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Speaker 1: Also media Welcome to Take Back and Hear, a podcast

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Speaker 1: about the consolidation of capital into increasingly centralized forms and

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Speaker 1: how it's ruining your life.

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Speaker 2: I am your host, Mia Long and with b today

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Speaker 2: to talk about how the consolidation of media monopolies has

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Speaker 2: ruined many, many, many many things for many years. Is

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Speaker 2: Vicky Osterweil, friend of the show, author of forthcoming April fourteenth,

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty sixth, The Extended Universe, How Disney killed the

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Speaker 2: movies and took over the world.

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Speaker 3: Vicky, Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 4: Thanks, it's so great to be back. Thank you, Mia.

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Speaker 4: I'm excited to talk about something a little less depressing

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Speaker 4: than the things we could be.

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Speaker 2: Talking about, right, you know, like this is a story, obviously,

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Speaker 2: the story that we're talking about here foremost is Paramount's

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Speaker 2: acquisition of Warner Bros.

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Speaker 3: Or forthcoming acquisition.

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Speaker 2: Since Netflix has backed out, it technically still could fail,

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Speaker 2: but seems very very unlikely to. And you know, you

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Speaker 2: could tell things are going great in the news where

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Speaker 2: this is the fun one, and the fun one is us.

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Speaker 2: Before we started recording, talking about who we think the

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Speaker 2: sort of Nazi commis are they're going to put in

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Speaker 2: charge of CNN. It's going to be there very wise,

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Speaker 2: So things going very good.

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Speaker 3: You can tell.

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Speaker 4: Oh, God, but you you.

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Speaker 3: Had the most cursed name that I've heard, so fun.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Tim, Tim Poole, I think is probably the

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Speaker 4: most cursed. Yeah, that would be the most it's a

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Speaker 4: dark horse candidate. I don't know whether were the numbers

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Speaker 4: on poly market. Should we look who's.

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Speaker 1: I know.

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Speaker 2: They they've probably that's probably up now. Yeah, I hate

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Speaker 2: I refuse to track polling market. Even if I could

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Speaker 2: no facts ahead of time, I simply will not. They

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Speaker 2: can't make me.

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Speaker 4: God, but we're not talking about insider trading war crimes.

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Speaker 4: We're talking about insider trading intellectual property. So that's that's

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Speaker 4: pretty good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, So to start, let's go back a

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Speaker 2: ways and do you want to talk about I guess

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Speaker 2: sort of the beginning of the history of what we're

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Speaker 2: talking about here, which is the consolidation of all media

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Speaker 2: into a handful of increasingly large conglomerates.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, so, in a way like consolidation is the

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Speaker 4: entire history of the movie business. So obviously what's happening

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Speaker 4: here with Paramount, which is one of the oldest, one

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Speaker 4: of the old five studios merging with Warner Brothers. That

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Speaker 4: leaves Disney and Paramount, Warner Brothers and Sony as the

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Speaker 4: three companies that released movies.

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Speaker 3: Is this good? A twenty four is gonna get bonded

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Speaker 3: three weeks from now?

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Speaker 4: Yeah? God, and that's like an Amazon or the news

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Speaker 4: of other studios and Netflix was in competition for this

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Speaker 4: and with true as you said anyways, but like one

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Speaker 4: of the things that the very beginning of the Hollywood system,

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Speaker 4: Hollywood starts because Thomas Edison. So now we're going way

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Speaker 4: back right the eighteen nineties.

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Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, yes, speaking of it, speaking a dude

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Speaker 2: who ruthlessly consolidated their power, He's like that.

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Speaker 4: Were intellectual, propercisely, dear God. So Thomas Edison is credited

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Speaker 4: in the US with inventing the movie camera. He is

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Speaker 4: one of five or six people in the world who

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Speaker 4: came up with the technology around the same time. It's

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Speaker 4: just not linearly possible to name any of them as

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Speaker 4: the inventor of the movie camera. But he gets that

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Speaker 4: credit because he sued the shit out of everyone who

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Speaker 4: tried to make a movie for fifteen years. Jesus right, right,

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Speaker 4: So he puts patents on the movie camera. He puts

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Speaker 4: patents on his stuff. And then and this is in

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Speaker 4: New York. He's in New Jersey. Menlo Park famously is

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Speaker 4: where his lab is. And what he starts doing other

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Speaker 4: than making really really boring movies, he's a mid film producer.

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Speaker 4: His movies are not that exciting. And at this point

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Speaker 4: a movie is fifteen seconds to about a minute, often

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Speaker 4: seen in a nickelodeon, like in a really small screen,

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Speaker 4: or like in a small room. These are short films.

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Speaker 4: Ninety nine percent of them are loss of time. Can't

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Speaker 4: we can't even watch these movies, right. But one of

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Speaker 4: the things that he would do is he, because he

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Speaker 4: had the patent on movie cameras, anyone who tried to

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Speaker 4: film a movie, he would sue them. So it's eventually

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Speaker 4: too hard to maintain this. So what he did is

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Speaker 4: he teamed up with the other large Independence and Eastman Kodak,

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Speaker 4: and they formed a thing I think it's called the

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Speaker 4: Motion Picture Company, which is unreferred to as the Trust,

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Speaker 4: quote unquote, and the Trust just did this at scale.

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Speaker 4: So now instead of it just being him fighting against

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Speaker 4: his competitors, it's all the leading movie filmmakers, all the

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Speaker 4: leading filmmakers, and the literal film company will come down

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Speaker 4: sue you sometimes even beat you up and like and

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Speaker 4: shatter your cameras if you if you try to make

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Speaker 4: a movie without their permission, without a license from them,

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Speaker 4: and without their equipment.

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Speaker 2: Right, this is such a good system, by the way,

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Speaker 2: Like I just like, like just the system of property rights,

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Speaker 2: so good, no problems, he.

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Speaker 4: Exactly, So what happens? So what happens? A bunch of

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Speaker 4: filmmakers move to this new land development out in California

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Speaker 4: called Hollywood. You know, it's nineteen oh seven. They're really

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Speaker 4: far away from New Jersey lawyers at Edison goons, right,

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Speaker 4: they're as far as possible. So Hollywood is founded by

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Speaker 4: a bunch of movie pirates, basically, right.

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Speaker 3: That's incredible.

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Speaker 4: We're violating you know, Edison's copyright because they're sick of

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Speaker 4: the of his of his legal harassment.

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Speaker 3: So it's some real The mountains are high in the

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Speaker 3: Emperor's far away shift.

