Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis, play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Trevis. Welcome in Wins and Losses podcast.
Speaker 1: Appreciade all of you listening. Encourage you to go back
Speaker 1: and listen to the thirty some odd podcasts that we
Speaker 1: have done. Long form conversation subjects that interests me in
Speaker 1: the world of sports, business, politics, media, you name it.
Speaker 1: Basically a fascinating exploration of topics and ideas that maybe
Speaker 1: we don't get a full length discussion for on the
Speaker 1: daily radio show. I of course him Clay Travis, and
Speaker 1: we're joined today by a guy that I'm fascinating to
Speaker 1: talk with. His name is Chris Fenton, and he has
Speaker 1: written a book called Feeding the Dragon, Inside the trillion
Speaker 1: dollar Dilemma facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American business. You guys,
Speaker 1: if you listen to this program regularly or listen to
Speaker 1: read me, know that I have been sort of on
Speaker 1: the forefront of the relationship between America and China and
Speaker 1: why I see it as a new modern day Cold
Speaker 1: War going forward, a battle over whose intellectual ideas and
Speaker 1: property rights and everything else. Is going to dominate in
Speaker 1: the twenty one century, and I think lots of Americans
Speaker 1: have been caught flat footed on exactly what's going on
Speaker 1: with China. And we bring in Chris Fenton now and
Speaker 1: I said, he just wrote a book. But Chris, your background,
Speaker 1: you have a knowledge about this sort of entertainment culture
Speaker 1: battle going on in sports and entertainment with China and
Speaker 1: the United States based on what what's your background and
Speaker 1: how did you end up doing what you did? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a great question, and I covered some of it
Speaker 1: early in the early stages of the book. But UM,
Speaker 1: just a brief snapshot. First of all, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me on the show. Secondly, UM, I grew up
Speaker 1: in South Florida, big Miami Hurricane fan, UM, big fan
Speaker 1: of pop culture. I'm years old, so I was sort
Speaker 1: of at the perfect prime moment to UM engage with
Speaker 1: pop culture both through my UM the MTV you know,
Speaker 1: music videos and the start of that network, and the
Speaker 1: v the vhs and VCR tapes that Blockbuster got so
Speaker 1: prolific at delivering UM and through that, I just really
Speaker 1: over time was thinking, Hey, I want to get into
Speaker 1: the cultural aspect of of the business community. How do
Speaker 1: I do that. I ended up going to Cornell University
Speaker 1: got an engineering degree there. UM, and uh, I was
Speaker 1: sort of lost in There wasn't a lot of great
Speaker 1: opportunities and it was a little bit of a downtick
Speaker 1: in the economy, and I just hopped in my car
Speaker 1: and drove across country um and slept on fraternity couches
Speaker 1: of of five Gama Delta across the way. I think
Speaker 1: I stopped in sixty three spots. UM. I actually was
Speaker 1: a terrible football player for Cornell University, but I bonded
Speaker 1: with Cornell or with football guys at different schools. I
Speaker 1: actually crashed on a couch of University Nebraska's Fiji House
Speaker 1: for a while, and they had a lot of football
Speaker 1: guys there and I got to know them and and
Speaker 1: over time, I eventually got um to Las Vegas, where
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to plant my my, my,
Speaker 1: my roots because it was sort of a booming economy
Speaker 1: at the time. And uh, a buddy of mine in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles talked me into visiting for a weekend. I
Speaker 1: ended up driving out just to visit him and never left.
Speaker 1: I was just like, this is the greatest place on Earth.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful at seventy two and sunny every day. The
Speaker 1: girls are absolutely spectacular looked at and and it's the
Speaker 1: center of pop culture. So what could be better. So
Speaker 1: my very first job was as a waiter at the
Speaker 1: Olive Garden um right off u C. L A's campus
Speaker 1: in Westwood. It's not there anymore. I used to go
Speaker 1: visit it every once in a while just to reminisce um.
Speaker 1: And then from there it led into a Hollywood career.
Speaker 1: So what did you okay? So you start waiting tables
Speaker 1: in l A, which is honestly an l A story.
Speaker 1: A lot of people understand when you get out there,
Speaker 1: even with a graduate I mean a degree from Cornell University.
Speaker 1: So you work at the Olive Garden and then your
Speaker 1: first job in the quote unquote entertainment industry is what
Speaker 1: and how did you get that gig? Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was waiting tables at the Olive Garden, which is UM,
Speaker 1: as you know, not not the most high end psycholo restaurant,
Speaker 1: but for me it was UM. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of hospitaliano and I was waiting on two guys on
Speaker 1: a double date. When was a guy named Chris Moore
Speaker 1: who had just left UH an agency called I C
Speaker 1: M and was producing a little movie that started a
Speaker 1: guy that no one knew named Ben Affleck, and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you planning on doing? I said, I have
Speaker 1: no idea. He's like, well, you should get into the
Speaker 1: Hollywood business. It's the Wall Street of the nineties. And
Speaker 1: he invited me into this UH pick up basketball league
Speaker 1: and and there I met a bunch of guys who
Speaker 1: no one knew at the time. That was a huge agency.
Speaker 1: Leaders Patrick White Sow and Ari Emmanuel of Ben Affleck.
Speaker 1: Matt came in. They're playing in the basketball league. All
Speaker 1: of us were there, like we we all were short
Speaker 1: of I mean, were a few years older, a generation
Speaker 1: slightly ahead of me. But it was all just a
Speaker 1: bunch of guys sort of trying to make it in
Speaker 1: the entertainment business. I mean even White Soul, he was
Speaker 1: a guy from Iowa. So um, A lot of this
Speaker 1: just sort of transplanted there and we're like, okay, how
Speaker 1: do we figure this out? And all right, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna cut you off here, but I gotta know,
Speaker 1: how would you assess the respective basketball games who had
Speaker 1: the best talent of the group that you played with.
Speaker 1: So you were talking about these young actors and these
Speaker 1: young agents who people, if they're familiar with the larger
Speaker 1: Hollywood universe, will know even if they don't know the
Speaker 1: ones who aren't actors. But how would you break down McConaughey,
Speaker 1: Damon and uh And and Athleck as basketball players? And
Speaker 1: how about the guys who were going to end up
Speaker 1: being super powerful agents, how would you break down their ability?
Speaker 1: I would say Patrick White soul was was a tremendously
Speaker 1: skilled player. He played growing up and I think he
Speaker 1: actually played in college a little bit. Ari was just tenacious, persistent,
Speaker 1: really difficult to get around, great defensive player. I would
Speaker 1: say Matt Damon was probably one of the best athletes
Speaker 1: I've seen as a as an actor. And by the way,
Speaker 1: most actors get that reputation of not being athletic, he
Speaker 1: was super athletic. Um Ben was actually a good player
Speaker 1: on the inside. Actually, Um slightly twisted his ankle on
Speaker 1: my playing defense against him, and I think I got
Speaker 1: a lot of crap for that for a couple of
Speaker 1: months afterwards. And then Chris Moore went on and produced
Speaker 1: Um Goodwill, Hunting and The American Pie franchise, great power forward,
Speaker 1: A big guy. Um. Some people might know him from
Speaker 1: his work on Project green Light on HBO for for
Speaker 1: several seasons. So this is pretty fascinating in and of itself.
Speaker 1: So you're playing in this basketball league, you're Cornell grad
Speaker 1: and how does that lead to the first quote unquote gig.
Speaker 1: So you're working at the Olive Garden, you show up
Speaker 1: out there, you start playing a basketball league with guys
Speaker 1: who are young and starting to kind of make their
Speaker 1: move but not really that well known at the time.
Speaker 1: And then what happens. Yeah, so then they then everybody said, hey, look,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in the business, well we'll
Speaker 1: set up some meetings and um, but we can't promise anything.
Speaker 1: Everybody's sort of very self interested, but will obviously help
Speaker 1: you out and give you advice. So I got a
Speaker 1: bunch of meetings, but it didn't lead to anything. I
Speaker 1: actually didn't really even know what I was doing in
Speaker 1: these interviews. Um, you know, I talked about somebody I
Speaker 1: want to run the world or whatever it was. It
Speaker 1: was never about Hey, I want to do anything I
Speaker 1: can for you. If that means delivering a stool sample
Speaker 1: to your doctor, I'm happy to do that, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, was something that mail room attendees had to
Speaker 1: do with William Morris um. But I ended up getting
Speaker 1: a temp job through a temp agency as a music
Speaker 1: facts clerk at the William Morris Agency, which doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: It got taken over by Endeavor, and I fact um
Speaker 1: music contracts all day long for the Lights of the Eagles,
Speaker 1: Red Hot, Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etcetera. And I
Speaker 1: would just read and study those contracts all day long.
Speaker 1: It was unbelievable. I mean you could see what the
Speaker 1: riders were, and the riders are sort of the backstage
Speaker 1: perks that these guys would have. I mean the Eagles
Speaker 1: and the Health Freezes Overtour had backstage perks. So it's
Speaker 1: cost sixty THO a show on the top of the
Speaker 1: million they were getting guaranteed. So it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: And then he saw it down in dirty guys like
Speaker 1: Glenn dan Zing and the fact that he just wanted
Speaker 1: three girls that lived within a twenty dollar cabs fair
Speaker 1: of the venue, you know. So it was pretty eye opening.
