Factually! with Adam Conover - How Capitalism Killed the Movie Star

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!)There haven’t been new movie stars in years, and what has taken their place is depressing.Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media and get all sides of every story. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access through my link.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Folks, this week's episode is sponsored by Delete Me, a service I have trusted for years long before they ever sponsored this show. I have been a genuine user of their service, and it is so valuable to me. Do you remember back when the internet was actually fun before everyone got super weird and chronically online? Those were good times. But now the internet is basically an industrial strength stress machine.

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but does anyone else feel like the entire movie industry wishes it were the 90s again? Like, take the Academy Awards this year. 90s TV star Conan O'Brien did a bit with 90s movie star Adam Sandler, and that was followed by a bit with 90s movie star Ben Stiller. Oh, maybe the reason they focused on all those stars

from the 90s is that the movie stars of today kind of don't feel like stars at all. Like, okay, the big winner of the night was Anura. This tiny indie movie and its star Mikey Madison won Best Actress. Now, she's super talented. She gave a great performance. I loved the movie. But is she really a movie star like the stars of the 90s were when most Americans, honestly, don't know who she is? I mean, my parents were texting me during the ceremony. Who is that nice young lady? I guess they didn't see scream 5 and it's the same with Timothy fucking chalamet I mean the dude was in two huge movies last year But despite his performances as sci-fi Messiah Mwadib musical Messiah Bob Dylan most of the headlines He made were about his dumb yellow suit.

I mean, who gives a shit? But you know, the smallness of stars today really hit home during Morgan Freeman's eulogy for Gene Hackman. Our community lost a giant. And I lost a dear friend. Yeah, I mean, that's a movie star. Gene Hackman was a giant.

So is Morgan Freeman. These people aren't just actors. They're renowned, widely beloved public figures. Their personalities have transcended the roles they play. They are iconic in American culture. And until recently, that kind of movie star was foundational to Hollywood success. And what the Oscars made clear to me is that we are not making new movie stars. At least, we're not making them like we used to.

Even the biggest young actors today are smaller, less influential figures than ever. While the true movie stars of the past are now a precious and dwindling resource. A garage full of gorgeous 65-year-olds that get trotted out like perfectly preserved old cars for the odd throwback prestige film or TV show stunt casting, then get put back in mothballs until Apple's next attempt to win an Oscar.

And you know what? Our strategic Clooney Reserve is dwindling fast. So we have to ask, who killed the movie star? Well, the answer is capitalism. But before I break it down, let's talk live comedy. I'm taking my stand-up tour to Providence, Rhode Island on April 3rd, 4th, and 5th, Vancouver, Canada on April 17th, and then Eugene, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Spokane, Tacoma, and so many more cities.

Head to AdamKonover.net for tickets and tour dates. And if you'd like to support the channel directly, head to Patreon.com slash AdamKonover.net for tickets and tour dates and if you'd like to support the channel directly head to patreon.com Adam Konover and I hope you do. So you might be thinking, Adam of course movie stars still exist, what about Glenn Powell? To which I reply, I don't know who that is and that should be obvious because when I went to find a picture of him I accidentally chose one of Ryan Reynolds. Actors today simply are not movie stars in the same way they used to be, as a matter of objective fact. See, the most important definition of a movie star is someone who has the independent ability to sell hard tickets.

A person who's so famous, so beloved by the public for their wit, beauty, talent, charisma, or sheer star power that people will plunk down 25 bucks and buy a bucket of popcorn just because this person's in the movie. So a couple years back, a film research firm did a major survey asking people to name up to five actors who would motivate them to buy a ticket in the theater. And it turns out that the list was dominated by stars who came up in the 90s and even the 80s. People like Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tom Hanks.