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Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean exactly, literally, how far can we

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Speaker 4: get away while still being on the continent, Like that's

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Speaker 4: you know, let's do it from New Jersey, which, like

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Speaker 4: many such cases, many people. Yeah, yeah, I can get

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Speaker 4: that far away from New Jersey before. But uh, you know,

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Speaker 4: so jumping forward into the classical Hollywood period are more

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Speaker 4: familiar with. There are sort of five major studios and

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Speaker 4: one of the ways that the major studios worked is

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Speaker 4: that they had something called vertical integration, which is something

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Speaker 4: we should all know about as we are living through

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Speaker 4: times and monopolies. Amazon is a classic example of vertical integration,

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Speaker 4: as is Google. What vertical integration means is that you

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Speaker 4: own everything in the pipeline for movies. You have the

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Speaker 4: offices where the producers work. You own the sound stage,

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Speaker 4: you employ all the people who work on it, You

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Speaker 4: employ the actors. You also then own the film that

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Speaker 4: gets made. You own the cameras, You own the company

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Speaker 4: that produces the film. Sometimes although those instas, they didn't

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Speaker 4: always own those companies, those chemical companies. This is on board,

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Speaker 4: but you know, and then you own the movie theater

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Speaker 4: where it showed. Right, So like movie theaters before the forties,

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Speaker 4: you would go to a RKO Pictures House. Arko is

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Speaker 4: one of the early big ones, or a United Artists theater,

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Speaker 4: and they would only show United Artists movies, right, so

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Speaker 4: they would be an active competition with one another. So

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Speaker 4: your neighborhood would have. You know, there'd be an MGM,

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Speaker 4: there'd be an RKO, and you would go based on

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Speaker 4: what movie was where. Then there's antitrust a done in

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Speaker 4: the forties that breaks up these studios. The studio system

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Speaker 4: sort of slowly collapses. They also then loses a lot

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Speaker 4: of market share to television. This is a really pot

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Speaker 4: into history, but I'm trying to give it as much

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Speaker 4: as possible. So basically, so by the sixties or seventies,

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Speaker 4: what you have is a lot of independent producers. So

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Speaker 4: the studios just become a brand and a sort of

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Speaker 4: pot of money and often a sound stage. They keep

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Speaker 4: the sound stages right. But then like distribution, becomes independent actors,

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Speaker 4: and like directors, they all are independent. They all have agents, right.

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Speaker 4: It used to be that they would be hired by

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Speaker 4: a company and they would just work for that company.

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Speaker 4: That's why you know classical Hollywood director would make like

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Speaker 4: sixty movies because they would just churn them out. They

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Speaker 4: would just be like directing them. Show up, do it

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Speaker 4: for two weeks, show up on the next one, do

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Speaker 4: for two weeks, et cetera. Just the studio system. So

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Speaker 4: then by the sixties and seventies, it's starting to look

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Speaker 4: more like what you have now, which is the studios

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Speaker 4: are basically they're the homes of all the producers, the

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Speaker 4: producers and people who connect the money and the talent,

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Speaker 4: you know, and put it altogether and package a deal

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Speaker 4: then market it right, and that process. It seems like

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Speaker 4: it's sort of a losing proposition. The business isn't doing

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Speaker 4: super well until the emergence of the blockbuster with Star Wars, right, so,

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Speaker 4: Star Wars and Jaws and a bunch of other movies

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Speaker 4: in the seventies. We're going so fast right now and

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Speaker 4: trying my best, but I'm sorry, this.

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Speaker 3: Is no e'ree.

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Speaker 2: This is like I was like, here, let's talk about

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Speaker 2: like one hundred and fifty years of history.

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Speaker 4: So anyways, with the emergence of the blockbusters, one of

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Speaker 4: the other things that happens is that the way blockbusters

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Speaker 4: work is that they are released everywhere in the country

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Speaker 4: at once. Film comes on used to come on literal

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Speaker 4: physical objects, and you can only have so many and

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Speaker 4: they can only be so many places at once, right.

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Speaker 4: So the way film used to work is they would

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Speaker 4: make a certain number of film reels if they thought

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Speaker 4: it was going to be big. There was a star,

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Speaker 4: but the studio was always gambling on how many how

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Speaker 4: big it would be, how many people would pick it up,

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Speaker 4: and then they had to sell it to the movie theaters, right,

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Speaker 4: and then the films would circulate when they did well

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Speaker 4: the print more so, movies would circulate for like a year, right,

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Speaker 4: two years sometimes even. But with Star Wars and the

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Speaker 4: day and date system that we have now, what they

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Speaker 4: started doing was just putting it in every movie theater

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Speaker 4: in the country. You also get the emergence of multiplexes,

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Speaker 4: white flight in the suburbs. I'm really going faster up trying.

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Speaker 4: But the result is that movies get both more potentially valuable,

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Speaker 4: but that value gets more and more concentrated in the

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Speaker 4: early period of the release, right in the early window.

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Speaker 4: Opening weekend was not very meaningful until the eighties really,

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Speaker 4: you know, late seventies, early eighties. As that happens, do

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Speaker 4: you suddenly need more financing and you can make more

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Speaker 4: money off of bigger gambles. Simultaneously, the rest of the

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Speaker 4: economy is going through financialization, right, which is a process

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Speaker 4: that you've talked about on the show before.

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Speaker 3: I can't get into that, but yeah, we can't.

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Speaker 4: And then Reagan deregulates everything, right, Reagan refts a part

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Speaker 4: of the FCC in many ways, deregulates media ownership stuff.

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Speaker 4: This is a big move. And then across the eighties

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Speaker 4: the home market opened, so you start getting VCRs and

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Speaker 4: this completely transforms the business another time, because movies can

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Speaker 4: flop in the theater, but you can guarantee rentals, right,

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Speaker 4: So so for like the eighties and the nineties, the

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Speaker 4: big studios kind of could print money because it was

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Speaker 4: pretty hard to lose money on a movie. Now the

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Speaker 4: people who lost money on movies were like, you know,

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Speaker 4: dentists from the Midwest who they get to invest and

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Speaker 4: they'd be like, oh yeah, you need sorry, like those

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Speaker 4: arcane deals. People still got rinsed. Obviously it was Hollywood.

