A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Epidemic of Celebrity Cowardice (with Gianmarco Soresi and Caroline Kwan)

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Neil Patrick Harris would like to make art that is “apolitical.” Sydney Sweeney “is not a political person.” Jelly Roll is a “dumb redneck” who we shouldn’t want to hear from, but we will be hearing his thoughts on global events “soon.” Ethan Hawke says we shouldn’t seek moral guidance from “a bunch of jet-lagged, drunk artists,” and perhaps he’s right. But at a time when celebrities who were once known for their political outspokenness have gotten strangely coy (Taylor Swift and Beyoncé come to mind), one naturally begins to wonder if something is amiss. And when LeBron James, who cites civil rights hero Muhammad Ali as an inspiration, says he’s heard “only great things” about Israel — now we’re just being, well, played. Today, Gianmarco Soresi, Caroline Kwan and I examine the marked shift pop culture has taken towards spinelessness and attempt to remedy it. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity. Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at https://www.blueland.com/fruity. Follow Gianmarco on Instagram. Watch Gianmarco’s podcast, The Downside. Watch Caroline on Twitch. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I wanted to start with a joke. I'm so excited. Hear it. So a gay man in Germany identifies as apolitical. I was wondering if you guys consider your art political. And if so, how can movies these days help fight the rise of fascism in Europe and America? Well, I think we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now. And so as artists, I'm always interested in doing things that are apolitical.

That's a joke. That's a joke. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good one. Not a comedy podcast, guys. Sorry. Hello, hello. And welcome back to A Bit Truvy. It feels like every week for the last several months, a new celebrity has stepped forward to bravely tell us one thing.

They are not political. After flirting with MAGA alignment for the better part of a year and gleefully becoming the object of Donald Trump's admiration. The president tweeted about the jeans ad, and I wondered what that was like. It was surreal. It was surreal. Sydney Sweeney declared herself,

quote, not a political person. Jelly Roll, who shook hands with Trump at a UFC rally not long ago, told journalists at the Grammys that... People shouldn't care to hear my opinion, man. You know, I'm a dumb redneck. I haven't watched enough. At the Berlin Film Festival,

which is still going on, a number of celebrities and filmmakers have continued to excuse themselves from questions about politics and how their work relates to it. Ethan Hawke told a journalist who asked about the genocide in Gaza, quote, the last place you probably want to look for advice in your spiritual counsel is a bunch of jet-lagged, drunk artists talking about their film. Maybe that's true.

But this all feels so far away from the pop culture of 10 years ago when it felt like virtually every celebrity was chomping at the bit to espouse progressive politics, especially when it came to anti-Trump sentiment during his first administration or on specific issues like the legalization of gay marriage or the brief collective reckoning over structural racism in 2020. Hashtag Blackout Tuesday. And while there are certainly some celebrities who didn't speak out then and there are some who do speak out very loudly now, shout out bad bunny, shout out Billy Eilish. I think it's undeniable that the median entertainer's willingness to speak out against anything really has plummeted significantly. And so today I want to interrogate why that is. I have some feces about some specific turning points in, I don't know, in the year 2023, but we will all throw our hat in the ring and see what happens. Today, I am so excited to be joined once again two episodes in a row by our friend Twitch pop culture streamer Caroline Kwan. Hi, I can't believe we're two weeks in a row. This is so exciting. This is my life now.

I really have you on retainer. And we are all. Also joined by a new friend of the show, John Marco Soresi is another anti-Zionist Jewish gay guy. And a big jelly roll fan. John Marco isn't gay, but if you're not familiar with John Marco Lure, I mean, where do you stand on being gay? Yeah, I'm not gay, but it's how I was raised. So it's a musical theater kid. So I would say that my social life was, was, was, uh, mostly gay growing up. I often feel like a middle-aged gay man spiritually. I look for those types of people to come on this show.

I went on John Marco's podcast, The Downside Last Year. It was where we met for the first time in person. And I will insert the clip here of me learning in real time that John Marco is not gay. Can I say something? You can say it. So we walked in, I walked in just now. And I asked if you lived here. And he said, no, my girlfriend.

He still live here. And I didn't know you were heterosexual. Oh. Oh, yeah. Wait, you learned on the podcast. Yeah. And by the way, not the first person to do so. We made a compilation, a compilation video of people finding out.

He mentioned his girlfriend. And I was like, I don't know if you've ever seen the clip of Britney Spears sitting next to Ryan Seacrest when Ryan Seacrest mentions a woman that he spent a night with, and Britney Spears looks into the camera and she mouths the word. She's like, woman? Because she thought Ryan Seacrest was gay. And that's the exact experience that I had with John Marco, where he was like, oh, yeah, like my girlfriend and I used to have this place as our apartment, but now it's our studio. And I was like, girlfriend. It's nice to be able to break barriers as a straight white man. Can I just say to, since we've mentioned jelly roll, one thing that has felt really ominous is a bunch of

these celebrities haven't just said, you know, I'm apolitical or whatnot. There's, there's also been almost a threat of, well, you'll find out, you know, I'm not going to say anything right now, but you'll find out soon. I'm like, I'm preparing a statement. I'm preparing a statement. Yes. I have a lot to say about it. And I'm going to in the next week. And everybody's going to hear exactly what I have to say about it in the most loud and clear way I've ever spoken my life. All will become clear. It's this very like Riddler type speak. I actually, got to include this in my outline. I don't know if you guys saw the quote from Rupert Grint. Yes. Yes. Formerly Ron Weasley. He's at the Berlin Film Festival right now and he was asked like

many of the celebrities we will talk about in this episode how he feels about like the rise of fascism. And he was like, you'll be hearing from me. Will we? I don't know. I feel like some ominous vibe to it. The actors are constantly proving the importance of writers. And that's what you got to remember a lot of these actors, you like them, but you're not hearing that it's writers. And then they get asked to say something. He's like, I'm going to, if he said, I'm going to consult a screenwriter to prepare a statement and I'm going to deliver the fuck out of it. I go, okay, that makes sense. Also, someone says, how do you feel about the rise of fascism? It's a pretty broad, like, you can just go, yeah, fuck that. That's all you have to say.

My statement on fascism is dropping. I think it was Juliet Benosh last year at Cannes Film Festival. She did something similarly. She was asked, so she was the film festival jury president. She was asked about why she had not signed this one of the letters, one of the global letters that was condemning the industry silence over the crimes being committed in Gaza. And she goes, I cannot answer you. You will maybe understand a little later. I mean, in her French accent.

But you maybe will understand it a little later. I thought we could get sort of a soft intro here with Sidney Sweeney, who, you know, I think is a less complicated case than some of these figures, but still reveals some of the same, like, structural rot within Hollywood that leads people to do this shit. I think most people know that Sydney Sweeney has sort of just become this like political lightning rod over the last year. You know, at the beginning, I was like, oh, she's, I don't think she's in on it. You know, I was willing to, to entertain the idea that, you know, and it's true. I think at the very beginning, there were a lot of, like, right-wing men online who were attributing, you know, the death of wokeness to

Sidney's boops. Like, that was a real thing that was happening. And at the beginning, I felt kind of badly for her, because I was like, you're just up there doing S&L in a dress. And suddenly there are think pieces about how wokeness is. dead. Then it seemed to me, and you guys are more inside the entertainment industry than I am, but it seemed to me like a PR strategy was acknowledged at a certain point where, you know, the president is tweeting about how Sidney Sweeney has the hottest ad, and she really gets like consumed by the right in this culture war over the American Eagle advertisement. And then she, you know, she's asked about it in interviews and she gives these coy answers, like, it's surreal.

And it felt like she was feeding into it because, and again, tell me what you think, but it felt like her PR team had decided we're going to cash in on this audience a little bit. Maybe cash in or I think more the opposite. It's like, okay, you're avoiding being talked about politically. People just wanted your soap of your bathwater and you're raking in money, raking in money. And then the president does this. And it's like, okay, if you respond negatively, you're going to just, lose money. I think just so much of this is the true defense would be, I'm going to lose a lot of money

if I say anything. And I mean a lot. And it's like, yeah, and that's why you're being criticized. Because ultimately you're saying, like, I don't want to give up all this money. And yeah, you're right. You're right. You have to sacrifice money for values. And so I don't even know if it's your PR team necessarily going like, oh, we're going to, we're going to cash in per se. I just think that the president tweet he's a fan of you what's your options you either are silent you either are coy which is same thing or you go uh fuck the fuck the president and then you lose a couple million dollars and you know it's tough but that's that's what you're faced with as a mega celebrity the one reason i think there is strategy here though is i don't know if you guys remember but a couple

years ago, Sydney, she had posted a video online. She was crying and she was talking about how exhausted and frustrated she was by being constantly sexualized. And again, this is before she really then leaned into the hyper-sexualization, the campaigns that were very clearly directed at horny young men. But she had posted this video where she was, she was very upset. And And I remember feeling empathetic for her. I said that's, you know, she's just a woman who is trying to succeed in this industry. She has boobs. Wow.

