The Ricochet Podcast - The Kabuki People Want To See

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

With heat waves, and the inevitable extinction of humanity practically around the corner, why not talk about what’s happening in the cool, comfortable theaters that we’re told are also doomed? To help us keep things light and pleasant, we’ve recruited film critic Sonny Bunch to chat about the elegiac Top Gun: Maverick, the rockin’ biopic Elvis, and the not-so-buzzy Lightyear. The trio also get... Source

At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race.

Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia.

Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. I can tell you more about Milton the Moose, keeps visiting us here than I can about Joe Biden.

I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. You know what's happening? They've had to put on their windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Rickishon Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Bileks. Today we talk movies with Sonny Bunch. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast, episode number 602. Would you like number 603? Well, that can be arranged. Join us at Ricochet.com. Be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web and help contribute, everything is discussed over at Ricochet. Member feed is where people who, you know, got a little skin in the game, as Rob said, yay, so many podcasts ago. And the little code of conduct keeps everything civil. So if you're tired of Facebook and Twitter and all the other people ranting and raving,

Ricochet is the place for you to go. And maybe just a little ranting and raving, if you like. Yeah, there is. That's Rob Long in New york i believe peter robinson is out in the woods somewhere right okay all right you survived whatever arcane wyoming wyoming wyoming right i thought you were some i thought you were at some some exclusive club where they you know invitation only where they take the new members and roll them in honey and sesame nuts and then leave them out in the new members and roll them in honey and sesame

nuts and then leave them out in the woods for the expiation of sin and care or something like that but wyoming that sounds great we have to tell us a little bit about it later i know he's chomping champing i'm sorry at the bit for that rob can't wait to talk about james khan who died i'm kidding of course rob does not want to talk about james khan i don't care it doesn't seem very interesting but i mean if you're interested in it, I'll talk about it. I'm not. But in the sense that these sort of sweaty mid-70s icons are passing, maybe we can discuss that with our upcoming guests.

But the thing is, is that are we in the silly season yet? That's sort of the period of the summer where news stops happening, or at least used to. I remember somebody saying, yeah, it's August. Nothing happens. And thenq invades kuwait and ever since then the silly seasons when nothing happens seem to be as eventful as the rest we're in a 24 7 365 news cycle never ever stops but peter has been out of the loop for a week correct blessed thing to be um i've been busy with family and stuff, and so I haven't been

marinating as much as I could, which is good for the brain, good for the mind, good for the heart and soul. But there is news to discuss. The president has COVID. Nobody particularly seems to care because nobody's worried. Nobody seems interested in how a gentleman in that controlled environment wearing, we assume, proper maskage at all times around people nevertheless came down with COVID. And while he gave a little speech saying he was fine, not wearing a mask, therefore putting the entire camera crew at risk. I mean, if it had been quote, beast mode, executive beast mode, when it comes to climate change and issuing what? Laws, demands, requirements? What? Have you guys been following this? And do you expect some raft of new edicts to come rattling down the pipeline?

Not that we have a pipeline, of course. I caught the headlines headlines that much i did do yesterday it's been 10 days since i really paid any attention to the news or read a newspaper thoroughly and it sounds like confession yeah well i'm just i'm just if if listeners hear me defer to rob which of course i do only through gritted teeth that's why because he he's in manhattan he's keeping up with things and i'm in wyoming and just plain haven't. Although I can tell you a little bit about a moose who keeps visiting us. So what is there to say? If he invokes emergency powers, he'll be doing something he ought not to do. Donald Trump invoked emergency powers for the border, and it turns out that emergency powers have been invoked by every president going back, back, back, at least to Gerald Ford. Bill Clinton invoked them far more often than Donald Trump did. So it's not that unusual, but presidents ought not to do this. rob this we have come back to this again and again on this podcast is why are these people

by which i mean the administration and the democratic leadership not moving to the center invoking a national emergency whatever executive order is he's going to issue under that legal coloration to cut off more drilling when people are paying five six in california seven dollars a tank at the pump i do not understand this as a matter as a matter of law and policy it's wrong as a matter of politics it is utterly baffling yeah we used to have this little joke um we would do in the writer's room when somebody kept pitching a joke on an area that was like you know something arcane thing that nobody cared about like taxes or something you know a joke born and someone say more tax materials screams america and that just feels to me like there's nobody in the Oval Office saying, you know, giving him the heart, like more climate change regulations screams America.

You know, like ask anyone in line paying five dollars a gallon or four dollars a gallon, whatever it is now. It's lower, but it's not that much lower if they wear climate change regulations are on their list of priorities. It just it seems, you know, it's funny. I think, look, I'm a partisan in a sense, although I'm not a Republican, I'm sort of generally aligned. I think everybody went insane around the second term of the George W. Bush administration.

That's kind of when I locate the true madness that beset the Democratic Party and the progressives. They just couldn't believe that John Kerry had lost. They went insane. And I believe that this kind of derangement is still there. They just don't. They had a psychic break with America at that point. And they didn't. They've not reclaimed it. And you can see you can hear it in everything they say. You can hear it in their instincts, their political instincts. I mean, this is the Democratic Party.

This is the most successful political party in the history of Earth. It was the largest political party ever. It had control for 50 years almost of the house it's an extra it's a success story in the world political history and it's now run by people who have really have some kind of cognitive or psychological uh break with their constituents and with reality and i find that so and it's easier for the republican party to go nuts and to be filled with weirdos and crackpots because it's smaller um just smaller like it's just always been smaller party right i mean that's one of the one of its big challenges but it's just always been smaller um this to me seems so strange but it also shows you that i think my larger argument now is that the institutions in America are changing rapidly and the voters are demanding new.

And one of the reasons why we have this volatility, I say this all the time and I tell me to shut up, but one of the reasons you're seeing this kind of crazy volatility in political markets, basically, right? In votes. We went from George W. Bush to, we went from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama, then back to Donald Trump, then back to Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House, I think, 10 times or something. Like we've had these rapid changes in government. And if you're one of the elites, you say that's because the people are stupid and insane. But if you're actually paying attention,

you're like, no, no, that's the people trying to get your attention. That's a marketplace saying it's not an opportunity. And the parties, both of them, I think, but especially the Democratic Party, just seem absolutely ill-equipped. I mean, the smart thing for them to do is to fire everybody, which they can't do, and replace everybody with somebody new. New people couldn't do any worse.

The only sense I can put on it is that the Democrats are in a state of political despair. Here's what I mean. They know they're going to lose. And what that means is that there's nobody in the party who has any defense against the left saying, well, if we're going to lose anyway, let's go for all of it right now. Let's just jam through as much of our agenda as we possibly can right now. Maybe they're behaving the way they're behaving, not because they think this is the way to the political uplands but because they are already they've already factored in the markets have impounded the information the political markets so to speak that the democrats are going to lose and they are just in this desperate wild unstoppable rage to jam through as much of their agenda as they possibly can right now that makes a little bit of sense only a little

bit they know they're not going to get it i, it seems to me that all this stuff leading up to the midterms is kabuki theater. Oh, and traditionally, I don't think this is specific to this moment, but it's kabuki theater. And if you're going to do kabuki theater, do kabuki theater that people want to see. Do the kabuki theater that Bill Clinton did. You know, remember, I mean, I'm old, so I remember. Bill Clinton ran on putting a list of crazy things, but it still sent a signal to America that got him reelected. 100,000 cops on the street,

new cops on the street, the federal government somehow paid for. I think that was fraudulent, but the fact that he said it meant something. And the school uniforms. Remember the president of the United States stood up, I'm in favor of school uniforms.