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Speaker 4: It was shady as well. But as so with the

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Speaker 4: deregulation and with all this money flowing and with the

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Speaker 4: integration of the home market, suddenly technology companies like Sony

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Speaker 4: and the emergence of of like Lucasfilms that they also

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Speaker 4: get really into computers. Lucas Turgeocus famously is into like

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Speaker 4: the computer side of the business. All these different technologies

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Speaker 4: get brought into the cinema at the same time as

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Speaker 4: you get to see regulated, so companies start snatching up

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Speaker 4: these other film studios, right and so, where once there

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Speaker 4: were five studios, and then the same season seventies, you

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Speaker 4: actually got a ton of independent studios, a lot of

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Speaker 4: really small ones, and they start getting gobbled up by

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Speaker 4: these bigger conglomerates. You know, Sony is the one that

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Speaker 4: was also a mega corp in the eighties already that

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Speaker 4: that would eventually go on to own to buy out

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Speaker 4: a bunch of movie companies. The same thing is happening

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Speaker 4: though with radio with TV. The main thing that happens

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Speaker 4: under the SEC regulation stuff is that they loosen up

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Speaker 4: whether a movie studio can own a TV studio. They

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Speaker 4: used to be fully separate. And then and and broadcast

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Speaker 4: rules changed. Broadcast rules changed, so studios could own a

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Speaker 4: movie theater or you could own a movie company, a

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Speaker 4: radio station and a TV station.

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Speaker 3: All oh good God.

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Speaker 4: And as you can imagine, that is how things started

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Speaker 4: to alerate. You get like the ABC Disney merger in

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Speaker 4: the late eighties, NBC Universal mergers and acquisitions become the

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Speaker 4: big thing. You know, the stock market is booming. Then

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Speaker 4: you get other big corps buying them out. And then

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Speaker 4: we're just in the classic phase of consolidation where bigger

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Speaker 4: and bigger fish eat up the small ones.

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Speaker 2: And this is how I guess importantly for this story,

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Speaker 2: suddenly like all of the television news media is owned

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Speaker 2: by these giant ass movie companies, which exactly, surely.

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Speaker 3: That's like we'll go wrong.

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Speaker 4: Well, yeah, we and we come to you here from

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Speaker 4: iHeart Radio, which you know is a lovely.

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Speaker 3: Bread of kind of making.

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Speaker 2: We are iHeart Media, Okay, excuse me, a technically distinct company,

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Speaker 2: I think. Actually, don't ask me to explain exactly how

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Speaker 2: that whole right I heard media I Heart Radio split works.

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Speaker 4: But exactly, you know, so media consolidation, this is you know,

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Speaker 4: consolidation is the story of capitalism famously right like that,

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Speaker 4: Like you know, an industry builds, lots of new entrepreneurs

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Speaker 4: come into the space, people figure out what's possible with

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Speaker 4: the industry, has more and more money flows in, a

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Speaker 4: few winners come and consolidate. We've seen it happen in

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Speaker 4: tech as well. But yeah, it has particularly perverse effects

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Speaker 4: when we're talking about the visual culture, the audio culture,

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Speaker 4: and the news media. The way information is spread all,

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Speaker 4: so I wouldn't you know, I would argue that the

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Speaker 4: effects are still pretty perverse from the way social media

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Speaker 4: and tech giants have control things. I think that's pretty

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Speaker 4: pretty obvious.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it is extremely bad, I would say, you might.

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Speaker 4: Say it's extremely bad. You know, a lot of people

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Speaker 4: are very upset about the news that David Ellison, who

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Speaker 4: is the NEPO baby to end all net bo babies,

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Speaker 4: because he's not a Hollywood netbo baby. He's not the

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Speaker 4: son of a previous He's just the son of a

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Speaker 4: rich guy who wanted to be in movies. So he

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Speaker 4: bought his way into like acting roles, and then he

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Speaker 4: like just threw money around until he got sky Danced Global,

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Speaker 4: which is this company that you know, he's been in

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Speaker 4: Hollywood for ten years. Technically he's like an experienced producer.

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Speaker 4: This man is forty three years old, which for like,

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Speaker 4: you know, the CEO of a billion you know, he

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Speaker 4: started with a generous loan from Daddy Larry. Let's just say.

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Speaker 4: And yeah, you know, I think people are very upset

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Speaker 4: obviously because he's a Trump ally, right, the Allison's or

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Speaker 4: Trump allies. He has literally said I'm gonna make more

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Speaker 4: right Wing movies, you know, like you know, the Daily

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Speaker 4: Daily Wire. You know, they were all washing out, but

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Speaker 4: now they'll probably have contracts or whatever. You know, who knows,

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Speaker 4: Like it's going to be money. But a lot of

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Speaker 4: people are also saying that this is just for CNN,

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Speaker 4: and that's actually not true. So a thing that is

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Speaker 4: important to know is that the cable part of this

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Speaker 4: deal Netflix was going to spin off the cable. The

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Speaker 4: Discovery channel at CNN was going to spin off all

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Speaker 4: the cable. So if he just wanted CNN, he could

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Speaker 4: have waited for the Netflix deal to go through, and

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Speaker 4: he could have just bought it on the market for

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Speaker 4: a steal. Because the thing about cable is it's losing

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Speaker 4: money if you look at Okay, this is a really

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Speaker 4: dark fact and I apologies everyone, but if you look

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Speaker 4: at the rate of cable subscription costs, if you look

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Speaker 4: at a meta aggregate data of it, the price of

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Speaker 4: the annual subscription to cable goes up by the distributed

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Speaker 4: out of the previous years subscription costs that were lost.

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Speaker 3: By boomers dying Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 4: So basically, it is a literally dying It is a

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Speaker 4: literally dying market. The only people who still pay for

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Speaker 4: cable other than institutional forces are like people above sixty

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Speaker 4: and they're just literally dying, and the price goes up

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Speaker 4: as more and more of them dying. It is, it

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Speaker 4: is over as a business cable. Even ESPN. Disney is

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Speaker 4: trying to get rid of ESPN, right, Even sports are

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Speaker 4: valueless now, not valueless, I means some billions of dollars obviously,

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Speaker 4: but to.

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Speaker 2: These yeah, yeah, you know, if you look at what

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Speaker 2: ESPN's like trying to do about this, they're like just

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Speaker 2: turning into an influencer factory, yeah, with just like rich

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Speaker 2: eyes and then like all these fucking unhinged dipshits exactly.

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Speaker 4: So anyway, so people are pretty like despairing about it

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Speaker 4: because I think it's about CNN. But if it was

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Speaker 4: just about CNN, like I said, they could have just

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Speaker 4: waited and gotten it for a song. David Ellison really

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Speaker 4: thinks he's a he's cosplaying as a movie producer, but

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Speaker 4: because he has so much money, he's succeeding. Yeah, of

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Speaker 4: the movies. He's pretty that you might like, although I

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Speaker 4: didn't like it, and a lot of people like top

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Speaker 4: Gun Maverick like it's fun.