The average age was 57.5 years old. The top 20 didn't feature any young actors at all. Only one of the actors on the list was under 40 at the time, Chris Hemsworth, and he was number 20 out of 20. So if it feels like the Oscars can't get over the 90s, that's because the public hasn't either. The stars of today are just not as famous. Now, that is really weird, because manufacturing new stars used to be a critical part of what made the movie industry sustainable and profitable. See, making a film is an insane business venture. It's incredibly expensive and it's incredibly risky. It's hard enough to make a movie that's good, let alone one that's profitable. And one estimate calculates that nearly 60% of movies lose money. So casting a true

star who is so personally powerful that they bring in an audience all by themselves is a hedge against the real and intense financial risk of movie making. That's why for a long time the movie studios worked to turn actors into stars Because it benefited both parties for them to do so the studio would help its stars build their fame by marketing them to the public And the stars in return would help the studios make money on the movies and along the way Movie stars were transformed into secular gods For most of the last century they've been the most visible and vaunted artists our society has created. You know, people like Yo-Yo Ma fine, but everybody loves Meryl Streep. But you know,

I think another reason we love movie stars is that they're also kind of heroes of labor. You know, being an actor kind of sucks you don't have control over where you work or what you do, but movie stars are people who, because of their immense talent, could command huge salaries, and their decisions of what roles to take could make or break entire companies. In other words, they were workers who had power in a capitalist industry defined by exploitation.

Who doesn't dream of being so talented that you can tell the bosses to fuck off or pay you what you're worth? And on top of the riches and the fame and the power, they also got to be cool as hell. Movie stars had every last drop of mystique and prestige our culture could produce. They were avatars of self-actualization. And so we didn't just love them, we wanted to be them. So badly, in fact, that collectively we would pay billions of dollars to see them,

which meant billions of dollars for the movie industry. So ask yourself this. If movie stars were so profitable for so long, why are they disappearing? Why did the movie industry simply stop manufacturing stars? Well, to understand how capitalism killed the movie star, we've got to go back to 2009. There was a recession, Obama was president, and Kanye was merely an asshole on a journey to eventually becoming a full-on Nazi. So this was a bad year for the studios. The economy sucked, DVD sales were tanking, and a number of movies that were headlined by big stars flopped. And even though the box office had only dipped slightly during 2008, well, the bosses who ran the movie industry weren't going to let the crisis go to waste, so they decided to re-engineer the entire industry to give themselves more control and to stop relying

on the star-centric model. But first, they needed something to replace it with, and they found it by following a ray of bizarre blue-tinted light coming from the Pacific Northwest, the Twilight series. It's a little difficult to remember now, but Twilight represented an entirely new business model for the movie industry. The production, based on a book series, hired no-name actors on the cheap. And when the first Twilight movie took off, they shot the next two simultaneously to keep costs down.

And with a stack of books in the Twilight saga, the producers could just keep pumping the movies out and draining cash from the series' dedicated fans. And don't forget, K-Stew and Pattinson were not famous yet at this time, so with Twilight, the actors weren't the star, the intellectual property was the star. And the property was really f***ing weird. I mean, if a romantic fantasy novel with Mormon and BDSM themes could be a hit, well imagine what the most powerful entertainment company on the planet could do using that model. Well, when Disney bought Marvel for four billion dollars in 2009,

we all found out. That deal was the most successful in movie history. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has pumped out 35 films that have made it combined $31 billion at the box office. That's triple what the second biggest franchise Star Wars had made, and you better believe Disney f***ing bought that too. The Marvel acquisition officially kicked off the era where intellectual property dominates Hollywood.

Comic books, a previous movie, a toy, or even a f***ing board game. That is what movies are based on now. And executives like intellectual property because here's the thing. They can't own a movie star, but they sure as hell can own IP. Think about it. Movie stars are free agents. They can go to another studio, they can demand more money, or they can refuse to be in a sequel. They're whole-ass people with minds of their own. You can't control them. But Spider-Man and Batman never talk back.

They'll do what you f***ing tell them to do. The studios loved IP because it gave them control. No longer do they need to manage fickle artists. They can just suck the value out of a plot of intellectual property like it's an oil field and it worked. By ruthlessly exploiting IP, Disney has had 14 of the 15 top-grossing films of the 2010s. Understandably, the entire film industry followed them. And the result was the destruction of the foundation of Hollywood success.

For most of the last decade, zero original movies were in the top 10 films of the year. Zero! And the same was true in 2024. By the way, if you wanna keep up with how Hollywood works without falling for the spin, check out this video's sponsor, Ground News. You know, even our entertainment is getting more politicized than ever, which makes understanding bias more important than ever.

