00:29:45.340 But here's the thing.

00:29:46.060 Casablanca may be a better movie, but The Wizard of Oz is a greater achievement.

00:29:49.080 That's correct.

00:29:49.420 It's an artistic achievement building an entire other world.

00:29:51.980 That one...

00:29:52.420 I mean, my grandmother told me she saw it in the theaters.

00:29:54.180 And when she went to the theater and actually saw it, and suddenly Dorothy opens the door,

00:29:59.040 and then it's in color, that one shot changed the world.

00:30:02.420 It's a world-changing shot.

00:30:03.540 It's an incredible thing.

00:30:04.320 When I was a kid, the only color TV was owned by a guy who lived across our backyard.

00:30:08.940 We would walk over every year to see The Wizard of Oz.

00:30:12.740 And then I was like three, and every time the witch came, I would get scared and have to go home.

00:30:17.200 For years, I never saw the entire movie.

00:30:19.420 You know, I gotta tell you, the one that won in 2014 was Birdman,

00:30:23.260 which no one liked because it was very indulgent.

00:30:25.620 I actually really liked it because it was very indulgent.

00:30:28.160 Shocker.

00:30:28.180 Big frickin' shock. 1.00

00:30:28.800 It's a garbage movie, and you're a garbage person. 1.00

00:30:31.800 I agree with half of that. 1.00

00:30:33.080 I agree you're a garbage person, but... 1.00

00:30:35.600 The movie was okay. 1.00

00:30:37.200 The movie was okay.

00:30:38.540 You know, the actual...

00:30:40.080 I mean, No Country for Old Men was good.

00:30:41.780 The Departed was good.

00:30:42.000 No Country was fabulous.

00:30:43.340 Gladiator, I think, was actually the last really great Best Picture winner.

00:30:46.940 I was saying great Best Picture winners or ones that you enjoyed.

00:30:50.760 Because I'll say that in 2010, the King's Speech won, which I enjoyed.

00:30:56.220 I like that.

00:30:56.500 Which I enjoyed.

00:30:58.200 And, let's see.

00:30:59.280 Yeah, No Country for Old Men before that. 0.84

00:31:00.840 But I would never watch the King's Speech again.

00:31:01.600 But it's few and far between.

00:31:02.780 And then you go back to the 30s and 40s in every year.

00:31:05.340 Every single year.

00:31:06.860 And the ones that lost are classic.

00:31:08.080 This is exactly right.

00:31:09.060 It's exactly right.

00:31:09.780 I mean, if you go back to...

00:31:11.120 I mean, I'm not going to do 1939 because that's unfair.

00:31:13.540 Yeah.

00:31:13.660 Because 1939 is the best year in the history of film.

00:31:15.760 Right.

00:31:16.300 I mean, it's gone with the dark and very good.

00:31:18.080 But these were just the pictures nominated for Best Picture.

00:31:20.660 And the year before was Adventures of Robin Hood.

00:31:23.300 Yeah.

00:31:23.800 And the thing is, they were not only nominated for Best Picture.

00:31:26.920 They were also the top of the box office, which is the art that Hollywood has lost.

00:31:29.600 Well, this is the other thing is that there came a point in American culture where the

00:31:34.360 left decided that it was very bad that the American people were becoming cultured.

00:31:37.200 This is in the 1950s.

00:31:38.100 Because the truth is, in the 1950s, more Americans bought a ticket for a symphony orchestra

00:31:41.700 than bought a ticket to a baseball game.

00:31:43.180 But really?

00:31:43.920 I mean, yes.

00:31:44.380 I did not know that.

00:31:45.360 Americans were buying the Harvard Classics during that period.

00:31:48.200 Yep.

00:31:48.460 Like tens of thousands of Americans every year were subscribing to the Harvard Classics.

00:31:51.960 Americans, like the newfound prosperity of the 50s after World War II was being channeled

00:31:56.560 toward a betterment of actual knowledge.

00:31:58.980 Yeah.

00:31:59.160 And the left decided that because they were making the case that capitalism actually emptied

00:32:02.460 you out because they're in league with sort of a Marxist philosophy, they started

00:32:07.400 seeing this as bourgeois.

00:32:08.820 And so anything that was popular had to, by necessity, be bourgeois.

00:32:12.580 And so it became, okay, now the stuff that really is good is the stuff that people don't

00:32:16.260 like.

00:32:16.960 Because the more they don't, it's like, in my view, what happened to Stephen Sondheim

00:32:20.680 in theater?

00:32:21.100 If you look at Stephen Sondheim in theater, every musical that he did beyond Sweeney Todd,

00:32:25.320 he started getting more and more and more obscure because he actually doesn't like the

00:32:28.560 audience.

00:32:28.900 He thinks that the audience, if they get him, it's a lack on his part.

00:32:32.380 Yep.

00:32:32.520 He hasn't been sophisticated enough.

00:32:33.840 And so if you look at Sondheim's stuff, you know, beyond Sweeney and Into the Woods, it

00:32:38.700 starts to go into assassins and passion.

00:32:40.840 It's like that with the movies, too.

00:32:42.220 They've decided that they will not, and the only movie that they feel like they'll reward

00:32:45.700 that did really big box office is Black Panther because they feel they have to.

00:32:48.820 Not to let the left off the hook, but this is what happens when art forms age.

00:32:52.280 They get taken over by intellectuals, and they split into empty entertainments and intellectual

00:32:57.460 things, some of which are good.

00:32:58.760 Ulysses is a good novel, but who reads it?

00:33:01.060 You know, nobody understands it except, you know, people like intellectuals.

00:33:04.100 But I think this was a deliberate, I think this was a murder of an industry.

00:33:06.540 I think it was a suicide of an industry.

00:33:08.440 I think that everybody here, everybody in this business knows that what pays the bills

00:33:12.480 is Avengers Infinity War, and they're all embarrassed that Avengers Infinity War pays

00:33:15.860 the bills, so they go and they make Birdman.

00:33:17.220 But it's not a memorable movie.

00:33:18.680 No, I'm going to go a step further than that and say they know that Avengers Infinity War

00:33:22.180 is what pays the bills, but they don't know how to make Avengers Infinity War transcend.

00:33:27.640 That's it.

00:33:28.140 They actually don't know how to make it great.

00:33:29.060 It's not an actual good movie.

00:33:30.180 That's right.

00:33:30.580 It's a good movie.

00:33:31.160 Not a great movie.

00:33:31.800 It's a good movie.

00:33:32.420 But there's no meaning to it.

00:33:34.680 Like, they used to be able to unify meaning with story.

00:33:37.020 They understood the limitations of their craft were actually in some ways helpful.

00:33:40.920 You have to please people and also bring a deeper meaning in there.

00:33:43.600 Like, Casablanca is a great potboiler that also happens to have an enormous amount of

00:33:47.340 deep meaning on a variety of levels.

00:33:48.580 It is interesting when they succeeded in that film, Logan, which is actually a good

00:33:52.100 movie.

00:33:52.560 Nobody knew it.

00:33:53.000 Logan should have won Best Picture.

00:33:54.520 I mean, nobody knew it was a good movie.

00:33:55.940 Logan was the best film.

00:33:57.040 By the way, here are the movies from 1939.

00:33:58.800 Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,

00:34:02.520 Nanachka, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.

00:34:05.360 Every single one of them you can watch.

00:34:06.720 Every one is a classic.

00:34:07.840 Every one is a classic.

00:34:08.240 I actually had forgotten about Wuthering Heights, another tremendous film.

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00:35:35.680 Go check them out.

00:35:36.260 Stamps.com.

00:35:37.140 Click on that microphone at the top of the homepage.

00:35:38.540 Type in Shapiro.

00:35:39.320 You get that four-week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale with no long-term commitment.

00:35:42.980 It's about as good a deal as you can get.

00:35:44.260 Yeah.

00:35:44.460 I want to talk about something John Nolte observed last night that I thought was such

00:35:48.220 a fabulous point.

00:35:49.880 He said that the real problem, the reason that the Oscars are no good.

00:35:53.440 Sure, they condescend.

00:35:55.280 Sure, they openly disdain their audience.

00:35:58.180 Sure, they're puffed up and self-important.

00:36:00.220 But the real problem is there just aren't any movie stars.

00:36:02.060 The movies are bad.

00:36:02.700 Oh, no, no.

00:36:03.340 There aren't any movie stars.

00:36:03.940 His great observation was they opened the show.

00:36:08.220 Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler.

00:36:12.900 Amy Poehler.

00:36:13.600 Yeah.

00:36:14.460 I think all three fabulously talented, very funny.

00:36:17.500 They're TV stars.

00:36:18.380 They're stars of the small screen.

00:36:20.520 They have appeared in some movies, but they are not movie stars.

00:36:25.360 The day of the movie star is over.

00:36:28.280 It's gone.

00:36:28.580 And people did go to the movies to see a Jimmy Stewart movie.

00:36:32.400 Yes, and people tuned into the Academy Awards because these weren't people who lived their

00:36:36.980 lives in front of us all day, every day.

00:36:39.220 They were mysterious.

00:36:41.320 They were from another world.

00:36:42.720 They descended down from Babylon, right?

00:36:45.600 And then we paid money and went into a dark room and projected them up there.

00:36:49.080 That is a different power than people who beam into your living room and you sit in your

00:36:52.800 underwear and flick through and see them.

00:36:54.820 And there were people hired to protect their reputations.

00:36:57.960 The idea that you protect an actor's reputation today is laughable.

00:37:01.360 If he goes into rehab, he has to tell us all about it.

00:37:04.580 They're just people now, which, look, that may be a healthy thing in some ways, but it's

00:37:08.560 also ruined the industry.

00:37:10.160 Your point is totally correct.

00:37:11.500 I have a cousin who's a legit movie star.

00:37:14.100 I mean, people know this on Wikipedia.

00:37:16.620 My cousin was Mara Wilson, who was the star of Matilda and Miracle on 34th Street.

00:37:20.560 We'd go up around the corner from each other.

00:37:21.720 And her mom was my dad's sister.

00:37:26.020 And one of the reasons that her mom never wanted her to get into TV when she was younger,

00:37:30.680 I remember her saying this to my dad, was because with movie stars, there was a certain

00:37:34.660 unapproachability.

00:37:35.660 You didn't feel like you knew them.

00:37:36.940 You felt like they're up there on the screen.

00:37:38.440 They're of a different caliber.

00:37:39.780 And then when you bring them down into your TV, then it's the same feeling that they have

00:37:42.680 about watching your show or my show or maybe know it's a show that somebody watched

00:37:45.660 that thing.

00:37:46.000 They still are filled with deep awe information from my show.

00:37:49.720 But people feel like they know you.

00:37:50.980 I'm feeling the law that you have a show.

00:37:51.360 On TV, people feel like they're friends with you, right?

00:37:53.320 Yeah.

00:37:53.480 On TV, people feel like they're friends with you and they know you.

00:37:55.900 Right?

00:37:56.400 You literally, you bring them into your home.

00:37:58.000 That's right.

00:37:58.260 And as opposed to going-

00:37:59.480 But let me make an argument why this is a good thing, okay?

00:38:00.900 Because, and obviously I have a bias here, but it emphasizes story.

00:38:04.760 It emphasizes the writer.

00:38:06.080 You watch TV because the stories are good and the stories are good because the writer is

00:38:10.060 king. 0.70

00:38:10.180 They treat writers like garbage in the movie industry and they get what they pay for. 0.87

00:38:14.160 So I totally agree that it is a good thing for story.

00:38:17.040 I would much rather watch, I mean, I spent the last several weeks going through old episodes

00:38:20.960 of The Sopranos.

00:38:21.720 The greatest TV show of our lives.

00:38:22.880 Now I can stream it full scale.

00:38:24.900 Yeah.

00:38:25.120 And it's great.

00:38:25.660 And at some point I want your guys' analysis of the finale because I'm 10 years late on

00:38:28.980 this thing.

00:38:29.360 But in any case-

00:38:30.080 Maybe the greatest episode of television.

00:38:32.920 It's a pretty astonishing show.

00:38:34.380 But you're right about all of that, but I do think that there is such a thing as the

00:38:39.340 culture fragmenting.

00:38:40.840 So I think there, to a certain extent, there was something good about the idea of on a certain

00:38:45.720 night every year, everybody was going to get together and watch The Wizard of Oz.

00:38:49.780 When there were cultural events, we still feel it in America.

00:38:52.360 Every so often there's like the Super Bowl is a cultural event and it's good for the country.

00:38:55.980 Everybody stops shouting at each other for five minutes and it's actually good.

00:39:00.160 I think one of the big problems with the Oscars is not only is an event we used to share,

00:39:04.020 it's now become so politically polarizing.

00:39:05.900 I think that it's actually a problem.

00:39:07.240 I think that it was something where we all got together and we ood and aahed at certain

00:39:12.040 aspects of the movie making.

00:39:14.120 And we also had rooting interests.

00:39:15.260 Like imagine how many more people- I would have watched the Oscars if this year it were-

00:39:19.500 I love The Death of Stalin, but if this year the Oscars had actually been- had been

00:39:24.660 Into the Spider-Verse versus A Quiet Place versus, frankly, something like Game Night.