Okay. Let's, you know, let's consider more than her boobs here. As she became more famous, she seemed to, you know, whether this was her team or her, I don't know where it's coming from, really embrace the hypersexualization in order to sell these products. I don't think she went into that gene commercial. And again, maybe I'm wrong. I think she probably showed up on set.

This is the campaign. I have good genes. They came out and then you hear all this news and you go, oh, fuck, dude. What? What are they doing? And unfortunately, that's when you have to make the decision. You have to go, even if you had no intention, you just made a gene ad. You should make 10 ads an hour and you find out this one's being reappropriated.

And it's probably really annoying. It probably sucks to wake up and find out you're trending on white supremacist Twitter. And you go, oh, fuck. Now I got to figure this shit out. But that's what you have to do if you want to continue to participate in selling yourself as a human being. That's the marketplace that you've entered. Yeah. Well, needless to say, Sidney is now on the cover of Cosmopolitan currently.

It's on every newsstand in New York. This is her when she is advertising for her new lingerie line. The new lingerie line she's promoting, which Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell put a billion dollars into $1 billion, which is, okay, then that's why she was at Jeff Bezos's wedding. I digress. It's called Siren, but it's S-Y-R-N. This is not at all relevant to the theme of the episode, but I want a campaign for startups to bring back vowels into the names.

S-Y-R-N, CERN? It feels like, I feel like that's an old, I feel like we move past that. Like we were doing that for so long. Grindr, crumble. Like, let's just bring back the vowels. It's fine. It's actually okay. That's my party platform.

But you know why? It's because it's copyright. That's where, like, copyright is actually motivating aesthetic, where it's like they probably siren was taken. So they just had to misspell it. So you just had to make it CERN? Yeah. The next phase is they add vowels.

The next phase is it's side two eyes, a silent age. They totally could have done the thing. where have you ever been on like R-slash white people baby names or whatever that is where they'll take a name, you know. No, I haven't. I'm not subscribed to that particular sub-preda. Technically, R-slash-T-R-A-G-E-D-E-I-G-H.

They could have done like S-E-I-G-H-R-N. Right, you go the opposite direction where you add the most letters. Sure, sure. Regardless, she's on the cover of Cosmo and she said, quote, I'm not a political person. I'm in the arts. I'm not here to speak on politics. That's not an area I've ever imagined getting into. It's not why I became who I am. Just say you want money. Just say you want money. I just would respect honesty. Yeah.

At least at this point, instead of being like, I'm an artist. I want I want to be as rich as humanly possible because because the problem is again it's it's the division it's talking about the arts as some kind of ethereal concept that you participate in and the same way politics is some ethereal thing of course we all know we all agree here politics is everything politics is engaging in the world so you want to engage in the marketplace but not the not the world you want to sell yourself as a human being but not talk about what you actually think and feel and believe that's the hypocrisy of all this. It's like, if you don't want to engage in politics, go, go become, I guess, a mathematician or a physicist or an accountant or just sell, sell, you know, wood. I don't know,

but you're selling yourself. And then you want to say, oh, actually, I don't have any thoughts. Okay. I also just think that it's like, we're going to see more probably interesting revelations that come out of the relationship she has with Scooter Braun. A lot of people don't. know Scooter Braun's influence in like the whole sort of like Zionist activism within Hollywood scene. First of all, Scooter Braun has like a gazillion dollars from managing and exploiting a lot of very famous artists, music artists. And he is intimately tied in with all sorts of pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us, which is why, I don't know if you guys saw this, Sidney posed for a photo in the backyard of Scooter Braun's $65 million home in L.A.

With two former Israeli hostages turned, you know, sort of like activist slash like poster children for Israel, that got posted to the Stand With Us Twitter page. If you don't know what Stand With Us is, it's just a right-wing pro-Israel advocacy organization. And obviously that was the work of Scooter Braun being like, babe, Like, I don't think, do I think Sydney in earnest knows what the fuck is going on in the Middle East? No.

That scooter being like, babe, I have this photo op. Just do it. It's fine. And then we'll, like, go get lunch after. You know what I mean? Yeah. How many, how many dates do you wait for until you ask your partner to help with Israeli propaganda? Like, what's appropriate?

Is it a third date? Yeah. Six. Six date. It just, it just makes this whole song and dance. She's attempting to do, to me, more egregious. You were saying that this is about. not bleeding money. But now it seems like she's trying to walk back from it. So do you think that's

still the same calculus of just trying not to bleed money and eventually the right wing thing became too toxic? Yeah, I think so for sure. Or maybe for all I know, she's saying, I really don't like this. I feel like I'm on the bad side of things. Can I go up and say like, I think people should be treated well. And the team's like, I don't know. I don't know if you can say that. And it reminds me a I'm not a Taylor Swift person, just no reason at all. But I remember that documentary where you really got to watch. I felt like it was an honest portrayal of her team being like, if you make this statement, it really is going to fuck sales up. And that was kind of a look where, you know, and of course, this is the part that they presented.

I'll never trust a documentary produced by the people it's about. But it was her kind of with the money people being like, we should do something. They're like, we really shouldn't. Can we do anything else? And we don't really know internally what those negotiations are. However, when she's with Scooter Braun and doing this picture, there's an overall picture that you do start to see emerge in terms of what she's concerned about. So yeah, maybe it was a shift financially.

Maybe she felt a little bit bad. Sure, sure. Well, the one thing with the Taylor Swift doc, too, is that she specifically mentioned the Dixie Chicks. She talked about in 2003 when famously the Dixie Chicks spoke out against George Bush. and the rock war and were one of the actual and first instances of a cancellation. And that was what Taylor was referencing as far as this is what happens when you challenge power. This is what happens when you speak out. And look at the Dixie Chicks.

They suffered for it. Can I just say about that too? It's so interesting that Taylor Swift has cited the Dixie Chicks as an example of good activism and sacrifice for good. we're going to talk later about like LeBron James having the same sort of admiration for Muhammad Ali but also Taylor Swift and LeBron James both being billionaires now. Name dropping these people as influences only to not follow in their footsteps in truly any meaningful way. Sorry like it's it's a little wild to me. Yeah. Well, they're billionaires and that's I think the that's on the story.

I do feel bad for for some of the country singers because like listen even if if jelly roll suddenly became very progressive and spoke out against ice, I still wouldn't listen to him. Sure. And that's tough. I can't get behind it. But yeah, the Dixie Chicks, their whole career got fucked because of it. And so you can't have sympathy for someone who goes, I really want to be a good person and a billionaire. Until you realize that those two things are at odds with each other, you're not going to get respect from the progressive side of things.

Also to anyone in who might be like, it's the chicks now. Yes, the Dixie Chicks changed the chicks. Just talking about the Dixie Chicks as they were as they were in 2003. Yeah. One point before I forget it on Sidney Sweeney in this Cosmo article, what she says in the article about Siren, aka Shrin, is that I want to show women that we can take back our power and fully free ourselves. Like this is a quote from the article.

And then she went on to talk about how. Hyran stands for the power of choice. Women can take back their power through a fast fashion lingerie line funded by Jeff Bezos. Okay. Okay. I mentioned in the intro how everything we're seeing now with like celebrities taking or I should say refusing to take stances on anything feels like such a far cry from a decade ago,

even with some of the very people we've been talking about, including Taylor Swift. And so I want to just revisit that era for people who've forgotten it, people who are extremely young listening to this podcast and don't really remember what that was like. My real pop awakening that coincided with my gay awakening was 2009, 2010, which was when Lady Gaga really is born this way. Gay, straight, or by lesbian, transgender light, like saying the word transgender in a pop song that was on the radio, wow, woke really was alive and well. That, like, had a real impact on me. That really, to me, kicked off the decade of a, of a, of like so much sort of like political celebrity activism type stuff.

And I do think for a lot of them it started in earnest. Mm-hmm. You know, there were multiple global social justice campaigns and movements that were taking place in the 2010s. And because the support was so huge, it was something that became safe for a lot of these celebrities to adopt it into their brands, because that's really. really what it is. So it was Black Lives Matter. It was, you know, support for victims of sexual abuse through movements like Me Too, other movements like Times Up. I mean, there was a lot

that was happening in the 2010s. Gay marriage, Occupy. I think what can be really tough to know is like, okay, so let's say people are obviously capitalizing. They go, oh, gay is in. Or wow, gay fans really participate. They see shows and they buy tickets. And there's a part where it's like, okay, even if it's cynical, if it's for a good cause, if it's for like being more accepting, is it a good thing ultimately? And then when the tides turn economically, you go, did we get any progress that lasts when the money's not there? And I don't, I don't know the answer to that because part of me is like, it is good. I remember my gay roommate in college from musical theater. are playing born this way, and they were moved. And it was a beautiful thing. Absolutely. I do think nuance can be held in the conversation of like a lot of the work that these people put out when it's economically viable to do so has a positive impact. Like Firework by Katie Perry, that music video showed two young gay guys kissing. And I sat in my bedroom in middle school. and I would the one second, one second where they kissed, I replayed it over and over and over and over and over again.