And that's why I use Ground News to research these videos. They're a great way to follow the news on any topic and make sure you're getting a variety of sources. They rate every source based on factuality and bias, allowing you to make sure you're getting accurate info and you can get 40% off if you use my special code, Factually. Go to groundnews.com slash factually. So the rise of intellectual property in Hollywood was a deliberate effort to take power away from the stars, you know, the people actually making the movie, and put it in the hands of the megacorporations themselves. So for instance, think about what a big deal Disney made about hiring relative unknowns

like John Boyega and Daisy Ridley to star in their Star Wars sequels. The real reason they did so is that unknown actors are cheaper and easier to control. A movie star can ask for more money or have a busy schedule that controls when you shoot. But a novice actor with no star power of their own, they just feel lucky to be there. If you don't like how they behave, you can kick them to the curb and find someone new to fill the suit. The studios have more power if they can keep the stars small. Even the actors in these movies know what's going on.

Here's Anthony Mackie back in 2018. You went to go see movies know what's going on. Here's Anthony Mackey back in 2018. You went to go see the Schwarzenegger movie, now you go see X-Men. So the evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star. Right. In this Captain America brave new world, the IP is the star, not the actor. We're literally cheering for property, not people. And that means we now live in a world where fans are expected to root for the corporation's latest brand deal. Think about how much excitement and rage fans have expended about Marvel and

Sony making a deal for the rights to have Spider-Man to be in the MCU. I mean, we're literally cheering for business deals. When you care more about what the lawyers are doing than the actors, the capitalism is the star, not the movie. And the studios are happy about this. In fact, they're rubbing it in our f***ing faces. In the last Tom Holland's Spider-Man movie, the big reveal was that they threw all the previous actors

who played Spider-Man into the movie. As if to say, yeah, who cares who these people are? Your dumb ass went to see every single one of these movies, no matter who we put in the suit. Because you love Spider-Man and we own Spider-Man, and that means we own you. See? Here are three of our little puppets dressed up in the costume. And you're such a sucker that you'll pay 25 bucks to sit here and watch them stand around and do shtick. So you like make your own web fluid in your body? I'd rather not talk about this. No. Now personally, I think this sucks.

I would rather watch an original story powered by human creativity and bonafide star power. But f**k me, I guess. The industry doesn't make that kind of movie anymore. And the result is that even the biggest stars today are a shadow of what they used to be. Let's bring it back to our brilliant buttery boy, Timothy Chalamet. If you ask people to name a young movie star today, they'd probably name him, right? But is he really that big of a star? Let's look back at the last couple movies he's actually been in. In the past few years, Timothy has appeared in the second movie adaptation of Dune, portrayed

the third Willy Wonka, and been the most recent of many, many cinematic Bob Dylan's. This is just more IP. I didn't take my dad to see A Complete Unknown on Christmas because of Timothée's star power. It was because Searchlight Pictures bought the rights to Dylan's life and music, and my dad loves him. Bob Dylan is basically Twilight for boomers. Now let's compare Timmy's peak star output right now to the biggest comparable star from the 90s, Leonardo DiCaprio.

From 95 to 97, Leo had an incredible run. He was in the Basketball Diaries, he was in Romeo and Juliet, and he was in f**king Titanic. He was a genuine social phenomenon. People could not talk about anything else. It's hard to fully explain today the full power of 90s Leo if you were not there for it, but believe me, Leo's Riz was a sparkling cloud that engulfed an entire generation of young women and men. And when we breathed it in, it felt really f**king good.

I mean look at this s**t. I want to f**k him right now. I would f*** his s*** and f*** his s***. And you know what? It never wore off. I still watch movies today just because Leo is in them. Chalamet simply cannot compete with that, no matter how much he impresses interviewers with his knowledge of college football. The man is simply not as famous, revered, or adored as Leo was in the 90s. And in large part, that's because the roles don't even exist anymore that would allow him to compete with Leo as a movie star. He's just another dope playing the IP roles like everybody else. He's a fine actor, but getting cast as the Moideeb cannot compete with Jack from Titanic. And that means he has less power.