And that was enough to convince the great vast middle that okay he's not insane um this guy seems like i i just it's so baffling to me it's just how you could how a big giant i mean we forget that these parties are uh really good at doing a thing that is actually very very hard to do they get 60 plus million people to do something roughly on the same day, mostly, but they get 60 million people to do something. If you're the vice president of product at Procter & Gamble, and you can get 65 or 70 or 80 million people now to do a thing, and the other guy over at unilever is getting another

60 70 80 million people to do one thing you know roughly within a certain time frame that's amazing these are these are these are these are organizations that have operated an extremely high level just you know operationally i mean um not intellectually of course but the fact that they're just incapable of doing that suggests that, I mean, I don't know. If I was a Democrat, I'd be saying, get me out of here. Give me something new. Everyone's gone. They're all 80 anyway.

The underlying philosophical precepts and beliefs to the Democratic Party used to be patriotism. America was flawed, america could be fixed america was exceptional they were all about america and they cast their eyes post carter pre-carter in carter uh around the world to say that human rights are good and american could be a shining beacon why we got a statue about that in the harbor eventually after the long march through the institutions i think the new left convinced to the democratic party or at least the people who are coming up into it that the cool thing to be is to be transnational the nationalism is bad uh you know belief in america it's a flawed project it's it's bad from the get-go and really

there's nothing special about it what we have to care about is the planet which is a very vague sort of thing and that very easily gets translated and and and transmuted into ecological panic which has always been there too because they love the ecological panic because it confirms all of their priors about the evils of consumerism about the blight of mankind as a virus on the planet about the the horrible things that capitalism have done why look at this garbage it makes this indian man in the commercials cry and he wasn't even an indian man at all he was italian etc so you've got the ecological panic and you have this belief in the wonders of the planet so what do you get you get this this idea

constantly being reshifted like like one of the apocalyptic leaders who says that god is coming on next tuesday and he doesn't so they shift the date for 30 years we've been hearing about the date being shifted so peter your question about why aren't they talking about gas prices if you think that the nazis are heading towards paris then people bickering in the streets of Paris about whether or not a five cent deposit on grocery store bags should be lifted strikes you as ridiculous. Here is the existential peril right here. And you're arguing about this. There was a cartoon in the paper today which had Uncle Sam on a beach, and there were three waves coming towards him, three huge tsunami waves. Now, you could take that cartoon and ask anybody in Russia, how would you fill in those waves?

And people would say gas prices, recession, economic collapse, et cetera, because those are the things that are concentrating the American mind wonderfully, but no. Uncle Sam on the beach is saying, if I close my eyes, maybe nothing will happen. The first wave is called heat wave, because we've never had anything like this before. It was remarkable. Somebody showed a difference in German television between, I think it was 2009 and 2019, or or 2022 the temperatures in 2009 were greater than they are to today in europe which is of course dying oh is that so that's right okay that's fascinating oh yeah remember those people died on this day were were higher and the map is green in 2022 when the temperatures listed are lower the weather person is standing in front of a map

and it's lurid red so just with that little simple little color change right there you're able to say you know what before looked like now looks like literally a fever and death in a way so the first the first wave in the at live score bet we love cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScore Bet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March.

Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data centre. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere.

So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia.

The first label Herblock-like on the wave is heat wave the second one coming behind it is climate change because of course what we're experiencing now is a direct result of people not buying electrical vehicles as quickly as possible and plugging them into an into a you know infrastructure that is powered by coal so that's the second way the third and largest tsunami which will presumably sweep miles into the coast that this cartoonist has us to worry about is labeled what do you guys think what do you think that we got heat wave we have global warming what do you think the third wave soon to come is global extinction oh global extinction so if that's what you're up against and i mean the guy did the cartoon

and penciled that in with the idea that nobody's gonna look a scans at it i mean if if he'd put drag queen story hour at the top they would have thought he was crazy but global extinction makes sense right oh yeah of course of course and our paper runs because heads are nodding this is what we're up against and this is why we all this is why everybody this is why the secretary of transport of transportation a department that is designed supposedly to assist people in getting from one part to the other part is telling us that i don't understand why people are so reluctant to part with their gas vehicles and buy an EV. They don't get it at all because the Nazis are marching toward Paris and we're arguing about a few centimes on the on the cappuccino bill. So it's remarkable.

But Rob's right. Peter's right. The disconnect is there. And they really do think America is demanding more tax policy jokes. Yeah, more material on the subject that nobody cares about. I mean, that is ultimately, you know, I think going to shape politics. Weirdly, it shouldn't shape politics for the next two years, but it's going to shape politics for the next two years. This bizarre obsession with 2024, when, in fact, if you were president of the United States right now, there's a lot you could do between now and 2024.

But this bizarre obsession with it, I think is what's creating the trouble. You know, you have, it's going to be, who is going to be talking about the issues that Americans care about? Who's going to be talking about inflation? Who's going to be talking about crime? Who's going to be talking about, I mean, pick a Ukraine. If you want to say Ukraine, who's going to be talking about crime? Who's going to be talking about, I mean, pick Ukraine. If you want to say Ukraine, who's going to be talking about, you know, I don't I'm making the border. Who's going to be talking about education? Who's going to be talking about which schools are open, which schools are not open?

Who's going to be talking about what are we going to do for the next wave of COVID? Who's going to be talk about all that stuff and uh if you what if one party is talking about climate change and the other party is talking about the 2020 election the america people are gonna go ape and they're gonna deserve to yeah and the american people are gonna say you know what neither the party that actually acts like a human being like it lives in the real world for five more seconds than the other party is the party that wins the the candidate that can behave like a normal person for five more seconds than his or her opponent is almost always the winner and um right now it feels to me like i mean i'm you know again i to try very very hard not to be a fan boy for ron desantis um i personally

think dark horse strong candidate for the republicans is mike pence um do you really i really do i really do i i i really do think he's he's he's a really good politician really good candidate i mean he's a lot more conservative than i am uh so i disagree with him it's not like i i'm not just stumping for him but i feel like he's uh you watch the moves he's making he's pretty smart guy and um and he and i've seen him you know you watch him on the stump you watch him in places where he's getting hostile questions and how he takes them and how he handles them. He's got a lot of skills,

politician. And certainly has a lot of skill as an administrator, which I think is a good thing. So anyway, the question is going to be like, who answers, who's answering the questions that the American people are asking. And I don't see anybody asking questions about climate.