And I was like, this is like, baby, you're a firework. Yeah, I was like, I was like, I want that. Like, that's real to me. So, so I think like the net effect of that stuff can be good. And then also we have to ask these questions relating to capitalism, which is like, why did all of this stuff come out at a very specific time in pop culture and why isn't really happening now in the same way? You know what I mean? Just so you know, Matt, the experience that you had watching Firework with Katie Perry is the same experience young straight guys now have watching the Sydney Sweeney Eagles at. They go, oh, oh my God.

That means so much to me. Oh, my God. It's finally a safe time to be young straight men in America. Wow. It really is. I mean, look, I think there are, we have to make a difference to in social issues that are still a lot. lot safer, safer, you know, as far as you're not going to get as much backlash or you won't worry about as much controversy. And I think supporting, you know, supporting the LGBTQ community,

is one that a lot of artists will still kind of hide behind, I think, when they don't want to talk about Palestine. When they don't want to talk about Palestine. I mean, this all comes down, I think, this conversation today to talking about how Palestine is the litmus test for a lot of these artists for a lot of these celebrities who have built these brands out of championing equality, championing acceptance, you know, appealing to marginalized groups who they have profited from. That like these are social issues that have helped further their careers that have helped increase their net worth, have grown their audiences. But at the end of the day, there is still safety in say going, I love gay people, you know, let's all be gay versus

is talking about support for Palestinian liberation. Yes. There's a lot of homophobia in Hollywood, undeniably. But there is also a tradition in Hollywood of celebrities, but also executives and people high up in industry who are conservative, but are friendly to issues like gay marriage or like the legalization of weed. And this is to me the lie of I'm a social liberal, but I'm a fiscal conservative. Because when you are a fiscal conservative, and that means requiring you to appeal to power so that you can continue your income,

and that means sacrificing, for example, Palestinians, because standing up for the most oppressed people among us in society right now becomes an issue to your bottom line. Well, suddenly you're not so socially liberal anymore because it's like socially liberal for who. So that makes sense? I guess sometimes I get curious, Matt, I feel like whether it's Neil Patrick Harris of it all,

I wonder what it's like as a gay person to look at Israel. And I think one of the defenses that they go is they go, hey, this place is more friendly towards gay rights than other places in the world. And that is the hook of like, that's why I support this thing. We will put a pin in Neil Patrick Harris that we will take out later in the episode. but I do think just as a quick note, like it's about realizing that like liberation for people is most certainly not a zero-sum game

and that like you as a white gay man are not the last frontier of liberation. That's what it means to me. And this is like such a syndrome that a lot of like white gay men have, frankly. I mean, a lot of people have it, but it's like white gay men have it in their own way where they are just so invested in like, LGBT pride causes or AIDS-related causes and that stuff is all good, but they think that it's like

where it stops, you know, and that if you have freedom to walk down the street in Tel Aviv as a gay man, then that's sort of like the moral endgame for you as a human being on this planet. And it's like, well, I mean, it's just it's just not. Like there's just other people who have it worse than us right now. And that's not about making a competition of suffering. It's just like, okay, but I, I, I, I can understand my suffering and I am willing to fight back on it. So we should be able to do the same for other people. I always think about like Emil Joaquin who was on SNL for one season. Should have been renewed, but wasn't.

And he did this very brave moment on weekend update where he was basically like, you know, if you stop bombing Gaza, like they say, oh, you can't have gay rights in Gaza. Like stop bombing them. They'll get to gay. Yeah. But you have to stop bombing them first. And I think about it that way. It's not a zero-sum game where, like, I get my gay rights or Neil Patrick Harris gets his gay rights and then, you know, so Gaza can't have, or they get their rights in Gaza so I can't have my rights as a gay man.

It's just, you have to think bigger than that, you know? Yeah, it's really like a thing, like, not realizing like, yeah, there's gay Palestinians. It's just not seeing, obviously, a group of people as, as people. And it's like, it's like, yeah, it's, if we're talking about gay rights, it's not just gay rights of the people on this border that keeps expanding. it is it's global. Anyway, not to zoom through a decade too quickly and not to simplify it, but this was sort of a theme throughout the 2010s where like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Katie Perry, Gaga, Kesha. I mean, I just named women because that's who I think about as a gay guy who loves pop music.

But everyone sort of like did this political pop. To me, this reached a saturation point with Taylor Swift's, you need to calm down music video, which sort of just represented home. homophobia as this like Westbro Baptist Church style like incoherent hatred, which is not typically how homophobia I think shows up for a lot of people. And it just seems like a, you know, a really cynical weaponization, I think to a lot of gay people of like LGBT culture and celebrities. I also think about this decade through the lens of the prom, which was a it was a musical and then adapted by Ryan Murphy into a movie that was not good. But the premise is funny because the prom is. about a group of flailing celebrities who feel like they need to attach themselves to like a safe

cause to revive their careers. So one of them goes on Twitter and learns that a high school in Indiana has canceled their prom because a lesbian student wanted to bring her girlfriend. So the celebrities then go to that town in Indiana and like cynically attach themselves to this girl's cause for their own benefit. And then of course it becomes like a heartwarming thing, but that's the premise. That's to me, a lot of the 2010s was celebrities being like, what's a brand safe cause to utilize for my career? Well, I think what also needs to be mentioned is Beyonce's Super Bowl halftime show when she had the, you know, revolutionary Black Panther aesthetics. It was very explicit in the symbolism.

And there are still Beyonce fans who, just like other, you know, stands of any major, major pop star, who try and do the whole, no, no, no, Beyonce is actually, you know, she's not just a billionaire. She's not just a massive brand and everything she does is in service of that. Who will still point to that Super Bowl performance as in, no, no, no, no, but that was, that's Beyonce. You know, don't focus on the fact that as Beyonce has become a billionaire, she and Jay-Z have only, you know, quadrupled their wealth that they have become less and less even participating in this display of political aesthetics. Was there a picture of the two of them?

They were like getting dinner with Kushners, weren't they? Yes. Yes. A few months ago, Beyonce and Jay-Z were at some like fundraising gala or something with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner sitting at a table with them. I mean, look, I know Beyonce has shooters, you know, as do Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and all these people. Obviously, I'm on Twitter. I know that they exist.

You can love these people's work. I have loved a lot of these people's work. And you should be able to criticize them, you know? Like, please just know that before you come into the comments section. It's kind of the opposite of separating the art from the artist where it's like, just because someone's art is good. doesn't mean that the artist is good as well. If you're a fucking billionaire, that speaks a lot to who you are as a human being. And you don't have to go, oh, their art is bad,

or their art doesn't even present as revolutionary, or their art doesn't say something good. But that doesn't mean the artist themselves is a good person. And I don't think they should be allowed to ride on the image that they are a good person while they participate in bad things. Yeah, this is a quote from an essay from Jason King in 2019 in Pitchfork called Activism, Identity Politics, and Pop's Great Awakening. Only a small handful of moneyed elite superstars have enough of a platform and budget to be able to make certain kinds of highly charged political statements, even in a diminished music economy. But the flip side is that those same artists are not likely to upset, disrupt, or criticize the capitalist system that has facilitated their success.

And I think that's ultimately like what you saw happen with this decade. Times and presidents changed. The political landscape became less conducive to celebrity branding. And the vast majority of them, I think, dropped that part of their brand as quickly as they'd adopted it. And I wanted to note here that Taylor Swift and Beyonce both recently showed their tour films in Israel. Now, anyone who knows about, you know, the boycott divestment and sanctions movement knows that cultural boycott. is a key component of that. You are not supposed to show your tour film in Israel.

That's, you know, part of a peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza. And I just remember specifically there was a video that came out of a theater, a movie theater in Israel. I don't know if you guys saw this. I was at the screening. Okay. All right, funny guy. Pack it up.

They were in the theater and they were waving Israeli fly. flags singing, you won't break my soul. Yes. And all of that is part of reputational whitewashing. That is normalizing these unbelievable crimes against humanity that are committed on every single day basis. And of course, and it's like the reason they're doing it is because it's the bottom line is they want money.

And it's the same way that a company, if they found out that, you know, they could dispose of their waste in the local lake and it saved the money, they would do it. But we have laws. hopefully that are all going away, laws that say you can't. And when it comes to art, unfortunately, you might not have laws that govern where the art can be spent. And it's up to the fans to make economic decisions that put pressure on these. Because Bionthe is not a person. She's a company.