00:39:29.580 When was the last time they nominated an actual- 0.53

00:39:31.220 Yeah, Game Night was terrific.

00:39:31.580 When was the last time they nominated a comedy?

00:39:33.320 Right, right.

00:39:33.720 They'll never nominate a comedy.

00:39:34.840 And if they do, it's going to be like an actual- it'll be a dramedy, like Little in the Sunshine

00:39:38.800 or something.

00:39:39.500 Yeah.

00:39:39.660 They'll never nominate an out-and-out comedy because they look down on it.

00:39:42.540 But one of the very first Oscar winners that happened one night is an out-and-out comedy.

00:39:45.380 There are a bunch of out-and-out comedies that won the early Oscars.

00:39:47.420 Yeah.

00:39:48.140 That notion that we all got together and watched something together is gone now.

00:39:52.760 And that's what is so- people on the left-hand side.

00:39:55.360 So why are you so frustrated at the Oscars when they do this leftist stuff when you know

00:39:58.220 they're going to do the leftist stuff?

00:39:59.200 And it's because you took something away from us.

00:40:01.340 I used to sit around the TV with my parents when I was a kid, and we all used to watch

00:40:05.040 the Oscars together.

00:40:05.900 And then around 2003, 2004, I vividly remember this.

00:40:09.000 We used to watch the Oscars, all of us as a family, and sort of enjoy it.

00:40:11.760 And then around 2003, 2004, like the crash time, they started to really get openly political.

00:40:16.740 And then Michael Moore in- what was it, 2003?

00:40:19.160 I think that's right.

00:40:19.680 And I remember every year, my mom and sisters would want to watch for all the dresses and

00:40:23.720 stuff.

00:40:24.220 And my dad would walk in every 15 minutes and go, why are you watching this, Bleep?

00:40:26.880 And walk out.

00:40:27.760 And it got to the point where I was like, we don't want to watch this anymore, because

00:40:29.980 why would we want to watch this?

00:40:31.800 And it wasn't just my dad ruining it, although he was.

00:40:33.640 It was also the fact that he wasn't wrong about that.

00:40:37.500 Like, it was political preaching, guised as entertainment.

00:40:41.000 And it was deeply, deeply irritating.

00:40:43.360 And this is a real change, by the way.

00:40:44.900 I mean, there was every few years, you know, Brando sends a Native American to receive an 0.99

00:40:48.500 award, or Patty Chayefsky gives that actually great speech, shooting down anti-Semitism.

00:40:53.180 But then, when Michael Moore did his speech about how awful George Bush is, half of that

00:40:58.700 audience booed him.

00:41:00.480 Imagine that today.

00:41:01.480 Not a single person would boo him.

00:41:03.240 Steve Martin came out and made a joke about the Teamsters throwing Michael Moore in the

00:41:06.640 trunk of a car.

00:41:07.520 And people applauded that.

00:41:09.280 There was actually a sense, this is not right.

00:41:12.180 We shouldn't be politicizing the Oscars.

00:41:15.100 Fast forward 15 years now, that is, people don't even remember that.

00:41:19.640 And there's a reason, too, is because our government has become, reached into every segment of our

00:41:24.060 lives. 0.99

00:41:24.580 In the old days, the government could do stupid stuff, and you never knew about it. 0.98

00:41:27.580 It always shocked me when I lived in England, that the government would pass a law, and two 0.98

00:41:31.560 days later, you would feel it, you know, because it's a small country.

00:41:34.540 Here, that didn't used to happen.

00:41:35.740 The government was smaller, and it didn't reach into every aspect of your life.

00:41:40.180 And so politics, you could argue politics and not feel like you were arguing about your

00:41:43.720 own life.

00:41:44.160 This is right.

00:41:44.500 You felt you were arguing philosophy.

00:41:46.020 Now, with a government this big, a government where the President of the United States can

00:41:49.800 talk about who should be allowed into men's rooms and girls' rooms in schools in Arkansas,

00:41:55.240 someplace he's probably never even been, except on a fast train, that's a government that's

00:41:59.700 way too big.

00:42:00.380 In the 50s, if the President wanted to have a say in who got to go into a school, he sent

00:42:03.760 the National Guard.

00:42:04.980 It was a big deal.

00:42:06.880 Yeah, that's right.

00:42:08.040 It wasn't a tweet.

00:42:08.940 It wasn't a tweet.

00:42:09.440 It wasn't a tweet.

00:42:09.840 But it's also true that Hollywood has embraced its political role in an insane way.

00:42:14.300 I mean, like, so last night, Representative John Lewis showed up on the stage of the Oscars

00:42:17.440 to talk about Green Book.

00:42:18.600 Now, John Lewis, everyone has veneration for him and should for what he did during the

00:42:22.080 civil rights movement.

00:42:22.700 Of course.

00:42:23.560 He's a partisan Democrat.

00:42:24.660 Right.

00:42:24.860 He showed up to introduce a movie that, like, what, 50 years after the civil rights movement?

00:42:29.300 And he's not the only Democrat who's done this.

00:42:30.800 Joe Biden was on that stage.

00:42:31.900 Michelle Obama showed up at the, what, the Grammys two weeks ago? 0.73

00:42:36.240 I mean, when was the last time?

00:42:37.280 Barack and Michelle, as President, showed up at the Oscars.

00:42:39.680 Yeah, they filmed a video for it.

00:42:41.320 Yeah.

00:42:41.780 There's never, and there never will be a Republican who actually appears there.

00:42:44.840 No, the best way for a Republican to appear there is if a movie destroying their reputation

00:42:49.220 appears as a nominee for Best Picture.

00:42:51.060 And we haven't talked about Vice, and it's probably beneath our dignity, almost, to talk

00:42:55.420 about Vice.

00:42:55.860 Oh, I think it's an important picture.

00:42:57.540 Can you?

00:42:58.240 You've seen it?

00:42:58.880 Yes.

00:42:59.080 Oh, I've seen it.

00:42:59.700 Yeah.

00:43:00.240 And it's a fantasy.

00:43:01.180 It's like watching a Hallmark movie.

00:43:03.080 I watch Hallmark movies to find out what girls dream about. 1.00

00:43:05.800 You watch Vice to find out what left-wing Democrats do.

00:43:07.740 There is a scene in Vice that is not just stretching reality, that is just factually inaccurate.

00:43:13.040 Scooter Libby says, Valerie Plame is that writer's wife.

00:43:18.360 And then Dick Cheney says, leak her identity. 0.94

00:43:21.160 We know that didn't happen.

00:43:22.640 There was a big investigation.

00:43:23.880 It was Richard Armitage who leaked that identity.

00:43:26.300 But the director of the film, in an interview, was asked about this.

00:43:29.640 And they said, but we know that it was Armitage who released it.

00:43:33.280 He goes, we know it was Cheney, right?

00:43:36.000 It was Cheney, right?

00:43:36.880 Yeah.

00:43:37.060 It meant Cheney.

00:43:37.380 And he's an open socialist, Adam McKay.

00:43:39.000 He is a socialist.

00:43:39.960 He made a movie about the crash.

00:43:41.680 It was a pretty decent movie.

00:43:43.100 Big Short.

00:43:43.700 The Big Short.

00:43:44.300 But they never mentioned the fact that that crash started with left-wing policies causing

00:43:50.520 them to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, guaranteed by the government,

00:43:54.120 which then spread through Wall Street.

00:43:55.440 So there was blame to put on the left and the right, but they only put it on one side.

00:43:59.860 That's the movie.

00:44:00.460 And I know it goes without saying, but imagine for a moment that someone on the right was

00:44:06.360 able to come up with $65 million to make a movie about, a major movie with one of the

00:44:12.500 few movie stars, true movie stars, Christian Bale.

00:44:14.800 I had a bunch of movie stars.

00:44:15.760 Amy Adams is in that film.

00:44:17.080 Sam Rockwell is in that film.

00:44:17.980 And good performances.

00:44:18.660 True movie stars about how Barack Obama was actually just a pot-smoking, hipster, Chicago

00:44:29.280 guy, shumgang guy without a real thought in his head, but Joe Biden was really running

00:44:36.300 the government.

00:44:36.980 You know, the old white guy was really doing all the work. 0.88

00:44:40.200 It would be just as fanciful.

00:44:42.420 Right.

00:44:43.080 Joe Biden's never doing any work in flight.

00:44:44.580 By the way, you don't even have to imagine this because there was a miniseries that is

00:44:48.320 an excellent miniseries that was made about 9-11 by Cyrus Nowrista, in which he pointed

00:44:52.720 out that Bill Clinton completely botched Osama bin Laden and that he failed to take a shot

00:44:57.300 at Osama bin Laden.

00:44:58.220 ABC not only pulled the miniseries after one showing, despite massive ratings, it is not

00:45:02.540 available for distribution anywhere.

00:45:04.000 And they won't do it.

00:45:04.520 And people have offered them millions of dollars to buy it out at lockup.

00:45:07.680 They will not release it.

00:45:08.740 It's amazing.

00:45:09.520 And the funny thing is, it's not even...

00:45:11.040 I wrote a piece for the Washington Post mentioning this.

00:45:13.220 Yes.

00:45:13.340 And they cut it out.

00:45:14.400 Of course they did.

00:45:15.280 And I said, put it back in because the whole thing was about censoring right-wingers.

00:45:18.320 I said, don't you understand that you're exemplifying what I'm talking about?

00:45:21.420 And they said, yeah, we're not doing it.

00:45:23.660 The only time an op-ed editor has ever said that to me was the Washington Post.

00:45:27.040 But you still write your weekly column for the Washington Post, don't you?

00:45:29.960 Yeah, exactly.

00:45:30.800 Well, democracy dies in darkness.

00:45:32.100 By the way, that documentary, not nearly as critical of the Clintons as Vice is.

00:45:39.260 I mean, not even in the realm.

00:45:41.420 Vice is a fantasy. 1.00

00:45:42.820 I mean, Bush is an idiot. 1.00

00:45:45.040 And Cheney is running everything. 1.00

00:45:46.480 And Cheney, on top of being a loving husband and father, is a completely morally empty guy

00:45:51.560 who bombs a country to make money off oil.

00:45:54.100 And we know this stuff isn't true. 1.00

00:45:55.660 We know that Bush was not a stupid one. 1.00

00:45:56.020 Because we didn't get the damn money. 1.00

00:45:57.400 Because our president said, Sonny Bunch over at Free Beacon, he said that he actually enjoyed 0.99

00:46:01.140 it because he watched it as like a right-wing fantasy.

00:46:04.420 Like what?

00:46:04.840 You know, in the beginning of that movie, for those who didn't see it, so everybody,

00:46:10.400 it says, the reason that we've taken liberties here is because Dick Cheney is one of the most

00:46:15.220 secretive men in the history of the U.S. government.

00:46:17.580 That's right.

00:46:18.100 The man has been in the public eye for over 40 years.

00:46:20.660 He wrote a 500-page autobiography.

00:46:21.880 We know everything about this guy.

00:46:24.400 But of course, they couldn't read the autobiography or anything else.

00:46:27.440 So they make up facts wholesale.

00:46:29.660 The fact that it was nominated for an Oscar was a gigantic screw you to every single person

00:46:34.200 who's a Republican, which is what, you know, it's still happened.

00:46:36.300 If you're one of the 60 million people who voted for this guy to become vice president.

00:46:39.500 By the way, the fact that somebody signed a $65 million check for that movie is a big

00:46:42.260 screw you. 0.92

00:46:42.720 So let me ask you this. 0.99

00:46:43.460 $65 million for a movie that's going to earn 10 bucks at the box office?

00:46:46.440 What's the audience for that?

00:46:47.520 Who's the wild audience going, you know what I need?

00:46:49.320 I need to go see a movie about Dick Cheney today.

00:46:51.200 Let me ask all you guys this.

00:46:52.500 I want to hear what you have to say about this because it drives me a little crazy.

00:46:55.480 We complain about this rightfully.

00:46:57.240 It should be complained about.

00:46:58.200 But why don't we make those movies?

00:47:00.420 Why don't we make that movie about Barack Obama?

00:47:02.140 Why don't we make the movie?

00:47:03.020 Yeah, give me $65 million.

00:47:04.500 Well, I mean.

00:47:05.140 No, no, no.

00:47:05.640 Is it not available?

00:47:06.880 Is it?

00:47:07.180 That is the answer.

00:47:08.180 We're supposed to be the rich guys.

00:47:09.480 We're supposed to have all the value.

00:47:10.660 Yeah, prove it.

00:47:12.260 Show me the rich billionaire in Silicon Valley who's an open conservative.

00:47:16.120 Bezos isn't going to fund your movie?

00:47:18.200 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:18.480 Show me the filmmaker, the successful filmmaker.

00:47:21.620 Well, it's because conservatives, I mean, we've talked about this for legitimately a decade

00:47:27.120 at this point.

00:47:27.540 I mean, I wrote an entire book on TV and made all these speeches in front of rich people

00:47:31.220 saying that we need to get in the culture.

00:47:32.540 And then I realized that it was not going to happen.

00:47:34.280 And the reason it's not going to happen is because conservatives have, they're like dolphins 0.95

00:47:38.360 that sleep with half their brains on and half their brains off.

00:47:40.860 When our political brains are on, we want to give money to candidates, to the Heritage

00:47:45.300 Foundation.