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Speaker 2: I guess, like everything about that movie. Suddenly just like

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Speaker 2: clicks into focus.

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Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, oh, I just want you to know

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Speaker 4: that Top Gun Maverick is the greatest work of art

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Speaker 4: that he produced by some extreme margin. This guy's responsible

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Speaker 4: for Terminators five and six that would be a dark

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Speaker 4: Fate and Genesis. Oh no. He produced on Geostorm, which

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Speaker 4: you may remember came too late to capitalize on the

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Speaker 4: disaster thing. In twenty seventeen, he made the Gemini Man movie,

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Speaker 4: which is what Will Smith fought Will Smith with weird

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Speaker 4: yet aging technology.

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Speaker 3: Oh I remember seeing TV correction.

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Speaker 4: It kind of killed Will Smith's marketability as a star.

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Speaker 4: Like that was kind of the film like after Earthly Chad.

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Speaker 4: But he's responsible for ending Will Smith. He did this

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Speaker 4: the Spy Kids reboot which my Kids Armageddon from twenty twelve.

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Speaker 4: Way no, this guy Jesus has made just really bad movies.

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Speaker 2: All of these weird right wing people are all like

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Speaker 2: the thing they want to do is make movies. This

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Speaker 2: is like what's like killing the Daily Wire is that

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Speaker 2: they decided to be a movie company and it turns

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Speaker 2: out they can't make movies. But it's like this guy

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Speaker 2: is like what if you had that but backed by

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Speaker 2: like the entire tech capital apparatus, and your dad was

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Speaker 2: fucking Larry Ellison, the Oracle guy, like one of the

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Speaker 2: richest test fascists who's ever lived.

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Speaker 4: Then you can do it. Then you can just buy

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Speaker 4: yourself a movie studio, and you can do it because

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Speaker 4: the thing movies need is money.

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Speaker 2: And then you can keep buying all their movie studios.

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Speaker 4: But and this is a bit contrarian. I'm not sure

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Speaker 4: that this is worse for movies than Netflix getting it,

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Speaker 4: because Netflix would have likely sabotaged what was remaining of

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Speaker 4: WB's theatrical business model, right, Like, Netflix doesn't like the

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Speaker 4: theater now, they've been trying to get into theatrical because

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Speaker 4: that's like, you know, it's cash on the table. You know,

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Speaker 4: it's how you build. It's the greatest marketing on earth. Right,

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Speaker 4: And you when you have a big hit film, then

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Speaker 4: that's a franchise. You get TV shows, you get theme parks,

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Speaker 4: you get you know, lunch boxes, you know, toys, t shirts,

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Speaker 4: you get resales, you get a reboot ten years down

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Speaker 4: the line, right, you get licensing. So they want that.

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Speaker 4: But but Netflix is really, i mean, they hate movies.

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Speaker 4: Netflix literally has a production design a design philosophy of

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Speaker 4: making movies that are designed for people who aren't looking

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Speaker 4: at them, so that the characters say what they're doing.

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Speaker 4: I mean, there's a big article that came out about

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Speaker 4: this a few weeks ago, Like, yeah, Netflix is a

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Speaker 4: nightmare company, so it's a real it's a real Cilly

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Speaker 4: in Caribtis kind of situation. Yeah, right, Like you've got

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Speaker 4: this fascist creep, but at least he like really thinks

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Speaker 4: he likes movies, you know, Like I don't know anyway,

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Speaker 4: the plaint being people are very upset about this news

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Speaker 4: because it's happened to you because he's a Trump Ally,

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Speaker 4: there's this political angle they were making all this noise,

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Speaker 4: they were begging Trump to do it. Y'all are thirty

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Speaker 4: years late to this being a problem, Like I'm not

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Speaker 4: trying to be like I'm not trying to be like

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Speaker 4: that whatever, Like no, yeah, but we are well, but

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Speaker 4: like having three movie studios instead of two, like you're

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Speaker 4: already doing pretty bad. Like in the thirties, as I

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Speaker 4: gave you in that little pot of history, in the thirties,

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Speaker 4: Hollywood was so brutally integrated that they literally the federal

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Speaker 4: government literally broke it apart. At the height, at the

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Speaker 4: height of the studio system, the biggest company at the time,

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Speaker 4: which I believe was MGM, was the big studio controlled

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Speaker 4: eighteen percent of the market of the film market, which

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Speaker 4: is massive. I mean the market of anything. Eighteen percent

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Speaker 4: of my market is obscene hideous. Yeah, Disney in a

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Speaker 4: bunch of the past years has run forty percent of

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Speaker 4: the market worldwide, worldwide. Not so like we are already

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Speaker 4: at this level of concentration, like the fact that it

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Speaker 4: keeps going, Like, yes, it does mean there will be

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Speaker 4: fewer and fewer movies, It does mean more layoffs. It

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Speaker 4: means things are getting worse. But you know, we've been here,

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Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I think it's actually

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Speaker 4: only thirty seven percent.

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Speaker 3: Thirty seven Oh wow wow, yeah, three percent.

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Speaker 4: Sorry, I'm sorry about that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, And this is something I think gets back to

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Speaker 2: one of the sort of political answers that I've been

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Speaker 2: seeing to this is like, you know, this return from

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Speaker 2: kind of like the left of the Democratic Party to

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Speaker 2: being like, oh, we should talk about like anti monopoly

410
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Speaker 2: and we should do like trust busting again. It's like probably, yeah,

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Speaker 2: but we did this right, Like we did this we

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Speaker 2: got rid of the.

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Speaker 3: Monopolies and then they came back. It's like, this is

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Speaker 3: you know.

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Speaker 2: This is this is the problem is that this is

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Speaker 2: this is basically a structural problem of capital is this

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Speaker 2: kind of resolidation. And you can break up the monopolies,

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Speaker 2: but they'll just reform. It requires you to win the

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Speaker 2: battle forever. And all the monopolies have to do is

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Speaker 2: get like one fascist elected or get like like all.