I hear them asking questions about why is gas $5? So why do we cancel pipelines? And why are the the why are some schools closed or why were they closed and why are they instead of teaching indoctrinating people what all sorts of questions right that if you don't answer um you know yeah on climate on climate if you really this is sort of this is what i think this is what j was getting at. Although James is right here. He'll tell me what he was getting at. But if you, if you were really,

was I, was I that obscure? What, if you were really concerned about climate, here's what you'd be doing. You'd be putting research money into more fracking, not less because of course, natural gas is cleaner than other forms of,

than oil that's dug up, and it's much cleaner than coal, and you'd want to encourage India and even China, you might even give some technology away to those countries to encourage them to move to fracking. And above all, you'd be putting research dollars into nuclear energy. Germany is now down to six reactors on its way to closing all the reactors and as a result now that putin has turned off the spigot of gas from russia germany is now burning coal france has 56 nuclear reactors i just looked it up how many nuclear accidents as far as i can tell zero of the modern countries france has the highest, I mean, of course, it is with gritted teeth that I give the French credit for anything.

But there are examples in this world of moving to forms of energy that pollute less, okay? And yet, we know that in this country, they're not serious. The left, which preaches endlessly about climate change, actually has no interest in expanding nuclear power and is doing all it can to shut down natural gas. And that's where the James point comes in. Americans sense that the Democrats aren't serious, that what's really going on is hostility to middle class life. And you know what? Middle class life is still pretty hard to achieve

for a lot of Americans. A second car in the garage, good schools for the kids. And when middle America senses that the Democratic Party sits in judgment on what represents an enormous achievement for family after family after family across the country, that they want to make it harder, that if they had their way, Alexandria Ocasio-cortez and the the gang would shut it down this is not good for that party this is just not good two interesting factoids i know we have to go to a spot one uh a giant earthquake in japan and a tsunami when you mean just now no no no we had the earthquake and the tsunami and it hit and it hit a nuclear power plant zero radiation leakage number of casualties from the power plant and radiation zero you know there were casualties a lot of people drowned a lot of people got hit by

stuff a lot of people died of exposure zero people died as a result of a gigantic tidal wave hitting that nuclear power plant um sign of that maybe people are building nuclear power plants in a smart way i mean i would say whoever built that one built one build a couple for us right uh second interesting um issue or a second interesting thing uh alexandria ocasia cortez won her district small number of votes she won um she won her winning margin weren't the working class brown people in that district they were the white gentrifiers you can look at that that that is who is now at the helm of the democratic party and college professors essentially and that is um not a recipe for success the people who can afford the luxury beliefs listen nuclear is the modern version of the dark satanic metals and

people are afraid of it what they want to see are those wonderful slow-moving turbine blades and i'm afraid that someday they're going to take north dakota look at it and say there's so much space here we can fill north dakota entirely with wind turbines you know what's going to happen then the wind is going to blow so strong in the opposite direction the turbines will have the effect of temporarily stopping the rotation of the earth you know what that happens i won't be able to sleep and people will be thinking oh my gosh the rapture actually did happen i should have converted so all the people i think in north dakota when they do build that many will just walk around with parachutes

on their back in case the rotation of the earth stop and they do fly up because eventually of course you're going to have to come down now when you're packing your parachute are you thinking boy i wonder what the thread count is on this? No, you're thinking about the quality of the parachute. Unbelievable. Doesn't matter how many threads your sheets have. And again, don't pack your own parachute of your own bed sheets. But if you did, you'd want the best threads possible, wouldn't you? And you would if you had bowl and branch. They use the best 100% organic cotton threads on the planet. They do that because they give a superior softness and a better night's sleep. Their sheets aren't just buttery, breathable, and impossibly soft to start with. They get softer with every wash.

We have a house guest this week, and I have availed her of our classic Bowl & Branch. I've heard a lot of people complain. As a matter of fact, she rises every morning and stretches and yawns and says she has an absolutely wonderful night's sleep. So I'm here to tell you that as in every single week I have done this, my sheets are better this week than they were before. And they were great last week. Now, the Signature Hemmed Sheets from Bowen Branch are bestsellers for a very good reason.

You'll immediately feel the difference. And from there, the sheets will just get softer and softer with every wash because they're made with threads that are so luxurious. They're beloved by, oh, I think we're up to three U.S. presidents now. And if presidents can't convince you, then check out their more than one, zero, comma, zero, zero, zero, 10,000 stellar reviews. Best of all, Boulder Branch gives you a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns on all the orders. And that sounds crazy. What, they want me to send my old, you know, my sheets back after I've used them for 30 days. Well, you can, if you want to, but you won't. They're that good. Get 20% off site-wise during the annual summer event. That's

happening only now at BowlinBranch.com. 20% off site-wide. It's the best offer of the year before the holidays. So act now. That's BowlinBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com for 20% off site-wide. And we thank Bowlin Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Sonny Bunch, culture editor of the Bulwark, contributor to the Washington Post. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, Commentary Magazine, the Weekly Standard and elsewhere. And of course, he's always on Twitter telling you his opinions on movies.

And he's here to talk to us about summertime movie fun. You're talking to Peter Robinson, who is in Wyoming, where they watched them projected on a bed sheet, Bowling Branch probably. Rob Long is in New York, where they have small, cramped little theaters that are still playing the Sorrow and the Pity. And I'm here in Minneapolis, where we have large, huge, wonderful theaters with great sound that undoes your lower back muscles and the IMAX and the rest of it. So you got the full panoply here.

But theater is sunny. We were told a couple of years ago, pandemic was going to just slay the entire industry. AMC had that little kerfuffle with their stock and the rest of it. They were closing. The industry was reeling. How's it doing now? And welcome, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you for having me on. To get the full range, I'm in Texas, the home of the D house the alamo draft which is a wonderful place to go see movies theaters have um look theaters uh are not back to uh 2019 levels 2018 levels um i think it's fair to say that they will likely never recover quite to that level um but that being said uh you know the the top of the the top of the uh theatrical experience has basically come back full force you know movies like top gun maverick which has made 600 million dollars it's in the top 10 domestic all time right

now um spider-man no way home made 800 million dollars domestic you know the the the mcu style movies are still uh putting putting people in theaters um and the uh the the real softness in the market is in that 100 to 250 million dollar range those are the movies that are uh have been slower to come back have been you know haven't been filling seats as well partly that's a that's just a that's just a product problem i mean there's i think there's 30 fewer films that will be released this year you know there there's there's less stuff in theaters um and there's less of certain genres right like i i saw somebody talking yesterday about how there have only been four uh wide release horror films this year um before nope or maybe including, maybe even including Nope, which is out this weekend, which is, look, those are the sorts of movies that they cost $15 million to make.

They make $70, $80 million. They help keep theaters kind of full. The studios make a decent amount of money on them. And they just don't exist right now in terms of what's in theaters. So I think until we see a wider range of stuff coming back um and uh that that kind of mid-market movie really hitting its stride again theaters are still going to be you know down that said if it if theaters come back to 80 of the the 2019 box office this year or 70 or so that's a that's a good comeback i mean that's a that's not bad well they're going to be encouraged to do that by the success in the theaters of movies this summer i mean it's been a good box office summer for movies i mean considering what people expected in theaters so i mean the problem is the pipeline

is always about 18 months 24 months late although people are making release decisions right so the studios are saying well we don't know yet where you're going to be able to see this first or when you're going to be able to see this first or how many weeks will be the window between singing in a theater and seeing at home i mean everybody's sort of like trying to figure that out um and there's no particular reason for it what we do know is that older people um have that middle market that's that's that's those are their movies right the movies used to come out in september october when the kids are back in school and grown-ups go out and watch movies. And those are traditionally even the movies that win the Oscars

because they're the boring ones that Meryl Streep's in, right? Those seem to be gone. I don't know where the case is for those right now. I mean, if you're... All these streamers are facing headwinds, right? The ones that are ad-supported are facing headwinds.

