Valuetainment - July 26, 2023


Hollywood CRISIS： Biggest Writers & Actors Strike Since 1960 Could Cost $4 Billion Dollars


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

217.05481

Word Count

4,160

Sentence Count

355


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I don't know if you're following what's going on in Hollywood right now, but it's in total
00:00:02.700 shambles right now. May 2nd, the writers go on a strike. We're not going to be writing anymore
00:00:06.400 because of AI, residual protection, what's going to happen to us. You guys are using AI to write
00:00:10.860 scripts. 11,500 writers guilt not writing anymore. So guess what? Stephen Colbert, go look at his
00:00:16.720 YouTube channel. Last time they did a video, new two months ago. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel,
00:00:20.780 two months ago. Jimmy Fallon is doing the best stuff. They're not even putting up any content.
00:00:24.620 Then July 14, guess who joins them? SAG. 160,000 members from SAG joined the strike. So now this
00:00:32.440 whole thing is going on. No one's getting paid. If you're part of SAG, you kind of need to be part
00:00:36.800 of SAG, union to be protected. But the bad thing about being part of SAG, you can't take another
00:00:40.840 job right now because you're part of the union. So you have to either step away from it. That's
00:00:44.600 171,500 members, no movies, no streaming, no shows, nothing. Then this week, Bob Iger on a CNBC
00:00:52.940 interview, shares what he thinks, this is disappointing what's going on. You got to
00:00:56.840 see that interview. And then Ron Prolman from Hellboy, from the 1987 Beauty and the Beast,
00:01:01.920 he played the beast. And from Sons of Anarchy, you recognize the face. He gets angry. He gets
00:01:06.620 pissed off, calling out the man who made $27 million. And everybody's like, who's this
00:01:10.720 $27 million a year person? When you Google Bob Iger's salary, 2022, $27 million. We're going
00:01:16.220 to follow this story and we're going to talk about what the solution is. Is it the big company's
00:01:20.260 fault? Are the writers not positioned themselves well? What should they be doing moving forward?
00:01:24.340 We're going to talk about that today.
00:01:34.340 If you get value out of the video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. But
00:01:37.500 let's get right into it. By the way, when you think about these things, like when's the last
00:01:40.160 time both Writers Guild and SAG went on a strike? This should probably happen every year, right?
00:01:45.020 Maybe every five years, every 10 years? What if I told you the last time this happened was 1960s,
00:01:48.980 when they both came together saying, what is this all about? Back then, actors and writers
00:01:52.520 joined together to fight for fairness in regards to residual payments from films sold to television
00:01:57.980 networks. It's just kind of fair. Hey, I want to get paid better. I want to get paid fair with the
00:02:01.240 residuals. Totally get it. That's a big part of Hollywood. We get it. But the next time this
00:02:04.380 happens was 1980s. In 1980s, it was only actors going on a strike, not writers. But then in 2007,
00:02:10.100 2008, when writers went on a strike, this was again for residuals from streaming services. You know,
00:02:15.760 the whole thing with Netflix, all these other things that was taking place, they went on a
00:02:19.140 strike. And that cost just the city of Los Angeles, an estimated $1.5 billion. Not actors,
00:02:26.800 just writers. So the concept of both of these guys now as of July 14, going on a strike,
00:02:32.880 this has not happened since 1960s. It's so frustrating for these guys that I want to give
00:02:38.000 you context before I play these clips. This is Ron Perlman. They're upset about the fact that the
00:02:42.340 executives are making a lot of money. I'll show you some of the numbers here if you want to take
00:02:45.240 a look at this. David Zaslav from Warner Brothers, the last five years, has made $498 million.
00:02:51.440 Ari Emanuel, $346 million. Reed Hastings from Netflix, $209 million. Bob Iger, $195 million.
00:02:57.940 Ted from Netflix, $192 million. You see the rest of the names. Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch,
00:03:02.580 Brian Roberts. All of these guys in the last five years have made over $143 million. And these guys are
00:03:07.720 saying, if these guys are getting paid this kind of money, how about us? And by the way,
00:03:10.460 even the actors, you know, it's not fair. Tom Cruise last year in 2022 made $100 million.
00:03:15.160 Highest paid actor when he did the movie Top Gun. How about Will Smith? He made $35 million.
00:03:19.460 Leo did $30 million. Brad Pitt did $30 million. Dwayne Johnson, $22 and a half. Will Ferrell,
00:03:24.480 Hemsworth, Vin Diesel, Tom Hardy, Joaquin Phoenix, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel, all of them did $20 million.