Speaker 1: And then over time I figured out who inside the
Speaker 1: agency could lead me into the mecca, which was getting
Speaker 1: into the William Morris mail room where I could get
Speaker 1: promoted into the agent trainee status making a whopping three
Speaker 1: dollars a week, and that's exactly what I did, so
Speaker 1: you get into the agent. I'm kind of fascinated by
Speaker 1: this too, because there's so many people. Hollywood agency is
Speaker 1: very much of a meritocracy, right and for people out
Speaker 1: there who are listening to us right now and think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm somewhat interested in the agent business as it pertains
Speaker 1: to Hollywood. What is a job in the mail room entail? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a job in the mail room is essentially Mr Miyagi
Speaker 1: um watching over you. And we had a guy named
Speaker 1: Marv ALBERTI was the mail room, the career mail room
Speaker 1: guy who led all these young trainees. And it was
Speaker 1: trainees that were essentially Steven Spielberg's nephew or David Geffen's
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, best friend's son or whatever
Speaker 1: it was. And then there were all kinds of crazy
Speaker 1: sort of Harvard law grads and everything else in there.
Speaker 1: And our job was essentially the deliver mail throughout the agency,
Speaker 1: so we would learn what every department was doing, whether
Speaker 1: it was commercials or TV syndication, cable or the movie
Speaker 1: business or television or at the time we were dabbling
Speaker 1: because we were representing um sort of some sports stars
Speaker 1: in various aspects. So we had that, and we had
Speaker 1: the music department, and over time you got promoted into
Speaker 1: what they called dispatch, and that's where you learned how
Speaker 1: the whole town work because you had to deliver packages
Speaker 1: and scripts and so on all over Los Angeles. You
Speaker 1: learned where Warner Brothers was in Paramount and Sony, and
Speaker 1: you learned where Quentin Tarantino lived and where you know,
Speaker 1: Russell Crowe lived and everybody else. So it was really
Speaker 1: interest sing because during that time you never understood why
Speaker 1: they had you do that, but it was essentially the
Speaker 1: wax on wax off method of Hollywood training, and over
Speaker 1: time you just sort of absorbed a lot of how
Speaker 1: the business operated. Okay, and so where does that lead?
Speaker 1: You start in the mail room and by the way,
Speaker 1: you kind of dropped it in there. But there are
Speaker 1: literally guys or girls who would graduate from Harvard Law
Speaker 1: School so desperately want to get into the entertainment business
Speaker 1: that they would take these three hundred dollar a week
Speaker 1: jobs in the mail room to try to work their
Speaker 1: way up. Yeah, essentially the ones that ended up getting through,
Speaker 1: and I was I was very lucky because I had
Speaker 1: uh A president of the company, a guy named Jerry
Speaker 1: Katzman saw me walk into his office one day and
Speaker 1: asked me, what shoot is that that you're wearing? And
Speaker 1: I said, oh, you like it? And he's like, where
Speaker 1: is it made? And I said, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And I opened up the the inside and I said, oh, Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: And he's like, where would you buy a Yugoslavia in shirt?
Speaker 1: And hear a suit and I said, well, it's up
Speaker 1: on Hollywood and bind you know that store. He's like,
Speaker 1: what I cost you? It's like, I think thirty three
Speaker 1: bucks because they got three. And he's like, I'm hiring
Speaker 1: you as my morning assistant. And he took a liking
Speaker 1: to me because I was a guy that completely was
Speaker 1: unprivileged and just wanted to get promoted as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: And those were the people that when the men and
Speaker 1: women that ultimately made it through those Harvard Law people,
Speaker 1: they decided, hey, you know what, I gotta go on
Speaker 1: and do something better. The nepotism sort of people were
Speaker 1: just not motivated enough to get through the system. So
Speaker 1: we all got through and I became an agent at
Speaker 1: twenty four and um, you know, I was making seven
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a week, but they said, hey, it's seven
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a week plus all you could eat, so
Speaker 1: um that made you had an unlimited expense account. And
Speaker 1: I think in my first year I spent something like
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five thousand bucks on my am
Speaker 1: x UM on top of the thirty thousand or whatever
Speaker 1: I was making a year, So people thought it was
Speaker 1: a millionaire at the time, but I was literally making zero.
Speaker 1: All right, So what does a young agent's job at
Speaker 1: that point in time consist of? In uh, in l
Speaker 1: A and who would you represent? What kind of clients
Speaker 1: would you have? Well, at the very beginning, you're doing
Speaker 1: really the grunt work, so UM I would cover shows
Speaker 1: like uh, the Tonight Show and have to, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure Arnold Schwarzenegger has everything he needed backstage two
Speaker 1: UM new shows that we were launching, like Ricky Lake
Speaker 1: or the Danny Bonaducci Show, crazy things like that. UM
Speaker 1: Old agents would give me clients that were completely unhirable,
Speaker 1: like one of the first director clients I had his
Speaker 1: last credit was a leave at the Beaver episode from
Speaker 1: like thirty years ago. So it was crazy stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But then over time you started to sign your own clients,
Speaker 1: and I got really lucky. I came across a young
Speaker 1: guy named Michael mcculler's who was working on the MTV
Speaker 1: Movie Awards, with a young actor named Mike Myers, and
Speaker 1: they wrote a script called Austin Powers and the next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I saw it the New Line and
Speaker 1: it becomes a huge hit. And then I came across
Speaker 1: this young author and a guy that was in the
Speaker 1: music business who was David Being and Brian Coppelman, and
Speaker 1: they wrote this fantastic script called Rounders, and we went
Speaker 1: out and sold that. So that's sort of how the
Speaker 1: weird part of Hollywood works. It's not necessarily a cream
Speaker 1: rises to the top business. It's a lot based on luck,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot based on perseverance and persistence, just
Speaker 1: like you built your career. So Rounders say, Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: I bet almost has has watched that movie at some
Speaker 1: point in time, what made you think, oh, this could
Speaker 1: be something? Well, I wasn't sure of that. I actually
Speaker 1: read the script and I thought, this is an amazing story,
Speaker 1: but it's not practical or realistic, Like this world doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And Brian and David were like, oh, definitely it does.
Speaker 1: Let's show you. And they would drive us around to
Speaker 1: like places in Commerce or Hollywood Park, which I didn't
Speaker 1: realize had like a underground poker facility, all these different things,
Speaker 1: and you saw this like underground world of people and
Speaker 1: characters and rich and poor sort of battling against each
Speaker 1: or in these poker parlors. And I had no idea
Speaker 1: it existed, nor did most people. Like that was way
Speaker 1: before the poker craze. And and quite frankly, I would
Speaker 1: say that that script and the cast that was put
Speaker 1: together and the way that was directed, it was Mirrormax
Speaker 1: at the time that really brought it to life and
Speaker 1: made it successful. That really kicked off the poker craze.
Speaker 1: It really did kind of take off in a huge way.
Speaker 1: And you guys were a part of that. So that
Speaker 1: movie happens, and then what so you're learning now. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've listened to the Winds and Lost
Speaker 1: his podcast before, but I'm always interested in how do
Speaker 1: you get from one place to another? Because everyone's story
Speaker 1: is so much different. So you're a young agent, you
Speaker 1: got this huge expense account, you got a successful story
Speaker 1: with Rounders. What then happens? How does it go from there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so then it's in And I walked through the book.
Speaker 1: It's really a Jerry mcquied story in a lot of ways. Um,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of big players that were big
Speaker 1: fans of mine. But like you said, it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a meritocracy. So I had one particular boss that
Speaker 1: had it out for me. We actually lost a client
Speaker 1: um to a competing agency, and he pinned it on me,
Speaker 1: and I tried to fight back, and ultimately one day
Speaker 1: I called into an office and I write very openly
Speaker 1: about it in the book. It was a terrible moment
Speaker 1: um and and they said, hey, we gotta let you go,
Speaker 1: And I said, are you kidding me? And they're like, yep,
Speaker 1: but you know, we won't tell anybody. It's all good.
Speaker 1: And the problem with Hollywood is when you get fired,
Speaker 1: the rest of the town already knew for hours before.
Speaker 1: So I remember walking out of that room and seeing
Speaker 1: everybody passed me in the hall, and I could just
Speaker 1: tell they all knew exactly what happened. It was the
Speaker 1: worst day, and I literally walked into my office. Um
Speaker 1: there was a guy Will Lowry, who actually lives in Nashville,
Speaker 1: tennesseee right now works for Endeavor. He was my assistant.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, by the way, just pack up my
Speaker 1: stuff bringing outside. I'm leaving. I'm not coming back. And
Speaker 1: I walked out and I literally felt like Jerry McGuire
Speaker 1: with a gold fish in my bag. Even Will was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta stay here. I need the job. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. I'll be fine. And I walked
Speaker 1: home and I was just, uh, just devastated. I was
Speaker 1: twenty nine years old, and I literally was. I felt
Speaker 1: like Jerry McGuire At the time. I was very much
Speaker 1: on the rise at that company. So it hit me
Speaker 1: like a ton of bricks. And when you know, when
Speaker 1: something like that hits you, you just don't know how
Speaker 1: to react right away, and you get really miserable about it.
Speaker 1: So immediately, obviously I started to hit the phones and
Speaker 1: try to get clients on board. My now wife was
Speaker 1: sort of cracking a whip on me right, making sure
Speaker 1: that like I got my ship together and stopped moping around,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I would talk to clients and
Speaker 1: they would be like, okay, maybe I don't know. But
Speaker 1: then ultimately they didn't come. And the one sort of
Speaker 1: rod Tidwell that decided to go with me into whatever
Speaker 1: venture I had decided to do by myself with this
Speaker 1: little Chinese production company that I had signed on a
Speaker 1: whim because they did this little movie that I thought
Speaker 1: was very interesting. And they said, hey, no one's called
Speaker 1: us from William Morris. We'll go with you. Just you
Speaker 1: our eyes and the years in North American. Let's figure
Speaker 1: something out. So I hopped on a head over to
Speaker 1: China and it was unbelievable. I looked around. I said,
Speaker 1: there is opportunity in this place, like count me in.
