Speaker 1: How often does a founder get to go buy their
Speaker 1: baby back and relaunch it.
Speaker 2: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Toad and this
Speaker 2: is there Are No Girls.
Speaker 3: On the Internet.
Speaker 2: The heyday of movie Pass was truly one of those
Speaker 2: you had to be there moments in tech and culture.
Speaker 2: If you were swiping that I kind of read movie
Speaker 2: Pass card back then, like I was, you probably found
Speaker 2: yourself wondering how is this even sustainable? Turns out you
Speaker 2: weren't alone. That very question is at the heart of
Speaker 2: the HBO Max documentary Movie Pass Movie Crash, which just
Speaker 2: scored an Emmy nomination. In many ways, the story of
Speaker 2: movie Pass is one of those classic tales of what
Speaker 2: we call in shitification, right when something good gets wrecked
Speaker 2: by private equity, relentless growth chasing and short term things.
Speaker 2: But it's also a story about race and what it
Speaker 2: means to be a creative black founder steering something huge.
Speaker 2: There's also a different story at the heart of this,
Speaker 2: a genuine love of movies, that magic moment when the
Speaker 2: lights go down and the screen lights up.
Speaker 1: My name is Stacy Spikes and I'm the co founder
Speaker 1: of Movie Past.
Speaker 2: That deep love of movies is something Stacy and I
Speaker 2: both share, and that's where our story begins. So you
Speaker 2: love movies, and I've heard you say that your favorite
Speaker 2: movie from when you were a kid is a Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: What was it about Blade Runner that.
Speaker 3: Just did it for you?
Speaker 1: I think I was eleven years old when I saw it,
Speaker 1: and it was a rated R film, and I had
Speaker 1: to beg my parents, and so they wouldn't let me
Speaker 1: see it alone. So my dad took me one day
Speaker 1: after work, and I remember my father falling asleep completely
Speaker 1: and snoring in the film. But there was something about it.
Speaker 1: I had already seen Star Wars, but this almost seemed
Speaker 1: like a reality you could touch, that you believed was
Speaker 1: not that far away, where I think Star Wars was
Speaker 1: so far away it was fantasy, but Blade Runner felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is going to happen in
Speaker 1: a few years kind of thing. And when you're that young,
Speaker 1: you don't know the difference between reality and what's real
Speaker 1: and what's not. And I remember, I want to work
Speaker 1: in this world or in this business. I want to
Speaker 1: work in robotics, want to I want to do this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that these people are talking about and
Speaker 1: I just found it a beautiful film and at the time,
Speaker 1: I think it touched me like a lot touched a
Speaker 1: lot of people. It wasn't a very big box office success,
Speaker 1: but it just stole my heart. There's literally on my
Speaker 1: wall in my office. I have a poster Blade Runner
Speaker 1: still up today.
Speaker 2: Do you think your parents knew was a seed that
Speaker 2: they were planting in you by exposing you to movies
Speaker 2: from such a young age.
Speaker 1: Well, both of my parents were really big movie lovers.
Speaker 1: My dad was a really big clean Eastwood fan, and
Speaker 1: my mom was a type that she's a lot like
Speaker 1: me that she just goes It's like it's like part
Speaker 1: of your culture, right, It's just part of your life.
Speaker 1: And on Saturdays she used to give me and my brother,
Speaker 1: like I swear, five bucks each and she would drop
Speaker 1: us off and come and pick us up in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and she would run all of her errands. And
Speaker 1: this is how she had a Saturday babysitter for kids.
Speaker 1: And today she would be arrested for that behavior. But
Speaker 1: true story. So every Saturday we were whether it was
Speaker 1: a double feature or seeing the same movie again, and
Speaker 1: the managers knew us and we got our little hot
Speaker 1: dog and so popcorn and what was what was quite amazing.
Speaker 1: I think after I saw Blade Runner, I told my
Speaker 1: parents I wanted to take a screenwriting class. And the
Speaker 1: only one they could find was at Rice University, which
Speaker 1: was a college course, and they it was a summer course,
Speaker 1: and my mom got permission because she knew some people
Speaker 1: at Rice. She got permission for this eleven year old
Speaker 1: to sit in a movie screenwriting course. And I remember
Speaker 1: my feet could really touch the floor that well.
Speaker 2: When I was young, I wanted to work in movies
Speaker 2: or something involving like culture or the arts. And I
Speaker 2: remember I would watch movies. My parents would take me
Speaker 2: to go rent a movie and I would but ending credits,
Speaker 2: I would pause it and look at different jobs and
Speaker 2: be like, oh, a gaffer, Maybe I could do that.
Speaker 2: Like the idea of you know, being able to somehow
Speaker 2: be involved in the creation of this thing that was
Speaker 2: so magical that could transport you to a different world
Speaker 2: from your like suburban town. It was just all like
Speaker 2: it really felt like something that was a far away dream.
Speaker 2: And then you get older and you're like, oh, somebody
Speaker 2: has this job, why not me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it when you said transport you you know, I
Speaker 1: always call it riding the light. It's like the lights
Speaker 1: go down in the theater and you have even if
Speaker 1: you watch the trailer, you have no idea where you're
Speaker 1: about to be transported to. You can go back in time,
Speaker 1: you can go far off into the future, you can
Speaker 1: go you know, metaphysical. It's like you you have no
Speaker 1: idea where you're going to go. And I find that
Speaker 1: always so exciting about that experience. So I I just
Speaker 1: this weekend, the last three weekends, each weekend I went
Speaker 1: to see Sinners. And first time I saw it in
Speaker 1: the same week and I went to regular screening, and
Speaker 1: then I saw it on Imax, and then I went
Speaker 1: this weekend. And each time it's a different movie. Right,
Speaker 1: there's something different, you see something else, there's an added thing.
