The Michael Knowles Show - The Wokest Awards Show in Hollywood

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

There's no business like woke business! Hollywood's most important night of the year is back again, so grab your popcorn and your tumbler because the Leftist tears are plentiful as always. Join this roundtable discussion featuring Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and Daily Wire god-king Jeremy Boreing, as they discuss the winners, losers, and overall leftist disaster that is the self-acclaimed wokest awards show in Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, this is Michael. You're about to listen to our latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage, where I join Ben Shapiro, Andrew Plavin, and the man who will one day fire me for real, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, for a great conversation on politics and culture, and where we answer questions from Daily Wire subscribers. Without further ado, here is Backstage. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 357th annual Daily Wire Backstage Awards night, rambling conversation about lots of stuff over whiskey and cigars. Coming to you live from the second floor of a vaguely art deco building near a used car lot somewhere in the valley.

And now our hosts, extremely small G, baby K god king of the Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring. Hate-filled conservative lunatic, husband and father, Ben Shapiro. An old crank who yells at the clouds, Andrew Claven. And finally, something or other Michael Knowles. Four, Daily Wire Backstage. Fake laugh in three, two, one. She ain't the boss of me. Hey, guys, I'm Jeremy Boring, the small G, baby Kay God King,

and whoever wrote that voiced monologue is now officially fired. Go home. Thank you for joining us here at The Daily Wire backstage, the wokenest award show in Hollywood history. The only award show that you know recognizes good movies, more or less, if that's still a thing. Roll intro graphic. Yeah, all right. I feel like we get worse. And the night is young, too.

You know, sometimes you watch the pilot of a show after like you're 12 seasons in. You go back and watch the pilot. This thing was good. This thing was so. This is never good. This is like the fifth season of Law and Order when it starts a real trend down. I do want to take a minute and introduce the Lady of the Evening, not Michael Moles and his Oscar gown. But one, lovely and talented.

Ely Shikrylis. They just called her a lady of the evening. What was that? Not a lady of the evening. The lady. Sorry, take two. I would like to acknowledge our one and only streetwalking. You know, my dad is watching.

My dad is watching. You know, he's from boomer country, so guns are still legal. They're boring. Watch out. Yeah, but Alicia, he has to take a boat from where he is to hear. And California would stop him at the border and confiscate all those guns from him.

Anyway, welcome, everyone. Do you know what's happening? Because I sure don't. But I do know that all of the... of our subscribers in the evening, we'll be able to submit their questions over at dailywireback.com. I'm going to repeat that because Ben Shapiro

is losing a lung. So don't forget to go over to dailywire.com. Click on the daily wire backstage banner at the top of the page to watch the live stream and then write your question in the chat box and we'll do our best to make the guys answer it. Their answers will be more interesting depending on how much whiskey they have. Also, we're going to be playing a really

fun game of bingo tonight. Head on over to the Daily Wire Twitter account. at Real DailyWire on Twitter, where we pinned the bingo boards for you to follow along and play with other DailyWire fans. It's going to be lots of fun.

There's some great options like Ben interrupts anyone. Drew coughing. I think that's already happened. There's also a free space, but only after a 70% bingo tag. I kind of wanted a hashtag backstage so white option,

but that didn't make any too. Anyway. It'll be lots of fun. We'll be checking in throughout the night. And I don't know, maybe next time you tune into backstage, we'll come up with a drinking game. But tonight, play hashtag backstage bingo with us.

And finally, be sure to vote in the Facebook poll. Tonight's poll question is going to be, who should have won Best Picture? For a lady of the evening, not only does she have a heart of gold, like all ladies of the evening in Hollywood. It's pretty funny. It's pretty great we can book Julia Roberts to do our backstage. It's fabulous.

So, guys, we didn't all get dressed up for nothing. the Academy Awards for last night Oh, we actually got dressed up pretty much. The Academy Awards were last night and we're going to talk all about who won, I'm hoping one of you guys knows, who should have won, and then probably just talked to politics,

but first. Someone recently said in the Twitter comments on one of our shows that they only tune in to hear me clumsily segue into ad reads. That's the only reason I come here. So something, something, something policy change.

That's exactly right. I'm here tonight against my will. I'd like to die. And if I do die, and the good news is I know that I'm covered and I have life insurance. But if you order to die tonight, do you feel the same?

This is why you need to go visit our friends over at PolicyGenius, because getting life insurance can feel like assembling the world's worst jigsaw puzzle. It's confusing. It takes for over. And when you're finally done, it doesn't even look cool.

But if you have a mortgage, kids, or anyone who depends on your income, it's a puzzle. You need to solve. Policy Genius can make it happen for you. Policy Genius is the easy way to get life insurance. In just two minutes,

you can compare quotes from the top insurers and find the best policy for you, which is what everyone in this room should do before they die of lung cancer. When you apply online, the advisors of PolicyGenius will handle all the red tape. They'll negotiate your rate with the insurance company, no commission sales agents, no hidden fees. PolicyGenius doesn't just do life insurance. They also do home owners insurance and auto insurance and disability insurance.

They're your one-stop shop for financial protection. So if you find life insurance puzzling, head on over to PolicyGenius.com. In two minutes, you can compare quotes, find the right policy, and save up to 40% doing it. PolicyGenius is the easy way to compare them by life insurance. Go check them out right now at PolicyGenius.com and make sure you're covered so you too are comfortable in your own death. I remember right when I started working here,

one of the first things Ben said to me said, Hey, Knowles, get life insurance. Get life insurance right now. The best thing about it is you know your dependents will say, he wasn't so bad. My favorite thing about PolicyGenius, is that they keep us on the air. Yeah, that's good.

They're great sponsors of the show, and the other people who keep us on the show. are actually the fans. So if you're not a subscriber, we'd like for you to become one over at Dailywire.com. Okay, let me explain this. Here's the deal. I have been here for hours today. Hours. I did my podcast this morning. At one time. At 6.30 this morning. Then I went and I did Dr. Phil's show, which is going to be on Wednesday, so you should tune into that. Then I did two more hours of my show live. And now I'm here for two more hours with these jackasses. So if I have to be here, the least you can do, you ungrateful. All you can, $9.99 a month. That's all we ask for me.

if you spend $99 a year, which is cheaper than $9.99 a month, do the math. You can. I know AOC has trouble with this, but if you can do the math, $99 a year, cheaper than $9.99 a month, you'll find this is true. Then you get this. The very greatest in all beverage vessel, the leftist tier is hot or cold tumbler. So go check it out. And please subscribe right now to keep us on the air and provide us some incentive for the love of God to continue doing shows like this, because I will tell you, I am this close. This close do not. I have a pretty good time. I was about to say it was good to see you. So last night, not the worst Oscars of all time. I actually have to say, and I think that at least tens of thousands of Americans will agree, certainly not millions, because the ratings were actually up slightly last night. Really? They were up slightly.

Well, that's because three people watched last year, four watch this year. No, an Oscar, an Academy Awards with no host is more popular than an Academy Awards with Jimmy Kimmel host. No, scientifically proven. Last night was the best host the Oscars have had since Steve Martin. In the series, in 10 years, that was the best host they've had. No host.

The show wasn't bad that's ever so. I disagree with this. The best host they've had was Ricky Jervais. He was good. You know why? Because what I actually want, if I were going to waste my life watching the Oscars,

what I would have wanted was a host who was just going to crap all over everyone in the room because the truth is they crap all over us. So, I mean, that's what that show was. The entire show, as always, was a three-hour-long ode to themselves with Lady Gaga walking and wearing

a $30 million diamond, I kid you not, and not one article in the woke blogosphere about income inequality after she wears a $30 million diamond to the Oscars. You know, Jeff Bezos can create a billion dollar company that employs hundreds of thousands of people and he's a bad guy. Lady Gaga sings some songs and was a $30 million diamond,

but income inequality is of no consequence whatsoever. And so, you know, honestly, what they should do, if they were smart, is they would have somebody coming in and roast the room. They used to do this. Bob Hope used to do this. Bob Hope used to do this. Bob Hope was actually funny. He was actually funny when he did.

And that would have been good. But right before the show, I was telling the guys that I do have a foolproof method of picking the best picture. And I knew who's going to win Best Picture this year. I knew who's going to win last year and the year before. I've been right three years in a row. Let's hear it. Okay. It's called the Wokeathon.

So here's how it works. All you have to do is pick the most intersectional candidate among the candidates for Best Picture this year. So this year, the various nominees were Black Panther about black folks, black Klansmen, about black folks, the favorite about lesbians, bohemian rhapsody about gay guy. And those were the four intersectional candidates. And then you had a Star is born, which was non-intersectional. And you had Roma about a Latina. And then you had Green Book, which is about a gay, black guy.

Done. That's the entire thing. Done. It wasn't gay. It wasn't black. It was gay and black. Go back to the year before. But you left out Republican Bad, which was the other film that was nominated. Well, yeah, sorry. I forgot about Republican Bad. But Republican Bad is still about white people. So that's not a thing. It's not a thing.

And then if you go back to last year, you'll recall that the movies that were nominated, if you can recall any of them, or it was a bunch of random, sort of, there were some that were intersectional, there were some movies about black folks and some movies about gay folks. The one with Army Hammer was nominated last year which is about gay folks. Call me by your name. Right, and then there was a, I'm trying to remember which other,

there was a movie about black folks last year as well. Get out. I think hidden faces, hidden faces. Hidden figures. Hidden figures. That was nominated last year. But the one that won was about a gay black guy, right? It was moonlight. Sorry, it was the shape of water that won that had a black person and a gay person and a commie, which is like and a fish. And a person.

and stooping a fish, which is like, boom, done. Oscars forever. If you have like an NCAA bracket of Oscar winners, that one comes in like seeded one. And then the year before was Moonlight, right? Which is gay black story. So next year, all you have to do if you want to win an Oscar is just check the most intersectional boxes.

It's like the 2020 Democratic primaries. This is all you have to do if you actually wish to win an Oscar. Because the truth is, the best movies of last year, not a single one was nominated, not one. Well, that's a good question. What should have been nominated? Okay, I think we'll all agree. I recommend it to all of you, so you have to agree by-bye.

But the best movie of last year, and in my opinion of the last five years, with the death of the style. It was an excellent and fabulous. It was a really good movie. It was phenomenal. And it got no attention. The critics liked it. It got 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It is hysterically funny. It is dark. It is really witty. And it's almost exactly true. Every moment of it is almost exactly right. Left-Wing or Bad is not an Oscar. That's right. So it didn't even get a single nomination, not one.

And everything in that movie is better than anything in any of the movies that were nominated this year. That was my pick. And I know that Jeremy, you had another movie that came to mind. I thought a quiet place. I agree with this. That's what I was going to say. Absolutely. They'll never nominate a horror film any in this day and age. They did. They nominated a Get Out last year. No, that's fair. But Get Out was way woker than a quiet place. Correct. It's a woke movie. And it was a real movie movie. It was an inventive movie. It was an inventive. It was deeply dramatic and terrifying. Yep. But it was also creative in a way that it was a high concept film. And it also said something to me. I'm sure they, this is an inventive movie. I'm sure they

This wasn't intentional, but it said something to me about outrage culture. Open your mouth and they'll come and kill you. That's right. Okay, the other movie, I don't know if you guys saw this one. It was nominated one best animated flick, but it should have been nominated for Best Picture was into the Spider-Verse. Yeah, that was good. Okay, Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture. Okay, it was fine.

It was so much worse than fine. I thought it was okay. I mean, I've seen virtually all the Marvel movies. It was like a B-Marvel movie. It was like the fourth best superhero movie of the last year. Forget the last five years. The last year. I can name three that are better off the top of my head.

Name them. Okay, into, I will. Into the Spiderverse was a better movie. Infinity War came out this year. That was a better movie. It was a better movie. And here's the controversial part. I'll go with Aquaman over Black Pan.