00:47:46.140 We want to subscribe to Daily Wire.

00:47:47.760 We want to get into the nitty gritty of politics and make a difference.

00:47:51.440 And the most direct way to make a difference is to give money into politics. 0.90

00:47:54.540 And when our do-gooder brain is on, then we want to give money to our church.

00:47:57.280 That's where we put our money.

00:47:58.000 We put our money in our churches and in our communities. 0.97

00:47:59.960 And when our business brain is on, we look at the movie business and we're not idiots. 0.98

00:48:03.400 It's not a good business. 0.90

00:48:03.820 And we say there is no money here.

00:48:05.340 It's a scam business.

00:48:06.400 Why would I sing $20 million I will never see again to make a movie that is going to

00:48:10.840 be distributed next to, you know, the man who killed Hitler and Bigfoot on Amazon within

00:48:15.760 six weeks?

00:48:16.940 And like, that's not a good business investment.

00:48:18.920 So conservatives are hamstrung by their own direct do-gooderism and also by their own need

00:48:26.260 to make money off business.

00:48:27.800 What you actually need is why Hollywood was founded by conservatives but taken over by the

00:48:31.620 left, just like every other major industry, is you need a bunch of people to start a new

00:48:36.580 form of the industry and invest in it when it's still profitable.

00:48:39.860 And then, and not to invest in movies.

00:48:41.980 I wouldn't invest in movies.

00:48:42.820 Would you?

00:48:43.580 No, but I mean, it's-

00:48:44.800 So then why are you asking people who are rich when you invest in movies?

00:48:46.180 Because they own Twitter.

00:48:48.660 They own YouTube.

00:48:49.640 These are money-making things.

00:48:50.760 I mean, Facebook.

00:48:51.600 These are all money-making things.

00:48:52.160 Right.

00:48:52.420 That's the business model.

00:48:53.320 Explain to me how sinking $50 million into a biopic of Barack Obama makes money.

00:48:57.140 No, but still, why are those left-wing organizations, too?

00:49:00.500 Why is every social outreach business-

00:49:02.940 Because conservatives don't understand culture.

00:49:06.960 There's also no prestige to it.

00:49:08.300 So meaning that a leftist will take money and sink it into a movie so they can go to all

00:49:11.760 their friends and say, I put money into Vice.

00:49:14.180 What conservative is going to go around and say, I put money into this movie?

00:49:17.860 I think that works at the church group.

00:49:19.300 What they want to hear is, I gave a million dollars to World Vision or something, right?

00:49:22.080 I gave a million dollars to my church.

00:49:23.420 I gave $2 million to Mitt Romney's Super PAC.

00:49:25.840 It doesn't cut a cutting-

00:49:27.740 You go to a Heritage Foundation party, you think it cuts ice to say, I sunk $10 million

00:49:31.460 into a biopic of Barack Obama?

00:49:33.880 That doesn't cut a dime's worth of ice.

00:49:35.820 None.

00:49:36.420 Yeah.

00:49:37.080 But you're saying, though, it is an attitude on the right.

00:49:39.600 The right actually does not care about the culture.

00:49:42.100 Well, the right believes, correctly in one sense and wrong in the other, that if culture

00:49:48.500 is upstream of politics, what is upstream of culture is church-going and community.

00:49:52.460 Right.

00:49:52.700 And that's true, but it's also true that the more money that you give to those areas

00:49:57.140 does not necessarily mean that those areas are going to win.

00:49:59.080 Right.

00:49:59.160 The culture can take away the gains of the religious community. 0.87

00:50:01.680 That's what we've found over the last 60 years.

00:50:03.260 That's the great poison of culture.

00:50:04.140 Well, the thing is, the culture, like socialism, takes 70 years to destroy a country so that

00:50:09.420 the people who put it in there don't have to answer to the people who suffer from it.

00:50:13.220 It's the same thing with culture.

00:50:14.460 It's 30 years down the line.

00:50:16.360 We're always fighting over some congressional district in Delaware.

00:50:20.240 We're always fighting over the most important election of our lifetime.

00:50:23.040 That's right.

00:50:23.540 That's right.

00:50:23.700 The most important election of our lifetime.

00:50:25.840 And we're doing nothing about what happens after that election.

00:50:28.860 Right.

00:50:29.360 Well, because we're not in the business of thinking about politics full time.

00:50:32.740 Right.

00:50:32.820 When we think about eternity, we don't think about politics.

00:50:35.720 Really.

00:50:36.220 I mean, like religious people, when we think about eternity, we think about going to shul or 1.00

00:50:39.680 going to church and what happens after I die and what happens to my kids and all this kind 1.00

00:50:43.400 of stuff.

00:50:43.680 We don't think my legacy is going to be this.

00:50:45.740 Like, you've written movies.

00:50:47.140 When you die as a religious person, what is your legacy going to be?

00:50:50.280 What is my...

00:50:51.200 Yeah.

00:50:51.940 I mean, we're talking five minutes from now.

00:50:53.300 What are you talking about?

00:50:53.460 So five minutes from now, what are we going to be talking about?

00:50:55.940 No, I hope some of the things I've written will, you know, last.

00:50:58.700 That's right.

00:50:59.020 But if I were to say to you, you only get to pick three things on your tombstone.

00:51:02.980 What do they say?

00:51:04.600 Probably that I wrote a couple of good novels and was a good father and, you know, had

00:51:09.420 a good life.

00:51:10.300 I would say you're not in that order.

00:51:11.400 I would say you're not in that order.

00:51:12.100 Not in that order.

00:51:13.020 That's the point.

00:51:13.620 Here, last Jeremy, he never flew in a private jet.

00:51:16.600 But this is the point.

00:51:18.040 I think that not in that order is the key point I'm trying to make.

00:51:20.120 I see.

00:51:20.540 I think that for folks on the left, good father and good husband don't even make the top

00:51:26.500 100.

00:51:27.280 You think so?

00:51:27.780 Well, in Hollywood?

00:51:29.240 Are you kidding?

00:51:29.540 In Hollywood, not in Hollywood.

00:51:30.360 In Hollywood?

00:51:30.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:31.100 Not in the left, generally.

00:51:31.920 There are plenty of good people on the left who care about being a parent or a husband or something.

00:51:36.800 But the people in Hollywood, you ask them what is their greatest contribution, and they're

00:51:40.480 going to send you their IMDb page.

00:51:43.040 Well, I mean, see, the thing is, most leftists live conservative lives.

00:51:46.140 I mean, a lot of good left-wingers live conservative lives.

00:51:50.000 They just won't preach what they practice.

00:51:51.820 So I want to talk for a minute about something that, a little controversy that we found ourselves

00:51:57.860 in with our friends over at Calm.

00:52:00.660 You know, they advertise on our shows.

00:52:02.120 They've always been great partners.

00:52:04.120 We have a good relationship, we ship with them all along.

00:52:06.420 But you may remember back in January, we broadcast the Ben Shapiro show live from the

00:52:11.380 March for Life.

00:52:12.480 And, you know, we're big fans of the March for Life.

00:52:14.700 That's an important event to us, something that we're going to support, always have,

00:52:18.040 and always will.

00:52:19.480 Unfortunately, we didn't think about the effect that that would have on some of our sponsors

00:52:23.540 like Calm.

00:52:24.980 Calm wound up being associated online by some people with the March for Life event.

00:52:30.300 And we didn't contemplate the fact that they would be perceived as not only sponsoring the

00:52:36.120 show, the Ben Shapiro show, but that you might be able to infer that they had sponsored the

00:52:41.360 event itself, which, of course, they did not do.

00:52:44.600 I think it was a fair concern for Calm to have.

00:52:47.340 We didn't consider the implication that people could perceive them as a sponsor of the event.

00:52:51.780 And Calm's job is not politics.

00:52:55.680 They're a great business.

00:52:57.020 Like most of our advertisers, they're not a political company, and they don't want to

00:53:00.920 make a stand on these hot-button political issues one way or the other.

00:53:05.200 And they shouldn't.

00:53:06.080 That's not the purpose of business.

00:53:07.780 They're a business.

00:53:08.360 They're a meditation app.

00:53:09.500 And their job is to be the number one source of meditation, mindfulness, and sleep for everyone,

00:53:14.340 regardless of politics.

00:53:15.660 And we kind of complicated that, put them in a tough position.

00:53:19.100 But the good news is we've had some great conversations with them over the last few weeks.

00:53:23.740 And because we've had a strong relationship all along with them, and they were receptive

00:53:27.800 to communicating with us, we're going to be working with them again.

00:53:31.460 Calm's going to be back on our shows.

00:53:34.580 I think that some of the concern when something like this happens is, is Calm attacking our

00:53:39.920 audience?

00:53:40.360 Are they saying that they don't want conservative customers?

00:53:42.800 That's just not the case.

00:53:44.100 They want all people who are interested in meditation, who are interested in mindfulness,

00:53:49.780 who are interested in a healthier lifestyle.

00:53:51.540 And we're grateful that organizations like Calm would advertise on our show.

00:53:56.460 It's not always the easiest thing for an advertiser to get involved in something that could be

00:54:00.020 deemed political or controversial in any way.

00:54:03.580 So, you know, I think for people watching who may feel a loyalty to us, you know, and

00:54:08.620 they see Calm coming back on, we couldn't be happier about it.

00:54:12.760 It's the result of some great productive conversations.

00:54:15.620 And we believed in the product before all this happened.

00:54:20.060 It's still a great product.

00:54:21.040 So we'll be getting to talk about them a little bit more kind of over the coming weeks.

00:54:25.400 I think starting with you.

00:54:26.900 Good.

00:54:27.420 Well, good.

00:54:27.880 I love them.

00:54:28.540 I use them, and I love them.

00:54:29.480 They actually work.

00:54:30.180 One of the things I love...

00:54:30.800 I love anybody who will advertise on your show.

00:54:33.260 One of the things I love about this, this is the only compliment I'm going to pay to you

00:54:36.660 in your lifetime, is that you have always let us vet the sponsors and make our decisions

00:54:41.860 whether we want to do it.

00:54:42.940 So everything we've advertised, we actually like, you know, which is great.

00:54:45.780 It makes you feel good when you come to work.

00:54:47.560 That's the nicest thing I'm going to ever say about you.

00:54:50.280 Here's the nicest thing I'm ever going to say about you.

00:54:51.920 Uh-oh.

00:54:52.220 Alicia, do you have any questions for us?

00:54:54.020 Do you have any questions for our subscribers?

00:54:56.760 Oh, sorry.

00:55:00.640 Just looking up new on-air gigs.

00:55:04.840 She's so spicy.

00:55:06.020 She is.

00:55:07.140 Also, facts don't care about your feelings.

00:55:09.500 This PopSocket does come in handy, so everybody should head over to Amazon and get that.

00:55:13.280 Here's a fact, in case y'all didn't know, Ben Shapiro does not want to be here, and he

00:55:16.860 doesn't care about Jeremy Boring's feelings.

00:55:19.640 Also, I'm doing pretty good with the bingo, so I hope everyone's still joining us in playing

00:55:23.580 their backstage bingo.

00:55:25.060 Head over to the Daily Wire Twitter account, at Real Daily Wire, and I think it's over there

00:55:28.780 on Instagram, too, so you can play along with me, and you can catch up.

00:55:32.820 Some of these things have happened.

00:55:34.280 They've been done.

00:55:35.160 All right, this next question comes from an awesome subscriber named Rustem.

00:55:39.260 He says, do you think the reason behind why all the nominated movies are old movies is

00:55:44.100 that leftists are trying to rewrite the context of that history?

00:55:48.260 Go ahead.

00:55:48.940 Well, no, this is your point.

00:55:50.380 Well, I think it's because they don't have any new ideas.

00:55:52.780 When I listen to the left, they call themselves progressives, and I think that's, you know,

00:55:56.580 appropriate because they're kind of like emphysema or cancer. 0.97

00:55:59.380 They are a progressive disease.

00:56:01.260 But they're the most regressive ideas on Earth.

00:56:04.620 I mean, socialism was debunked.

00:56:06.400 I mean, socialism, it was debunked.

00:56:08.220 The thing that we tried, people tried it.

00:56:09.940 I understand why they tried it.

00:56:11.200 It sounded good.

00:56:12.220 It failed.

00:56:13.080 Nobody, you know, I was watching Bernie Sanders from a cut from 1988, and he's saying, oh,

00:56:18.240 the Soviet Union is doing great.

00:56:19.660 Three years before it collapsed in chaos.

00:56:22.340 You know, three years.

00:56:23.100 I mean, it is very possible that Bernie Sanders was around St. Petersburg when he felt it

00:56:27.380 was time for a change.

00:56:28.680 That guy's been around for a long time.

00:56:30.680 But I mean, I just...

00:56:31.440 I said his campaign slogan should be, at least I personally knew Marx.

00:56:35.080 But I mean, I think that they are stuck in this world.

00:56:37.960 They cannot let go of the racist thing.

00:56:39.940 We all know that there was a real serious problem for black people in this country.

00:56:44.440 We all know that leaves a mark.

00:56:45.720 It's not...

00:56:46.100 Nobody's making fun of that.

00:56:47.660 But after a while, the thing is, you've got to let go.