Speaker 1: And while I've never been a filmmaker, I'm always looking
Speaker 1: at where the camera sits. Why did they choose to
Speaker 1: come up from below, or why are they coming from
Speaker 1: on high or how are they panning? And what they
Speaker 1: want you to see and how the cinematographer and different
Speaker 1: lighting like the way Dune would change its whole color
Speaker 1: palette depending upon what world you were on. Just all
Speaker 1: of that stuff, like my mind just geeks out on
Speaker 1: all of it.
Speaker 2: Movie Pass launched in twenty eleven, but that shiny red
Speaker 2: car didn't hit my wallet until a few years later.
Speaker 2: By then, it was just nine dollars and ninety five
Speaker 2: cents a month for unlimited movies, so going to see
Speaker 2: even one movie a month made it totally worth it.
Speaker 2: It kind of feels like a fever dream now, but
Speaker 2: Movie Past made you feel like a god walking into
Speaker 2: that theater. You could be walking down the street, spot
Speaker 2: at theater, walk in and watch something, no planning, no hesitation.
Speaker 2: And I did that a lot. I saw movies I
Speaker 2: never would have picked in theaters I never would have
Speaker 2: gone to otherwise. It made movie going feel spontaneous, accessible
Speaker 2: and even kind of luxurious. I'm not ashamed to admit
Speaker 2: that a few times I even used a movie Pass
Speaker 2: just to be able to use a bathroom in a
Speaker 2: movie theater while I was out and about. So for me,
Speaker 2: we were solidly still in the this is awesome era
Speaker 2: of the story. But even then, every time I swiped
Speaker 2: that movie pass card, I'd think, how is this sustignables? Like,
Speaker 2: how is this making anybody any money? It kind of
Speaker 2: felt like the money wasn't even real and if it was, well,
Speaker 2: it wasn't my problem. I want to talk about Movie
Speaker 2: Past because I remember the height of Movie Pass, and
Speaker 2: for people who weren't there, it's like it truly was
Speaker 2: that you had to be there moment in culture. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a joke in my house. My partner one
Speaker 2: of our first dates, I was in a movie and
Speaker 2: they texted like, Hey, do you want to get a drink?
Speaker 2: You want to hang out? And so I left the
Speaker 2: movie to come meet them and they were like, Wow,
Speaker 2: you must really be into me if you like left
Speaker 2: the theater. And I was like, nah, homie, movie Pass,
Speaker 2: I'll just go catch the end tomorrow. What was it
Speaker 2: like to be part of it in that heyday, in
Speaker 2: its height, when like it was really poppin', you know.
Speaker 1: One of the weirdest, our most outer body experiences that
Speaker 1: I had was I remember going to Regal Union Square
Speaker 1: and I think it was on a Saturday, and I remember,
Speaker 1: so where you go and if you're getting your ticket
Speaker 1: in the theater, you walk into kind of this vestibule
Speaker 1: and there's two walls, but they kind of sit almost
Speaker 1: at an angle. You walk in this way, and there's
Speaker 1: one wall here and one wall there. And I was
Speaker 1: standing at my wall, and I kid you not, everybody
Speaker 1: pulled out a movie pass and I looked over to
Speaker 1: the other side and they all had movie passes too,
Speaker 1: and people were waiting, and it was surreal. It was
Speaker 1: like and people were looking at each other like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're part of the club too, and we know each
Speaker 1: other and we're you know, we always had this same
Speaker 1: movie passes for movie people, right, and we movie people
Speaker 1: understand what that means. And that was a very surreal moment.
Speaker 1: That's when I knew we were sitting in another world.
Speaker 1: Then you were always on the grind for years, trying
Speaker 1: to get this thing and get it up the hill,
Speaker 1: and everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not
Speaker 1: gonna work and no one's gonna like it, and the
Speaker 1: theaters aren't going to allow it. And then boom, it
Speaker 1: just it's it's everywhere. And that was that moment.
Speaker 2: How did the idea come to be?
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't I don't think it's revolutionary. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like, we should make Netflix for movie theaters.
Speaker 1: It was just this idea that everyone was going in
Speaker 1: the direction of subscriptions. So you had music going subscription,
Speaker 1: you had you know, streaming, you had everything going from
Speaker 1: your people were doing food coming to your house on
Speaker 1: a subscription, and movies just seemed to make sense to
Speaker 1: a certain number of people who go often enough. And
Speaker 1: what you were doing was for the theaters you were
Speaker 1: increasing attendance and for the consumer you were driving savings
Speaker 1: and reducing mental friction like should I go, shouldn't I go?
Speaker 1: Then it just became a question of do I have
Speaker 1: the time right? And I know, for me, would my
Speaker 1: movie pass, not only being a creator but a customer.
Speaker 1: I would be in a city somewhere and oh I
Speaker 1: got two hours before my next meeting, and boom, I'm
Speaker 1: in a movie, you know. And it kind of changed
Speaker 1: the friction of it. While it may not be much
Speaker 1: that twenty dollars you make, should I spend the money
Speaker 1: on this? It took that friction away, and that's was
Speaker 1: a really big difference. You know that I saw it happening.
