This Week in Startups - Ask Jason! + Streaming news with Lon Harris | E1579

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Jason opens the show by answering listener questions for 20+ minutes! (1:19) Then, Lon Harris joins to break down Netflix's new mega-hit, the death of network TV, and more! (30:22) (0:00) Jason tees up today's topics! (1:19) How founders building hardware and deep tech products can more efficiently raise capital (3:58) Settling Co-Founder disputes (8:28) Jason's thoughts on Seattle as a place to live and as a startup hub (9:58) Is now the right time to jump to FAANG with a high-paying role? (13:06) Athletic Greens - Get 1 year of Vitamin D free and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase at athleticgreens.com/twist (14:20) Benefits of taking VC for a founder that's already successfully bootstrapping (19:40) How There Will Be Blood relates to entrepreneurship (23:35) Is there an age cutoff for investing in founders? (28:56) Revelo - Get 20% off the first 3 months by mentioning TWIST at https://revelo.io/twist (30:22) Lon Harris joins the show to discuss the biggest stories in streaming (34:17) Netflix has a new hit show about Jeffrey Dahmer (38:48) Babbel - Save up to 55% off your language learning subscription at https://babbel.com/twist  (39:59) Understanding Netflix's numbers with the Dahmer show, and the financials around the show's creator Ryan Murphy (47:30) Network TV is dying, Comedy Central's big mistake, and more general streaming talk FOLLOW Lon: https://twitter.com/lons FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Okay, everybody, it's Thursday. First up, I'm going to answer some amazing Ask Jason questions, including why a bootchrap company might or might not take Venture Capital. It's a great question. Why would you take Venture Capital if you don't need it? I also answer the question about there will be blood, the famous film and why so many entrepreneurs seem to love this film. Then I will have Lon Harrison. He's back and talk about all things streaming. It's going to be an amazing show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Reclaim your health and arm your immune system. them with convenient daily nutrition. Go to athletic greens.com slash twist to get a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Revello. Looking to affordably scale your product development with global tech talent in U.S. time zones, hire vetted remote developers in Latin America with Revello.

Get 20% off for the first three months at Ravelo.com slash twist. and Babel. Start your new language learning journey today with Babel. Save up to 55% off your subscription when you go to babble.com slash twist. That's B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L dot com slash twist. Okay, here's an interesting question. What do you think of founders that have great ideas, but those ideas require a lot of money up from before it can become profitable.

Many from Series A won't be enough. Okay. So deep tech comes to mind. You want to build a battery company. You want to build a flying car. This kind of stuff, if you're going to go for something where it requires $25 million in R&D, right? It's kind of a bridge too far. And you have to do one of two things.

One, you have to break the company down into its component parts and maybe build something that takes a little less money. And this is very hard to do. In your mind, you're saying, well, I'm going to build an electric. you know, like the company boom that was, you know, making Sonic Jets. That comes to mind, right? Building an airplane, it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars. And so I think they started with like building a little prototype unit that was smaller and maybe that was going to cost $25 million or something. But those things are really hard. You have to have a lot of credibility. So how do you build credibility? So you either go the credibility or you narrow the focus.

One way to narrow the focus is if you wanted to build a robot, let's say, to do deliveries, right? Well, you could build that little robot that looks like R2D2 that you see, delivering burritos in Berkeley and other places. So there were companies that were going to build hardware like that. And so they did what they said, you know what, let's just hack it together and get an experiment going and show that this could work. So how did they hack it together? Well, they put phones in them.

They had cameras. They had LTE and a person was driving and they were walking behind it. So if you've never seen this, people simulated a robot delivering a burrito by literally like they were driving, like what they call those RC cars, like they were driving a remote control car. They were walking behind it with like a little RC controller. And somebody would order a burrito and they would be five feet behind it with a camera on them and a camera on the thing. And they would simulate walking it to somebody's house.

Okay, great. Now investors go, okay, you did that for a million dollars. You ran a test for six months. People got their burritos. They did come out. They did take the burrito from the thing. You were standing 10 feet behind it. So you didn't have to worry about any regulation.

You were just running an RC car down the street. What a brilliant hack to do what's called a proof of concept. So you have to think, can I do a proof of concepts that builds my credibility? Or are you, if, you know, if you, if you. You were like some legendary Burson Rodney Brooks coming out of MIT. You've done robotics for a long time. You know rich people. You might get a Jeff Bezos to give you the money to do it.

Or a Kitty Hawk, right, which just shut down, I understand. They had, you know, Larry Page and Sebastian had worked with Larry Page before. So a lot of credibility. So either you need a ton of credibility and just really deep pockets that'll take the flyer on you for an important idea. Or you can do a proof of concept. And you've got to be very clever about that. It's a great question. What's your advice for co-founder conflict?

Great question, Philip. Where the business is doing well, but the general relationship between the founders is breaking down as things get busier. Okay. So there's always going to be founder conflict, just like there's always going to be conflicts between siblings, friends, partners, married couples, whatever. This is just the nature of life. People don't see eye to eye.

