TRIGGERnometry - Has Hollywood Reached Peak Woke？ - Critical Drinker

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00:00:15.960 I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest. 1.00

00:00:20.520 She treats Ken like a piece of shit, from what I recall. 1.00

00:00:23.580 He just wants a little bit of respect, and apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie. 1.00

00:00:28.140 Bizarre.

00:00:28.620 The idea that it's best picture, really?

00:00:31.880 Like, you couldn't find anything better than that.

00:00:33.960 Do you think that's a political decision?

00:00:35.580 Oh, 100%, yeah.

00:00:36.880 If we look at the Oscars now, what is the point of the Oscars, really?

00:00:42.340 Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail

00:00:47.000 was when Chris Rock was assaulted.

00:00:49.300 They're dying a death, and they're bringing about their own demise.

00:00:52.960 Critical drinker, welcome to the Kremlin.

00:00:56.120 Sitting at the end of a very long table.

00:00:58.260 It's great.

00:00:58.920 I feel like a Bond villain here.

00:01:00.220 It's fantastic.

00:01:00.960 Well, it's awesome to have you back on the show.

00:01:02.640 We had you on about a year and a half ago, and we spent, it's not an uncommon thing for us,

00:01:09.220 quite a bit of time talking about whether wokeness is destroying Hollywood and the movie business,

00:01:13.540 and we had a great conversation.

00:01:14.920 It's done really well.

00:01:15.660 So we wanted to talk about a bunch of stuff that's happened since a few of the movies,

00:01:20.840 you know, Barbie Oppenheimer, the controversy with the Oscars and all of that.

00:01:26.160 But first of all, actually, it'd be interesting to get your take on coming back to the conversation

00:01:30.120 we had last time.

00:01:31.860 Is Hollywood getting more woke, less woke?

00:01:34.940 Is it getting better?

00:01:35.720 Is it getting worse?

00:01:36.400 What do you think?

00:01:37.160 I think last year really saw a lot of changes in that industry.

00:01:40.920 I mean, I think for one thing, it was the demise of the superhero movie last year.

00:01:44.840 And, you know, that really became the benchmark for, I guess, woke politics being pushed into

00:01:52.100 movies when you look at the Marvel stuff that had been coming out.

00:01:56.760 I think they got away with it up until a point, and then last year was really the point where

00:02:00.800 it all reached critical mass and everyone just really rejected it.

00:02:05.460 Partly it was the politics, partly it was just really terrible writing and low-quality movies

00:02:09.280 and, like, superhero fatigue.

00:02:10.700 But, yeah, I think probably last year was a bit of a turning point for all of this stuff

00:02:15.740 in Hollywood.

00:02:16.320 We're still going to see more of it, for sure.

00:02:18.260 It's not going to go away overnight, but it's definitely the point where it's no longer

00:02:21.680 financially viable.

00:02:23.440 That's really interesting.

00:02:24.360 And the superhero stuff, is that literally just, as you say, fatigue, or is there another

00:02:28.580 dimension to why those movies are not getting made as much anymore?

00:02:31.440 It's probably a whole bunch of things that have come together, like I say, to reach critical

00:02:35.220 mass last year.

00:02:36.700 It was superhero fatigue, for sure.

00:02:38.520 It's oversaturation of the market.

00:02:40.340 Like, we have had nothing but superhero movies for the past 10 years.

00:02:44.180 It's declining quality because they've spread themselves so thin, trying to make so many

00:02:48.600 different projects.

00:02:49.920 Inevitably, the quality suffers.

00:02:51.540 I think also perhaps hiring people based on things other than merit to do the writing,

00:02:56.720 to do the directing, doesn't help either.

00:03:00.560 And, yeah, the political dimension of it, I think, has just become tiresome.

00:03:04.500 So all of those things combine together to just really crash the entire genre.

00:03:07.820 So I'm not going to be sad to see the back of them for a while.

00:03:10.560 I think we're all getting a bit bored of that sort of thing.

00:03:13.340 Isn't that a real problem, though, for the Hollywood studios?

00:03:15.880 Because in an era where young people are going less to the cinema, they seem less engaged with

00:03:22.960 movies as a whole because of social media.

00:03:25.240 The superhero movies were a guaranteed way for those studios to print money, in a way.

00:03:32.560 They were.

00:03:33.060 And they were partly responsible for this gradual creep in cost as well for movies.

00:03:39.020 You know, it used to be that any movie that went over the $200 million mark was rare.

00:03:43.860 And that was a big event.

00:03:45.580 Now, it just became the norm.

00:03:47.280 That was the minimum, really, to make a superhero movie.

00:03:49.420 It was $200 million.

00:03:50.240 You were getting into the realms of $300 million, $350 million, and when you're doing that,

00:03:54.660 when you're spending that amount of money, you have to play it safe.

00:03:58.480 You know, you need a guaranteed return on that investment.

00:04:01.800 And the way to do it up until recently had been superhero movies because they were making

00:04:05.820 a billion dollars apiece.

00:04:07.140 It was great.

00:04:07.860 You know, it was like printing money.

00:04:09.620 But when you start to get tired of that, when the audience interest starts to decline,

00:04:13.440 and you're not even able to get to $500, $600 million, you're losing.

00:04:18.580 And you can't keep doing that.

00:04:19.620 You can't keep losing money on your films.

00:04:21.780 Yeah.

00:04:22.500 And one thing I found really interesting is that accompanied by the rise of the superhero

00:04:28.460 movie was the death of the indie movie.

00:04:31.020 If you go back to the early noughties, you saw these incredible indie movies being made

00:04:36.580 for relatively low budgets with big name actors.

00:04:39.900 And they were these fascinating projects.

00:04:42.140 But those have kind of died as well.

00:04:44.980 Certainly at the cinema, the summer movie season became entirely dominated by the big

00:04:49.700 budget tentpole superhero movies.

00:04:51.760 For the obvious reasons, like I just said, they made a lot of money.

00:04:55.920 And so they did end up dominating the scene.

00:04:58.140 But then you saw last year, the biggest movies were the Mario Brothers movie, Barbie, Oppenheimer,

00:05:05.000 you know, movies that had nothing to do with superheroes or comic books or anything like that.

00:05:08.860 So it was a definite shift there.

00:05:10.380 But what I found, let's talk about Barbie and Oppenheimer, because I don't think many

00:05:17.620 people would have predicted, maybe Barbie.

00:05:20.460 You go, look, you know, every girl played with Barbie when she was younger.

00:05:24.320 OK, I get the nostalgia elements of it, why people would go and watch that movie.

00:05:29.460 But Oppenheimer?

00:05:30.800 And then it came out at the same time?

00:05:33.240 Yeah.

00:05:33.420 That was weird.

00:05:34.980 It was a bizarre phenomenon.

00:05:36.940 I don't exactly know how it came about.

00:05:38.940 But suddenly, Barbenheimer was just the thing that dominated the summer.

00:05:43.380 And, you know, we've said before on my live streams and so on, I think Oppenheimer profited

00:05:48.080 from that way more than Barbie did.

00:05:50.240 Barbie was by far the bigger movie.

00:05:51.840 And the idea that you've got this very long, very slow-paced, historical epic, you know,

00:06:01.180 dealing with a subject matter that not everyone's going to be super invested in.