Speaker 2: It's like you had to be there, if you know,
Speaker 2: you know kind of moment and culture. I've tried to
Speaker 2: describe what it was like to people who missed it,
Speaker 2: and I don't feel like I can articulate that that
Speaker 2: cultural shift and like, yeah, just what a time it
Speaker 2: was in those early days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a you know, the big thing was
Speaker 1: in taking that friction away. It was about focusing on
Speaker 1: behavior and focusing on going and just you know, being
Speaker 1: in the habit and it's it's weird, like some people
Speaker 1: might not understand it. But it was also not so
Speaker 1: much about the money. It was about being a member
Speaker 1: of a group of people whose behavior It was like,
Speaker 1: there are there are dead heads, right, and you would
Speaker 1: hear about deadheads saying like if somebody said to you,
Speaker 1: I took three months off my job to go follow
Speaker 1: the grateful dead around for the summer, you'd think they were.
Speaker 4: Crazy, right, But people do that, And you would see
Speaker 4: white people talking about, yeah, I wouldn't follow the debt.
Speaker 4: But I felt like movie passed to movie people was
Speaker 4: not only this card carrying member that yeah, I'm one
Speaker 4: of those people, and it was I'm a centophile.
Speaker 1: I love movies. Movies are a way of life, and
Speaker 1: movies are something that are so important to me that
Speaker 1: I want to make this investment in its future and
Speaker 1: my future. And that monthly payment that I was making
Speaker 1: was also a forward looking statement of my commitment to
Speaker 1: this art form. And so that's what it made it
Speaker 1: really powerful to me and what we saw with other people.
Speaker 1: It had that that no one had ever built a
Speaker 1: community around movie going. There was you're a member of
Speaker 1: this theater chain, or you're a member of the Disney
Speaker 1: Club or something like that, but no one had ever
Speaker 1: done and around just movie going in general. I remember
Speaker 1: people saying I'm gonna go see every Oscar nominee on
Speaker 1: movie pass right and they would say I'm and they
Speaker 1: would post it and they that was that was, you know,
Speaker 1: such a huge change, and I thought something great for
Speaker 1: our cinematic culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like that, Like the cultural in group building I
Speaker 2: think is really important because you know, if you're a
Speaker 2: movie movie people are a we are a weird type
Speaker 2: of people. It's a weird type of person who's like,
Speaker 2: I want to see the movie. I want to read
Speaker 2: eight reviews about the movie. I want to see what
Speaker 2: they're saying on a Reddit, I want to I want
Speaker 2: to put it on letter bots. Like that is a
Speaker 2: particular kind of person. And I think you built something
Speaker 2: that was like a way to signify that you were
Speaker 2: in this group.
Speaker 1: So I did a podcast yesterday and I asked them
Speaker 1: what movies had they seen lately, And it was very
Speaker 1: funny the two movies they named. I said, you saw
Speaker 1: that in theaters? They were like, no, no on streaming, Oh no,
Speaker 1: no movie, go to the movies. And it's funny how
Speaker 1: you have some people who think if I watched it
Speaker 1: on my phone, it's the same thing, right, Like if
Speaker 1: you got to listen to a print song on your
Speaker 1: phone and you got to see Prince, Like, those are
Speaker 1: not the same thing.
Speaker 2: No, And I mean not to go back to Sinners,
Speaker 2: but I hadn't been to the movies in a while,
Speaker 2: and Sinners was the first time I had been to
Speaker 2: the theater in the kind of a little bit, and
Speaker 2: we were essentially dancing together, having this communal experience. I
Speaker 2: forgot how fun and how special it is to go
Speaker 2: to a theater, this communal. The lights go down and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, y'all are like family, you're strangers,
Speaker 2: especially especially a black movie. It's like it's like it
Speaker 2: is a special thing. And there is just no way
Speaker 2: I would have had as much fun watching it on
Speaker 2: my couch on TV. There's just no way.
Speaker 1: No, I think The most recent most fun I had
Speaker 1: was when I went and saw Nope, and it was
Speaker 1: like when Kiki's running and people that they're like, run, bitch, run.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is a special thing.
Speaker 1: You are not going to get that in your house.
Speaker 1: It is by yourself. I don't care how animated you
Speaker 1: are about the movie you're watching. And when I went
Speaker 1: and saw Minecraft, that was crazy.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: When when I saw the Beyonce film and when she
Speaker 1: did Uncle Johnny the Uncle Johnny track and the fans
Speaker 1: came popping out, I was like, oh shit, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's It's like whenever somebody says I
Speaker 1: watched it at home or Watson on my phone, I
Speaker 1: feel bad for him.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 2: I believe movies or forever. I think that we'll still
Speaker 2: have movie theaters, regardless of whatever technological advancements or changes
Speaker 2: might happen. But when I hear about people who are
Speaker 2: how can I put this putting up barriers to the
Speaker 2: experience of like getting lost in a movie, Like they're
Speaker 2: gonna watch it on their phone or they're gonna text
Speaker 2: through if you know, they want to have another screen
Speaker 2: to occupy their mind. I. Yeah, I just sometimes feel
Speaker 2: bad because you know, part of the fun is giving
Speaker 2: yourself fully over to this immersive world. And I do
Speaker 2: you worry that we are in a climate where some
Speaker 2: people are not allowing themselves the beauty of that experience
Speaker 2: because it's like, oh, well, I'll get the gist of it,
Speaker 2: I'll text through it or what have you do?