The ones that are subscriber-supported are facing headwinds. Everybody, so like the consumer's feeling a little pinched. They don't really want to pay $200 a month for stuff they're not watching. So there's going to be a... Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center.

And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio, and they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center networking portfolio and they deliver that's them hey nokia right on time get your data center ai ready someday is here with nokia shake down there is that gonna i mean traditionally as somebody who's worked in that business the every time streaming uh stumbles people in the old og types think yeah and every time um the big box office

or a broadcast network stumbles people in the streaming and some more premium space think yeah but isn't it possible that both of them are gonna have trouble and then i don't know and the rest of america is gonna say yeah or what totally if? Totally. If you look at Netflix's subscriber numbers, Netflix lost subscribers for the second quarter in a row. Not as many as they thought, though. Not as many as they thought. So they had projected losing 2 million subscribers. I think they only lost just under 1 million. So, you know, it's a big, big win.

We only lost 900,000 subscribers. And, you know, they have 220 million subscribers or whatever. So they can they can afford to take the occasional uh beating like that um the the issue for i think the issue for consumers from from a consumer point of view the thing that consumers are confused about is what is going to be where and when um so if you when you when you have a movie like the black phone right which is a relatively big hit it's a horror film, costs $20 million to make. I think it's gross $67 or $70 million, something like that, domestically so far.

Big hit, but it also winds up on Peacock. It's on VOD three weekends later. It's on VOD the third weekend. I think it's going to be on Peacock a couple weekends after that. For a bigger example of this, look at what is happening with the MCU and Disney Plus. Disney Plus basically says, we're going to have all of our big movies on Disney Plus within six weeks, seven weeks. And what you end up getting is these huge opening weekends, like Thor Love and thunder debuted at $140 million or whatever. Dr.

Strange to debuted at $180 million, followed by massive precipitous drop-off 68% drop 67% drops. And that's because that's because you have like that front loaded audience who like has to see it first weekend. And then everybody else is kind of like, I'll wait, I'll wait to see it on Disney plus. I don't need to,

I don't need to. I mean, that is part of the strategy. I mean, to release a picture, to release a title, whether it's a Netflix series or a feature film, we're talking about $15, $20 million, right? Because it's going to go right into the middle of crazy, this huge kaleidoscopic bazaar of things you can watch on TV.

Anyone who's ever tried to watch a TV show on television, the way you watch them now, has had this experience, which is where is everything? How do I get it? Apple maybe is the most successful user experience company in the world, and their Apple TV

interface is appalling. Hard to use. Amazon, appalling. These are absolutely... i mean if i were amazon is the worst yeah but if i were steve jobs i would be haunting that little circular thing and saying this is it's a huge circular thing yeah yeah um so part of them part of them they deserve i think these headwinds they're not making it easy they're making it homework for me they're creating more friction the whole point of streaming was reduce the friction

yeah um and it seems to me that once you can say to people actually it's easier for me to drive to the mall and park and get a diet coke and popcorn and watch a movie at 7 35 p.m that it is for me to figure out this freaking you know apple tv interface which i think it is that is when you're not that bad an interface for one thing oh it's terrible it's terrible it's terrible they even even they know it's terrible internally right but i don't find myself stabbing with the remote and and saying it's not working it's not calling up my stories i mean the incident one of the things i like about it is actually knows what i watched on another platform and puts it in a pain up there i don't have i mean could it all be could it all be better it could all be better so you are you are you are

i have to say your constituency won on that even apple internally they recognize it's a disaster it's a disaster and it's also fraudulent because it tells you oh you can watch this and you click on it and like well no you can't you have oh, you can watch this and you click on it. And like, well, no, you can't. You have to pay. Well, wait a minute. I thought I got this. Like the consumers are furious. The normal consumer. One thing we should draw a distinction on here. And this is a weird thing.

Again, I don't think consumers understand entirely is that you have the Apple TV app and then you have the Apple TV app, like James says, is actually useful in the sense that it will remind me that I have a show on Hulu I want to watch or a show on, you know, Apple TV Plus or Netflix. Like, keep watching, continue watching. But the Apple TV Plus channel itself is it's impossible to just scan through and stroll through and see, like, what's new and what's, what's interesting. Um, I, but like for the, for the big summer movies, I mean, look, I, I, I think I am, I am as shocked as anybody by the success of top gun Maverick.

Right. Um, why, why, why are you shocked? Oh, I'm shocked. I mean,

I thought it was going to, I thought it was going to be a success because paramount thought it was going to be a success. They've held this movie for two years now. They, they, they knew they had something special and I'm Tom Cruise saw and fought for it, a theatrical release. It's going to make a billion dollars in cash from the theaters.

And Tom Cruise is the hero behind it all. Tom Cruise knew what he had. You know, director Joseph Kaczynski knew what he had. Like, I expected it to be a hit. I did not expect it to be a 1.2 or 1.3 billion dollar hit. I mean, that's an order of magnitude, you know, beyond kind of what is it any good? It's great. Is it any good?

We're talking about money, money, money and systems for seeing it. Give us some criticism. Oh, it's it's it's what I mean, it is. Here's here's why it is so much better than so many of the other action films that you see in theaters right now. You can actually see the stresses of the action on the actors faces which is not a thing that you always see like you go to a marvel movie and i like the marvel movies fine i but but they're they're they're kind of flat cgi spectacle uh where you've got guys on a green screen doing their thing and in top gun maverick you have people actually in airplanes experiencing g-forces and like it just looks different on your face

their faces deformed practical effects will always trump whatever sort of cgi trickery they do the marvel movies you will it consists of people regularly being thrown against concrete pillars which buckle and break and show the rebars and they get up and dust themselves nothing matters there's no nothing matters yes yeah every single one of those movies is the same they are all the same there's not one different from any of them the third act is the same season 4 or the next phase of the MCU was just showing that actually

the quiver is empty and the tank is dry but so yes but Peter wanted you to criticize Top Gun he wanted you to find some fault with it so let me Sonny I sort of agree that top gun is great i yeah i i agree that top gun is great i mean i just enjoyed it but let me

try tossing two criticisms at you and see what you do with them and rob you're not allowed to say oh that's old man stuff you've got to you got to take these or at least sunny has to pretend to take them seriously um one is that tom cruise as as a fighter pilot, is preposterous. The man is turning 60 this year. He was 58, 57, 58 when they were shooting the show. They're very vague about his age. There is no way in which anyone close to Tom Cruise's age would ever be permitted to climb into a cockpit of an F-18. Item one. Item two, Ed Harris is correct at the beginning of the movie, and he undermines the entire venture. And what Ed Harris says is, listen, pal, to Tom Cruise, we don't need your kind anymore. Drones will handle all of this. And then, as we're seeing

the final third of the movie set up, as Tom Cruise and his squad of F-18 pilots are flying to the attack point, what do we see? We see cruise missiles speed past them and with astounding accuracy take out the runway and the airplanes and so forth of the enemy airbase. And at some point you say to yourself, wait a minute. Why do we need crews in the air? Why don't we just have those crews? Okay, so what I'm saying is that the central premise, that Tom Cruise is actually still young enough to play that role, is preposterous.