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Speaker 3: They need is one Ronald Reagan and you just lose everything.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, okay, like this this is a problem

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Speaker 2: that can't be solved just by tinkering on the edges

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Speaker 2: of the system. You have to actually destroy the conditions

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Speaker 2: that make it possible. And those are regulatory conditions. Those

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Speaker 2: are hold on why are people allowed to own this shit?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that's exactly right. And I think,

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Speaker 4: you know, one of the things about monopoly of the station,

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Speaker 4: which is famous, one of the things that even capitalists

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Speaker 4: don't like about monopolies is that the quality goes down. Famous, Yeah, right,

431
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Speaker 4: because you don't you don't know, you don't have to

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Speaker 4: compete whatever, there's literally no reason to try and make

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Speaker 4: the product good. But like, one of the things about

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00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:40,280
Speaker 4: the concentration of IP, and like one of the things

435
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:43,200
Speaker 4: that's like sort of scary about it's consolidation in general.

436
00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 4: And this is the fact that's really important to understand.

437
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:50,120
Speaker 4: When you own a bucket of intellectual property. Let's say

438
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 4: you own Sesame Street, right, which is one that's not owned.

439
00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:54,840
Speaker 4: So it's a good example to use because it's weird

440
00:21:55,240 --> 00:21:57,240
Speaker 4: when you own Sesame Street, and if you start to

441
00:21:57,280 --> 00:22:00,320
Speaker 4: make products of Sesame Street, it means that every idea

442
00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:04,280
Speaker 4: that isn't Sesame Street but threatens to become more popular

443
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:07,880
Speaker 4: than Sesame Street is a threat. So it is if

444
00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:10,159
Speaker 4: you own, if you own enough IP, it is in

445
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:15,040
Speaker 4: your logical material interest to stop new ideas from being made,

446
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:19,679
Speaker 4: because every new idea is competition. If you own the

447
00:22:19,720 --> 00:22:22,480
Speaker 4: back catalog of Bob Dylan, for as like some of

448
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 4: these investment firms, do you think he's I think he

449
00:22:24,359 --> 00:22:27,560
Speaker 4: has sold to Hypnosis or one of these big there

450
00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 4: are these big music investment firms that own the rights

451
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:33,560
Speaker 4: to all of these old songs. If you guys, If

452
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:38,639
Speaker 4: y'all remember in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, all movie trailers

453
00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:42,520
Speaker 4: suddenly started having weird sad girl covers of like sixties

454
00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:46,360
Speaker 4: and seventies pop songs. Do you remember this era? Oh yeah, yeah,

455
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:48,880
Speaker 4: the sad utograph and I was just like what happened

456
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:51,639
Speaker 4: in like Hollywood, was there like some weird trend. No,

457
00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:54,479
Speaker 4: what happened was these investment firms got hold of it,

458
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:58,080
Speaker 4: and if they can release a new cover version of

459
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 4: a song, they hit the property rights twice, so they

460
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:03,520
Speaker 4: get it on the new they get it on the

461
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:05,360
Speaker 4: new play, and then people go back to the old

462
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 4: ones they're reminded of it.

463
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's worse too, because the.

464
00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:15,800
Speaker 4: God and and this is only possible because of the

465
00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:19,160
Speaker 4: way that the streaming services got consolidated and that they

466
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:22,280
Speaker 4: pay per play, because pay per play, as everyone knows,

467
00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 4: completely screws artists. There's just no way to make any

468
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:30,040
Speaker 4: money off that. But if you own a massive library

469
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:33,320
Speaker 4: like the UM, like the BMG or Sony Universal, if

470
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 4: you own a library like that, you do nothing and

471
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:38,560
Speaker 4: you make billions a year, right, so it becomes this permanent,

472
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 4: perfect rent that you never have to worry about. So

473
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:43,520
Speaker 4: all you have to do is buy enough musical IP

474
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:45,840
Speaker 4: and then try and get new artists who are hot

475
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:49,040
Speaker 4: to cover your old ip. So this is like this

476
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:52,760
Speaker 4: really weird esoteric seeming. You know, it's bailed on the

477
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 4: division between particular recording uh copyrights and the copyrights of

478
00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 4: like individual song of the songwriting. It's like built on

479
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:03,360
Speaker 4: the sort of weird esoteric structure of intellectual property law,

480
00:24:03,359 --> 00:24:05,400
Speaker 4: which like when you start talking about it, people's eyes

481
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,159
Speaker 4: literally roll in the back of their head, right like

482
00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 4: a daisy. They fall over in a daisy popstup like

483
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,239
Speaker 4: the cartoon. They're just dead. That's not interesting. But like

484
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,480
Speaker 4: because of that, for five years, when you went to

485
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 4: the grocery store, you would be in a weird, uncanny

486
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:22,119
Speaker 4: valley where you were hearing a song that you thought

487
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 4: you recognized but was like slightly different.

488
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

489
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:28,439
Speaker 4: Right, So the entire material structure of the world, like

490
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:31,400
Speaker 4: the psychic structure of the world, gets transformed by these

491
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:35,439
Speaker 4: weird exploits over like financial loopholes by the worst people

492
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 4: on earth, whose goal is to never let you hear

493
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 4: a new song, right, Like they'd never want you to

494
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:44,600
Speaker 4: hear new music again. They just want the boomer tracks

495
00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,280
Speaker 4: to play forever with like new versions by you know,

496
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 4: like they just want Charlie XCX to record fucking Jefferson Airplane,

497
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:54,240
Speaker 4: Like that's there, that's their wettest dream, you know, and

498
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 4: all that shit is going on in the background of

499
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:58,240
Speaker 4: your life, right, Like, I mean it's not, it's it's

500
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 4: but it's affecting the psycha atmosphere. It's producing nostalgia, it's

501
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 4: producing all these affects that are rife for fascism. It

502
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:07,800
Speaker 4: makes people want to go back.

503
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:11,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, Okay, what happened the last time we

504
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:15,120
Speaker 2: saw like the completely unhinged like concentration of all capitals,

505
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 2: some monopolies. It's like, well, all that capital was liquidated

506
00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:23,120
Speaker 2: by World War Two. There was World War One as

507
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:25,640
Speaker 2: well too, right, these were both to a larger extent.

508
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:26,679
Speaker 2: And this is something that you know, if you go

509
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 2: back and read anyone who's doing any political analysis about

510
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:31,879
Speaker 2: World War One in the lead up to it and

511
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 2: as it's happening, the thing everyone is talking about is

512
00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:38,800
Speaker 2: is the consolidation monopoly capital. And I think you can

513
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 2: argue maybe that the early eighteen hundreds had like a

514
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 2: larger consolidation just in the sense of, like I'm questionable

515
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:49,880
Speaker 2: as to whether this is just because it's too expensive

516
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 2: to literally run a country, but like we haven't quite

517
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 2: returned to like the East India company has an army

518
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 2: and they conquer countries periodically.