00:06:04.500 It's kind of old news at this point.

00:06:05.720 But the fact that it did as well as it did was just a testament to the fact that Barbie

00:06:10.960 had such massive momentum behind it.

00:06:13.300 And people were seeing them as a double feature.

00:06:15.440 It was a strange thing.

00:06:17.220 Not something that you see very often in modern Hollywood, but it somehow happened.

00:06:21.500 And fair enough.

00:06:22.360 It was interesting.

00:06:23.420 And was that contrived?

00:06:24.720 Was that deliberately done?

00:06:26.540 Or did it sort of spring up organically that it was packaged up like that?

00:06:30.080 I mean, certainly the success of Barbie was very well engineered through a brilliant marketing

00:06:34.380 campaign.

00:06:35.100 I mean, they made this the movie that everyone had to go and see for the summer.

00:06:38.620 So they did their jobs spectacularly well.

00:06:41.840 We'll start to jump in.

00:06:42.940 Tell us more about that, because I know that the marketing budget for Barbie was bigger

00:06:47.980 than the budget for the movie, but money doesn't necessarily equate to outcome.

00:06:52.500 So what is it that they did that made it such a big movie in the end?

00:06:56.060 I think they just obviously tapped into that nostalgia aspect for the toys.

00:07:01.360 You know, like most girls in the Western Hemisphere will have played with a Barbie doll 0.99

00:07:05.900 at some point in their lives.

00:07:07.120 And so there's a big, probably emotional attachment to it there.

00:07:10.480 You had a star like Margot Robbie there, who was finally coming into her own as a A-list

00:07:17.000 star, because she'd struggled a little bit, weirdly.

00:07:19.440 The thing that people forget about her is that she'd had a lot of movies that hadn't

00:07:23.080 done necessarily greatly.

00:07:24.340 The Birds of Prey movie, trying to launch her as an A-lister. 0.99

00:07:27.120 But this was the point where she finally reached that A-list status.

00:07:32.020 So that certainly helped.

00:07:33.280 You had Ryan Gosling, who was super popular as well at the time.

00:07:35.860 And the whole aesthetic of the movie was just very different, very interesting.

00:07:40.920 Certainly not like what we were used to seeing.

00:07:43.120 It didn't look like a superhero movie where there was big explosions and big, grand, spectacular

00:07:48.860 CGI.

00:07:50.100 Kind of looked like, as you'd imagine, a playset, you know, for little kids.

00:07:54.800 And so it just looked visually interesting.

00:07:57.000 And it really, the marketing somehow made it seem like it was going to be an event.

00:08:03.640 I don't know exactly how they accomplished it, but I think they brought together all

00:08:07.200 of these elements of having two big popular stars, certainly a popular director in Greta

00:08:13.360 Gerwig, who, if you're a feminist, for example, you're definitely going to be aware of her and 1.00

00:08:18.680 following her work.

00:08:19.580 And so I think it became that kind of, what did they call Black Panther?

00:08:25.360 A cultural event.

00:08:26.580 Yeah.

00:08:26.900 I think maybe this was like Black Panther, but for feminists. 1.00

00:08:31.020 Yeah.

00:08:31.180 Pink Panther.

00:08:32.040 Yeah.

00:08:33.240 So it was a piece of genius how they marketed it.

00:08:36.180 It was very well done.

00:08:37.100 And it's interesting because my wife and I, we've got a young child at home.

00:08:42.020 So we don't go and see a lot of movies, even though we love them.

00:08:45.060 But it was one of the ones, one of the very few that we did go and see.

00:08:48.380 Um, and you know, we had our own opinion on it.

00:08:51.300 What did you make of it?

00:08:52.640 I, I, I'd be lying if I said I had a great time watching it.

00:08:56.400 Watching this film was one of the most miserable, demoralizing, unpleasant experiences I've ever

00:09:02.160 had as a movie critic and genuinely made me question where our society is heading.

00:09:07.500 It was a strange movie.

00:09:09.000 I, I feel like the, the actual telling of the story and the, the internal consistency of

00:09:15.640 it, the characters, the things I generally look for in a movie.

00:09:18.380 Uh, was entirely subsumed by the message of the film.

00:09:21.580 Um, the only problem is the film wasn't particularly clear on the message it was trying to get

00:09:26.740 across either.

00:09:27.420 Like the obvious one being, you know, uh, women have it terribly hard in the modern world 1.00

00:09:32.800 and we need to appreciate how, how difficult it is for them and cut them some slack.

00:09:36.580 I'm like, okay, fine.

00:09:37.740 Um, you know, it's been the theme of every movie ever for the past 10 years.

00:09:42.620 That'll be $500 million.

00:09:44.080 Yeah, exactly.

00:09:45.340 Uh, I think they could have done interesting things with it by perhaps exploring that,

00:09:49.780 you know, in the world we live in today, men don't always have it easy either.

00:09:53.880 And there's perhaps expectations put on them or there's unfair imbalances in how they're

00:09:59.280 treated, that sort of thing.

00:10:00.620 But clearly the film wasn't willing to go there.

00:10:02.780 So fair enough.

00:10:04.520 Uh, and I think, you know, it's, uh, it became a bit toothless because I, I understand what

00:10:11.320 people say, but it was also a critique of modern day feminism in that it puts on realistic 1.00

00:10:15.980 expectations on women. 0.99

00:10:17.280 They have to be super successful and, and make it look easy and all that stuff.

00:10:21.140 But it felt like it was never willing to really critique it.

00:10:24.140 It was just paying lip service to that.

00:10:26.500 So it was an imbalanced sort of movie.

00:10:28.540 It clearly wasn't a movie made for someone like me.

00:10:31.000 So let it be its own thing.

00:10:33.620 I suppose all I could do was give my impressions of it.

00:10:36.520 Um, certainly as a person who tries to be, um, to judge movies based on the key elements,

00:10:42.660 like I say, storytelling, consistent characterization, all that sort of thing.

00:10:46.360 Uh, it definitely fell flat because it was all subsumed by the message it was trying to

00:10:50.820 get across.

00:10:51.660 And what was interesting about it is because we're talking about wokeness, but it was a

00:10:55.680 pretty woke film.

00:10:57.740 Like some of the central tenants of wokeness, you could see running right the way through

00:11:01.500 that movie.

00:11:02.580 I think so.

00:11:03.240 Yeah.

00:11:03.420 I mean, it's, uh, it's not to the degree of other films where, for example, Barbie becomes

00:11:08.240 this, um, action hero who can, who can fight men and beat the crap out of them and

00:11:13.660 stuff.

00:11:13.900 Um, it was a more, um, I don't know if thoughtful is the right word, but it tried to at least

00:11:19.180 go into the, the methodology and the, um, philosophy behind feminism and I guess how women are treated

00:11:26.120 today, uh, which on the face of it is fine.

00:11:28.720 Like you can explore all this sort of thing.

00:11:30.420 It's all down to the implementation of it.

00:11:32.220 Um, and I guess, yeah, if you want to, um, apply that term to it, it would be considered

00:11:38.120 woke because it's really, um, it doesn't treat men and women equally, I guess.

