The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 2: Meadowlarkers 81 'BlackBerry'

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Howard Bryant and Kate Fagan are joined by Jeremy Taché in place of Amin Elhassan to discuss the new film, 'BlackBerry,' a movie that takes look at the rise and fall of the innovative product that overtook the cell phone market. The crew discusses their connection to the phone itself, how this story can relate to the sports world, the difficult balance between business and innovation, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Dunlabel Tarshall with the StugatSpotcast. Welcome to Metal Lockers 81. We have two thirds. We got a quorum here. Amino Hassan is out doing the NBA finals where as we know in Metal Lock, it's not a big deal here at all

as the metal lock, the shipping container fanboys continue to do what they do down there. Not an embarrassment to anybody at all, not at all. Now, as they fawn all over the Miami heat. And I am Howard Bryant. Hate Fagan is here and bringing cash. Yeah. Bringing cash into our show in place of a being L. Hassan is Jeremy Tashay. You like what I did right there? I love what you did right there.

And also, I'm fanboy number one when it comes to my meat. Unfortunately, so if it's not an embarrassment then I'm leading you in non-embarishment, I guess that. No, we're loving to get here because we're not talking we're not talking basketball Um, we are here to talk about a really fun movie that I really enjoyed I think Kate vague and you enjoyed it Jeremy you've seen it But we haven't asked you how you felt about it. It is called Blackberry Nice independent film. It is the story of the rise and fall of the world's first smartphone

It is brought to us by XYZ films and I have C-films directed by Matt Johnson starring Glenn Powerton. You may know from it's always Sonny and Philadelphia. You may know the voice of Jay. I'm not just saying that it was a barooshell. He is the voice of Hiccup Haddock if you watch the how to train your dragon series no babies for you Kate because your dog is not watching these movies but if you had children you would know the how to train your dragon series. This is a very personal movie for me Kate vegan. Yeah you alluded to that very exactly. I'm excited to hear why. A very personal movie for me because along with Oakland A's picture Dave Stewart,

Smoke Stewart, number 34, perhaps you've heard of him, I am in that category of the last most loyal Blackberry customer. I held on so long. I believed, I hoped that there was going to be some way that they were going to be able to survive the onslaught of the Android and the iPhone. I loved my keyboard. I had a Blackberry curve. I had a Blackberry bold. I had a Blackberry storm.

I still have, I think, my original monochrome Blackberry from 2002. So this was a fun movie for me. And it is essentially the story of the underdog story of the little engine that could, that no one had ever heard of the Canadian company research and motion. And they essentially pioneer what is commonplace now, which is the smartphone. The little device that is a computer, it is a pager, it is a phone all in one. And this story is about the spectacular rise of it and the horrifically hilarious fall. Kate, your thoughts, one of the film and two of the choice to really make it a comedy, it was kind of hilarious.

Well, first, Howard, I mean, you and I have a lot in common and we also have this in common when it comes to our clinging to our blackberries, which is, I remember I was on the Sixers Beat from 2008 to 2011 and it wasn't until the very end of the Sixers Beat that I got an iPhone. It was right after I believe right after the storm came out, the Blackberry storm came out, and it was a disaster as this movie highlights for us. But I, this movie was great for me for so many reasons. One being that I was one of those people being like,

I just want the click. I need the click of the Blackberry keys. As I type, it was tactile. I remember standing in, at the time, the Wacovia Center talking to people who had the iPhone being like, I don't know how you're doing it. You don't have keys. And so seeing all of this played out in the movie

was nostalgic for me. And it also, it just reminds you of just the impermanence also of all of these technology innovations as they come in and out of our life. Yeah, so I really enjoyed the movie. I appreciated their choice to go, like, and it wasn't a dark comedy, right? But it is very much almost like an ironic portrayal

of research and motion and this story. And the irony coming and like telling this, it had the Silicon Valley energy to it, the TV show Silicon Valley. And I, like at first I was like, when I watched these type of movies, I usually lean toward wanting more of like a fest simile of what actually happened, and less sort of like a Hollywood reinterpretation, but I thought it worked really well given the way they were able to parody technology

and our like obsessiveness of it and how relevant that is to our current moment with AI and chat GPT. So I think there's a lot of places we can go off of this movie, even diving back into the sports world, but I gotta give Jeremy the floor here as the youngster in the crew, who probably wasn't longing for the click of the Blackberry. You know, it's funny because the Blackberry

is like the first phone that I thought was super cool as a kid. Like I remember seeing either older cousins or older siblings of friends that when they were getting their first phones and at the time what was like middle school or high school for them, they were getting the Blackberry. And I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Like going from the Motorola Razor getting the Blackberry. And I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Like going from, you know, the Motorola Razor to the Blackberry, it was this big upgrade in status, it was this big upgrade in like almost professionalism. And it was because originally it was sort of more of a phone that seemed to be for business

people and eventually made its way, almost like how Facebook was originally for college kids and then made its way to everybody. The Blackberry became everybody's phone. As they mentioned in the movie, it had a 45% market cap on cell phones, like it was everywhere. And so for me, I thought this movie was exciting because I wanted to hear about their story. And what was so cool about it is you know it's gonna end poorly. Like you go into the movie knowing the ending. It's gonna end in failure ultimately. But to see the rise in the fall and we'll dive into obviously the movie here,

but what I thought they did a really great job of was highlighting what really mattered. This was like a 10, 15 year long story that they fit into an hour and a half and they hit the key points. And I feel like, you know, at one point, they skip over six years of time, specifically just to be able to kind of show us, like, yeah, we were fine during that stretch. Like, everything was cool.