00:56:50.400 You have to, because history won't fix itself.

00:56:52.200 Only the future can fix itself, you know?

00:56:54.060 And I think they are not forward-looking people.

00:56:56.480 I think that the conservatives that I talk to, the conservatives that I talk to are all

00:57:00.240 thinking about how can we go forward in such a way that we keep the best things about

00:57:03.900 this country, the freedom, you know, the limited government, but also go into a future

00:57:07.720 that's going to be complicated.

00:57:08.820 It's going to have things we've never seen before.

00:57:10.580 I never hear the left talking about this.

00:57:12.280 All I hear them saying is 12 years from now, we're all going to be dead.

00:57:14.980 Therefore, let us take over everything.

00:57:16.480 That is a very, very small-minded, regressive way to look.

00:57:19.380 I think that's totally right.

00:57:20.260 And I think that when you look at the history, the fact that they've been making all of these

00:57:23.700 films about history, it's difficult to make the argument that today, America is a deeply

00:57:27.480 terrible racist country.

00:57:28.600 It really is, yeah. 0.79

00:57:29.060 And so instead, what they do is they point to a time when America did have a serious race

00:57:32.940 problem and when Americans were a lot more racist than they are now.

00:57:35.980 And then they add a tag.

00:57:37.340 So that's what Spike Lee does in Black Klansman.

00:57:39.200 So he tells you a story that happened in 1980 or 1977 or something, and he tells you about

00:57:44.260 a time when the KKK was still operative and was still a major force in American life, and

00:57:48.740 he does the whole story.

00:57:49.660 And then at the very end, he has a little tag about President Trump in Charlottesville.

00:57:52.580 It's like, oh, fast forward, boom.

00:57:53.400 Here's the little tag punch. 0.94

00:57:55.360 Are we even pretending?

00:57:56.540 Really?

00:57:57.060 I mean, really?

00:57:57.900 Are you really pretending that the two are comparable?

00:58:00.420 And the attempt to compare the two by skipping over the entire intervening history is really

00:58:05.740 morally and intellectually bankrupt.

00:58:08.000 But that's, I think, what they're trying to do.

00:58:09.420 I think that's why they keep going back to this.

00:58:10.880 It's as though you were making the case every day that America were a deeply anti-Semitic

00:58:14.420 country, and every film you decided to produce was Gentleman's Agreement.

00:58:17.800 It was every film you decided to produce was about a time when Jews couldn't join country 0.99

00:58:21.280 clubs.

00:58:21.680 And you'd look around at America and you'd say, wait a second, Jews are doing pretty well

00:58:24.340 over here.

00:58:25.300 Jews seem to be doing okay.

00:58:27.000 And yet, but that undercuts the case.

00:58:28.820 That's the whole point.

00:58:29.360 It undercuts the case.

00:58:30.300 I made the mistake of criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez one time on Twitter.

00:58:35.820 Wow.

00:58:36.440 How dare you?

00:58:37.360 How dare you?

00:58:37.840 She's very fresh and very face.

00:58:39.380 So fresh.

00:58:40.040 So fresh.

00:58:40.660 Fresh faces.

00:58:41.520 So fresh.

00:58:42.100 Freshness like you can't believe.

00:58:44.000 And people keep writing in and saying things like, women were only able, only got the vote

00:58:47.760 in 1920.

00:58:49.840 Like, that's a century.

00:58:52.660 It was a whole hundred years ago.

00:58:54.060 You would have a great point if it was 1920.

00:58:56.540 I feel that way about all their points.

00:58:57.900 But you would have a great point about racism if it were the 1860s.

00:59:02.400 Even if it was the 1960s.

00:59:04.100 Even the 1960s.

00:59:04.920 It is not.

00:59:05.760 But that's, and that's why all these pictures are so old.

00:59:07.920 By the way, did you see, you saw this AOC video over the weekend, right?

00:59:10.780 Oh, it was great.

00:59:11.340 The Cash Me Outside video of AOC explaining that, can we play it just because it was so

00:59:17.400 great?

00:59:17.740 Her explaining that she was the boss.

00:59:19.580 She's in fact the boss. 0.99

00:59:20.160 She's the boss. 0.99

00:59:20.800 Do we have that video, guys?

00:59:24.000 Everybody dive back there.

00:59:24.700 We don't have that video.

00:59:25.940 But we do have another question from Taylor Swift subscriber.

00:59:28.500 Listen, if I have to choose between talking about the news or answering questions from

00:59:32.320 the people who actually pay for my house, I am 100% going with the people who pay for

00:59:36.760 my house.

00:59:38.080 I have a quick question, though.

00:59:39.740 Am I allowed?

00:59:40.400 I am a subscriber.

00:59:41.500 I just noticed something.

00:59:43.140 Do Lady Gaga, Donald Trump, and Michael Knowles go to the same tanning lounge?

00:59:47.500 Stop that.

00:59:48.140 Get out of here.

00:59:48.640 This is all natural, baby.

00:59:49.760 I'm on the intersectional hierarchy.

00:59:51.820 Sicilians in this country have suffered. 0.97

00:59:53.820 I'm going to start making movies about it.

00:59:55.160 Just the juxtaposition of, like, vampire Shapiro next to, like, spray tan Knowles gets me every

01:00:01.840 time.

01:00:03.120 This question comes from Jonathan.

01:00:04.700 He wants to know, should obscene or pornographic media be regulated by government, and is it

01:00:09.500 an infringement on the First Amendment?

01:00:11.760 Ben, you're the lawyer who wrote a book about pornography.

01:00:14.480 So there are two answers.

01:00:16.460 Is it an infringement on the First Amendment to pass legislation that regulates pornography?

01:00:20.460 The answer is no.

01:00:21.240 The First Amendment was designed to protect originally political speech.

01:00:24.900 It was not designed to protect pornography.

01:00:26.720 Adams and Jefferson and Washington were not sitting around thinking, these dirty wood carvings.

01:00:31.880 We must protect the dirty wood carvings from 1780.

01:00:35.240 It was not.

01:00:35.660 At the time, it was ratified.

01:00:36.920 It was not commonly understood that you could trade in smut and have pornography.

01:00:40.860 Right.

01:00:41.100 Well, not only that.

01:00:42.220 It was commonly understood that you could regulate it.

01:00:44.180 I mean, pornography regulations existed on the books in literally all 13 colonies when

01:00:47.540 the Constitution was originally passed.

01:00:49.300 So to suggest that the First Amendment, by its nature, protects pornography is simply untrue.

01:00:55.280 It was meant to protect political speech.

01:00:56.500 Robert Bork has a seminal article about this before he was nominated for the Supreme Court

01:01:00.060 in the 1970s.

01:01:01.420 So that's the constitutional argument.

01:01:03.380 Then there's the practical argument.

01:01:04.620 Should the government be in the business of regulating pornography?

01:01:07.360 And my answer to that is essentially no.

01:01:08.860 The government should not be in the business of regulating pornography.

01:01:11.080 And this is a change from a position that I held probably back when I was 21, 22.

01:01:14.320 And I looked at this, and I felt like a lot of this stuff is addictive material.

01:01:18.140 The fact is that it does have brain effects that are very similar to addiction, particularly

01:01:21.700 for men.

01:01:22.680 And that if local communities want to regulate pornography, then they should have the ability

01:01:27.480 to do so.

01:01:28.020 So my feeling is that local communities still have a lot more ability to regulate than

01:01:31.520 the federal government.

01:01:32.860 If you don't want to live in a community that doesn't allow porn shops, then move out

01:01:35.720 of that community.

01:01:36.280 Find another community.

01:01:37.080 I don't really have much of a problem with local communities experimenting with the extent

01:01:41.260 of law.

01:01:41.900 What I would say is that on a general level and in my community, I would not regulate the

01:01:47.480 distribution of pornography so long as it didn't have public display.

01:01:51.640 The public display of pornography is different.

01:01:53.020 It has externalities.

01:01:54.240 In terms of trying to regulate the distribution of pornography, you're fighting a battle against

01:01:58.660 human nature that is likely to fail.

01:02:00.960 For the same reason that I oppose the war on drugs, I also oppose a generalized war on pornography.

01:02:05.980 That doesn't mean you can't have time, place, and manner restrictions, zoning restrictions.

01:02:08.680 It doesn't mean that you have to have a billboard of a naked lady above your local elementary 1.00

01:02:12.160 school.

01:02:13.280 But it does mean that I think the government is pretty bad at everything.

01:02:17.260 And a mandate for the government to get involved in certain areas of what is widely considered

01:02:21.800 to be speech quickly tends to evolve into the government getting involved in other things.

01:02:26.080 Once they start labeling stuff pornography, you can see them extending that.

01:02:29.480 Well, is pornography really as damaging as, say, the Bible?

01:02:32.060 The Bible perverts how you think about various issues.

01:02:35.380 The left has no compunction about restricting anything that they're allowed to regulate,

01:02:40.540 violence.

01:02:41.220 Now just everything they don't like is violence.

01:02:43.220 Exactly.

01:02:43.800 Alicia?

01:02:44.640 All right.

01:02:44.980 Anthony wants to know, what do you think a movie should accomplish in order for it to

01:02:48.320 be nominated for an award?

01:02:50.680 It would be helpful if it were good.

01:02:52.900 That would be, if it were good, if it were art.

01:02:55.280 I mean, this is actually another reason why conservatives often fail at the culture and fail at movies,

01:03:00.300 is we're a little too on the nose, we're a little direct sometimes, and the left is very

01:03:04.840 good at hiding itself.

01:03:06.160 Until recently, until the last two years, they were even pretending that they're not socialists.

01:03:10.500 And so if the movie is a work of art that isn't just some didactic, knock-over-the-head

01:03:16.940 political message, that would be a good start.

01:03:19.260 Yeah, and I think the thing that the mistake conservatives make is that conservative art does

01:03:23.240 not look like conservative life.

01:03:25.020 I mean, The Sopranos is a great work of conservative art.

01:03:27.520 It doesn't look anything like conservative life.

01:03:29.480 It has all kinds of violence and bad language, nudity, all those things.

01:03:33.680 And yet, it is a deeply, deeply moral and godly, even, story.

01:03:38.840 I was reading a book called Genesis the other day.

01:03:41.140 Have you ever read Genesis?

01:03:42.140 Well, people always say this to me.

01:03:43.480 They say, I don't need that stuff.

01:03:44.800 I can read the Bible.

01:03:45.700 And I thought, have you read the Bible?

01:03:47.580 But there is a question here that I think is an interesting one, which is, very often what

01:03:52.080 you'll hear is, I'll say things like, why don't they nominate movies that people actually

01:03:55.080 like?

01:03:55.360 And they'll say, well, that's not what the Oscars are for.

01:03:56.860 The Oscars are for nominating stuff that the artists, you know, that is more artistic,

01:04:01.060 or like there's some other standard out there.

01:04:03.220 But I think that that separation between what the people, this goes back to a discussion

01:04:05.920 we were having earlier.

01:04:06.780 The separation between what the people like and what is quote unquote artistic is an

01:04:10.240 artificial separation that has begun in the last 30, 40 years.

01:04:13.500 The Godfather was a massive box office smash.

01:04:15.560 I mean, Star Wars was a massive box office smash.

01:04:18.820 E.T. was a massive box office smash.

01:04:21.520 Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated for Best Picture.

01:04:23.600 Raiders of the Lost Ark never gets nominated for Best Picture now because it's not deep.

01:04:26.400 It's not profound.

01:04:27.180 Even though the truth is that Raiders of the Lost Ark has some actual morality to it, right?

01:04:31.420 I mean, it's actually saying that, like, in essence, it's saying there is something

01:04:34.500 beyond what you think there is.

01:04:36.140 It's actually a pretty good argument against science.

01:04:37.980 And he was the last, Spielberg was the last director who could make films that everybody

01:04:42.340 loved that were also great movies.

01:04:43.580 He really is the last guy.

01:04:44.960 The other thing is, you and I have had this discussion where we disagreed about the movie

01:04:47.980 Get Out.

01:04:48.660 And one of the things I think that art does that offends conservatives is that it talks

01:04:53.160 about the inner experience of being a human being in the world.

01:04:56.180 Why I loved Get Out.

01:04:57.340 And I really did think it was a good movie, a very good movie.

01:04:59.900 Yeah, you're telling me about this.

01:05:01.020 No, yeah, and we disagreed.

01:05:02.560 I thought it actually talked about the fear, when you assimilate, will you lose your soul?

01:05:08.380 If I assimilate, will I lose my soul? 0.67

01:05:10.000 It was a horror movie.

01:05:10.960 So in the horror movie, you do lose your soul.

01:05:13.420 But that's a human experience.

01:05:14.880 That's a human fear.

01:05:16.080 And I thought that was completely legitimate.

01:05:18.300 I don't know what, I can't remember if it's Key or Peele.

01:05:22.240 Yeah, I don't know what he thinks about that.

01:05:25.180 I don't care what he thinks about it.

01:05:26.200 What the movie said to me is, this is a fear that people have with assimilation.

01:05:29.760 The Godfather was also about assimilation from a different point of view.

01:05:32.520 You try to get out, they pull you back in, you know.

01:05:34.440 And I think that assimilation comes with costs and very deep scarring on people.