It's about the consumers to enforce the social laws and pressures that force them navigate things. I don't think they made the decision. And I could be wrong. I don't think they made the decision about Israel because it was like, well, I believe, I believe in the right for Israel to exist. They go, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And it's like, yeah, it's up to the fans as annoying or as they'll be painted as annoying or woke or whatever the fuck. That's the only guardrails that these corporate entities of artists have to guide them because there's no laws.

people are the laws. They are the rules. They are the guides. And it's tough if you love an artist, but that's your role as a consumer. Exactly. I wanted to give a shout out to this show's longest running sponsor, Blue Land, for sponsoring this episode of the show. It's a new year, out with the old, in with the new. So why are you still using cleaning products that are full of unnecessary plastics, have bulky packaging and stack up to unnecessary costs. Listen, I know it is hard to break the routine of buying the same products that you're used to over and over and over again, but I do think that Blue Land is worth changing things up. Blue Land is a line of sustainable home cleaning products

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first order at blueland.com slash fruity. That is blu land.com slash fruity. Now, let's get back to the show. So, I know that a lot of things have changed in the world since Trump won, since the 2010s, since this like sort of woke era of pop culture, as we've been describing it. However, my personal thesis around all of this that we circled around a little bit, is that October 7th fundamentally changed the way that celebrities think of themselves as like having roles in political discourse and their willingness to say anything about anything. Do you think that is a fair thesis? Yeah, it made it way more complicated than I think it had been in the past.

Even when I think about when I was younger, it was so easy to be like, oh, I'm a Democrat because it was centered around gay rights. which again, Democrats were never spotless in that record. But it was like, oh, this is an easy thing. It's like this side is against gay people getting married. This side is for it. And I think that childish view of the world was the celebrity view with a lot of issues. And suddenly they were like, oh, the world's more complex than this.

And, you know, it's not easy to make a statement and just raking money. Do any of you want to talk about your experience in the entertainment? in the industry around and in the aftermath of October 7th because like I'll start like does anyone want to talk about it I do but like I had representation as like an as like an influencer at a big talent agency before October 7th and you know I've told this story to my friends but I started speaking out about Palestine because I thought it was the morally correct thing to do not long after October 7th because the genocide started and been ramped up very quickly. It did not go over well at that talent agency.

And there were lots of headlines coming out at the time about all sorts of people like more famous and in traditional media than I was being punished by these similar talent agencies like Susan Sarandon, like Melissa Barrera. I remember before I was officially dropped by that talent agency, I at one point was in a Zoom call with celebrities, like real celebrities, who were all kind of like, you know, getting from their fans online, like, what do you think about Israel? What do you think about Palestine? What do you think? October 7th, October 7th, say something, say something, say something. And for the first time, like you said, John Marco, because a lot of these people had simplified ideas of just like, well,

we're anti-Trump. So we define our politics as being anti-Trump. They were like, we don't know what to say because we don't know a lot about this. And the sort of like institutional around what you could and couldn't say was very explicit. And that I think is why I did not last at that talent agency. And that was totally fine because now I do, you know, everything by myself. And I'm very happy that way. But there was, and I think we all remember this, but especially if you were sort of inside of the entertainment industry around that point,

there was a real silencing of dissent. I mean, like Melissa Barrera dropped from scream. I think the chilling effect was just undeniable. And to me, that is the turning point because as the genocide got worse and as public opinion changed and as it sort of just became undeniable, you couldn't deny what was in front of your eyes, a lot of people in entertainment were forced to do so. And look at what happened to Rachel Zegler, right? And just the constant harassment from entertainment media, from fans, from her own bosses. that muddied the waters in terms of celebrities feeling like they knew anything about anything or had a place in saying anything political about anything.

I just think the chilling effect was so large. And so like, am I going to ever be hired again if I step into politics? Meanwhile, three years ago, you were talking about BLM. You were talking about gay marriage. You were talking about all of this stuff. But now it's all just too complicated because Palestine. Like, I really do think it's not all that. that simple, but I think that's a huge part of it. I mean, it's stressful in a way, like,

you and I, uh, just speaking in terms of like what are, what our businesses are, we have a very direct one-to-one relationship with people that ultimately result in us making a living. And I do think a lot of these, these actors, some of them, it's like they really are in this system that they, for some of them, they didn't realize how Zionist it was. And there's so many powerful people that have a firm line about this one thing. And they'll, listen, agents are not known for having kind of a strict moral backbone. They'll represent Tucker Carlson and, you know, Don Lemon on the same agency. If people understood who these agencies represented and how these three major agencies represent people across the spectrum, and in a way, there was a freedom in that as a performer.

You said, well, I didn't have to bend the knee to anything because they don't have any conscience. And then there was this one thing. There was this one thing where it was like, actually, we do care about that. And in a way, I didn't feel in effect because frankly, I wasn't successful enough that it mattered. I wasn't in a movie to be kicked off of. My business is a one-to-one with people buying tickets or not. And I got the benefit, of course, of being a Jewish person, a Jewish man. A straight Jewish man.

let's do the full spectrum of all the privileges I had to speak out and be honest with whatever. But I think a lot of these actors were terrified. We're terrified because I think for some of them, it did threaten their whole livelihood and they didn't realize it. And unfortunately, they had benefited off the social causes that were easy to speak on and were confronted with something new. It's like, yeah, you made a deal with the devil to a degree. And now you have to face it. 1,000% there was and still is blacklisting that's happening when Melissa Barrera's firing was so public and caused a huge backlash.

And I think that that was not anticipated because, again, for the most part in the entire history here, people have been kept in the dark about Israel's behavior. They have been largely like, oh yeah, Israel, democracy ally in the Middle East, you know, great friend to the U.S. And so when things started to switch, there was a backlash to these firings. And so what they did instead was they kept blacklisting, but they did behind closed doors. They did not make it as obvious. And I remember, I mean, I covered this on stream on October 7th. And looking back on that, that was wild because I did not anticipate what would happen afterwards. And I, so my career, I was working in the entertainment industry. COVID happened and then I switched to being a digital content creator. And I covered the events as they were unfolding on October 7th. And that led to crazy smear campaign, just the worst harassment I've ever experienced in my life. I was thinking to myself, if I were still trying to pursue a

career in Hollywood, I'm fucked. Like if I ever try to go back, you know, if I ever try to go back and be a screenwriter, you know, I still have some scripts floating around. Like I still have a script at this one production company. I am fucked because of how obviously the blacklisting of people who have this perspective have been taking this stance is. And I know we've mentioned talent, high profile talent who got fired, but do you all remember Maha Dakeal, I think her name is? Maha Dekiel.

Yes. She was head of co-film at CAA, I think. Yes. And they came for her. And you know what's fascinating about the Mahadakil story? So she is one of the biggest agents at CIA, which is one of the biggest talent agencies in entertainment. She represents Tom Cruise, Madonna, Olivia Wild, Natalie Portman, these enormous blockbuster artists. What happened because what she posted on her Instagram story shortly after the genocide began was a graphic that said,

if you're ever wondering what you'd be doing during a genocide, this is it, which by today's standards is in sort of run-of-the-mill take. But at the time, you could not say that. But did they fire her? No, because she brought in too much money. What they did was they punished her within CIA. They took her off of some board that she was on, I think temporarily. And to me, the hope in that,

story is that, you know, like, we need our own structures that have moral clarity. And that's why, I mean, that's why we live in a capitalist country. And so part of it is like, you have to decide financially to support the things that you want. I don't think we're ever going to have a major agency. America will crumble before there is a major agency that competes with the big three that is not a very Zionist leading an industry. It's not going to happen. That's why you got to support completely non-problematic celebrities like Tom Cruise because those money people, they're there.

But listen, the world's complicated. It's a good thing what Tom Cruise did. To be clear, Tom Cruise stood up for Maha to kill, and that's part of why they did not fire her completely. Yes. And Tom Cruise is, he kills me because he's done a lot of great things, you know, how he protects people on SADS, make sure people are compensated. But then at the same time, it's just a little.

thing. But yes, you're right. It's like what needed to happen and then what did happen was people with real power who Tom Cruise himself might not be, you know, out there educating around what it means to be anti-Zionist, but he stepped in to use his power in the industry to stop them from completely throwing Mahadakil in the trash. And that's why it can sometimes feel exhausting. I do understand when people get kind of tired of celebrities choosing what pin to wear at whatever festival and as if that's worthy of applause. But I

will say that when you have powerful celebrities who like a Mark Ruffalo who's going to continue working no matter what, they end up clearing a path to a degree of saying like, look, your people can express this opinion without you blacklisting them.

They become a coalition of you can't get rid of 50 of these top earning actors. They use their money and their power to give head clearance for people beneath them. Because ultimately, sometimes these conversations, we talk about Susan Sarandon, who, again, I admire what she does, but she's also okay. She's got money. There's people, I know a comedian where it's like they were fired from the agency and they

don't have money. They're not going to get scooped up by UTA because this other agency dropped them. And those are the ones that we're not even talking about because we don't even know who they are because they really took a hit. That's why it's, it's not worthy. Oh, Beyonce did a kind of a, had a lyric that was cool 10 years ago. It is the chicks. They lost their career. And thus we don't even talk about them as much anymore. Well, that's how fucked. Speak for yourself. I'm talking about them all this. And good. And good. And that's that's putting your, you know, putting your money where where your heart is.