So again, the turn to IP was a specific strategy by the studios to increase their power at the expense of their talent. They didn't give a sh** that it ruined actors' chances to become true movie stars. That was the point. But here's the worst part. This strategy has actually failed at making money for the movie studios. After peaking in 2019, the box office last year was below where it was during the Great Recession and ticket sales are way down. It turns out that we don't want to root for empty suits. We want to root for people. We are bored as an audience of superheroes and IP, but the companies are locked into this strategy because it gives their executives more power. So instead of giving us what we really want as viewers, they're just planning to ram more IP down our throats. In fact, far

from reversing this trend, it's actually being supersized because of the next big change of the entertainment industry, streaming. Netflix started their streaming service in 2007 and today it has 66 million US subscribers, and a lot more if you count all the exes who are still using your login. You know, there's something magical about being able to choose from an infinite library of shows and movies you're probably not in the mood for on demand whenever you want. It might even seem good for movie stars and movie lovers that Netflix started spending billions to produce its own movies and shows.

But there's a problem here. Because Netflix is not a movie company, or an entertainment company even. It's an algorithm company. And movies are just one flavor of chum that Netflix feeds its algorithm to keep your eyeballs glued to it for as long as possible. Ideally, forever. With streaming, you watch at home while you're eating or folding laundry or staring at your phone.

So now, movie stars have to compete for your attention with the latest psychologically abusive reality show or Turkish historical docudrama. So streaming makes movies less special. Remember the studios devalued stars as a part of the movie making process to put IP first, but streaming devalues movies entirely in the service of the algorithm. And that actually affects the movie's quality One of the reasons that movies in the 90s were so good constantly outdoing themselves is because they had to perform well at the box Office they had to be good to sell those tickets

But they don't need to sell tickets anymore without the pressure of performing at the box office The streamers just don't care about making their movies a big deal anymore, and thus the movies and the stars feel smaller than ever. I mean, does anybody really care about Brad Pitt and George Clooney reprising their bromance in Apple TV's Wolfs, a movie that plays like a low-budget knockoff of a heist film from the 90s? And when Cumberbatch drops a limited series on Netflix, does it even make a sound? Stars used to be big partially because the studios marketed them, but the streamers have completely given up on even promoting their projects. Seth Rogen is one of the biggest stars in America,

and he just dropped a new show on Apple TV called The Studio. But I hadn't even heard of it until it was mentioned to me by the guy installing my TV, and I'm a comedy writer who lives in LA. Streaming will never promote the stars the way the movie studios of the past did because they don't matter to streaming, only the algorithm does. The company, the capitalism is the star, not the person.

It's Netflix and chill, not Seth Rogen and chill, and don't you fucking forget it. I mean, when you stop to think about how streaming works, devaluing stars, not caring about the content of the work beyond its ability to keep you mindlessly watching, things get kinda dark. You can start to imagine some kind of dystopian future where all the content starts blending together in a digital slurry and people who might have been able to make an independent living in the industry just a few years ago become digital serfs, tilling the Lord algorithm's land for a nub of content to catch your evermore

subdivided attention. Oh wait, nevermind, that dystopian reality is already here. It's called social media. I mean, of course social media competes with movies for our attention. Plenty of people have made that argument. But more importantly, it's the final step in this same evolution of media from one that is centered around people to one that is centered around profit. Because think about this, if you're a capitalist, social media is an even better business than movies or streaming. It gives you even more control.

Influencers are the stars of social media today, but they have less power and are paid less money than any media figure in history. That's because the influencers aren't really the stars at all. The app, the company, the algorithm is the star. That is what people show up for. And that is why even influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers struggle to make a living. 48% of full-time creators make 15 grand or less a year.

And you better believe there isn't any health insurance or paid time off. So if it feels like all of media is getting worse, cheaper, and less sustainable, this is why. Because we've gone from a world in which the people we watched on our screens were able to turn our love and adoration into not just a living, but prosperity to one in which they're barely scraping by.

In which the writers and crews that make our favorite Hollywood content have to threaten to go on strike just to make a fair wage. So in this world where the artists who make our favorite media are being systematically devalued and minimized by the forces of capitalism, is it any wonder that some of the biggest movie stars have decided to switch teams?