00:03:29.880 How about us? And by the way, Ron Perlman, his net worth, he's a millionaire. He's worth around
00:03:33.980 $8 to $10 million, according to some of the data out there. But watch what he says when he calls out
00:03:39.380 the $27 million, man. And then I want to let you hear from Bob Iger. Then I got a couple thoughts
00:03:43.400 here. Here's Ron Perlman. The mother who said we're going to keep this thing going until people
00:03:49.880 start losing their houses and their apartments. Listen to me, mother. There's a lot of ways to
00:03:58.020 lose your house. Some of it is financial. Some of it is karma. And some of it is just figuring out
00:04:05.040 who the said that. And we know who said that. And where he lives. There's a lot of ways to lose
00:04:14.140 your house. You wish that on people. You wish that families starve while you're making $27 million a
00:04:22.840 year for creating nothing. Be careful, mother. Be really careful. Because that's the kind of
00:04:29.960 that stirs up. So everybody's like, who's this $27 million man? Again, I showed you online. If
00:04:35.960 you look at how much money he made, Bob Iger in 2022 is $27 million. So it's a direct call out.
00:04:41.180 Here's what Bob Iger said on defending him, their position against union. Here's what he had to say.
00:04:47.120 Well, I think it's very disturbing to me. You know, we've talked about disruptive forces on this
00:04:52.020 business and all the challenges that we're facing and the recovery from COVID, which is ongoing. It's
00:04:56.680 not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption. There's a level
00:05:02.620 of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to a set of challenges
00:05:09.160 that this business is already facing that is quite frankly very disruptive. So they're not being
00:05:14.040 realistic? No, they're not. Why not? I can't answer that question. Again, I respect their right
00:05:20.620 and their desire to get as much as they possibly can in compensation for their people. And I completely
00:05:27.100 respect that. I've been around long enough to understand that dynamic and to appreciate it. But
00:05:31.920 you also have to be realistic about the business environment and what this business can deliver.
00:05:36.840 What do you do in the interim then? Does AI start to write a lot of scripts?
00:05:40.360 It will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business. And unfortunately, there's huge
00:05:46.660 collateral damage in the industry to people who are, you know, who are support services. I could
00:05:52.340 go on and on. It will affect the economy of, you know, different regions even because of just the
00:05:59.000 sheer size of the business. Now you may say, well, I agree with Perlman. That's not cool. That's not
00:06:04.220 fair. Or you may say, I don't know. Union always breaks stuff. They always get in there and hold
00:06:08.540 people hostage. Union doesn't typically do good things. They start off as good. Eventually, they hurt the
00:06:14.180 people that they wanted to help. The whole point right now is who needs who more and who's going
00:06:19.520 to cave first? Are they going to wait till people can no longer make their mortgage payments? Then
00:06:23.940 they're going to come back and say, hey, SAG, we're not with it. I got to start making money. This is
00:06:28.000 not cool. This happens in baseball when there's collective bargaining agreements and there's a
00:06:32.220 strike. It happens in basketball. It happens everywhere. But the recent point in the fear of AI
00:06:37.800 and the direction they're going, there was a movie that was done, Flash. I took my kids to watch Flash.
00:06:41.400 There's a scene at the end of the movie which they're kind of using AI to replicate actors'
00:06:46.140 likeness without fair compensations. The Flash, it raised eyebrows as it used these deep fake
00:06:51.200 CGI and depicting these deceased actors steering up discussions of future filmmaking. So let me get
00:06:56.700 this straight. So you can literally scan my body and have me turn around in every possible way,
00:07:01.580 put it in the system. The system can use me to use future roles in a movie and I shouldn't get paid
00:07:08.180 for that. That's actually a valid argument to have. So let me get this straight. I understand
00:07:13.400 you don't want me to do the work. You're going to use AI. Maybe I don't get paid 100% because I'm
00:07:18.060 not actually there. You're using mine. Maybe it's 10%. Maybe it's 5%. Maybe it's 15%. That's the job of
00:07:23.660 the agent to go out there and negotiate. But the point is, if you're going to use my face, my body,
00:07:27.800 my voice, my everything, and I don't get paid for nothing, what the hell am I doing here?
00:07:33.020 You need to pay me fairly. That's a very fair argument in the direction that AI is going.
00:07:38.700 Either hire me to do the work and pay me the full premium, $20 million, $10 million, $5 million,
00:07:42.520 or $100,000, or if you're going to use my AI, my CGI image, you got to still pay me a certain
00:07:49.120 percentage of it. And they can kind of figure that part out. Now, some people will say, well, Pat,
00:07:52.180 do you know what's the average pay actors get paid in Hollywood? According to U.S. Bureau of Labor
00:07:57.460 Statistics, they make roughly $27.73 per hour. Some people may say, well, that's not a lot of
00:08:04.380 money. You should pay me more. These people should get paid more. I get it, but 27 and 70, that's
00:08:10.040 actually a very good number. Minimum wage is $15. If you want to get paid more, like a Top Gun or like
00:08:15.560 a Dwayne, that guy started off in his first movie not getting paid that much money. He worked his way.
00:08:20.080 James Franco in his first movie barely made any money. You can go look at a lot of these stories
00:08:23.700 of how they got started, and they worked their way up. You got to do the same as well. If not,
00:08:26.660 minimum wage is a pretty decent minimum wage, while the federal minimum wage is at $7.20 in California
00:08:31.900 is at $15 an hour. You're 2x California. So that argument, let's set that one aside. The next
00:08:37.080 argument is, Pat, you know, did you know only 12.7% of SAG members qualify for union's health plan,
00:08:42.660 and the minimum amount of money a performer must take home in one year to qualify for health insurance
00:08:47.460 is $26,470. Yeah, I get that. You're part-time. So that argument of, we should give everybody health
00:08:52.880 insurance. No, you shouldn't. Because if somebody's doing SAG and you're doing one part or one role,
00:08:57.640 and you're making $1,800 or $1,900, you want, no, that's not how this works. You have to be full-time
00:09:02.920 committed. The tiers need to be certain higher to be able to offer health insurance, especially knowing
00:09:06.880 how expensive health insurance is today. I also understand why Bob Iger and the other guy is going
00:09:11.780 to be like, we're just not going to do that for you. So it is what it is when it comes down to the
00:09:14.920 health insurance. Now, the next part is, hey, look how much money I'm making. If it's on network
00:09:19.580 television versus streaming, right? I'm not making anything. I'm making pennies on a dollar, and a
00:09:23.280 bunch of people are posting pictures. You know, here's one that says, you know, I made $2.77 for
00:09:28.440 two minutes long, and I'm netting $2.77. This other person says that I got one, five payments totaling
00:09:33.400 $0.13. Another person got one that said negative $0.01. Another person named Luke Cook on TikTok responded
00:09:39.500 saying, I'm only making $7,500 per episode versus my competitors are getting $100,000. Another guy
00:09:45.160 named Jack Bensinger said on seven episodes of TV residuals, he made 19 cents. Anyways, this keeps
00:09:50.280 going on and on and on. All right, valid network television versus streaming. Just so everybody
00:09:55.420 knows, network television is going away. So that business model, they were making a lot
00:09:59.560 of money because they can charge people $100 a month for cable, $200 a month for cable. Netflix
00:10:05.840 is doing $9.99, $12.99. The margins are not the same margins that they have, but on the
00:10:10.660 next round of negotiating contract, get better negotiation on tiers, on what you're going
00:10:16.060 to be doing moving forward. You can't go back and sell what? On anything I've done in my
00:10:19.420 past, I want to be able to do this. That negotiation has already been done. Unless if it shows that
00:10:24.140 a renegotiation opportunity is coming up, well, then make sure you guys got the right lawyers
00:10:27.940 defending you. This one, 50-50, they can both argue to see what's going to happen there.
00:10:32.260 So you remember when 2007, 2008, just the writers went on a strike and there was a $1.5
00:10:37.960 billion discrepancy, how much they lost in LA alone. Remember that whole number we talked
00:10:41.780 about? Right now, they're projecting the potential economic impact of the combined writers and
00:10:46.140 actors strike could cost $4 billion or more in damage, according to Kevin Cloud and chief
00:10:50.980 global strategist for economic think tank at the Milken Institute. He told this to CNN.
00:10:55.540 And at the same time, London and UK, Australia, New Zealand, and other places which either have
00:11:00.320 studios or even do post-production will also face a real impact. So then we start talking
00:11:05.180 about here and saying, Pat, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And
00:11:08.180 here, this person tweets out saying, Disney won't give up 0.091% of their revenue to stop
00:11:13.060 the strike. Netflix won't give up 0.214% of their revenue to stop the strike. Warner Brothers
00:11:17.980 won't give up 0.108% of their revenue to stop the strike. Paramount won't give up 0.148%
00:11:23.200 of their revenue to stop the strike. And by the way, this is Petros of Sparta. I want to give
00:11:27.600 him credit. These are good conversations and good debate. They don't have to do it. They can
00:11:32.200 still say and say, no problem. But why is this important to you and I? So we already know Disney's
00:11:38.360 gone a complete different direction and they've lost a lot of families that no longer trust to
00:11:41.860 put their kids watching Disney. We already know the direction Netflix has gone with some of the
00:11:45.800 movies they did with Cuties. And a lot of people are like, what the hell are you doing with all
00:11:48.320 these movies? Why do you care about my kids? So they're already getting destroyed. By the way,
00:11:51.780 to give you a number of what's happened with revenues over the years, okay, box office revenue.
00:11:57.160 Let me give you this data. In 2005, according to Statista, box office, global box office revenue
00:12:02.900 in dollars was $23 billion. Every single year, it went up consecutively till 2019, the year before
00:12:10.240 COVID, topping at $42.3 billion. 2020, COVID happens, it drops to $11.8 billion. 2021, $21.3 billion.
00:12:19.940 In 2022, it's a little over $25 billion. Still hasn't gone back to $42.3 billion in 2019, and now
00:12:27.640 they're doing strike. So guess who gets affected? Everybody. But more importantly, I sat there and
00:12:33.020 asked a question from our guys. Kelly asked me a question saying, Pat, what do you say to this?
00:12:36.980 Is it fair what these big companies are doing? These guys are needed. They're worried about what's
00:12:41.880 going to happen with AI and all this other stuff. I said, okay, great. Let's talk about that.
00:12:45.740 Yeah. Radio is gone. Nobody listens to radio anymore. What do we do? Force it to work? No,
00:12:52.360 it's podcast. Uh, what happened to newspapers? Newspapers are gone. It's all digital. What
00:12:57.480 happened to all these magazines? Do you remember Maxim Magazine? How big it was? When's the last
00:13:02.160 time you subscribed to Maxim Magazine? Flex Magazine, bodybuilding, gone. Yeah, I can go on
00:13:07.300 giving you so many different magazines, gone. If you don't adapt, you're going to get destroyed.
00:13:11.700 And many people in Hollywood are getting destroyed because of the level of innovation
00:13:16.500 that we have. However, to give it back to these writers and sagging actors, let me give
00:13:20.660 you my perspective. I sit there. I love movies. For me, movie is therapy. When I ran my company
00:13:25.840 for many years at the stages when I was doing a hundred hours a week and I was working Monday
00:13:29.360 through Sunday, pretty much my therapy once a week was when I needed to go get away from
00:13:33.660 everybody and turn off my phone as I used to go spend two hours with 20, 80 year olds,
00:13:38.680 you know where? At the movie theater. Hey Patrick, how are you? So are we going to watch
00:13:43.240 this year together? I'm like, here Mary, I got you some popcorn. Here's some icy. Let's
00:13:46.740 sit down. And I would sit in the back by myself half the time. If the movie was boring within
00:13:51.000 15 minutes, you know what I'm doing? I'm gone, right? But it was therapy because I love
00:13:55.820 movies. We went out on the most credible website to see the top 100 greatest movies of all time.
00:14:01.640 If I were to ask you right now, what's the greatest movie of all time? I'm curious what you
00:14:04.200 would say. Now it's a tough question. I get it. Give me one of them. We're not on a date. I'm
00:14:08.040 just asking you, what's the most incredible movie you've ever seen in your life? Some guys here
00:14:12.700 said, you know, Maverick said Bambi. She said Gladiator. Brandon said different. Everybody's
00:14:17.620 given their movies, right? I want you to think about this. Watch this. Do you know out of the
00:14:21.380 top 100 movies, according to IMDb, do you know what decade produced most movies that aren't the top
00:14:27.860 100 greatest movies of all time? Let's go through it. You ready? Number one, 1950s, 20 of them.
00:14:33.220 1970 is second place with 19. Third place is a tie between the 60s and 90s with 15. Next one is
00:14:40.640 1942 with 12. Next one is 1980s with 7. Next one, 1930s with 9. Zero in 2010s, the entire decade,
00:14:50.060 not one movie on IMDb is considered a top 100 movie of all time. And in the 2000s, from 2000 to 2009,
00:14:56.980 it's only three. The Pianist, Gladiator, and Lord of the Rings. Why? We have better technology.
00:15:01.960 We have better CGI. We have better Photoshop, editing quality stuff that we do. How come top
00:15:07.860 100 movies of all time? We haven't had any pretty much in the last 20 years, even though everything's
00:15:12.520 getting better. Because no matter what we do, and no matter how popular porn is, nothing compares to
00:15:19.640 going on a real date. No matter how concerned people are about, you know, what's going to happen
00:15:24.160 with virtual reality, there is nothing like you sitting in front of somebody having a conversation
00:15:28.440 with them, knowing you need to woo them. You need to persuade them. You need to win them over.
00:15:33.740 What is the challenge of me sitting in front of a virtual reality date where the girl is fake,
00:15:38.980 and she's going to say everything's great about me, but I know she's lying. It doesn't do anything
00:15:42.660 to me. It's the art of winning that person over, the human being. There's something to it. Go to Madden.
00:15:48.560 Madden, if you want to watch a game, the bodies in Madden game looks like real football players.
00:15:52.740 If you go watch NBA 2023, the bodies, Kobe looks like Kobe. So what happens? Let's just say they
00:15:57.660 get it so close to where the bodies look exactly like exactly where the players are. Are you going
00:16:01.800 to stop watching the NBA? You're just going to go watch Madden? You're just going to go? No. So
00:16:05.400 CGI is almost ruining it. Some of the best movies were from back in the days. I sit with my dad and
00:16:10.400 watch his movies. I'm like, what? This is awesome. It's a beautiful story. It's like acting to have
00:16:14.460 nothing. They're just doing it in a room. So I think you and I, if you're American, Hollywood,
00:16:20.380 Hollywood, storytelling, movies is part of our DNA. You guys got to figure this part out. I'm not in
00:16:26.560 the industry right now. You guys got to figure this part out with the negotiation and realize,
00:16:31.260 I don't care how great AI is going to be. I want to see the real actor who's got blood,
00:16:35.920 who can get pissed, who can screw up an act and have to do it again. I want to see bloopers. I want
00:16:40.980 to see behind the scenes stuff. I want to see the real thing. So we need those guys. So no matter how
00:16:45.360 great AI is going to be, I'm not going to sit there and be like, oh my God, look at this as adults.
00:16:49.280 We don't watch a lot of cartoons. We want movies. Maybe it works for kids. I don't know if it's
00:16:54.180 going to work for the rest of the guys. So closing thoughts for that industry. You guys got to figure
00:16:58.400 this thing out. It's a power play, of course. The guys with the money don't have to do anything.
00:17:02.500 The union people are going to bully. Quite frankly, when I was selling my company, I'll never forget
00:17:06.480 the guy that was buying my company. He made one of the best phone calls he made to me. He says,
00:17:10.200 Patrick, let me tell you what happens here. He says, I'm telling you I'm buying your company and this is
00:17:14.860 my price. And you've committed to me. Is it fair? I said, I'm all in. We're going together. He says,
00:17:19.260 the only people that are going to screw up this deal are going to be lawyers. As long as you and
00:17:24.360 I are on the same page, let's not allow lawyers to ruin this deal. Is that a deal? One of the most
00:17:30.620 powerful things he said to me. I said, deal. You know what happened? My lawyers and his lawyers
00:17:35.920 almost ruined the deal multiple times. And every time, remember what we talked about? You're right.
00:17:41.160 So what does this mean? Hey, Bob Iger heavyweight guys, you know who you are?
00:17:45.260 And actors, SAG writers, do not let union ruin what you guys have done the last hundred years
00:17:52.020 that has entertained people like me and tens, if not billions of people around the world that
00:17:57.760 don't necessarily like to read books. They get their education sometimes from movies. They don't
00:18:02.060 like docs. They like movies. Don't let the union screw up the amazing work you've done in the past.
00:18:08.060 And if I can whisper one other thing to you, leave our kids alone. Just make some movies like the movies
00:18:12.280 that we want to see. Don't do all the other ESG bullshit stuff that you're getting involved in.
00:18:16.380 And this Larry Fink guy is now controlling you guys. Don't get involved in that bullshit. It makes
00:18:20.180 us sick. If you go that route, you are not going to get this guy's a customer. But if you say, hey,
00:18:25.420 ESG Fink, we don't need your money. Not you, not Vanguard, not State Street. We're going to kind of
00:18:29.880 figure out a way to do it ourselves. And we're going to be very cool with the way we're making our
00:18:33.020 movies going back to the days we did it when we built all these top 100 greatest movies of all time.
00:18:37.240 Great. And if we do that, maybe this decade, 2020 to 2029, maybe we can produce a couple movies that
00:18:45.800 will be on that list of top 100 greatest movies of all time. What do you think about that? And by
00:18:49.800 the way, if you got value out of this episode, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel.
00:18:52.960 More importantly, I did a video about the history of Hollywood for some of you that forgot about it.
00:18:57.200 Maybe you ought to look at it and see why you escaped New Jersey and you were under the
00:19:00.620 control of a guy named Thomas Edison and you're doing it again. Don't repeat that same mistake.
00:19:05.100 If you haven't seen that video, click here or here to watch that video. Take care, everybody.
00:19:09.500 Bye-bye, bye-bye.