Speaker 3: Know what you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know. I we have this saying that
Speaker 1: adventures should never come with a pause button. And you know,
Speaker 1: the powerful thing about it is you can't pause. You
Speaker 1: don't want to run to the bathroom. You are in
Speaker 1: the middle of an experience that the roller coaster started
Speaker 1: and you do not get off until it ends. And
Speaker 1: when I'm at home or I'm not in that type
Speaker 1: of environment, I cannot help but naturally be distracted and
Speaker 1: get a diminished experience, you know. And we talked about
Speaker 1: how cinema was going to kill Broadway, and then television
Speaker 1: was going to kill cinema, and then streaming was also
Speaker 1: going to kill cinema and DVD and VHS and blu
Speaker 1: ray and larger screens, and the reality is it is
Speaker 1: still the number one out of home entertainment activity in
Speaker 1: the world. By far, people go to the movies ten
Speaker 1: times more than all sporting events combined. No matter what
Speaker 1: part of the world you're in, whether you're in Asia,
Speaker 1: whether you're in Africa, or whether you're in India or
Speaker 1: even in America, we go ten times more. So I
Speaker 1: think I think that the headlines blow it out of proportion.
Speaker 1: It's still you know, two thirds of Americans every year
Speaker 1: go to the movies at least once, and that's that's
Speaker 1: a big music concerts anything. Think of it like this
Speaker 1: on one movie that breaks one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: a single weekend. That movie movie had more people go
Speaker 1: to it than all of the games of the entire
Speaker 1: NFL season coming up. Wow, one movie. So when people
Speaker 1: I think it's the King of the Hill that people
Speaker 1: still like to beat up on. But I, like you
Speaker 1: think that it is the cheapest experience you can for
Speaker 1: a live event. It is accessible, and it's opened three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five days a year. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's going anywhere.
Speaker 2: So what exactly went wrong with Movie Pass? Well, it
Speaker 2: was the usual growth at all costs. Remember how I
Speaker 2: was describing gleefully swiping into movie theaters thinking good thing.
Speaker 2: This math is somebody else's problem. Yeah, there's a reason
Speaker 2: that math didn't work. In twenty seventeen, private equity firm
Speaker 2: Helios and Matheson bought movie Pass. Mitch Lowe, a former
Speaker 2: Netflix executive, and Ted Barnsworth, who as far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, was just basically a professional scammer, were brought
Speaker 2: in as leadership. There was absolutely a racial dynamic at
Speaker 2: play here too. You have a service created by black people,
Speaker 2: and then you bring in two white guys who maybe
Speaker 2: look the part of what some people assume a tech
Speaker 2: CEO looks like, just without any of the actual vision.
Speaker 2: Ted and Mitch's big idea to save movie Pass dropped
Speaker 2: the price down to nine dollars and ninety five cents
Speaker 2: a month for unlimited movies. And as much as my
Speaker 2: greedy ass liked that price point, Stacy warned it was unsustainable,
Speaker 2: and he was fired from the company for saying. Zone Sure,
Speaker 2: subscriber skyrocketed, but the service quickly became unusable. Movie Pass
Speaker 2: started blocking users from seeing movies, intentionally resetting passwords and
Speaker 2: blaming fake fraud alerts, you know, something the government kind
Speaker 2: of thinks of as a crime. According to the FTC
Speaker 2: movie Pass did this to seventy five thousand users. The
Speaker 2: FTC says that Mitch and Ted knew about ordered and
Speaker 2: helped run this so called password disruption program they were
Speaker 2: running on paying customers. Meanwhile, Mitch and Ted were also
Speaker 2: blowing through movie passes money, like flying the wrapper fifty
Speaker 2: cent to Coachella on a movie pass branded private jet.
Speaker 2: Why who knows? The Justice Department says this was all
Speaker 2: a scam. They lied to investors claiming the nine dollars
Speaker 2: and ninety five cents model was profitable when they privately
Speaker 2: admitted it wasn't. They also hyped up some powerful AI
Speaker 2: that was meant to monetize movie pass user data, only
Speaker 2: that AI didn't actually exist. Classic AI washing, a tech
Speaker 2: CEO vaguely claiming that AI is doing a thing it
Speaker 2: is absolutely not doing. Both Mitch and Ted eventually applied
Speaker 2: guilty to securities fraud. They faced actual jail time. In
Speaker 2: just eight years, movie Pass went from massive growth to
Speaker 2: total collapse and stacy while he was out of the
Speaker 2: company that he founded. What did it feel like to
Speaker 2: be pushed out of something that you built, you know,
Speaker 2: that was that was your baby?
Speaker 1: Well you you know you watch movies and you watch
Speaker 1: stuff and if you saw a biopic and I don't know,
Speaker 1: Cinderellaman or some movie where some some lead characters something
Speaker 1: goes wrong with him, you like, you shouldn't have let
Speaker 1: that happen. You should have you know. And it's funny
Speaker 1: when you're inside of it and it's unfolding in real time.
Speaker 1: And it was very simple, kind of big boy chess
Speaker 1: moves where it was like we got some investor capital,
Speaker 1: the we had three board seats that additional money asked
Speaker 1: to expand the board to five, and he had then
Speaker 1: three seats and we had two. And then he brought
Speaker 1: Mitch in and the next thing, you know, the dynamics
Speaker 1: of the board had changed and they were then able
Speaker 1: to make decisions that we couldn't stop. And it you
Speaker 1: kind of think, oh, we're all friends here and we
Speaker 1: all have the same purpose and we're rowing in the
Speaker 1: same direction, and then quickly the dynamics had shifted, and
Speaker 1: then you realize too late you're out. But people say,
Speaker 1: what would you have done differently? And I said, I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know. Because you're out raising capital and there
Speaker 1: are some businesses you can go make a little hair salon, our,
Speaker 1: a pizza shop, and you have your initial startup capital
Speaker 1: and you work your way up over many years. But
Speaker 1: when you're building something that is like a national theater
Speaker 1: subscription circuit, you can't do a little at a time.