And I'm never going to go in here like, oh, don't ever support or don't ever listen to the music. We can't deny what we want artistically sometimes. But you can go out of your way to financially support people whose views you admire because the industry is not going to look out for the ethics. Tom Cruise, listen, he may have stood up for that agent, but I promise you when he wants El Ron Hubbard's great granddaughter to become a movie star, he's going to come knocking in and get that favor back. This is not an ethical industry. I will say I still have, you know, I have a lot of, a lot of empathy and sympathy for people who are caught between a rock and a hard place because they, they don't have money and power like a Mark Ruffalo.

But there are still a lot of people who don't have those protections. And yet, you do have Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo and Hannah Einbinder and just a lot of big talent in the industry who have. expressed publicly support for Palestinian liberation, have called the genocide a genocide. So when you have other famous names that are refusing to join them, it's like, I don't know anymore if this is working for you as far as the, oh, if I say anything, I'm screwed. The last thing I want to say before we talk about the film festival that is still going on and the Shakespearean drama that is unfolding there. I just want to say, John Marco, when I went on your

podcast a little while ago, it was still earlier in the genocide. And I have receipts of the chilling effect around free speech and entertainment affecting me in my own psyche. It's nobody was telling me what to do. I had internalized the censorship. And I was self-censoring because after I got home from doing our recording, I message you on Twitter. Hi, babe. Thank you for having me today. I had fun. Quick edit request for you. Could you cut the part at the beginning where I'm like, is this a safe space to say fuck Israel? L.O.L.L. The message is true, but the tone didn't land how I like to. L.O.L. Heart. Who, who was I censoring myself for? Like, this is the thing. This is the thing. This is the thing. I know that there are maybe a few celebrities who listen to this

podcast. I don't say that to have a big head. I just know that that's true. And it's like, listen, as a podcaster, I know I'm not a movie star or a pop star or whatever, but like as a podcaster, I am in the rare privileged position to be financially supported through Patreon, through advertisers. I'm good. Who am I censoring myself for? That's the message that if you, not that this is just like a podcast for like the three. celebrities who might be listening to this, but it's like, you're fine financially. Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle Yo. Like, we're going to talk about them.

But like, who is this for? Is this really you can have a second beach house? I don't know. Listen, I'm not Mother Teresa. Like, I'm not an infallible perfect person. I'm just like, in hindsight, I look at that self-censorship that I was doing that I know a lot of these people with, frankly, a lot more money than me are doing. And I'm just like, for what?

You know, that's my impassioned rant. I just think like, listen, when you look at what a movie costs to make, there's a little bit of a tangent, but there's someone who's been very much talking about Broadway, is the sweaty Oracle is his name. And he like does kind of, you know, rants about Broadway and theater. And he's very, very funny. But he's been reflecting pretty harshly on how many Broadway producers and whatnot are in the Epstein emails. And I think the cynical part of me goes like, yeah, What do you think Broadway shows cost, if something costs 20 million to make, and that's the money that you need to fund, it's going to be connected towards rich people. Rich people are connected to bad things because to get that fucking rich, oftentimes you have to be a little bit of a sociopath. And it's the same with movies where like there's a degree where I think you get to this point. You don't know you're being constrained in your views because you haven't had to confront it or it's been easy. and you get to a certain level where you're working in movies and you get to work with cool people and fun projects

and you're famous and you're making, you're not just rich, you're filthy rich. And then you find out, oh, there is this one thing you should not, you can't talk about. And you're already here. And these movies cost a lot of money and they are tied to a lot of people that will not put you in that big movie anymore. And you are going to be in pain.

And you haven't been honest on the way up. you haven't necessarily expressed your views on the way up. You know, Rachel Zegler, she's expressed herself. She can now kind of with a more clear conscience, continue to be a movie star. And anyone who works with her, producers, directors, they will have had to deal with the fact that she's been outspoken and she's expressed these things. Some of these celebrities, they never did. They never talked about anything. And it's true.

Their careers might change. There might be some movies. They lose if they speak out. And they can't expect people to not give them shit for it. That's the bargain you made. And yeah, it sucks. It sucks for you that if you speak out, it's going to affect some of the movies you get to do. That's life.

That's life. It's also like there are people who are speaking out who are students on visas. Yes, exactly. You have infinitely still, infinitely more protections and more. privileges than people who are getting yanked off the streets. Like a couple years ago, this environment of fear and chilling speech, I get more people who were in a position to and didn't say anything. But now it doesn't, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work because the other thing is that they're not just asking them about Palestine. It's like they're asking them about fascism. in the United States, yet they can't even, they're so afraid to say anything about fascism. And the beautiful art that they make, sorry, the beautiful art that they make the movies or whatever, having just recently, I just did kind of a tour of some countries in Asia. And, you know, I'm going to Hong Kong. And I'm going to, I'm going to places where the art you can make is a lot more limited than it is in, in America or other parts of Europe or other parts in Asia, too. but like the rise of fascism will affect the art you're able to make.

And maybe right now you're able to make that period piece where you get to talk about, you know, like a gay person in the Holocaust and you get to talk about the struggle that they had and you get to dive into humanity. For now, but that was earned. That freedom was earned. And the things that we're talking about now will encroach on the movies that you've. get to make and the stories you get to tell. And that's the disconnect where you go like, don't you understand the movies that you're allowed to make were hard won by people who sacrificed money for humanity. And if you don't have power, if you don't have power, like let's say, I don't think anyone's asking, you know, they're asking the big celebrity some of these questions,

but like, let's say you're an actor and you're like, you're broke, you got in a movie, it's shocking. It's in a festival, but you were paid sag rates, so you don't have any money from this. You could go, I'm scared to say what I think because I'm worried it's going to have an impact. Like, at least say that. Even that is better than going like, oh, I got a lot of thoughts and you'll be hearing from me at some point. Just say, be honest about it. Especially when you have athletes at the Olympics who are speaking out more than these artists who have in the past, you know, proudly talked about how political these film festivals are and how important the, you know, the role of art can play inspiring conversation and fostering human connection. And like just the fact that the silence from these artists, this attempt to claim a political status, when you got goddamn, you. skiers pissing in, or sorry, is Gus Kenworthy skier?

Gus Kenworthy, who peed and who peed fuck ice? You're asking the, skier snowboard. Skier snowboard. You got skiers pissing fuck ice into the snow. I love that the one sports question was like the only time in the last hour and a half that there has been total silence. But per your point about money, like people with a lot of money and power, you know, speaking out. Like, it's the same with athletes. Like, if you're brutally talented, like, you know,

Baham and Ali, it was a degree of like, what are you going to do? Take him out of boxing? And this is the marketplace. People are going to fill up Madison Square Garden to see this guy throw a punch. And it's like, that's a lot of power. And he used that power to speak honestly in a way where no one could be like, hey, you talk like that again. We're not going to let you in the ring. In Hollywood, that is true a lot. But with athletes especially, it's like, if you're fucking the best. Nothing anyone can do to shut you up. But also what I want to say is like when Muhammad Ali spoke out when he, you know, said, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go fight over in Vietnam in this bullshit war. That was at a time when he really was one of the few

prominent superstars that was saying that in the same way that the chicks in 2003, especially as country artists, you know, they really were on an island. And so right now, there is so, there's such an outcry. You got people in Minnesota who are like, I have never protested a day of my life. You know, they're on the news saying this. But fuck this shit. I am going out because I can't, you know, I will not sit here and

and do nothing. And so this is not even a time period that, oh, if you say something, then, you know, you're going to be by yourself and you have to shoulder all of that backlash. Yeah. I want to shout out Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. It is a new year. Trump sure as shit hasn't done anything for affordability. And it's

time to think about how we can budget responsibly in 26. Budgeting is something that my dad has always instilled in me. And even when I thought he was being really annoying about it, he, as always, was right. Shout out to you, dad. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. The app is really clean and easy to understand. It gives you a dashboard where you can see all of your subscriptions and repeated expenses in one place and helps you cancel the ones you don't want or need anymore with just a few clicks. It's a really easy and accessible way to just feel like you always have a handle on exactly what money is coming in and out, you know? Rocket money

has over 5 million users and saves them an average of $740 a year. when they use all of the app's premium features. If you'd like to start canceling your unwanted expenses and grow your savings, you can head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That is rocketmoney.com slash fruity. Now it is time to get back to the show. So in speaking about genocide, now let's shift focus to the site of one of the worst genocides in history, Germany, where a certain film festival has been taking place.

and it has not been going well. So the Berlin Film Festival has been going on for the last week or so. The drama that has been unfolding there with regard to what celebrity is willing to say or not say anything about what is going on in the world has just been reaching Shakespearean levels. And I want to walk through it. I want to walk through this drama and see what we learn from it. So the film festival opened last Thursday, I believe, with a press conference with the festival's voting jury, where a journalist asked about the role of film in politics and specifically about Germany's ongoing support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.