Speaker 1: So you flew to China? What year is this? When
Speaker 1: you're twenty nine years old? You lose your job at
Speaker 1: William Morris. By the way, can you tell us who
Speaker 1: the who the client was that you lost? That was
Speaker 1: such a big deal. Yeah, he's he's actually a friend
Speaker 1: of mine now, so I'm fine saying it. But it
Speaker 1: was Jerry O'Connell, who, believe it or not, played Cush
Speaker 1: and Jerry maguire. Uh, yeah, it was, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: look everybody's in you know, everybody's going to do what
Speaker 1: they gotta do, and he thought he actually left for
Speaker 1: Patrick Whitchel, which was even crazy here, and Patrick was
Speaker 1: at C A A at the time, So it was
Speaker 1: it really hurt and it really wasn't my fault, but
Speaker 1: the fault got put on me, and ultimately the senior
Speaker 1: agent one out over me and I got thrown out
Speaker 1: on the streets. So, by the way, yeah, Jerry was
Speaker 1: hot there. What's it like to be an agent and
Speaker 1: constantly live in fear that you might get a call
Speaker 1: from a client and they're saying, hey, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going somewhere else. Is that something I imagine now it's
Speaker 1: even more stressful because people have got phones, and I
Speaker 1: think they probably make even more rash decisions. I would
Speaker 1: just say in general, because you know, we don't have that, uh,
Speaker 1: that that sort of governor on us. Certainly, you can
Speaker 1: look at the way people use Twitter now and I
Speaker 1: would imagine the agency job has gotten even tougher. But
Speaker 1: also it's easier to reach out to somebody, right if
Speaker 1: somebody else is trying to poach away a client. What's
Speaker 1: that feeling like? Do you always just kind of have
Speaker 1: a dull apprehension in your stomach associated with being an agent. Well,
Speaker 1: you gotta realize that it's so difficult and you're you're
Speaker 1: in the same kind of business, so you know this.
Speaker 1: I mean the amount of rejection that anybody on the
Speaker 1: talent side of the business, whether you're running shows for
Speaker 1: Fox Sports or your own podcasts, or you're a movie
Speaker 1: star or director or whatever, the amount of rejection you
Speaker 1: face on a daily basis is like, of everything you do,
Speaker 1: of that one percent is the goal that you always
Speaker 1: have in mind. But that creates a lot of insecurity.
Speaker 1: So when you're an agent trying to grab somebody from
Speaker 1: another agency, all you gotta do is to play into
Speaker 1: that and say, hey, you're getting all that rejection because
Speaker 1: you have the wrong agent, Whereas the agent that reps
Speaker 1: that person has to play into the one percent and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you have this one percent because I'm working really hard.
Speaker 1: So it stats the deck in regards to being able
Speaker 1: to steal clients from other agents, and it's why most
Speaker 1: of the town works in fear all the time, which
Speaker 1: quite frankly plays into the China conversation. Be sure to
Speaker 1: catch live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis
Speaker 1: week days at six am Eastern three am Pacific. We're
Speaker 1: talking to Chris Fenton and uh, I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: fascinated by all this. Okay, you got and this is
Speaker 1: wins and losses. I'm Clay Travis. Appreciate all of you
Speaker 1: listening along with us. Encourage you to go listen to
Speaker 1: all of our long form conversations here. Okay, you arrive
Speaker 1: in China. I'm assuming that was your first trip to China.
Speaker 1: What year is it and what do you see on
Speaker 1: the ground when you arrive in the country for the
Speaker 1: first time. Yeah, So the first time I started working
Speaker 1: with the Chinese was around two thousand I set foot
Speaker 1: in the market around I think it was two thousand four,
Speaker 1: was the first time I got over there. Um, and
Speaker 1: then I went regularly ever since. UM And at the
Speaker 1: time it was interesting I even write about in the book.
Speaker 1: They had an operation there that was in Beijing that
Speaker 1: one night, in the middle of the night, bulldozers came
Speaker 1: in and cut their building in half. So when I
Speaker 1: went and visited their office in Beijing, the back half
Speaker 1: of their their their building had to tarp over it
Speaker 1: to keep it from the outside elements because literally it
Speaker 1: was in two zoning areas of Beijing, and that was
Speaker 1: a perfect example of what was happening in China at
Speaker 1: the time. They called it the National Bird, was the
Speaker 1: construction crane, and they were everywhere. So when you got there,
Speaker 1: you literally looked around and said, Holy how the opportunities
Speaker 1: are endless here. The world is your oyster. And you
Speaker 1: got to realize, like I was a guy living with
Speaker 1: four other guys. I'm the hot you know, up in
Speaker 1: the Sunset off the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 1: We have parties with many, Me and Matt Damon and
Speaker 1: even Monica which would come over. It was crazy. And
Speaker 1: now suddenly I got thrust into China almost like Michael
Speaker 1: Keaton and Gung Ho or something. It was just weird, surreal,
Speaker 1: but that was all I had. Did you speak Chinese
Speaker 1: at all? I didn't know, not at all, And even
Speaker 1: to this day I speak a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: can sing a bunch of songs and Mandarin, which is
Speaker 1: very helpful. Alright, So, uh so you're repping that like
Speaker 1: you got fired. You get fired, and the obviously there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there listening right now who
Speaker 1: are going to get fired or have been fired at
Speaker 1: some point in their life, maybe not for any reason
Speaker 1: of their own, certainly in this era where the coronavirus
Speaker 1: and everything else with the unemployment rate is up. You
Speaker 1: have one client in China. What does the client do
Speaker 1: uh and what are they trying to do? So the
Speaker 1: client was h There were three founders of this production
Speaker 1: company and they were doing Western style commercials in a
Speaker 1: market where Western style commercials didn't really exist so at
Speaker 1: in the nineties. If you were Procter and Gamble or
Speaker 1: somebody trying to sell a toothpaste, they're literally be a
Speaker 1: camera that has a still shot for five seconds of
Speaker 1: a Tuba toothpaste on the table and that was your commercial.
Speaker 1: They started works, That's the way they would, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They started. Um There were two Chinese and one uh,
Speaker 1: one guy that came in from New York that was
Speaker 1: there from the early nineties on, and they started directing
Speaker 1: commercials for Volkswagen in particular and also UM UH various
Speaker 1: other sort of um less exciting type of clients. But
Speaker 1: v W always wanted to have sort of Auto style
Speaker 1: Super Bowl ads in that market, so they got really
Speaker 1: good at shooting fantastic Western style commercials with a China flare,
Speaker 1: and then over time, these companies that used different ad
Speaker 1: agencies would ultimately come to them and say, Hey, we
Speaker 1: think you guys have better creative instincts in regards to
Speaker 1: this market than our ad agency that's based in Tokyo,
Speaker 1: or in Hong Kong, or in Taiwan or even in
Speaker 1: the US. Would you be our ad agency? And right
Speaker 1: around the time when I dove head first into working
Speaker 1: with them, um, was when they got Volkswagen as their
Speaker 1: um first advertising client across the across the market, and
Speaker 1: at the time Volkswagen was something like thirty market share
Speaker 1: in that market. They had sixteen different models on sale,
Speaker 1: So it was a huge effort and it literally transformed
Speaker 1: the company from this little production house into a full
Speaker 1: service advertising agency overnight. So can you explain to people
Speaker 1: out there who may not have any clue how when
Speaker 1: you arrive in China, even in two thousand, for I
Speaker 1: think you said you got over there for the first time,
Speaker 1: how behind would you say they were from an entertainment
Speaker 1: and pop culture perspective to where we were in the
Speaker 1: United States at that time. Well, I know because we
Speaker 1: did the very first deals in sort of different exercises
Speaker 1: that had never been done in that country before. For instance,
Speaker 1: in the music business, the only music they had from
Speaker 1: the West there was unlicensed. It was just pirated. So um,
Speaker 1: folks Volkswagen really liked this song by that bop band Hampsten.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember them, a song called
Speaker 1: Yeah there is a song called I'll Come to You.
Speaker 1: And I remember calling the music publishing house it was
Speaker 1: Sony a TV at the time, saying hey, I want
Speaker 1: to license this song for China and they said really, right,
Speaker 1: no one licenses songs for China. I said, well, we
Speaker 1: really want to build something special and did that condu
Speaker 1: with the Hollywood, so we want to do it right,
Speaker 1: so um ultimately, And what was crazy is everybody thought
Speaker 1: China was full the money even back then, so they're like, well,
Speaker 1: that's gonna cost you ten million dollars, right, And I
Speaker 1: was like, no, all you got is a hundred fifty grand.
Speaker 1: So you know, you had to work the network and
Speaker 1: figure out how to get to the right people to
Speaker 1: get that deal done. But it was things like that
Speaker 1: where they had never been done before and we were
Speaker 1: doing them for the first time and sending the template
Speaker 1: for many others to do it. UM. It was interesting
Speaker 1: because the music license same business was nothing in China,
Speaker 1: and then shortly after we did Hanson some stuff with
Speaker 1: the Jackson five and various others UM, suddenly it became
Speaker 1: one of the biggest markets for music license same and
Speaker 1: we did the same thing in regards to the sports
Speaker 1: business UM television. We actually brought the World's Strongest Man
Speaker 1: Competition over there because ESPN had been trying for years
Speaker 1: to get access to that market, to do it and
Speaker 1: to get that show on the air in China, and
Speaker 1: we thought it was a brilliant idea for a show
Speaker 1: because it's very simple to understand. It's like big guys
Speaker 1: carrying heavy objects as fast as they can across the
Speaker 1: finish line. So it really had since the Chinese and
Speaker 1: we did this huge search for the Chinese Strongman Competition
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other stuff, and ultimately we got
Speaker 1: more viewers on the final night of airing that show
Speaker 1: than the twenty five years added up of that show
Speaker 1: did in total across the world forty six million viewers. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's how popular The Strongest Man was in Uh in China,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just blew up. We made it popular
Speaker 1: because we found this guy out in the rice fields,
Speaker 1: um out and probably close to the Shinjang province actually,
Speaker 1: um it was out in the west, and he was
Speaker 1: somebody that was a big, strong guy, but didn't have
Speaker 1: the technique for picking up refrigerators or any of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So we knew he wasn't gonna win,
Speaker 1: but we created a mentor protege relationship with a guy
Speaker 1: named Jesse Mrundi who we felt was going to be
Speaker 1: the ultimate winner. So even after he got disqualified, he
Speaker 1: was always on on the screen cheering on the eventual
Speaker 1: winner of the of the program. So it worked really well.
Speaker 1: People got really behind them and they got it became
Speaker 1: a frenzy of a show leading into the two thousand
Speaker 1: eight Olympics. So it was a really interesting sort of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the case studies that we pitched
Speaker 1: to the movie studios ultimately down the road when we
Speaker 1: were talking about how do you create relevant sheet for
Speaker 1: that market in order to get access to the consumer
Speaker 1: and get the consumer engaged in what you got? All right,
Speaker 1: these are relatively small introductory aspects of pop culture. Uh.
Speaker 1: The songs, the handsOn Song, American toothpaste, America's strongest man.
Speaker 1: When do all of the you know, big movies really
Speaker 1: start to recognize the opportunity in China? Was there a
Speaker 1: lightbulb moment take me into that universe as it continued
Speaker 1: to grow the relationship between China and American pop culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So one thing you got to realize when you're marketing
Speaker 1: there is that everything is overseen by the Ministry of Propaganda,
Speaker 1: which reports directly to the commun This Party of China.
Speaker 1: So all the is it literally called the Ministry of Propaganda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Propaganda Ministry or I mean that's kind of crazy, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have to get everything, okay, to effectively by
Speaker 1: that ministry, which is directly reporting to the Chinese Communist
Speaker 1: Party exactly. So you've got to think of it like this.
Speaker 1: And this is the one of the ways I would
Speaker 1: always talk to people in North America about it, because
Speaker 1: there's there's such a glass ceiling of what you're gonna
Speaker 1: know about China. There's so much nuquauntch to it. And
Speaker 1: as an American working in l A and just going
Speaker 1: back and forth, I had a massive glass ceiling. So
Speaker 1: the way I look at it and the way a
Speaker 1: lot of people agree is that the Chinese Communist Party
Speaker 1: has one major goal, and that's the keep one point
Speaker 1: four billion people just happy enough that they don't revolt.
Speaker 1: They don't want another Tianna men Square. Okay, why do
Speaker 1: I say just happy enough? Because for one point four
Speaker 1: billion people to all be happy, there's not enough resources
Speaker 1: on earth to do that, right, So they need to
Speaker 1: give all those people all of what they need, some
Speaker 1: of what they want, and they need to create messaging
Speaker 1: that they have all that, and then also create messaging
Speaker 1: that says, hey, if you aspire for more, you can
Speaker 1: get that, you can get into that middle class. Right,
Speaker 1: And that is how they keep the populace content and
Speaker 1: not overthrowing the CCP. So the Ministry of Propaganda is
Speaker 1: overseeing the messaging for all those people. Imagine in the
Speaker 1: United States of America, you had MSNBC, CNN, Richo, Matdow,
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, you know, Steve Bannon, Maria Barderomo, Fox, Fox Sports, ESPN,
Speaker 1: everybody on the same message all day long, every day. Right,
Speaker 1: it would be impossible for the American public not to
Speaker 1: have sort of other thoughts, other ideas, other opinions, because
Speaker 1: they're just this this this messaging is is thrown down
Speaker 1: their throats all day long. Right, That's what's the deal
Speaker 1: in China. Right. So the idea is, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: market a product and service in that country, you need
Speaker 1: to think about does it play into keeping the populace happy?
Speaker 1: And part of that is creating cultural relevancy with any
Speaker 1: of that product and service, which showcases something that's exciting
Speaker 1: to the Chinese, something that creates pride, something that creates
Speaker 1: this want and desire of a Western democracy company coming
Speaker 1: into their market and making it feel special to those people.
Speaker 1: The other thing is is trying to integrate some sort
Speaker 1: of middle class objective into that product or service. I e.
Speaker 1: That's why there's forced jvs where um. In order to
Speaker 1: sell a product or service there, you've got to create
Speaker 1: your own JV over there that's owned by the Chinese,
Speaker 1: because that's going to create jobs, middle class jobs. Or
Speaker 1: if you're shooting a movie or shooting the World's Strongest
Speaker 1: Man competition, you bring over best in class people from
Speaker 1: Hollywood to help make it side by side with Chinese
Speaker 1: that are fledgling in that business, so they can learn
Speaker 1: the skill set and the process to create their own
Speaker 1: middle class skills in that industry. Right, So all that
Speaker 1: stuff you have to think about in terms of the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Propaganda's biggest objective, which is keeping those people
Speaker 1: from revolting. So below the Ministry of Propaganda you have
Speaker 1: various parts of the bureaucracy that oversee different parts of
Speaker 1: where messaging is. So at the time, you had a
Speaker 1: thing called the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television
Speaker 1: that oversaw under the Ministry of Propaganda anything that was
Speaker 1: on television, anything that was marketed on television, anything that's
Speaker 1: in the movie business, anything that's in print, anything that
Speaker 1: people absorb as some sort of narrative that governed it all. Right.
Speaker 1: And then below that you had China Film Group, and
Speaker 1: you had different sports divisions, the sports bureau, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So all that plays into what we learned with the
Speaker 1: sports business that ultimately led to the movie business. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things, and I sent you an article
Speaker 1: earlier just to she because a lot of people forget this,
Speaker 1: but Lebron James and Nike in two thousand four, this
Speaker 1: was after his rookie season. He wanted to make Lebron
Speaker 1: the next Michael Jordan's in that market. They created an
Speaker 1: advertisement with their ad agency wid Nan Kennedy called the
Speaker 1: Chamber of Fear, and in the Chamber of Fear, a
Speaker 1: series of age they incorporated Lebron James, a kung Fu
Speaker 1: master and a dragon competing and in the competition Lebron
Speaker 1: James one and it was the most it was the
Speaker 1: most damaging commercial spot ever for the NBA, Lebron James
Speaker 1: and Nike because it insulted the Ministry of Propaganda in
Speaker 1: a way that said, you have a Western basketball player
Speaker 1: defeating a niconic mythical creature up to the Chinese, a
Speaker 1: dragon and an iconic person in the Chinese culture a
Speaker 1: kung fu master, and they ripped it off everything that
Speaker 1: was that was showing it, and it set back Lebron, Nike,
Speaker 1: and the NBA quite a bit at the time. Now,
Speaker 1: we got involved with Nike shortly thereafter, along with the
Speaker 1: China n B A and offso the NBA and we
Speaker 1: started working with them to make sure that the narratives
Speaker 1: of everything they were working on always placated the CCP
Speaker 1: in the Ministry of Propaganda. How did that initial ad
Speaker 1: get approved, That's a good question. I I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how it got through Chances are a lot of
Speaker 1: times you're dealing with lower level bureaucrats that will sign
Speaker 1: off on something without thinking about it, and then it airs,
Speaker 1: and then there's a bunch of criticism that makes its
Speaker 1: way to the bosses above, and then the bosses above
Speaker 1: make that lower level bureaucrat essentially disappear along with all
Speaker 1: the ads that were approved. So how long would it
Speaker 1: take for let's say the Chinese World Strongest Man to
Speaker 1: get approval through all of those agencies to be greenlit. Well,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is if you play into that message I
Speaker 1: was talking about, which is creating this aspirational sort of
Speaker 1: middle class directive and all the other kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: it actually really works to put Windier back. So, in
Speaker 1: terms of World's Strongest Man company Titian, we thought it
Speaker 1: would be great to shoot it in Beijing. It was
Speaker 1: in O five and the Olympics were gonna be an
Speaker 1: O h, so we shoot it there. We'd have these
Speaker 1: competitions up on the Green Wall and in the Forbidden City,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But the Chinese government was like, no, we're
Speaker 1: not interested in that. We're not going to approve it,
Speaker 1: but we would approve it if you use it to
Speaker 1: showcase another city that we really want on the global stage.
Speaker 1: And we said, well, which one is that? And they
Speaker 1: said chang Do. We're like, Chang Do, where is that?
Speaker 1: And it's out you know, it's out in the Sichuan
Speaker 1: province and at the time it had I think ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen million people, but no one had heard of it.
Speaker 1: But they wanted to showcase it as like this technological marvel.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's where Intel started its headquarters in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties for China, and ultimately we said, fine, we'll
Speaker 1: shoot it in chang Do. There are all kinds of
Speaker 1: backdrops and things no one knew on a global stage,
Speaker 1: but we were sort of forced to use them and
Speaker 1: showcase them. And it was a hugely successful show. In fact,
Speaker 1: one thing that everybody can identify with, which is where
Speaker 1: that what Chang Do is known for are pandas, So
Speaker 1: we incorporated pandas quite a bit into the show. So
Speaker 1: what did you do for the NBA after this disaster
Speaker 1: in two thousand four where they have Lebron James being
Speaker 1: able to defeat a dragon and a kung fu master. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there were a lot of things. What we
Speaker 1: really try to do was put the NBA continue what
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan and David Stern were doing in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: which was really make the NBA part of the cultural
Speaker 1: fabric in China. So um Ben involved. We actually represented
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant along with obviously Rob Blanka for for several
Speaker 1: years over there. We did a lot of stuff around
Speaker 1: the Beijing Olympics. In fact, we we did this sort
Speaker 1: of um uh five on five tournament that took the
Speaker 1: best kids from around the country and they competed, and
Speaker 1: we had Lebron, James, Kobe, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony
Speaker 1: all judged the competitions and picked out who we thought
Speaker 1: the best player was were and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we had NBA players there all the time, right,
Speaker 1: and it was really important to do that because the
Speaker 1: Chinese needed to see this willingness of the NBA players
Speaker 1: coming over there and wanting to be there, and we
Speaker 1: would teach them different sort of slogans and Chinese and
Speaker 1: teach them different cultural things, and we'd have um competitions
Speaker 1: in the Forbidden City that would they would come to
Speaker 1: and they would be sort of incorporated into the backdrops
Speaker 1: of these iconic places for the national televised audience to see,
Speaker 1: and it was really really important to ingratiate them to
Speaker 1: that market, and ultimately too, it was how we helped
Speaker 1: build this China uh NBA also, which was the version
Speaker 1: that obviously you know of where some of these players
Speaker 1: that aren't are no longer in the NBA find a
Speaker 1: home overseas in China and it's really picked up to
Speaker 1: the point where the ratings for the China NBA are
Speaker 1: up there on par or not better than what the
Speaker 1: NBA was prior to Darryl Mori tweet. So, would that
Speaker 1: be something that Nike is paying for, uh, for those
Speaker 1: eyes to be over there in China? Is that a
Speaker 1: part of their marketing deals or were they doing separate
Speaker 1: marketing deals for China related trips. Yeah. No, NBA was
Speaker 1: involved with a lot of them because a lot of times,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, Nike was involved with a lot
Speaker 1: of them because a lot of times the players with
Speaker 1: their showcasing new shoes that may or may not have
Speaker 1: just been for the China, the China market or for
Speaker 1: the global market. Um, So they were over there a
Speaker 1: lot of times pitching some of the products that Nike
Speaker 1: had the Nike would pay for a lot of that.
Speaker 1: The NBA also, depending on the kind of event that
Speaker 1: was going on and what was getting pushed with, the
Speaker 1: NBA would be pushing for it too. And then obviously
Speaker 1: the NBA was very involved with the building of the
Speaker 1: China version of it, so there was a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of cross collateralization with that too. UM and the
Speaker 1: Olympics was really sort of this real big coming out
Speaker 1: party for the NBA, looking at looking at really twenty
Speaker 1: years of building up what they built UM into the
Speaker 1: two thous Olympics, which is sort of the culmination of
Speaker 1: that coming out party. Here we are, we're China, We're
Speaker 1: on the global stage, here's one of the greatest leagues
Speaker 1: with the greatest players. UM they find us as a
Speaker 1: second home. It was a really interesting sort of moment
Speaker 1: and and an interesting case study on how the NBA
Speaker 1: gratiated themselves so well into the Fabrica China. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like you're an element of Chinese propaganda at this
Speaker 1: point in time or are you so excited with the
Speaker 1: business opportunities that you're not even thinking about the larger
Speaker 1: societal consequences of your choices. It's a fantastic question and
Speaker 1: I'm embarrassed to give you the answer. But the fact is,
Speaker 1: the idea of globalism, that mission of opening that market
Speaker 1: to any American product and service was by far the
Speaker 1: number one priority. It didn't matter how it was done.
Speaker 1: And in my book, I actually talked about how my
Speaker 1: wife questioned certain things we were doing with the movie
Speaker 1: business and things, saying do you feel okay about that? Um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of moments in the book where um,
Speaker 1: I reread them now and I go, Jesus, I sound
Speaker 1: like I was working for the Ministry of Propaganda. Um.
Speaker 1: But I never woke up to any of that issue. Literally,
Speaker 1: this is how embarrassing it is. I never thought about it,
Speaker 1: never thought I was doing anything wrong until days after
Speaker 1: the Daryl Morey tweet and I in October of last year,
Speaker 1: and I saw the reaction of majority of Americans towards
Speaker 1: this cow town that the NBA was doing to China
Speaker 1: in order to get access to it. And that was
Speaker 1: the moment, that was the aha moment, as ridiculous as
Speaker 1: it sounds, where I go, oh my god, I was
Speaker 1: a part of that. And I was definitely a huge
Speaker 1: part of it. When it came to Hollywood. Why do
Speaker 1: you think that Darryl more a tweet and the reaction
Speaker 1: to it in China was suddenly a lightbulb moment for you. Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the reaction and China was the reaction in
Speaker 1: the United States. When I remember, I was watching I
Speaker 1: have a thirteen year old Shawn, and I was watching
Speaker 1: him play soccer with a couple of soccer dads when
Speaker 1: I saw that tweet popped up. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: door Darryl Morey, but I definitely knew of the Houston
Speaker 1: Rockets because of the al Ming. They're the biggest branded
Speaker 1: team in China. And I remember saying to the dad
Speaker 1: next to me, I said, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be terrible for the NBA in China, and he
Speaker 1: said why is that? And I was like, you watch
Speaker 1: trust me. And by the way, within twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: I was a right. What I didn't see, I never
Speaker 1: saw coming, was the reaction of this, you know, and
Speaker 1: I hate to use the word woke, but the American
Speaker 1: public because of the bumbling and fumbling of the response
Speaker 1: of the NBA, whether it was Adam Silver, Steve Kerr,
Speaker 1: Lebron James, or even Darryl Moore, himself about sort of
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy of the fact that he used his right
Speaker 1: of First Amendment UM and it was used against him
Speaker 1: by China and no one backed him on that. That
Speaker 1: woke the American public to the fact of Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why aren't you not backing him up? Wait what you
Speaker 1: guys couched out of the Chinese like that where you're
Speaker 1: just gonna stay silent on this issue when you talk
Speaker 1: about everything else that Wait, that makes no sense. And
Speaker 1: it erupted And next thing I know, I'm on all
Speaker 1: kinds of different interviews and stuff talking about it while
Speaker 1: I'm figuring out for myself. Jeez, I just wrote this
Speaker 1: book about how colorful and Jerry McGuire by story was
Speaker 1: with China and how interesting the glue is of commerce
Speaker 1: and culture exchange between the two superpowers. And now suddenly
Speaker 1: I'm realizing, oh my god, I wrote a book about
Speaker 1: how smoking is really good for you health wise for
Speaker 1: twenty years, and then suddenly one day a report comes
Speaker 1: out and says smoking will kill you. I'm going, what
Speaker 1: am I going to do about this book? Right? And
Speaker 1: that was the that was the thing where I go, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I was in the fog of war of globalism
Speaker 1: like everybody else, and I finally had a waking moment
Speaker 1: about it. So I'm gonna be the squeaky wheel in
Speaker 1: this situation. I'm gonna have this book come out and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about it, and I'm gonna do it, uh,
Speaker 1: even though I know a lot of people are not
Speaker 1: gonna want me talking about it. And that's where I am,
Speaker 1: and that why I wanted to be on your show,
Speaker 1: because you're actually somebody in the sports industry calling it
Speaker 1: out and saying we need to fix this. What kind
Speaker 1: of changes were you required to make for movies in
Speaker 1: China in order to get them in front of Chinese audiences?
Speaker 1: Do you recall a couple of examples of what was
Speaker 1: going on prior to kind of your lightbulb moment with
Speaker 1: the NBA in China. Yeah. I walk people through various
Speaker 1: case studies in the book in a in a very
Speaker 1: sort of fun way, but one is uh. For instance,
Speaker 1: a movie called looper Um that started Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon, Levitt,
Speaker 1: Emily Blunt. It was a sci fi thriller where it
Speaker 1: takes place in the present day and also forty years
Speaker 1: in the future, and the movie was supposed to take
Speaker 1: place in the United States and in France, but it
Speaker 1: was a movie we thought we could make money in China,
Speaker 1: even though time travel is banned in terms of content
Speaker 1: in China. And the reason that's banned is because the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Propaganda wants to control the narrative of what
Speaker 1: things happened in history, and they wanted to control the
Speaker 1: narrative where things go in the future. So we played
Speaker 1: into that future and where things where they want things
Speaker 1: to go in the future. So we we approached the
Speaker 1: filmmakers and said, hey, what happens if we switched the
Speaker 1: future in this movie to be China. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is China is really where the way of
Speaker 1: the world's going to be in forty years, Like there's
Speaker 1: so much of a push to that side of the world.
Speaker 1: Who knows what's going to happen with France, like China
Speaker 1: is on the front page of every paper, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And Brian Johnson, the filmmaker, ultimately, over a long convincing period,
Speaker 1: decided to say, Okay, let's do that. And then we
Speaker 1: went to the CCP and said, hey, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: this movie and we're gonna showcase China as the place
Speaker 1: everybody wants to be in the future. What city do
Speaker 1: you want us to showcase? They said, Shanghai. Great, How
Speaker 1: do you want Shanghai to look? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: we wanted to look like the most like modern day
Speaker 1: Marvel metropolis you could ever imagine. We said, great, here's
Speaker 1: a bunch of modeling we did with c G companies.
