Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. She's a film executive,
Speaker 1: she's a producer. She's the president of Oryan Picture. She
Speaker 1: helped bring us films including American fiction. Alana Mayo stops by.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be speaking to her in just a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ryan Pictures Man, they've been around for a while,
Speaker 2: so interesting.
Speaker 1: Different now though, yes, than it was in the nineteen seventies, which.
Speaker 2: Is fascinating, right, you'd like to see how these things change. Hey,
Speaker 2: also billionaire real estate developer and maybe la mayorial candidate
Speaker 2: or maybe he wants to be governor of the state
Speaker 2: of California. We're Caruso of Carusa is going to be
Speaker 2: back with us. We're going to ask him, We're going
Speaker 2: to push him. Last time we talked with him, he's like,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm going to have a decision or announcement.
Speaker 3: So maybe he wants to do it live with us on.
Speaker 4: Air, maybe just saying maybe we're ready, let's do it. Also, yes, chef, yes, chef, Yes, chef,
Speaker 4: yes chef.
Speaker 1: We got the colinary producer of the Bear stopping by
Speaker 1: and also the youngest female self made billionaire in the
Speaker 1: world joins us.
Speaker 4: Lucy Guo co founder.
Speaker 2: Home wants us to say yes chef when he's cooking,
Speaker 2: and we're like, not happening, that happening. That happening.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 2: Also, the youngest female self made billionaire in the world
Speaker 2: is with us. We've got Lucy grow co founder of
Speaker 2: Scalai and founder of Passes. She's going to be along
Speaker 2: as well. So she's a once to watch, isn't she.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's here with us. She's right here.
Speaker 2: She is right here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's coming by in in like forty five minutes.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: I want to get to our next guest though, because
Speaker 1: we are in the heart of Hollywood, live at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: screen Time in La we're speaking to the folks who
Speaker 1: are defining the next phase of pop culture, includes film
Speaker 1: and streaming. Alta Mayo is with us. She thinks a
Speaker 1: lot about these things, streaming and traditional releases, probably simultaneously
Speaker 1: these days, which is like a little crazy of the
Speaker 1: world that we live in. Oriyan Pictures goes back to
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies. I think a day is silence
Speaker 1: of the Lambs and more. It's different now, though Alana
Speaker 1: joins us here at screen time these days. Orian focuses
Speaker 1: primarily on films from underrepresented filmmakers. Releases under her tenure
Speaker 1: include American Fiction Academy Award nominated Nickel Boys, and many more.
Speaker 1: In a lot coming on the Harai M. Yeah too, welcome.
Speaker 4: How are you?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 3: I'm very well happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You just wrapped up this conversation with Mark duplas we
Speaker 1: spoke to him a little earlier. Also Catherine Oliver as
Speaker 1: well for from Bloomberg. She was the former film Commissioner
Speaker 1: of New York City. The focus was on reinfigurating the
Speaker 1: creative community.
Speaker 4: How do you do it?
Speaker 3: Just that small question I just want This is.
Speaker 4: Like the underlying theme of the entire thing.
Speaker 3: How why are we here?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: I think we're here because we have so much change
Speaker 5: in so dynamo, so much dynamism, And the reality is
Speaker 5: that no one really knows what the next wave of
Speaker 5: media content Hollywood is going to look like. So we're
Speaker 5: at this incredible inflection point and having to innovate in
Speaker 5: real time and build new systems while the previous systems
Speaker 5: are being dismantled, are evolving, are changing. So well, I
Speaker 5: wish I had a quick answer to your question.
Speaker 3: Of how do we do it.
Speaker 5: What we ended up talking about mostly is how do
Speaker 5: we just create enough sustainability for artists so that everyone
Speaker 5: can sustain this moment in time? And so whatever is
Speaker 5: on the other side of this, whatever that looks like
Speaker 5: that the creative voices that build our industry can still survive.
Speaker 4: Does it get worse before it gets better?
Speaker 5: I mean, if you look at it with a long lens,
Speaker 5: you know, define worse, right, If you look at a
Speaker 5: lot with a long lens, it's always this business has
Speaker 5: always been challenged. This business has always gone through dips,
Speaker 5: it's always gone through ebbs. And how long this moment
Speaker 5: of uncertainty lasts is probably longer than any of us
Speaker 5: would love. And if that's how you define the worse,
Speaker 5: then yes. But I think, you know, I think it's
Speaker 5: just going to always be changing. I don't know if
Speaker 5: it's going to get worse or better. I think we're
Speaker 5: going to continue to change and evolve.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I always think about supplying demand cycles. I've got to
Speaker 2: dogree economics, and I think about the world in that way.