And that the plot, it's one of those movies where when you step out of the theater into the sunshine, the plot begins to wobble pretty quickly. What are you talking about? And Ed Harris undermined it from the very get-go. I do not wish to hear from Mr. Long. I wish to hear from Mr. Bush. Insanity, Peter. I do not wish to hear from Mr. Long.

He's a movie star. Movie stars can do whatever they want. Well, listen, I'll rebut. Wait a minute, we were just talking about the reality of Top Gun, that you see gravity. Gravity affects people as they age. The reality. Oh, that's why.

That's what I want to do in the summer is go and sit in a theater and see reality. I got reality for free, Peter. Wait, now you're arguing for Marvel. Go ahead, Sonny. I'll rebut point number one by saying this. Did you see Cry Macho, the Clint Eastwood movie? So in Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood, who's about 90 when this was shot I think uh is seen riding a horse yeah he's the old old he's look I love Clint Eastwood old man um but the

he's he's shown riding a horse which is like all right you're stretching it there and then he's shown chasing a chicken around like Rocky in the Rocky like bending down and that's the most ridiculous joints actually still work I've ever seen. So that is an example of a movie star aging out of a role before he should have shot it. I do not think the same thing is applicable to Tom Cruise here. I mean, did you see the beach scene,

the abs, he's got the arms and the back and he's fine. He's fine. To the second, but Sonny, just, just, just to interrupt and see

what you think about this we are in an age of movies that have old guys doing justice things tom cruise is very young but we've got jeff bridges who literally had cancer and covid who is then shown in this in the old man strangling a 22 year old former marine back of a car and we buy it we do liam neeson has taken in his 47 taken roles. The Highwaymen, I think, which had, what was that? Matthew, was it Matthew McConaughey? You know, the movie about Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. Totally believable about these old guys doing it.

And it may be that you have this aging out boomer audience that likes to see the old guys doing the justice things. But I think we do a little, I mean, it used to be that when a guy turned 58 in the old movies, he immediately was stooped. He had gray hair. His wife had the hair in the bun. He was either a banker or he was a loser, you know, hanging around the mission. Now it's entirely possible for somebody to be 70, 75 and vital in these movies.

And we buy it, which I think is a good thing. Anyway, to your second point. To the second point, look, could this mission have been done by drones? No no they say in the movie that it can't so it can't be done uh but second secondly secondly uh you're a believer it's also because the movie itself is a metaphor is a metaphor for the idea of the star-driven property right it's it's about tom cruise being better than marvel cgi it's about uh the the idea that you need the person driving the thing instead of the ip driving the thing i mean the third possible explanation for all this of course is that he dies yeah and that and this is all his purgatory slash death dream

where he is reliving his i've heard your crackpot theory on that it's a good theory it's not a good theory no this movie's gonna make okay this movie's a good theory. This movie's going to make $1 billion. It's already made $1 billion. It's like $1.2 billion. I mean, domestically, right? It's going to get $1 billion. Yeah, come on. Let's give it that. It's going to get really close. It's going to be the biggest movie ever.

Do you believe that the old man in the Pixar movie Up actually tied a lot of balloons to his house and went off? Or did he die after he took his little electric scooter up to the top of the stairs you know what i i believe he died and you know why i believe he died because there was not an up two and there is going to be a top gun three and guess who's going to star in it the i guess the reanimated corpse sunny of tom cruise come on i

don't i i haven't written it i don't. Christopher McQuarrie is probably working on it right now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sonny, give us your theory about how Tom Cruise dies. Basically. So at the start of the movie, we see Tom Cruise flying an airplane at Mach 10, ridiculous speed for an airplane to go. And then the airplane explodes. And supposedly he ejects and, you know, winds up in some small city and he's like, hey, where am I? And the kid he sees is like Earth, but he's not on Earth. He's in purgatory and he is trying to work his. And this is why all the whole film is just a series of images of him reliving past triumphs and proving to himself that he can still do it. And also helping get over his his sins of the past with the lost loves and the son of the navigator that he killed, etc., etc.

So there's all of it. He has to do two miracles? Two miracles? Top gun by way of Dante Alighieri. This is quite a theory. All right. There has to be a Turkish television version of this, actually,

done on the very cheap, which explicitly states that he's in some sort of purgatory. Yes. Are you going to watch Turkish Netflix? We're going to watch something like that in another country. I don't know. You could watch Netflix with ExpressVPN or you could watch it without. But why would you watch Netflix without using ExpressVPN?

That's like going to the casino and only being able to play in the slot machines. Why limit yourself like that? Big money someplace else. No, what you do is you use ExpressVPN to sort of, well, make them think that you're elsewhere. And when you do that, like I can sit there and I can explore. Well, I'm a big fan of European television and there's a lot of stuff you just can't find in here. But if you're coming in from someplace and they think that it's over there, you get libraries, different content libraries for every country. And Netflix has thousands of shows, but without a VPN, you only get access to a fraction of that based on your location. Now, on your own, you're limited to whatever content Netflix chooses for your country and your access. But with ExpressVPN, you can

control where you want Netflix or other streaming websites to think you're located. For me, for example, to watch 2019 Joker. I love that movie. Dark, nihilistic. Yeah, I know. I know. But I loved it. In order to watch it, I had to be in Australia. I could travel all that way, meaning to go down despite all the spiders and the kangaroos. Or I could fire up my app, tap a single button, and let ExpressVPN do all the traveling for me. All I have to do is refresh the page. The movie's there. ExpressVPN is compatible with my phone, my tablet, my laptop, and smart TV speeds. They're blazing fast. I can stream in HD with zero buffer speeds and with servers in 94 different countries. I'm not wanting for that content I'm looking for. No. So be smart.

Stop paying full price for streaming services and only getting an access to the fraction of the content. Get your money's worth at expressvpn.com. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, Hey, it's me.

Your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated, the whole data center networking portfolio, and they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. He's not alone in this theory. This theory is also shared by Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and Rudy Giuliani.

So you're, yeah, you heard me. You know what, Sonny? You know what totally works about it, totally works about it, is there is something haunted and a sense of loss in Maverick that the original didn't have. The original was, you know, Kenny Loggins' song Driven, jingoistic 80s all the shiny sweaty glistening this one there there's a there's a i wouldn't say a set maybe sadness is the right word there's something not empty because empty it's not an empty movie but there's an

absence there's almost an absence you can feel feel it everywhere in the America that produced the first movie. There's there's an amazing shot. There's an amazing shot in this movie where Tom Cruise is watching kind of from outside the bar. Remember, he gets thrown out of the bar at the beginning and he kind of looks in and he sees Goose's kid playing the piano and he sees his lost love behind the bar. And he's just like he's freaked out like his eyes go wide his face face goes pale and like i i that is it that is a that is a haunting image of loss and regret right there i mean i like for as triumphant as this movie is and for as you know rah rah america this is what we can do um it is a movie that has a lot of, I don't know, questions. No,

it's, yeah, use the fancy term. Well, I don't know. I, I, I don't think that's true.