Speaker 1: You kind of have to do it all, and so
Speaker 1: you have that build cost, and so you have to
Speaker 1: build fast and someone or someone else is going to
Speaker 1: build it and beat you to the race. Like Netflix,
Speaker 1: if you can get there, and you can get there
Speaker 1: first and established dominance, you can withstand the storm because
Speaker 1: you were first to the party. And even when people
Speaker 1: cut away like they're starting to do with streaming services,
Speaker 1: they're still going to keep the one. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: nobody would cancel HBO, right, it was like you had
Speaker 1: your HBO. So it's similar to that, and that having
Speaker 1: gone through that experience, you realize how how many you
Speaker 1: know a lot of diverse founders are artists woke up,
Speaker 1: whether it was Sammy Davis Junior or Red Fox or
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor, and they woke up and they were broke.
Speaker 1: How I broke? You got to walk through something similar
Speaker 1: and you realize it can happen to you too, no
Speaker 1: matter how smart you are.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: I remember watching the girl group TLC give one of
Speaker 2: the most honest interviews I have ever seen after winning
Speaker 2: a Grammy for their breakout album Crazy Sexy Cool, but asked,
Speaker 2: how can you sell million records and still be broke?
Speaker 2: Their answer was a sobering reminder.
Speaker 1: Trust me, you can sell ten million nails and be
Speaker 1: broke if you have greedy people behind.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a warning no matter how talented, successful,
Speaker 2: or smart you are, you can still end up on
Speaker 2: the outs especially if you're a black creative. Stacy's story
Speaker 2: it's ultimately about what it means to navigate this kind
Speaker 2: of dynamic. Getting pushed out of the very community that
Speaker 2: you built and being left to feel like you have
Speaker 2: nothing on the other end of it is a story
Speaker 2: far too many of us know all too well. Stacy
Speaker 2: writes about this in his book Black Founder, The Hidden
Speaker 2: Power of being an Outsider. Watching the documentary, I was
Speaker 2: really struck by the ways that it was a story
Speaker 2: about race, and you know, the reality is not great
Speaker 2: for you know, folks of like entrepreneurs of color. I
Speaker 2: think it was what like less than one percent of
Speaker 2: a funding goes to us, and so is there a
Speaker 2: negative perception that comes with Thunders handing over a big
Speaker 2: check and a lot of trust over to a black founder.
Speaker 2: Do they feel more comfortable handing over that trust and
Speaker 2: handing over that money to somebody who looks like Mitch
Speaker 2: and Ted versus somebody that looks like me or you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I definitely. I think there is a
Speaker 1: black tax that you have to pay, and I think
Speaker 1: that you know people. Well, let me, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say something that it's my experience, but it may it
Speaker 1: may sound funny the way it's going to come out.
Speaker 1: I think we are creatures of habits and we follow
Speaker 1: pattern recognition, and I'll give you a thought experiment and
Speaker 1: what I mean. So I was being interviewed by I
Speaker 1: think it was a New York Times and it was
Speaker 1: a woman writer, and she asked me a similar question,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, if we go outside. We
Speaker 1: were at the Angelica, and I said, if we walk
Speaker 1: outside onto Houston Street and we start asking people, close
Speaker 1: your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. Right,
Speaker 1: they're gonna describe or give me a name, or tell
Speaker 1: me what you think of tech founder. I told her,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna describe someone who looks like me, and
Speaker 1: they're not gonna describe someone who looks like you. But
Speaker 1: I said, tell me what a star basketball player looks like,
Speaker 1: or tell me what a star athlete looks like, or
Speaker 1: even give me a star player in golf or even tennis,
Speaker 1: or even gymnastics or any of those things. Well, they
Speaker 1: may describe someone who looks like me when it comes
Speaker 1: to that. And again that's that thing about pattern recognition.
Speaker 1: And I think when I was working on my book
Speaker 1: and we were deciding what the cover was gonna be,
Speaker 1: we talked about black founder and it was like I
Speaker 1: wanted to put my face on the cover so that
Speaker 1: more and more you're gonna see this is what founders
Speaker 1: look like too write. And once upon a time we
Speaker 1: were not in any sports, and so we had negro leagues,
Speaker 1: but we weren't on the main field. So over time,
Speaker 1: I think it can change, but there needs to be
Speaker 1: more of us who are out there making it happen,
Speaker 1: and that they get to see us and they start
Speaker 1: to realize, Okay, this is acceptable. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: like racism, like they're not as good. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a categorizing in a way to say because I
Speaker 1: don't see this that often, I'm going to trust it
Speaker 1: less or I need more to be convinced that it works.
Speaker 2: I was reading an interview before we got on. I
Speaker 2: think it was with the make the director of the film.
Speaker 2: One of the instances that did not make it into
Speaker 2: the film was that folks would come into the room
Speaker 2: and automatically assume by pass you and automatically assume like, well,
Speaker 2: certainly this white person is the founder. And I think
Speaker 2: that speaks to what you're talking about. It's not a
Speaker 2: question of ability. If every time you walk into a
Speaker 2: room like that, the white guy is the founder. I
Speaker 2: can understand how we need to see more and more
Speaker 2: founders that look like you, founders look like me, so
Speaker 2: that folks break those patterns.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. It's just pattern recognition. Once you start
Speaker 1: changing the pattern enough, people become fine with it. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, with pattern recognition and being able to see
Speaker 1: how things can change over time. Like first black love
Speaker 1: on screen was crazy. You didn't see that interracial love
Speaker 1: on screen was you remember with Jungle Fever, right, that
Speaker 1: was so taboo? And then I remember Denzel doing people
Speaker 1: were saying, why don't you ever kiss anybody in a movie, right,
Speaker 1: but he would have Julia Roberts or some lead across
Speaker 1: him and they couldn't. They never touched each other. And
Speaker 1: then when I saw Moonlight, I was like, that's a
Speaker 1: huge accomplishment. You saw black love. You saw same sex
Speaker 1: black love, and it wasn't even Broke Back Mountain violent
Speaker 1: in the tent. I'm taking this shit. Black Love. It
Speaker 1: was beautiful. And that's what I mean by now you
Speaker 1: can see people moving around in the world and it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's like pattern recognition. It's one of those strange things
Speaker 1: about our time, how people are trying to roll back
Speaker 1: things that are now commonplace and trying to roll history
Speaker 1: back to the nineteen fifties, as if that's something more
Speaker 1: sacred but interesting.