Guys, I'm literally shaking from the racism right now. I am literally shaking. But I thought that we know, but according to shape of water, fish is actually. Fish are good. The amazing thing to me, Into the Spider-Verse is better than all of these. Well, certainly. The interesting, because I watched Black Panther this week.

I hadn't seen it when at first. came out because I wasn't sure if I was allowed. You got the Halloween mask. You remember there's all the controversy. It was apparently just you're not supposed to if you're not allowed. That's not for you. So I watched it this week. Is it not a racist movie?

It's a racist movie. By the way, I don't mean racist like in the way that the left is racist because they actually want people to be segregated into different race groups. I mean racist like old school white racism. Like, isn't today an old school white racist movie? Well, it's based on a comic that was written in the 60s. I mean, you mean, they're using tropes in Africa that seem like they're straight from. There's really African tropes that are, yes.

And not only that, the whole idea of the movie was, was, oh, we could have had European culture of only a magic rock had fallen on us, which is like, first of all, it's degrading, it's degrading to the black people in American culture who have contributed enormous amounts. It's like they should be ashamed of their culture, which is just not true. And we all came here, we all came here to try and save our lives. It also, it also happens to be not true. There is a magic rock in Nigeria. amazing mineral well in Nigeria, right. Cobalt is a blue magic rock that exists in Nigeria, and it is not a well-governed place, and so it's a bad place. And it's a very small-minded idea of what culture is. Also, they wanted to build Trump's wall, right? I mean, like, their whole, the whole place exists inside Trump's wall. Like, if you have no dealings with the outside world,

if you don't deal with any of the outside world, the idea that colonialism would have corrupted this place, just like it corrupted all the others, except they guarded this place. That's not accurate either, because there are places in Africa that were not really touched very much by colonialism, and they're some of the worst places in Africa, too. I mean, like... The other thing that struck me about every single movie is every movie was basically about people my age, you know? They took place in the 60s, the 70s,

the... They were based on movies that were made first in 1930s. A Star is born. The Black Ant was... Did you see a Starzborn? I saw it. Okay, so I want to get your opinion on it because the, I saw the one with Judy Garland and James Mason, which is an amazing film. Great movie. And Judy Garland is unbelievable. The one is based on with Frederick March. is a great movie.

Right. So the first two are really good. How was this one? It's mediocre. I mean, Bradley Cooper has now replaced Denzel Washington as the best actor who's also a leading man. And Denzel is kind of aged out of that role.

And he's so good that he makes Lady Gaga look bad. And she's not bad. She's just, you know, singer doing it. She's a singer doing an acting turn. So she looks really bad. And they have a lot of ad-lib scenes in which she's just obviously going off the reservation, doesn't know what she's doing.

The music is nice. There's nice music in it. but basically it's mediocre. Okay, then Roma was nominated, right? I watched Roma this morning. I'm still watching it. I know, yeah, it's still on. I woke up very early to watch this stupid movie

because Drew's a sadist and I had to do it on a show. And I watched that whole thing. I mean, you got through the first part. First 20 minutes. The first five minutes is a puddle. It's a shot of a puddle. The thing with Roma actually typifies

everything that is wrong with Hollywood. It is, they say that, nostalgia is history after a few drinks. It is this nostalgic, self-indulgent, pretentious tripe. It is a movie about nothing. It is pointless. Inso much as it has a point, it's a sort of bland bourgeois movie. It is just, it's the sort of movie that people who have never seen a good movie think a good movie is supposed to look like. You know, because it's in black and white, and it's really slow. I mean, he's right that there is legitimately a three-minute establishing shot of water washing over cobblestones at the beginning followed by another three-minute

establishing shot of a small plaza no bigger than the size of our combined offices, really. And it's not like an establishing shot like at the beginning of Pinocchio where it swoops through the entire city. You're like, wow, this is really cool. It's an established shot of a door, and they turn the camera, and it's another door, guys. And then they turn back, it's still, the first door hasn't moved. It's actually still there. It's unbelievable.

And this is great direction. That one, by the way, the best Oscar winner last night was Bohemian Rhapsody for Best film editing. That is absolutely hysterically funny. Have you guys ever have you seen any of the clips? Just not even the movie. Okay, so it is the worst edited film in the history of film. I'm not sure you even notice that.

Go back, there are a bunch of people who have posted film editors who have gone on and posted little clips on Twitter of the movie. There's one scene where the band is sitting around a table and they're being talked to by the manager or something. And it's just random cuts of reaction shots that don't even make sense. It's like they filmed all

of the people with various cameras and they had a monkey with a toggle switch and back. Just trying to do... Not to mention that... I know a little something, something about movie making, haven't been around Hollywood a day or two. I am almost certain that the entire first act of Bohemian Rhapsody

was altered in the edit bay, which actually causes the film the characters to be slightly more sympathetic, which I think is what they were going for, but makes the movie not make any sense. There are scenes that I'm certain are happening out of the sequence of the screenplay, Which, listen, that happens in Hollywood, but when it's done well in editing, you don't know about it.

Right. Whereas in Bohemian Rhaps, it was pretty, pretty definite. This was one of my favorite things in the night was Brian Singer completely disappearing. Oh, they disappeared Brian Singer. They were winning technical awards, and everybody would go out there and be like, and I'd like to thank everybody down to the grip. And the director is just like in the back going, what about me? Like, you were molesting the people.

It was literally, literally the Oscars were the end of Death of Stalin. That's exactly right. You want to hear something sad? I happen to be reading a book that is about the friendship between Henry Fonda and James Stewart. In 1940, James Stewart won the Oscar for Philadelphia Story

to make up for the fact that they hadn't given it to him for Mr. Smith goes to Washington the year before, and when he won, he felt he has stolen it from Henry Fonda for grapes of wrath. Those movies are still,

you watch those today and they are as modern as they were at the time. It's like 80 years ago now. The movies then, I mean, it's not exaggeration. The number of people who will watch these movies in 80 years, is exactly zero. Zero number of people

who watch the movie. I mean, you can't name the ones that have won in the last three. When's the last time you picked up a movie? The last movie that I saw, where I've actually picked it up since it was nominated for anything, was Whiplash. That was, I think, four years ago. Yeah, you like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, but the number of movies that you will actually like, you know... The Pianist, I think, was the last, the last winner that I actually watched.

Every year at Christmas time, I take in a showing of crash. This was, this one's my favorite part. There were a bunch of articles about how this was the worst, best, best picture winner since crash. And I thought, did anyone see shape of water last year? It was the worst movie I have ever seen. I mean, forget about the worst winner. Except it had Nick Searsie in it. That kind of element. The International Film. Well, that's different. But Nick Searsie was in, Nick Searsie was also

in every single movie last year. I know. Every movie. He was in three hours and I'm I want to tell you guys a funny story about international film and television star P-Body Award winning after Nick Searcy. He followed me on Twitter today. Wow. This is big.

He knew you were doing this show. You wanted to get him good. So we got to get to another one of our sponsors. I can't even pretend to do it. It's now in my head about these ad rates. They got to you. They got to me. Yeah, you should never read Twitter.

Never read the comments, you guys. Bravo Company Manufacturing, Ben. So when the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by the government. The second right they enumerated was the right of the people to protect that speech and their own persons with force. I believe in that.

Everybody in this room believes in that, except for somebody back there. But in any case, Bravo Company Manufacturing, was started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago to build a professional-grade product that meets combat standards. BCM believes that the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless

of whether they're a private citizen or a professional. They're not a sporting arms company. As I have said many times, a gun is not for going hunting. A gun is for protecting your life, it's protecting your civilization, protecting your family. That's what it's about. If you can go hunting with it too, fantastic. But BCM is manufactured,

so if you're in a life-threatening situation, the gun is going to work. Each component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standards, and BCM works with leading instructors of marksmanship from top levels of America's special ops forces who can teach the skills necessary to defend yourself, your family or others.

To learn more about Bravo Company manufacturing, head on over to Bravo Company MFG.com, and you can discover more about their products, special offers in upcoming news. That is Bravo CompanyMFG.com. If you need more convincing, go check them out at YouTube. They have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com,

slash Bravo Company USA, meet the people behind the company. It really is fantastic. I know the people who run Bravo Company USA. Great folks. Check them out at Bravo CompanyMFG.com or YouTube.com slash Bravo Company USA. They're doing important work and you should join them.

Yeah. So I think I took you to buy your first gun. You did. You did. I still have it somewhere. I keep it to buy my first. I took it to buy your first. Yeah, you've got a real track record. Yeah, it really is a thing that I've done.

Because I'm from Texas as you know, once I moved to L.A., I realize that no one owns a firearm. And I thought, well, I'm going to make it, you know, like some people help the poor. and some people help the widows. I'm just going to help people ammo up. Back then, I didn't even know I was a conservative.

That's a true story. It was during the Bush-Gore election. It was the first presidential election I ever voted in. You know, like George W. Bush had been my governor for eight years and Al Gore had been my vice president for eight years.

I kind of didn't want to see either one of them go. I thought, you know, one of these guys that's going to lose. Go off his rocker, grow a great big burly beard and say that the sky is falling and become a billionaire. And I just didn't want to have to have. I didn't need a gun, though, because I lived next to one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and one of the biggest anti-gun activists, and there were so many guards with guns in her house

that they would call me up and say to me, we're watching your house, too, don't worry. I don't need to. That's true? That's true? That's absolutely true. So her armed security. She had so much armed security that they were... They were watching my house. They were watching your house. Yeah, so I didn't need a gun. Well, the most heavily armed person left in our office since the last person went on to have babies, which is a good thing. That's a good thing. Is one Elisha Kraus, who, Elisha, what do you got for us over there? Well, you know, I might like Miss Congeniality over here.

Got holsters everywhere and no one can tell. So the celebrities last night went home with, you know, these swag bags that were upwards of $100,000. Well, tonight the guys are going to be going home with a much cooler but less expensive swag bag. Wow. We want to be sure that everybody heads over to Amazon. because we got some really great gear,

including these little pop sockets that people put on their iPhones, especially for us ladies. This is actually, thank you, Patriarchy for creating these because it makes it easier to text with our small hands. And it works really well.

There's tiny, delicate little hands. I think it's unfair of you to just assume that because men invented literally every damn thing that they also invented pop soapsackers. That you also invented these? Yeah, I didn't see a pair. My favorite thing is the...

Hold on, I'm sorry, Jerry. I just looked it up. Men also invented pops. But you know what? You didn't invent Spanx. And thank God for those. Also, thank God for our amazing daily wire subscribers. We do have some subscriber questions.

Guys, Alicia's on fire. She's on fire. We should just go. All you had to do is follow a prostitute. You changed everything. It's the baby I have. We got two levels of creativity going on here. Two,

girls were you to take you guys down. All right. But we have some awesome subscriber questions, all related to the Academy Awards last night. This first question comes from Philip. He says, people seem to look for moral and philosophical leadership from famous people, like actors and politicians.

More Michael Knowles. Do you think this is part of human nature? And should we try to do something to change this? Well, I'll take a crack at it and say that for people who haven't visited Hollywood before, there really is like a Babylonian motif that Hollywood literally deliberately steers into.

Like if you go down to the Hollywood and Highland Center, which is where the Academy Awards take place, that's the home of the Dolby Theater, is right down the block, is literally a block away from the Roosevelt Hotel where the first Academy Awards took place.

And it's complete aesthetic is Babylonian mysticism, right? So in other words, my point is that idolatry is a sort of winked at, if not openly celebrated aspect of Hollywood. And so, yeah, the stars are a kind of modern idol. And it's kind of funny to call them modern,

because one of the things that the Academy Awards really brought home to me last night is that Hollywood is dying. The movies in particular, TV's kind of in a golden era. The movies are dying. You know they were this close to basically writing themselves out of existence. If Roma wins best picture, they're toast. Because Roma didn't, Roma only appeared in theaters

for purposes of Oscar bait. Roma is on Netflix. That's right. If Roma had won, then the streaming services would have produced the best movie in Hollywood, and streaming services would have completely been on the path to what. They still are. They're basically on the path to wiping out theater movies.

Yeah, but I think that before, we discussed on the show before what happened to Hollywood, so we don't have to relitigate the whole thing today. There were the two really ill-conceived writers' guild strikes that happened right in a row at the beginning of reality television at the beginning of YouTube. But the result of those things is that the movie star, who historically was an idol,

just like 10 years before the rock star who was also an idol figure was diminished by Napster and then the two writer skills tracks and a few other bad decisions in Hollywood brought the movie star low. So the funny thing is I don't think people look to movie stars to be their intellectual, philosophical,

and religious idols anymore. I think they did for about a century. I think one of the things that that Hollywood hasn't tuned into yet is that people don't care what they think in the way that they... Hollywood used to do. to be able to move the needle.

Stalin tried to and maybe even succeeded at taking over Hollywood. That's what gave us Ronald Reagan. Because Hollywood was so influential. And I really think to now, today, Maya Rudolph walks out to give the opening jokes, can't help and immediately take a crack at

the audience. 64 million people. And I think everybody just yawns. I don't think anybody really cares. I think there's something else going on to, and I totally agree with you, obviously, about the idolatry. The truth is that what social science tends to show is for the same reason that if you, there's a great experiment, one of my favorite social science experiments, if you take somebody and you put them out on a street corner and you just have them look up,

like in nothing, like just have them look up. Then within five minutes, there'll be a crowd of people standing around that person looking up because that's just what we're geared toward. We're geared toward sensing both threats and things we feel like other people are looking at. So if somebody starts to gain a level of fame, everybody starts to look at the person who is famous, I don't think that it's a matter of Hollywood stars are no longer relevant. I think it's that there is no such thing as a Hollywood star anymore, meaning more. The only way that fame existed before was we all knew the people who were on our movie screens or we knew the people who were on our TV screens.

There's a whole level of fame. But I would say that virtually no generation above the age of 25 knows about YouTube stars are stars, right? YouTube stars are actually the new movie stars. There are people with 98 million followers on YouTube. And those people actually are change in tastemakers when it comes to this sort of stuff. But going all the way back to the Bible and Saul being selected because he was a head taller than everybody else, there has been this idea that the movie star matinee idol has something to do

with all of them. It is a difference though that it used to be when the actors came to town you locked up your daughters. They were disreputable, they were the lowest level. Like Knowles you know, for instance. For all of the history of the arts, actors have been lumped in with prostitutes. Well, really, and now the fact that they,

I think people still feel the same way about them, except that they also worship their beauty and they worship their stuff. I'm not sure if people ever listen to their opinions. I think movies move the needles. I'm not sure movie stars ever do. Well, I think that's true. They worship their beauty and their prostitutes. Alicia, do you have one more question for it?

Geez, Louise. Taking it hard on the chin today, I'm sorry I'm standing between you guys. I have a feeling that some prostitutes probably make a lot more money than I do. Wow, she's owning it. Also, the MSRP of this ain't much folks. So you can go over to Amazon right now and check out our gear.

Next question comes from Mike, who's a subscriber, by the way. He thought it was worth spending $99 so he could get a leftist tier tumbler and ask you guys a question. What was the last best picture that you actually felt deserved the award? Wow. Now I need to look up a history. Yeah, you have to look.

That is the problem. That is the problem. I mean, I don't even remember. Gone with the wind one. Yeah, but the Wizard of Oz is a better movie. The Wizard of Oz is a great move, but not, gone with the wind is a great thing. I think the Wizard of Oz is the greatest achievement in the history of Hollywood. I think this a solid case we made for it. I think the Wizard of Oz is the

I think it's a great movie, and I wouldn't even argue. I mean, I think it's Casablanca myself, but even so. But here's the thing. Cossibon may be a better movie, but Wizard of Oz is a greater achievement. That's an artistic achievement building an entire other world. That one, I mean, my grandmother told me she saw it in the theaters. And when she went to the theater and actually saw it, and suddenly, Dorothy opens the door. Yeah.

And then it's in color. That one shot, like, changed the world. It's a world-changing shot. It's an incredible thing. When I was a kid, the only color TV was owned by a guy who lived across our backyard. and we would walk over every year to see the Wizard of Oz and then I was like three

and every time the witch came I would get scared and have to go home for years I never saw the entire movie You know I gotta tell you the one that won in 2014 was Birdman which no one liked because it was very indulgent I actually really liked it because I was very indulgent

It's a garbage movie and you're a garbage person I agree with half of that I agree you're a garbage person but the movie was okay The movie was okay. You know, the actual, I mean, no country for old men was good. No country was fabulous.

Gladiator, I think, was actually the last really great best picture winner. I was saying great best picture winners, winners, or ones that you enjoyed. Because I'll say that in 2010, the King's Speech won. Which I enjoyed. And let's see, yeah, no country for old men before that. But I like, I would never watch the King's. And then you go back to the 30s and 40s and every year. And the ones that lost a class.

The ones that lost their classics. This is exactly right. It's exactly right. If you go back to, I mean, I'm not going to do 1939 because that's unfair. 1939 is the best year in the history of films. I mean, it's gone with the dark thing. These were just the pictures nominated for Best Picture. And the year before was Adventures of Robin Hood.

Yeah. And the thing is, they were not only nominated for Best Picture. They were also the top of the box office. Which is the art that Hollywood has lost. Well, this is the other thing is that there came a point in American culture where the left decided that it was very bad that the American people were becoming. coming culture. This is in the 1950s, because the truth is, in the 1950s, more Americans bought a ticket for a symphony orchestra than bought a ticket to a baseball game. Really? I mean, yes.

Americans, actually, Americans were buying the Harvard classics during that period. Yep. Like tens of thousands of Americans every year were subscribing to the Harvard classics. Americans, like the newfound prosperity of the 50s after World War II, was being channeled toward a betterment of actual knowledge. And the left decided that because they were making the case, the capitalism actually emptied you out because they're in league with sort of a Marxist philosophy, they started seeing this as bourgeois. And so anything that was popular had to, by necessity, be bourgeois. And so it became, okay, now the stuff that really is good is the stuff that people don't like. Because the more they don't, it's like, in my view, what, what happened to

Steven Sondheim in theater? If you look at Stephen Sondheim in theater, every musical that he did beyond Sweeney Todd, he started getting more and more and more obscure because he actually doesn't like the audience. He thinks that the audience, if they get him, it's a lack on his part. He hasn't been sophisticated enough. And so if you look at Sondheim's stuff, you know, beyond Sweeney and Into the Woods, it starts to go into assassins and passion. It's like that with the movies, too. They've decided that they

will not, and the only movie that they feel like they'll reward that did really big box office is Black Panther because they feel they have to. Not to let the left off the hook, but this is what happens when art forms age. They get taken over by intellectuals and they split into empty entertainments and intellectual things. Some of which are good, Ulysses

is a good novel, but who reads it? You know, nobody understands it, except You know, people like intellectuals. But I think this was a deliberate. I think this was a murder of an industry. I think it was a suicide of an industry. I think that everybody here, everybody in this business knows that what pays the bills is Avengers Infinity War. And they're all embarrassed that Avengers Infinity War pays the bills.

So they go and they make Birdman. But it's not a memorable movie. No, I'm going to go a step further than that and say they know that Avengers Infinity War is what pays the bills. But they don't know how to make Avengers Infinity War transcend. That's it. They actually don't know how to make it great. It's a good movie. It's a good movie.

It's a good movie. But there's no meaning to it. They used to be able to unify meaning with story. They understood the limitations of their craft were actually in some ways helpful. You have to please people and also bring a deeper meaning in there. Like, Casablanca is a great pot boiler that also happens to have an enormous amount of deep meaning on a variety of levels. It is interesting when they succeeded in that film Logan, which is actually a good movie. Nobody knew it.

Logan should have won best picture. I mean, nobody knew that was the movie. By the way, here are the movies from 1939. Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Nanachka of Mice and Men, stage coach, The Wizard of Oz in Wuthering Heights.

Every single one of them, you can watch it. Everyone is a classic. I actually had forgotten about Wuthering Heights, another tremendous film. So, stamps.com. Stamps.com,

I love stamps. They are an actual sponsor of ours. Yes, and I love them. This is my worst segue. That was a great prison. It was my worst transition of Paul's fine, you guys.

It was a triumph. It was a triumph of Segway and it was. And it's unfair because, like, stamps.com actually helps us run our business. Not only because they sponsor us, but also because, you know, stamps, In L.A., in L.A., if the post office is five minutes away, it's three hours away.

That's right. It really makes a difference out of your computer. That's right. In fact, it's nobody has time to go to the post office, and you can save money on all the great services that you get at the post office when you go to stamps.com. Stamps.com is one of the most popular time-saving tools for small businesses. It eliminates trips to the post office and saves you money with discounts you can't even get at the post office. They bring all the amazing services of the U.S. Postal Service direct to your computer, whether you're a small office sending invoices or an online seller shipping out products. Stamps.com can handle it all with these.

It doesn't matter you have a warehouse full of stuff, and you can still use Stamps.com. Simply use your computer to print official U.S. postage 24-7 for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it. With Stamps.com, you get five cents off every first class stamp and up to 40% off priority mail. It's a no-brainer. There's a reason why 700,000 small businesses already use Stamps.com, including

the Daily Wire. Right now, our listeners get a special offer that includes a four-week trial, plus free postage and the digital scale without any long-term commitment, which is a solid deal. Go over, check them out right now at Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Shapiro. At Stamps.com, enter Shapiro. I use it personally. It's a great service. Go check them out. Stamps.com. Click on that microphone at the top of the homepage. Type in Shapiro. You get that four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale with no long-term commitment.

It's about as good deal as you can get. Yeah. I want to talk about something John Nolte observed last night that I thought was such a fabulous point. He said that the real problem, the reason that the Oscars are no good. Sure, they condescend. Sure, they openly disdained their audience. audience. Sure, they're puffed up and self-important. But the real problem is there just aren't any movie stars. No, no, there are no, there are no, there are no movie stars. His great observation was they opened the show. Tina Faye, Maya Rudolph, and... Exactly. Amy Poehler. Amy Poehler. Yeah. I think all three fabulously talented, very funny.

They're TV stars. They're stars of the small screen. They have appeared in some movies, but they are not movie stars. The day of the movie star, is over. It's gone. And people did go to the movies to see a Jimmy Stewart movie. And people tuned into the Academy Awards because these weren't people who lived their lives in front of us all day every day. They were mysterious. They were from another world. They descended down from Babylon, right? And then we paid money and went into a dark room and projected them up there. That is a different power than people who beam into your living room and you sit in your underwear and flick through And there were people hired to protect their reputations.

The idea that you protect an actor's reputation today is laughable. If he goes into rehab, he has to tell us all about it. They're just people now, which maybe, look, that may be a healthy thing in some ways, but it's also ruined the industry. Your point is totally correct. I have a cousin. Who's a legit movie star? I mean, people know this on Wikipedia.

My cousin was Mara Wilson, who is the star of Matilda and Miracle on 34th. Three, we go up around the corner from each other. and her mom was my dad's sister. And one of the reasons that her mom never wanted her to get into TV when she was younger. I remember her saying this to my dad was because with movie stars, there was a certain unapproachability. You didn't feel like you knew them. You felt like they're up there on the screen.

They're of a different caliber. And then when you bring them down into your TV, then it's the same feeling that they have about watching your show or my show, or maybe Knowles' a show that somebody watches that thing. They still are filled with deep awe information from my show. But people feel like they know you like on TV. People feel like they're friends with you, right? On TV, people feel like they're friends with you and they know you.

You literally, you bring them into your home. That's right. But let me make an argument why this is a good thing, okay? Because, and obviously I have a bias here, but it emphasizes story. It emphasizes the writer. You watch TV because the stories are good and the stories are good because the writer is king. They treat writers like garbage in the movie industry, and they get what they pay for them. So I totally agree that it is a good thing for story.

I would much rather watch. I mean, I spent the last several week going through old episodes of The Sopranos. because I can stream it full scale. And it's great. And at some point I want your guys' analysis of the finale because I'm 10 years late on this thing. But in any case... Maybe the greatest episode of television.

It's a pretty astonishing show. But you're right about all of that. But I do think that there is such a thing as the culture fragmenting. So I think to a certain extent, there was something good about the idea of on a certain night every year, everybody was going to get together

and watch The Wizard of Oz. When there were cultural events, we still feel it in America. Every so often there's like the Super Bowl is a cultural event. And it's good for the country. Everybody stops shouting at each other for five minutes. And it's actually good. I think one of the big problems with the Oscars is not only is an event we used to share,

it's now become so politically polarizing. I think that it's actually a problem. I think that it's fine. It was something where we all got together and we would not at certain aspects of the movie making. And we also had rooting interests. Like, imagine how many more people. I would have watched the Oscars if this year it were, I love the death of Stalin,

but if this year the Oscars had actually been had been into the Spiderverse versus a quiet place versus frankly something like Game Night, when was the last time they nominated when was the last time they nominated a comedy? They'll never nominate a comedy and if they do, it's going to be like an actual drama, it'll be a dromedy like little to sunshine or something.

They'll never nominate an out-and-out comedy because they looked down on it but one of the very first Oscar winners it happened one night is an out-and-out comedy. There are a bunch of out-and-out comedies that won the early Oscars. That notion that we all got together and watch something together is gone now. And that's what is so, people on the left leftist. So why are you so frustrated at the Oscars when they do this leftist stuff?

When you know they're going to do the leftist stuff. And it's because you took something away from us. I used to sit around the TV with my parents when I was a kid. And we all used to watch the Oscars together. And then around 2003, 2004, I vividly remember this. We used to watch the Oscars,

all of us as a family and sort of enjoy it. And then around 2003, 2004, like the crash time, they started to really get openly political. And then Michael Moore in 2000. What was it, 2003? I think that's right. And I remember every year, my mom and sisters would want to watch for all the dresses and stuff. And my dad would walk in every 15 minutes ago, why are you watching this bleep?

And it got to the play, and it was like, we don't want to watch this anymore, because why would we want to watch this? And it wasn't just my dad ruining it, although he was. It was also the fact that he wasn't wrong about that. Like, it was political preaching, guised as entertainment. And it was deeply, deeply irritating. And this is a real change, by the way. I mean, there was every few years, you know, Brando sends a Native American to receive an award or Patty Chiave. He gives that actually great speech, shooting down anti-Semitism.

But then when Michael Moore did his speech about how awful George Bush is, half of that audience booed him. Imagine that today. Not a single person would boo him. Steve Martin came out and made a joke about the Teamsters throwing Michael Moore in the trunk of a car. And people applauded that. There was actually a sense, this is not right. We shouldn't be politicizing the Oscars.

Fast forward 15 years now, people don't even remember that. And there's a reason, too, is because our government has become reached into every segment of our lives. In the old days, the government could do stupid stuff, and you never knew about it. It always shocked me when I lived in England that the government would pass a law, and two days later, you would feel it, you know, because it's a small country. Here, that didn't used to happen. The government was smaller, and it didn't reach into every aspect of your life. And so politics, you could argue politics and not feel like you were arguing about your own life.

It's right. You felt you were arguing philosophy. Now, with a government this big, a government where the president of the United States, can talk about who should be allowed into men's rooms and girls' rooms in schools in Arkansas, someplace he's probably never even been, except on a fast train. That's a government is way too big. In the 50s, if the president wanted to have a say and who got to go into a school, he sent the National Guard. It was a big people.

That's right. It wasn't a tweet. It wasn't a tweet. But it's also true that Hollywood has embraced its political role in an insane way. So last night, Representative John Lewis showed up on the stage of the Oscars to talk about Green Book. And John Lewis, everyone has veneration for him and should for what he did during the Civil Rights Movement. Of course. He's a partisan Democrat. Right.

He showed up to introduce a movie that, like, what, 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement, and he's not the only Democrat who's done this. Joe Biden was on that stage. Michelle Obama showed up at the, what, the Grammys? Yes. Two weeks ago. I mean, when was the last time? And Michelle, as president, showed up at the Oscars. Yeah, they filmed it. They filmed a video for it. Yeah. There's never, and there never will be a Republican who actually appears there.

No, the best way for a Republican to appear there is if a movie destroying the movie, their reputation appears as a nominee for best picture. And we haven't talked about Vice, and it's probably beneath our dignity almost to talk about Vice. Oh, I think it's an important picture. Can you... You've seen it? Yes.

Oh, I've seen it. Yeah. And it's a fantasy. It's like watching a Hallmark movie. I watch Hallmark movies to find out what girls dream about. You watch Vice to find out what left-wing Democrats. There is a scene in Vice that is not just stretching reality that is just factually inaccurate.

Scooter Libby says Valerie Plame is that writer's wife. And then Dick Cheney says, leak her identity. We know that didn't happen. There was a big investigation. It was Richard Armitage who leaked that identity. But the director of the film, in an interview, was asked about this. And they said, but we know that it was Armitage who released it. He goes, we know it was Cheney, right?

It was Cheney, right? And he's an open socialist, Madam McKay. He is a socialist. He made a movie about the crash. It was a pretty decent movie. Big Short. The Big Short. But they never mentioned the fact that that crash started with,

left-wing policies causing them to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, guaranteed by the government, which then spread through Wall Street. So there was blamed to put on the left and the right, but they only put it on one side. And I know it goes without saying, but imagine for a moment that someone on the right was able to come up with $65 million to make a movie about a major movie with one of the few movie stars, true movie stars, Christian Bale. I had a bunch of movie stars. Amy Adams is that film, Sam Rockwell is in that film? performances.

True movie stars. About how Barack Obama was actually just a pot-smoking, hipster, Schoong guy, Schumgang guy without a real thought in his head,

but Joe Biden was really running the government. You know, the old white guy was really doing all the work. It would be just as fanciful. Right. Joe Biden's never done. Incomprehensible.

By the way, you don't even have to imagine this because there was a miniseries that is an excellent miniseries that was made about 9-11 by Cyrus Nowrista, in which he pointed out that Bill Clinton completely botched Osama bin Laden and that he failed to take a shot at Osama bin Laden. ABC not only pulled the miniseries after one showing despite massive ratings. It is not available for distribution anywhere. And people have offered the millions of dollars to buy it out a lockup.

They will not release it. It's amazing. And the funny thing is it's not even... I wrote a piece for the Washington Post mentioning this and they cut it out. And I said, put it back in because the whole thing was about censoring right-winger. I said, don't you understand that you're exemplifying what I'm talking about? And they said, yeah, we're not doing it. The only time an op-ed editors ever said that to me was The Washington Post.

But you still write your weekly column for the Washington Post, don't you? Well, democracy doesn't bargain. By the way, that documentary not nearly as critical of the Clintons as Vice, I mean, not even in the realm. Vice is a fantasy. I mean, Bush is an idiot, and Cheney is running everything. And Cheney, on top of being a loving husband and father, is a completely morally empty guy who bombs a country to make money off oil.

And we know this stuff isn't true. We know that Bush was not a stupid. Because we didn't get the damn money. As our president said, Sonny Bunchover at Free Beacon, he said that he actually enjoyed it because he watched it as like a right-wing fantasy. Like what?

You know, in the beginning of that movie, for those who didn't see it, so everybody, it says the reason that we've taken liberties here is because Dick Cheney is one of the most secretive men in the history of the U.S. government. That's right. The man has been in the public eye for 40, over 40 years. He wrote a 500-page autobiography.

We know everything about this guy. But, of course, they couldn't read the autobiography or anything else. So they make up facts wholesale. And the fact that it was nominated for an Oscar, it was a gigantic screw-you to every single person who's a Republican, which is, you know, it's still-hap-up. If you're one of the 60 million people who voted for this guy to become vice president. The fact that somebody signed a $65 million check for that movie is a big screw-you.

So let me ask you. $65 million for a movie that's going to earn $10 at the box up. What's the audience for that? Who's the wild audience going? You know what I need? I need to go see a movie about Dick Cheney today. Let me ask all you guys this. I want to hear what you have to say about this,

because it drives me a little crazy. We complain about this. Rightfully, it should be complained about. But why don't we make those movies? Why don't we make that movie about Barack Obama? Why don't we make the movie? Yeah, give me $65 million. Well, I mean, no, no, no.

Is it not available? That is the answer. We're supposed to be the rich guys. We're supposed to have all the billion. Yeah, prove it. Show me the rich billionaire in Silicon Valley, who's an open. Bezos isn't going to fund your movies?

Show me the filmmaker. The successful filmmakers. It's because conservatives, I mean, we've talked about this for legitimately a decade at this point. I mean, I wrote an entire book on TV and made all these speeches in front of rich people saying that we need to get in the culture. And then I realized that it was not going to happen.

The reason it's not going to happen is because conservatives have, they're like dolphins that sleep with half their brains on and half their brains off. When our political brains are on, we want to give money to candidates, to the Heritage Foundation, We want to subscribe to Daily Wire. We want to get into the nitty-gritty of politics and make a difference. And the most direct way to make a difference is to give money into politics.

And when our do-gooder brain is on, then we want to give money to our church. That's where we put our money. We put our money in our churches and in our communities. And when our business brain is on, we look at the movie business, and we're not idiots. It's not a good business. And we say there is no money here. It's a scam business. Why would I think $20 million I will never see again to make a movie that is going to be distributed

next to, you know, the man who killed Hitler and Bigfoot on Amazon within six weeks. And, like, that's not a good business investment. So conservatives are hamstrung by their own direct-dougarism and also by their own need to make money off business. What you actually need is why Hollywood was founded by conservatives but taken over by the left, just like every other major industry, is you need a bunch of people to start a new form of the industry and invest in it when it's still profitable. And then, and not to understand.

invest in movies. I wouldn't invest in movies, would you? No, but I mean, it's... So why you're asking people who are rich in the best movies? Because they have, because they own Twitter, they own YouTube. These are money-making things. I mean, Facebook, these are all money-making. That's the business model. Explain to me how sinking $50 million into a biopic of Barack Obama makes money. No, but still, why are those left-wing organizations, too? Why is every social outreach? Because conservatives don't understand culture. There's also, there's also no prestige to it. So meaning that a leftist will take money and sink it into a movie so they can go to all their friends and say, I put money

into vice. What conservative is going to go around and say, I put money into this movie? And what works at the church group? What they want to hear is I gave a million dollars to world vision or something, right? I gave a million dollars to Mitt Romney's Super PAC. It doesn't cut a cutting, you go to a Heritage Foundation party? You think it cuts ice to say I sunk $10 million into a biopic of Barack Obama? That doesn't cut a dime's worth of ice. None. Yeah. But you're saying, though, it is an attitude on the right. is actually does not care about the well the right is under the the right believes correctly in one sense and wrong in the other that if culture is upstream of politics

what is upstream of culture is church going and community right and that's true but it's also true that the more money that you give to those areas does not necessarily mean that those areas are going to win the culture can take away the gains of the religious community that's what we found over the last 60 years that's that's the great well the thing is the culture works the culture like like socialism takes 70 years to destroy a country so that the people who put it in there, don't have to answer to the people who suffer from it. It's the same thing with culture.

It's 30 years down the line. We're always fighting over some, you know, congressional district in Delaware. We're always fighting over the most important election of our lifetime. That's right. The most important election of our lifetime. And we're doing nothing about what happens after that election. Right. Well, because we're not in the business of thinking about politics full time.

When we think about eternity, we don't think about politics. Really, I mean, like religious people, when we think about eternity, We think about going to Shula, going to church, and what happens after I die, and what happens to my kids and all this kind of stuff. We don't think my legacy is going to be this, like, you've written movies. When you die as a religious person, what is your legacy going to be? What is my life? Yeah. I mean, we're talking five minutes from now.

So five minutes from now, what are we going to be talking about? No, I hope some of the things I've written will, you know, last. That's right. But if I were to say to you, you only get to pick three things on your tombstone. What do they say? Probably that I wrote a couple of good novels and that was a good father. and, you know, had a good life. I would think you're not an order.

I figure you're not never flew in a private jet. Here you realize Jeremy. He never flew in a private jet. But this is the point. I think that not in that order is the key point I'm trying to make. I see. I think that for folks on the left, good father and good husband don't even make the top

100. You think so? Well, in Hollywood? Are you kidding? Oh, in Hollywood? In Hollywood? Yeah. Not in the left generally.

There are plenty of good people on the left who care about being a parent or or a husband or something. But the people in Hollywood, you ask them, what is their greatest contribution? And they're going to send you their IMDB page. Well, I mean, see, the thing is, most leftists live conservative lives. I mean, a lot of good left-wingers live conservative lives. They just won't preach what they practice. I want to talk for a minute about something that a little controversy that we found ourselves in with our friends over at Calm.

You know, they advertise on our shows. They've always been great partners with a good relationship. We'll ship with them all along. But you may remember back in January, we broadcast the Ben Shapiro show live from the March for Life. And we're big fans of the March for Life. That's an important event to us, something that we're going to support, always have, and always will. Unfortunately, we didn't think about the effect that that would have on some of our sponsors like Calm. Calm wound up being associated online by some people with the March for Life event.

And we didn't contemplate the fact that they would be perceived as not only sponsoring the show, the Ben Shapiro show, but that you might be able to infer that they had sponsored the event itself, which of course they did not do. I think it was a fair concern for Calm to have. We didn't consider the implication that people could perceive them as a sponsor of the event. And Calm's job is not politics. They're a great business. Like most of our advertisers, they're not a political company.

and they don't want to make a stand on these hot-button political issues one way or the other. And they shouldn't. That's not the purpose of business. They're a business, their meditation app, and their job is to be the number one source of meditation, mindfulness, and sleep for everyone, regardless of politics. And we kind of complicated that, put them in a tough position. But the good news is we've had some great conversations with them over the last few weeks. And because we've had a strong relationship all along with them, and they were receptive to communicating. with us. We're going to be working with them again. Calm's going to be back on our shows.

I think that some of the concern when something like this happens is, you know, is Calm attacking our audience? Are they saying that they don't want conservative customers? That's just not the case. They want all people who are interested in meditation, who are interested in mindfulness, who are interested in a healthier lifestyle. And we're grateful that organizations like Calm would advertise on our show. It's not always the easiest thing for an advertiser to get involved in something that could be deemed political or controversial in any way. So, you know, I think for people watching who may feel a loyalty to us, you know, and they see Calm coming back on, we couldn't be happier about it.

It's the result of some great productive conversations. And we believed in the product before all this happened. It's still a great product. So we'll be going to talk about them a little bit more kind of over the coming weeks. I think starting with you. Good. Well, good. I love them.

I use them. I love them. They actually work. One of the things I love... I love anybody who will advertise on your show. One of the things I love about this, this is the only compliment I'm going to pay to you in your lifetime is that you have always let us vet the sponsors and make our decisions whether we want to do it.

So everything we've advertised, we actually like, you know, which is great. It makes you feel good when you come to work. That's the nicest thing I'm going to ever say about it. Here's the nice thing I'm ever going to say about you. Oh, oh. Elisha, do you have any questions for us from our subscribers? Oh, sorry.

Just looking up new on-air gigs. She's so spicy. She is. Also, facts don't care about your feelings. This pop socket does come in handy, so everybody should head over to Amazon, get that. Here's a fact in case y'all didn't know, Ben Shapiro does not want to be here,

and he doesn't care about Jeremy Boring's feelings. Also, I'm doing pretty good with the bingo, so I hope everyone's still joining us in playing their backstage bingo. Head over to the DailyWire Twitter account at Real DailyWire. I think it's over there on Instagram too, so you can play along with me,

and you can catch up. Some of these things have happened. They've been done. All right, this next question comes from an awesome subscriber named Rustum. He says, do you think the reason behind why all the nominated movies are old movies is that leftists are trying to rewrite

the context of that history? No, this is your point. Well, I think it's because they don't have any new ideas. When I listen to the left, they call themselves progressives, and I think that's appropriate because they're kind of like emphysema or cancer. They are a progressive disease.

But they're the most regressive ideas on earth. I mean, socialism was debunked. I mean, socialism, it was debunked. The thing that we try, people tried it. I understand why they tried it. It sounded good. It failed. Nobody, you know, I was watching Bernie Sanders from a cut from 1988,

and he's saying, oh, the Soviet Union is doing great. It's three years before it collapsed in chaos, you know, three years. I mean, it is very possible that Bernie Sanders was around St. Petersburg when he felt It was time for a change. That guy's been around for a long time. But I mean, I said his campaign slogan should be, at least I personally knew marks. But I mean, I think that they are stuck in this world. They cannot let go of the racist thing.

We all know that there was a real serious problem for black people in this country. We all know that leaves a mark. It's not. Nobody's making fun of that. But after a while, the thing is, you've got to let go. You have to because history won't fix itself. Only the future can fix itself, you know. And I think they are not forward-looking people.

I think that the conservatives that I talk to, the conservatives that I talk to are all thinking about how can we go forward in such a way that we keep the best things about this country, the freedom, the limited government, but also go into a future that's going to be complicated and it's going to have things we've never seen before. I never hear the left talking about this. All I hear them saying is 12 years from now, we're all going to be dead, therefore let us take over everything. That is a very, very small-minded, regressive way to look. I think that's totally right. And I think when you look at the history, the fact that they've been making all of these films about history, it's difficult to make the argument. that today America is a deeply terrible racist country. And so instead what they do is they point to a time when America did have a serious race problem and when Americans were a lot more racist than they are now. And then they add a tag. So that's what Spike Lee does in Black Klansmen. So he tells you a story that happened in 1980 or 1977 or something.

And he tells you about a time when the KKK was still operative and was still a major force in American life. And he does the whole story. And then at the very end he has a little tag about President Trump in Charlottesville. So I go fast forward, boom. Here's the little tag punch. are we even pretending? Really? I mean, really. Are you really pretending that the two are comparable?

And the attempt to compare the two by skipping over the entire intervening history is really morally and intellectually bankrupt. But that's, I think, what they're trying to do. I think that's why they keep going back to this. It's as though you were making the case every day that America were deeply anti-Semitic country and every film you decided to produce was gentleman's agreement. Every film you decided to produce was about a time when Jews couldn't join country clubs. And you'd look around at America and you'd say, wait a second,

Jews are doing pretty well over here. Jews seem to be doing okay. And yet, but that undercuts the case. That's the whole point. It undercuts the case. I made the mistake of criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez one time on Twitter. Wow.

How dare you? She's very fresh and very face. So fresh. Fresh-faced. She's a fresh-faced. Freshness like you can't believe. And people keep writing in and saying things like, women were only able, only got the vote in 1920.

Like, that's a century. You would have a great point if it was 1920. I thought that way about all their... You would have a great point about racism if it were the 1860s. Even if it was the 1960s. It is not. And that's why all these pictures are so old.

By the way, did you see... You saw this AOC video over the weekend, right? Oh, it's great. The Cash Me Outside video of AOC explaining that... Can we play it just because it was so great? Her explaining that she was the boss, she's in fact the boss. Do we have that video? guys? Everybody die back there. We don't have that video, but we do have another question

from the way of a subscriber. Listen, if I have to choose between talking about the news or answering questions from the people who actually pay for my house, I am 100% going with the people who pay for my house. I have a quick question, though. Am I allowed? I am a subscriber. I just noticed something. Do Lady Gaga, Donald Trump, and Michael Knowles go to the same tanning lounge? Stop that. Get out of here. This is all natural, baby. I'm on the intersectional hierarchy. Sicilians in this country. have suffered. I'm just going to make movies about it. Just the juxtaposition of like vampire Shapiro

next to like spray tan Noel gets me every time. This question comes from Jonathan. He wants to know should have seen or pornographic media be regulated by government. And is it an infringement on the First Amendment? Ben, you're the lawyer. Okay, so the two...

So wrote a book about pornography. So there are two answers. Is it an infringement on the First Amendment to pass legislation that regulates pornography? The answer is no. The First Amendment was designed, to protect originally political speech. It was not designed to protect pornography. Adams and Jefferson and Washington

were not sitting around thinking, these dirty wood carvings. We must protect the dirty wood carvings from 1780. At the time, it was ratified. It was not commonly understood that you could trade in smut and have pornography. Right, well, not only that,

it was commonly understood that you could regulate it. I mean, pornography regulations existed on the books in literally all 13 colonies when the Constitution was originally passed. So that is, so to suggest that the First Amendment, by its nature protects pornography is simply untrue. It's meant to protect political speech. Robert Bork has a seminal article about this

before he was nominated for the Supreme Court in the 1970s. So that's the constitutional argument. Then there's the practical argument. Should the government be in the business of regulating pornography? And my answer to that is essentially no. The government should not be in the business of regulating pornography. And this is a change from a position that I held probably back when I was 21, 22, and I looked at this,

and I felt like a lot of this stuff is addictive material. The fact is that it does have brain effects that are very similar to addiction, particularly for men. and that if local communities want to regulate pornography, then they should have the ability to do so. So my feeling is that local communities still have a lot more ability to regulate than the federal government. If you don't want to live in a community that doesn't allow porn shops,

then move out of that community, find another community. I don't really have much of a problem with local communities experimenting with the extent of law. What I would say is that on a general level, and in my community, I would not regulate the distribution of pornography so long as it didn't have public display. The public display of pornography is different and has externalities.

In terms of trying to regulate the distribution of pornography, you're fighting a battle against human nature that is likely to fail. For the same reason that I oppose the war on drugs, I also oppose a generalized war on pornography. That doesn't mean you can't have time, place, and manner restrictions, zoning restrictions. It doesn't mean that you have to have a billboard of a naked lady above your local elementary school. But it does mean that I think the government is pretty bad at everything and a mandate for the government to get involved in certain areas of what is widely

considered to be speech quickly tends to evolve into the government getting involved in other things. Once they start labeling stuff pornography, you can see them extending that. Well, is pornography really is damaging as, say, the Bible. The Bible perverts how you think about various issues. The left has no compunction about restricting. Anything that they're allowed to regulate violence, now just everything they don't like is violence. Exactly. Elisha. All right. Anthony wants to know. What do you think a movie should accomplish in order for it to be nominated for an award? It would be helpful if it were good. That would be if it were art.

I mean, this is actually another reason why conservatives often fail at the culture and fail at movies is we're a little too on the nose. We're a little direct sometimes. And the left is very good at hiding itself. Until recently, until the last two years, they were even pretending that they're not socialists. And so if the movie is a work of art that isn't just some didactic knock over the head political message, that would be a good start. Yeah, and I think the thing the mistake conservatives make is that conservative art does not look like conservative life.

I mean, the Sopranos is a great work of conservative art. It doesn't look anything like conservative life. It has all kinds of violence and bad language, nudity, all those things. And yet, it is deeply, deeply moral and godly even story. I was reading a book called Genesis the other day. Have you ever read Genesis? Well, people always say this to me. They say, I don't need that stuff.

I can read the Bible. And I thought, have you read the Bible? But there is a question here that I think is an interesting one, which is very often what you'll hear is, I'll say things like, why don't they nominate movies that people actually like? And they'll say, well, that's not what the Oscars are for. The Oscars are for nominating stuff that the artists, you know, that is more artistic or, like, there's some other standard out there. I think that that's separation between what the people, this goes back to a discussion we're having earlier. The separation between what the people like and what is, quote, unquote, artistic, is an artificial separation that has begun in the last 30, 40 years. The Godfather was a massive box office. Oh, yeah. I mean, Star Wars was a massive box office smash. E.T. was a massive box office smash. Raiders of the Lost Ark was nominated for best picture. Raiders of the Lost Ark was never gets nominated for best picture now because it's not deep,

it's not profound. Even though the truth is that Raiders of the Lost Dark has some actual morality to it, right? I mean, it's actually saying that, like, in the essence, it's saying there is something beyond what you think there is. It's actually a pretty good argument against science as of a certain extent. He was the last, Spielberg was the last director who could make films that everybody loved. There were also great movies. Right.

He really is the last guy. The other thing is you and I have had this discussion where we disagreed about the movie Get Out. And one of the things I think that art does, that offends conservatives, is that it talks about the inner experience of being a human being in the world. And why I loved Get Out, and I really did think it was a good movie, a very good movie. Yeah, you're totally wrong about this. No, yeah, and we disagreed. I thought it actually talked about the fear, when you assimilate, will you lose your soul? If I assimilate, will I lose my soul?

It was a horror movie, so in the horror movie, you do lose your soul. But that's a human experience. That's a human fear. And I thought that was completely legitimate. I don't have to, I don't know what, I can't remember if it's key or peel. Yeah, I don't know what he thinks about that. I don't care what he thinks about it. What the movie said to me is this is a fear that people have with assimilation.

The Godfather was also about assimilation from a different point of view. You try to get out and they pull you back in, you know. And I think that assimilation comes with costs and deep, very deep scarring on people. And I think that Get Out really spoke to that. This is something else. is I think the substitution of the visual in film for the plot-driven and character-driven in film has been a real problem.

And this has been happening in the last 25 years. That if you look at Star Wars, Star Wars has a very, very good plot. It has a very good plot. It is a plot that's, I mean, it's based on Joseph Campbell, obviously, but it's a plot that actually hits marks that makes sense, that is coherent. And that doesn't end with just,

okay, now two big monsters hit each other, which is like how every big movie ends now, right? Every single big movie that you see in the theater that cost $100 million, to make has the same ending. It's two giant monsters hitting each other with big explosions everywhere until the credits roll. And that's it. That's not good movie making. No. Right? And that's, and that's the difference. That's why the Dark Knight deserves to be nominated for Best Picture, but Infinity War doesn't. Because why Logan should have been. Right, exactly. Because that,

those actually hit some plot and character points. Yes. Right. And all the other movies that make a lot of money right now, people are only going, this is, this is the big gap, because of TV, because of streaming. The reason people are going to the movies right now is because you want to see something on the movie screen and pay 16 bucks for it that you can't actually see in your own home. So if you go to, so the Dark Night changes things because you want to see it on the big screen and it fulfills all those things. But most movies we want to see on the big screen are just big spectacle movies. Yeah. And so Hollywood goes, fine. I can put together a spectacle movie in five minutes. It's formulaic. It has a big monster fight at the end. And then we're done.

And they never try to link the two. Right. They never try to link anything of substance or plot. even Black Panther has the typical movie hero versus movie villain fight at the end with some rushing trains, and then it ends. And it's like, okay, well, that's the same thing as every other Marvel film. So we couldn't get an actual Academy Award here, even though we've all taken our shots over the years. And so instead we have the Jaspies. The Jaspi Awards is how we're thinking of the evening. There it is. In honor of this small terrier, the chief executive dog of the Daily Wire.

Yeah, yeah, he put on his best tucks. and to make it a true award show worthy of its name, the Jaspi Awards, it's important that like all other award shows, we celebrate those who we have lost this year. And that's why we're proud today at the Daily Wire to bring you in Memorium. Wow.

Truly our hearts are with. I didn't know Ginsburg time. Okay, Media Matters Explaner. Nobody thinks we're Peter Ginsburg died. She's very much alive. We're not joking about her death. We're joking that there are some people who pretended that she didn't.

died and thought she died. Ben. If there's no picture, there's no picture, there's no photo. It didn't happen. Michael, on the other hand. That is sad, though, yeah. Well, I mean, it's a good day for me. At least this day ended up.

I mean, I, you know, in memoriam, an empty chair. Yeah. It says it all. It ain't for Elijah, buddy. So it's rare when we do one of these shows that we have an actual expert on the subject that we're discussing. Or somebody who knows anything. Lord knows it ain't us.

We do have a guest to join us for the last piece of the show here. It's a pal of all of ours. Actually, somebody who's been an important mentor in my life, a guy who's made a big stand in Hollywood on behalf of Ben. And that's our dear friend, Lionel Chetwin. Lionel, join us. Good evening. And also one of the Black Guards.

One of the Black Watch. Black Watch. Black Watch. I'd be hell. I'm sorry. You know what a fan. My Scottish blood, my 1,026 Scottish blood in the sky. Lionel, coming to us from England by way of Canada, by way of basically being the only...

Canadian uniform. It's blackwash, wear a highland version of Canada. Of Canada. And I have lost a lot of weight, and so my dinner jacket doesn't fit me. But this does miracle of miracles. Mine doesn't... My jacket doesn't fit me today. It's not because I lost weight.

Well, the good news is that you're wearing a kilt, so that's an actual thing that as opposed to that guy at the Oscars who decided to wear like a full-on gown, which was stunning and brave. Don't get me wrong. Stunning as well as brave. It was a big issue when they took women into the army as to whether they should be allowed to wear the kilt. Because it kills, it's for a laddie, eh?

It's not for a wee last. Well, you'd expect something silly at the Oscars, I think. I was promised cigars was, I know you can. I lit this for you knowing you were coming on stage, and then I allowed it to go out, which was rude of me. but this is my favorite cigar. It's a nine-year-aged Monte Cristo Anyahu.

Oh, well. And if you need fire, we have fire. So Lionel, I think, has been the most outspoken, probably voice, conservative voice in Hollywood throughout his career. But to reduce him down to that would miss his huge body of work as a writer and a director of town. We're not big on long biose.

on our show, but more than anyone, you've moved for the last, you know, five, let's call five years successfully throughout this community. And so you have a unique perspective on what we witnessed last night. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've been here a long time. Ten years. I went to my first Oscar was actually in 1975, but that's beside the point. I was a nominee. I was a child. I was a child's daughter. What struck me last night, which is really interesting. So I've watched it. I mean, I have been here for some time, and I've succeeded, notwithstanding, I'm an out-of-the-cli-the-cli-clusive, and have been pretty much all my time here, but there are reasons for that. You know what? Last night's Oscars were the perfect Oscars for the selfie generation.

And I thought about that, you know, you see these people, particularly Hollywood stars, and there's, you know, they've done a selfie, and the Eiffel Tower is over here, or the Parthenon, or whatever it is. All these things exist with no intrinsic value. to them except as prompts in their own selfie. And these were the selfie Oscars. The Oscars, Frank Price has observed that the problem was that the TV show served the Academy. The Academy was meant to be a guardian and custodian

of, was meant to be like the Academy Francaise. It was pretty pretentious in the beginning. The idea was we would have an Academy like the Royal Academy of the Royal Society, and people, after a career of great success, members and they would pass on the collective institutional memory to new people. Three years ago, I think it was three years ago, the Academy by Fiat, there was no discussion, there was no vote. They just said, well, we've decided, because this is really a response to Roscoe So White,

anyone who was not had a creditor who been involved in a film in 10 years, unless you're nominee, you've been a nominee or a winner, no longer has a vote. That removed the institutional memory. Yeah. And that's why it became about the current membership. It was never about that. It was about all these old people who thought, well, I had a bloody good career, didn't I make?

Well, you know, I'm going to protect it. And, you know, in the academy on the second floor with the screening room, they have posters of every film that's ever won an Oscar. And, I mean, sure, there's, you know, the greatest show on earth with Bert Lancaster, you know, mussel it up. But there's also All About Eve.

There's also Lawrence of Arabia. There's also a lot of... On the waterfront. I mean, these are great films. The question is whether or not... So the real question is why are Hollywood films, which was once the center of the world.

And there's a reason for that. Deteriorated. One of the reasons was... I'm sorry, I'm talking. We talked to talk away. We brought you to do this. So the thing is... Despite this...

despite how much we enjoyed the kilt. I think it was a kilt that got you allowed. I can you all. This is a wonderful cigar. As you know, I'm a real cigar smoker. I really, but this is really good. The complete technology for sound

existed as early, really as 1923. The sync sound, not the optical sound jack, but what came into the theaters. The reason that the studio bosses didn't want to touch it, is they assumed that all their audience were immigrants. They didn't speak English.

They didn't speak English. They'd be going to the vaudeville or the musical or, God forbid, Broadway, right, the play, the theater. And so, and they spoke many different languages. So you could have a card, but a card had to be very short. It had to be just long enough for whoever it was that they brought with them. Their kid usually from school, because during those period of immigration, we had something called the Drive to Americanization, which required the kids learned English

and school right away, and they didn't teach 54 languages. But that's another subject. And so the card could not be any longer the truth would say, Vos, Vos Bastille. You know, or, hey, capish, you know, whatever their language was, they would have a kid there and they would translate.

What that meant was that American movies became very low context. They were films that did not require you to bring very much into the theater with it. It's not like a merchant ivory film. By the way, this observation is not mine. It's a Japanese director called the Tommy, who said the reason their films never go anywhere

is because they're very high context. If you don't understand Japanese mentality, you will not understand their films. With the exception, perhaps, of Seven Samurai, or historic films, but in general, no. They had to put a narration track on Shall We Dance. It was called about the ballroom dancing thing. So we developed, and the apotheosis of that,

and I know I could use that word about it was Hainoon. I'm being someone down from Alpha Centauri, right? Yeah. And say, doesn't speak any reason, doesn't even know, don't know where to watch this. And at the end of it, this terse film has revealed nearly all there is

in terms of, you know, the variety of the human condition. Now, we've lost that. We've lost the ability to do low-context films. And we've lost that because there's no longer a process by which you work your way up. up and up. Part of that is because of the, I don't want to say slavish,

but the drive to diversity. Yeah. Which meant that people were being advanced, you know, ahead of their craft. I got one quick story about that. Okay? Well, when I was a very young man, I was reading for Columbia Pictures in London.

I had engineered myself. I was the assistant managing director of you, which is your biggest thing. One day my boss, Pat Williamson, the greatest man ever knew, called me in and said, we're cutting Lawrence of Arabia for three hours in 40 minutes

to two hours and 20 minutes. Now, Sam Spiegel really owns, Horizon has it, but the copyright, but we have to have someone from Columbia in the room to sign the docket at the end of the day. And you're going to go and do that. They said, you're joking?

What do I know about it? I'm a kid. I don't want anything about films. All I can do. was I sit there, whatever they put in front of me outside, he said, ah. I presented myself to Sam, at Sam Spiegel's office, Mr. Sam, as he was called, and he was a godlike figure. Think of Steven Spielberg with true gravitas, but no slur on Mr. Spiegel. And he said, So, Chet Vinder, you'll come, you will see, come meet my team, who I will have cutting my film for me.

David Lean Robert Bolton wrote it Freddie Young who was a photographer Ernie Walter was there he was the assistant to Anne Coates who'd cut it and Marjorie Jarre showed it

for a little bit he was done to music so I thought of all jimpses there during nothing but in fact I had a role to play they played Sam had what was called rock and roll he had like eight projectors

and he could press back and forth and he had the film on every one So we go through the first sequence with the match, you know, or actually the first sequence, really, was the motorcycle that we looked at. And I used to hear thinking, well, you know, I'll do a cross-up us or something. And all of a sudden, Robert Bolt, who was there really to protect his words, says, Mr. Chedwin, don't you think, perhaps that's a bit tediously long? And before I had to answer, David Lean said, but Mr. Chedwin, sure.

Surely you understand. And that's what they would do. So they would argue amongst, they would present their views to each other to this. I was like a sock puppet. You know, it's funny. You represented the Ute.

Yeah, no, yeah, right. I was just there for Columbia and because Columbia needed someone in the room to protect their copyright, their share of the copyright. I was dismembered. I didn't really understand that. So finally we get to the scene

of Omar Sharif coming out of the mist. and Robert Bolt says you know Mr. Chedwin I think that's a bit long three bloody minutes to have a man come out of it and for the first time I gave an opinion

I said I must be honest when I first saw that film in the Seville Theater in Montreal that was the first time I ever thought that cinema was art at which point for any young who had said nothing up to this point said Art, art, expletive art,

that's art, mate, that's Kraft. He said, they wanted this, and they had this vision, but I knew that I had a 500 meter lens at 45 degrees Kelvin, and I thrust it down there. I remember doing the accent that well, because he was not quite his working class, and I'm a cockney, and I slip into that. And he explained the technical aspect of that shot,

how he got the lens. I think it was invented for that shot, and that was compression. It was the first thing that was done. done later, I think, what's his name, Mike Nichols did it in the graduate with the running, he's running to the church at the end and he's running and getting nowhere. And he shoots him to the camera. And I carried that with me. And a few years later, I was, Bob Fawsey, who was very influential in my life, he said,

I said something about art. He said, I'm a song and dance man. He says, this is no art. He says, this is craft. He'll learn the rules. he said, you know, you spend your life and you're a carpenter. And if you get real good at it and you learn everything,

maybe you'll be a cabinet maker. And better than that, you'll be an Ebeneist, which is the French word for cabinet. And I think that that's one of the things that's gone from our films, and it's reflected in the Oscars. I think we're losing our worship of craft. And of course you are.

If you basically say, no one who came before it has a voice, even in what's going to be chosen on the one hand, And on the other hand, you say, we have to have the freshest faces possible to prove how diverse we are when. And you've disconnected the Hollywood of now from the Hollywood. And if you think that your job, as Fossey did, was one of bringing all of his technical skills to tell a story the best way he could. That's very different. I don't think about Foster would ever say, I'm making a film to give voice to the voiceless, close to the clothes to the clothesless,

homes to the homes, whatever. I don't think he would ever have said that. he might have been in his head. I really hope this has a positive impact on society. When I met him, I had already seen Cabaret the first time I met him. I spent six hours with him. That's a whole other long story.

But I said, there's virtually a perfect film. So what do you mean virtually? I said, no, no, no, please, please. No, no, you have something in mind. And I said, well, it just seems to me that, you do this fantastic. scenes more belongs to me, you pan up, you show the guy's flip, they're all in it, and then you cut to the car, and Brian says to the Baron, do you still think you'll stop the Nazis?

And Bob Fossey banged his head. And he said, you know, if I was Stanley Kubrick, I'd be recalling the prince. He was so obsessive about the perfection of it, and that's where I learned my craft. This reminds me of one of the greatest notes I ever got on a short film that we showed to, we wanted to see how people would respond to the short film, not just filmmakers, you know? This taught me a lot about asking for soliciting opinions from people, you're going to get them. So we show the short film in the room.

We're very proud of it. The lights come up, and we say, you know, we'd love to have your feedback, what works, so it doesn't. I won't name the guy, a pal of mine raises his hand, and he says, yeah, I just think it'd be a lot better if he had a hat. I mean, yeah, well, great. Now you tell me Go back the cast

But the general idea I think that seems like that's true across art Is the substitution I've said this on my show before Is the substitution of energy for skill Is that the difference between art and craft Is that art you can shy You can say this was unskilful

But it was artistic because it got the thrust of it It got the main message of it And the idea of actually applying a craft Spending years learning how to do something Has completely fallen out of favor You see it in music particularly Like when people ask me Like I was a classical violinist

for years. And when people ask, well, why... Really? Oh, yeah, I was like a concert-level violinist until I was 16, 17 years old. And when people would... David Oistracht moved me to twos. With the Czechosk. Oh, yeah. Oistrach's phenomenal. phenomenal. And the... And when people would ask me, well, why don't you like kind of modern music very much? I'd say, because

it's all energy and no craft. You can follow what Brahms studied for years to do what he did. And then he would go back into his old versions and rewrite his old versions to make them better. Beethoven spent time, home owning his craft. Even the vision of Mozart, you know, in Amadeus, that he's sort of just throwing off these tunes willy-nilly,

because he grew up with them from the time he was three. I mean, it took him years to learn how to do this stuff. And you see the same thing in writing. I mean, I've spent my entire, literally my entire adult life, writing nonfiction, and speaking about politics. So when people say, well, how do you get good at it? It's like you spend an enormous amount of time doing it and getting better at it.

And what you see in the movies, or what you see it in music, or what you see in. That's exactly right. In politics, the fresh face, it's the energy that AOC matters because she's energetic, and music matters because it's energetic. And this new movie, it's great because maybe they don't know what they're doing, but it shows such a promise because of the energy and the message covers for everything. It's even the AOC message about it doesn't matter what I'm saying is true.

It only matters if it's morally true. You see that in the movie, it doesn't matter if it's a good movie. It only matters if it's morally good. Or, yes, and relevant. I think that was the argument for Moonlight, the R word for moonlight. The best example of that is for reasons I don't understand, I love ballet. I mean, I'm sure there are reasons why. women dancing around in flints and costumes.

But my wife, Gloria, who's an actress, but she's studying with Martha Bimshunds, a dance, which I did a, I did this documentary for which I won the world gold medal of the New York Film Festival. By the way, I saw this documentary. I don't know anything about ballet. I don't care anything about ballet. I was glued to this thing. It's so good. Yeah.

Because you have a craft. Well, that was a complete exercise of craft because it was, you know, I'm not a dancer. but these people who devote their lives for a very short playing career I mean dancers are going to last very long I mean you'll last as much time as a second baseman on the Dodgers other than Davey Lobs

and you look at that and then I watch on TV the world championship of dance I think it's called and these are the best dancers in the world and they're really basically kind of music video things and ballet will be lost, which is one of the great treasures

of Western civilization, in the same way the music. The question I get asked more often than almost any other is for young wannabe writers. They say, is there a book I can read that will teach me how to write a novel? And I always say, no, there's 100 books

that you have to read to write a novel because before you know what you're doing, you have to know what's been done. You have to learn the techniques. You have to learn everything that's been done. And if you throw it away, if you break the rules, you've got to know those rules.

You have got to know what you right to do it. Well, and this is the other thing that we were talking about earlier, is that knowing, I mean, this is true in art as it is, in morality as it is in life. The Chesterton rule applies. You know, the idea that you're walking through the forest and you see a fence and is the fence, should we just remove it willy-nilly? Or should we assume it was there for a reason before you can remove it? This is true in music. It is true in politics. It is true in morality.

It is true in everything. We're a society that just assumes that if the fence was there, it's because it was a bunch of dead white males who were patriarchal racists who put it there. And so, of course, not only should we remove it because we don't know why it's there, we should. remove it because the people who put it down were obviously more ignorant than we were because they lived in a time where people did all the stuff that we don't like, so we're going to remove it. And you see this in film, the violation of basic film law happens all the time now, like obvious things. And people don't even notice it because they don't know what the rules were in the first place. It's why the best art was always crafted within the ambit of rules. Shakespeare took place

with a bunch of rules around him. It's the greatest art ever created by the Western minds. I ambit contaminants. Well, that's, and what craft basically teaches you in the end, I think, this is Fossey believed this, is editing. Craft is about getting rid of everything you don't need. You know, it's like, Rodon's saying, how did you get that? I just tip away the pieces of the granite that I don't need. Yeah, that aren't this, yeah. And that's completely lost.

And the whole idea of editing, of shinking down, you have movies now, oh, everything's over two hours. It is part of putting the country. If you hate the country, you hate the traditions, you lose all that wisdom. And the civilization. I mean, the civilization is about rules. and rules and rules. And that's a great point that the editing point, I can't remember the last time I didn't see a movie where I thought they could slice 20 minutes out of it. Oh, absolutely. Well, I actually... My one exception is, by the way, is Donovan. Ray Donovan, surprisingly. Minimalist. So minimalist. Yeah, very minimal.

I actually learned a lot about... Everything I've learned about filmmaking, I learned editing movies that I had made poorly. Because you... Well, we can all claim that, dear one. You sit in a room and you have to now interpret what you did on location. You know, it's a complete new day, basically. This is all you have. He's not wearing a freaking hat, and you've got to make the most compelling story that you can. So, like, I didn't learn how to write for the screen

until I was in the edit bay. I'm the first film that I had written that was shy. I didn't learn how to direct until sitting in the edit bay after the first film that I directed. I think that one of the things that I observe in young people, especially young people in Hollywood, because, you know, if you've been out here very long, it's just a matter of time until somebody,

knew your grandma back home and they come ask, they're right off the bus, and they want to know how they can be big and famous, you know, like you're going to be able to. I don't know if you find out, though. But I've observed that many of them won't work on short films or independent films. So guys, when we got ready to make the Arroyo, guys who went to film school, who now were waiting tables, and we would ask them, hey, come be involved. You know more about this than we do.

And they wouldn't do it. And they wouldn't do it because in their mind, their first, film is going to be Citizen Kane. In their mind, they are the next big thing. And they actually don't want an at-bat. Because if they have to go make a movie, it's not going to be much better than my movie was. I'm not ashamed of any of my movies, though, because I made them. And then I learned something. And then I applied what I learned and made another movie. And I have a theory that if you do that long enough, you will get better at it. But this sort of idolatry of Hollywood, right? This allows people to come here and hide from who they are behind the belief.

of who they could be, but they won't actually take any steps to cross the distance between, because that's where your actual life is. That's where the truth about you is going to be revealed. That's why. Hollywood is part of their selfie. They're not here looking at this thing

and saying, how can I be part of this? So I'm doing this film, Lonesome Soldier, and in basic, why did you join? Well, I wanted to be part of something larger than myself. And the sergeant says, as my sergeant once said to me, be part of something bigger than yourself, that's easy, boy, join the Boy Scouts. It's being worthy of something bigger than you.

And the point you make, by the way, is really important. Until you have directed a film once, you do not know. I don't care how much background you have. That's when you learn, oh, my God, the things I didn't shoot, the inserts I forgot, the stuff I shot that I didn't need. The transition from the written page to what you shoot to what you edit, very hard, and you only learn that by repetition. You know, I mean, there is no repetition anymore.

And I thought that was what last time was about in. You know, everyone's talking about, what's his name, Spike Lee. But that's selfie behavior. That's right. You know, this is me. Yeah. This is me making the Oscars part of my. Yeah.

There's one of the few things I always admired about Woody Allen was, he never showed up for the Oscars because he knew that the films were everything, you know, and he, and, you know, he would go, he had a band that he played with, and he would say, well, that's the night I play with my band. And he would just go and play with the band. I thought that's right, because you're making the movie. It might be fun to go to the Oscars. You know, I'm not dissing people who do, but to understand that the work is everything,

the work is everything is the first lesson you have to learn because everything else is draws, you know? I mean, it's fun, but it's not the morning. The first time I went, I was sitting right behind, actually, Lauren Bacall, and Catherine Hepburn was over there. It was really something, you know. larger than life. I know, I think that, a guy there in short pants,

I didn't. You know? It's just, it's a selfie thing, you know. But we are not making films where we do. I happen to like the Green Book. That's probably because I'm deeply flawed somewhere. So I'm led to believe. Only morally, yes.

And then that's not news, is it? I'm morally flawed. But because I thought that. That was a well-made film. On the other hand, Roma reminded me, you remember like Fellini, early, God, only, early Fellini, I stopped teaching because I realized no one had ever seen. They didn't even know what high noon was or Lawrence Vrabian. But Phileen made his early films when he had very little money and he was learning his craft.

He did bicycle thieves. He did Knights of Cabiria. The Julietta Messina films, the other one was the Knights of Cabir became Sweet Charity. And Julietta of the Spirits, right, and all of that. And that's what Roma was. And it was a very interesting film, but I thought rather long. And I don't know how that poster will look in 20 years on the wall of the academy. I'm just not sure.

I'm not saying it was not a great film. I'm just saying I don't know. It's the movie you make on your way to making great movies. It was for Fellini, certainly, yeah. So I want to take a few more questions from our Daily Wire subscribers before we call it a night. Dailywire.com, click on the subscribe button, give us all your money. Not all your money. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say it. You won't hear this. You happen to know I'm a pastor. Yes. And as a pastor, I want, because of Christianity, I want people to give me all of their money.

As a businessman, a greedy, cold-hearted businessman, I only want you to give us money in exchange for a good or service. And the good or service has basically been. But you also get to ask questions. up is here at the backstage show. So Elisha, what have you got? And that's when you get to see my face. So please ask more questions. Subscribe. I love that Elisha has had a wardrobe change between every second

tonight. Oh, someone noticed? She's Hollywood, babe. Someone noticed? I mean... I didn't. I didn't. I'm trying to keep up with Alicia Keys and hoping next year they'll let me host the Grammys. Who knows? Before we get to those amazing

subscriber questions, though, we do want to give everybody the results of our Facebook poll, we talked about who should have won best picture. Well, according to our Daily Wire Facebook audience, 13% said Black Panther, 18% said the movie that Mr. Chetwin just mentioned, Green Book, 24% said a star is born, but 45% comes in for the Queen Biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. I take it back. Our listeners, our listeners should, don't subscribe. Don't do any of those things. We take it all back. If you think Bohemian Rhapsody should have won best picture, just go watch a bunch of MTV from 1987 and be satisfied with your day.

My God, what's wrong with you? Not one vote for Gonsnell in there. I don't know. I almost need one of your... My girly drinks? Who is drinking? Who is drinking? I am.

I'm not man enough to do anything. I respect you. I respect you for that. I'm a man. Listen, I can wear or dress to the Oscars or I can drink this drink. That's the way this works. You can do both.

Let's have some questions, Elyche. I really enjoy this question for Veronica. She wants to know, do you guys feel that mashups like Pride and Prejudice and Zobbe, are disrespectful. And what mashups would you create? As a fan of Mark Twain,

I do think that it's disrespectful to denigrate perfectly good zombies with a bunch of tripe like pride and prejudice. Pride and prejudice should only be associated with zombies when you roll up your copy and jab them right through the skull with it to make sure that they're dead. So I'm all in favor of all kinds of mashups and comedy.

Anything that makes me laugh, I'm for it. That's why I'm here. You know, I'm gonna go, you know, as I so often am, counter the prevailing trend here. I do have a problem with people hijacking other people's work and then using it for their own profit, meaning that pride and prejudice is a great work of art. It is a great work of art.

Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. I was like you, Jeremy. And then really, and then I went back and I reread it. And I said, this is an amazing issue. She's the greatest female writer who ever lived.

Female novel. I don't think it's particularly close, actually. But there are two ways if you want to do something with Jane Austen, rather than mash up someone else. First of all, crazyer of Jane. Asians, Asians, was Jane Austen. Right, that's exactly right. It's just a remake. So that he just did it, and it's an homage.

Right, unless I had a story of Shakespeare. You can do, like, that's all fine. Or you can do what, was it the Zuckers who did, Jane Austen's Mafia? I mean, you know, but I mean, taking other people's work, there's some guy, and they put him on TMC, who rewrote Morayshar's music. Yeah. Brought in other people. He didn't rewrite it. Actually, took other music and put it on Lawrence of Arabia. I mean, are you kidding?

I know it. Yeah. That's one of the problems with technology. Everyone is now an artist. I'll tell you one that bothered me, actually, was the musical Wicked. So the work of El Frank Baum is masterful. I mean, if you go back and you read the actual Wizard of Oz books, they're amazing, amazing books. And to just flip that on its head and make it into kind of a cynical thing about feminism or whatever it was about, it's go write your own.

Like, really, just go write your own stuff. Like, if you can't be original, then go do a... modernization of a Shakespeare story, like as Westside story is. Like, no one's going to regret you that, because we all recognize the homage. But to take the, but to cut the heart out of another person's story and then to reuse it so you can make money off it, it's utterly unoriginal and it seems like plagiarism to me. I mean, to be honest. I have to admit that I agree with you insofar as I always hate when people write sequels

to books that they didn't write. Somebody did that with Gone with the Wind. It's like, who the hell are you? Yeah. Who are you? I know. Are you Margaret Mitchell? So we'll get to another question.

I do want to quote Master Twain, who once observed that one could make a perfectly good library out of any library by the simple omission of the works of you. He hated Jane Austen. Yeah, digging her up and hitting her with her jawbone. Alicia, give us one more. That's really bummer, too, because I think Mark Twain is a distant cousin of mine,

along with Elizabeth Warren, apparently. You're Native American? Only one, 120, I don't know. All right, Crystal says, oh, I love this show. Silicon Valley was the last good show that she watched. Are there any other good conservative shows out there? Oh, boy. Silicon Valley was a terrific show.

This is what's really funny. It is a terrific show. My judge is the best. Is it coming back to Silicon? Yeah, yeah, coming back for another season. And I could not be more excited. That show is so Uber conservative and nobody knows it. It's phenomenal.

That whole episode about the guy who's afraid, who's gay, was afraid to come out as Christian. It was just fantastic. Yeah, that show is great. Openly conservative. Yes, bodyguard. Just came out on Netflix. Bodyguard, yes, very good.

Yeah, and it is conservative. You watch to the end, right? You know what I said? It's conservative. It's definitely conservative. Okay, here. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, there's one that my wife and I are watching right now

called Travelers. That's kind of conservative. The basic thesis of the show, the premise of the show, is that sometime in the future, some world ending event, and so they've somehow harnessed the technology to send the consciousness of people from the future into the bodies of the present, but they can only pick people who are about to die in the present, so they're not killing the people, the people will die anyway. And there's some really interesting stuff in that.

The most conservatives are shown on TV is Master Chef Jr. You take these cute little tikes. This is right. You put sharp knives in their hands, put them over hot stoves, and if they don't cut it, you send them home. Do you know what I find out of conservative, and this would shock him? And I'll, could end my career if by annoying him is Chuck Lorry shows, Young Sheldon, which takes place in Texas.

If you watch it, it is very respectful of those people, of the father's burden, of the mother's, it's a comedy, and it's, yes, it's a set up, but the values in that show, and in all of his shows are very interestingly about self-discipline, about hard work, and mom, Big Bang Theory, it's very interesting. He thinks his vanity cards are horrific. But this is my theory about sitcoms generally, is that sitcoms inherently end up being conservative because, again, they're based on certain Shakespearean tropes.

Everyone gets married at the end of the sitcom. And the person who is supposed to be the villain is always the wise old man in the end. Like every character you like, Archie Bunker ends up being the hero of all in the family, and he's supposed to be the villain. Rod Swanson and Parks and Rec is supposed to be the villain, and he's the hero of the show.

Alex P. Keaton was right. I mean, I talked to Gary David Goldberg, who wrote the show and I did my book. And he said Alex P. Keaton was supposed to be the villain of the show. everyone loves Alex P. Keaton because Alex P. Keaton is saying the only true things on the show. And when he's not saying something true, it's because his father is informing him. It's not true, which is patriarchalism at work. The method of the sitcom is to reinforceing the United States. They don't want to recognize this. Everybody's values in the United States when it comes to family and home and hearth are inherently conservative. Of course. Sitcoms are there to make you feel comfortable. And so anything that makes you feel comfortable is not challenging those inherent values. It's reinforcing those inherent values and making you feel comfortable in those values. Currie, you've never watched White Fam or there's a new one called FAM. They're not in the Shakespearean model. But no, I think the successful ones, you're right.

Because there's a sequence to life, basically. The bourgeois middle-class sequence about Amy Goodman fired. You go to school, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you raise them. That's how this system works. And if you do that, you will succeed. And ultimately, people, you know, Americans don't like films about... is why I worked on Beacon Hill, which was the American version of upstairs downstairs.

It was never going to work because Americans aren't, they're not interested in people who are happy to be servants. And if you're going to move ahead, you must follow the sequence. If you're going to follow the sequence. You're ultimately going to be a conservative. Alicia, one last question, but first, a question from me to you. Is that a $30 million necklace? And it's so from whom did you borrow?

You know, I think that this came from, I don't know, maybe the insurance. that I purchased through one of our very generous... No, I think it came from Mark Anthony, because it looks like one of those wonderful Roman, you know. I was told it looked very Madonna, so, you know, Vogue, here we go. Speaking of sitcoms, apparently Roth and Rachel are subscribers to the Daily Wire, because their last question of the night,

they want to know, do you think video games are more reflective of American culture? I believe the Video Game Awards had games that were artistic and popular, while the Oscars offered nothing. I, as a video gamer, I have to say I think there has been more innovation in video games in the last, let's go back 20 years, than there has certainly been in movies. They definitely emphasize a kind of heroism and sacrifice and putting yourself forward and encourage and essential values. And they create works of visual art that are immersive in ways that art has never been before. And it's actually unique. It's actually a unique form.

It's got some built-in restrictions that keep it from being a good source. storytelling form, but as a visual art, it's amazing. And I think they're absolutely right. What are you playing right now? I'm playing Diablo 3, which is a throwback to one of the first games that ever kind of lit me up. I mean, because I was there for Pong, you know, I was there at the beginning. And when Diablo came out, I found it in a bin. He means ping pong. Yeah, exactly. He's not a young man. But when Diablo came out, I found it in a bin, and I just liked the cover, and I took it home, and I went, oh, oh, this is a new thing.

And now they've brought out this new version, and it tells its story that absolutely just precision speed and you're completely immersed in this world and it's the first game I've been addicted to in a long time and it's just absolutely I'm sorry I just wanted did you play Assassin's Creed? Yeah sure because one thing I learned from that is that video games have been the cutting edge of nearly all the technological Oh yeah Advancement in film all all of the new cinematic art is really coming out of these gamers Yeah, you know certainly 3D and and it's been a funny thing too because they'll steal from Night of the Living dead and they'll make resident evil, and then they'll make movies of Resident Evil, so it's been

kind of incestuous all along. That's interesting. I just played through, I only played about one game a year, and I just went through a nostalgia game. One of the first games that I fell in love with as a kid was The Legend of Zelda. There's this new Zelda out on Nintendo. I bought a Nintendo just to play Breath of the Wild. It's fabulous. It's one of the most immersive games I've ever played. It's a real journey, and you kind of, in a sort of choose your own adventure way. I feel like no two people who ever play the game will have the same experience, which isn't something I'd really encountered in the typical kind of games I like, like Years of War.

When I was a kid, they were talking about this in fiction, that they were going to have fiction where you could choose your path and all that. It's video games that did that. My switch is in the mail, so I'm looking forward to that. It's supposed to arrive tomorrow. Alicia, thank you, and thank you to all of our Daily Wire subscribers who shell out their hard-earned 10 bucks to keep Ben Shapiro in everything. Really, he's doing very well.

But he does so well with it. And Lionel, thank you for coming up. the show tonight, especially as a substitute for the guest that promised that he was going to be here and then didn't show up, Stephen Crowder. What a jerk. I can't believe the jerk. Probably died from drinking out of a stupid mug. It's all the ashes in it.

Well, it's what has to be in second place to someone, I guess. What the hell? And thank you to the family of Michael Knowles who suffered a terrible loss. That is a shame. Terrible, terrible. I feel absolutely awful about it. We lost a good one.

And as long as they never find the body, we're good. All right, we'll see you guys here. in a couple of weeks. Fake laugh in three, two. The Hollywood laugh.