00:11:43.860 And the, the way the film resolves itself is essentially in the fictional world of Barbie

00:11:49.960 where you're supposed to be identifying with men are put firmly back in their place.

00:11:53.660 Uh, and I just thought that's doesn't seem like a very nice way to end it.

00:11:58.220 I feel like maybe if you were to go for an equal balance, you know, where they recognize,

00:12:03.080 hey, men and women are both really important for society.

00:12:05.620 And if we keep them, um, if we keep one side down and elevate the other, it's not really

00:12:10.400 fair and it just leads to more conflict.

00:12:12.200 But the movie didn't seem to want to go down that road.

00:12:14.760 So no, it didn't.

00:12:16.080 Fair enough.

00:12:16.940 And it was interesting because I was watching it and I actually went in and I wanted to like

00:12:21.420 it.

00:12:21.640 I wanted to like it.

00:12:23.180 And this is genuinely what I thought. 0.99

00:12:25.320 I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest. 1.00

00:12:30.300 She treats Ken like a piece of shit. 1.00

00:12:32.100 Um, because you know, people talk about this, like he's like the actual hero of the movie 1.00

00:12:37.860 where all he wants really is a little bit of recognition and to be seen by her.

00:12:43.140 He doesn't even want to be like worshipped or like, um, be the ruler of everything.

00:12:47.580 He just wants a little bit of respect.

00:12:49.640 And apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie.

00:12:52.460 Bizarre.

00:12:52.980 It is bizarre.

00:12:54.100 And then, so I didn't actually think it was a particularly good movie.

00:12:58.240 I didn't think the, the narrative was coherent.

00:13:01.480 I thought the, to me, it was a badly structured movie.

00:13:06.940 However, it's got best picture.

00:13:09.500 It's got, well, it's nominated for best picture at this year's Oscars.

00:13:12.380 That is hilarious.

00:13:13.020 And then Greta Gerwig didn't get nominated for best director, which then precipitated the

00:13:20.420 inevitable meltdown on social media and whatever else.

00:13:23.120 So what's your take on that?

00:13:24.640 Man, these guys should be grateful that that movie got nominated for anything.

00:13:28.280 Like I can see it getting nominated for like best production design or something.

00:13:31.680 And best costume.

00:13:32.460 Yeah, very visually interesting movie.

00:13:34.860 But the idea that it's best picture, really?

00:13:37.880 Like you couldn't find anything better than that?

00:13:40.400 That's baffling.

00:13:41.940 Do you think that's a political decision?

00:13:43.600 Oh, 100%.

00:13:44.300 Yeah.

00:13:44.960 I mean, it's, it's a movie that says all the right things, presents all the right messages,

00:13:49.740 and obviously has this massive cultural movement behind it.

00:13:54.460 And so, sure, of course, they're going to try and give it every award ever, you know?

00:13:59.800 And it was quite funny that people were raging, you know, that Greta Gerwig didn't get best

00:14:04.220 director, Margot Robbie didn't get best actor or nominated for it, whereas Ryan Gosling did.

00:14:11.080 I mean, Gosling was actually the best thing about the movie.

00:14:14.800 I think so, yeah.

00:14:15.420 I mean, he's, he's obviously a charismatic actor, and even though they present Ken as

00:14:20.900 this bumbling doofus, you know, who you're not meant to empathize with, you absolutely

00:14:24.880 do. 0.95

00:14:25.240 And partly it's on the strength of his performance.

00:14:27.720 And I think Margot Robbie, to be fair, she's a good actress, not taking anything away from

00:14:31.620 her, and at times gave a pretty good performance as Barbie. 0.93

00:14:35.380 You know, she can certainly emote, but, you know, is she like the best of the best for the

00:14:39.020 whole year?

00:14:40.080 Clearly not.

00:14:40.700 I actually thought that, I don't remember what other movies came out in the year, but I,

00:14:45.000 like, Tonya is a movie that she is absolutely amazing as an actress, like, so, so, shows

00:14:50.480 her range very well and very, very persuasive, not just a pretty girl.

00:14:54.140 Yeah, she's very much willing to do smaller projects and take risks and take on more challenging 0.92

00:14:58.920 roles, which is great.

00:15:00.120 And, you know, I've heard it said before that perhaps, like, the fact that she is so beautiful

00:15:04.860 in a conventional sense, which works so well for her in Barbie, maybe worked to her detriment 0.99

00:15:10.540 in some other films, because you almost have to look past that and realize, no, this person's

00:15:14.060 actually giving a really good performance as an actor.

00:15:16.240 Yeah, I remember realizing Brad Pitt was a good actor, like, quite a long way into his

00:15:20.820 career, because it's hard to look past the looks and all of that.

00:15:24.260 Yeah.

00:15:24.620 Yeah.

00:15:25.220 But speaking of visually arresting movies, I thought Oppenheimer was so cinematically

00:15:31.140 beautiful.

00:15:33.280 And that one, it was a movie that I really loved.

00:15:36.740 I really enjoyed that.

00:15:37.740 Did you, were you similar to that?

00:15:39.260 Very much so.

00:15:40.440 Certainly up to the point of the end of the Manhattan Project.

00:15:44.160 The third act is obviously the, I was going to say the fallout from that, that's the wrong

00:15:47.900 word.

00:15:49.640 The later life of Oppenheimer, you know, the trials, the very much, it devolves into a

00:15:54.860 lot of very dry legal proceedings and so on.

00:15:56.960 I probably would have trimmed that down personally, because the movie does start to get a bit long

00:16:01.160 towards the end.

00:16:01.780 You do feel the extra length.

00:16:03.360 Doesn't sound like Christopher Nolan, does it?

00:16:05.060 I know, exactly, yeah.

00:16:07.260 But as a visually interesting and brilliantly acted, brilliantly structured movie, yeah,

00:16:14.660 I can't fault it.

00:16:15.320 It's nice to see a movie get so much attention, which is actually thoughtful, intelligent,

00:16:21.620 well put together, made by an actual artistic director who actually has something he wants

00:16:27.740 to say.

00:16:28.100 And he has a really strong creative vision, as opposed to someone that's just been cast

00:16:31.460 in the role of director by a big studio.

00:16:34.920 So it's, if nothing else, like the good thing that came out of Oppenheimer is that a lot

00:16:40.340 of people got to see that movie.

00:16:42.480 They got to see Oppenheimer, who perhaps wouldn't have done otherwise.

00:16:45.740 And I don't know if you, sorry.

00:16:46.840 Yeah, go for it.

00:16:47.660 I don't know if you felt this way, and you probably don't, but my issue with Christopher Nolan

00:16:53.140 is I always feel like with some of his movies, he's very prone to disappearing up his own 0.99

00:16:57.220 ass. 1.00

00:16:57.800 Yes. 0.97

00:16:58.520 And he didn't on this one, which is what made it palatable to a mass audience.

00:17:03.540 And I include myself in the matter.

00:17:04.820 I'm not a cinema critic or anything.

00:17:07.360 It was a movie that was actually consumable by a normal person like me.

00:17:12.720 And that seemed to me a really important thing in telling what is actually a huge element

00:17:17.060 of the story of world history, Western history.

00:17:20.360 Yeah, I think the key difference is that this is not a work of science fiction.