I think that's why it's a great picture. That's why people are lining up and seeing it once, twice, three times in the theater. When we've been told they're not going to do that. And they're doing that. That's the reason why this movie is a success. You could say the same elegiac darkness to High

Noon, another great movie. To almost every single one. Yes, of course. There's always a moment in these great movies of kind of regret and a sense of loss. That's what makes them great. The Dark Knight. Don't get me wrong. This movie is scratching an itch that Americans want

scratched, which is that America's a great country, and we should be optimistic about it instead of the sour, taciturn darkness that we seem to be getting from both parties in Washington. Rob's mad because he tried to reboot Electro-Glide in Blue, and the studio just wouldn't buy it. Yeah, I would love to do that, by the way. This is a great

great moment for patriots yeah maybe no for sure for sure so so on this lj sorry this is interesting to me i'm one more question one more thought this is again i direct this to sunny and rob is going to come in and say us by the way have you noticed the whole drift of this conversation, Sonny, that Rob Long, whose business card reads artiste, Rob Long keeps saying, ah, stop with your fancy terms. The thing made a billion dollars. It's great. Just stop. Count the money. Business card does not say artiste.

It says the opposite. I don't know what it is, but it's like I've been in show business for 32 years. Let me tell you that when a successful a successful thing happens the smart thing to do is to pay attention to why people love it i agree i totally i actually totally agree with that that that i i think there's something to be said for trusting the audience on something like this so how much of top gun is a certain kind of i'm going to use the word again even though rob dislikes it the elegiac a sweet kind of ele a sweet elegiac rather than a dark or disturbing elegiac, a sweet kind of elegiac, a sweet elegiac rather than a dark or disturbing elegiac quality, how much of that is just because of what we happen to bring to it?

For example, I called up on Google images of the other stars from the 36-year-old Top Gun. And let me put it this way, time and chance doth happeneth to all men and all stars as well tom cruise is the only one who looks anything like what he used to look like so you think ah here's a big time an old-fashioned star doing it one more time and then of course you've got this feeling wow that's what the united states was like during the 80s. We can still just about pull it off. We can still just about believe that we still... Is that... So what am I asking?

I guess I'm asking if that's just me and just James? No, no, no. Or if that's sort of built into the product itself? I think you get a sense of this in the scenes in the movie with Val Kilmer, right? Val Kilmer, uh has been has been who is sick i mean sick in real life but also in the in the in the movie is is very ill has cancer but he still has a like a positive outlook like it's very sad that he looks ill and sounds ill very sad that he's dying but he still has this positive outlook he still has something to give

not only his country but his friend um to to help him propel him into right the after to heaven to fighter pilot heaven when tom cruise enters the bar in his dress white uniform it is a moment uh that just like the apparition of an angel coming down i mean that's what we're supposed to i mean it's supposed to hit us like that it's an old image and here's something that we spent the last 20 years, 30 years, however many years saying that we should be tut-tutting about. And now there's, without going rah-rah and celebrating jingoistically style the military, just in this image, this callback to the 80s, as Peter mentioned, there's so many things

that it draws upon. And that's why you, I mean, there's so many American things about it. If you grew up in this culture, marinated in this culture, everything about it, it just seems to draw them up into a nice little bouquet and hand them to the audience, which then explodes in your face because it's an action movie. So, no, it's great. And we will see more of that, don't you think? Because like Rob said, they're going to look at this and you'd think what? Because they have pre-existing you know intellectual remember the the original top gun was also an enormous hit i mean it was the highest grossing

film of its year by 50 i think um was it was just a huge huge hit and there was no sequel to that for 35 years so i mean i you know it all kind of depends on how much tom cruise wants to do it yeah look if tom cruise wants to do it yeah look if tom cruise wants a sequel to top gun top gun three he's going to get one and i i suspect that he does he i mean i think i mean what's interesting about tom cruise is that it wasn't that long ago but tom cruise's career was over because he was weird and i had believed in this weird scientology and he jumped on oprah's couch and people were watching YouTube videos of him and saying, this guy is too weird to be in movies. And he just methodically, relentlessly, like a, I mean, he, you got to give him guy credit, like a self-discipline,

incredible self-discipline. He made these mission impossible movies and they are good movies. They're not special movies, but they are good movies. They made a lot of money. They were exciting. He does his own stunts. The stunts are crazier and crazier and crazier. He relentlessly focused, as Sonny said, on the face and the body. He's there doing his stunts. You're watching those things, and it's him.

And then he puts together this project with his help, but also he fights for it to be in the theaters. I mean, Tom Cruise deserves a statue in the middle of show business land. I mean, he has single handedly reminded show business of what it has forgotten, which is that people like adventure. They like heroes. They like America. They like fast planes. They like cool stuff.

They like to rah-rah at the end, and they like it when the good guys win. And that doesn't mean it's a dumb movie. That means it's a movie that touches you in a way that movies are supposed to. And if you somehow resurrected a studio executive from anywhere before 1979 or 1980 or even 1985 and told them that these are the lessons that Tom Cruise has taught us, he's like, how did you forget that? Like, this is what built the whole town, was movies like Top Gun. And the idea that Top Gun is special and people say, Top Gun? No, we gotta think about that. The idea that it's being

now examined as some kind of outlier is a sign that show business some kind of like outlier. It's a sign that show business is kind of losing its way. The best thing for them to do is to stand back and to stop messing with the formula, make scary movies that are scary and make adventure movies that have adventure and stop trying to make them all intersectional and,

and ideological homework for the viewer, which is what they've been giving us. There's nothing homework about Top Gun. That's why people have seen it three, four times. It's just fun. Yes. Rob is right. Rob knows what he's talking about. He's worked in movies. Don't get carried away.

I love Pixar movies. I love the Disney animation studio movies. It's a lot of talented people. And again, to use the horrible term IP, they've got it in space. I love Toy Disney animation studio movies. It's a lot of talented people. And again, to use the horrible term IP, they've got it in space. I love Toy Story, guys. I love Buzz Lightyear. He's a commendable figure, right? He's heroic.

He's resourceful. All of these things. So they make a Buzz Lightyear movie. And I was instantly, instantly turned off from going to see it. It had nothing to do with it. Whether or not there was a lesbian subplot, who cares? It was in the trailer that they made and showed to us saying, this is what this is.

We saw Buzz being dressed down by some smart, young female astronaut who had his number and had the DreamWorks animation, a little expression on her face. And I thought, this is just going to be that. And I just instantly drained everything that I wanted to see out of the movie, which is odd because these guys would, I mean, it was a printing press Pixar. And now their work doesn't seem to have a tenth of the cultural impact that it used to. Or is that wrong?