Speaker 2: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 2: In Stacy's book Black Founder, The Hidden Power of being
Speaker 2: an Outsider, Stacy says that being traditionally marginalized as an
Speaker 2: entrepreneur does come with challenges, but it's not always a
Speaker 2: bad thing. Sometimes it gives you the perspective to see
Speaker 2: needs others might overlook. That outsider's insight is what led
Speaker 2: Stacy to create Urban World, now the largest Academy Award
Speaker 2: qualifying Black and Multicultural film festival in the world, and
Speaker 2: nearly three decades later, it's still going strong and it's
Speaker 2: twenty ninth year. The subtitle of your book the Hidden
Speaker 2: Power of being of being an outsider. I've always thought
Speaker 2: this that, you know, being at the margins or being
Speaker 2: someone who's like traditionally marginalized, it can actually be a
Speaker 2: place of power for folks who want to build something sometimes,
Speaker 2: Like for instance, with Urban World, you saw an overload
Speaker 2: need in your own people and in the community, and
Speaker 2: we're able to build something that spoke to this need
Speaker 2: that existed, right, And so I feel like some of
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do is like reframe this thing
Speaker 2: that is so often we're told as like a negative,
Speaker 2: as like a kind of a source of strength. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I bring a different perspective. I can see things that
Speaker 2: maybe other folks can't see, and that is a that
Speaker 2: is a in some ways a gift.
Speaker 1: That's right. So when we started Urban World, it was
Speaker 1: like you had John Singleton, you had Spike Lee, and
Speaker 1: you amazed occasionally had another director who would pop up
Speaker 1: and do something, but there was so many other directors
Speaker 1: trying to break in and trying to get on the scene,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like, you know, if we get
Speaker 1: to play, we're gonna rock this, like and and and
Speaker 1: the fact that the gatekeepers there was a very systematic
Speaker 1: type of gatekeeping. And what I struggled with was, Ah,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't want to get on my soapbots
Speaker 1: too much. But what I struggled with was the well
Speaker 1: intentioned gatekeepers, often white. Their version of what they liked
Speaker 1: to see was black pain. And sometimes those of us
Speaker 1: who are coming from the experience don't just want to
Speaker 1: see that. We want to see us having fun. We
Speaker 1: want to see us being the Cosby's. We want to
Speaker 1: see us making money, we want to see us in love.
Speaker 1: We don't just want to see that. Oh, I feel
Speaker 1: so bad about what happened during slavery or during civil
Speaker 1: rights and the black pain experience. What about the black
Speaker 1: beautiful fun experience?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And so the things that were bubbling to the top
Speaker 1: were still those same experiences, but regular black life or
Speaker 1: fun black life wasn't getting seen because it wasn't critically acclaimed,
Speaker 1: and we felt that all all of it needed to
Speaker 1: be seen. And at some point someone said Urban World
Speaker 1: became to cinema what Showtime at the Apollo became to music.
Speaker 1: It became this curation place and if you made it here,
Speaker 1: you can make it anywhere. Kind of think, if we
Speaker 1: say it's great and we think you're great, then you're great.
Speaker 1: And that was like if you rub the stone at
Speaker 1: the Apollo and you made it there, forget about it.
Speaker 1: We don't care what the rest of the world says.
Speaker 1: We know you're the best because we are tough critics.
Speaker 1: And I remember when Ava Duverney was our publicist, and
Speaker 1: I remember Ava sitting in the theater we were watching
Speaker 1: dream Girls. Her mom's next to her, and she goes,
Speaker 1: you know, I really want to make a movie. I go, well, Ava,
Speaker 1: we got Urban World. Make it. We'll premiere it. And
Speaker 1: she made her first short film and almost every film
Speaker 1: Ava's ever made, she's come back to Urban World and Showcase.
Speaker 1: So it's it was our moment to move civil rights
Speaker 1: from music to film, and an Urban World was that
Speaker 1: thing to help make that happen.
Speaker 2: That's so beautiful. And I don't know, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think those investments that you make in people and their
Speaker 2: stories and their vision, they really come back. It says
Speaker 2: something that she continues to come back.
Speaker 1: Course. Yeah, and I think it's great to have a
Speaker 1: home base. And it just feels good to have a home,
Speaker 1: have a people that are supporting you and rooting you
Speaker 1: and watching you go out around the world changing the world.
Speaker 1: And our stories, you know, our experience and our struggle.
Speaker 1: I travel all over the world, and what's really funny
Speaker 1: about these times we're walking through America's greatest export is us.
Speaker 1: When you go to France, or you go to England,
Speaker 1: or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are where
Speaker 1: wearing Jordan's They're wearing Kobe's shirt, They're watching Black Panther.
Speaker 1: It's like we are what they are most proud of.
Speaker 1: And when you think of the possibilities of America, the
Speaker 1: Black experience is the one that everyone holds up as, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's why I want to go there. Sure you can
Speaker 1: be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, but we
Speaker 1: have such a unique experience about coming from the bottom
Speaker 1: up that that is one of America's greatest exports. And
Speaker 1: yet why would you want to kill that? People love
Speaker 1: the idea of coming here because of those possibilities, and
Speaker 1: they see it in music and film they love walking
Speaker 1: around Brooklyn, knowing the streets where so much of hip hop,
Speaker 1: and coming to the Blue Note and seeing jazz and
Speaker 1: seeing all of these things where constant waves of our
Speaker 1: experience dominate the world code. So I just I think
Speaker 1: it's really important about that's what God gave to us
Speaker 1: to share to the world.
Speaker 2: You did a TED talk about the use of AI
Speaker 2: in filmmaking, and you sounded like you really do think
Speaker 2: that film and music and culture and stories have the
Speaker 2: ability to literally change the world, and that if more
Speaker 2: people have the ability to make projects like this, that
Speaker 2: power only grows.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you a quick little story. So back
Speaker 1: in Warner Brothers music history, and I know this from
Speaker 1: the music industry because I was there before I came
Speaker 1: into film. When you take you used to have to
Speaker 1: go into a recording studio and you had to record stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was very expensive. And the first person to
Speaker 1: really do that in our community was Barry Gordy with Motown.
Speaker 1: Now Here comes MIDI recording, where you can do a
Speaker 1: drum machine and you can do all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: this seventeen eighteen year old kid has a demo and
Speaker 1: the head of music at Warner brothers went to see him,
Speaker 1: and it's Prince. And he asked, Prince, who played on
Speaker 1: your album? And he said, I played all the instruments, okay,
Speaker 1: But he had the drum machine, he had the task
Speaker 1: Can four track, he had the synthesizers, he had the guitar,
Speaker 1: and he sang, and you could now go and make
Speaker 1: an album r at least a demo in your bedroom, okay.
Speaker 1: And what that did, and the sampling and being able
Speaker 1: to sample music and put the samples in the keyboard
Speaker 1: exploded music. So what do you think is gonna happen
Speaker 1: when filmmaking gets affordable, that kids in bedrooms can now
Speaker 1: make movies. The same thing that happened with hip hop
Speaker 1: is about to happen with the longer visual form of storytelling.
Speaker 1: And you can't stop it. And that's what I talked
Speaker 1: about during my ted Ai talk. We've seen this before
Speaker 1: in technology with music industry. You can make you can
Speaker 1: make a full album off of your iPhone right now,
Speaker 1: right So the distance between what you imagine and what
Speaker 1: you you believe to happen, the distance between those two
Speaker 1: gets shorter and shorter and shorter. And AI is going
Speaker 1: to make that and it's going to bring the cost
Speaker 1: way down. Movie making is a very rich person's game.
Speaker 1: You're about to make it that kids are going to
Speaker 1: blow our minds with the place that they're going to
Speaker 1: take us.
Speaker 2: Now, it's a very I mean, I love to hear
Speaker 2: an optimistic vision for the future for once, But what
Speaker 2: do you say to people who say the opposite, that
Speaker 2: AI is simply going to kill creativity in film.
Speaker 1: You have people on both sides of the argument kind
Speaker 1: of promoting doomsday scenario. On either side, filmmaking is going
Speaker 1: to become so expensive it's going to die, or filmmaking
Speaker 1: is going to become soho cheap, no one's gonna make
Speaker 1: it anymore. Well, it never happens that way because as
Speaker 1: artists mature up. Prince didn't just stay recording in his bedroom, right,
Speaker 1: And when you saw many synthesizer bands, the ones who survived,
Speaker 1: they all went to real instruments, and you saw bands
Speaker 1: who hadn't used synthesize or pre recorded stuff go the
Speaker 1: other way. So why do you see Christopher Nolan and
Speaker 1: others shooting on imax and shooting on film stock. Why
Speaker 1: do you see that because they look at the masters
Speaker 1: that came before them, and there's stuff that they want
Speaker 1: to do, and they play with the technology and they
Speaker 1: go forward and backwards in time, and that's how all
Speaker 1: art is, you know, And so I'm not worried about it. Artists,
Speaker 1: artist tools change and change and change and change, but
Speaker 1: we are still connected to the artists and their journey
Speaker 1: and experience. And a robot or an AI system still
Speaker 1: needs to run through the human, you know, vessel that
Speaker 1: we as people will care about, right We want to
Speaker 1: know where you're from, what block you grew up on,
Speaker 1: what trials and tribulations you went through to make this
Speaker 1: piece of content. And that's when when the audience will
Speaker 1: care if you If it's just I spit it out
Speaker 1: on my computer, no one's gonna care, you know, we don't.
Speaker 1: We didn't care if Whitney, Houston are are what do
Speaker 1: you call? Dolly Pardon wrote I Will Always Love You.
Speaker 1: But when that song came out through Whitney, we heard
Speaker 1: we heard her mother, we heard Dion Warwick, her aunt,
Speaker 1: we heard her church upbringing, We heard all of that
Speaker 1: come through Whitney, and you can't replace that, you know.
Speaker 1: That's the part that I think is very special.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like you're saying that even if creators
Speaker 2: are finding ways to use tech in their work, it
Speaker 2: really all comes down to whether or not they're doing
Speaker 2: so in service of creating something authentic, you know, something new,
Speaker 2: something real, because if it's not authentic, your audience is
Speaker 2: really going to be able to sniff it out, like
Speaker 2: well know, yeah.
Speaker 1: We've had do you remember Milli Vanilli and sampling and
Speaker 1: people not singing on their own albums, whether it was
Speaker 1: AI or something else. We still crave authenticity, and authenticity
Speaker 1: will always trump that which someone didn't do. Even when
Speaker 1: it came to sampling, we wanted to know where did
Speaker 1: that sample come from? Oh that's Frank Sinatra. Are it's
Speaker 1: a hard knock life? Right? We wanted to know, And
Speaker 1: then the sample wasn't cheating. The sample was. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring another world, this white experience, into
Speaker 1: our black experience, and show you how they're the same.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have Annie tell you it's a hard knock life.
Speaker 1: And then I'm gonna pull Brooklyn in here right well
Speaker 1: that that pollenization is so beautiful and we've been doing
Speaker 1: it forever, so I'm again I'm not overly worried or
Speaker 1: concerned about it. We love authenticity and artists are going
Speaker 1: to have to be authentic in their own way, whether
Speaker 1: you're using voice samples or whatever. And we know the
Speaker 1: real deal and what we want because we get goosebumps when.
Speaker 2: It happens, and you you can't deny it, like real,
Speaker 2: recognize real. You know something when it's authentic and it's
Speaker 2: grounded in that experience, you can.
Speaker 1: Tell that's right one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, Stacey was able to repurchase movie Pass.
Speaker 2: He still runs it today along with the Mogul, a
Speaker 2: brand new platform that lets movie fans compete in fantasy
Speaker 2: style tournaments based on their favorite entertainment. Relaunched movie Pass,
Speaker 2: nearly one million people were waiting to sign up. I
Speaker 2: asked Stacy that it felt like he was recapturing someone
Speaker 2: the magic of the old days.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. So in four days we had eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people sign up for the wait list and
Speaker 1: people join and it went, you know, instantly, it was
Speaker 1: back and so we were very excited about that, and
Speaker 1: you know, we were catching back up when we first
Speaker 1: were born. We were the first to the party, and
Speaker 1: then afterwards it's been Now that you have sixty percent
Speaker 1: of theaters have some form of movie pass right, they
Speaker 1: have a subscription of their own. So now with Mogul
Speaker 1: and other things, we're even changing the space more. But
Speaker 1: it was such a How often does a founder get
Speaker 1: to go buy their baby back and relaunch it, you know,
Speaker 1: it just rarely happens.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That's like Steve Job and Michael Bell, Michael Dell from
Speaker 1: Dell Computers have gotten to go back and do that.
Speaker 1: That is a very rare thing. So I know how
Speaker 1: lucky we were to be able to do it. And
Speaker 1: it just meant so much of the fans that were
Speaker 1: so excited and we're posting like I want my movie
Speaker 1: pass back and that they were there when we were
Speaker 1: ready to bring it back. They were there. They were
Speaker 1: like I'm down. They love the idea that you can
Speaker 1: just go to any theater, to anywhere you want and
Speaker 1: just boom, here's my movie past. Let's go, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's what's really exciting, where all of the others
Speaker 1: you can only go to just that theater, that theater chain,
Speaker 1: but Movie Past you go wherever you want. So it's
Speaker 1: still a beautiful thing. And we are continuing to grow
Speaker 1: it and love being that epicenter for fans and fan fandom,
Speaker 1: if you will, and being able to have that voice
Speaker 1: for so many people.
Speaker 2: Stacey, I could talk to you all day.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for gug like honestly, just the
Speaker 2: fact that you have built such a great career and
Speaker 2: presence out of like nerdy like black nerd shit, I
Speaker 2: really like, Yeah, it really warms my heart. And you
Speaker 2: have such a passion for filmmaking and a passion for
Speaker 2: film It really is beautiful. So thank you for being here.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Bridget, thank you so much. And I'm actually working on
Speaker 1: a book called how to Watch Movies, and I there's
Speaker 1: so many times I was talking to people and I
Speaker 1: would say, like going see a kid's film, don't go
Speaker 1: see it at night. Go see it early in the
Speaker 1: afternoon when the theaters packed the kids, like you get
Speaker 1: a different experience. Like telling people how to go see
Speaker 1: movies can give you a different experience than just thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just go at eight o'clock at night or
Speaker 1: six o'clock at night? Are where to go see a movie?
Speaker 1: You go see a horror film, go see it uptown
Speaker 1: that's what you finished, right right. It's like there's places
Speaker 1: that you're gonna get a whole different experience if you
Speaker 1: go do things in different ways and help educate people
Speaker 1: on how to how to watch movies. It's a whole
Speaker 1: different thing.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait for this book when it comes back,
Speaker 2: when it comes out, please come back to the show.
Speaker 2: This is yes, you have no idea. You are like
Speaker 2: very much speaking of my language. I have a whole
Speaker 2: thing about how I go see a movie. Where I
Speaker 2: go see a movie, who I see it with, who
Speaker 2: I don't see it with. I have a whole philosophy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a bad experience if you pick the
Speaker 1: wrong person to go. Oh my gosh, I'll go by
Speaker 1: myself before I'll take the wrong persona same.
Speaker 2: Oh look, I love movies for myself. That's like my
Speaker 2: special place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, Bridgie, thank you so much. This
Speaker 1: was so awesome and wonderful.
Speaker 2: Oh the pleasure was all mine. Got a story about
Speaker 2: an interesting thing in tech. I just want to say hi.
Speaker 2: You can be just said hello at ten go. You
Speaker 2: can also find transcripts for today's episode at tagoiti dot com.
Speaker 2: There are no girls on the Internet. Was created by
Speaker 2: me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
Speaker 2: creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is
Speaker 2: our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, bridget Todd. If you want to help
Speaker 2: us grow, rate and review.
Speaker 3: Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
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