00:17:24.740 And that's where sometimes Christopher Nolan can go off the rails, because he has got

00:17:29.540 this gigantic mathematical space brain where he can conceive of the most fantastical ideas

00:17:34.880 imaginable.

00:17:35.900 The problem is, like, the average person can't always digest it.

00:17:38.780 And Interstellar starts to go down that road towards the ends, where you get into hard,

00:17:43.600 hard sci-fi.

00:17:44.780 And then Tenet was probably the worst example of that, where I watched it twice now, straight

00:17:51.340 up still baffled by what's going on.

00:17:53.220 It's so intellectualized that it's difficult to even connect what the narrative is there,

00:18:00.080 particularly because it is straight up going backwards and forwards.

00:18:03.720 And I think that's his problem.

00:18:05.460 He's, I hate to say it, but he's almost too intelligent for his own good sometimes.

00:18:09.120 And he needs someone to rein him in sometimes and say, you know, the average person's not

00:18:14.280 going to be able to understand this.

00:18:15.540 And I think he even made this excuse when he was taking criticism for Tenet.

00:18:20.900 He said recently, oh, you're not necessarily meant to understand it. 0.99

00:18:24.340 I think that is bullshit, my friend. 0.98

00:18:27.560 You cannot say that about your movie, that it's intentionally impenetrable to a normal 1.00

00:18:32.540 person.

00:18:33.280 You should be able to understand it, at least.

00:18:34.920 Yeah, the fact that he said that is both shocking and at the same time, completely unsurprising.

00:18:40.940 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:42.040 So with Oppenheimer, it's great because he's dealing with real events, real people.

00:18:45.960 And, you know, I'm surprised actually he didn't go into more of the science behind the actual

00:18:49.940 atomic bomb.

00:18:50.760 Like, I don't know, maybe he was prevented from it.

00:18:52.820 You don't want to tell people too much about how these things work.

00:18:55.000 But, yeah, it's very much him just dealing with real events and not allowed to indulge

00:19:02.200 his worst tendencies too much as a writer.

00:19:05.100 Do you think part of the reason that Oppenheimer was so successful, and it's actually, if I'm

00:19:09.400 being brutally honest, one of the reasons that I loved it, there was no political lectures.

00:19:14.020 There was no talking about, you know, politics.

00:19:16.860 It was just a story that was well told, well acted, well written, well shot.

00:19:24.620 I think so.

00:19:25.580 I mean, your only political dimension to it is, like, the universal idea of science going

00:19:31.860 too far or creating something that is going to have unforeseen consequences, you know,

00:19:36.360 their rush to develop the atomic bomb.

00:19:38.260 Where is this going to lead?

00:19:39.420 A whole world filled with these things.

00:19:41.680 Well, you know, and what happens when people start using them?

00:19:44.100 And so that is a pretty universal theme that doesn't try to take a stance necessarily one

00:19:48.680 way or the other.

00:19:49.320 It's just an interesting philosophical idea to explore.

00:19:52.480 And yeah, it was nice to not be lectured by a film and just allow the audience to draw

00:19:56.740 some of their own conclusions from what they see.

00:19:58.880 Going back to the Oscars.

00:20:00.440 Can I just disagree with both of you on this, by the way?

00:20:02.660 There's a massive political dimension to the movie that gets smuggled in that it's so

00:20:07.100 well that both of you didn't notice it, which is the McCarthyism thing.

00:20:11.440 Okay.

00:20:11.720 The whole film is about McCarthyism.

00:20:14.100 Do you not notice that?

00:20:15.440 The whole film is about him and people around him being persecuted for being communist or

00:20:20.060 not being communist.

00:20:20.960 Oh, right.

00:20:21.640 It's not about that necessarily, but it's a dimension of it.

00:20:24.900 It's a facet of the film.

00:20:25.860 Yeah, it's a better way of putting it.

00:20:26.280 The core element is what have we created in this thing.

00:20:30.560 But that serves as a backdrop to his life and a reflection of the persecution that he

00:20:37.560 goes through.

00:20:38.460 Yes.

00:20:39.260 But the reason I say this is we recently interviewed Michael Malice, who's a good friend of ours,

00:20:44.640 talking about the concept of McCarthyism that Hollywood likes to portray may not have happened

00:20:52.340 quite like that, not least because Hollywood was absolutely infiltrated with communists.

00:20:56.760 And so they're quite keen to play that down.

00:20:58.460 So what I would say is the political dimension was very well hidden in this film.

00:21:04.060 But anyway.

00:21:04.940 Yeah.

00:21:05.280 Yeah.

00:21:05.460 So I saw that more as a kind of historical element to it.

00:21:10.660 But I take your point, nevertheless.

00:21:12.740 If we look at the Oscars now, what is the point of the Oscars, really?

00:21:19.240 Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail was when

00:21:24.560 Chris Rock was assaulted.

00:21:26.000 Yes.

00:21:27.040 And that was nothing to do with the movies or anything.

00:21:29.200 It was just, you know, one man punches another kind of thing.

00:21:33.060 Yeah, I don't know.

00:21:34.160 Well, at this point, it's becoming increasingly irrelevant.

00:21:36.860 It's reflected in the viewing figures, really. 0.99

00:21:39.700 It's pretty much just Hollywood kissing its own arse for an entire evening. 0.99

00:21:44.900 The degree of self-congratulation, the arrogance of it, and the fact that you've got all these 0.99

00:21:53.020 people who flew in on their private jets to be there for this ceremony.

00:21:55.960 They're wearing suits or dresses that cost more than we make in a year.

00:22:00.020 And they're going to lecture us about climate change and saving the environment and cutting

00:22:05.820 back on things.

00:22:07.240 You're singularly unqualified to have opinions about any of this stuff.

00:22:11.480 So all of that is just, people just aren't interested anymore.

00:22:15.320 And that, to me, even though it was the Golden Globes, but it's pretty much the same thing,

00:22:19.140 why Ricky Gervais' monologue went hyperviral.

00:22:22.660 Yeah, I loved it.

00:22:24.180 It's one of the most cathartic things you can see, because he's exactly right on every

00:22:28.460 respect.

00:22:29.000 And the reactions from people in the audience are just glorious.

00:22:33.920 It's like, he's going against the script.

00:22:36.560 He's not supposed to be saying this stuff.

00:22:38.760 So yeah, he was bang on then.

00:22:40.700 And I respect him so much for doing that.

00:22:42.560 But does it mean anything anymore, really, that an actor wins an Oscar or a movie gets

00:22:48.280 nominated for Best Picture?

00:22:49.700 Because I remember, as a huge cinema buff when I was a kid, if I saw a movie got nominated

00:22:55.720 for an Oscar, I would actually say to my friends, should we go and watch it?

00:22:59.380 And they would look at me like I was nuts.

00:23:01.580 But to somebody who was obsessed by movies, that was a big thing.

00:23:05.560 And I don't really think it is anymore.

00:23:08.340 It's not, no.

00:23:09.200 And it's just the whole devaluing of the brand and the trust in that Hollywood institution.

00:23:14.000 Because like you say, it used to be movies that had real artistic merit, but there was

00:23:18.580 a balance between them and films that people have actually heard of before, that told interesting

00:23:25.120 stories, that had really interesting performances, all of those things.