Speaker 2: And I think there was a period where we thought, man,
Speaker 2: if you're a content creator, you are a good as
Speaker 2: gold because there's so many, you know, different platforms that
Speaker 2: need your services, they need your content, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I think there's a lot of content
Speaker 2: and maybe I don't know, there was too much content
Speaker 2: and the oversupply. So where is the rebalancing or how
Speaker 2: do we get back to a different level.
Speaker 5: I think we're seeing the rebalancing now. I will say
Speaker 5: I personally am a little bit worried about the level
Speaker 5: of consolidation that we have because I do think that
Speaker 5: it is hard to keep saying swayed in the favor
Speaker 5: of the creators and of the artists, which is really
Speaker 5: the community that we need to continue any sort of
Speaker 5: artistic endeavor and idea. But you know, I think Mark
Speaker 5: said something. He may have already said this to you
Speaker 5: guys earlier, but that I think is a really important
Speaker 5: bit of context, which is the past ten years of
Speaker 5: the streaming arms race was a boon, like that was
Speaker 5: a spike, that that was an abnormal state of our industry.
Speaker 3: Right, So this is a little bit corrective, right.
Speaker 5: It's not completely just the you know, Earth has fallen
Speaker 5: out underneath us. This is a little bit of a
Speaker 5: correction of something that was a real kind of an
Speaker 5: aberration in of itself.
Speaker 2: So a good thing a little bit maybe, but not
Speaker 2: kind of your.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was gonna say, I think the good thing
Speaker 5: is that there are more ways to monetize content, right,
Speaker 5: And we talked about everything from direct to consumer models
Speaker 5: to YouTube. There are a lot of different platfor forms
Speaker 5: in addition to Hollywood where you can monetize content.
Speaker 3: How you do that? Right? Is the thing that a
Speaker 3: lot of us don't yet know is you.
Speaker 2: Know, uh, when it pauses, this could be serious.
Speaker 4: It's political too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The President has weighed in recently and he said the
Speaker 1: way to fix this is to put tariffs on films
Speaker 1: that are made outside of the US.
Speaker 4: You're shaking your head.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's the way to say this.
Speaker 1: Why should we be filming scenes about Brooklyn in Vancouver?
Speaker 3: I think that we listen.
Speaker 5: I definitely am personally invested in US keeping production inside
Speaker 5: of the communities that, you know, where the people that
Speaker 5: make them live, right, Because it's not just about are
Speaker 5: we maintaining the integrity of the film itself by location
Speaker 5: spased shooting. This city is where the majority of people
Speaker 5: that make stuff live, and we've got to keep this
Speaker 5: city healthy, and the economy and the infrastructure of that
Speaker 5: has to be supported by films being made here, and
Speaker 5: we've got to figure that out. At the same time,
Speaker 5: if we're going to make the path of supporting these
Speaker 5: artists is to be able to make more, to increase
Speaker 5: the amount of stuff that is being made, we've got
Speaker 5: to be nimble and if that means that sometimes shooting
Speaker 5: things outside of the States, or shooting things outside of
Speaker 5: LA and New York is the way to do that.
Speaker 5: You know, a lot of the films that we've been
Speaker 5: able to make that are really innovative and original and
Speaker 5: risky have to find ways to cost less, and some
Speaker 5: of the ways that we find to make them cost
Speaker 5: less is to shoot them elsewhere. And then you have
Speaker 5: American Fiction, which is a Boston set story that shot
Speaker 5: in Massachusetts. So you know, we can figure it out
Speaker 5: different ways, but we've got to have some.
Speaker 4: Plex to figure out what college that was? What was it?
Speaker 3: I went to college and doing Stayden.
Speaker 5: I don't believe they shot I would I would be
Speaker 5: lying to you if I told you I knew exactly
Speaker 5: where that location was. But it may not have been
Speaker 5: a college at all. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I guess I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: Remember where Sopranos was like taped in my neighborhood and
Speaker 2: it's not in New York City, it's just outside New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 4: Supposed to be perfect.
Speaker 3: So what do you say?
Speaker 2: What do you say? We're talking with a lot of Mao.
Speaker 2: She is president of Ryan Pictures, you know. But when
Speaker 2: you talk about right, like you want la and the
Speaker 2: film scene and the filmy like you want it to
Speaker 2: be alive and healthy. But I also do think about
Speaker 2: you know, part of your market is a global market, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: So being able to film wherever in the world, Like,
Speaker 2: that's part.
Speaker 5: Of it, right, one hundred percent. We're you know, we're
Speaker 5: a global community.
Speaker 2: Without a penalty, whether it's a terror for one of
Speaker 2: one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: And also what about the movies that we produced out
Speaker 5: of Hollywood that are not set in the US. You know,
Speaker 5: we also produce movies that are set all over the world.
Speaker 5: You know, Mission Impossible doesn't just all take place here, right,
Speaker 5: So I think we have to be a global industry.
Speaker 5: We have to you know, be a global economy with
Speaker 5: artisans that are working all over the world. But the
Speaker 5: argument that I understand is that shouldn't be to the
Speaker 5: expense of the film industries locally. Really, I feel very
Speaker 5: strongly about that.
Speaker 1: You have a really cool background. You have worked twentieth
Speaker 1: Century Thoughts, Paramount Pictures. You did a stinted Vimeo I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh my god, that's a blasphem with it's a
Speaker 3: milling round. I know.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard it.
Speaker 4: A while society.
Speaker 2: Sorry Vimo.
Speaker 1: You came of age in an industry while it was
Speaker 1: like undergoing this massive shift to streaming, which you alluded
Speaker 1: to when you began your career. Did you ever think
Speaker 1: that you'd be making movies at a company that was
Speaker 1: owned by Amazon.
Speaker 3: No, I couldn't. I shouldn't do this.
Speaker 5: But I remember when Amazon first started making television shows.
Speaker 3: I was at Fox and I laughed. I was like,
Speaker 3: this is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Because it will never laugh and everyone was like, and then.
Speaker 5: They started making incredible TV shows. And then you know,
Speaker 5: to track from that moment to now working at a
Speaker 5: film studio that is under the Amazon umbrella. I couldn't
Speaker 5: have predicted any of this. I will say, though, when
Speaker 5: you talk about all of those places that I worked,
Speaker 5: part of the reason why I got my dream job,
Speaker 5: the best job that I thought you could ever have
Speaker 5: in film. I was a movie studio executive at Paramount.
Speaker 5: I was on the Paramount lot, and after being there
Speaker 5: for five or six years, I realized that the world
Speaker 5: around me had changed. And I went to Vimeo very
Speaker 5: intentionally because I thought, there's all of this cool stuff
Speaker 5: that is happening in this digital space that I need
Speaker 5: to understand it. And then I said, I got to
Speaker 5: work with close to the talent, and I've got to
Speaker 5: produce and be able to be scrappy and produce for
Speaker 5: different platforms and different mediums.
Speaker 3: I went to go work with Michael B.
Speaker 5: Jordan and so it's been ever changing for the entirety
Speaker 5: of the time that I've had the you know, blessing
Speaker 5: of having a career in this industry, which is why
Speaker 5: I think it's not falling. You know, it's not all
Speaker 5: falling apart.
Speaker 2: What's it like? I mean, Amazon is mass company and
Speaker 2: there are a lot of folks are like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: where I buy all my stuff, right, But we know
Speaker 2: Aws is massive and we talked about it earlier too
Speaker 2: here in terms of what they are doing media.
Speaker 4: All sports, entertainment. Doctor works for Amazon.
Speaker 2: And your pharmacist y like hands in so much of
Speaker 2: our world and increasingly more so, what's it like they're
Speaker 2: running a studio within the Amazon world.
Speaker 5: It's interesting, you know, the great benefit of it is
Speaker 5: in this time of instability, Amazon has such scale that
Speaker 5: it feels as if you can one still be innovative,
Speaker 5: you can still take risks, and you can ride these
Speaker 5: waves of change within this massive, you know, company that
Speaker 5: can withstand.
Speaker 3: Some of the headwinds that we're experiencing.
Speaker 5: So I think it's actually a place where innovation thrives,
Speaker 5: which sounds like a talking point, but I swear I
Speaker 5: just made that up. I'm like, let me see, I'm
Speaker 5: like my cue cards, let me pull them out. But
Speaker 5: it is also a big culture clash, you know, So
Speaker 5: it's navigating those two things at once well.
Speaker 2: And I also can I just just to follow like AI?
Speaker 2: Right Amazon, They're so interchangeable, and then we're looking at
Speaker 2: anybody who creates content and it's almost terrified of it.
Speaker 5: There are yeah where it's Those are difficult conversations that
Speaker 5: we're navigating every single day in real time.
Speaker 3: And I think the difference from last.
Speaker 5: Year where AI never came up, not once in a
Speaker 5: conversation about any movie that I was working on to
Speaker 5: this year, where it is ever present in what tools
Speaker 5: are we using, what tools are we not using?
Speaker 3: And also the fear I can only.
Speaker 5: Imagine next year, you know, this stuff is happening exponentially.
Speaker 4: Is the fear warranted?
Speaker 3: I think yes and no.
Speaker 5: Right, I think anytime that you have a technology that
Speaker 5: is going to cause a reduction in jobs, of course
Speaker 5: it's worrisome for people like that.
Speaker 3: It's a real human I can't you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think for me, who works with a lot of
Speaker 5: independent filmmakers and people that are making really highly original
Speaker 5: stuff but at a lower costs, I think the tools
Speaker 5: have honestly been mostly helpful because they are creating you know,
Speaker 5: reductions and costs to our budget.
Speaker 3: Beyond that, I don't know, Like how do.
Speaker 2: I was thinking? I think about this a lot, like
Speaker 2: because we're starting to increasingly play around with things like Chachi.
Speaker 1: But stilt, I can't rely on it at all. Sure,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not.
Speaker 2: No, no, We're careful. We are, like I spend more
Speaker 2: time to like I do everything trying to make it good.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like I don't when I get back I
Speaker 1: don't get the love that I need.
Speaker 2: We check sources, But I was thinking about it in
Speaker 2: the entertainment world, back to like that Star Wars movie,
Speaker 2: the first one, and they were playing around with stuff.
Speaker 2: But I think about CGI, and I think about animation.
Speaker 1: The first one, the first one, like in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: first one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was considered high. But you know, technology
Speaker 2: has always had a roll increasingly, you know, whether it's
Speaker 2: mission impossible, the things that Cruise is doing, and this
Speaker 2: stuff happening around like pick pick whatever it is came
Speaker 2: a throat like everything. So technology has a role. So
Speaker 2: are we being silly to be so fearful of AI
Speaker 2: or we just have to be smart or is it
Speaker 2: something very very different from the things that we've had
Speaker 2: in the digital universe.
Speaker 5: I don't think that it's silly to be cautious about
Speaker 5: technological revolutions evolutions, because they usually come with the flip
Speaker 5: side to the coin that can have some sort of
Speaker 5: damaging impacts.
Speaker 3: But what I don't think is going to happen is
Speaker 3: I don't think that we as.
Speaker 5: Studios are going to start generating all of our scripts
Speaker 5: from some l M and producing those scripts so that
Speaker 5: we don't have to pay writers.
Speaker 3: I said, that's a real or.
Speaker 2: It's not going to be all over the II actress.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Chilli will be in some things. She will
Speaker 3: not be in a Ryan.
Speaker 1: I have seen stuff that is so bad where I'm like,
Speaker 1: this was definitely from AI. But of course I want
Speaker 1: to shift gears a little bit and talk about sort
Speaker 1: of the old school creative process and just ask the
Speaker 1: basic question, how do you find the good stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, that's you know, that's part of the job.
Speaker 5: As you you spend ten, fifteen, twenty years reading twenty
Speaker 5: scripts a week, and part of my job is to
Speaker 5: sift through all of that.
Speaker 1: And okay, so, for example, to pick something like it,
Speaker 1: to bet on something like American fiction, which I think
Speaker 1: everybody knows. Yes, how many things do you pass on
Speaker 1: before you get to that?
Speaker 3: Probably over one hundred.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the conversion rate of American Fiction was an incredible script.
Speaker 5: One of the best scripts I've ever read in my life.
Speaker 5: And those are unicorns, and they don't come around often
Speaker 5: and they cannot be generated. Can someone now write, you know,
Speaker 5: a replicate script that's American Fiction esque, perhaps through an LM.
Speaker 5: It's not something that's an incredible voice and writer who
Speaker 5: wrote almost a perfect script, and that those just don't
Speaker 5: come along often.
Speaker 2: Do we have time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, go your background?
Speaker 3: Your dad? Yeah, Radio, Yeah, he was a big deal.
Speaker 4: He's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Is a big deal, I think, so, yeah.
Speaker 2: How did that shape you kind of growing up in
Speaker 2: that world?
Speaker 5: The best thing about having my dad and my mom
Speaker 5: both worked in the entertainment industries is I knew that
Speaker 5: you could make a living doing this, and I didn't
Speaker 5: have parents who were scared of me chasing this. But
Speaker 5: I will say I also had a parent who lived
Speaker 5: through massive, massive technological changes in his industry. I remember
Speaker 5: showing my dad and iPods, showing him Napster and his
Speaker 5: reaction to how that was going to affect things. So
Speaker 5: I think I have a little bit more kind of
Speaker 5: tenacity around this because I saw that happen very up
Speaker 5: close in radio, and it's almost exactly the same as
Speaker 5: what we're experiencing now in film's entertainment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like we see it in our world,
Speaker 2: and we now do shows that you know right now,
Speaker 2: you're on our streaming service, you're on YouTube, you're on radio,
Speaker 2: and we do a couple of hours that throwed you know,
Speaker 2: tradition linear television into it, so it's this melding is
Speaker 2: pretty wild.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you. What a pleasure. Likewise, yeah, really fun.
Speaker 3: I hope you can catch up. I hope sin at
Speaker 3: some point in the future as well.
Speaker 2: Thanks Alata Mayor, she's president of Ryan Pictures, joining us
Speaker 2: right here at Bloomberg screen time.