Here's where everything goes awry. And I think to be able to see something like this that had such a stranglehold over us, that now, you know, like you mentioned, the iPhone is everything. Like the iPhone just absolutely destroyed it. And so going into the movie, I was really excited to just learn more.

And I felt like I came out of it more informed while also getting sort of the cheeky parody element of it where I was like, okay, I understand what happened here. And yet, you know, now I just wanna go look up more of the actual facts surrounding it. Yeah. And it's completely, and also the speed in which things become obsolete.

And I remember, I had, and I thought, once again, this is a very personal moving for me. I remember specifically, I had a palm, I had a palm trio, or a palm pie, the first one. And back then, you had to make a decision about what you were going to do. Were you going to have a cell phone because there were three different devices. It's like talking to people about being online before the days when the internet was available to the world, unless you were a college student, you couldn't get it unless you were a college

student or work at a university or the military or government of you or dot edu.mil, whatever, you couldn't get, you were on AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy way back in the day. So back then you had to make a choice. I had a cell phone and then I had a palm and the palm had the stylus. Yep, that's right. But the reason why I enjoyed my palm was because that poem actually had a phone.

I mean, I'm sorry, I had a camera. So I had two devices. And of course, they weren't merged together. And as we see in the film, that was also one of the questions when Palm was trying to buy a blackberry. And then one day, I think it was 2002, 2003. I was at Fenway Park and Theo Epstein had a Blackberry. And I was like, what's that?

And he's like, it's a Blackberry. I'm like, are you on the phone? He's like, yeah, I'm like, but you're typing. He's like, yeah. I was like, dude, how much does that cost? It's very expensive. I was like, 500 bucks for whatever cost. I was like, I can have that. I want one of them. I want to go to there. Right? I mean, that was the, I think it was the Fenway Park dugout. And I was like, I want one of those. And so that was when I got my first Blackberry, I believe in October's Journal Playoffs,

October of 2003, the Aaron Bluenegame, the ALCS Red Sox Yankees. And that's when I got my first Blackberry. And it was completely hooked. And then realized, of course, then suddenly things were, they were consolidating. Now it was like, yeah, now my phone absolutely has to text. And now you can easily text because before on the flip phone,

trying to text off those little numbers, you had to do all of the different machinations to get to all the different characters. This was easy, this was great. And then it was like, okay, well, when is it going to get a camera? And the speed in which things just begin, you know, you know, needing to, the phone had to do so many things.

I thought, Jeremy, that was a really, really good point that they compressed like six years into like 10 minutes. Yeah. And there was a moment where Blackberry was, you know, once again, it's Kate was saying, Crackberry was everything. What I thought was cool about it. One of the areas that I really immediately hit me like when a movie hits you emotionally was when the two nerds, when Doug and Mike go into the first meeting and they're completely unprepared and you realize it's us versus them, right? Us, the creatives with the ideas, them who know business and you could just

see it was like, chum in the water that they were just so overmatched. And it immediately started to hit me how hard that must be. And we all go through it when you know that you may have the idea and you may have the brains, but you're out of your league. Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because there's the part where you see you like you said the two nerds they've got that deal with us robotics that they're getting screwed over on and they call and they don't understand business. don't understand business. And so they're just approaching it like people who know technology, who are treating one human like another human like what happened? Should we invoice you?

Right. And then, of course they're not lying to us. Right. Who would do that? And then the, you know, the, I'm assuming it's an MBA, the Harvard MBA guy, or maybe he's just undergrad. What's his name? How are you so good with names?

The co-CEO, who ends up being the co-CEO of Blimey? Oh, Doug and Mike. No, no, no. Oh, Jim. Oh, you mean Jim, Bistley. Yeah, Bistley. Bistley, Bistley, right? You didn't like that, he liked that.

It was Bistley. Yeah. And like, I, during that whole sequence of events where he steps in and he calls US Robotics back, you know, we've talked in previous episodes about like things that are actually skill sets that we don't necessarily give enough credit for. And this is one where I recognized instantly. Like, personally, I am bad at business. Right, like I would be, I would lean more toward

behaving like those two nerds than I would Jim Bacilli. I don't understand how business works. I don't know how to get to business. Is that really true, Kate? I really do think it's true. Is it really true or is it something else? Is it the fact that I'm just gonna go out of turn right here and if human resources comes and gets me,

then human resources can come and get me. Okay. We're going to have a little conversation, Kate. So there was this game once when there was a baseball team. I'm not going to name names because I'm only going down to human resources by myself. And this team had a great September, and they were trailing, and they really made a big push and they ended up winning the division. We're talking baseball. And I asked this executive about how his team performed. And he said, we spent that whole month and we played big dick baseball. And I was like, you did what? He said, we played big dick baseball. And I bring this up because I am in York camp and When I watch those business scenes in any movie, I'm like I Don't have that personality to walk in and yell at other people and just

Completely to you know like the way they're on the phone who that's unprofessional to me But this is their language. Right. And so the US robotics people understood another guy speaking their language, you know, and that that's what I mean. That's what exactly. So they know what are they saying? We brought you know, it's that it's that male machismo thing that I only get there when completely pushed. When you realize that somebody is slapping you in the face and now you've got to fight.

Right. These guys talk like this to each other as a matter of course. Right. And these two nerds aren't used to talking. You don't talk to another human being like that. Right. used to talking, you don't talk to another human being like that. And it seems like, yeah, and it seems like a byproduct of living in a world where you talk with that energy where you're bringing that energy is you become, it's, and this is what it, this is what it look, when I think of the business world,

this is what I assume happens is you get used to being okay with other people not liking you. And you get used to pressing their buttons and asking for things they don't want to give you. And attacking them. Yes. And like I think, you know, a lot of people, most people hate public speaking. I don't hate public speaking because I do it all of the time. And I think of business in that way too, we're like, but if some, but I'd be more like those nerds who are like, we'll give you 33% of the company for $125,000. Like you're giving, I give things away

because I don't understand how to withhold from people the way in business you're like, I'm gonna so far lowball them because I wanna get to a middle ground. That, to me, that it's not necessarily an intrinsic skill set, but it's a practice skill set. It is a practice skill set. And I don't have it.

Yeah, go ahead, Jeremy. Something that I found interesting too and the way that they did the storytelling to sort of set that up for you was they gave us what Jim Bacillie was doing at his company before Blackberry starts. And putting him in the position where he's the guy who's sort of uncomfortable, doesn't

has this pressure on him from his bosses, from the people underneath him, he's trying to impress everyone, and it only makes him more and more of an asshole. And he failed it, and he failed that, yes. He failed exactly. You know, and because of that failure, he has to come back to this idea that otherwise as sort of a business jerk earlier in the day who didn't want to deal with these people who were coming in with kindness and empathy and whatever at least that's the way they sort of set it up in in the movie. He has to come crawling back to them and show them this is how you do it. But while also reliant to, but he doesn't crawl back. He comes back with the guns, the energy. Right. Exactly. He shows up with BD energy. Right? I mean, while lying to everyone that he is the boss, when he actually he was fired, you know, he didn't

even have a job. Why is your phone number crossed out on your business card, right? He's faking it. And he's walking in there because he knows he can believe them. It reminded me of anybody's ever seen the Spike Lee movie 25th hour, the way that Spike depicts Barry Pepper and those guys on the trading floor Wall Street. You know, this is the language that they speak. You know, this is the way they talk to each other. This no, no wonder you don't feel like you can make it in those rooms. I mean, the male energy, the white male energy, the masters of the universe, that Tom Wolf shit in there, right? When you go into those rooms, they are looking for the weak and the way that they determine who is weak and who is strong

is all in terms of belittling, you know, it's not that far away from sports. Yeah. You know, it's not that far away. But what I found interesting about those scenes is the response, the guy on the other end at US Robotics isn't like, well, you're talking to it. It was like, oh, yes, sir, right on on it now the it's like the two sharks recognizing each other right yep yep and that well because you mentioned how are the little bit of this like to me the the funniest scene in the movie is I forget exactly what the new c o o a blackberry is saying but he's coming in to wrangle all of the engineers. of the engineers. And he's basically assuming that they're all men, and whatever he says is alluding to their private parts and the way men act.

And then we just zoom in on the lone woman. And then just like pause on the surface like this. And I love that zoom. It was like the scene out of the, it was like the way they shoot the office, the veritate, there's this zoom in directly on that face. And that's exactly right. A part that was interesting to me, and actually Matthew Kugler, who's one of our producers

here for South Beach sessions, brought it up to me that was interesting, is in some ways this movie is similar to the social network, and that it's about the creation of this new thing and how they build it on the business side, but the difference between these two things. And I do wonder sort of if this is ultimately why one still exists in Facebook and one disintegrated as quickly as it did in Blackberry is Mark Zuckerberg became business guy. You know, you see it happen through the movie where he's originally the tech guy and he's hired his friend to help build the business. And ultimately, he becomes the cutthroat MFR who's willing to do anything and hurt anyone

for money. Where in this scenario with Blackberry, the tech guys remained for the most part, although they give you the evolution of one of the, you know, the co-CEO who was the reason I found that. Who suddenly has the cat Riley hair by the end of the movie. I'm like, is that the same guy? Right. Right. But they give you that it's more of a stretch for him to become a business person.

It's more of a stretch for him to kind of, you know, be so cutthroat and to watch Black Berry do what it does where really, really detect in the creative and the business are totally separate the entire time in terms of making this product and pushing it and you're watching that push and pull the entire time throughout the movie of we're selling phones that you haven't even made yet. You haven't even come up with this technology, but we're going to sell it. And we're selling phones that can't even handle the existing bandwidth, right? And we are going and we're breaking the law to do this because we're just, it was really

that we're done a figure it out thing brand new technology. And for you, BlackBerry lovers out there like myself, one of the things that was the greatest piece of the BlackBerry was the BlackBerry pin was the fact that when you were text messaging another BlackBerry, it was a direct message to that phone. It was incredibly cool. It was very different. Like you don't, I was a direct message to that phone. It was incredibly cool. It was very different. I don't think an iPhone does that. I mean, obviously, you can, you can eye message people, but you don't have, each phone doesn't have an individual pin, where you're essentially sending a message to that one phone. And so all of that stuff was

really new and really interesting. And the way that Blackberry, the way that at Blackberry, the way that when when but silly, I think his pronounces name when he was building the company, the the I was getting nervous. I am conservative in like two areas in my life, I think. One is money in the other is drugs. Right? I'm not. I don't do drugs, all right? And so in money, I prefer the money in my pocket.

Sorry, Dr. F. Kings, I prefer the money in my pocket, sorry, Dr. F. Kings, I prefer the money in my pocket to the money I could possibly win. It's just kind of who I am. And so watching this guy go to Google and go to all of these different companies and promise money he doesn't have and you know, go on way over the stock up. And I'm watching this and I love that little very subtle question. The most important question is also the most subtle in the whole movie. Is this legal? Right? I mean, that's the...

And we all know the answer kind of is like, if it is, it kind of shouldn't be, right? And so, you're sort of setting up what's going to happen. And I think another less subtle question of the entire movie is like, what are we all willing to do for growth and money? Because even in, you know, there's what I thought was so fantastic about the movies that even though it was bringing humor and it was telling you this very true story about a product that so many of us engaged with, It was also telling of a very much,

like a larger story about where we are all going. Like, so I bet that this line stuck with all of you as well. Like in the beginning of the movie, where they're just merging with Jim Bacilli and like they're trying to figure out how they take this product to market. And Jim Bacilli says like, have you ever heard that perfect is the enemy of good?

And then the engineer responds. Good enough is the enemy of humanity. And to me, that is where this crystallize, how this movie is telling a bigger story that we can apply to the sports world. Because how are when you're talking about the parts of the movie where they go in to engineers at Google and Nintendo and Microsoft and they're offering, and these engineers don't want to leave those companies.

Yeah. They're probably a family. They're forcing them up. They're forcing them up. And they don't want to do it. Of course you need it. And then it's like, yeah, well, how about 2 million? How about 3 million?

10 million. Will you come to Canada and work with us for 10 million? Like, to me that directly applies to like our current sports world. Where, like, you take the PGA tour and live. And it's like a year or two years ago, you know, Jay Moana hands like, oh, like we would never emerge with them.

Oh, but then it's like the same thing is happening. Oh, then we go to Saudi Arabia. It's like, what about 10 million? What about 100 million? What about a billion? What about a billion? What about a billion? Right. Well, now I think we can merge.

And this blackberry was telling the story of what happens when you compromise your morals and when you have to have growth at all costs. You end up with the blackberry storm, which never worked. And now you have 0% shared. Again, that doesn't always happen. This is a cautionary tale, but like the way they told it, it was very broadly relevant.

Yeah, I want to throw two things at UK to along those lines. Number one, one of the first things that hit me about that film, too, was what happens when your luck becomes big business? These guys were nerds. They were playing Doom. They were all in it for the fun. They were all in it for the cool factor. They were all in it for the fun. They were all in it for the cool factor. They were all in it because they enjoyed each other.

They were in it for their friendship. And now you're on to something that is gonna change everybody's life. To the point where you could probably tell, and the way the movie was set up, that a bunch of those guys probably maybe would have preferred to go back into their parents' basement in a play-dum.

Yeah. And then when the new COO comes in and he's talking about production, production, production, and put that basket all that way, and what is it? The metaphorical death of fun is the plunger for the winner gets to put the plunger on the desk and out of the plungers and the trash, right? In other words, we're not here for fun in games anymore. It reminds me very much of speaking of plunger, interesting. You know, the plunger, the late great Vita Blu, who goes 24 and eight with the old clays and is this fresh faced kid out of Louisiana and with a lightning arm and

suddenly wants his money. He wants to get paid for his value and Charlie Finley refuses to pay him and Vita Blue then suddenly goes and works for a plumbing company because back then, pre-free agency, you either took what the team gave you or you didn't play at all. And Vita Blue eventually came back and would always tell you he was never the same human being after that baseball was fun Then it became business and then it became exploitative and I was I never had the same joy for the game ever since that moment I feel like we we don't often take that into account when we talk about the mental health side for athletes either We don't often take that into account when we talk about the mental health side for athletes either, right, where you're turning something that was once their joy, their identity,

the thing that they did for a release, you know, and kids game and turning it into their profession. And look, I'm sure we all deal with this in this industry. We all love what we do, but there are moments where it will still feel like work, right? You're still showing up to work and doing your job, and I think that, you know, this example in this movie of how extreme it can get, and particularly like a guy who does come to mind if we want to wrap it back around to Miami Heat Basketball, but it's Duncan Robinson, right?

He's a guy who experienced so much joy playing a sport that he never thought he was necessarily going to be a pro. He didn't have the size, he didn't have the speed. Then he grows six inches in college and all of a sudden he gets to be an NBA player after going undrafted. And it's all fun and games until he gets paid. And then he's public enemy number one of the entire Miami Heat fan base because he's not living up to the contract And that complete and he's talked about it It took away the love of this thing that he used to love going outside to clear his mind and to shoot hoops in the backyard of his parents house And now you know you circle back around. He's like I don't want to touch a basketball

I don't want to be anywhere near it because it's taking away the love of what you do and in this movie That's ultimately what starts to happen to all of the engineers who were working alongside, you know, the main creators is, these guys were there because they wanted to be part of essentially like their own version of a threat. They wanted to be involved in something that was part of it. That's right, and the relationship between the two founders,

the Doug and Mike is like, you know, and Doug is played by Matt Johnson, who's the director of the film. He's terrific. You know, the scene when he has to go to New York and Doug doesn't get to go and you see Doug standing by the window like he's a puppy. You know, like, you know, like he's on the outside of this. Oh, and also, by the way, nobody asked about the mind. He's, I know. I have no choice.

There's also that! ¡Weed las personas que os piden que mireis, ¡tríquete y siguen convido! is you started this conversation talking about needing your click. And I needed my clicks as well. I could not imagine. I could not imagine not having a keyboard on a phone. The piece of this movie that I really enjoy, maybe the most, was the arrogance of business. The arrogance of the nerd, the arrogance of genius, the arrogance of Mike turning, from the nerd who starts the movie with the nerd, the arrogance of genius, the arrogance of Mike turning, you know,

from the nerd who starts the movie with the easel to being in the business room going, I built this industry. There's no possible way that people are going to want a phone that doesn't have a keyboard and he is completely passionate about this and he is so convinced he is right. And of course, as Jeremy said, the movie, we know how the movie ends. You couldn't have been more wrong. And so I loved this watching this because we know, as I'm looking at the timer, looking at my iPhone 14 Pro, that not only has no keyboard, it doesn't even have a headphone jack, and it has a camera. It's like, this whole thing is going in a direction. You can anticipate, and so watching him fight the rising tide was really fascinating to watch from a business standpoint

because I was in his camp back in 2008. I want my keyboard, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to have my keyboard. Howard, or this is more for Howard than Jeremy, I still think Mike was right. Like, I'm watching this movie, and there's numerous times where, you know, like his co-CEO was like, what about this Apple thing? Everybody tells me it's going to kill us and he's like, it's not going to kill us.

Nobody wants a screen without a keyboard. Nobody wants, it's going to be a data machine, like all of those different things. And I'm sitting there going, he's right for me. Like I, I still, I, still, I have my iPhone here. I don't know how many times a week, I turned a Catherine or somebody and I'm like, I f***ing hate texting on this thing. I hate writing emails on it.

Like never has a text been written by me on this thing where it's like, I didn't have mistakes, I have to go back and correct, then I gotta try to get the cursor in the right spot. I fucking hate it. Like, I still miss the Blackberry. Yeah. I still miss the functionality that that allowed me. And so, like, when everyone's like,

well, of course, everyone wanted a screen without a keep. I don't, did we? Did we do that? Did we do that? Did we, or did I just get used to it? And to that other point, I'm watching this, and I'm saying to myself, if you told me in 2004, when I got my first blackberry,

this device is going to be killed because people are actually, there's gonna become a generation, your child right now, your wife is pregnant with the child who will very soon watch two hour movies on that little screen. Right. I'm like, you gotta be shitin' me. No way, who's gonna wanna watch two hour movies on that little screen. Right. I'm like, you gotta be shitting me.

No way, who's gonna wanna watch a movie? Who's gonna watch a full anything on that side screen? And so you could see it coming and Jeremy, go ahead, because I have one other thing I wanna go at. Yeah, I just think the part that's so interesting about that, that in particular, is it changed so quick where everybody did love that click.

Everybody was obsessed with sort of the mechanisms of how that worked and it's interesting to see the way we adjust to things. No different than all these folks who are very, very, very upset right now about PGA and live and their merger. In two years, if they're golf fans, they're just going to watch whatever that league is, and eventually they might still be complaining about, oh man, I remember when PGA was this or that, but they're just going to get used to it. And that's where, unfortunately, where business does trump innovation in that if it can make you more money, and ultimately that's what the iPhone was doing.

I think the initial iPhone, and we all have looked this, and I looked it up a lot more, you guys lived it no way more than I did, but the initial iPhone was not as good as the Blackberry. It was not as good as the phone. I gave in, I believe in 2013, 2014, when I got my first iPhone. I hung in as long as I possibly could.

I remember, has anybody, by the way, in this, I'm the old guy in the group, but have any of you ever heard of a three-be-o? 3DO. I don't have it. No. Okay, I'm a gamer back in the day, right? I cover in technology for the Oakland Tribune, and the two big dogs, of course, are Sega and Nintendo, right?

These are the machines. And now the technology is moving away from cartridge-based games to CD-ROM, more space on the CD-ROM. However, a ROM is a read-only memory, so you can't store stuff, you can't save your stats to anything like that. However, the technology of the disk is greater greater is superior to the technology of the cartridge. So there's the startup in Silicon Valley called 3DL. And they are coming out with a console where their technology is better. And Sega, by the way, is fighting like hell to go from Sega Genesis. Then they had the Sega Saturn and the Sega Neptune. They come in with all of these different CD-based games.

They're not that good. There are consoles aren't that good either. Nintendo never did it. Nintendo went Q, GameCube, and they went in the other direction. But, 3DO's technology was superior to the Nintendo and the Sega consoles. They believed that they were going to have this market share to do it. They even got a few contracts, like the US robotics contract. They had to deal with Madden. They had to deal with a couple of the big dogs. So you could get some really good games on

that, you know, on that console. And then they didn't anticipate the one thing that the Blackberry folks in this movie didn't anticipate, which was there was a big dog on the horizon, just like Apple, whose sheer market size and sheer power was going to destroy you. And that was Sony. Sony was building a console called the PlayStation. And they were saying the same things that the that Mike is saying in this movie. There's no way that they're they make TV. Sony make what does Sony know about the video game business? They make televisions. They don't know how to do this. We know how to do this.

And you know, they were saying that was, you know, Apple, Apple doesn't make phones. They don't know that sheer power, crushed 3DO, and pretty much crushed damn near everybody else. And now Sony is the, you know, the PlayStation is obviously the ubiquitous console that it became. Sega doesn't even make a console anymore. They came in and they destroyed pretty much everybody.

And then Nintendo had to readjust so they come up with the Wii and they do all the other stuff now. But the arrogance of Blackberry and their believing that their technology could beat market forces. It immediately took me back to the beginning of my career, where it was like, look, when Sony tells you they're getting involved, when Apple tells you they're getting involved, you better be scared. Well, like, you know, I think one of the, like, when I even think and I think about Blackberry and about what they showed us in this movie, there's a part of me that doesn't even fault Blackberry

in ways because what Apple built still doesn't make sense to me. It's not the most functional phone. And let me just give me a second here on this because one other key moment in the movie is the way everyone in that business was thinking of What they were selling was minutes. Yes, I love that and then at the very end Blackberry realizes far too late that it is pivoted and now what they're selling is data because the CEO of AT&T says You know the problem with a minute. there's only a minute in a minute.

Whereas data is unlimited. And so then you retroactively look at it and you're like, so did Apple build the best phone? Like if Blackberry's mindset, and maybe this is where I was, is where they fall down, is like they weren't thinking of it holistically. But like, why would they ever build a phone

that had just a screen because they weren't thinking of it as data? What is functional for a phone? So it's like, and this relates to the sports world in a lot of ways for me because when I look at the PGA tour and live, I think of it in the same way of like there's only a minute and a minute and data's unlimited and therefore we're gonna build a phone

that's not the best phone because it can get you to use the most data. And in the same, is this best for golf, is this best for the fan, or is this best for whatever the power is that be when it comes to all of the factors that we know with Saudi Arabia and trying to get into the sports world. And so that's what really shook me up about

thinking back on the blackberries. Like, damn, I've spent the last 15, 20 years using a phone that's inferior to what I mostly use it for because of market forces that wanted to build something to make obviously money on the back end and not use your experience. Exactly, but Jeremy, isn't it something else? The one thing that hit me about this having lived through this? Because and that's the fun thing about being at this age, right? There are two things about being this age that I really sort of enjoyed, which is one.

I have lived through the I was alive for the entire creation and evolution of hip hop, right? I wasn't alive when rock and roll was created. I wasn't alive when blues was created. That I inherited that by birth. But hip hop and rap we saw from start to finish or start to continuation. And it's the same thing as true of the smartphone generation. We were here for this. We watched all of this. And the thing that hit me about it was that the thing that you had to recognize wasn't just the minutes to date the conversion, but also the phone to culture. Apple wasn't selling a phone. Apple was selling culture. Remember those commercials?

It was all about the cool, it was about the colors and about the person with the headphones. They were selling music. They were selling culture. They were selling, this is the device you have to have. And the future. They were selling culture. That's right. This is the future. They're selling that this thing not only takes great pictures, but you can watch a movie. That has nothing to do with a phone. The phone is actually the least important part of the device in a lot of ways, which runs completely counter to the blackberry side, where that was a business device. It was this is designed for us to type. People don't even want to type. Now they talk into the damn thing and let the voice texting go for you know. So all of

it was like, I think the cool piece of it was in those pieces of the world, in those parts of the world where you're being asked to essentially be a futurist and the Steve Jobs part, you know, part of the world, where are we going and to be able to have an idea. And I guess that's the battle is to know what the your vision is right or wrong And so here is Mike standing in this office and standing in his you know and in the boardroom and then in his office Talking about what he created what you created has already passed you by unless in a decade and the irony is There's a chance that they still created the best phone Exactly.

Because then I feel Jeremy, I will tell you right now, full disclosure. I, to this day, I have a pair of $300 Bose headphones, right? The Bose earbuds, whatever incarnation of those, and they are fantastic. I still do not use two earphones to talk on the phone. Kate Fagan, when I call you I am still using my one-year plantronics earpiece from back in the day. Why? Wow. Why? Because it actually works. Right. Yeah. Well, that and that's the part, right? Where what what like you just said what Apple was creating was coming off of the iPod, which was sweeping the nation and mind you.

That's right. A whole bunch of people who said, like, oh, but I have a walk. Well, it was that Jeremy was the two device thing that we were talking about earlier. I have my iPod from my music, and now I have my cell phone. Right. I don't want to have two devices.

Right, and that's where you give Apple the credit of innovating and realizing, like, well, what if we just threw all of this together and you know what? It's okay if the phone suffers slightly because these people will eat up the concept of it's all together It's all there and we've created something new and it's funny as you were talking about like seeing the evolution and staying Almost stubborn in it. I'm thinking of not just the business of sports, but sports in general. You can look at basketball and there were franchises that went, no, we have to have a big man. Three point shooting teams can't win championships.

It can't be about shooting like that. We got to play from the post out, not from the three point line in. And you look at baseball. And that's changing. This post season is debunking that. Oh, it is. But, but, but you saw Swift at about 10 years, a Swift evolution to where shooters get paid.

You know, you look at Major League Baseball and Moneyball, the way that that completely changed the way organizations run their business and have either of those necessarily been for the better of the consumer. Not necessarily. It was for the efficiency of the business and knowing that you could build the best team possible

by doing basically creating as many fail safes as you could to know that you were going to succeed. And so with Apple, they looked at this entire market and went, all right, let's just merge all of it together. We're BlackBerry kept saying, no, we want to have the best phone. So we're gonna keep making the best phone. And I think that's the part of it.

It's really interesting. That's right. Can we do one last section before I go because we're going to keep making the best phone. And I think that part of it's really interesting. That's right. Can we do one last section before I go because we're running out of time? I wonder Kate Fagan how you feel about another piece of this technology and of the where we are culturally, which is as we talk more and more about Empire, look at the movies that are being made. Now we have movies being made about products. We have the social network, a movie about Facebook, we have air, a movie that is about a sneaker, not about a person. Michael Jordan is really in the movie. It's not about him. It's about a product. We have Blackberry, a movie about a product. And now coming out on Hulu, Evil

Angoria is directing in her directorial debut, a movie called Flaming Hot, which is all about the idea of making flaming hot Cheetos. Oh my God. I mean, it's a parody, I believe. In fairness, I think it is a parody. Yeah. Is it a parody? Yeah, I do believe it's a parody.

I don't think it's a parody. No, oh, God, I know. It's not a parody. It's a story of rags to rich history about how one gen is. We got more? Yes yes about how a janitor Essentially had the idea and saved freedom lay. It's a it's an underdog story. It's not a parody It's an underdog story about how one one guy sweeping the floor had an idea that even the gigantic mega corporate suits Didn't have and his idea changed how you know

The different flavors of of Cheetos and food that we now get. Yeah. Three of those locals tacos were soon to follow. What about this, Kate? What about the fact that we're in a culture now? Is it simply another example of empire now? We're going to be watching movies not about people, but about products. Well, I mean, it seems like it's a symptom of late-stage capitalism, right?

Like the snake eating its tail. Like, first, we have to go through, because when those products were created, in a lot of ways, they probably maybe not want universally appreciated as moving the culture forward, but I don't think there was as much blowback, right? We're... I'm not going to a movie about Cheeto It's an underdog story Howard Story Now we've got other avenues of our capitalist economy that are

cannibalizing the stories of other avenues of our capitalistic Economy and like you can just see this thing circling in on itself. Now are we years away? No, we're probably much longer than that. But like, that's what it's representative of to me. Like this. Have you seen Air German, Kate? I haven't yet.

And I look forward to it. I think it's funny too, because it's like. If we do that next week. I mean, what's funny is, is this stage of movie about products is coming after this wave of biopics where we ran out of ideas for creative movies or, or, and more than running out of ideas, we ran out of people with money to green light, good and creative ideas. Four versus priority, Tesla. You've got all that, you've got that, you've got that you've got you've got you know all of these music movies that were made over the last few years

Whether it's somebody playing Freddie Mercury or Elton John. It's oh I can see this I know what this is. I like that product. Let's greenlight a movie as opposed to some of these more creative and beautiful Like indie stories that get told in in other. And that doesn't mean that this movie and a lot of those aren't great. It just as you said, Kate, it's just another example of sort of late stage capitalism of, this is what we're doing. We're just making products and making people famous

and then telling the story of how we did it and then one day we'll tell the story of how we told the story and the story of what we did itself. Also Tetris. Tetris is another. And Tetris is another one, exactly. Another movie about, and Mario Brothers is now, I mean, it's really, and like where it is,

it's like, I don't know if I sort of love this, right? Where it's almost as if the billionaires are patting each other on the back. And we don't tell stories about people. And yet, and yet at the end of the day, when anyone talks about air, they can't stop talking about Viola Davis, and that's it. They still, the end of the day when anyone talks about air, they can't stop talking about violet. David. So that's it. They still people still want to know stories about people.

On that note, we will have our final thoughts. My final thoughts on Blackberry is everyone should go see it. I think it's a lot of fun, especially if you lived it and you were a loyal loyal loyal Blackberry customer like myself who hung on as long as they possibly could. I thought it was a great, I thought it was really fun. I thought it was a good romp. I thought that the, the only negatives in that movie I found was that there was absolutely no personal life of any of them. We don't know that it was kind of implied that these guys were all living in their mom's basements, but we don't really see any of that. I thought that was sort of interesting. The, the villain, of course, drives a BMW convertible, which tells us a little bit about who he is, but there was no personal backstory to any of that.

But I don't really think it was detrimental to the film at all. No, yeah, I'm with you Howard. I've really enjoyed this one. And I lament the demise of Blackberry still. Same, Jeremy. I'll say I just want to shout out Glenn Howardton. I'm a huge fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

And I think his performance in this was really spectacular. He found a way to do the sort of controlled anger and then find the right moments to have his outbursts. And I think just his acting job was great and watching him go from a super comedic actor in a totally ridiculous show. Like It's Always sunny in Philadelphia. To go on after Gary Bettman in the conference room?

Yeah, like it was intense and it was really, really well done and it was cool just very quickly. I heard him in an interview or maybe on his own podcast, talking about how he actually did not study the mannerisms or anything of Jim in real life. He didn't know anything about him other than what was presented on the screenplay until afterward. And purposefully played the character as opposed to playing the actual person.

He didn't want it to be a biopic. He knew that this was about the Blackberry and telling that story was more important. And I think that that really came through in the performance where it was clear he wasn't trying to imitate anybody. He was just trying to deliver, you know, these moments that were necessary for you to understand the story. And I think that's an interesting approach to a movie like this. He ultimately met him later and said that that guy Jim actually really liked the movie and said it wasn't all that inaccurate. He didn't really have any issues with it. Sounds like it was a good story. It's a very interesting dance on something that happened.

It's like, is it a good approach? Sure it is. Is it a good approach when you're supposedly, because there are people in the world who know these people. Yeah. And so it's not like it's actually fiction. It's not fiction. Right.

And so that's why it's interesting. Well, it's why I found it interesting. And I found his decision there interesting where he was saying like look We're not we're not doing a documentary. We're not telling this whole thing You know some of these individual moments that were creating never happened, you know the the rapid Going from literally fired to that afternoon meeting with the time I'm sure it's not as simple as that and And so his view was, I'm playing a character that they've presented to me.

That character just happens to be based on a man in real life. You mean William Wallace in the princess, actually never hooked up in Braveheart? Don't. I never have. Are you telling me that never happened? Stop.

I guess not. I'm shattered. Shattered. So there it is, Kate Fagan, you have the microphone close to you. Are you final thought? Or are we good? Let's bounce out of here. I'm good. We are good. Yes, for Jeremy Tasha. Thank you for making your your maiden voyage here on Metal Arcars 81. Thank you. Kate Fagan always a pleasure. We will see you next week. And maybe we will go watch air. Maybe we'll do air for next week. You're gonna do it. It's worth it.

We'll see you. Be good. It would be an air enjudgment not to. It would be an air enjudgment.