519
00:25:57,560 --> 00:25:59,200
Speaker 3: But like I think it's just because that's too expensive

520
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 3: and you'd rather just to the state.

521
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 4: But it's less farther than you think, less far than

522
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 4: your thing, because yeah, the part of the way that

523
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 4: it outsources to the state, and this is in this

524
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,160
Speaker 4: is this is all stuffer from my upcoming book which

525
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 4: you can preorder.

526
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 3: Now, that's true.

527
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 4: The World Trade Organization. One of the things that it

528
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 4: did when you joined the WTO, and this was done

529
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 4: by lobbyists, mostly film and pharma and chemical lobbyists from

530
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 4: the US sense, if you join the WTO, you have

531
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 4: to accept you don't not only have to accept their

532
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 4: copyright and piracy law, you have to agree to build

533
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 4: copyright courts and copyright police in your country Jesus Christ,

534
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 4: so that if say Apple sees you making a fake iPhone,

535
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,880
Speaker 4: they have a literal legal procedure domestic to your country

536
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:51,880
Speaker 4: to force you to stop. To smutch those pricis. Major

537
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 4: corporations can get police in Vietnam to go in and

538
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 4: light a warehouse on fire because it's full of faked goods,

539
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,160
Speaker 4: like without ever leaving the US right, So yeah, yeah,

540
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 4: the company's more contigutive through these world trade organizations.

541
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 2: Well, they did the order liberal thing of where we're

542
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:12,679
Speaker 2: using the supra state apparatus to negate the sovereignty of

543
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 2: the state by creating the super state which we run.

544
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,640
Speaker 4: Yes, so I mean I'm obviously interested in the ip

545
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 4: and the cultural angle. This is the only law like

546
00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 4: this in any of these agreements. All the rest of

547
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 4: the trade agreements, like they can negotiate. But like, part

548
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 4: of what's so obscene about Trump's tariffs is that the

549
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 4: US already had this. It was called the Priority watch List.

550
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 4: They just have this list in the White House where

551
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:37,400
Speaker 4: they could just say you're not doing a good job

552
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 4: enough stopping piracy, and it gives the White House unilateral

553
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 4: capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to Congress.

554
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 4: Like this was all the tariffs, which also hurt your

555
00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:51,919
Speaker 4: economy obviously, but even if they worked the way Trump

556
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 4: imagines they do, like he already had that power and

557
00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 4: like other presidents have been using it for decades. Big

558
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 4: visible sanctions what they put on Iran or Venezuela are

559
00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:05,120
Speaker 4: a much more dramatic upscale, but the Priority watch List

560
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 4: they can just threaten to upgrade you from on the

561
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 4: watch list to a priority country on that and you

562
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 4: will watch countries fold entirely on trade policy, Like it's crazy. So,

563
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 4: like one of the things that's interesting about this moment

564
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 4: and about the Trumpet moment is that they're ripping apart

565
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 4: their own infrastructure. Yeah, because they literally just don't understand

566
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 4: how it works.

567
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 2: No, it's it's like that you headed to an aircraft

568
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 2: carrier and they're ripping out the copper wires and trying

569
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 2: to sell it, and it's.

570
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 3: Like, you have an aircraft carrier, what are we doing?

571
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 4: Yeah?

572
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 3: God, exactly.

573
00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 4: You know. So again, like I think there is this

574
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 4: talk about the consolidation of culture, and I think, like,

575
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 4: you know, people like the Ellison's are just they're just

576
00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 4: vulgar at it. Yeah, Like the thing is, like Mike

577
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 4: Eisner was better at it. Like Bob Iger is, who

578
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 4: is the CEO of Disney currently other he's about to

579
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 4: step down. Bob Iger saw them through the acquisition of

580
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 4: Marvel and Star Wars and all that. He is an

581
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 4: incredible I mean, you know, or whatever his team and

582
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 4: he himself is a pretty unimpressive guy. But like, you know,

583
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 4: like other than internal politics, which is what all CEOs

584
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 4: are good at anyway. You know, like these these these

585
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 4: companies were already good at this, and like what has

586
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 4: happened is that a wing of the capitalists who are

587
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 4: really bad at it and really resentful because they're all

588
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 4: sort of like the David Allison's in the world. They're

589
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,640
Speaker 4: all the resentful fail sons of wealth who you know,

590
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 4: they want more power and more respect and they don't

591
00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 4: appreciate how much their shit is already built on the

592
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 4: very thing they claim to want to do.

593
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I guess it is to some extent

594
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 2: a kind of funny, like the election to Trump and

595
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:38,000
Speaker 2: also just sort of Ellison just like devouring this is

596
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 2: what it is, like Third Studio that he's eaten in

597
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,719
Speaker 2: like five years, and like all all these forces being

598
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 2: devoured by this. This is like well, yeah, like this

599
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 2: is what happens when you set up a system like this.

600
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 2: Eventually there's going to be a bigger fish who's just

601
00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 2: going to devour you because they have, for example, Oracle

602
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 2: behind them, which is just an amount of capital that

603
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,400
Speaker 2: like outside of like Disney, you can't have that kind

604
00:30:00,440 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 2: of capital, right, And like with Trump, it's like, yeah,

605
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 2: you find you finally created a monster that is large

606
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 2: enough to shatter the extremely delicate and complicated system that

607
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 2: you did.

608
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 3: And it's also just doesn't understand it.

609
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, if you want to

610
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 4: see what the future of Hollywood looks like, I mean,

611
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 4: you know, you can go worse than to look at China. Right,

612
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 4: China is the most dynamic film market. It overtook the

613
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 4: US as the number one value of the box office

614
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two. I think I think it did

615
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, but that was still COVID shutdown

616
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 4: affected ye twenty two or twenty twenty three. China became

617
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 4: an actual the actual plurality of ticket sales in the

618
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 4: world by dollar, if not by number. By numbers, they've

619
00:30:41,360 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 4: already long surpassed the US.

620
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:43,760
Speaker 3: Yeah.