As a person who did movies, there were some great things about it, but also, you know, I think when you're an entrepreneur and a founder, you have a lot of agency and freedom to create what you wanna create, kind of when you wanna create it. I mean, think about it. Movie stars were supposed to be the most liberated

and empowered artists in our society. Being a movie star was one of the best things you could Be in America, right take Gwyneth Paltrow. She had an Oscar. She was paid millions to pretend to be other people She was revered around the world. Wow, what a wonderful life but now Gwyneth finds more freedom more power more compensation as a capitalist who pedals high-end pseudoscience to gullible rich people. And horribly, it's working for her. And she's not alone.

Here's Edward Norton, another wonderful actor, pitching his board meeting presentation company ZEC. I've definitely had a number of people say to me, you have a very interesting day job. Like, why would you get involved in something as down in the weeds as a board governance software platform, and it's a fair question. I mean, Ed can convince audiences he's a Nazi or a serial killer or Pete f***ing Seeger,

but he can't even convince himself to be excited in front of the host of CNBC's Squawk Box. But you know, there's one movie star capitalist worse than the rest, Ryan Reynolds, the emptiest man in Hollywood. I wouldn't characterize myself as an entrepreneur. I would characterize myself as someone who has found a couple of different things in life that I believed in with every cell in my body.

Okay Ryan, so every cell in your body told you not to just be a movie star, but to own a gin brand, a marketing agency, and a mobile phone provider. I'm supposed to think it's cool that you own a cell phone company? Get the fuck out of here, you Glenn Powell wannabe! I mean, this dude has the balls to make a TV show about how he bought his own soccer team and expects me to root for him. Like what's next? Am I supposed to cheer for his stock portfolio when it outperforms the S&P 500?

Call my mom in joyful tears when Mint Mobile was heroically acquired by T-Mobile? Ryan Reynolds is what you get in a world where even movie stars don't give a shit about being movie stars. It's a fucking bummer. First of all, because movie stars were good. I liked them. They were hot and charming and aspirational and wonderful artists plying their trade on the silver screen.

And you know what? They were just a lot more f***ing fun to watch than today's crop of pseudo CEOs and CGI animated superheroes. They weren't empty suits or capitalists or AI. They were humans up there on the screen and that is why we loved them. But now, humanity is being sucked out of the movies, out of all of media, and that makes what we watch worse. But you know what? I think we should care about this. Not just because of the movies, but because this is what capitalism is trying to do to all of us. The same way the movie industry has tried to destroy the movie stars so they can make more money and have more control. Well, that is the same thing your boss is trying to do at your job. That is why they are trying to break your union.

That is why they are trying to employ you via an app. That is why they are trying to turn you into a cog or even replace you with AI. They don't just want to suck the humanity out of the movies, they want to suck it out of our entire economy and out of our lives themselves. And if we remain passive, if we keep watching the money move up on the screen, keep scrolling on the algorithm, keep drowning in a Deadpool of distraction, we are just gonna let it happen. The antidote is for you, for all of us in the audience, to actively turn our attention back to the people making things that we care about. Instead of letting the algorithm or the MCU calendar dictate what you watch, seek out

authentic artists and support them directly. On the internet, that might mean subscribing to a podcast or supporting us on Patreon, sure. But for the movies, it means going to the movie theater with other people and turning it back into a human experience. And you know what? There are optimistic signs that the public is doing just that. Despite social media and all the distractions that everyone's always talking about, well guess what?

Gen Z goes to the movies more often than any other age group. And if you go on Letterboxd, you can find an engaged community of millions of movie lovers that's as strong as any that's ever existed. People who are treating movies as an art form to be appreciated, not just AI slop to be consumed. And maybe, just maybe, if the people who run the industry take a cue from their own audience and start making the kind of authentic human films that people love again, the kind of films we have loved for decades, well then maybe they'll start making money again and maybe the industry will turn around. And I hope they do. Because movies are one of the great American art forms.

They are our contribution to global culture, and that makes them worth saving. The people on top just need to remember that at the end of the day, it's us, human beings, who are watching the movies. Not AI, not piles of dollar bills sitting on the couch, people like us, people like like you and people watch movies Because we like people we like other human beings so if they want to succeed they need to remember to put

Humanity on screen not just an empty suit full of cash That was a hate gum podcast