Tell us what's coming up this summer, let's say in the animation world, and whether or not you have any hopes for this season of animation. Well, summer is kind of coming to a close here i mean the uh the the big release this weekend i mentioned uh nope the new jordan peele movie uh that's that's coming out uh there's seen that i have it's a uh i i i'll i don't want to i don't want to i'm not going to spoil it at all i'll say i liked it uh i liked it less than us and i liked it less than get out um it i it's get out. It I, it's a mess. The movie is,

the movie is a very big, ambitious mess. But I would rather watch like a big, ambitious mess than kind of a successful mediocrity. So like, I still liked it. I still enjoyed it, but it's,

it's a, it's a messy movie. And then I, after this, you've got bullet train, the Brad Pitt action movie from the director of Deadpool, I think. And then that's kind of it for summer.

That's it until like the fall. We're going to get the next Black Panther movie and Shazam 2 and Avatar 2 like that. But that's not coming till, you know, October, November, December. So, you know, in terms of animation that's coming out, there's DC League of Super Pets or something on the horizon, which is that's not a joke. That's a thing. I know. I know. It's a real thing. Yeah. Yeah. There's just not there's not a ton on the horizon. And this is what to get back to the, you know, kind of first thing we were talking about. I know theater owners are a little bit worried about the next couple of months here.

Um, I, I think if you did not get a chance to see Top Gun and IMAX, uh, you might, uh, at some point here in the next month or two, because there's going to be a lack of product.

Um, and, and theaters are going to want to, you know, put the hits back in. Um, it's a, it's,

it's a bit of a dry stretch coming up. I, the movie, the movie summer overall has been a success. I think nobody would complain about the box office numbers they've seen. And frankly, the movies have been pretty good, too. We haven't even talked about Elvis, which is a movie I quite enjoyed and has held very well. Audiences have been very into it.

It's had very low declines from weekend to weekend. And I'm surprised by it. I figured this movie would be a huge bomb just looking at the ads for it i was like who's gonna want to go see this older audience started slow to be fair it had a slow start didn't it it opened it opened to 30 million dollars which is more than i thought it would open to i mean i figured it was going to open to 18 15 million something like that it opened to about 30 uh and it's held very well again it's it's it's still in theaters still doing well um and and importantly or older audiences are showing up for it so older audiences showed up for top gun maverick and even older audiences showed up for elvis uh the the percentage

of audiences above the age of i think 55 was um was higher for elvis than it was for basically anything that's uh come out at least and has made that much money um so you know older audiences are starting to show up again uh and they were they were sparked to, uh, this is all anecdotal, but what I hear from the theater owners is that people went to see Top Gun Maverick. They saw the trailer for Elvis and they were like, oh, that looks pretty good. I guess I'll show up for that. And they hadn't been to a movie for two years before that because of COVID because of, you know, whatever else. Um, so, you know, Top Gun Maverick, in addition to saving America and, you know, else um so you know top gun maverick in addition to saving america and you know and and all that uh it's also i think done a very has played a very key role in getting

a key market segment back to the theaters yeah i said too i've seen two movies in theaters in the last and i'm ashamed to say it one was top gun and the other was west side story which i absolutely would seem to be be another destination thing. But like I said, my daughter and I used to go to see the Pixar movies every year. It was an event. It was something. Now we're looking at Avatar 2, 3, 4 through 17, I believe, Cameron's made. And we're expecting that to make a lot of money, are we?

Are we expecting it to have any sort of spinoff cultural impact whatsoever? I mean, the movie that made the most money, not even just for inflation, nobody quotes it. Nobody talks about it. Nobody even knows what it's about, except for some guy on this planet with a bunch of anthropomorphic Jar Jars walking around with big eyes. But apparently it looks great. But what do you think it's going to do well i mean i i i i can't i i mean i'm loathe to say you know creatively how successful it will be um and business-wise the place that's going to be the most successful is china i mean the reason these these movies are being made is because they're going to make 500 600 million dollars in china assuming china's not still on you know

extreme covid lockdown uh in lockdown in Shanghai or wherever. So like that's kind of why those movies are made. I mean, they're just going to be enormous hits. Avatar came out at a very weird time because Avatar was is the first and arguably the only real huge artistic and commercial success of the 3D boom from the from the late aughts, early tens. Right. Like it is a movie that really needed to be experienced. One of the few movies that needed to be experienced in IMAX and succeeded as an IMAX 3D spectacle, right? Will it, I don't think it's going to do quite as well this time around,

but I do think... Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver.

That's them. Hey, nokia right on time get your data center ai ready someday is here with nokia i think we are under selling the permanence of avatar which i know it's like everybody likes to joke nobody can remember the name of the main character you know what what are these blue alien guys running around stances with wolves but on but a search for unobtainium right um that said people i mean people went bonkers for this movie when it came out it was a huge it was a cultural phenomenon people were i i i was looking back at some of the stories people were committing suicide because they could never go to the navi planet you know i like i it was it was a it was a crazy crazy time i don't i don't know that we'll have that sort of thing again and again because people have gotten a lot more emotionally balanced more stable

work through its issues for sure um but i you know i again i think that that was such a unique uh moment in both culture and like the technology of film that we've kind of passed that i you know i again i think that that was such a unique uh moment in both culture and like the technology of film that we've kind of passed that i don't know that that will be the same sort of cultural phenomenon but maybe you never know we'll see sonny we gotta let you go and it's been great we'd like to have you on again and again and again because you know your stuff you're fun to talk to and of course we course, we read them on Twitter, elsewhere in print, and in digital publications. And, Sonny Bunch, thanks for joining us today. Sonny, what's the temperature in Dallas right now?

Currently, I think it's about 95, but it has been over 100 degrees for about 21 straight days. So, it's been hot. Hot in Dallas, Texas. But cool in the movie theater. That's what they used to say. Come on in. It's cool inside. Have a great day. Totally wrong about your

avatar. I mean, your Top Gun theory, but... I'm not wrong about anything. Right about everything. Take it outside, boys. Take it outside. No, he's never wrong. Yeah, we had 100 degree weather here in Minneapolis, and that's when our air conditioning

went out brutal miserable but i assume of course yes i know of course they wouldn't come and fix it because it was too hot upstairs in the attic to fix it uh but eventually they did when it cooled down and i didn't need it as much anymore i imagine that it'll be hot in austin but it's going to be even you know what are the temps in austin in september he said throwing rob an easy segue they are in fact very hot they are hot but an easy segue. They are, in fact, very hot. They are hot, but I don't think, certainly not in the hundreds. But speaking of Austin,

Ricochet is excited to be a media partner with the Texas Tribune Festival, which is taking place September 22 through 24 in Austin. We're going to have an announcement soon on some of your favorite Ricochet stars who will be there. Stay tuned on that front. And if you'd like to attend the event yourself, we have a special discount code for a one-time 15% discount off one general

admission ticket. Just go to TribFest, T-R-I-B-Fest.org and enter the code Ricochet15 in the promo code box located at the bottom of the registration widget and click apply. We'll have this information on the member feed for sure. We hope to see you there. Again, this is part of our, you know, following the lead of Joe Biden.