01:05:40.480 And I think that Get Out really spoke to that.

01:05:41.540 This is something else.

01:05:42.320 I think the substitution of the visual in film for the plot-driven and character-driven in film has been a real problem.

01:05:48.500 And this has been happening in the last 25 years.

01:05:50.660 That's a great point.

01:05:51.000 That if you look at Star Wars, Star Wars has a very, very good plot.

01:05:55.840 It has a very good plot.

01:05:56.920 It is a plot that's, I mean, it's based on Joseph Campbell, obviously.

01:05:59.140 But it's a plot that actually hits marks that make sense, that is coherent.

01:06:03.560 And that doesn't end with just, okay, now two big monsters hit each other.

01:06:06.380 Which is like how every big movie ends now, right?

01:06:08.520 Every single big movie that you see in the theater that cost $100 million to make has the same ending.

01:06:13.580 It's two giant monsters hitting each other with big explosions everywhere until the credits roll.

01:06:18.600 And that's it.

01:06:19.620 That's not good movie making.

01:06:21.060 No.

01:06:21.320 And that's the difference.

01:06:22.900 That's why The Dark Knight deserves to be nominated for Best Picture.

01:06:25.600 But Infinity War doesn't.

01:06:28.260 That's why Logan should have been.

01:06:30.020 Right, exactly.

01:06:30.940 Because those actually hit some plot and character points.

01:06:33.440 Yes.

01:06:33.840 And all the other movies that make a lot of money right now, people are only going, this is the big gap.

01:06:39.240 Because of TV, because of streaming.

01:06:40.480 The reason people are going to the movies right now is because you want to see something on the movie screen and pay $16 for it that you can't actually see in your own home.

01:06:47.900 So The Dark Knight changes things because you want to see it on the big screen and it fulfills all those things.

01:06:53.980 But most movies we want to see on the big screen are just big spectacle movies.

01:06:57.740 And so Hollywood goes, fine, I can put together a spectacle movie in five minutes.

01:07:00.540 It's formulaic.

01:07:01.200 It has a big monster fight at the end.

01:07:03.200 And then we're done.

01:07:04.240 And they never try to link the two.

01:07:06.680 They never try to link anything of substance or plot.

01:07:09.360 I mean, even Black Panther has the typical movie hero versus movie villain fight at the end with some rushing trains and then it ends.

01:07:14.940 And it's like, okay, well, that's the same thing as every other Marvel film.

01:07:17.780 So we couldn't get an actual Academy Award here, even though we've all taken our shots over the years.

01:07:23.400 And so instead we have the Jaspies. 0.96

01:07:25.760 The Jaspie Awards is how we're thinking of the evening.

01:07:28.340 There it is.

01:07:29.360 In honor of this small terrier, the chief executive dog of the Daily Wire.

01:07:34.820 Yeah, yeah, he put on his best tux.

01:07:38.340 And to make it a true award show worthy of its name, the Jaspie Awards, it's important that like all other award shows, we celebrate those who we have lost this year.

01:07:49.720 And that's why we're proud today at the Daily Wire to bring you In Memoriam.

01:07:54.820 Isn't that the model?

01:08:14.660 I mean, truly our hearts are weird.

01:08:30.980 I didn't know Ginsburg died.

01:08:35.020 Okay, Media Matters explainer.

01:08:36.900 Nobody here thinks Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.

01:08:38.760 She's very much alive.

01:08:39.800 We're not joking about her death.

01:08:41.120 We're joking that there are some people who pretended that she died and thought she died.

01:08:43.880 Ben, if there's no picture, there's no picture.

01:08:46.600 If there's no photo, it didn't happen.

01:08:51.540 Michael, on the other hand.

01:08:52.740 That is sad, though, yeah.

01:08:53.820 Well, I mean, it's a good day for me.

01:08:55.160 At least this day ended well.

01:08:56.900 I mean, in memoriam, an empty chair.

01:09:00.360 It says it all.

01:09:02.140 It ain't for Elijah, buddy.

01:09:06.100 So it's rare when we do one of these shows that we have an actual expert on the subject that we're discussing.

01:09:11.820 Or somebody who knows anything, yeah.

01:09:14.280 Lord knows it ain't us.

01:09:15.720 We do have a guest to join us for the last piece of the show here.

01:09:20.200 It's a pal of all of ours.

01:09:21.980 Actually, somebody who's been an important mentor in my life.

01:09:25.400 A guy who's made a big stand in Hollywood on behalf of Ben.

01:09:29.140 That's true.

01:09:29.480 And that's our dear friend, Lionel Chetwin.

01:09:32.080 Lionel, join us.

01:09:33.220 Good evening.

01:09:33.820 And also one of the Black Guards.

01:09:35.900 One of the Black Guards?

01:09:37.120 The Black Watch. 0.91

01:09:37.820 My Scottish blood.

01:09:42.860 My 1,026 Scottish blood.

01:09:46.940 Lionel, coming to us from England by way of Canada, by way of basically being the only...

01:09:52.100 That's Canadian uniform.

01:09:53.160 Yes, of course.

01:09:53.860 Black Guards wear Highland Regiment of Canada.

01:09:55.520 Of Canada.

01:09:56.380 And I have lost a lot of weight.

01:09:57.920 And so my dinner jacket doesn't fit me.

01:10:01.580 But this does miracle of miracles.

01:10:04.020 My jacket doesn't fit me today.

01:10:05.900 It's not because I lost weight.

01:10:07.840 Well, the good news is that you're wearing a kilt.

01:10:09.640 So that's an actual thing that men wear as opposed to that guy at the Oscars who decided

01:10:12.860 to wear like a full-on gown.

01:10:14.400 Which was stunning and brave.

01:10:15.560 Don't get me wrong.

01:10:16.560 Stunning as well as brave.

01:10:17.560 So brave.

01:10:18.300 It was a big issue when they took women into the army as to whether they should be allowed 0.99

01:10:21.820 to wear the kilt.

01:10:23.240 Because the kilt's for a laddie, eh?

01:10:25.420 It's not for a wee lass. 0.99

01:10:28.500 Well, you'd expect something silly at the Oscars, I think.

01:10:31.940 I was promised cigars was like, no, you can. 0.54

01:10:34.000 I lit this for you knowing you were coming on stage.

01:10:36.700 And then I allowed it to go out, which was rude of me.

01:10:40.360 But this is my favorite cigar.

01:10:43.140 It's a nine-year-aged Monte Cristo Añajado.

01:10:46.220 Oh, wow.

01:10:48.180 And if you need fire, we have fire.

01:10:51.120 So Lionel, I think, has been the most outspoken, probably, voice, conservative voice in Hollywood

01:10:59.400 throughout his career.

01:11:01.860 But to reduce him down to that would miss his huge body of work as a writer and a director

01:11:07.560 in town.

01:11:07.980 We're not big on long bios on our show.

01:11:11.280 But more than anyone, you've moved for the last, you know, five, let's call it five years,

01:11:18.140 successfully throughout this community.

01:11:20.540 So you have a unique perspective on what we witnessed last night.

01:11:24.500 Yeah.

01:11:25.040 Well, I've been here a long time.

01:11:27.220 Ten years.

01:11:27.780 I went to my first Oscars, actually, in 1975.

01:11:30.380 But that's beside the point.

01:11:31.700 I was a nominee.

01:11:32.700 I was a child.

01:11:33.460 I was a child.

01:11:34.260 I was a child.

01:11:35.800 What struck me last night was it was really interesting.

01:11:37.920 So I've watched it.

01:11:38.820 I mean, I have been here for some time.

01:11:40.400 And I've succeeded, notwithstanding, I'm an out-of-the-closet conservative.

01:11:43.960 And I have been pretty much all my time here.

01:11:45.740 But there are reasons for that.

01:11:46.700 So, you know what, last night's Oscars were the perfect Oscars for the selfie generation.

01:11:55.920 And I thought about that.

01:11:57.020 You know, you see these people, particularly Hollywood stars, and they've done a selfie,

01:12:01.720 and the Eiffel Tower is over here.

01:12:04.220 Or the Parthenon.

01:12:05.780 Or whatever it is.

01:12:06.980 All these things exist with no intrinsic value to them except as props in their own selfie.

01:12:13.260 And these were the selfie Oscars.

01:12:16.700 The Oscars, Frank Price has observed that the problem was that the TV show served the

01:12:20.880 Academy.

01:12:21.620 The Academy was meant to be a guardian and custodian of, was meant to be like the Académie

01:12:27.900 Française.

01:12:28.660 It was pretty pretentious in the beginning.

01:12:33.520 The idea was we would have an Academy like the Royal Academy of the Royal Society, and

01:12:37.260 people, after a career of great success, would become members, and they would pass on the

01:12:41.700 collective institutional memory to new people.

01:12:44.620 Three years ago, I think it was three years ago, the Academy, by fiat, there was no discussion.

01:12:50.880 There was no vote.

01:12:52.760 They just said, well, we've decided, because this is really a response to Oscar so light.

01:12:57.140 So anyone who has not had a credit or been involved in a film in 10 years, unless you've been

01:13:01.520 a nominee or a winner, no longer has to vote.

01:13:06.240 That removed the institutional memory.

01:13:09.820 Yeah.

01:13:10.220 And that's why it became about the current membership.

01:13:14.700 It was never about that.

01:13:16.020 It was about all these old people who thought, well, I had a bloody good career, didn't I, 1.00

01:13:20.480 mate?

01:13:20.680 Well, you know, and I'm going to protect it.

01:13:23.380 And, you know, in the Academy, on the second floor of the screening room is, they have posters

01:13:30.460 of every film that's ever won an Oscar.

01:13:34.080 And, I mean, sure, there's, you know, The Greatest Show on Earth with Burt Lancaster,

01:13:37.840 you know, Muslin' Up, but there's also All About Eve.

01:13:42.880 There's also Lawrence of Arabia.

01:13:44.360 There's also Waterfront.

01:13:45.060 I mean, there are great films.

01:13:45.600 On the Waterfront, yeah.

01:13:46.520 On the Waterfront.

01:13:47.140 I mean, these were the great films.

01:13:48.900 The question is whether or not, why, and so the real question is, why are Hollywood films,

01:13:55.980 which was once the center of the world, and there's a reason for that, deteriorated?

01:14:00.660 Well, one of the reasons was, I'm sorry, I'm talking.

01:14:03.560 Talk away.

01:14:04.680 We brought you here to do this, so.

01:14:05.840 So, the thing is.

01:14:08.040 Despite how much we enjoyed the kilt.

01:14:09.900 Yeah.

01:14:10.700 I think it was a kilt that got you laughing.

01:14:13.900 I ken y'all.

01:14:16.560 This is a wonderful cigar.

01:14:20.620 The, and as you know, I'm a real cigar smoker.

01:14:24.620 I really swear this is really good.

01:14:25.660 The complete technology for sound existed as early, really, as 1923.

01:14:32.120 The sync sound, not the optical sound check, but what came into the theaters.

01:14:36.800 The reason that the studio bosses didn't want to touch it is they assumed that all their audience were immigrants.

01:14:45.200 They didn't speak English.

01:14:46.280 If they spoke English, they'd be going to the vaudeville or the musical or, God forbid, Broadway, right? 1.00

01:14:50.960 The play, the theater.

01:14:53.100 And so, and they spoke many different languages.

01:14:56.460 So, you could have a card, but a card had to be very short.

01:14:59.060 It had to be just long enough for whoever it was that they brought with them, their kid usually from school.

01:15:04.500 Because during those periods of immigration, we had something called the drive to Americanization, which required the kids learned English in school right away. 0.61

01:15:11.860 And they didn't teach 54 languages.

01:15:13.840 But that's another subject.

01:15:16.680 And so, the card was not, could not be any longer.

01:15:19.280 They could say,

01:15:20.300 You know, or, hey, capiche.

01:15:24.940 You know, whatever their language was, they would have a kid there and they would translate.

01:15:28.880 What that meant was that American movies became very low context.

01:15:31.500 They were films that did not require you to bring very much into the theater with it.

01:15:37.120 It's not like a Merchant Ivory film.

01:15:38.720 By the way, this observation is not mine.

01:15:40.240 It's a Japanese director called the Tommy.

01:15:42.640 He said, the reason their films never go anywhere is because they're very high context.

01:15:45.940 If you don't understand Japanese mentality, you will not understand their films.

01:15:49.720 Yeah.

01:15:50.060 With the exception, perhaps, of Seven Samurai, which, or historic films.

01:15:54.160 But in general, no.

01:15:55.840 They had to put a narration track on Shall We Dance.

01:15:58.880 It was called about the ballroom dancing thing.

01:16:01.500 So, we developed, and the apotheosis of that, and I know I can use that word of my threat, was High Noon.

01:16:11.360 I can bring someone down from Alpha Centauri, right?

01:16:14.180 Yeah.

01:16:14.560 And say, doesn't speak English, doesn't even know, doesn't know where to watch this.

01:16:18.300 And at the end of it, this terse film has revealed nearly all there is in terms of, you know, the variety of the human condition.

01:16:26.980 Now, we've lost that.

01:16:28.080 We've lost the ability to do low-context films.

01:16:30.240 And we've lost that because there's no longer a process by which you work your way up, up, and up.

01:16:37.660 And part of that is because of the, I don't want to say slavish, but the drive to diversity.

01:16:49.040 Yeah.

01:16:50.040 Which meant that people were being advanced, you know, ahead of their craft.

01:16:56.040 I got one quick story about that.

01:16:58.100 Okay?

01:16:58.860 Well, when I was a very young man, I was working for Columbia Pictures in London.

01:17:03.760 I had engineered myself.

01:17:06.040 I was the assistant managing director of the, which was their biggest thing.

01:17:09.980 One day my boss, Pat Williamson, the greatest man I ever knew, called me in and said,

01:17:13.620 we're cutting Lawrence of Arabia for three hours and 40 minutes to two hours and 20 minutes.

01:17:20.040 Now, Sam Spiegel really owns the horizon, but the copyright, but we have to have someone from Columbia in the room to sign the docket at the end of the day.

01:17:26.780 And you're going to go and do that.

01:17:29.480 I said, are you joking?

01:17:31.780 What do I know about, I'm a kid, I know anything about films.

01:17:34.860 He said, all I can do is I sit there, whatever they put in front of me outside, he said, ah.

01:17:41.260 I presented myself to Sam Spiegel's office, Mr. Sam, as he was called, and he was a godlike figure.

01:17:48.100 Think of Steven Spielberg with true gravitas, but no slur on Mr. Spiegel.

01:17:54.340 And he said, come, you'll see, come meet my team, who I will have cutting my film for me.

01:18:02.900 David Lean, Robert Bolton wrote it, Freddie Young, who was a photographer, Ernie Walter was there.

01:18:11.200 He was the assistant to Ann Coates who would cut it.

01:18:14.440 And Morgish Jarre showed it for a little bit.

01:18:17.340 He was done the music.

01:18:18.260 So I thought, well, she's doing nothing.

01:18:21.900 But in fact, I had a role to play.

01:18:24.700 They played, Sam had what was called rock and roll.

01:18:27.180 He had like eight projectors, and he could press back and forth, and he had the film on every one.

01:18:31.740 So we go through the first sequence with the match, you know.

01:18:36.000 Or actually, the first sequence really was the motorcycle that we looked at.

01:18:39.760 And I used to hear thinking, well, you know, I'll do a cross with us or something.

01:18:44.400 And all of a sudden, Robert Bolt, who was there really to protect his words, says, Mr. Chetwin, don't you think, perhaps that's a bit tediously long?

01:18:58.120 And before I had to answer, David Lean said, but Mr. Chetwin, surely you understand.

01:19:03.100 And that's what they would do.

01:19:03.960 So they would argue amongst, they would present their views to each other, to this, I was like a sock puppet.

01:19:09.520 You know, it was funny.

01:19:11.120 You represented the Ute.

01:19:13.000 Yeah, no, yeah, right.

01:19:14.620 I was just there for Columbia, and because Columbia needed someone in the room to protect their copyright, their share of the copyright.

01:19:21.380 I was dismembered.

01:19:22.280 I didn't really understand that.

01:19:24.540 So finally, we get to the scene of Omar Sharif coming out of the mist.

01:19:29.700 And Robert Bolt says, I don't know, Mr. Chetwin, everything that's a bit long, three bloody minutes to have a man come out of the scene.

01:19:42.580 And for the first time, I gave an opinion.

01:19:44.120 I said, I must be honest, when I first saw that film in the Seville Theater in Montreal, that was the first time I ever thought that cinema was art.

01:19:54.520 At which point, Freddie Young, who had said nothing up to this point, he said, art, art, expletive art, that's art, mate, that's craft.

01:20:05.960 He said, they said they wanted this, and they had this vision.

01:20:08.140 But I knew that I had a 500-meter lens at 45 degrees Kelvin, and I thrust it down there.

01:20:13.500 I'm not doing the accent that well, because he was not quite as working class, and I'm a cockney, and I slip into that. 0.99

01:20:19.440 And he explained the technical aspect of that shot, how he got the lens.

01:20:25.080 I think it was invented for that shot, and that was compression.

01:20:28.140 It was the first time that was done.

01:20:29.100 It was done later, I think, what's his name?

01:20:33.300 Mike Nichols did it in The Graduate.

01:20:35.600 He's running to the church at the end, and he's running and getting lower, and then suddenly he shoots into the camera.

01:20:41.760 And I carried that with me.

01:20:43.600 And a few years later, Bob Fosse, who was very influential in my life, he said, I said something about art.

01:20:51.920 He said, I'm a song and dance man.

01:20:54.220 He said, this is no art.

01:20:55.260 This is craft.

01:20:56.460 He said, you'll learn the rules.

01:20:58.460 He said, you know, you spend your life, and you're a carpenter.

01:21:02.060 And if you get real good at it, and you learn everything, maybe you'll be a cabinet maker.

01:21:06.660 And better than that, you'll be an ebonyste, which is the French word for cabinet.

01:21:09.620 And I think that that's one of the things that's gone from our films, and it's reflected in the Oscars.

01:21:17.780 I think we're losing our worship of craft.

01:21:21.440 And of course you are, if you basically say no one who came before us has a voice even in what's going to be chosen on the one hand.

01:21:28.320 And on the other hand, you say, we have to have the freshest faces possible to prove how diverse we are when.

01:21:34.720 And you've disconnected the Hollywood of now from the Hollywood that.

01:21:39.440 And if you think that your job, as Fosse did, was one of bringing all of his technical skills to tell a story the best way he could, that's very different.

01:21:47.520 I don't think Bob Fosse would ever have said, I'm making a film to give voice to the voiceless, clothes to the clothesless, homes to the homes, whatever.

01:21:55.880 I don't think he would ever have said that.

01:21:57.860 It might have been in his head.

01:21:58.760 But I really hope this has a positive impact on society.

01:22:03.980 When I met him, I had already seen Cabaret the first time I met him.

01:22:07.840 I spent six hours with him.

01:22:09.040 That's a whole other long story.

01:22:11.180 But I said, there's virtually a perfect film.

01:22:15.020 He said, what do you mean virtually?

01:22:17.660 I said, no, no, no, please, please.

01:22:19.180 He said, no, no, you have something in mind.

01:22:20.900 And I said, well, it just seems to me that you do the fantastic scenes, More Belongs to Me, you pan up, you show the guys, they're all in it.

01:22:31.960 And then you cut to the car, and Brian says to the Baron, do you still think you'll stop the Nazis? 0.88

01:22:39.080 And Bob Fosse banged his head.

01:22:41.460 And he said, you know, if I was Stanley Kubrick, I'd be recalling the prince.

01:22:44.180 He was so obsessive about the perfection of it.

01:22:49.360 And that's where I learned my craft.

01:22:51.080 This reminds me of one of the greatest notes I ever got on a short film that we showed.

01:22:55.800 We wanted to see how people would respond to the short film, not just filmmakers.

01:22:59.560 This taught me a lot about soliciting opinions from people.

01:23:04.040 You're going to get them.

01:23:04.920 So we show the short film in the room.

01:23:07.140 We're very proud of it.

01:23:08.140 The lights come up, and we say, we'd love to have your feedback, what works, what doesn't.

01:23:11.960 And I won't name the guy.

01:23:14.280 A pal of mine raises his hand, and he says, yeah, I just think it'd be a lot better if he had a hat.

01:23:23.180 I mean, yeah, well, great.

01:23:26.700 Now you tell me.

01:23:28.040 Go back the cast.

01:23:29.380 But the general idea, I think that seems like that's true across art.

01:23:32.800 Is the substitution, I've said this on my show before, is the substitution of energy for skill.

01:23:36.880 Is that the difference between art and craft is that art, you can say, this was unskillful, but it was artistic because it got the thrust of it.

01:23:44.520 It got the main message of it.

01:23:46.000 And the idea of actually applying a craft, spending years learning how to do something, has completely fallen out of favor.

01:23:51.680 You see it in music particularly.

01:23:53.120 Like when people ask me, like I was a classical violinist for years.

01:23:56.140 And when people ask, well, why?

01:23:56.920 Oh, yeah, I was like a concert level violinist until I was 16, 17 years old.

01:24:01.000 And when people would ask.

01:24:01.880 David Oistrakh moved me to twos with the Tchaikovskans.

01:24:04.840 Oh, yeah, Oistrakh's phenomenal, phenomenal.

01:24:06.920 And when people would ask me, well, why don't you like kind of modern music very much?

01:24:11.280 I'd say because it's all energy and no craft.

01:24:13.880 You can follow what Brahms studied for years to do what he did.

01:24:18.260 And then he would go back into his old versions and rewrite his old versions to make them better.

01:24:22.880 Beethoven spent time honing his craft.

01:24:25.940 Even the vision of Mozart, you know, in Amadeus, that he's sort of just throwing off these tunes willy-nilly.

01:24:31.220 Because he grew up with them from the time he was three.

01:24:33.140 I mean, it took him years to learn how to do this stuff.

01:24:35.160 And you see the same thing in writing.

01:24:36.540 I mean, I've spent my entire, literally my entire adult life writing nonfiction and speaking about politics.

01:24:42.840 So when people say, well, how do you get good at it?

01:24:44.240 It's like you spend an enormous amount of time doing it and getting better at it.

01:24:47.960 And what you see in the movies or what you see in music or what you see in.

01:24:51.000 Or you have a fresh face.

01:24:52.200 That's exactly right.

01:24:53.020 In politics, the fresh face, it's the energy that matters.

01:24:55.340 AOC matters because she's energetic. 1.00

01:24:56.840 And music matters because it's energetic.

01:24:58.220 And this new movie, it's great because maybe they don't know what they're doing.

01:25:01.040 But it shows such promise because of the energy.

01:25:02.880 And the message covers for everything.

01:25:04.460 It's even the AOC message about it doesn't matter if what I'm saying is true.

01:25:07.280 It only matters if it's morally true.

01:25:08.720 You see that in the movie.

01:25:09.180 It doesn't matter if it's a good movie.

01:25:10.340 It only matters if it's morally good.

01:25:12.020 Or it hits the message.

01:25:13.140 Yes, and relevant.

01:25:13.980 I think that was the argument.

01:25:14.840 Relevant, exactly.

01:25:15.340 For Moonlight, the R word for Moonlight.

01:25:17.240 The best example of that is, for reasons I don't understand, I love ballet.

01:25:21.620 I mean, I'm sure there are reasons why.

01:25:23.180 But women dancing around in flimsy costumes. 1.00

01:25:28.020 But my wife, Gloria, who's an actress, but she's sitting with Martha Bim. 1.00

01:25:31.220 She's a dancer. 1.00

01:25:31.860 So I do a lot of ballet.

01:25:33.120 And I did this documentary for it.

01:25:35.520 I won the world gold medal at the New York Film Festival.

01:25:37.400 By the way, I saw this documentary.

01:25:39.460 I don't know anything about ballet.

01:25:41.060 I don't care anything about ballet.

01:25:42.840 I was glued to this thing.

01:25:43.840 It's so good.

01:25:44.640 Yeah.

01:25:45.140 Because you have a craft.

01:25:47.520 Well, that was a complete exercise of craft because it was, you know, I'm not a dancer.

01:25:51.980 But these people who devote their lives for a very short playing career.

01:25:56.520 I mean, dancers are going to last very long. 0.96

01:25:58.160 I mean, they're going to last as much time as a second baseman on the Dodgers.

01:26:04.460 Other than Davey Loeb.

01:26:05.840 But, and you look at that.

01:26:09.780 And then I watch on TV the World Championship of Dance, I think it's called.

01:26:14.680 And these are the best dancers in the world.

01:26:16.980 And they're really basically kind of music video things.

01:26:22.780 And ballet will be lost, which is one of the great treasures of Western civilization.

01:26:28.060 You know, the question.

01:26:28.500 In the same way the music will.

01:26:29.680 The question I get asked more often than almost any other is for young wannabe writers.

01:26:34.440 They say, is there a book I can read that will teach me how to write a novel?

01:26:37.340 And I always say, no, there's a hundred books that you have to read to write a novel.

01:26:41.720 Because before you know what you're doing, you have to know what's been done.

01:26:44.880 You have to learn the techniques.

01:26:46.220 You have to learn everything that's been done.

01:26:47.520 And if you throw it away, if you break the rules, you've got to know those rules.

01:26:50.780 You have got to know what you're doing.

01:26:51.440 Well, and this is the other thing that we were talking about earlier.

01:26:53.520 Is that knowing, I mean, this is true in art as it is, in morality as it is in life.

01:26:57.600 The Chesterton rule applies.

01:26:59.100 You know, the idea that you're walking through the forest and you see a fence.

01:27:01.880 And is the fence, should we just remove it willy-nilly?

01:27:03.660 Or should we assume it was there for a reason before you can remove it?

01:27:06.300 This is true in music.

01:27:07.540 It is true in politics.

01:27:08.700 It is true in morality.

01:27:09.680 It is true in everything. 0.95

01:27:10.960 We're a society that just assumes that if the fence was there, it's because it was a bunch of dead white males who were patriarchal racists who put it there.

01:27:17.480 And so, of course, not only should we remove it because we don't know why it's there. 0.98

01:27:21.220 We should remove it because the people who put it down were obviously more ignorant than we were.

01:27:24.380 Because they lived in a time where people did all this stuff that we don't like.

01:27:26.840 So we're going to remove it.

01:27:27.580 And you see this in film, the violation of basic film law happens all the time now, like obvious things.

01:27:35.720 And people don't even notice it because they don't know what the rules were in the first place.

01:27:38.820 It's why the best art was always crafted within the ambit of rules.

01:27:41.920 Shakespeare took place with a bunch of rules around him.

01:27:44.160 It's the greatest art ever created by the Western mind.

01:27:45.900 rules, iambic, pentameter.

01:27:47.700 Well, that's what craft basically teaches you in the end.

01:27:51.780 I think this is, Fosse believed this, is editing.

01:27:56.160 Craft is about getting rid of everything you don't need.

01:27:58.940 You know, it's like Rodan saying, how did you get that?

01:28:01.920 I just tip away the pieces of the planet that I don't need.

01:28:05.700 Yeah, that aren't this.

01:28:07.040 And that's completely lost.

01:28:09.420 And the whole idea of editing, of shrinking down.

01:28:12.200 You have movies now.

01:28:13.240 Everything's over two hours.

01:28:14.360 It is part of living in the country.

01:28:15.840 If you hate the country, you hate the traditions, you lose all that wisdom.

01:28:19.400 And the civilization.

01:28:20.200 I mean, the civilization is about rules and rules and rules.

01:28:22.080 And that's a great point, the editing point.

01:28:25.100 I can't remember the last time I didn't see a movie where I thought they could slice 20 minutes out of it.

01:28:28.120 Oh, absolutely.

01:28:28.800 Well, I actually learned...

01:28:29.740 My one exception, by the way, is Donovan.

01:28:32.060 Ray Donovan, surprisingly.

01:28:34.260 Minimalist.

01:28:34.780 So minimalist.

01:28:35.640 Yeah, very minimalist.

01:28:36.580 I actually learned a lot about...

01:28:37.940 Everything I've learned about filmmaking, I learned editing movies that I had made poorly.

01:28:42.320 Um, because you...

01:28:44.700 Oh, we can all claim that, dear boy.

01:28:46.340 You sit in a room and you have to now interpret what you did on location.

01:28:51.460 You know, it's a complete new day, basically.

01:28:54.980 This is all you have. 0.89

01:28:55.860 He's not wearing a freaking hat. 0.91

01:28:57.360 And you've got to make the most compelling story that you can. 0.87

01:28:59.260 And so, like, I didn't learn how to write for the screen until I was in the edit bay on the first film that I had written that was shot.

01:29:07.060 I didn't learn how to direct until sitting in the edit bay after the first film that I directed.

01:29:12.080 I think that one of the things that I observe in young people, especially young people in Hollywood,

01:29:16.920 because, you know, if you've been out here very long, it's just a matter of time until somebody knew your grandma back home

01:29:22.620 and they come ask, they're right off the bus and they want to know how they can be big and famous, you know.

01:29:26.040 Like, you're going to be able to...

01:29:27.180 I don't know if you find out, though.

01:29:29.460 But I've observed that many of them won't work on short films or independent films.

01:29:35.320 So, guys, when we got ready to make The Arroyo, guys who went to film school, who now were waiting tables,

01:29:42.460 and we would ask them, hey, come be involved.

01:29:44.460 You know more about this than we do.

01:29:46.080 And they wouldn't do it.

01:29:47.120 And they wouldn't do it because in their mind, their first film is going to be Citizen Kane.

01:29:53.040 In their mind, they're the next big thing.

01:29:55.240 And they actually don't want an at-bat.

01:29:57.820 Because if they have to go make a movie, it's not going to be much better than my movie was.

01:30:01.600 I'm not ashamed of any of my movies, though, because I made them.

01:30:04.100 And then I learned something.

01:30:05.740 And then I applied what I learned and made another movie.

01:30:07.920 And I have a theory that if you do that long enough, you will get better at it.

01:30:11.440 But this sort of idolatry of Hollywood, right, this allows people to come here and hide from who they are behind the belief of who they could be.

01:30:22.820 But they won't actually take any steps to cross the distance between.

01:30:25.660 Because that's where your actual life is.

01:30:27.160 That's where the truth about you is going to be revealed.

01:30:30.580 Hollywood is part of their selfie.

01:30:32.280 It's not, they're not here looking at this thing and saying, how can I be part of this?

01:30:37.180 So I'm doing this film, Lonesome Soldier, in basic, why did you join?

01:30:42.480 Well, I wanted to be part of something larger than myself.

01:30:44.660 And the sergeant says, as my sergeant once said to me, be part of something bigger than yourself.

01:30:49.020 That's easy, boy.

01:30:49.900 Join the Boy Scouts.

01:30:51.360 It's being worthy of something bigger than you.

01:30:53.600 And the point you make, by the way, is really important.

01:30:57.620 Until you have directed a film once, you do not know, I don't care how much background you have, that's when you learn, oh my God, the things I didn't shoot.

01:31:07.880 The inserts I forgot, the stuff I shot that I didn't need, the transition from the written page to what you shoot to what you edit, it's very hard.

01:31:17.260 And you only learn that by repetition, you know, I mean, but there is no repetition anymore.

01:31:22.900 And I thought that was what last night was about.

01:31:24.920 And, you know, everyone's talking about, what's his name, Spike Lee.

01:31:28.460 But that's selfie behavior.

01:31:30.140 That's right.

01:31:30.500 That, you know, this is me.

01:31:32.480 Yeah.

01:31:32.960 This is me making the Oscars part of my.

01:31:36.000 Yeah.

01:31:36.240 That was one of the few things I always admired about Woody Allen was he never showed up for the Oscars because he knew that the films were everything.

01:31:42.320 You know, and he, and, you know, he would go, he had a band that he played with.

01:31:45.900 And he would say, well, that's the night I play with my band.

01:31:48.180 And he would just go and play with the band.

01:31:49.520 I thought, that's right, because you're making the movie.

01:31:51.860 It might be fun to go to the Oscars.

01:31:53.100 You know, I'm not dissing people who do.

01:31:55.780 But to understand that the work is everything.

01:31:57.980 The work is everything.

01:31:58.940 It's the first lesson you have to learn because everything else, everything else is draws, you know. 0.91

01:32:04.200 I mean, it's fun, but it's not the point.

01:32:06.940 The first time I went, I was sitting next to, right behind, actually, Lauren Bacall.

01:32:14.320 Catherine Hepburn was over there.

01:32:16.880 It was really something, you know, larger than life.

01:32:21.080 You know, I was thinking that a guy there in short pants, you know.

01:32:24.700 It's just, I thought, you know, it's just, it's a selfie thing, you know.

01:32:29.940 But we are not making films the way we do.

01:32:32.660 I happen to have liked the Green Book.

01:32:34.920 That's probably because I'm deeply flawed somewhere.

01:32:38.980 So I'm led to believe.

01:32:40.820 Only morally, yes.

01:32:41.760 And then that's not news, is it?

01:32:44.160 I'm morally flawed.

01:32:45.360 But, because I thought that was a well-made film.

01:32:50.660 Yeah.

01:32:51.020 It was.

01:32:51.320 On the other hand, Roma reminded me, no, you remember like Fellini, early, God almighty.

01:32:57.440 Early Fellini.

01:32:58.540 I stopped teaching because I realized no one had ever seen, they didn't even know what High Noon was or Lawrence Fabian.

01:33:03.520 But Fellini made his early films when he had very little money and he was learning his craft.

01:33:08.200 He did Bicycle Thieves.

01:33:09.140 He did Knights of Cabiria.

01:33:11.600 The Giulietta Messina films, the other one was the Knights of Cabiria Became Sweet Charity.

01:33:16.140 And Giulietta, the Spirits, right, and all of that.

01:33:19.920 And that's what Roma was. 0.84

01:33:22.180 And it was a very interesting film, but I thought rather long.

01:33:27.400 And I don't know how that poster will look in 20 years on the wall of the Academy.

01:33:33.080 I'm just not sure.

01:33:34.240 I'm not saying it was not a great film.

01:33:36.700 I'm just saying I don't know.

01:33:39.260 It's the movie you make on your way to making great movies.

01:33:42.020 Maybe making a good movie.

01:33:42.820 It was for Fellini, certainly, yeah.

01:33:45.360 So I want to take a few more questions from our Daily Wire subscribers before we call it a night.

01:33:50.340 Dailywire.com, click on the subscribe button.

01:33:53.220 Give us all your money.

01:33:54.400 Not all your money.

01:33:55.860 In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say it.

01:33:57.400 You won't hear this.

01:34:00.000 You happen to know I'm a pastor.

01:34:01.880 Yes.

01:34:02.300 And as a pastor, I want, because of Christianity, I want people to give me all of their money.

01:34:07.080 As a businessman, a greedy, cold-hearted businessman, I only want you to give us money in exchange for a good or service.

01:34:15.200 And the good or service is basically Ben.

01:34:17.160 But you also get to ask questions of us here at the backstage show.

01:34:22.340 So, Alicia, what have you got?

01:34:24.060 And that's when you get to see my face.

01:34:25.760 So, please, ask more questions.

01:34:28.120 Subscribe.

01:34:28.880 I love that Alicia has had a wardrobe change between every segment tonight. 1.00

01:34:32.440 Oh, someone noticed?

01:34:33.240 This is Hollywood, baby.

01:34:34.280 Someone noticed?

01:34:35.260 I mean...

01:34:35.620 I put this whole thing.

01:34:36.460 I'm trying to keep up with Alicia Keys and hoping next year they'll let me host the Grammys.

01:34:42.680 Who knows?

01:34:44.640 Before we get to those amazing subscriber questions, though, we do want to give everybody the results of our Facebook poll.

01:34:50.560 We talked about who should have won Best Picture.

01:34:53.240 Well, according to our Daily Wire Facebook audience, 13% said Black Panther, 18% said the movie that Mr. Chetwin just mentioned, Green Book, 24% said A Star is Born, but 45% comes in for the queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.

01:35:08.800 I take it back.

01:35:09.280 Our listeners should...

01:35:10.720 Okay, our watchers should...

01:35:12.080 Don't subscribe.

01:35:13.060 Don't do any of those things.

01:35:14.760 We take it all back.

01:35:15.600 If you think Bohemian Rhapsody should have won Best Picture, just go watch a bunch of MTV from 1987 and be satisfied with your day.

01:35:22.900 My God, what's wrong with you?

01:35:24.280 Not one vote for Gosnell in there.

01:35:25.080 I don't know.

01:35:26.540 I almost need one of your...

01:35:28.820 My girly drinks?

01:35:29.880 Who is drinking that?

01:35:31.400 I am.

01:35:31.760 I'm not mad enough to do any of this stuff.

01:35:32.960 I respect you.

01:35:33.660 I respect you for that.

01:35:35.480 I'm a man...

01:35:36.200 Listen, I can wear a dress to the Oscars or I can drink this drink.

01:35:39.940 That's the way this works.

01:35:40.520 Or you can do both.

01:35:42.280 Let's have some questions, Alicia.

01:35:43.720 I really enjoy this question for Veronica.

01:35:45.940 She wants to know, do you guys feel that mashups like Pride and Prejudice and zombies are disrespectful?

01:35:51.020 And what mashups would you create?

01:35:53.100 As a fan of Mark Twain, I do think that it's disrespectful to denigrate perfectly good zombies with a bunch of tripe like Pride and Prejudice.

01:36:04.240 Pride and Prejudice should only be associated with zombies when you roll up your copy and jab them right through the skull with it to make sure that they're dead. 0.65

01:36:12.140 True.

01:36:12.540 So I'm all in favor of all kinds of mashups and comedy.

01:36:15.880 Anything that makes me laugh, I'm for it.

01:36:17.440 I don't know.

01:36:17.720 Actually, I'm going to go, as I so often am, counter the prevailing trend here.

01:36:23.100 I do have a problem with people hijacking other people's work and then using it for their own profit.

01:36:26.620 Meaning that Pride and Prejudice is a great work of art.

01:36:29.520 It is a great work of art.

01:36:29.960 Come on.

01:36:30.600 It's a great work of art.

01:36:32.000 Come on.

01:36:32.700 Come on.

01:36:33.500 I was like you, Jeremy.

01:36:35.160 And then, really, and then I went back and I reread it and I said, this is an amazing issue.

01:36:38.900 She's the greatest female writer who ever lived.

01:36:40.860 Female novelist.

01:36:41.540 I don't think it's particularly close, actually.

01:36:43.080 She's one of the great novelist.

01:36:43.880 But there are two ways if you want to do something with Jane Austen, rather than mash up someone else.

01:36:47.900 First of all, Crazy Rich Asians was Jane Austen.

01:36:51.800 Right.

01:36:52.000 That's exactly right.

01:36:52.640 It's just a remake.

01:36:53.080 So he just did it and it's an homage.

01:36:55.620 Right.

01:36:55.980 Unless I had story of Shakespeare.

01:36:57.260 You can do, like, that's all fine.

01:36:58.160 Or you can do, what was it, the Zuckers who did Jane Austen's Mafia? 0.99

01:37:02.120 I mean, taking other people's work.

01:37:05.740 There's some guy, and they put him on TMC, who rewrote Maurice Jarre's music.

01:37:10.900 Yeah.

01:37:11.220 Brought in other people. 1.00

01:37:11.960 He didn't rewrite it, actually.

01:37:12.860 Took other music and put it on Lawrence of Arabia.

01:37:15.960 I mean, are you kidding?

01:37:17.500 I knew it.

01:37:18.240 Yeah.

01:37:19.140 That's one of the puns with technology.

01:37:20.720 Everyone is now an artist.

01:37:21.700 I'll tell you one that bothered me, actually, was the musical Wicked.

01:37:25.320 So the work of L. Frank Baum is masterful.

01:37:29.300 I mean, if you go back and you read the actual Wizard of Oz books, they're amazing, amazing

01:37:34.140 books.

01:37:34.760 And to just flip that on its head and make it into kind of a cynical thing about feminism

01:37:38.040 or whatever it was about, it's, go write your own, I mean, like, really, just go write

01:37:43.600 your own stuff.

01:37:44.120 Like, if you can't be original, then go do a modernization of a Shakespeare story, like,

01:37:52.380 as West Side Story is.

01:37:53.840 Like, no one's going to regret you that, because we all recognize the homage.

01:37:56.980 But to cut the heart out of another person's story, and then to reuse it so that you can

01:38:03.300 make money off it, it's utterly unoriginal, and it seems like plagiarism to me.

01:38:06.920 I mean, to be honest.

01:38:07.720 I have to admit that I agree with you insofar as I always hate when people write sequels

01:38:11.280 to books that they didn't write.

01:38:12.600 Yes, exactly.

01:38:12.920 Somebody did that with Gone with the Wind. 0.98

01:38:14.280 It's like, who the hell are you? 0.90

01:38:15.360 Who are you? 0.99

01:38:16.040 I know.

01:38:16.360 Are you Margaret Mitchell?

01:38:17.760 So we'll get to another question.

01:38:19.520 I do want to quote Master Twain, who once observed that one could make a perfectly good

01:38:26.140 library out of any library by the simple omission of the works of Jane Austen.

01:38:31.220 He hated Jane Austen.

01:38:32.220 He hated Jane Austen. 0.99

01:38:32.680 Yeah, digging her up and hitting her with her jawbone. 1.00

01:38:35.720 Alicia, give us one more. 0.64

01:38:37.260 That's really a bummer, too, because I think Mark Twain is a distant cousin of mine, along

01:38:42.200 with Elizabeth Warren, apparently.

01:38:44.180 But...

01:38:44.540 You're Native American?

01:38:47.020 Only 1,120...

01:38:49.120 I don't know.

01:38:49.700 1,024.

01:38:50.940 All right.

01:38:51.560 Crystal says, oh, I love this show.

01:38:53.140 Silicon Valley was the last good show that she watched.

01:38:55.780 Are there any other good conservative shows out there?

01:38:58.480 Oh, boy.

01:38:59.700 Silicon Valley was a terrific show.

01:39:01.260 It is a terrific show.

01:39:03.160 Mike Judge is the best.

01:39:04.580 Is it coming back to Silicon Valley?

01:39:06.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:39:06.480 It's coming back for another season, and I could not be more excited.

01:39:08.980 That show is so uber conservative, and nobody knows it.

01:39:11.440 It's so conservative.

01:39:12.180 I know.

01:39:12.500 No, no, no.

01:39:13.500 That whole episode about the guy who's gay but was afraid to come out as Christian was

01:39:17.680 just...

01:39:18.140 That was terrific.

01:39:18.780 It was just fantastic.

01:39:19.640 Yeah, that show is great.

01:39:21.820 Openly conservative.

01:39:22.600 Yes.

01:39:23.560 Bodyguard just came out on Netflix.

01:39:25.800 Bodyguard, yes.

01:39:26.540 Very good.

01:39:26.960 Yeah, and it is conservative.

01:39:29.600 You watched it to the end, right?

01:39:30.680 Yeah.

01:39:30.840 It's conservative.

01:39:32.600 It's definitely conservative.

01:39:34.440 Okay.

01:39:35.360 Sorry.

01:39:35.560 Go ahead.

01:39:36.100 Yeah, there's one that my wife and I are watching right now called Travelers that's kind of

01:39:40.800 conservative.

01:39:41.300 The basic thesis of the show, the premise of the show, is that sometime in the future,

01:39:45.560 there's some world-ending event, and so they've somehow harnessed the technology to send

01:39:49.240 the consciousness of people from the future into the bodies of the present, but they can

01:39:52.820 only pick people who are about to die in the present, so they're not killing the people,

01:39:56.760 the people who die anyway.

01:39:57.560 Right.

01:39:57.840 And there's some really interesting stuff in that.

01:40:00.340 The most conservative show on TV is MasterChef Junior.

01:40:03.600 You take these cute little tykes.

01:40:05.580 This is right.

01:40:06.040 You put sharp knives in their hands, put them over hot stoves, and if they don't cut it,

01:40:10.880 you send them home.

01:40:12.320 Do you know what I find rather conservative, and this would shock him, and could end my career

01:40:17.340 if by annoying him, is Chuck Lorre's show, Young Sheldon, which takes place in Texas, if you

01:40:23.560 watch it, it is very respectful of those people, of the father's burden, of the mother's, it's

01:40:30.740 a comedy, and yes, it's a set-up, but the values in that show, and in all of his shows,

01:40:36.480 are very interestingly about self-discipline, about hard work, about my mom, Big Bang Theory,

01:40:41.420 it's very interesting.

01:40:41.980 This is my theory.

01:40:43.620 Vanity cards are horrific.

01:40:44.980 But this is my theory about sitcoms generally, is that sitcoms inherently end up being conservative

01:40:50.020 because, again, they're based on certain Shakespearean tropes.

01:40:52.220 Everyone gets married at the end of the sitcom, and the person who is supposed to be the villain

01:40:56.820 is always the wise old man in the end, right?

01:40:59.060 Like, every character you like, Archie Bunker ends up being the hero of All in the Family,

01:41:02.820 and he's supposed to be the villain.

01:41:04.100 Rob Swanson in Parks and Rec is supposed to be the villain, and he's the hero of the show.

01:41:07.540 Alex P. Keaton was, I mean, I talked to Gary David Goldberg, who wrote the show,

01:41:10.840 and I did my book, and he said Alex P. Keaton was supposed to be the villain of the show.

01:41:14.000 Everyone loves Alex P. Keaton, because Alex P. Keaton is saying the only true things on the show,

01:41:17.620 and when he's not saying something true, it's because his father is informing him it's not true,

01:41:20.980 which is patriarchalism at work.

01:41:23.000 The method of the sitcom is to reinforce, because your values, everybody's values in the United States,

01:41:28.140 they don't want to recognize this, everybody's values in the United States,

01:41:30.320 when it comes to family and home and heart, are inherently conservative.

01:41:33.340 Sitcoms are there to make you feel comfortable.

01:41:35.320 And so anything that makes you feel comfortable is not challenging those inherent values.

01:41:39.300 It's reinforcing those inherent values and making you feel comfortable in those values.

01:41:42.440 Clearly, you've never watched White Famous, or there's a new one called Femme. 1.00

01:41:47.900 They're not in the Shakespearean mold.

01:41:51.400 But no, I think the successful ones, you're right, because there's a sequence to life, basically.

01:41:55.380 The bourgeois middle-class sequence that got Amy Goodman fired.

01:41:59.380 You go to school, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you raise them.

01:42:04.220 And that's how this system works.

01:42:06.500 And if you do that, you will succeed.

01:42:09.200 And ultimately, people, you know, Americans don't like films about failures.

01:42:12.680 That's why I worked on Beacon Hill, which was the American version of Upstairs, Downstairs.

01:42:16.520 It was never going to work, because Americans, they're not interested in people who are happy to be servants. 0.99

01:42:21.620 And if you're going to move ahead, you must follow the sequence.

01:42:24.320 If you're going to follow the sequence, you're ultimately going to be a conservative.

01:42:27.620 Alicia, one last question, but first, a question from me to you.

01:42:31.880 Is that a $30 million necklace, and if so, from whom did you borrow?

01:42:36.340 You know, I think that this came from, I don't know, maybe the insurance that I purchased through one of our very generous members.

01:42:44.440 No, I think it came from Mark Anthony, because it looks like one of those wonderful Roman, you know.

01:42:49.580 I was told it looked very Madonna, so, you know, Vogue, here we go.

01:42:54.000 Speaking of sitcoms, apparently Roth and Rachel are subscribers.

01:42:56.980 To the Daily Wire, because their last question of the night, they want to know,

01:43:01.120 do you think video games are more reflective of American culture?

01:43:04.280 I believe the Video Game Awards had games that were artistic and popular, while the Oscars offered nothing.

01:43:10.920 As a video gamer, I have to say, I think there's been more innovation in video games in the last, let's go back 20 years,

01:43:17.540 than there has certainly been in movies.

01:43:19.880 They definitely emphasize a kind of heroism and sacrifice and putting yourself forward and courage

01:43:25.280 and essential values, and they create works of visual art that are immersive in ways that art has never been before,

01:43:34.480 and it's actually unique, it's actually a unique form, it's got some built-in restrictions that keep it from being a good storytelling form,

01:43:41.420 but as a visual art, it's amazing, and I think they're absolutely right.

01:43:45.780 What are you playing right now?

01:43:46.540 I'm playing Diablo 3, which is a throwback to one of the first games that ever kind of lit me up.

01:43:52.280 I mean, because I was there for Pong, you know, I was there at the beginning, and when Diablo came out, I found it in a bin.

01:43:57.240 He means ping pong.

01:43:58.120 Yeah, exactly.

01:43:58.900 He's not a young man.

01:43:59.780 But when Diablo came out, I found it in a bin, and I just liked the cover, and I took it home, and I went, oh, oh, this is a new thing,

01:44:06.860 and now they've brought out this new version, and it tells its story with absolutely just precision speed,

01:44:13.240 and you're completely immersed in this world, and it's the first game I've been addicted to in a long time,

01:44:17.580 and it's just absolutely great.

01:44:18.380 Did you ever, did you, I'm sorry, I just wondered, did you play Assassin's Creed?

01:44:21.480 Yeah, sure.

01:44:21.900 Because one thing I learned from that is that video games have been the cutting edge of nearly all the technological advancement in film.

01:44:31.620 All of the new cinematic art is really coming out of these gamers.

01:44:35.020 Yeah.

01:44:35.480 You know, certainly 3D.

01:44:36.740 And it's been a funny thing, too, because they'll steal from Night of the Living Dead, and they'll make Resident Evil,

01:44:42.560 and then they'll make movies of Resident Evil, so it's been kind of incestuous all along.

01:44:45.880 That's interesting.

01:44:46.660 I just played through, I only play about one game a year.

01:44:50.240 Yeah.

01:44:50.320 And I just went through a nostalgia game.

01:44:52.220 One of the first games that I fell in love with as a kid was The Legend of Zelda.

01:44:55.520 Oh, yeah.

01:44:55.760 There's this new Zelda out on Nintendo.

01:44:57.360 I bought a Nintendo just to play Breath of the Wild.

01:45:00.320 It's fabulous.

01:45:01.020 It's one of the most immersive games I've ever played.

01:45:04.460 It's a real journey, and you kind of, in a sort of choose-your-own-adventure way,

01:45:09.680 I feel like no two people who ever play the game will have the same experience,

01:45:12.660 which isn't something I'd really encountered in the typical kind of games I like, like Gears of War.

01:45:16.960 When I was a kid, they were talking about this in fiction,

01:45:19.260 that they were going to have fiction where you could choose your path and all that.

01:45:21.980 But it's video games that did that.

01:45:23.440 My Switch is in the mail, so I'm looking forward to that.

01:45:25.400 Oh, it's a great thing.

01:45:25.980 It's supposed to arrive tomorrow.

01:45:27.240 Alicia, thank you, and thank you to all of our Daily Wire subscribers

01:45:29.960 who shell out their hard-earned ten bucks to keep Ben Shapiro in everything.

01:45:35.000 Really, he's doing very well.

01:45:36.000 But he does so well with it.

01:45:37.380 And, Lionel, thank you for coming on the show tonight,

01:45:40.600 especially as a substitute for the guest that promised us he was going to be here

01:45:43.800 and then didn't show up, Stephen Crowder. 1.00

01:45:46.120 What a jerk. 1.00

01:45:46.580 Can't believe the jerk just promised. 1.00

01:45:48.440 He probably died from drinking out of his stupid mug. 1.00

01:45:50.880 It's all the ashes in it. 1.00

01:45:52.660 Well, it's what has to be in second place to someone, I guess.

01:45:56.120 What the hell?

01:45:57.320 And thank you to the family of Michael Knowles who suffered a terrible loss. 0.97

01:46:01.280 That is a shame.

01:46:02.360 Terrible, terrible.

01:46:02.940 I feel absolutely awful about it.

01:46:04.980 We lost a good one.

01:46:05.760 And as long as they never find the body, we're good.

01:46:08.460 All right, we'll see you guys here in a couple of weeks.

01:46:11.040 Fake laugh in three, two.

01:46:14.920 Of the Hollywood Lounge.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 26, 2019

The Wokest Awards Show in Hollywood

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