I also have a political question. I was hoping to get a quick answer from everyone because since Avat said, you know, changed the world. This festival does not happen in a vacuum. The Berlinale as an institution has famously shown solidarity with the people in Iran and Ukraine, but never with Palestine, even today. So my question is in light of the German government support of the genocide in Gaza and its role as the main fund of the Berlinale. Do you, as a member of the jury, support this selective treatment of human rights? It should be mentioned here that the festival has previously taken hard stances on other global

events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. First, the Polish producer, Ewa Pusinska, apologies, pronounced that wrong, said this. Oh, not just the Polish producer, producer of zone of interest. She produced zone of interest. She produced zone of interest. All right. Here we go. Does the jury want to answer? I mean, I think we also want to talk about films in the festival, but. Well, films are political, as you just said. You know, the films are not political in the meaning of the world. I think you think of the meaning of the world. Asking, ask this question is a little bit unfair,

because, you know, this is, we are trying to, not, you know, we use the word change the world, but of course we are trying to talk to people, every single of the viewer, and to make them think. But we cannot be responsible for what their decision would be, would be the decision to, you know, to support Israel or would be the decision to, you know, support Palestine. Or, you know, this is we can talk about Senegal and all the other wars, you know. You just pointed the most, the biggest, but there are many other wars where genocide is, you know, committed.

And we do not talk about that. So this is very complicated questions. And I think, as I said, it's a bit unfair asking us. That's real. All genocides. matter. All genocytes matter, but you know what? We won't even talk about any of them.

We always say that this film festival, we want to change the world, but we didn't really mean that. How dare you ask us such a question? Yeah, I also can't get over her saying this is not a fair question. And something that has really left me quite flummoxed is these jury presidents and members of juries at these international film festivals getting caught off guard or going, well, hold on a sec, this isn't fair. as if they don't expect that these questions are going to be asked when these questions have been asked over the last couple years when the question arises of, hey, these institutions are complicit, especially Berlin Film Festival because of Germany.

Like, Germany is aiding and abetting Israel's actions in Gaza and in the West Bank. And this was the same thing when Alexander Payne, who was the jury president at Venice, he was asked about Palestine. He was asked about, you know, are these institutions remaining silent, these film institutions complicit then? He said he was unprepared. He's like, I'm unprepared to answer this question. I go, how the fuck are you unprepared? You're not unprepared. You don't want to answer the question.

And when it comes to the matter of fairness, I apologize. It's like you participated in an industry that's about society and per what she said, politics. Like, like, if you wanted to open a bakery and it's, it's in your back, you're a small bakery and you're trying to do an interview about your croissants. And the first question they ask you about is like, make a statement on Israel. I could understand a little more so being like, oh, fuck, man. I'm, I really, there's a lot of, there's, this is in Brooklyn. I was hoping to get some of these sales. Can we figure this out later?

But this is the movie festival in Germany that involves political movies. Like, that's the industry you chose. Yes. Sorry. Sorry, it's inconvenient right this moment. It benefits you in other times. You don't just get to pick and choose. I love the idea of being interviewed about your croissants.

Anyway, so then Vim Vendors, who is this famous for decades filmmaker and who is the head of the jury at this film. Festival takes the mic and says, We cannot really enter the field of politics. We have to stay out of politics because if we made movies that are dedicatedly political,

we enter the field of politics, but we are the counterweight to politics. We are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians. Boo! So I want to read to you a quote

from this man's book from 1988 that he published called The Logic of Images. Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be entertainment movements. They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change. In every frame, they tell you everything's fine the way it is. They are a continual advertisement for things as they are. So what changed? Palestine.

It's Palestine. It's always Palestine. Because Vim Vendors just last year made a short film in conjunction with Germans' cultural ministry that addresses the current insecurity in Europe due to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, their illegal invasion. And tying that, you know, making the parallel. between the end of World War II and the current environment in Russia. And he has spoken about how it is important to speak on these matters. It is important to create art that is reflective of this reality. So it's Palestine. That's what it is. Palestine is the litmus test. Palestine is the line that

they refuse to cross. And it puts their hypocrisy on full display. And Vim Vendors knows that he knows. He knows that this is hypocritical. I know he knows this because I know his work, because I know, you know, what he has said his entire life as a creative. It's also just like the world that they envision or the world that they seem to want where like it's not fair to bring this up. It's like, okay, so is the world that you imagine is that all governments function without any kind of public discussion. And then outside of that, we have an arts industry that just talks about the past and theoretical versions of like. feelings. That's not a world we'd want to live in. And the world of like confronting things involves uncomfortable conversations, especially if you're going to use a forum where you open it up to questions from the general public. Otherwise, what do you want? You want just everything to go on as it is

and you get to put on a movie festival and no one ever talks about things. It's just nonsense. It's, it's not fair. This sets off a string of journalists asking celebrities at this film festival about politics, about Palestine, about ice, et cetera, et cetera. So Neil Patrick Harris is at the Berlin Film Festival promoting his new movie. Journalists asks him a similar question. I want to play his response. This clip is so surreal.

When I first watched it, I felt my body like levitating. I have a question to the director, George, and maybe Neil or Bella. I was wondering if you guys consider your art political and if so, how can movies these days help fight the, rise of fascism in Europe and America? Well, I think we live in a strangely algorithmic and divided world right now. And so as artists, I'm always interested in doing things that are apolitical, because we're

all as humans wanting to connect in some way. That's why we experience things together. And so when you get to go to a film where you're caring about the people, you're caring about the heart of what's happening, you know, you're watching this film. film of these young adults growing up under the umbrella of a world where some of them won't. And I think that is so touching and also kind of exciting and rebellious and horny. And it's fun to be able to witness that without having to process it through a contemporary lens, right? It is so current and yet timeless.

So getting to spend time in strict, strangely sunny Glasgow, Scotland. It didn't rain once, like for the entirety of the time we were there. It cost us a fortune turning off the air. Right. And then getting to just hang out with these amazing people who've had illustrious careers and who are sort of starting their careers as a little group of artists outside of the world conversation

was quite unique. unique. Love to do it. The weather. He gets asked about the rise of fascism and he, in the short, sweet 80 seconds dilutes the conversation from fascism to, it's so sunny out right now. The part where I question, you know, my own kind of brashness is like, do you go, okay, if everyone knows my political views as an artist, maybe a bunch, a huge swath of the population in whatever, as he said, the divided algorithmic world that we live in,

they won't even engage in my art. And here's where I think it's a little bit bullshit. If they engage in my art, which is about humanity and understanding other perspectives, maybe that will bring out their own humanity. That's what I think the most, like, good faith

interpretation of some of these things is, is like, well, how can I persuade as Zionist to see people as human beings if I can't even get them into the movie theater. But the bottom line is if they never have to confront their own views, they can go see a movie and go like, yeah, you should treat others like you want to be treated and still endorse a genocide because human beings are able to be hypocritical in that way.

But that's the part that I think like what some artists I think probably think or want to project those that aren't fully financially motivated. That's my thought. When I saw this, I was just thinking, Like, Neil Patrick Harris is a gay man who came out as an already famous person in the mid-2000s. He knew what his being in entertainment meant then politically. And to have become so privileged that you just drop the act. And this is what I mean.

It's like the syndrome that a certain type of oftentimes privileged white gay man has about like thinking their own suffering is the final frontier. You know what I mean? Neil Patrick Harris also was the Grand Marshal for. Tel Aviv Pride in 2019. So I don't know. I guess that wasn't political. Of course. He's not even being asked specifically about Palestine. He's being asked about, as a lot of artists were about the rise of fascism. And I think this decision to say,

I'm just interested in the apolitical, to go back to John Marcos' point earlier of, do you understand what fascism does to art and culture and freedom? Like, do you get that like some of the first things to go are art and culture and fascism, you know, it devours everything and then eventually devours itself. So your film might not explicitly be about the rise of fascism, be about, you know, any particular political messaging. However, you are creating a film that it has political elements. you have a gay character talking about cancer, etc. I know it's a lighthearted, it's, you know, it's lighthearted fair, but it is still being created in our current world.

They are acting as if this is a world that is completely separate from this other world where all these things are going on. So Michelle Yo, who is also at the film festival, was asked in a press conference. and she did if she had, quote, any comment as an international actress on the current state of the U.S., which is obviously pointing to Trump, fascism, ICE, etc. Palestine was not mentioned. Because as I'm trying to make the case, I think the chilling effect is bigger than just Palestine. She said, quote,

I don't think I'm in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S. and also I cannot presume to say I understand how it is. So best not to talk about something I don't know about. I think I want to concentrate on what is important for us, which is cinema. She's like, I want to concentrate on what's important to know, which is that Madam Morrible, flip it around. Wicked Witch. Can I say I actually liked Michelle Yo and Wicked? Oh, kind of a hot tank.

What I'm about to say is not about that. A lot of people responded to this statement by Michelle Yeo saying, well, she's Malaysian. How could she know about American politics? If she was like just some person, I could be sympathetic to that. Like, I don't know what's going on, you know, in the political world of Malaysia. I really am sympathetic to that argument. However, there's a number of things that make me question the legitimacy of that argument. First, Michelle Yeo has a home in Beverly Hills and has for years and all.

also spends a ton of time working here for the last many years. Yeah. Michelle Yo is a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations. Did you know that? Yes. Also, I'm sorry, but we're talking about the United States. It isn't the same thing for you to understand Malaysian politics. Because Malaysia does not have the power in this world,

and therefore the influence and global reach that the U.S. has. So all the things that you just listed, yes, absolutely. are reasons why this is totally bullshit, but also because we are talking about the United States. So, like, there are people who are not Michelle Yeo, who are not global superstars who have lived in, you know, have homes in Los Angeles. There are regular people all around the world

who have an awareness of the United States because of the impact that it has on their own country. Michelle Yo is a full human being with a very long career and complicated integration into actually Malaysian politics, interestingly. There's sort of just a lot that we don't have time to get to today. But my thesis around Michelle Yo skating around what I thought was a very softball question is that she is really tied in to the sort of global elite class. I think nothing represents that better than the fact that her husband is the former CEO of Ferrari, among a lot of other things. He is an

extraordinarily wealthy man. Another billionaire. Who is in the Epstein files. Yeah. He was having friendly email exchanges with Jeffrey Epstein in 2017. 2017, this was not 1999. This is post-conviction. Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to point that, oh, Michelle Yo's husband was involved in nefarious activity with minors.

But I am saying, like, the thing that we have learned from the Epstein files is the way that this sort of global elite protects each other and is, involved with each other on a level that sort of like ascends morality and law. And to me, Michelle Yeo's skating around this question has much less to do with like her being a Malaysian, which by the way, her primary residence for the last seven years has been in Geneva, Switzerland. It is more to me, I think, about her being deeply enmeshed in this global elite. Just my opinion. Feel free to disagree. I think also similarly with Neil Patrick Harris, Michelle Yeo will get political. She will speak on politics

when it affects her personally. So she is always talking about representation. She just talked about it when she got her Hollywood Walk of Fame star this week. She talked about it when she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Asian person, maybe Asian woman,

to get that at Berlin Film Festival. She got into, you know, cause some tea, cause some drama when she was up for an Oscar for everything ever all at once because she had reposted a piece that someone had written. Oh my God. This was like gay guy civil war.

Yes, it was because it was about Cape Blanchett. It's like you had these two mothers going up against each other, Kate Blanchett for Tar, Michelle Yo for everything everywhere all at once. And she had reposted this piece about how a win for Michelle Yo would be much more significant because of all the barriers in Hollywood, because, you know, we've only had one other actress of color, Hallie Berry, who had one best actress. So Michelle Yo absolutely gets political when it is pertinent to her own self, when it is to her benefit.

Hmm. And, and, like, we're all about representation in film. Like, I think she makes some valid arguments, of course, when it comes to that. Of course, I'm an Asian woman who, you know, was in the entertainment industry. Of course, representation is so important. It's something I've talked about. But I think it's, and this really ties back into the 2010s when I think. feel like the dominant form of progressive politics espoused by people was relegated to identity politics. Yes. And identity politics without class analysis doesn't take you very far. As we've seen, it really set the stage for, I think, in a lot of ways, where we are now. So over the course of the film festival, these repeated answers from film stars from the people working in the film jury for the festival, they started to get a lot of significant negative attention.

online, this led festival head Trisha Tuttle to release the following statement. Increasingly, filmmakers are expected to answer any question put to them. They are criticized if they do not answer. They are criticized if they answer and we do not like what they say. They are criticized if they cannot compress complex thoughts into a brief soundbite when a microphone is placed in front of them when they thought they were speaking about something else. This just come on. Listen, it would be one thing if these journalists were like, can you weigh in on the Texas Senate race in the Democratic primary between James Tolariko and Jasmine Crockett?

Michelle Yo, Neil Patrick Harris, Vim Vendors. Can you, are you supporting Tala Rico? They're asking the basic softball questions of like, what do you think about genocide? What do you think about ICE kidnapping? Like, these are like majority held positions by people that all of this stuff. is bad. These are these are really vague and easy questions to answer. Especially for a festival that's bragged about being the most political. Well, so that's the other thing is amidst all of this. I was like, what's the Tia on the Berlin film festival? Because like, I'm not, I can't pretend to be a film guy. So I went to their website

and I was reading the About Us section where they say the Berlin Festival enjoys an eventful history. To this day, it is considered the most political of all major film festivals. That is on their own website. Following this statement, 81 artists, including Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Adam McKay, release an open letter criticizing the Berlin Film Festival's silence on Gaza. And I clipped part of it here. We write as film workers, all of us past and current Berlin Al participants who expect the institutions in our industry to refuse complicity in the terrible violence that continues to be waged against Palestinians. We are dismayed at the Berlin All's involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel's ongoing genocide

against Palestinians in Gaza and the German state's key role in enabling it. Last year, filmmakers who spoke out for Palestinian life and liberty from the Berlinal stage reported being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. We fervently disagree with the statement made by Berlinal, 2026 jury president, Vim Vendors, that filmmaking is the opposite of politics. You cannot separate one from the other. Then, then, Trisha Tuttle, God bless this one. Imagine this being your job. She's out here tettling. She is tettling. Imagine being Tricia Tuddle and this is your job every week to just be like, it's just hard to condemn genocide. You're forcing us into an impossible position. She releases another statement about, quote,

holding space for that complexity of the conversation around Israel's genocide. She wrote, Not everyone wants to talk about this issue, as serious as it may be in their own lives. Some people want to come to the festival for other reasons. The festival needs to provide space for filmmakers to talk about their work, but not necessarily always be the story themselves. This clearly hasn't worked for the activist campaign who want us to say what they want us to say. And anything less than that is going to result in continue to,

harassment and misinformation. We're in the process of reaching out to some of the people we know who have signed the letter to make sure they really understand what they've signed and that what they've signed is not fair or accurate. Okay, so this actually sounds like y'all are going to be engaging in this harassment that you claim you have been victim to. My God. I...

Enough. Enough. Shut up. And Matt, I texted you this, but I used to put together, you know, I worked on putting together our slate when I was at Sony and worked in international production, I would prepare my boss to go to Berlin and all of these major festivals. I have never seen this much conversation, media reporting, etc. around Berlin Film Festival that has not to do with the films, but these asinine statements that are coming from filmmakers, jury members, and the heads of Berlin. So actually,

this has really backfired on them. The decision to try and wave this away and then dig their feet in even harder and then release these condescending, ridiculous statements is unfortunately taking the attention away from the films that they have so desperately tried to insist upon that that's what it's about.

It's about the movies. I feel like for me, you know, it's easy to like look at this wide, back and forth that's happening between like Neil Patrick Harris and Vim Vendors and Trisha Tuttle and just be like, wow, this is just the level of drama. But this is what it's really about for me. So the film No Other Land, which is about the Israeli sort of ongoing attacks in illegal settler expansion in the West Bank of Palestine. This was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024. It won the documentary film award there. It also won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. In March

2025, months after it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won all these awards and sort of made the film industry feel good about itself, I would say, is the role of a lot of these films and the festival's decision to show it. Ham Don Bilal, who is one of the films directors and writers, He went back home to Palestine. He lives in the West Bank and was attacked by Israeli settlers at his home and then kidnapped from his ambulance by the IDF. The Academy did not immediately support him in any capacity when this happened. This is a man who stood on the Oscar stage with an Oscar in his hands. Yeah, like two weeks prior, no other land had won. And the Academy had refused to put out a statement until they faced pressure from.

major A-listers. And another year later, just a couple weeks ago, Hamdan's small concrete house in the West Bank, where he went back to after winning an Oscar, was attacked again by settlers while he wasn't home. But his brother was home. And this just happened. The settlers knocked his brother to the ground. His name's Muhammad.

And they choked him until he turned blue in the face. And Muhammad's children had to take him to the hospital afterwards. This is from the Guardian. Quote, relatives in a nearby village who got news of the attack made their way to the Bilal's house and were intercepted by the army, the Israeli army. Two of the director's brothers,

a nephew and a cousin, were held in handcuffs and blindfolded for three hours at a nearby army base before being released at night on a road used by settlers, putting them at further risk. The IDF released a statement, confirming the detention of his family members. And their statement said, oh, well, we didn't attack them.