00:23:29.260 Now, when you see it, I think they've got quotas for the level of diversity, for example, that

00:23:34.280 you have to have in your actors, your film crew, your production people, just to be considered

00:23:41.560 for an Oscar.

00:23:43.080 So when you realize that, when you realize that films mandate that certain people have

00:23:47.820 to be put into certain roles just to be considered, you're automatically not getting the best quality

00:23:53.060 end products because you're making all these concessions that you shouldn't have to. 0.81

00:23:56.760 That's so ridiculous, isn't it?

00:24:00.120 Because, and it seems now that we just get trapped in these endless arguments about, you 0.82

00:24:06.020 know, should this actor play X role?

00:24:08.960 People were saying, well, Cillian Murphy shouldn't have played Oppenheimer because he's not an

00:24:13.680 astrophysicist who happens to be Jewish. 0.87

00:24:15.560 And you're going, he's an actor.

00:24:17.860 Yeah, mate.

00:24:18.220 Jews are underrepresented.

00:24:19.160 It's, yeah, I mean, where does it end, I suppose, when it comes to this sort of thing?

00:24:26.040 If you're going to do a zombie movie, do you have to cast actual corpses in it?

00:24:29.160 Oh, yeah, so you can cast Biden.

00:24:30.900 Yeah.

00:24:32.160 But, I mean, yeah, that's the, when it comes to this sort of thing, though, people are making

00:24:37.080 up their own minds because you, like I say, you see it in the viewing figures or things

00:24:41.620 like the Oscars.

00:24:42.380 They just go down and down year on year.

00:24:45.080 You know, they're dying a death and they're bringing about their own demise.

00:24:48.220 So, fine, let them do it.

00:24:49.660 If people don't care about it anymore, they're just staging a really expensive show for nothing.

00:24:55.060 Do you know, it never made a lot of sense to me why people would, you know, destroy their

00:24:59.780 own industry in this way.

00:25:00.700 We saw it actually in comedy in this country as well.

00:25:04.240 Until I went to LA.

00:25:05.500 Have you been?

00:25:06.420 I have not been to LA and I'm very proud of that.

00:25:09.180 We went for work, you know, interviewing people and stuff.

00:25:13.100 But when you are in LA and you meet people in LA and you see the world that they live

00:25:17.920 in, suddenly all of this makes so much more sense.

00:25:21.360 Yeah.

00:25:21.680 Because the bubble that those people operate in, then the contrast between the stuff you

00:25:29.880 might see on social media about, you know, this actress says, oh yeah, we don't need

00:25:33.480 men in Snow White or whatever it is.

00:25:35.740 And the world that we all normal people live in is massive and it is because they just live

00:25:41.380 in this bubble over there.

00:25:42.760 And all of these diversity quotas and all of this other stuff, it makes perfect sense 1.00

00:25:48.300 in that world.

00:25:49.300 Which actually, I have to say, has made me incredibly skeptical about everything Hollywood

00:25:54.360 producers because you're going, you know, the perceptions we might have of, you know,

00:25:59.800 people in the American South or people in the American, in the city or whatever, they're

00:26:04.460 all shaped by that cultural creation that is made by people who don't actually live in 1.00

00:26:10.300 the real world.

00:26:10.920 And it's a fantastic eye-opening thing.

00:26:13.560 I really found that.

00:26:14.560 It really is.

00:26:15.200 And you can understand that when you, like you say, you see the echo chamber that they live

00:26:19.480 in, when you're surrounded by people who all say the same thing, you don't want to

00:26:23.260 be that person who disagrees with them because suddenly you're going to stand out.

00:26:27.720 And I think really it can end your career if you ask the wrong questions or you say the

00:26:32.780 wrong things within Hollywood, you'll just get blacklisted.

00:26:35.180 And it'll probably be done subtly.

00:26:37.380 You're not always, it's not public shaming.

00:26:39.660 You'll just stop getting recommended for roles or you'll stop getting opportunities.

00:26:43.780 And before you know it, you're just closed out of it.

00:26:45.720 And yeah, I've read just really sad stories for people who are used to work in the writer's

00:26:52.500 rooms, for example, for big TV shows or movies.

00:26:56.080 And they essentially just don't get opportunities anymore.

00:26:59.740 And they were told by their agents in some cases, there's no point applying for this show

00:27:04.460 or this movie because they're not looking for people who look like you or your gender

00:27:09.040 or whatever.

00:27:10.160 So it's a waste of your time.

00:27:12.800 And I just thought, what a crappy thing to do to people, to take opportunities away from

00:27:17.140 them just because you've said, well, this group or that group deserves it more.

00:27:20.640 Which is funny because that is exactly what people used to do to ethnic minorities and 1.00

00:27:27.820 to women in the past in Hollywood and elsewhere, right? 0.93

00:27:30.600 People would be discriminated against.

00:27:32.480 Yeah.

00:27:33.060 And then there was the attempt to resolve that.

00:27:36.880 And we've just gone completely full circle.

00:27:39.380 I think so.

00:27:39.780 Yeah.

00:27:39.900 Because, you know, doing the opposite is just replicating the problem.

00:27:43.740 It's not fixing it.

00:27:45.060 And, you know, it's not like I can sit here and say, yes, well, there's clearly an easy

00:27:50.440 solution to this.

00:27:52.540 There needs to be a bit more of that balance, though, and an opportunity for people to come

00:27:57.340 in organically to the industry.

00:27:59.020 Because what you get is people, say directors, who've got almost no experience, being suddenly

00:28:06.600 put at the helms of like big budget movies.

00:28:08.720 And the movies inevitably flop because they're not ready for a massive project like that.

00:28:13.620 And so they then get the blame for it and they're not used again.

00:28:16.640 So you're almost giving them one brief opportunity and then taking it away from them again.

00:28:21.540 Whereas you need a chance to gradually bring people up, I suppose, and allow them to build

00:28:26.920 up their experience, build up their skills at doing this stuff, and then give them the

00:28:31.060 big budget projects.

00:28:32.100 But it's like they try to jump from A to Z while missing out all the other letters along

00:28:35.700 the way.

00:28:36.160 And it's just, it doesn't work.

00:28:37.820 It's so interesting that it's exactly what happened in the comedy industry in this country.

00:28:41.740 But actually, what you're talking about is also true of, I don't know if you saw the

00:28:44.840 affirmative action thing being struck down in America.

00:28:47.800 And one of the arguments about affirmative action against affirmative action has always

00:28:52.120 been that it means that students from certain backgrounds are being pushed into positions

00:28:56.200 where they don't succeed.

00:28:57.780 And instead of going to a college where they would do well and they would be at the top of

00:29:01.380 their class, they end up going to a place where they're not at the top of their

00:29:04.780 class.

00:29:05.100 They have a bad experience.

00:29:05.960 They drop out and it's bad for them more than anybody else.

00:29:09.880 Yeah.

00:29:10.060 And it's also bad for the people who are ethnic minorities who have got there on merit as 0.78

00:29:15.640 well, because then people go, oh, you're just a diversity hire.

00:29:18.560 And it's like, no, mate, I've got the grades.

00:29:22.160 Yeah.

00:29:22.280 So then they're exposed to another type of bigotry, prejudice, whatever you want to call

00:29:27.300 it.

00:29:27.660 Yeah.

00:29:28.800 And like I say, I don't know what the easy or quick solution to this is, probably because

00:29:32.660 there isn't one.

00:29:33.500 But trying to just force that solution on people, I don't think it benefits really anyone

00:29:39.860 in the long term.

00:29:40.720 Yeah.

00:29:41.620 And one of the things we wanted to talk to you about is obviously, as Hollywood moves

00:29:45.360 in that direction, there are attempts being taken to actually counter that, how successful

00:29:51.540 they are is a very different conversation.

00:29:54.140 Yeah.

00:29:54.420 I mean, you've got places like The Daily Wire who are now starting to make their own movies,

00:29:57.820 their own TV shows.

00:29:59.000 And, you know, it's a drop in the ocean, really, compared to what Hollywood can do in terms

00:30:06.580 of resources, in terms of the volume of programming.

00:30:09.360 But I think the demand is there for non-political, non-pushy content, I suppose, that's just there

00:30:18.040 to entertain people.

00:30:19.760 I don't know if necessarily The Daily Wire is the one to do it, but they've kind of opened

00:30:23.980 the door and shown that it can be done.

00:30:26.320 Other people might start to do their own things, and other people might follow in their footsteps.

00:30:32.320 I actually thought, no, I haven't seen the Western.

00:30:34.760 Apparently, the Western that they created, I can't remember the name off the top of my

00:30:38.040 head, was a fairly down-the-line standard Western movie.

00:30:42.200 Terror on the Prairie, I think.

00:30:43.460 What did you think of that?

00:30:44.440 And then we'll get into Lady Ballers. 1.00

00:30:46.040 Yeah.

00:30:47.920 We'll go balls deep.

00:30:49.920 Yeah, with Terror on the Prairie, yeah, it was just a stock Western, really.

00:30:53.400 Nothing particularly new or innovative about it, necessarily.

00:30:58.580 It was just a standard Western kind of story about survival out in the frontier.

00:31:03.960 Fine for what it was.

00:31:05.500 You know, I think I would give them a little bit of slack, because it's one of their first

00:31:08.760 movies that they made.

00:31:09.840 But if it had been just a mainstream Hollywood production, I would have said, yeah, it's

00:31:14.720 just pretty forgettable.

00:31:15.980 Yeah.

00:31:16.120 But it's an interesting little landmark, I guess, for them.

00:31:18.900 Oh, absolutely.

00:31:19.800 And I was really heartened by that, especially when I was reading about it.

00:31:24.820 Now, I didn't watch it, because I'm not particularly a big fan of Westerns.

00:31:27.620 It doesn't really appeal to me.

00:31:29.140 But what I found very heartening about it was there was an absence of politics within

00:31:33.680 that.

00:31:34.120 And I thought, ah, they've hit on something here.

00:31:37.400 Because what they're doing is they're presenting, they're doing a movie like you would have seen

00:31:42.240 30, 40 years ago, where it's just a straight movie, simple narrative.

00:31:47.200 And then I watched Lady Ballers. 1.00

00:31:50.260 And I was disappointed.

00:31:52.240 Because to me, and let's have a conversation about it, I thought that they just did the

00:31:58.140 mirror of what Hollywood did.

00:32:00.980 Yeah, very much agree.

00:32:03.280 It's because they tackled a very contentious subject.

00:32:07.000 And it's obviously not things that mainstream Hollywood studios would be willing to take

00:32:11.560 on, but they were willing to do it.

00:32:13.500 But I think the key to getting that demographic of people who are tired of political pandering

00:32:18.540 and just want entertainment, you've got to capture the middle ground then.

00:32:22.000 And so you've got to resist the urge to put your own politics into it.

00:32:25.420 And that's, I think, the trap that they fell into there.

00:32:27.540 You were essentially just replacing Hollywood's message with your own message.

00:32:33.080 And it's just a mirror image of the problem.

00:32:35.860 Again, it doesn't really solve it.

00:32:37.380 So yeah, that was probably the issue I had with it as well.

00:32:42.240 It wasn't as funny as it could have been.

00:32:46.100 And it started to get quite pushy with all that stuff towards the end, which it didn't

00:32:50.920 need to do.

00:32:51.420 I wonder whether that's almost actually a financial stroke business decision, because

00:32:58.240 in the modern world, as we all know, things with a political message or political dimension

00:33:03.700 create heat and heat attracts eyeballs.

00:33:07.480 And so if you just make a good movie, but you don't have access to the ability to push

00:33:12.320 it out like Barbie, even though that was a political movie, you don't have the ability

00:33:16.540 to push it out to cinema and movie theaters all over the world, then you almost feel like

00:33:22.260 you have to insert a political message, because then at least your base will watch it.

00:33:27.240 Do you think that's part of the thinking?

00:33:29.320 I mean, I think when you look at companies like The Daily Wire, they're obviously a very

00:33:33.020 strongly conservative company.

00:33:35.020 So that's what they stand for.

00:33:36.220 And it's what they believe in.

00:33:37.440 And presumably, if you're a subscriber to their services, that's what you believe in as

00:33:42.180 well.

00:33:42.360 That's their audience that they're going to play to.

00:33:43.800 So there is that.

00:33:46.540 And I think it would be enough almost to just tackle a contentious subject like that, because

00:33:52.540 it is a very politicized topic, what the Lady Ballers covers. 0.85

00:33:56.340 But you can do it from that neutral standpoint of like, this is a bit silly. 0.94

00:33:59.840 This extreme is also kind of silly.

00:34:01.420 Like, maybe there's a middle ground that we can find here, kind of like what South Park

00:34:04.060 does a lot of the time.

00:34:06.060 But they're not going to expand beyond their core audience.

00:34:09.480 They're not going to expand beyond their base if they just keep pushing their own sort 0.97

00:34:14.020 of conservative messages into it.

00:34:15.920 Because, yeah, the middle ground of people, the vast majority of audiences just wants to

00:34:21.700 be entertained.

00:34:22.380 They don't want one side or the other necessarily.

00:34:25.040 There's two problems with that approach as well.

00:34:27.300 Number one, when you have the comedy element, if your comedy is strongly ideological, then

00:34:32.820 you're going to be able to predict every single punchline because you know where they're coming

00:34:37.800 from, what the point of attack is going to be, and therefore what the reveal is going

00:34:41.520 to be.

00:34:42.240 And number two, you're never going to get people defecting, probably the wrong word

00:34:47.680 to use, from Hollywood because they'll be thinking to themselves, if I go and work with

00:34:52.720 this strongly ideological studio, I may not be able to go back.

00:34:58.220 Whereas if you work with someone who would just, look, we're not going to do the whole

00:35:02.560 woke stuff, we're just going to make movies, that's all we do, then you're offering people

00:35:07.780 an opportunity to be able to flip back and forth.

00:35:10.540 I think so, yeah, because there probably are a lot of creatives in Hollywood who are just

00:35:14.460 burned out with all of that sort of thing, and they just want an opportunity to have artistic

00:35:18.380 freedom again.

00:35:19.540 And that's what a studio who's willing to just say that, they would thrive at this point.

00:35:24.340 They'd attract some great talent, and they would attract audiences as well.

00:35:28.940 It's just hard to then, it's hard to break into that, I suppose, because you're going

00:35:32.520 to need someone with huge amounts of money and resources to be able to set up a studio

00:35:37.060 like that and start producing content.

00:35:39.700 And it's a pretty rare thing.

00:35:42.660 Yeah, you're going to need a bunch of billionaires to get together, basically.

00:35:46.160 Elon Musk, you should just make a movie studio.

00:35:48.860 It's kind of tied down with Exit at the moment.

00:35:51.000 Yeah.

00:35:51.340 Yeah, but no, it's an interesting conversation, because I suspect part of the reason that they've

00:35:58.680 made the movie that is that ideological is just, at least you know that a certain number

00:36:04.580 of people are then going to watch it.

00:36:06.100 And also, let's be honest, from a creative perspective, it's much easier to create something

00:36:10.740 that's politically driven, because it doesn't have to then be as great a movie, because people

00:36:16.640 will be like, oh, I agree with that.

00:36:18.320 Entertaining.

00:36:18.900 Yeah.

00:36:20.000 And we're talking about these people who can create and who can change the movie industry.

00:36:25.860 To me, there's very, very few people who could do that.

00:36:28.220 At one point, it was Harvey Weinstein, who completely...

00:36:30.660 Yeah, he really changed it.

00:36:31.700 Yeah, he did.

00:36:33.360 Yeah, he did.

00:36:34.600 It's very different now.

00:36:35.540 He made a mark on it.

00:36:36.660 Yeah, it is.

00:36:39.420 He's a great hero of you.

00:36:40.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:41.340 He made some great movies.

00:36:43.480 I mean, objectively.

00:36:44.660 Yeah, he did.

00:36:45.580 He did.

00:36:46.180 No, anyway.

00:36:48.120 But one of those people is...

00:36:50.500 Oh, dear.

00:36:53.140 That's getting clipped.

00:36:54.160 Another one is Bill Cosby.

00:36:55.560 Yeah, exactly.

00:36:56.580 Great men in their own right.

00:36:58.200 No.

00:37:00.560 It's Tom Cruise.

00:37:02.020 Yes.

00:37:02.500 Tom Cruise is one of those people who started out as a pretty boy 80s actor, as part of the

00:37:09.640 Brat Pack, and has now gone on to be arguably the most powerful man in Hollywood at this

00:37:16.700 point.

00:37:17.700 You could say that he even single-handedly saved the movie industry through COVID with

00:37:22.460 Top Gun and cinemas.

00:37:25.460 Is that a potential role for him?

00:37:28.220 I guess at a certain point, he is going to get too old to be doing these action movies,

00:37:33.020 probably when he's about 95.

00:37:34.600 He'll stop running around and throwing himself off buildings.

00:37:37.060 But yeah, maybe he'll start to get more into the producer side of things.

00:37:41.260 But yeah, he is an extremely powerful force within Hollywood now.

00:37:44.400 And part of that is tied to him being one of the last remaining actual movie stars that

00:37:49.280 we've got, a bona fide name in Hollywood.

00:37:52.480 I mean, I talked about this recently in a video where actors aren't box office draws anymore,

00:37:57.560 by and large.

00:37:58.660 You know, nobody's going to go to see the latest Chris Pratt movie.

00:38:02.620 They might go and see it anyway, but not because he's in it.

00:38:06.420 It's just, you know, we've moved beyond that point.

00:38:09.540 Tom Cruise has still got an element of that, I think.

00:38:12.560 But yeah, he's savvy enough to pick movies that he knows are going to be successful.

00:38:18.560 He's got a tremendous body of work behind him.

00:38:21.060 And with things like Top Gun Maverick, yeah, he certainly pulled Hollywood out of the doldrums.

00:38:27.400 And it was just, for so many people, it was such a relief to get a movie that was big budget,

00:38:33.740 that was bombastic, that was patriotic, didn't make them actively feel horrible about themselves,

00:38:39.740 and wasn't some, you know, superhero movie with people just like flying around shooting

00:38:45.340 laser beams out their eyes.

00:38:46.260 It's so interesting the way you described it, though, because you described it almost

00:38:51.220 exclusively in terms of what it wasn't.

00:38:53.880 You threw in patriotic and a couple of other things, but, and that's kind of how I felt 0.73

00:38:58.020 about it, because I was like, this is good by virtue of not being crap. 0.69

00:39:02.840 I think so, yeah. 0.51

00:39:04.320 Do you know what I mean?

00:39:05.080 That's our benchmark.

00:39:06.340 But that's what I mean.

00:39:07.580 Because I watched it, I was like, okay, cool, nice.

00:39:10.320 But it was like a six and a half out of ten compared to the movies of that genre that

00:39:15.980 you would have seen 10, 15 years ago.

00:39:17.500 Yeah, I think we're all old enough to remember the 90s and the 2000s, where big action movies

00:39:23.240 were all the rage.

00:39:24.620 And, you know, they, by and large, were not particularly political, and they weren't out

00:39:29.260 to pander to people or anything like that.

00:39:31.120 They were just popcorn entertainment.

00:39:33.500 And I think that's what we've been missing over the years.

00:39:36.360 And so to get a movie like that, it was like this crazy throwback to a different time in

00:39:39.920 Hollywood.

00:39:40.440 So I think that was a real novelty for people as well.

00:39:43.120 It's partly why they loved it so much.

00:39:44.680 Yeah.

00:39:45.100 I was just, I guess what I'm saying is, I was just, the film is almost a reflection of

00:39:51.460 the reason I'm disappointed in it.

00:39:52.960 It's basically a remake with an old guy who's playing a role that's a little bit too, like,

00:39:59.760 you're almost like squeezing an older guy into a younger role.

00:40:04.320 And it doesn't quite fit.

00:40:06.300 And do you know what I mean?

00:40:07.320 I think so.

00:40:08.040 To some extent, they talked at the time, actually, about, like, we're looking for the next Tom

00:40:13.420 Cruise, like the next movie star, the next guy who can sell box office tickets.

00:40:18.940 And we couldn't get one.

00:40:20.160 So then actual Tom Cruise had to just come back and do it again.

00:40:23.420 You know?

00:40:24.320 Do you think part of that problem, just touching that with the death of the movie star, is when

00:40:30.380 we looked at movie stars, there were these bigger, larger than life characters.

00:40:35.260 A lot of them were quite problematic people.

00:40:38.440 You know, a lot of them were drug addicts.

00:40:40.440 They were drinkers.

00:40:41.360 They, you know, they enjoyed the company of women, shall we say.

00:40:45.360 And that kind of stuff, I mean, it's pretty much frowned upon really now, isn't it?

00:40:50.980 When you think arguably the last movie star, I would say, would be someone like Robert Downey

00:40:56.780 Jr. Quite possibly, yeah.

00:40:59.640 I think the bad boy of Hollywood seems to be a dying breed.

00:41:04.180 You know, like, when you look back to a lot of the lives these guys led, like you say,

00:41:07.500 they were out partying all the time.

00:41:09.180 They were doing drugs.

00:41:09.900 They were doing all kinds of crazy stunts and dangerous things with their lives.

00:41:13.500 And it's what made them exciting.

00:41:15.180 It's what made them interesting.