Speaker 1: What what buildings do you like? What do you want
Speaker 1: in the backdrop? How do you want it to look? Here?
Speaker 1: The colors, here, the queues, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: And we worked with the Chinese officials to make what
Speaker 1: they thought was the perfect backdrop for these locations, and
Speaker 1: we did it. And then on top of it, in
Speaker 1: the movie itself, we cast the Chinese actress so we
Speaker 1: could showcase the fact that we were providing interesting sort
Speaker 1: of artistic opportunities for their for their people. We shot
Speaker 1: a lot of it on the ground over there. We
Speaker 1: did process and skill exchanges with best and class crews
Speaker 1: in Hollywood along with their people that were in that
Speaker 1: fledgling industry, so we were showing that we could bring
Speaker 1: middle class jobs into their film industry that way. And
Speaker 1: then on top of it, We had lines in there
Speaker 1: where Jeff Daniels. If you've seen the movie, Jeff Daniels
Speaker 1: is a mobster from the future. He comes back into
Speaker 1: the present day. Joseph Gordon Levitt says one day when
Speaker 1: I retire and moving to France, and it goes, now,
Speaker 1: you should move to China, and Joseph Lovely goes now,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I want to move to France, and Geffino
Speaker 1: slams his fist on the table and he says, I'm
Speaker 1: from the future, you want to move to China, And
Speaker 1: it was one of the most infomercial moments you could
Speaker 1: ever imagine for China. But then on top of it,
Speaker 1: our energy screenings, which are the test screens we did
Speaker 1: here in America, that was one of the highest testing
Speaker 1: moments in the movie too, because it was sort of
Speaker 1: a fun comedic moment. Fox Sports Radio has the best
Speaker 1: sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
Speaker 1: shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen
Speaker 1: live all of this. Initially, like the stories that you're telling,
Speaker 1: I can see how they happen. And we're talking with
Speaker 1: Chris Finton. His book is Feeding the dragon inside the
Speaker 1: trillion dollar dilemma facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American business.
Speaker 1: You can see how these small things start to be
Speaker 1: given to China, and initially they don't seem very substantial,
Speaker 1: but then they continue to grow and grow to the
Speaker 1: point where with the Darryl more A situation, and if
Speaker 1: people don't remember, he's the Houston Rockets GM who basically
Speaker 1: tweeted support for Hong Kong democracy protesters, and the reaction
Speaker 1: in China was Chinese values no longer now are limited
Speaker 1: to China. We expect for Chinese values to be propagated
Speaker 1: around the world. And effectively, what they were saying to
Speaker 1: the n b A is your employees don't have First
Speaker 1: Amendment rights to say whatever they want, even if they're
Speaker 1: not making those comments in China if they offend our
Speaker 1: cultural sensibilities. And so for people out there who are like,
Speaker 1: why should I care about this, it's because China is
Speaker 1: now trying to propagate Chinese values around the world, much
Speaker 1: of which is in direct contravention with basic human rights
Speaker 1: and ideals espoused by America for a century or more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and that's why I was excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you about this. Subject because you and I see very
Speaker 1: eye to eye with that issue, right like I think
Speaker 1: you and I differ differ on the cold Are we
Speaker 1: at cold war right now? Because I would say we're
Speaker 1: so entangled with commerce and trade that it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: to call it a cold war like we had with
Speaker 1: the U. S. S R. But your your idea that
Speaker 1: they are encroaching on our First Amendment rights when we're
Speaker 1: on our soil here is what really really bothers me,
Speaker 1: and to me, I'm not I'm not looking to the
Speaker 1: NBA of the sports community or Disney in the Hollywood community.
Speaker 1: It's try to figure out how to solve the atrocities
Speaker 1: too wiggers, or to tell the Chinese to pull back
Speaker 1: their encroachment from Hong Kong, which happened twenty seven years
Speaker 1: earlier than they promised. I'm saying these two entities need
Speaker 1: to come together and support each other and create a
Speaker 1: united effort to stop this cross border censorship that the
Speaker 1: Chinese have started doing. In relatively recent times. It was
Speaker 1: one thing to answer things for inside their borders, for
Speaker 1: their populous to see, right, they want to keep one
Speaker 1: point four billion people just happy enough that they don't
Speaker 1: revolt so you know, they don't want things that are
Speaker 1: going to create envy or create these aspirations that make
Speaker 1: people want to live in a full democracy or whatever.
Speaker 1: That is fine, that's your market will censor for you.
Speaker 1: And I get it. Hawks are gonna be mad at
Speaker 1: me for saying this, But I'm okay with that because
Speaker 1: we do the same thing for Japan, We do the
Speaker 1: same thing for South Korea. Would do the same thing
Speaker 1: for Middle Eastern countries. We censor for their own territories. Right.
Speaker 1: The problem is is when they say Darryl Morey, and
Speaker 1: by the way, Daryl Morey reached out to me, he
Speaker 1: seems like a super cool guy like Darryl Morey used
Speaker 1: his First Amendment rights as an American citizen in Houston, Texas,
Speaker 1: on American soil and says, I do not agree with
Speaker 1: what China is doing here. I support the Hong Kong protesters.
Speaker 1: He has every right to do that. And quite frankly,
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Propaganda and their firewall can keep that
Speaker 1: tweet from being seen by anybody inside of their country,
Speaker 1: so they can't say, oh, that's going to create it
Speaker 1: a revolution or whatever, and we're piste off. No, they
Speaker 1: can fire wall that instead. What they're saying is, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna fire wall that all day long from our
Speaker 1: populace ever seeing it, whether you say stuff like that
Speaker 1: or not. And there's all kinds of instances of that.
Speaker 1: But on top of it, we don't want somebody in
Speaker 1: Argentina seeing that tweet. We don't want to see somebody
Speaker 1: in Germany seeing that tweet. We don't want to see
Speaker 1: somebody in Hennessee see in that tweet. We want to
Speaker 1: control the narrative of what the global of what the
Speaker 1: Globe says about China, and that they claim is their prerogative.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying no, We've got to stand up against that.
Speaker 1: And the only way we can do it, and this
Speaker 1: is the solution, right And I get the callouts of
Speaker 1: Lebron James to stand up for these people and to
Speaker 1: say the right things and to do what we think
Speaker 1: is best. The problem is with Lebron is if he
Speaker 1: does that, he gets replaced by the next basketball player
Speaker 1: that's willing to keep his head in the sand. If
Speaker 1: Disney stands up, he gets they get replaced. Their theme
Speaker 1: park suddenly gets shut down. Universal takes it over along
Speaker 1: with their Universal Beijing Park. Universal and Warner Brothers movies
Speaker 1: take the place of the Disney movie. It becomes the
Speaker 1: sacrificial land whack a mole situation, right, and nothing changes.
Speaker 1: The only way it changes is what Americans have done
Speaker 1: all our history, which is strength in numbers, unify and
Speaker 1: create leverage. If we have the sports community back Daryl
Speaker 1: Morey and say, you know what if you take if
Speaker 1: he takes a stand on our soil and exercises his rights,
Speaker 1: we stand behind it. China, if you retaliate against that.
Speaker 1: We are not sending our products and services over there.
Speaker 1: Nike is not sending our shoes over there. We're shutting
Speaker 1: down our factories. NBA is not going to play the games,
Speaker 1: which obviously that's already been taken care of. The Premier
Speaker 1: League is going to stop working with them, which is,
Speaker 1: by the way, something else that's happening. Anything involved with
Speaker 1: the sports industry. Shuts off that water, you know, that
Speaker 1: that current of of flow, and then on top of it,
Speaker 1: we get the I O C behind it, which is
Speaker 1: the ultimate leverage. Point two aging Winter Olympics, and the
Speaker 1: same thing can be done by Hollywood. Disney stands up
Speaker 1: and says, hey, we're not We're not capable of stopping
Speaker 1: what's going on with leakers, but we can voice it
Speaker 1: so that we can ground swell a global effort to
Speaker 1: stop it. Right, and we're going to exercise our First
Speaker 1: Amendment rights, and the rest of the Hollywood community is
Speaker 1: going to back us, because if China retaliates, we're gonna
Speaker 1: shut off all movies. We're gonna shut off all Activision,
Speaker 1: We're gonna shut off all Imax, We're gonna shut off
Speaker 1: all Hasbro, anything that are partners of the Hollywood community.
Speaker 1: That's gonna stop. And that becomes an issue for the
Speaker 1: c c P. Why because it creates discontent. All that
Speaker 1: populace is used to getting that stuff, not not used
Speaker 1: to getting Disney where that's going to create a problem,
Speaker 1: but they're used to getting Western forms of content products
Speaker 1: from the sports and Hollywood industry on a whole that's
Speaker 1: so big that it creates a vacuum if it's all
Speaker 1: shut off, and the CCP wants to avoid making those
Speaker 1: people upset, so they'll back off. Be sure to catch
Speaker 1: live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week
Speaker 1: days at six am Eastern, three am Pacific. We're talking
Speaker 1: to Chris Fenton. I'm Clay Travis is the Winds and
Speaker 1: Losses podcast. Uh okay, So let's go back to the NBA.
Speaker 1: Lebron James basically lines up behind China. You've got the
Speaker 1: owner of the New Jersey Nets, who I believe is
Speaker 1: is It's I. I'm not sure t s a. I.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how you pronounce his name. Uh he
Speaker 1: is Chinese? Yeah, Joseph's I. You've got Steve Kerr. You've
Speaker 1: got all these guys that Adam Silver, that are so
Speaker 1: outspoken about flaws that exist in America, which are a
Speaker 1: pen prick of the flaws that exist in China. Yet
Speaker 1: none of those guys will speak out in any way
Speaker 1: in defense of basic American values to Chinese institutions. Is
Speaker 1: it just money? I mean? And do you agree with
Speaker 1: me that there is profound hypocrisy in the way that
Speaker 1: not just the NBA, but the NBA as a metaphor
Speaker 1: for the larger American cultural institutions are profoundly rejecting American
Speaker 1: values in the way that they're interacting with China right now. Uh,
Speaker 1: with everybody other than Joseph SSI, I'll say that it
Speaker 1: is money. I think Joseph Si probably has other issues,
Speaker 1: including family that's in China and his ties with China.
Speaker 1: Um he probably has security interests that he's got to
Speaker 1: be careful of. But everybody else, it just comes down
Speaker 1: to money. And yes, is it a hypocrisy, But I
Speaker 1: feel okay saying that because I was a hypocrite for
Speaker 1: twenty years too. Like I was a hundred percent complicit
Speaker 1: in this, and quite frankly, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: people that were as integrated in the applied and practical
Speaker 1: sort of expertise of being as complicit as I was.
Speaker 1: And that's why I've decided to become a squeaky wheel
Speaker 1: on this and I leave that over time, with enough pressure,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get more squeaky wheels involved. In fact. Judd
Speaker 1: Apatality the other day on MSNBC started talking about it,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. You don't see that from the filmmaking
Speaker 1: world in Hollywood. You're starting to see various individuals start
Speaker 1: to take a stance, So we're starting to make a difference.
Speaker 1: And what's even more interesting is that this book right which,
Speaker 1: as you know, the book books don't make you a
Speaker 1: lot of money, but I have noticed that the higher
Speaker 1: my book goes up on lists. The less the left
Speaker 1: side of the aisle, the mainstream media platforms that I
Speaker 1: need to get on to be a proper squeaky wheel,
Speaker 1: start to get to the point where they can't ignore
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Even though they want to protect
Speaker 1: Hollywood community, they want to protect the NBA and the
Speaker 1: sports community, they can't stop me from getting on there
Speaker 1: because we're building enough momentum to start talking about it.
Speaker 1: And quite frankly, this is the left and right issue,
Speaker 1: as I talked about before, and if you look at
Speaker 1: the left side of the aisle, I mean you and
Speaker 1: rights uh are the freedom of expression and freedom of
Speaker 1: creative endeavors, UH, middle class issues, national security. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of democratic platforms that this falls right smack into.
Speaker 1: So we need to stop not talking about it. So
Speaker 1: I calls it a third rail issue. We got to
Speaker 1: stop with that. We need to talk about it. We
Speaker 1: need to apply the pressure to everybody that's involved, and
Speaker 1: we need to come up with solutions that are better
Speaker 1: than just calling out, say Lebron James and say hey,
Speaker 1: do the right thing, Because we don't want to be
Speaker 1: in a sacrificial lamb whackle mall business where people are
Speaker 1: just replaced by others that are staying silent and nothing
Speaker 1: is accomplished. We need to figure out how to put
Speaker 1: the weight of America behind this and to get it fixed,
Speaker 1: because this encroachment is what the Chinese do all the time.
Speaker 1: They're like an adolescent, They're like a teenager. If you
Speaker 1: don't push back on them, they keep pushing further. And
Speaker 1: it's like they had a ten o'clock curfew and now
Speaker 1: suddenly we're realizing that they're getting home at three am
Speaker 1: because no one told them that they had to keep
Speaker 1: it at ten am. We need to push him back
Speaker 1: and we've seen it work in the past with China
Speaker 1: and it will work this time. But we got to
Speaker 1: motivate everybody to start talking about it and work together
Speaker 1: to fix it. Should we demand that the Olympics be
Speaker 1: pulled out of China? In two look, I like, would
Speaker 1: you like to see? Would you like to see? And
Speaker 1: the reason why I bring it up you say it's nonpartisan. Uh,
Speaker 1: would you like to see a decision made? And one
Speaker 1: of the things that was great about the response to
Speaker 1: the NBA and the Darryl Moray tweet was you had
Speaker 1: Alexandria Caso Cortez AOC and Ted Cruz writing a joint
Speaker 1: letter condemning the NBA's behavior in their response to China,
Speaker 1: and it was like, for a lot of people, it
Speaker 1: was a wow moment over the expansiveness of China's definition
Speaker 1: of what exactly they were trying to do in the
Speaker 1: twenty one century. A lot of people suddenly it was
Speaker 1: like they realized it. And again, it's not a democrat,
Speaker 1: it's not a republican. But basically what it is is
Speaker 1: we are selling American values in exchange for money. Right
Speaker 1: in general, you mentioned earlier the pent Thing Disney has
Speaker 1: a amusement park in China that they own of but
Speaker 1: China owns fifty one percent of so China controls the
Speaker 1: decisions that are being made there to a large extent.
Speaker 1: I think one reason Lebron James didn't speak out is
Speaker 1: because he wants Space Jam two to be on in
Speaker 1: Beijing theaters. Right, everybody is making the decision that advocates
Speaker 1: for their pocket book, but in the process they are
Speaker 1: selling American values out, which is ultimately allowing China's influence
Speaker 1: to grow around the world and creating major issues for
Speaker 1: human rights, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all
Speaker 1: of the things that should be the essence of the
Speaker 1: American experience. Yeah, I was so in regards the Olympics
Speaker 1: in two. I am firmly behind the idea of boycott.
Speaker 1: Boycotting it if we can can, if we can decide
Speaker 1: on as a country the important priorities that we want
Speaker 1: overturned in exchange for still competing in that right, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's atrocities that are going on around
Speaker 1: the world. There are wrongs going on around the world,
Speaker 1: and to try to swoop in and say we want
Speaker 1: all wrongs fixed by China, we want them to be
Speaker 1: a democracy or whatever it is. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: not fair. I'm just saying it's not realistic in terms
Speaker 1: of the Olympics and whether the boycott. What I would
Speaker 1: like to see are things that are near and dear
Speaker 1: to Americans protected, and the First Amendment right is one
Speaker 1: of those, like we need to be able to voice,
Speaker 1: whether it's an industry, a political leader, a citizen, what
Speaker 1: we feel is wrong in terms of human rights abuses
Speaker 1: that have been occurring around the world, like we do
Speaker 1: with every other country. China cannot pay for our silence,
Speaker 1: and that is what they're doing. They're essentially saying, we'll
Speaker 1: pay you a lot of money if you carry our
Speaker 1: narrative around the world, and that needs to stop. So
Speaker 1: I would say, just in the most basic leverage point
Speaker 1: and call to action, it would be China, stop with
Speaker 1: this first Amendment right encroachment. We are going to say
Speaker 1: what we want to say outside of your soil, and
Speaker 1: you cannot retaliate if you do. We are not sending
Speaker 1: our athletes to Beijing, and that, to me is a
Speaker 1: realistic goal. Isn't it crazy that the NBA players and
Speaker 1: owners and and and a commissioner will speak out politically
Speaker 1: at the drop of a hat on anything in America
Speaker 1: on their social media accounts. But if you ask them,
Speaker 1: like I've done this with Mark Cuban, Hey, Mark, you
Speaker 1: speak out on everything all day long. Will you say
Speaker 1: that you support basic human rights in China? They won't
Speaker 1: say it. I mean, I I just I don't understand
Speaker 1: how they can get and look themselves in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Mark Cuban is a good example. This guy is always
Speaker 1: lecturing people all day long. Uh. Same thing with Steve Kerr, certainly,
Speaker 1: same thing with Lebron James. They lecture Americans all day
Speaker 1: long about things that we do wrong. Yet they won't
Speaker 1: even speak out in any way about one of the
Speaker 1: things that we have done better than any country in
Speaker 1: the history of the world, which is propagate basic human
Speaker 1: rights around the globe. They won't say that Chinese people
Speaker 1: deserve basic human rights. They won't say it. Yeah, it's well.
Speaker 1: And by the way, watch the Oscars speech or the
Speaker 1: Golden Globe speech and you'll see the exact same hippos
Speaker 1: from actors and actresses right exactly so. And and the
Speaker 1: part that's even more troubling to me is that we
Speaker 1: just witnessed in a domestic issue, obviously, the violence against
Speaker 1: blacks by police and the BLM movement. We just witnessed
Speaker 1: the ability for the NBA to lead a sports industry boycott,
Speaker 1: to make a point and to hold firm on a
Speaker 1: position and the whole sports industry back. Then the same
Speaker 1: thing can be done on an international issue that is
Speaker 1: this important. I don't know why they don't utilize that
Speaker 1: ability to do it. They can do it. It's we
Speaker 1: just saw it happen. And that's the part where it
Speaker 1: drives me crazy when people say, look, you know, and
Speaker 1: I get a lot of this not publicly but privately. Hey,
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying. I wish more people would
Speaker 1: do it. I would join you, but I get fired
Speaker 1: and I can't do it publicly or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But also, don't you think it's a little unrealistic to
Speaker 1: think that all the Hollywood studios could get behind this effort,
Speaker 1: or all the sports leagues and the sports players can
Speaker 1: And I go, no, not at all. First of all,
Speaker 1: that's not American to say something like that, we can
Speaker 1: stand behind whatever issue we find is most important to
Speaker 1: go do that. But number two is we just witnessed
Speaker 1: it in the sports industry over a domestic issue, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is a really important issue to handle,
Speaker 1: just like this one is internationally. Like, we can do this,
Speaker 1: It's not that impossible. All we need is a handful
Speaker 1: of leaders. I mean, I would call on an emissary
Speaker 1: and like Phil Knight and maybe Lebron James and some
Speaker 1: others from different sports and different sports industry partners to
Speaker 1: come up, come together and say let's leave this charge
Speaker 1: and let's just get it done. The Chinese will back off,
Speaker 1: they always do, So how does this end? Like, let's
Speaker 1: presume what is China's goal? Here. You said earlier that
Speaker 1: their goal is to keep people happy enough that they
Speaker 1: don't revolt, that there's not another tenement square. But it
Speaker 1: seems to me like China's goal is not just that anymore.
Speaker 1: It's now to start to spread and propagate Chinese values
Speaker 1: around the world. If you look at the money they're
Speaker 1: spending in Africa, if you look at the money they're
Speaker 1: spending in Europe and Latin America, they are trying to
Speaker 1: create a series of countries that are basically subsidiary. Are
Speaker 1: he's subsidizing the Chinese values around the world. It seems
Speaker 1: like their gaze is no longer inward, but now external,
Speaker 1: beyond the boundaries of the country. What based on your
Speaker 1: experience in China do they want now, Well, a lot
Speaker 1: of that belt you're you're referring to Belton Road initiative
Speaker 1: around the world and sort of how they're building in
Speaker 1: They're spending money like crazy all over the world to
Speaker 1: try to curry influence in favor exactly. And and a
Speaker 1: lot of that has to do with supplying commodities and
Speaker 1: certain resources to their one point four billion people. So
Speaker 1: they've got enough food, and they have enough energy needs,
Speaker 1: and they have all kinds of other stuff to keep
Speaker 1: them from uprising. That's number one. That's what that Belton
Speaker 1: Road initiative and a lot of that pushes. But then
Speaker 1: number two is they are trying to spread their wings.
Speaker 1: I mean the South China see is a perfect example.
Speaker 1: You're seeing Hong Kong for sure, although maybe Taiwan complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well Hong Kong is a little complicated because technically there
Speaker 1: was a fifty year deal that they encroached twenty seven
Speaker 1: years early to get it back on on the PRC
Speaker 1: sort of territory lists. But um, and then Taiwan is
Speaker 1: obviously going to be an issue probably in the coming year,
Speaker 1: which is a little scary. Um. And then we're seeing
Speaker 1: with it with the Arctic, definitely, with Africa, like you
Speaker 1: talked about, various European countries, Southeast Asia countries. You're seeing
Speaker 1: them spread their wings. Now do they want to be
Speaker 1: the global dominant player that they want to lead the
Speaker 1: world someday? I would question whether that's really their motivation.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are pacifists in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: They're not really that big into starting wars, but if
Speaker 1: you corner them, they're gonna fight back hard. Um. I
Speaker 1: think that they're looking to say, Hey, this side of
Speaker 1: the world is ours. Your side of the world United
Speaker 1: States is yours. Don't screw with us anymore. We've come
Speaker 1: to play. Why did you decide to write the book? Now?
Speaker 1: The book is again feeding the dragon inside the trillion
Speaker 1: dollar dilemma facing holl would the NBA in American business.
Speaker 1: He's Chris Fenton. You worked with China for twenty years.
Speaker 1: I know you said your light bulb moment was the
Speaker 1: Darryl Moore a tweet Why now? Presumably no, this this
Speaker 1: business burns a lot of your bridges of relationships with China.
Speaker 1: I would think, why now? Why speak out now? Well?
Speaker 1: Number one is I had planned to write a very
Speaker 1: colorful sort of memoir anyway prior to the Darryl More things,
Speaker 1: so I had a lot of it on the page
Speaker 1: without the thematic of oh my god, what have we done?
Speaker 1: Darryl was the one who sort of created that moment
Speaker 1: that I looped into the thematics of the book um
Speaker 1: to essentially say, well, now, reader, you understand sort of
Speaker 1: this colorful journey of how Chris Fenton even fell into
Speaker 1: this crazy business and then sort of how crazy it
Speaker 1: was as a business between these two superpowers and the
Speaker 1: misguided mission that we're all under this fog of war
Speaker 1: of globalism that turns out to be really wrong. So
Speaker 1: now that we're aware of that, what now? And I
Speaker 1: sort of present certain paths forward that I think we
Speaker 1: need to start talking about as a country in order
Speaker 1: to try to rectify some of the wrongs. So why
Speaker 1: did I write it? It was initially because a lot
Speaker 1: of people told me my stories are just insane and
Speaker 1: you've got to put it on the page or telling
Speaker 1: in a movie or something. But number two is why
Speaker 1: am I so outspoken in a squeaky wheel about it?
Speaker 1: Because I believe as Americans we're gonna come together on
Speaker 1: this issue. We're not going to fix all the world's evils,
Speaker 1: and we're not gonna fix all of China's evils, but
Speaker 1: we are going to come together and decide on this
Speaker 1: idea of patriotism and patriotism before capitalism. That is my
Speaker 1: mission that I think is make America great again? Or
Speaker 1: death panels or Black Lives Matter or whatever is that
Speaker 1: is the slogan that makes it very simple. Think about
Speaker 1: what it is to be a patriot before you embark
Speaker 1: on free market capitalism, which by the way, I'm a
Speaker 1: total fan of, and quite frankly, if you look at
Speaker 1: it that way, I bet you the capitalistic endeavors that
Speaker 1: we can go after with that first priority in mind
Speaker 1: become better for all Americans and probably more profitable in
Speaker 1: the long run too. And the issue for me is
Speaker 1: how do we start talking about this, like who starts
Speaker 1: the movement? And I'm not saying I'm the one guy
Speaker 1: that starts it, but I'm just saying we need squeaky wheels,
Speaker 1: we need people to come out, We need platforms, which
Speaker 1: is why I hope the people that listen to this
Speaker 1: not because it puts a lot of money in my pocket,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't. But the farther up these lists I
Speaker 1: get with this book, the more I get on the
Speaker 1: left side of the aisles platforms, because I gotta get
Speaker 1: in that bubble and talk about it and create a
Speaker 1: crescendo of pressure so that people start talking about it
Speaker 1: and start dealing with the issue. And I do think
Speaker 1: there's baby steps approaches to it, where we can tackle
Speaker 1: things that we can accomplish first, with an end goal
Speaker 1: of maybe somewhere down the road really accomplishing like closing
Speaker 1: down the concentration camps in the Jinjaang profit But that's
Speaker 1: not the initial goal. The initial goal is we have principles, values,
Speaker 1: national security interests that we hold dearly here in this country.
Speaker 1: We need to fight back and get them right. We
Speaker 1: need to create leverage to continue doing work in China,
Speaker 1: selling our products and services there, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money to make from that market. Quite frankly, we
Speaker 1: helped build that market into what it is today. It's
Speaker 1: our turn to get our money out um. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind, we did this in the early eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: with Europe to catch up to them. We had a
Speaker 1: lot of protectionist policies. We had a lot of tariffs,
Speaker 1: we had all kinds of stealing intellectual property to create
Speaker 1: our own industrial revolution. And then one day Europe said, okay,
Speaker 1: you caught up to us. Enough is enough, You're not
Speaker 1: doing it anymore. That's what we need to do with China.
Speaker 1: Although I will say back in the eighteen hundreds, we
Speaker 1: weren't spreading the United States propaganda all through Europe. That
Speaker 1: wasn't part of the situation. That's one of the issues
Speaker 1: that we have with China that we gotta address right now.
Speaker 1: Man This is absolutely fascinating. I'm gonna go read the book.
Speaker 1: It's Chris Finton. I haven't read the book yet. I
Speaker 1: will now. I imagine a lot of you will be
Speaker 1: interested in reading it as well. Chris. Thanks for the time,
Speaker 1: my man. We will maybe get you on the radio
Speaker 1: show at some point in the future. Yeah, Clay, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, anybody wants to follow me just um,
Speaker 1: I'm at the dragon feeder on Twitter, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you right now, I have no problem getting up at
Speaker 1: four in the morning West Coast time to behind your
Speaker 1: awesome show. I listen to it every day. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love how you stand your ground on things and
Speaker 1: you come up with solutions and your fans are fantastic.
Speaker 1: And by the way, thank you as a guy who
Speaker 1: drove down from Cornell every weekend to see my brother
Speaker 1: at Penn State to watch those big Big ten games,
Speaker 1: like thanks for getting behind that cause I hope they
Speaker 1: come back and play some football, you and me both.
Speaker 1: Uh and again, I just would reiterate with this China
Speaker 1: situation as you have as well. It's not partisan, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want our battle with China to
Speaker 1: turn into something where Republicans think we need to be
Speaker 1: doing one thing, Democrats think we need to be doing another.
Speaker 1: I know they'll the subtle variations, but we need to
Speaker 1: be combating them on all fronts in an aggressive manner.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think you have made that case very
Speaker 1: very eloquently here today with us. Thanks my man. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'll keep you a sight of hope, like
Speaker 1: maybe China is a blessing in disguise, and it's it's
Speaker 1: an issue that all Americans can get behind and it
Speaker 1: unites us as a country, no kidding. When AOC and
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz are writing on the same letter furious with
Speaker 1: the NBA for their response to Darryl Morey. Uh, Darryl
Speaker 1: Morey debacle, you know that there's actually at least something
Speaker 1: that still unites us. Thank you, my man. I am
Speaker 1: Clay Travis. This has been wins and Losses. Encourage you
Speaker 1: to go listen to the thirty plus conversations we've had.
Speaker 1: This is yet another in the fascinating line that we
Speaker 1: have been producing. Thanks a lot, and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you next time. This has been wins and Losses. Fox
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