It was more peaceful than he's. Bull fucking shit. We know that they don't just come and peacefully arrest people for living in their homes, you know? And so this is the reality, right? Is these institutions show this man's movie. They get all the praise,

all the standing ovations for saying, look, two years late, hundreds of thousands of potential deaths later, we're going to show a Palestinian movie and use that to sort of, I think, cleanse the industry's image a little bit after doing so much silencing of speech. And then when those Palestinians go back home and are continually attacked by Israeli thugs because this issue has not been solved and because the international community hasn't put pressure on Israel to change its behavior at all, then the very same week that this man

continues to get attacked, Berlin-alk says, oh, we're apolitical. And that's what it's about to me. It's like the closest thing that these festivals get to doing something good right now, turns out to just be an exploitation. And I think the twisted aspect here is that Hamdan Balal has not just been repeatedly targeted because he's a Palestinian living in the West Bank. And for decades, it's been under military, illegal military occupation. And these illegal settlers who brutalize Palestinians in their own homes on their own lands, it's not just because of that. It is because he was a part of making this film,

because he won these awards. And the first time that he was attacked right after the Oscars, that was an element of why they went after him because he had that Oscar. And the message was, you might have a shiny trophy. You know, you might have won fancy awards for this film, but you do not have the power here. We will still come into your home and do whatever we want,

and that Oscar isn't going to stop anything. And that is exactly what you said, how these institutions will pat themselves on the back. They will try and pretend like they are not complicit because, look, we have Palestinian films, and these Palestinian films are getting awarded. And so our job here is done. The other part of this is that for these artists who want to separate politics from art,

that is a complete sign of privilege. Hamdan Balal does not have that luxury because his entire existence is political. To him, politics is a matter of life and death. Politics is what strips him of his humanity. politics is what allows these thugs to come in and brutalize him and his family. Yeah. And I mean for Neil fucking, look, I'm not going to like scapegoat Neil Patrick Harris as like, if Neil Patrick Harris had alone said something, then all the world's issues would be like, I know that's not the case. But it's just this evading a responsibility that I find so disgusting

because you know what, Neil Patrick Harris was sitting in that chair in Berlin, Germany, 80 years ago, he would have been arrested, taken to a concentration camp, and had a pink triangle sewn to his vest, you know? Yeah. And so it's just, my God. And I think the point that's trying to be made is that it's not the responsibility of these artists, of these actors to speak on these issues. Like, it's not their responsibility as artists, which I don't agree with. But I think we should look at it in terms of, well, what about your responsibility as a human being? I also just want to mention that Arantari Roy boycotted Berlinol. She put out a statement that was condemning Vim vendors and Berlinol's complicity here

and their attempts to deflect away from talking about Palestine. Also, the director of voice of Hin Rajab, Kaother Ben-Haniyah. She rejected her award that she won at Berlin All because of the political cover that they have provided for Israel's crimes. So not everybody, yeah, not everybody is doing this a political song and dance. Oh, sorry, we're just here to talk about the movies. That's it. That's all. La la la la. To cap out. Cap out. To cap off.

Cap off? To cap this conversation. She's losing it. I want to bring up another celebrity, not totally in the enter... Well, I guess professional sports is ultimately entertainment. Space chair. That's true. LeBron James made waves the other night when at the press conference for the NBA All-Star game

didn't think you were coming to the Bitfutty podcast to talk about the NBA All-Star game. You thought wrong. He was asked about the Israeli player who was playing in the game. more generally what he had to say to his fans in Israel. What message would you like to send for Israel? If I have fans over there, I've never been there. If I have fans over there, then, you know, I hope you've been following my career. I hope I aspire to people over there to not only want to be great in sports,

but I want just to be better in general in life. So hopefully someday I can make it over there. Like I said, I've never been over there, but I've heard nothing of great things. and I appreciate the question. You never heard a bad thing about Israel? LeBron, I know you're on Twitter. I know you're on Twitter. I see your tweets.

You've never heard a bad thing about Israel. Get out of here. Get out of here, LeBron. No one's buying that bullshit. Even in Israel, they're like, okay, don't pander. Please, get out of here. You have so much money. Just say it.

Just go, oh, I, I, I, I, I, I would love, I, oh, if I have fans in Israel, I'd love if they gave me some of their money. That's what you're saying. Just say it. Just fucking say it. Enough with this bullshit. We're all tired of it. And I hope, I hope as a society would just more and more people go, shut up.

Shut up. Stop talking in that fake bullshit way. Never heard a bad thing. Get the fuck out of here. I, I mean, this is the thing with, with LeBron James, who I won't pretend to be a scholar of, but I do know that LeBron James has long-sighted Muhammad Ali. That's like me saying, that's like me saying, I've never heard a bad thing about your son's ball skills on the court.

And I don't fucking know anything about basketball. But I've heard, I've heard, you're telling me I've heard more about your son and not being as good as basketball as you, but you have heard a single bad thing about Israel. Get out of here. Sorry. No, it is. Are you done? You don't have to be.

Yeah, I'm done. No, no, no, no. That's all I know. And that's all I know. It's just, you know, he's cited Muhammad Ali as one of his greatest influences, specifically the way that, you know, if you don't know anything about Muhammad Ali, he was widely considered the best athlete of all time. And as a 25-year-old in 1967, at the height of his physical ability, he refused to be drafted to the Vietnam War due to his ethical opposition to it. He was convicted of draft evasion by the government, stripped of his titles, and banned from boxing. for three years, which I think is just like it's a level of moral clarity from a public figure of that stature that is almost unthinkable today, but especially from LeBron James. Like, LeBron James, he's a billionaire, you know, which we're sensing a theme here. Yep. I'm just going to read a passage from an article that Dave Zuren, who is the editor, the sports

editor for the nation, and who's also Jewish. He wrote this about LeBron James. James has said his two goals in his life. One is to be, quote, a global icon like Muhammad Ali, and the other is to be the richest athlete in the history of the world. And while these may be two great goals, they don't exactly go together. That's because people like Muhammad Ali didn't become global icons because they were rich, but because they were willing to sacrifice everything,

including sponsorship deals to stand up for what they believed in. This week, the effort to balance the spirit of Muhammad Ali with his life as a 41-year-old billionaire, tipped away from Ali. Actually, it didn't just tip. It crashed to the ground. James knows what's been going on in Gaza, and it's ludicrous to think he's heard nothing but great things about Israel. He certainly hasn't heard great things from his old cavaliers running buddy, Kyrie Irving, who has not been shy about showing his solidarity with the Palestinian people. He hasn't heard great things from current and former NBA players, like former teammate Dwight Howard or Tarik al-Dul-Wahad,

or Aiton Thomas, and more who have spoken out against genocide. and for a free Palestine. Hell, during this past weekend's All-Star game, Irving wore a press shirt in solidarity with the journalists in Gaza, killed by the Israeli army, and Spike Lee were the colors of the Palestinian flag court side. James knows what's going on. Instead of fulfilling his teenage dream of being a hero to the downtrodden,

he has chosen to turn his back on war crimes, permitting his fans to do the same. Perhaps he fears what a backlash will do to that other youthful dream of unfathomable wealth. Or maybe he just doesn't care. The only way to be a billionaire in this world is to be a sociopath. That's the bottom line. And until culturally, like in a deep way, every person understands that, that having that much money is not a sign of like brilliance or even if it really is more deeper than anything else, a sign that

you do not value other human beings and are thus not worthy of people's respect. You're going to get away with that. And so I just think when you have this much money, it's a warning sign. automatically. And before you know, you're going to start saying some crazy shit. Like you've never heard a bad thing about Israel. I don't know. I don't think I could find a world if we were trying to make a jury and go, has anyone have any thought who hasn't heard a bad thing about Israel? Shut up. Yeah, maybe somebody who's been in a coma for 50 years. For the last 75 years. Plus, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Caroline and John Marco, thank you so much for joining me on this episode today. It's weird and often frustrating times, but, you know, I just personally get through it by trying to make sense of it. So thank you for helping me do that. Where can people find more of you?

You can find me on all social media platforms, John Marco Sarasi, spelled with the G. A lot of stand-up on YouTube. I tour. And I have a podcast that Matt has been on. Give it a good, listen. It was great episode. We talked about Jubilee. We got deep into the weeds of that. So it was a lot of fun. And that's called The Downside, available on YouTube and anywhere else you get your podcast. And I said, fuck Israel. And for some ungodly reason, ask you to edit it out. So I'll have to return to your podcast and we'll rectify it. That'll be the title. Caroline? Oh, I cannot answer you. You maybe will understand a little later. Where you can find me. You can find me at Caroline Kwan, some variation of it, though, unfortunately, on certain social media platforms. Caroline Kwan was already taken, but mostly I'm on Twitch, streaming just about every night.

I love you so much. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I will see you on the next one, and until then, stay political and stay fruity.