00:41:16.580 Now they seem a bit safe and a bit stage managed by comparison.

00:41:20.100 And the other problem is we've actually got to know them now.

00:41:25.480 You know, with social media, the mystique that used to surround the movie stars vanished. 0.99

00:41:30.700 And now you get to see every dumb thought that pops into their heads. 0.77

00:41:34.180 And it doesn't make for compelling viewing. 0.97

00:41:36.500 And so they don't seem like a breed apart anymore. 0.99

00:41:39.560 You realize, like, well, at the time, they're just as dumb as I am. 0.99

00:41:42.800 And that's a terrifying thought. 1.00

00:41:44.360 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

00:41:45.340 And it's not just that they're dumb. 1.00

00:41:46.780 They're just not fun. 1.00

00:41:48.060 You can't imagine.

00:41:50.040 Even Tom Cruise, you wouldn't go, oh, I'd like to hang out with him.

00:41:53.140 I remember hearing this story about Peter O'Toole when he was filming King Ralph

00:41:57.160 and he was smoking a cigarette.

00:41:58.820 And this young actor came in and said to him, oh, do you have an ashtray? 1.00

00:42:02.720 And he went, make the world your ashtray, dear boy, and flick the ass on the floor. 0.98

00:42:08.040 And you just go, there's that sense of fun that when you watch Peter O'Toole, 0.99

00:42:12.300 of course, he was a magnificent actor, but there was this danger about him.

00:42:16.340 And you wanted to be around him.

00:42:18.180 You wanted to hang out with him.

00:42:19.760 You wanted, there was a part of you that wanted to be him.

00:42:22.680 But you look at the actors now, and I mean, some of them are very good,

00:42:26.600 very technically competent, but there's nobody who's got that charisma.

00:42:30.900 They're a bit tame and soft.

00:42:32.380 Yeah.

00:42:32.720 Like I say, they're just a different generation and a different breed. 1.00

00:42:36.380 Yeah, some of the stories about Richard Burton were amazing

00:42:38.420 because he vanished for an entire week while they were filming Where He Goes There.

00:42:42.540 And he'd just gone on this crazy bender around Europe and no one knew where he was,

00:42:45.840 which I think is fantastic.

00:42:47.420 But you wouldn't get that nowadays.

00:42:48.800 It's just, it's a different world.

00:42:51.060 So go for it, man.

00:42:52.200 Well, if you've got more questions, I was going to say,

00:42:54.520 why don't we ask some questions from our supporters on Locals?

00:42:57.480 Cool.

00:42:57.940 There was just one thing that I wanted to talk about very quickly,

00:43:00.520 which is we've talked about movies and we've kind of ignored TV

00:43:04.800 because actually this has been the age of TV.

00:43:08.060 It hasn't been the age of movies.

00:43:09.140 If you think of things like Succession, Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos,

00:43:13.900 they've made far more of a cultural impact than any movie, really.

00:43:18.020 They have, but then a lot of them are from a good five or ten years ago now.

00:43:22.040 Yeah.

00:43:22.420 And I think, I can't remember who said it,

00:43:24.660 but they were talking recently about how we're no longer in that golden age of TV

00:43:28.280 because it's been dumbed down and partly streaming is the problem.

00:43:31.700 Like you need to capture your audience and keep them hooked in.

00:43:35.900 And so you can't have these big elaborate like 28 episode seasons.

00:43:40.000 They can't be as slow paced and methodical as they used to be.

00:43:44.200 It's got to be very immediate because people want to binge it now.

00:43:47.340 And so it's contributed, I guess, to that sort of decline in the quality of TV production.

00:43:52.820 There's still definitely good stuff out there, but it's not as mainstream as it was.

00:43:56.240 Like in the days when we had The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad,

00:43:59.720 like those are all very much like previous generations TV shows.

00:44:03.780 So, it's a great point.

00:44:06.120 The more recent ones would be Game of Thrones, for example, right?

00:44:09.740 And Succession.

00:44:10.900 Yeah.

00:44:11.180 And Succession.

00:44:11.640 Yeah, Succession's still current.

00:44:13.040 Yeah.

00:44:13.260 And Game of Thrones, well, we saw how that ended.

00:44:15.760 The ending of that was so disappointing.

00:44:18.640 What was interesting about that was it was almost like the entire series,

00:44:22.580 they'd been resisting the urge to make it conventional into a conventional story.

00:44:28.220 And at the end, they were just like, you know what? 1.00

00:44:29.980 Fuck it. 0.99

00:44:30.620 I think it was partly the writers were eager to move on to Star Wars 1.00

00:44:33.800 because they had a Star Wars movie that they were promised to do.

00:44:36.400 And so HBO were up for doing two or three more seasons with them. 0.99

00:44:41.180 And they were like, no, fuck it. 0.98

00:44:42.340 Let's get this out of the way as quickly as possible. 0.99

00:44:44.060 Wrap everything up in like five or six episodes.

00:44:47.140 That's why you ended up with what you got.

00:44:49.100 They could have kept it going.

00:44:50.360 And that's why, yeah, everything started to rush.

00:44:52.780 Characters who would have taken an entire season

00:44:54.640 to get from one end of the country to the other

00:44:56.920 could do it in a single episode now.

00:44:58.880 And there was all the big set piece battles and everything.

00:45:02.040 It was all a bit spectacle rather than storytelling.

00:45:03.840 And in the end, what they went away from is the thing

00:45:06.300 that made Game of Thrones Game of Thrones,

00:45:08.160 which is it was unpredictable.

00:45:10.000 Yes.

00:45:10.360 And it wasn't good versus evil and good always wins in the end.

00:45:15.480 I mean, it was slightly unpredictable towards the end,

00:45:18.580 but not in a good way.

00:45:20.680 Right.

00:45:21.420 Well, listen, man, it's been great having you back on the show

00:45:24.160 to chat about all this stuff.

00:45:25.440 Before we go to a few questions from our supporters,

00:45:28.240 as you know, we always ask at the end,

00:45:29.960 what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be?

00:45:33.840 Why are visual effects so horrible in movies now?

00:45:36.460 Like, they're worse than they were 10 or 15 years ago.

00:45:39.200 I don't think we cover that enough anymore.

00:45:41.620 It looks awful.

00:45:42.740 Like, I look back to things like Pirates of the Caribbean,

00:45:44.880 that looked amazing back then.

00:45:46.620 Not now.

00:45:47.820 So that would be my thing.

00:45:49.800 Very interesting.

00:45:50.520 Well, follow us over to Locals,

00:45:52.120 where we ask a few of your questions to the Curriculum Drinker.

00:45:55.040 What's likely to be the next big thing

00:45:58.840 for the general direction of Moody's?

00:46:07.560 Compliance moves fast,

00:46:08.920 and Moody's can help organizations move even faster,

00:46:11.520 leveraging AI to help you gain quicker insights

00:46:13.680 and reduce bottlenecks.

00:46:15.040 Let Moody's help your organization

00:46:16.360 navigate change with confidence.

00:46:18.160 Visit moody's.com slash kyc slash ai dash study

00:46:21.360 to discover how.

TRIGGERnometry - February 25, 2024

Has Hollywood Reached Peak Woke？ - Critical Drinker

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