621
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 4: But the way that Chinese film companies work is like

622
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 4: they're all pretty nakedly financial companies like ten Cent and

623
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 4: Ali Baba, right, and like like these are companies they're

624
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 4: just already from other sectors and they're just like we

625
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 4: have cash, we use the cash to make movie, yeah,

626
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 4: which is what the studios always did too. Right. I

627
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 4: want to be really clear, like I don't want to romanticize,

628
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 4: but like you know, that's where it always was, right,

629
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 4: And it's just that like in the turn of the

630
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 4: century when Hollywood was being made, industries were just more divided. Yeah,

631
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 4: the reason to talk about all of this business stuff

632
00:31:29,320 --> 00:31:31,520
Speaker 4: on some level, I mean, it's interesting on its own

633
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 4: as history, it's interesting as a critique of capitalism. But

634
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 4: I think it's also interesting because it affects the aesthetics,

635
00:31:37,840 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 4: like of what the movies that get made, right. And

636
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 4: I think when we think about when people think about

637
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 4: fascist propaganda, you know, we think about the Nazis, right, obviously,

638
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 4: because the Nazis had the longest running fascist propaganda machine

639
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 4: in the world. They had the Ministry of Culture under

640
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 4: your Gerbils, right. And I think when we talk about

641
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 4: Nazi propaganda, we think about trying for the will, and

642
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 4: we think about stuff like Juden's right, like extremely horrifying

643
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 4: anti Semitic bullshit, extremely horrifying anti Semitic movies. There were

644
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 4: two of them in the ten years that Gerbels ran

645
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 4: the UFA, which is the film company that made movies

646
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 4: for Germany. The vast majority, the vast majority of films

647
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 4: under the life were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure

648
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 4: stories because the principle that Gerbels operated on was called

649
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 4: the orchestra principle, and he believed that you should just

650
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 4: actually art should just be reduced to creating feelings. It

651
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 4: should be totally de intellectualized, and then very little of

652
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 4: that art remains. Those movies are mid. You know. The

653
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 4: movies made by Utha are not good, like even the

654
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 4: ones that are not offensive. They're just mid. But they

655
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 4: all do the same thing. They all work together around

656
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 4: a principle of certain principles around family and romantic love

657
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 4: and domestic life, most of it inoffensive in and of itself.

658
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 4: And so I think when we think about Ellison taking over,

659
00:32:56,240 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 4: I think we imagine, you know, as we were joking

660
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 4: about at the beginning, shit like the Ellie Wire, anti

661
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 4: woke Cinderella or whatever the fuck. Yeah, and I allowed

662
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 4: to cuss. I'm doing so.

663
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 1: Much of it.

664
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I tour all the time. Okay, thank god we

665
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 3: are not regulated by the FCC.

666
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 4: Let's go no one these days.

667
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess we technically are, but we're we're

668
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 2: not under the radio regulation, so we can say whatever

669
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 2: we want.

670
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 4: Perfect love that, but like fascist filmmaking has not looked

671
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 4: like that for the most part in the history of it.

672
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 4: Fascist filmmaking looks like family adventure fair often. And I

673
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 4: think we have been so blinded to the way that

674
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 4: this happens that we imagine that Allison taking over is

675
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 4: suddenly going to mean that now there's gonna be fascist

676
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 4: movies in theaters. But like, have y'all been to the movies? Yes,

677
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 4: Like have you all seen what Warderwrollers did with like

678
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 4: the Snyder verse, Like.

679
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:53,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, did you did you watch The Beekeeper?

680
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 1: Right?

681
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 2: Speaking of Netflix, Like that was the most fascist movie

682
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 2: I have.

683
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 3: Ever seen exactly.

684
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 2: It is literally it is a movie that is just

685
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 2: a guy shooting a bunch of people, and then the

686
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:08,440
Speaker 2: background superstructure is an explanation of what the furor is,

687
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,479
Speaker 2: which is like the force that is outside of the order,

688
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 2: that is able to violate the rules of the order

689
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 2: in order to in order to create the order itself.

690
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 2: Except it's a guy called the bee Keeper and he

691
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 2: just shoots people like.

692
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:20,919
Speaker 4: It's it's that's pretty bad.

693
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 3: That's like that.

694
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did not watch that one, and I like, state.

695
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 3: It's really unhinged. I watched it with my family nightmare.

696
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 3: Holy shit, it's going insane.

697
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, things are so bad that Like there was a movie,

698
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 4: Nobody with Bob Odenkirk that came out in twenty nineteen,

699
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:40,280
Speaker 4: and it was basically a parody of those like Liam Neeson,

700
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 4: you know, the John Wick movies and like Liam Neeson

701
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,520
Speaker 4: like Dad then taking stuff right, Yeah, and it was

702
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:47,520
Speaker 4: a parody you maybe you could be clued in by

703
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 4: the fact that it was Bob Odenkirk and it was

704
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 4: fillsed with comedians. Maybe you could be clued in by

705
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 4: the fact that he's fighting because they took his daughter's

706
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 4: Hello Kitty bracelet. Like there's a pretty like dry, but

707
00:34:57,719 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 4: it's a dry plays a very dry.

708
00:34:59,520 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

709
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 4: Every single professional film critic reviewed it like it was

710
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 4: dead serious, like Bob was to become the next Liam Neesen.

711
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,280
Speaker 4: And part of that is because they shot good action sequences,

712
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 4: Like he did a good job with the satire. But

713
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 4: then what happens, what happened next is that now there's

714
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 4: a Nobody too, and it's completely forgotten the joke and

715
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 4: it's not good either.

716
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 3: So like Jesus Christ, Yeah, and Bob won and.

717
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:26,800
Speaker 4: Kirk just like he had this one window where he

718
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 4: could really sell that, he couldn't sell it in this sequel.

719
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter.

720
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 3: It's it's the Doorhead sequels right exactly.

721
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 4: But like we're just in a time of extreme literalism,

722
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 4: where like everything is really really like script driven. It's

723
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 4: really on its face, it's really textual. Everything is just

724
00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:50,320
Speaker 4: selling something else. Everything can possibly be sequel. Nothing really changes,

725
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 4: politics only exists as bureaucracy. These are all deeply fascist concepts.

726
00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 4: They're just more subtle than goose stepping SS, you know

727
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 4: for it. You know. Yeah, part of what's so funny

728
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 4: about The Daily Wire is it's like like they come

729
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 4: for Disney, like you can't do anything to make them

730
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 4: more fascist pop Like Disney entertains people and makes the

731
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 4: fascist populous. Like they're just bad filmmakers and that kind

732
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 4: of matters.

733
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is a chance that like I

734
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 2: don't know, Ellison is such a dumb ass that he

735
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:25,800
Speaker 2: just tries to do it anyways, Like he just tries

736
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 2: to be like fuck it. Well even then, like he

737
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 2: hasn't really made like a stereotype of Nazi movies. He's

738
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:36,240
Speaker 2: made like actual Nazi movies. Just to say, the fucking

739
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 2: top gunn Baverrick.

740
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 4: And people loved Top the Mavericks. People were like, yeah,

741
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 4: I guess it's maybe kind of a problem about it,

742
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 4: like but we love you know. It's like that movie

743
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:49,839
Speaker 4: is like literally propaganda for the Air Force. Like I

744
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 4: thought it was fun. Yeah, don't get me wrong, but

745
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 4: like people are have been really trained to not see

746
00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 4: that stuff.

747
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like we're like now fighting the war

748
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 2: at that movie was propaganda for yes, exactly, like we

749
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:04,240
Speaker 2: literally we literally are fighting.

750
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 3: We've made it to road like or we're bombed a

751
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:07,799
Speaker 3: ride at all.

752
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 4: That fifteens went down so the first time of the

753
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 4: Gulf War.

754
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they got shut down by Allies Air defenses.

755
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 4: You know what, we didn't have Maverick, we didn't have

756
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 4: Tom Cruise training them. And that's what Allison's gonna do.

757
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:25,359
Speaker 4: That's why I'm happy he's merging it, because our brave

758
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 4: boys and the Skies are going to be safer.

759
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 3: God.

760
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 4: So yeah, anyways, I don't know where I'm going with

761
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 4: this because obviously things are bad and anyone betting against

762
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:36,359
Speaker 4: things getting worse over the last ten years has lost

763
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 4: their pants, right, But things can get worse. But like,

764
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 4: also there is the actual object, the actual film object exists,

765
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 4: and like part of what has been hard about Hollywood,

766
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 4: the reason they have built these monopoly structures, the reason

767
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 4: they've built these pea structures, is because because audiences are fickle,

768
00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 4: and that's annoying, and you can't just like force stuff

769
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 4: down their throats and they're not gonna like buy something

770
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,279
Speaker 4: for sure every time, and you have to sort of

771
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 4: seduce them, right like, it's it's you have to you

772
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 4: have to make something they want to see. Right The

773
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 4: MCU was unstoppable until it stopped, and now no one

774
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 4: likes it and it's really annoying, right like, and they

775
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:14,879
Speaker 4: still make their money back on the MCU, like they're

776
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,840
Speaker 4: doing fine. No, do not play a violin for for

777
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 4: Kevin Feige. He's doing fine. You know, he's crying on

778
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 4: his third shot, you know. But like, but so, I

779
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:25,759
Speaker 4: guess what I'm saying is that, like, is that like,

780
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 4: as we enter into more and more naked versions of this,

781
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 4: what it should help us do you, rather than think,

782
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 4: oh my god, all is lost, is to reflect on

783
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:38,120
Speaker 4: how we got here already. How often we were already

784
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 4: here under liberalism, under Biden, under just regular capitalist conditions.

785
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 4: How often we've already been here, reevaluate the way we

786
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,839
Speaker 4: think about what good culture could look like, and then

787
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:49,479
Speaker 4: start to move.

788
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to come back to something I said

789
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 2: a few years ago when we did a show with

790
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 2: Gare about the People's Joker, and.

791
00:38:58,160 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 4: I saw on the TV glow.

792
00:38:59,360 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw it.

793
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 2: I was about to say, the one about the egg

794
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 2: has the bad ending and never transitions.

795
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 4: Yes, the horror of you about not transitioning yet.

796
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think there is an extent to which,

797
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:15,600
Speaker 2: you know, there was a really brief attempt to sort

798
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 2: of sublimate transness into film for like one year. But

799
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:24,760
Speaker 2: you know, like we are the people who've been spat

800
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 2: out of this, but also trans people are making movies

801
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,080
Speaker 2: at a rate that has never happened before. Ever, There's

802
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 2: never been anything like it. And you know, like the

803
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 2: Wachowskis like have a studio now where they're pumping out

804
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,879
Speaker 2: a bunch of trans movies, and like, you know, we're

805
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,799
Speaker 2: getting like Manhunter, and we're getting like a whole bunch

806
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,279
Speaker 2: of other stuff. And you know, the thing I said

807
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:47,800
Speaker 2: a few years ago I think is even more desperate

808
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 2: and true now is that, like transfilm is one of

809
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 2: the last things, fighting for the existence of film as

810
00:39:55,040 --> 00:39:58,879
Speaker 2: a medium and not as a way to sell you

811
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:02,080
Speaker 2: toys and like fifteen dollars popcorn.

812
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 4: Hey, they also tell you all expenses paid, vacations, you

813
00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 4: have to go into debt for it. Okay, it's good. Yeah,

814
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 4: good support trans film, support local film. And the thing

815
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 4: about movies is that movies are bad. But the other

816
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:16,959
Speaker 4: thing is that movies are good. So it's hard.

817
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:19,360
Speaker 3: The dialectic emotion.

818
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Look, I will say this, there has been

819
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 2: for many thousands of years a second dialectic operating. And

820
00:40:27,719 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 2: then it's a dialectic between labor and capital. That's probably

821
00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:35,279
Speaker 2: I probably backdated capital too far, but you know, fuck it,

822
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 2: I don't know. We could resolve We could resolve movies

823
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 2: good in movies bad by resolving the other dialectic of

824
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 2: capital and labor, by simply destroying the categories and ending

825
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 2: the class system. I believe in us we can make

826
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 2: a movie good again. Movie has never been good. There

827
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 2: could be a new future were a movie good.

828
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, exactly, Yeah, yeah, I believe.

829
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 3: One final thing, VICKI, where where can people find your book?

830
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 4: Yes, it's being put up by Haymarket, So you can

831
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 4: go to their website. I also have a link to

832
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 4: my bookshop page via Blue Sky. I'm vicki acab on

833
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 4: blue Sky. So if you want to watch me posting

834
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:18,839
Speaker 4: through it, you know, come hang out. I guess yeah,

835
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 4: you ar talk to libraries about it. Ask a local

836
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:23,959
Speaker 4: if you have a local bookshop, asking them that stuff

837
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 4: really helps make a huge difference. And yeah, I would

838
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 4: really appreciate any of that if you're if you're interested

839
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 4: in how Disney destroyed the world and in the ways

840
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 4: that we've been talking about here today, can read way

841
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:35,239
Speaker 4: more about it.

842
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't know Vicky. Vicky's Book's good.

843
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:41,759
Speaker 2: Can confirm have read the good?

844
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 4: Thanks n.

845
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 5: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

846
00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

847
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 5: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the

848
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 5: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

849
00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:58,879
Speaker 3: You listen to podcasts.

850
00:41:59,239 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 5: Can now find urs for It Could Happen Here listed

851
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 5: directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.