We're not going to get worried about COVID, just like Joe Biden. And because Ricochet spans the globe, it's not the only meetup. It's not the only meetup. No, of course. We have a meetup in an obscure town you may have heard of called Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The meetup is July 29th through 31. And again, we have a lot of meetups, so it's hard to keep track of them all. You got to stay in touch with it on the member feed. But we know the place. That's next weekend. So next weekend in Milwaukee, our very own Matt Balzer has coordinated with members for a ton of fun in the Badger State. Wisconsin is the Badger State. So if you're a Ricochet member in the area, be sure to check out the Ricochet Meetup group or email support at ricochet for details.

But again, Ricochet Meetup group from the member feed. If you're not a member, this is a perfect time to become a member. This weekend in Wisconsin, early autumn, maybe the first day of autumn, September 22nd in Austin. It is just the beginning. We are gathering IRL. Great. Well, now that people have endured all that wonderful self-promotional stuff, we have to give them something before we go out.

We just can't end there. So, Peter, you've been out of the loop, you said, for a week, but surely some news has penetrated up to your cabin. Surely you heard that there was an Indiana man who killed a mass shooter or a prospective mass shooter at a mall. This is everything we're told doesn't happen, right? That somebody who is packing actually takes out the guy who's there to commit mass maim. We're told that this doesn't happen. Oh, this is a story that ended the right way, sort of.

It did. And everybody got mad at him and pointed out that he shouldn't have had the gun in the first place because the mall bans guns. As you could say happened, was applied to the shooter as well. But that story apparently doesn't have any traction with either the two of you.

Well, we have a stabbing in New York, right? Rob, that's practically your backyard, right? Because I know the people of New York City have great empathy and love and connection to the people upstate, right? Yeah, well, a

gubernatorial candidate was stabbed, and all you really need to know is that he's okay. But the other thing you need to know is that the guy who stabbed him walked out of the... was charged with a misdemeanor assault or something, and then walked out of jail. Really?

That I didn't get. In California, I read about a couple of guys who apparently imported enough fentanyl to kill every person on the planet. And they posted a post of bail and walked. They're out. They're gone.

They didn't show up for their hearing. And so they're now asking us to locate them. There was the NASCAR driver who was killed at a gas station by a man, it turns out, who had been let out, who hadn't paid for his crimes as he had. We hear the stories every day. We hear them here. Yes, you can ask Peter. Well, I do have a story. I have a Wyoming story. It has nothing to do with politics. That's what I have. I have wished all my life, which is getting to be a while now, to see a moose in the wild. Last time I was in Wyoming in the winter, somebody pointed out off in the trees that there was a moose there, and you could sort of see a

shape moving. And I thought, okay, well, if I have to, that's one I can tick off the bucket list. I hadn't really seen it. And two days ago, in the afternoon, a moose, a big bull moose, walked up to just outside my bedroom and looked against the window pane 10 feet away from a magnificent wild animal and just took him in for hour after hour after hour and you know what reality is pretty remarkable that moose was beautiful and strange all at the same time um and it's kind of moving yes yes yes a little bit like you although he's much more open-minded uh i just i don't know i don't know why i found it so moving but i did find it moving to be in the presence of to just to be reminded at how how capacious and strange and beautiful reality is. And then he stood up and ambled off into the woods and has not been seen again.

That's my story. The first settlers came to America and they encountered Mises. They were seven feet tall. This guy could have been seven feet tall. He was a large creature. That's an enormous animal it's like when you're in south dakota and you see admittedly small compared to the old but still impressive bison herd amble across the road traffic has no option but to stop of course and

then come into your the front yard of wherever you happen to be staying in the enormity of the creatures it's just so yes imagine coming to a place that had all sorts of fauna, flora that you'd never seen before, and wondering how far this country went. And you know, there are days, Peter, when you're standing there at the window, not with dances with wolves, but it's chewing with mouse, with moose, watching the work the cud, and you have still a sense of wonder, as opposed to just, yeah, you know, I've seen pictures of these things all my life. I know they're out there a big deal. So the wonder and surprise and glory and fascination and curiosity and anticipation that they had when they first came here, aside from hunger and scurvy and deprivation still exists in all of us.

It's part of being an American. It's, it's looking at that and wondering what else is out there and marveling at all the things that this great land can contain. So yes, that's your, I envy you there. Also feel like when i first saw a moose my first reaction was oh my god it looks just like a moose i mean it looks just like bullwinkle it looks just like it's supposed to look well apart from this standing on its back legs and conversing with june foray i mean

that well that but like it's just a funny thing. Oh my God, it's a movie. It's like when you see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Yeah, that's what that's supposed to look like. The Leaning Tower of Pisa right there. There's something kind of refreshing. I don't know. One of the things you discover when you go

to the wild places is that they just walk around. This is their neighborhood. They just walk around. These exotic, cool-looking animals, they're just there. They're not there for us. They're just there. That is true.

Yesterday, early, early, early, we got up and drove some distance and went for a hike and ran into another hiker coming from the other direction saying, just so you know, around the corner, there's a mother grizzly and a cub. And, but don't worry about it. And then off the other hiker went. Whereupon my wife, the thing they always tell you is have your bear spray ready. So my wife reaches in the can, she's ready to move the bear spray and then make noise. So my beloved wife began singing, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the... And we turned the corner and to our enormous relief, it was a black bear and her cub. And black bears just don't care that much about people. It was...

But again, though, it was this just amazing thing. Wait a minute. They're not here for us. This is not a zoo. That is a wild animal raising her little creature and rooting around for grub and berries. I don't, again, I just, I'm stuck at trying to find some kind of lesson there, except that there is just something wonderful about it.

All right, I'm done. Yeah. The lesson to all that stuff is that there's a God. Otherwise, there's nothing rational about a moose. With infinite ingenuity. There is nothing rational about a moose. In peopling this world with all the glories that it has. You know, you're in California, Peter,

but those of us who think California is this great unspoiled place, except for Los Angeles and San Francisco. So I'm surprised, actually, that the campus environment isn't bucolic and filled with little dancing creatures anyway, Disney style. But apparently not. And, of course, Rob is in the antithesis of the natural world, New York, this entire manufactured artificial canyon, which has its own ecosystem and the rest of it.

And I'm in a place where you can get out of town in half an hour and be amongst them. So yes, it's an incredible country and there's still some summer to enjoy it. So yes, go to the movie, enjoy that, but also maybe get in your car while you can and drive far, touch grass, as they say on the internet, or eat it as my dog does when he needs to throw something out. We would like to thank you, by the far, touch grass, as they say on the internet, or eat it, as my dog does

when he needs to throw something out. We would like to thank you, by the way, for listening. We'd like to thank Bowling Branch for sponsoring and ExpressVPN as well. Support them for supporting us. Enjoy and ricochet today so you can too be part of those meetups in real life. Maybe even have one of your own someday

and introduce yourself to everybody else in person, in the flesh, it can be done. Leave us a five-star review. I've been saying for 500 podcasts at least, so you could shut me up if you all did it today. Those reviews allow new listeners to discover us and to keep the show going. And of course, we want to keep the show and

Ricochet going. And we will see you all in the comments. Peopled and contentious and enjoyable as they always are at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. Next week, fellas.

Ricochet. Join the conversation. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver.

That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia.