The Ryen Russillo Podcast - How Marvel Changed the Movie Industry With Ben Fritz and Professional Life Advice With Trevor Moawad

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Russillo is joined by author Ben Fritz to discuss his new book ‘The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies,' as well as what he learned from the infamous Sony hack, plus the end of the DVD era, the rise of franchise films, and more. Then Ryen talks with renowned mental conditioning expert Trevor Moawad about his background in the field, working with Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, and Russell Wilson, the power of "neutral thinking," and more before they answer some listener-submitted Life Advice questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I don't know that we're going to just, I don't want to label anything because you never know. But this is going to feel like a weird Wednesday back in the day now that we're going to Monday, Wednesday, Friday again. So here's the plan. We're going to have Ben Fritz on, the author of the big picture, that movie book that both Bill Simmons and I were talking about because we've read it recently. It was just fun.

It's a lot of fun for people that like movies and want to understand the evolution of the movie industry in the last 20 years and why we have the movies that we have that are at least in theaters and kind of where it's going. So some good stuff from Ben. And then we have Trevor Moad, who is somebody I met years ago. I don't know if you call him just a Tony Robbins type positive thinker, but he's going to help us with some life advice. You're going to hear his backstory. He worked with Nick Saban. He works with Kirby Smart now. He's partnered up with Russell Wilson. So he's a guy I've known a while. I've hung out with a couple of times and he's now in California. So I thought that'd be

kind of a fun thing to do to have him do some of those life advice emails. But real quick off the top, I just want to share with you a little bit on the NBA's return because Bill and I had talked about this and Bill kind of did some new stuff on it. And where this restart, well, I guess the first restart, let's go back in time and remember how it worked. It was, well, it could be this date. It could be this date. All right, the players are going to need 30 days. I don't know. The players need 45 days.

And then we had all these trainers saying, oh, the players ended up getting 60 days notice of, okay, this is when we're going to hope you guys get back into camp. And then we're going to give you a month and then you're going to show up to the bubble. And then it's going to be another month that you're going to be down here. And then we're going to get these games going in August. And it actually all worked out and everybody deserves a ton of credit, but the day-to-day lead up of all of that after March suspended the season of all the people that I would talk to and everything that you would read it was okay this could be in play this could be a proposal I always thought the Orlando thing was the heavy favorite uh compared to all the other options which is why I didn't up down there but um there

was it wasn't misinformation it was just if you assume that any decision had been made you were wrong it was it was always updating you on hey this is kind of where I think it's going to go. And so from what I had heard the last few weeks was that, as Silver had said publicly, first of all, is that starting up on Christmas, as much as they want that Christmas day to just belong to the NBA, one day of ratings, I don't think is worth starting something up a little bit too early. And Silver said, man, just Christmas feels so early. It just feels way too early. And we did a full kind of timeline, like what could happen and all the financials on all

the NBA stuff with Brian Winterhorst last week, which was great. But you also had owners. And when I would talk to teams, what people were saying was that owners are going to say, look, if it's zero fans in January and I have fans in March, then this is a no brainer. I do not want to open up the season without any fans because most of the arenas are not going to let fans in January and I have fans in March, then this is a no-brainer. I do not want to open up the season without any fans because most of the arenas are not going to let fans in. But as we look at, I would think, some scary second wave numbers in Europe. We have some really bad peak numbers here in the United States, pushing towards peak numbers that we've had in the summer.

Is it worth waiting for something that you don't even know if it's a 50-50 proposition that you're going to have a full arena, 17,000 to 20,000 people, if you started the season in March? And the other factor is that it's starting to feel like the league is going, okay, if that's an uncertainty, we don't have an answer to that. Then the sooner they start the season, the sooner they can get next season back on a normal schedule. And that's something. Because right now, the next NBA season would have started now.

We'd be in the normal regular season for 2021. Think about that. And so to say, well, it doesn't matter. Just keep pushing it back. You jeopardize the Olympics. And I'm telling you, the ratings thing was a real holy shit moment. Now, we could get into a million debates about why the ratings are the ratings. As you know, the extreme side of it and dismissing anything are two arguments I wouldn't make. I think everything is a factor. I don't know to what degree it is, but there just weren't enough people at home watching sports, not only basketball, but a lot of sports. So we'll see where the college football numbers come back because

some of those are trending towards like maybe there's a recovery. But we thought maybe with a pandemic, no one would have anything to do. They're going to be watching basketball all the time. And even during a pandemic, there weren't enough people home watching basketball. So to delay this season again, have it finish in the fall. Who knows where we're at? I mean, at that point, you'd have to hope you'd have to think that we're going to be through this. I don't know. So I'm certainly not predicting anything but the league the more recent information is if we don't have any answers to the stadiums or arenas if we don't have any

answers to fans there if we have bad ratings coming off of this this makeshift finish in a non-traditional time slot and i'm not talking about tip-off times, I'm talking straight up just the normal schedule of television, then the best thing for the league, at least the most recent information feels like, the best thing for the league is to just get this next season going, start it sooner than some of the other stuff. Because I was starting to hear like February, maybe even March,

and it's like, nope, let's go January. And again, this all could change because nothing was decided. I was talking to hear like February, maybe even March. And it's like, nope, let's, let's go January. And again, this is all could change because nothing was decided. I was talking to somebody late last night. Um, but get this next season to get the 2021 season in theory over with, and just have it be the 21 series season so that they can make the following season normal again. So just something to think about. And again, that could all change, but that's the momentum as of today. So there you go. All right, let's do some interviews and talk about stuff that doesn't have much to do with sports. Okay, you heard Bill Simmons and I talk about this new book that I was reading and Bill picked up as well. It's The Big Picture, The Fight for the Future of Movies. Ben Fritz, a longtime Hollywood reporter with Wall Street Journal, covers the film industry.

This book is so much fun. And for anybody that's a movie fan, I think you should check it out just because it kind of answers all the questions of like, why are these the movies that are being made? So let's start at maybe just the beginning of your motivation behind this, and then we'll get to kind of the timeline of the book. The reason for this book, I know it was your beat. It was something you were covering a long time, but at what point did you have that moment where you're like, hey, there's a book here? Oh, sure. So yeah, like you said, I was covering the Sony hack extensively for the Wall Street Journal when it happened in like five or six years ago. And then I remember once the initial news died down,

I started thinking after talking to some friends, geez, there's so much, but this is the biggest story that i've ever had covering hollywood you know this may be the moment to write a book i've always wanted to write a book about hollywood um but first my idea was oh i'll just tell the story of the hack i'll just go deep inside sony you know it'll be kind of like too big to fail but for the movie business like deep in there but i quickly realized you know that drama there just wasn't enough there to fill a book, and it was all being covered so much in real time. But I had downloaded everything from the hack. I mean, everything. I just started going through it looking for what I thought would just be the characters and the drama to set us up for what happened in the hack. I realized, no,

I realized, holy shit, there's a story right here. There's a bigger story, sort of the grand story of the decade or so I covered Hollywood, which is how did we go from the time when so many diverse movies, original dramas for adults and thrillers being pumped out on a regular basis to franchises dominating, everything being a superhero film and a reboot and a sequel. That story is right here in the hat because you can see Amy Pascal and her colleagues desperately trying to still make those old kind of movies, the ones like You Said You Love. And you can see them failing at it. They can't do it anymore. The business has changed underneath their feet. And I started to realize, oh, the story here is not just Sony. Sony is actually a

vehicle to tell the story of Hollywood. And all the materials here, there's the financial documents, there's the emails where they're trying to put together movies and they can't, and they're trying to figure out how to make franchises to keep up with Marvel. That story is kind of all here in front of me. It was basically like a eureka moment for me. And then I realized that I could put all this material together, do some other interviews and tell this bigger story. So if we look at the end of the 90s, early 2000s, I still think those movies, you know, like I'll always point to kind of like the Wes Anderson stuff where you go like, Oh, okay. You know, Rushmore is coming out. Tenenbaums

is coming out and it made sense. And now when you look at it, you're like, good luck. We're getting any of that stuff made. When did that shift first? I mean, I know it's late nineties, early two thousands, but what motivated that shift to kind of the way production companies, producers, and the entire industry said, you know what, we're just not making these movies anymore. So there were a few factors, right? And first was sort of the recognition, Hey, that franchises work really well. And I think the first huge one was, was Harry Potter, right? And there was just this sort of big global franchise and the same audience kept coming back again and again, a huge global audience. And, you know, the financials of those movies

are so much better for the studios because it really, of course, it costs more to make a Harry Potter than it costs to make a Wes Anderson film, but it doesn't actually cost that much more to market it. You have to spend about the same amount of money to release a movie worldwide, regardless of how much it costs to make it. And the profits are so outsized.

People will go see it multiple times. They'll buy the DVD. The cable companies will pay a lot of money to get the rights. The profits are disproportionately so much bigger, the studios realize. So they start increasingly putting up the tent poles, as we used to call it, of their slates. But then they still had some of these other, you know, smaller movies mixed in, right? It was a diverse slate. Then the big thing that happened is the DVD market collapsed, right? The reason why your Wes Anderson movies, you know, your children and men can make money was because

people bought a lot of DVDs. And we all remember, you know, you just sort of go into Target or Walmart, they'd have these Lost Theater DVDs priced And we all remember, you just go into Target or Walmart, they'd have these Lost Theater DVDs priced at $15. You had to go shopping anyway. You pick up a couple on the way out. And people told me, you talked to the studio executives, and they're like, it was almost difficult to lose money on a movie in the early to mid-2000s because everything made it back on DVD.

People were buying DVDs and not even opening them. 15% of the DVDs people bought, they never even opened the shrink wrap. Then you start getting Netflix, Redbox, iTunes by the late 2000s and DVD sales plummet. And suddenly it's really hard to make money on these small to mid-sized movies. But the big movies are doing as well,

frankly, even better because the global market's growing. China has come online and Chinese people are seeing movies. They love the big franchise films. They don't really care about Wes Anderson movies. So all these economic factors are now saying, make more and more of the tentpole movies and don't make these other movies because it's so hard to make a profit on them. I kind of want to save China towards the end and as we build towards the franchise, but something you had said on the DVD sales, which is just perfect because of all the times you think of like, oh, I'm in line.

Okay, Mission Impossible, whatever. I'll just throw it in the car. How could that money there not been enough of the streaming part of it with all the money that comes in from all these different has that not somehow supplemented or replaced that dvd money no it's not you really it's hard it's hard to explain this how profitable dvds were right i mean the cost of manufacturing and shipping a dvd was like a dollar or two right and then wal Target, they bought it at wholesale for like 15 bucks. I mean, that's more than $10 profit on average

per DVD the studios were making. And people behave based on convenience, honestly, for better and worse, right? You bought the DVDs because it's still a pain in the ass to rent it from Blockbuster, take it home, watch it, and then drive it back there. Like that was inconvenient for people. Redbox is a lot more convenient.

You go to the grocery store anyway, and they had this model of just $1 a day that made so much more sense to people the same thing with you know renting it via vod online or you know once it started to become possible streaming it via subscription and no the amount of money that netflix would pay for the rights to stream a movie does not make up for those huge profits they can make on dvds there was there was really nothing that could fully make up the amount of profits the studios were they could make on dvds there was there was really nothing that could fully make up the amount of profits the studios were able to make on dvds okay so the star part of this was also the early thing where you mentioned like castaway tom hanks

castaway okay auto everybody's going to start to see it um yeah and then that kind of changed a little bit and that's what led to bill and i which i want to share that will smith story again with you because you're the one that wrote it but how did how did it go where the the studio started to figure out like man there there used to be 10 marketable stars it didn't even matter hey who's in it which is always the thing like when people will say oh i don't like this from hollywood i don't like these movies and we go okay but how many times has somebody said you like hey i want to go see this movie or hey this movie's on and then you say automatically who's in it you know that people my family will do that i'll be like no this is a great movie there's nobody in it that you know

i don't want to watch it and yet that became something that was no longer automatically bankable so how did that happen right well that is where you got to give the credit i mean especially to marvel for better and worse right they were the innovators there is that people always know, people sort of want a shortcut to say, do I want to see this movie? Most people are not real cinephiles. They don't know a lot about a movie. They don't read a lot of reviews. Do I want to see it? Well, you know, I generally like the kind of stuff Tom Cruise does, or Julia Roberts does, or Tom Hanks does, whatever. So I'll go see, you know, I'll go see that Will Smith or Adam Sandler movie. I kind of know what I'm going to get. And if they go a little off course, I generally trust them.

It's the best shortcut there was because students are making all these diverse kinds of films. The one constant you could say is the star and it's an easy thing to know about it. But with Iron Man, Marvel had this insight to say no. The star is not really Robert Downey Jr.

because he was not a big deal at the time. The star is the brand name. They said, no, Iron Man The star is the brand name. They said, no, Iron Man, our brand, is a star. And then eventually the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And they always went with sort of actors and directors who were cheap, who were on the outs, either because their career had fallen or they had never become big in the first place.

And nobody, except maybe Marvel, but not even fully Marvel, predicted how well that would work. People prefer brands even more than stars because even Tom Cruise will sometimes do something different. Even Will Smith. Yeah, Will Smith does a lot of fun action movies, but then he'll go do his Seven Pounds or something. And that may not be what his fans generally like. But when you go see a Marvel movie, you know what you're going to get. You go see Fast and Furious, you know what you're going to get.

Every time, it is basically the same thing. And people like predictability, it turns out. They like to say, when I go see this, I know what you're going to get every time it is basically the same thing and people like predictability it turns out you know they like to say when i go see this i know what i'm going to get and brands became perfect at that so it works well for the audiences and of course the studios like it too because it's a lot easier to control what fast and furious is going to be and bring the talent in and out than it is to control what will smith is going to do because will smith will you know do what will smith wants to do because Will Smith will do what Will Smith wants to do. Okay, so let's back up then. Give us the origin of how the Marvel thing went from this isn't going to work to Marvel's going bankrupt

to they kind of are taking over and then there's this Spider-Man split with Sony and all these different things because as you point out accurately, you don't know if you give Marvel all the credit in the world and then as some would like to say, with their success, they're to blame for what we now have right yeah so you know like like all big success stories it's a lot of luck and then some smart within that luck right marvel got

you know in the in the mid 90s marvel was bankrupt you know this is one of the biggest debacles in in american business history and coming out of it they were desperate for cash an easy way they thought to make cash was to sell the movie rights to their characters. And Sony really wanted Spider-Man because they, through some other business dealings details in the book, they already had the home video rights, but they really didn't have the theatrical rights. They wanted to get them all together. And they went to Marvel and said, we want to get those.

Marvel said, well, why don't you take all our characters? We'll literally give you the rights to every single Marvel character the movie writes. $25 million, right? And the Sony executives were like, who the hell wants all these Marvel characters? That's useless. Who the hell wants to see-

But like Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Guardian, like all of those Captain America- It's higher Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yeah. Who would possibly want to see a Captain America movie, an Ant-Man movie, a Black Panther movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor? These are garbage are garbage nobody cares about them send it all back right it's like uh like jack and the beanstalk coming back with a magic bean right it's like

this is crap this is not we just want spider-man we'll just take spider-man they rejected everything else and uh i will say you know i heard that from one source and then i went back to some of the people who ran sony at the time and i said, do you remember this moment? And I will never forget the face of that executive who told me the name, just going like, oh my God, I can't. You heard about that? That's one of my worst memories. Yeah, it was one of the biggest mistakes in American business history. And because Marvel was left with those rights that nobody else wanted, then eventually, they saw how big Spider-Man was for Sony. Remember the first two Spider-Man movies, great movies, massive successes

for Sony. And Ike Perlmutter, who ran Marvel at the time, said, we're not making much money on this. Sony's getting all the credit. Everybody said, think Spider-Man belongs to Sony. I want to stop licensing this stuff, giving it away. We should be making money ourselves. We should be making these movies ourselves, keeping all the profits ourselves. We should be able to control when they come out so we can release toys at the same time and not let Fox or Sony control the release dates and everything. Because it was the mid-2000s, and there was this economic boom, it was easy to borrow money. So they borrowed a lot of money. But Ike Pomona was cheap, and he didn't want to hire big stars. Iron Man had originally been in development at New Line. They were going to cast Tom Cruise. And Ike Perlmutter was not going to pay Tom Cruise $20 million and also let him

have creative control the way Tom Cruise does. He was like, no, we're going to do it ourselves. We're going to hire a cheap filmmaker. Jon Favreau never done a big movie. And Robert Downey Jr. had all his personal issues. Nobody wanted him. We're going to make this movie on the cheap. And we're not going to hire some big name producer. We're going to do it ourselves. Everybody in Hollywood was skeptical. This is not the way you make big

tentpole movies. But it turned out that having a team who loves the characters, knows the comic books, Kevin Feige and all his colleagues, they read those comic books, they loved them. They made a pretty loyal adaptation that had action adventure

and the sense of humor from the comics. Fans really took to that. You know, there's a reason these comic book characters have survived so long. They really resonated. And then the real genius was just to have Sam Jackson,

you know, show up at the very end and be like, hey, there's all the Avengers are out there. And then, you know, the great insight Marvel had was that these different movies can be sequels to each other. And if you like Iron Man, you'll see Thor, you'll see Captain America. You're not just a fan of one, you're a fan of all of them. And it became this concept of the cinematic universe, where people who like one of the characters will go see them all because the storyline interweaves, which of course is something they borrowed from comic books. Nobody had ever done that before.

Nobody thought it was possible in Hollywood. It's just not the way you typically did things. And then they are the most successful movie company of the 21st century, without a doubt, financially. And if you just look at what audiences love creatively, they completely revolutionized. And everybody else, all these big established players like warner and sony and paramount they all had to try to play catch up and be hey how can we do a cinematic universe because nobody else was happy the success marvel was when you were going through the email hack stuff i think it was interesting to some of us on the outside but i had to imagine it was unbelievable for for you that are kind of on the front lines of covering these kind of stories what

were the biggest regrets and kind of some of the storylines as you were digging through it all and then following up with some of the people that were actually involved in the emails oh man there's so much um i think the the the struggles you know to make these these original movies how much energy they were putting into trying to get like steve jobs you know there's a whole chapter on that just how how could we make the steve jobs movie the amount of energy that the people running the studio were trying to put into it the different cast they went through and the different script and at the same time their bosses you know the people in charge of story incorporation were like why are we not where are franchise movies we want our franchise movies where are franchise

movies um that was kind of stunning to me you know know, I sort of thought they were, frankly, driven more by the numbers. But in fact, there's so much where they were trying to get around the numbers. They were trying to say, how can we make the numbers work so we can still make the kind of movies that we want to make? And they couldn't. You know, it's not because they don't care about making original movies. It's because they were, you know, interesting, diverse movies for adults.

They were trying, and they couldn't make it work. And you can see the numbers. There are these great financial spreadsheets that sort of show if we make a movie like Steve Jobs, it's probably only going to gross this much and then that means the profits will be this much. And they shoot the same sheet for Amazing Spider-Man 2,

whatever, the big franchise movies and there's no comparison. So actually seeing how hard they were banging their heads against the wall trying to make these non-franchise movies and seeing the actual financial projections for why they couldn't, I found that really eye-opening. All of a sudden, you're like, oh, this is why we get the movies that we get because it's so financially impossible to do anything else no matter how hard these people are trying. Yeah, you brought up a good point in the marketing thing and it's something

i didn't understand as well because there would be these indie more adult driven dramas and they'd say okay this costs 40 50 million to make throw in the marketing part of this like we can still probably make 20 to 30 million when it's all said and done and then it seems like it's about big bets because then the same studio it's about big bets because then the same studio goes, well, that's stupid because we can spend 150 million on this movie. And even though it costs way more to make, you mentioned the marketing part of it's the same, the profit margins are just totally different. And it makes it, it's like, hey, do you want to invest in a stock that's going to go up 10% or do you want to invest in a stock? Like you're still

going to make money on the first one, but why would you put your money into that? Is that the influence a lot like sports where it's analytics it's it's all of these people with unbelievable backgrounds the nbas and different people making hollywood decisions is that why we also have what we have you know i i have to say the work it's not that there were these like uh business geniuses coming in and showing new numbers it's basically it's kind of the case when like you know some great new nba player comes in and showing new numbers. It's basically, it's kind of the case when some great new NBA player comes in and plays like nobody else ever has before. And you're like, holy shit, I didn't know you could do that.

I didn't know you could have a team that focused primarily on shooting three-pointers. And when you do that, oh my god, it actually works better. I didn't know you could do it this way. It's like Marvel came in and just had a whole new game plan that nobody else thought was possible. And then it worked and everybody else had to whole new game plan that nobody else thought was possible.

And then it worked, and everybody else had to scramble to adopt that strategy. It was sitting there for anybody to do, but nobody really saw it. And then the irony story of it all is that they realized... The funny thing is, you think the more you bet, the greater the risk, but they started to realize, no, the more you spend on a movie, actually, the lower the risk on average. Iger comes out looking like the hero in this, the Disney CEO. I've always kind of wanted this, too, background-wise. If you have a different background, most people are going to have an origin in their own career that's going to be different in the end. But here's Iger, who, by all accounts, people that ran it, like, I technically, you know, I worked for Disney for 14 years being at ESPN, but it's not like, you know, I had a little Mickey

mouse on the check and I had passes to Disney that I never used. But, um, I think people liked Iger. You know, I, I do think that there was just a level of decency there where people were like, this guy's smart, but he's not so smart that he wants to tell you he's smarter than all of you. He treats people the right way, but he comes off looking at it. Cause I remember being at, at work and like, we would look because those of us,

whether it was stock or whether it was knowing that there could be impending lives, like when John Carter completely bombed as a big event movie for Disney, like there was a, there was a bill that was going to have to be paid later on. And ESPN ended up having, I'm not saying it's directly correlated because ESPN has some of its own struggles, but there would just bill that was going to have to be paid later on. And ESPN ended up having, I'm not saying it's directly correlated because ESPN has some of its own struggles,

but there would just be that concern. We would want movies to do well. When John Skipper would talk to us at events once every six months, once a year, he would tell us, hey, make sure you go out and take everybody to Star Wars, okay? People wanted you to be about the brand,

which is fine. They're the ones who were paying the checks. But for Iger to go, all right, $4 billion for this, and Hey, Lucas, we're taking all of this. And people were freaked out. Like people didn't really even know what a real number would be, but Iger maybe visionary is too strong of a word, but it's an incredible bet where he builds Disney's brand. He has probably the two best franchises in movies. And it was just as simple as going,

hey, what's the best? Okay, done and done. I'm writing checks for these two things. And it was a huge, huge amount of money. It totally was. It was, it was, it was, we'll buy these stuff. And also his great insight was,

and we'll stop making everything else, right? Everybody in Hollywood always thought, you gotta have a diverse slate. You gotta have a Miramax. You gotta make your indie movies. You gotta have a touchstone. You gotta make your original movies for adults. Iger didn't come from the movie business, didn't care about relationships in the movie business.

He just looked at the numbers of which ones had the greatest return on investment and said, these non-franchise movies don't make as much money on average. Why are we doing it? It's not our... He said to me, he likes lots of other different kinds of movies, but he's... It's not his job. It's not his job. Somebody else can make those movies and keep the creativity of the film business going. His job is to make a lot of money for his shareholders. And the movie business generally has not been that profitable of a business.

Nobody thought it could make more than about 10% profit margins on average. And he said, no, we should be making as much money as TV. And the way to do that very clearly was invest in our brands, right? And so at the time, their brand was Disney, the Disney branded films, right? There's, you know, there's Disney family films like Pirates of the Caribbean. So he's like, let's double down on that, double down on that. It took them a while to figure out that the best way to make those, I think, sadly, for creativity is just remake all the old animated movies.

But then once he saw, okay, brands and franchise movies are what make the biggest profits, he was like, okay, well, we need more of them. It can't just be Disney. Then we get Pixar. And then he said, what are the other biggest brands and franchises out there we can add? And whatever they cost, because Disney is so good at these. And when the movies come out, Disney can make more profits on them than anybody else because they got the theme parks, because they got the best consumer products business. It's worth it for him to write a $4 billion check. A studio like Sony that doesn't have theme parks, doesn't have a great consumer products business, even if they have $4 billion

sitting around, they can't make as much profit off of it because they don't have that machine the way Disney does. You mentioned television. You have to include this in the way the movie industry is impacted, but what's the best way to explain TV's impact on the creative part of the movie industry? Sure. So TV has basically taken a lot of the stuff that film did best. The TV can now do it, right? A lot of the reason it turns out why people went to the movies a lot and why to see dramas and thrillers, romantic comedies,

was because those weren't on television. A lot of people would rather stay home and go to the movies and spend $10, $15, $20 to find out if a movie is good. But TV used to just be the broadcast networks or the basic cable networks that relied on advertising. And when you're being driven by advertising, you make sort of lowest common denominator content because you just want to reach a really big audience

and you don't really care if they like it. You just care that they stay tuned in. You know, I always think of, remember all those crappy sitcoms that were on kind of in between Friends and Seinfeld, right? And people just didn't bother to change the channel, right? So those shows would stay on. You're not talking about Boston Common, are you because no obviously boston common was an underrated jam obviously i'm talking like baby wings um but uh once you start switching to subscriptions right

which was the hbo model then you know netflix and you know sort of the more premium cable networks like fx they started to be, no, advertising was not withdrawn, but they wanted to have a smaller loyal audience who would keep paying that big cable bill or pay for the premium network. That's what made sense. They cared about loyalty. Is it still worth it for me to pay 15 bucks a month

for my HBO or my Showtime? And then, so that business model changed. All of a sudden, it makes sense for TV to do risky, daring dramas, R-rated content, thrillers. And they start taking away the stuff that film used to do best. And once it's on TV, people would rather watch it on TV. Film can only do what was left for them to do. And TV and streaming has taken away more and more of the stuff that we used to think only film could do. That's the reason we used to go to movies so much in the 90s and 80s and so on.

Now, what's left? So the question became, what's left that movies can do that Netflix and Amazon and HBO, etc. can't do? And all that's really left is these big franchise event films. Let's go back a bit in the book, the piece that Bill and I talked about,

because Adam sandler starts to have a rough go of it after being allowed to do whatever he wanted because his movies just made that much money and then it was kind of all over the place will smith held the same line and it felt like will smith and his his group his he has a production company with i believe as you said in the book it's like one guy who's this guy and then they kind of got in a room and they started trying to figure out essentially their own franchise. And that was after earth. So correct anything I have wrong from the book, but it's just, sometimes I admire how delusional the biggest stars in the world can be. And maybe that's not fair for me to even say delusional, but they didn't just think that they

were making some sci-fi movie. They thought they were making something that was essentially going to impact the world. So I don't want to make a mess of telling the story because it's your story, but tell that with all the detail and maybe even some other stuff we don't know. All right? Sure. So this is really fun.

We talked about the stuff that I found in the hack that was so amazing. All the stuff about After Earth is actually not from the hack. You will not find it there. As I said, I talked to some sources who I knew, and a lot of people had left Sony, and you know ex-employees are often good sources and there was this one person i got to know who had left sony and when that person left they took uh just

like a usb stick of like all of their files everything they've been working on and this person was like as long as you don't mention my name and say where you got it you can have it and i just plugged it into my computer and looked through it. And it was mostly junk, right? Like random scripts they never made or different versions of the development notes for movies they didn't make. And then I found the After Earth file.

And I found all of these presentations that I talk about in the book, that the plan was After Earth was not just going to be a franchise movie. It was Will Smith's pitch to be, I can do my own Marvel Cinematic Universe. Just because I'm a star doesn't mean I become irrelevant. I can plug in to this new craze for franchises and I'll make a franchise and that'll be the big Will Smith comeback. I'll make the next Lord of the Rings. I'll make the next Harry Potter. I'll make the next Marvel Cinematic Universe starring me.

And you talk about delusional, talk about getting ahead of themselves, right? Marvel, to their credit, when they made Iron Man, they didn't have, they weren't thinking, and in 2018, somebody's going to buy us, have bought us $4 billion and we're going to have theme park rides. They started at the beginning. We're going one, a few movies at a time. And Will Smith and his production partner, James Lasseter, they got very ahead of themselves. And they created this 200 plus page Bible that was like all the backstory you could ever imagine

for the after earth universe, you know, so that the people making, of course, the 38 sequels and TV shows that would be coming out of it would know everything. And they had this pitch document, this deck that I saw, which sort of said, here's how it's going to work. You know, this movie is going to come out this year, and there'll be a sequel two years after that. And then we'll have the kids animated show and the TV show. And then we'll have the perfume

and the toys and the cologne and the underwear. And I'm not making this up, it's all in there. And then of course, the absolute best thing, the delusion, as you would say, just I would say the arrogance was, you know, look, Facebook's popular now, but nobody really knows if Facebook's going to last. So we should get ahead of that inevitable crash and create our own social network, the After Earth social network, where people will go on and have the profiles and share and it'll all be around the concept of After Earth because people are going to love this so fucking much, they will never get tired of talking about it, nonstop. We'll be able to make this. And it was all a brilliant plan, but the only thing they forgot is that first movie actually has to be good. And you read this, and it's hilarious, right? It's so ridiculous, especially because we now know how bad After Earth was. But when somebody becomes popular like Will Smith, it's not that he's a bad guy or a dumb guy. It's just that they become completely cloistered from reality and there's nobody around to say no anymore. There's nobody around to tell them that's not really a good idea because everything he's done has turned to gold, right's hard it's very hard to get out of that mindset um and

it's very hard for anybody else to be able to tell them differently and um that that's exactly what happened with will smith and it all ends up in this debacle of a movie called after earth it's which is it's and it's just it just captured i think it captures so perfectly the what went wrong with movie stars yeah and look i'm not against anybody going for it but the the facebook quote in there it was like and you never know with facebook in three or five years and you go like okay maybe but i don't know that people are going to wake up and be like did you check your after earth profile like no yeah like i hit you up on after earth be like oh yeah that's right yeah yeah sorry i'm sorry i'm watching

the animated series again i don't have enough time to look. Okay, two more things here. Towards the end of the book, the Chinese influence, we understand their economy, which was very anti-movies as far as bringing anything in. And then realizing, I think, after a couple of things, specifically Avatar, where you're like, wait, there's all this money there. And then it turns into Chinese investors going, just name a price, we'll buy the studio. And it gets to the point where you're like, wait, we're starting to see

people cast in storylines or just almost like product placement, but with Chinese people, just to kind of pander a little bit to the audience or that. So the investors feel better about the product. And as you were explaining some of these things that have happened in movies, I'm like, oh, wait, that's right. That's what happened there. So what does that mean? Because that's a newer development and certainly doesn't look like it's going to go in the

other direction. Yeah, it's only accelerated because this year, especially with the pandemic, you know, the China is now the biggest movie market in the world. There's going to be more box office in China this year than in the U.S. And China became the most important market outside the U.S., and especially after DVD sales failed. People were scrambling to make money in China to try to make up for it. But China is not just another market, of course.

It's a communist-run state where businesses have to align with the interests of the government. And they're not interested in free speech, right? They're not interested in anything that not only would be critical of the Chinese government, of course they hate that, but that really promotes values that they don't like, which sometimes are very obvious, like criticism of a government, let's say criticism of the military. But sometimes it's also just like they don't like stuff that's supernatural because they don't want to encourage religion, right?

So anything like that starts to get censored. It starts to get pre-censored. The studios are like, let's not even mess with that. Let's not even put it in there in the first place. So they're censoring before the Chinese government has a chance to do it. And of course, they want to start putting in stars. So you start seeing these Chinese actors appear in random small parts of your films because they'll help to market it in in china and you know there's

there's so many different examples of that you know we've all seen them in our franchises my favorite one though for sure which is detailed the book is the is the remake of red dawn um you know the original movie back in the 80s was of course was the soviet union uh invading the u.s the new idea was to have china invade the u.s but between the time that movie was made and then the time it was going to come out, China became this big movie market. And you can't release a movie that is so offensive of China that would show China as the enemy of the U.S. and then China losing, getting beaten by American teenagers. So they went back through the film and they digitally changed everything from China to

North Korea, every flag, every pin, et cetera. They just remade the movie so that it would be releasable and it wouldn't offend China, not only so that movie could get released, but so the company that made it, MGM, would not get in trouble repeatedly with the Chinese government going forward. So keeping the Chinese audiences and the Chinese government happy has become one of the biggest priorities for the movie business. Eventually, it became so extreme that for the smaller studios, they wanted Chinese investment because Chinese companies were either buying the American companies or they were doing co-financing deals and giving them a lot of money to co-finance their films. The last thing you want to do is piss those guys off. Last thought then, where is this all going?

Where do you see the industry? Last thought then, where is this all going? Where do you see the industry? It feels like it's heading towards even more of this, an accelerated version, less movies made. And certainly the pandemic plays a huge part in this too because of what theaters are going to have to look at. I saw a thing today where AMC was offering up 15 million shares. You're like, oh, really? Are you?

But give me your best sense because you understand this better than most of where all this is headed right i wouldn't say less movies made but it's definitely fewer movies released in theaters fewer movies made for theatrical release right that's the difference is the our definition of a movie of course always used to be it comes out first in a theater and then it eventually goes to dvd and tv-for-TV movies were this separate lesser-than category, right? It was crap. And now, made-for-TV movies could easily include Roma

or The Irishman, right? That's easily a made-for-TV movie. Or Hillbilly Elegy that's about to come out from Ron Howard. They go direct to streaming. so, those movies are going to get made like that but the only movies that are going to getting released in theaters for the most part are these big franchise films and this the pandemic is just accelerating that because obviously you know most you know theaters

aren't open in a lot of the country and so studios aren't releasing movies people are getting more and more used to watching things at home a lot of movies that were maybe going to get released in theaters are now going straight to home smaller Smaller movies, but even like the Pixar movie Soul is going. And Mulan, we saw. Trolls. So a lot of kinds of movies, people are like, oh, I can watch this at home and it's fine. And when the pandemic's over, are they going to go back to theaters to see those kind of films? Skeptical, right? I'm very skeptical. The only thing that's left that people are still going to say, I must go to a theater to see it. And the studios are going to say, I have to release it in the theater because it costs so much to make are your James Bond, your Wonder Woman, your Marvel movies. And that's mostly what's going to be left. will get released in the big cities for a few weeks before they go direct to streaming.

So if you're somebody who really prefers to see that movie in a theater and you live in or near a big city, you'll probably get to see it. But the business model of those movies is not going to be primarily about getting released in theaters. That's just going to be the equivalent of the vinyl record release for music, even though 99% of us are going to listen to it on Spotify. The vinyl album's there for people who want to see it. That's what movie theaters for anything except the big franchise films are going to become. And look, it's positive and negative. On the one hand, for those of us who value movie theaters, who value that communal experience of seeing a movie and everybody seeing it at about the same time, sort of big cultural event, I think that's really sad, right? But the flip side you cannot deny is that between Netflix and Amazon and Apple and Hulu and Disney Plus and HBO Max and Peacock,

more content is getting made than ever before. There's more shows and movies and limited series and whatever the hell you want to call it getting made. And so if you just care about people getting a chance to tell their stories and you as a consumer getting a chance to see lots of different stuff, there is definitely more of it now than there was ever before. So that's the positive of it. And that trend is also continuing for at least a few more years. The book is The Big Picture, The Fight for the Future of Movies and Ben Fritz. Thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate it.

It was a great read. It was a lot of fun and honestly, just feel more educated about the entire thing instead of going in like, how come this? How come this?

Be like, oh, all right, I don't want to take up more of your time, man. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you so much for having me. All right,

let's change it up here. Now we're going to talk with Trevor. This is really special because I've always wanted to get somebody on to help with some of these life advice questions. I always appreciate people being so nice to me about it, but sometimes you guys ask stuff that I'm just not built to handle. But Trevor Moad is someone I met, I think it's 2008, Trevor. We were at the IMG Academy, and it was this weird thing where they had a bunch of

basketball writers come down and go through the process of learning what it'd be like getting ready for the NBA draft so we had workouts we had a media coach we had all these different things and then you came on to talk about positive thinking and of course I was in the back and I was like whatever and Trevor said something I've never forgotten and i share it with other people is that when trevor was was first talking to uh his his then what was going to be his wife um and the family kind of gave you a hard time it's like what are you one of those positive thinking guys and you were like yeah you know and you were really cool about it and then they had said like does that really work and you said well negative thinking does yeah and it's something i've never forgotten because I would admit that I don't know how much of the stuff I've ever tried

to apply or think about, but that's something that's absolutely true. So I've always wanted to thank you for that. And because I just think it's so true. So how's it going, man? It's going great. Obviously not living out there in the beautiful world where you are anymore. I've moved up to Lake Arrowhead, kind of in the San Bernardino Mountains, just a town of about 5,000 people, Ryan, and just seemed like the safer place to be now. So like you, I can do a lot of the things I need to do by Zoom and go out and hike. And so doing the best I can to navigate it. And kind of like you said, positive thinking, really all the data is sort of anecdotal, but negative thinking from the Mayo Clinic to the Cleveland Clinic, you know, 83 to 100 percent.

It works negatively all the time and, you know, reduces your ability to make decisions by 40 percent, to be creative by 50%. So, uh, and, and same with negative environments. So I'm, I'm enjoying being up here and excited to join your show. And obviously I've listened to you a lot over the years and, uh, and so excited to, to kind of get on and help answer some questions. Yeah. So how did you get into this though? At what point do you go, this is what I'm going to do? Well, you know, I was raised, so my dad was a longtime high school basketball coach and school teacher. And in the mid seventies, when I was born, there was about six former state championship football, baseball, and basketball coaches in Washington state that got together and they had been successful teachers and coaches, but they had also had these

extracurricular courses. My dad's was pep talks, personal enrichment principles. He was a state championship. And then there was Lou Tice, who was Pete Carroll's mentor for many years, and a number of these guys. And they went into the business world. The average employee productivity in the late 70s was an average eight and a half hour workday, four hours of employee productivity on average. And if an employee had any type of emotional issue, it was 1.5 out of eight and a half hours a day. So a lot of businesses were saying, how can you help my employees, you know, get out of their own way? And these guys were, you know, masters in physical educations and had some psych, it wasn't a clinical job. And so I was raised my whole life. That's what my dad did.

Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Starbucks, Pepsi. He taught these courses and curriculum, kind of like a Tony Robbins, Ryan, but a little bit different, but it's all sort of the same family. And then when I went to college down in LA at Occidental and played a couple of years of pro soccer and was a high school teacher, uh, I just, you know, I got an internship at IMG Academy, uh, in Bradenton and in 2000 kind of started in the sports psychology department and, uh, sort of worked my way up. So how do you, once a Nick Saban hears about you and says, come talk to the team, and I know that was something you and I talked about too, because you'd been with Nick, and then Kirby wanted you to talk to both, and Nick was like, all right,

you can't do that, and then you went with Kirby, right? So I got to imagine this weekend was tough for you. Yeah, well, you know, all my time in Bradenton, Florida, for those that don't know the academy, and I know I met you through Mike More through Mike Moreau, it's like Hogwarts for athletes. Five, 600 acres, and it's basically 1,000 high school kids and a lot of pro athletes that come in and out. So for me, it was kind of the NFL to sort of learn the industry. And Tom Condon and Ken Kramer at that time were kind of the best super agents. And they really created this model called combine training. They would bring 10 to 15 guys down to Bradenton, Florida as part of their marketing pitch.

And they would get them specifically ready for the NFL combine in Indianapolis. Well, we also got a chance, Chad Bowling, who's with the Yankees and the Cowboys and myself, to do all the sports psychology work with these guys, get them ready for the Wonderlic, for the interviews, all those things. And after two, three years of doing that, and that was with like Kyle Turley and Cade McNown and Tim Couch and all those guys, you know, we built some relevance with them. And the Jacksonville Jaguars hired us to come in and start working with Fred Taylor and others. So it was more of like a program, like specific things for the coaches, specific things for the players, specific things for individual players, educationally. And then that went well with Fred.

And then, you know, a group, we had a group of probably eight to 12 guys we'd see every Wednesday. And then, you know, a group, we had a group of probably eight to 12 guys we'd see every Wednesday. Nick Saban in 2006, he did a search. He was looking for some additional bandwidth in the psychological area. And, you know, I got hired for 40 days to work with him, to work with the coaches and to work with the team and to work with individuals. I think a lot of that because I was in an environment like Bradenton that had relevance where you're teaching this all the time. And then I think secondly, you know, it's not a big field, Ron. Not a lot of people can relate to that population.

So, yeah, I went with Nick in 2006 and I went with him to Alabama, which was a great experience. You know, it was weird when we got there, we had a lot of new ideas and they would say, well, that's not how Bear Bryant did it. You really couldn't say anything, you know, but I got a chance to form that. And then I really wasn't under exclusivity. It was just kind of the best that you could do. I worked with Jimbo for many years at Florida State and I would rotate weekends, Thursday through Sunday, with Florida State and with Alabama kind of on both sidelines, which was crazy. And then with Kirby, it was really more of I was starting to move out of the sports world and move into the business world. And I just went with Kirby. We were the same age.

And I just went with Kirby. We were the same age. And at that point, I started to do a lot less sports and a lot more business like I'm doing with Russell Wilson and our company Limitless Minds, which is truthfully where the, Ryan, you know this population. There's no self-help industry in sports. Very few coaches are really innovating in this type of way. You have a standard that you have to be able to play to. And if you can't, they just get rid of you. And some people like Nick will have different programs focusing on sleep and psychological area and others. But for the most part, you're on your own to do that, where I think the business world is more actively seeking, how do we get better? And then we've been teaching this idea of neutral thinking, because just kind of like you and truthfully, like me, positive thinking sometimes causes so much anxiety. And the reason I think it hasn't ever really sunk for most people

is when something happens that you know did happen and it wasn't good, it makes you feel like you have to pretend it didn't happen. And I think for a lot of people, trying to be positive creates more anxiety. And so I think what we learned on my times at Alabama, Florida State, and Georgia is learning how to be less negative is a lot more powerful than trying to be more positive. Negativity is almost 70 times more powerful than positivity. And it just goes back to the way we're hardwired, Ryan. When we were born 10,000 years ago, if you didn't assume the worst, you're going to get eaten by a dinosaur. And our minds just never evolved. And my first book I wrote, It Takes What It Takes, that came out earlier this year, really goes back and explores why negativity just weaponizes you against you.

And how to minimize it, not in your thinking, but in your language. And then in your consumption, you know, three minutes of cable news before 9am increases your probability by 27% that you'll say you had a shitty day. Just three minutes. And that's not cable news' fault. They understand how we're wired. And that's not cable news' fault. They understand how we're wired. So they engineer their content to keep us in tune. And we're just not wired to receive positivity the way we're wired to receive negativity. Did you ever read Sapiens? I didn't. I didn't. something that it's of all of it which is great that stood out to me was that we're just not it's so brilliant and that you point out you start assuming the worst because of survival instincts yes but that the other part is that basically once there was 30 upright people in whatever group it

became an unmanageable group and it would break off and there was enough space and so few people that then there would be no further interaction. Like, okay, now you're part of this clan and this clan is after 30. And I think some of our problems have to do with the fact that we are still wired to probably not be able to go more than 30 deep. And we're trying to do it at times

with over 300 million people, at least in this country. You know, I agree. And one of the things you learn from being around, you know, Coach Saban and these others is just, and, and you learn, you know, how, how you and Scott got to the top of your field and how others is, is, you know, the minimization of negativity, the people you bring around you, the things that you watch, the people you talk to, the things that you say, all those things are in your control. You know, I'm always asked, Ryan, they're like, well, well, you know, what makes a Eli Manning or Cam Newton or or a Russell Wilson or a Bill Belichick. I say, you know, a lot of times the best performers, we think it's all these things that they do that make

them incredible. But in my opinion, it's what they're willing not to do. You know, what they won't eat, what they won't watch, who they won't hang out with. You know, a lot of times those are the things, things that we don't do that really can change our career. And I've learned that, you know, a lot in the last couple of years where I've had some unique challenges. And I think that just even this year, having the ability to unplug my stuff from cable, you know, and I work for a pro basketball team that gives us information every day. You got to be six feet apart. This is what we know about the masks.

These are all the information. So I could get information without bias, which was important for me because the whole thing scared me. So I minimized that negativity, which gave me a little more functionality to manage this. So anyway, I just think that if people learned how to be less negative,

kind of like we were talking about 12 years ago when I first met you, they actually would never need to be more positive. Yeah, it's a really good point. All right. I'm going to get to the emails because I don't want to take up your entire day because I could go all day on this. But can you give me and then the people listening to this an example of the actual message you would give to a team. Maybe it's a story from a specific night before a big game

where it's what you're actually doing in front of the athletes and sharing that part of it with us so that some of us get a better understanding of it. Yeah, what I might do is show, let's just take Malone Surviv and lone survivors, a movie based on operation Red Wing and the Navy SEAL mission. And, and we're talking. And they're, they're,

they basically go in the wrong way, right? Like they go up and they're, they're just, they're supposed to go back to town. Well, yeah, I actually, you know, I'll use that example. So, um, SEAL team six, I was with Alabama. This was 2012. So we were going for our third national championship, second in a row. And ABC or 60 Minutes had just done a piece on the bin Laden raid. And they had one of the guys from the mission. So I cut up about five minutes of the actual interview of that raid. And what we talked about was they had built a life-size compound of bin Laden in North Carolina in Fort Bragg and practiced this assault 150 times. And, you know, and the military has this thing called commander's intent.

And then they have the mission. And the mission is all the things that you've got to do to get the job done. But the intent means no matter what happens, if the mission falls apart, the intent never changes. So we kind of went through and told that story. changes. So we kind of went through and told that story. And I went, I would say probably 13, 14 minutes before Coach Saban started talking after, but going into LSU, because essentially what happened in the Bin Laden raid was the helicopter wrecked right before they even landed. So all the mission, the whole plan completely changed because now everybody in the compound knew they were there. And so we were in a situation where every time you play at LSU, something goes wrong.

And so how do you view it? Do you view it as a challenge or a crisis? And so I'll never forget, and Coach Saban talked about it in our postgame, but as things went south and we couldn't do anything in the fourth quarter, our players kept saying, you know, because essentially what happened is the helicopter crashed, but the intent was, let's get to the third floor and we're taking care of business. And I remember them saying that before our final drive where TJ Yeldon caught the ball on basically everything went wrong, final drive, everything went right, beat LSU. examples, stories, analogies like that in real world situations of where it doesn't matter if things go exactly the way you want, your intent doesn't change. That's just an example. And coach talked about it in our post game. We psychologically prepared by watching that mission, knowing that it's okay if it doesn't always go right. As long as your intent doesn't change and your intent is to win the game. So that might be an example, because I can't teach in theories. Most of the time I get in front of these guys, it's not a population interested in self-help. So it's got to be entertaining. It's got to make sense. It's got to be practical. It's got to help

them, particularly in like pro football, pro baseball, where the guys are in and out of the league before, you know, three years. Yeah. I remember that, uh, TJ Yeldon played pretty well. Cause it happened right in front of me. Yeah. So yeah. And then I was incredible. I know until I knew the game, I was thinking, wait, everything always goes right for Alabama at LSU. What are you talking about? Not that game. No, not that game. We kept turning it over. But that final drive, the idea of this idea that we teach neutral thinking is the past is real, but it's not predictive. And that's where I think positive thinking is so hard because it makes us feel like the past isn't real. Like, look, you go through a personal challenge, you've been furloughed, you're going through a tough time. You know, you're having an issue

with where you're living. You have a health challenge. That is real. But you know, like you can't, but it doesn't mean that the future is going to look exactly like that. If you change kind of what you're doing, then your future outcomes can change. And, you know, I always point to Russ in the NFC Championship with those four picks, you know, run around, just keep competing. It's still just a two touchdown game, you know, and they were down 16-0 and found a way back, even though it was arguably the worst game of his career with four picks halfway through the third quarter. And yet, you know, in overtime, he went

three for three and they won the game. And here this whole time, I trusted Russ as much as any quarterback because of his physical ability. And I was just, I was diminishing your contribution to it, Trevor. So I apologize. Let's be honest, Ryan, he was born that way, but it's, he, he certainly reinforced it. You don't need to be sick to get better. And that's why it's fun working with the population of high performers because they're under so much pressure. They know they need help in everything. You know, so it's actually harder to work with recreational people who don't have the pressure to perform that, you know, you or myself or the population we serve has to do a good job. I mean, ratings matter. All that stuff matters. So you better do a good job

and whatever you can do to help you. And if any person can help you, you'll engage them. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. All right, let's get to three emails here. So you can be as quick as you want, Trevor. I will try to stay out of your way. You are the expert. So here we go. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay, we'll leave the names out of this because you never know. Hey, Ryan, just started to listen to the pod about four months ago. Thank you. I actually wrote to Clay Travis a couple months back, got some advice from him, but he didn't help. We'll leave that out. But anyway, I want to ask you my situation. A 25-year-old in my second year of law school recently just got out of a four-year relationship in which last year we were engaged. And the only reason we didn't get married is because of COVID restrictions at the venue. She asked me for space three times in the last year. And I'd go and stay

with different buddies for a day or two. Then she'd quickly apologize. I then told her if she asked for space again, I was done and going to move in with my parents. Not a great option, but I can't work right now. Guess what? It happened again. And I've been at my parents now for two months. She's now saying this time is different because it's been so long that she can't live without me. I constantly tell her if she really cared about me, she would just leave me alone and let me feel better. But she contends that she is, quote, fighting for us and can't give up on us now. I'm I know I'm too nice and I can't stand to hurt her.

I don't really know how you come back from this or how to make this stop. It's a crappy situation. One of your thoughts. Yeah, you know, I think everything's relative, but obviously, you know, being in law school, you know, having the option to go home, you know, obviously circumstances are functional. I mean, he can survive. He's got a home that he can be at. He's got a place that he can sort of manage through at this sort of unique time. So I think broad perspective is, you know, he's got a roof over his head. He's got a career that he's moving towards, which I think is good. I think secondly, um, you know, what's the truth? Like, I like the idea of being neutral in the sense of take the judgment out. What's the truth?

The truth is more times than not that he's gone back to her. Um, eventually some, there's something between them that isn't making it stick completely. It's almost like you take a plug and you put it in, and it's almost in, and then it comes out. So I think because of the pandemic, because of how hard it is to meet people right now, the tendency might be to settle. I would probably, he sounds very clear, like he knows that she feels like she may or may not be fighting for them, but I don't think he's sold on the fact that this thing, the problems you're having in the relationship right now are only going to expand when you get married. So to me, it's a matter of having the discipline right now, not necessarily to move forward, but to move on. It can only happen, and Ryan, think about how many friends we have. It can only happen so many

times when somebody shows those colors and can't change. Um, and I just think you'd be putting too much pressure on her to expect her to be different. Um, and then I would just reset, focus on being home, focus on law school, uh, and, and maybe let the social element of your life go a little bit more right now, and then just focus a little bit more on your career, particularly at 25. Yeah, I, I totally agree. I mean, the writing's on the wall with this one. She keeps telling you move out. You can't be in a relationship

that's like a 10-day contract from the NBA, all right? You know, sign a long-term deal here or move on and play in Europe. And he's given her the ultimatum multiple times. Yeah, right. And she said she bailed. I like that. I like that you were just, you were nice,

but then you kind of got to the end and you were like, who are we kidding here okay two more uh let's see okay this one's tough a little bit here all right um as a graduation present this spring my younger brother was rewarded with the uh economy being in the shitter thanks to the pandemic and subsequently has been spending the rest of the year living at my parents place applying for jobs and no responses my brother lived at home during college to save money it seems to be getting on my parents nerves my mom complaining about dealing with him almost every time i talk to her as an older brother i try my hardest not to be a parent just be a friend and i know he has to deal with being constantly

questioned nagged about his life plans by my parents he has mentioned that he's thought about attending grad school to get his master's in data science but i'm not sure if he's serious about that or if it's just to get my mom off of his back. Here's where my question comes in. I work for a university a couple of states away, so I could help him get into a program at a discounted rate and provide an option for him to live at my place, to give him a chance to get a reset, maybe find some direction. However, I don't want to seem like a parent who forces this option on him, so I don't know if I should offer to help or if it would be better for me to stay silent let him figure it out himself

first of all it's a good brother you know amazing right that's it that you know that's an amazing brother for even considering that right i don't know that my brother would have considered that for me but i i think he knows, I think he's literally wanting, the simple fact of the matter is the younger brother's been at home too much, living there through college. And then now I'm sure the parents are fantastic, but probably there's an expiration date

on that relationship, at least needing some breathing room. I think, look, there's nothing more powerful than having options. I think for sure you give him the option. He ultimately can make it decide to figure it out on himself, by himself. But the more options he has, the more opportunities he has to figure out what he wants to do. Right. So I think if you can help graduate school, like applying to it right now would be scary. I don't know, you know, knowing that you could get into one, you had a place to stay

where you felt safe, uh, just a few States away. You're still with family. I think, I think for sure you got to give him that option. You'll feel better as a brother that, that you actually did it. Um, and then I think for him, it'll give him that option. And if he chooses not to, you're not nagging him. You make the case, make a good case why you think it'd be a good option. If he doesn't take it,

then you respect that you've done what you could do. Don't you think? Yeah, I don't know what the relationship, obviously, is just emails. But my guess would be, it feels like the guy writing the email doesn't know how to approach

it. And I think whenever anybody does something serious, but in a non-aggressive way, where you say to your brother, be like, hey, we need tomorrow. I want to talk to you at any point. Give me a time where you and I can get on the phone for 20 minutes. Because then it's like, oh, OK. He's not just texting me out of the blue. He's not just calling me out of the blue.

And he says, look, here's the option. Do you want to take it? And I'm serious about this. And it's an unbelievable offer. I don't know why the guy would want to stay home, but again, we're all different. I would, I've said throughout, as soon as I get out of the house, I would rather be homeless than live at home at one point. I just had to get away from my parents. And so I, you know, guys, some guys like that. Some guys like staying home the whole time. But I would think if you just offered it up in a very serious way, that's like sort of out of the normal routine of you and your brother.

Maybe it registers with him a little bit more than just a casual conversation. Like, hey, you could always come out here or whatever. He's like, no, no, no. Here's the deal. Do you want out of our parents' house? They want you out. Here is an option. It is a great one. Give it a shot. Yes or no. And if he says no, then stop worrying about it. There's nothing you can do.

Couldn't agree more. And he may think you're Indian giving from an option perspective and not know that you're serious. So I think the fact that you laid out, just like you said, much better for them. Okay. One more. This one, this is, this one I think is, is right up your alley because it's a little bit more complex. Okay. Hey, my name's, I think that's, he's giving me the wrong name. So whatever. We'll just say Steve, 23 year old male currently living in DC. Lately, I found a lack of spark in my life and I'd love to blame the pandemic. I know it's only an additional factor. I have a comfy, well-paying job, my first job out of college, but find my day-to-day dull and unfulfilling. I don't exactly yearn for college days because truthfully, I despise college. I got through my four years of my alma mater without making any real significant relationship, either friend or romantic, and stressed out of my mind

with academics, dipping my toes into random hobbies, but never latching on anything, I suppose, paid off in terms of a job. And I really do actually like my job and feel the work. I feel good about that because almost 90% of these emails are not that, but not making any real effort socially has had its consequences in ways that I don't think a lot of others have had to face. I lack hobbies or any unique characteristic with a real sense of aplomb. Terrific education, by the way. And I live, and it's just a well-written email. I live in a kind of a vortex of cynical, negative energy. Nothing socially has ever felt like it worked out.

So why would it now? I'm incredibly anxious in group situations. And I know that anxiety probably also shows up when I go on dates. I find that women place me on the, quote, kids table, never taking me seriously as a potential partner. And guys mostly just find me forgettable. It was hard enough to make connections at a giant university I attended and now seems nearly impossible as a working adult. My question for you boils down to this.

How do you want to want again? How can you escape a catch 22 of social isolation to finally connect with others, both socially and romantically? Like I see so many others doing. People point out the flaws of my cynicism, but I don't hear enough about what it takes to escape it once and for all. I'm ready to be roasted. Don't hold back. Thank you. Wow. Yeah. When I saw that earlier, that's an intense one. You know, he clearly, Steve, right? Yeah. Clearly sort of can catalog the reasons why he has the problems he has and sort of brushes over, yeah, I did well in my four years and got a good job, which is a really big deal

to do well academically and get a good job and only be 23. academically, and get a good job, and only be 23. So to me, this is a great example of somebody who has flooded himself with negativity. And I really believe that you're defined, like your past is real. So his cynicism, whatever he's done to get at the kids table, all those things, there must be some specific things he's doing that, that create that. But if he stopped doing those things I think things could change. So, so this is what I would say, your behavior precedes your success or your failure. So take the emotion, take the right or wrong,

identify what you, what you know you do that may be a turnoff to certain friends or certain women and literally just stop doing it. Right. Don't judge it. Just stop. So it's not about feelings, it's about behavior. I think secondly, the negativity. Your verbalization, when you say something, it's 10 times more powerful than when you think it. And if it's negative, it's a multiple of four to seven. So literally by like my second year of Alabama, our goal was just don't say stupid shit out loud.

Like just stop saying stupid shit. Stop. We know it's 105 degrees. We know it's the third practice. We know like, but there's no science that says venting is good for you. As you say it 70 times, 70, you know, you're, you're impacting yourself. And then you're also impacting other people like a commercial, like a TV commercial. So stop externalizing your negativity because all it's doing is reinforcing to you who you don't want to be. And then I think, you know, then I think secondly, you know, the last part is, you know, study the things that are going to allow you to develop good relationships. Is it listening?

How do I listen better? Is it engagement? You know? How do I listen better? Is it engagement? You know, how do I engage better? Is it being, you know, more vocal? So what are the things you cannot do that will help you? Okay. And then how do you minimize the negativity that you're externalizing and bringing in by things you're watching or social media that you're going to, then I think what are the things that you can do that based upon the science of relationships, uh, create that engagement. You're just because this is how it's gone for you the last four or five years, doesn't mean it's how it will go the next four or five years, unless you don't change, you know? And I think that that's And I think that that's the big piece.

And when I got divorced, Steve, there was no infidelity. There was none of those things. It was literally traveling 250 days a year, just disconnection. And I didn't engage well enough and we're still very good friends. I actually saw her last week,

but I had to catalog that myself and almost take 18 months. And a lot of my friends from the military community did a really good job. What didn't I do? What should I have done? Now I know it. And some things I knew at the time, I just chose not to do that. And I think that's where you know are you willing to make changes and i think that that's kind of the key uh to be better going forward let go what you've been and focus on where you're going yeah it sounds like he needs almost like a costanza thing where as stupid as it sounds where you go next time you go on a date stop thinking about all of the things that you know are going to go wrong and and do opposite opposite stuff. Yeah. Tell your, tell yourself you're the fucking man when you walk out the door, even though you don't believe it. Like this guy needs to stop thinking so much. He's a real

reacher. He's already, he's got no shot before he's opened the door. Correct. He's overthinking this thing so much. Right. And, and, and, and, uh, it's crazy how, you know, just, all right, my, I think I should, you know, just look at the things that other people do to make it work, you know, and it's tough. Like, um, you know, trust me, I get it, you know, um, but one step at a time. It's at Trevor Moa. That's M O A W A D. He's the co-founder of Russell Wilson, Limitless Minds.

The books are terrific. And he's, look, I'm telling you, you made a real impact on me. Not that I'm always the most positive guy, but you really, when you said I've never forgotten it and I've shared it with a lot of people over the years and it's been awesome to reconnect and I'm so happy for your success or whatever you need, man. Ryan, my pleasure. Safe travels again to you. I know coming up and thank you again for the opportunity and And thank you for taking time. You know, whether it's one person, three people, 10 people, I think a lot of the things that we even talked about today are far beyond one to 10 people and their topics that are really relevant for everybody with what we're going through, certainly in October 2020. for everybody with what we're going through, certainly in October,

2020. Okay. That was a different, we're going to do some football, some college ball again as well on Friday. So please rate review and subscribe to the Ryan Russell podcast on Spotify. Thank you. you