Now, when there's a business, here's the good news. It's just one business. There can be many businesses in the world. So if you have three co-founders, let's say. And one of the co-founders, disagrees with the other two, well, you got a very easy vote. Two out of three people want to do X. The third person wants to do Y.

Okay, now you have to do a negotiate settlement here. That person can keep their equity. That person can get voted out. You want to have a very clean exit where possible. And sometimes that means the person keeps half their shares, puts the other ones back. Maybe the person has the ability to sell those shares and get some money from them. And you're bored, your attorneys and common sense and a third party helping you. Typically, an attorney or a board member and investors.

can help you navigate this. I sometimes get pulled into this. And I'll just say, okay, listen, the three of you own 20% each. You're two years into this, 20%, 20%, you're leaving. Okay, so you've earned half of your 20%. You got 10 points of the 20. What do we do about that other 10%? You really want to stay and you want to get that right.

Okay, we'll make you a special advisor and you can earn 2% of it. So you're at 12 out of 20. And if not, you're going to get fired anyway. And you're not going to get that 2%. So we'll give you that 2%. We'll make you feel good. You get listed as a co-founder on the website for all time. And maybe the VC says, oh, yeah, you know, you have another idea.

I'll see you invest in your other idea. I'll give you 500K. So there you go. You know, there's a lot of different negotiated settlements that occur. And if you look at Snapchat, that wound up in a lawsuit. Who knows the truth there? If you look at YouTube, there was a third partner he wanted to leave. He got, you know, a portion of his equity, but not all of it.

And then sometimes people get bought out. So, okay, the company's worth 10 million. You own, in this case, 10% of it. You got a million dollars in shares. Okay. We will give you $500,000 today. And we will give you $500,000. in the next year when we raise our next round,

or we will give you interest on that if we can't. But anyway, of the next funding round, if the funding round is, you'll get 25% of the next funding round up until $500,000. So if we only raise a million, you get $250, then we'll give you in the next one. So you can come up with something that doesn't kill the company. And there's a hard discussion, right?

It's hard to not be wanted. There's also coaching, I would advise looking for a coach. A lot of times people bring their childhood, the trauma, how they felt. I remember one time somebody just felt as a co-founder and they confided in me you know,

I just wasn't liked. I felt like I was left out as a kid and I'm being left out again, you know, and it was really sad. I got very choked up about it if I'm being honest. And I said to the person,

listen, you know, of all the people who left you out as a kid, you do realize you're the most successful and worth over $50 million right now. And they look at you

and they're just absolutely in awe, and perplexed at how unbelievably wealthy and successful you are, and you can go do whatever you want now. Think about all the things you can do for your family and your friends and for society with a $50 million bag. A little bit had this conversation with somebody. It's like, you're, and at the time, I was like, you're worth a lot more money than me, kid.

Like, take the bag, go buy your mom and dad a house, go buy a ski house, go buy a, you know, jet card. Have fun. Let's go. And, yeah, so, you know, it's not easy stuff. But the same is true for people who get divorced or, you know, simple. siblings who have rivalries and, you know, they lose the ability to be friends. Something really that happened. You got to go to therapy or have a third party or a coach in those situations. You know, therapy probably with family therapy or siblings going to therapy individually and then together.

Luckily, I've never had this. My two brothers and I are super tight. We'd jump on a grenade for each other or buy each other. Ronde-lates any time. Your mileage may vary, but try and work it out. Try to make good communicators. Division of labor can sometimes help. You know, hey, you're a responsible for design. sales, I'm responsible for operations and fundraising. Sometimes clear division of labor can also help and then holding each other accountable for hitting the notes. And you have to be rooting for each other. That's the other thing.

I see this in marriages, friendships, business partnerships. People stop rooting for each other. If you stop rooting for each other and then you tip over into not rooting for each other, you got to get out of that relationship. You've got to reboot the relationship and do some relationship maintenance. So do the relationship maintenance and, you know, be rooting for each other again. It's critically important. Great question.

What does Jason think of Seattle? Has he spent much time there versus other than... It's cold and it's damp. Cold and it's damp. I mean, no basketball team, no Buono. I have considered Seattle. I like it, but I really like warm places, I think. And increasingly, I want to live in hot places

and then ski in the winters. So, I don't know, maybe I'm super privileged. But I will tell you, like last night, I was looking at houses in terms. in Tokyo. Man, I would really love to live in Tokyo for a year. I also love Australia. I could see myself living in Australia for a year or two.

I would like to live in another country at some point, you know? I got a, you know, I got three daughters, so I have to, there's a lot of factors that have to take into account. But when I'm an empty nestar, I'm sure my wife and I will try that, like, live in Paris for a year, live in Tokyo for a year. I'd really like to try some other places. Like, Singapore is fascinating to me. I think there's, like, places that are really unique in the world.

I've really enjoyed, like, living part-time in Lake Tahoe during the winter and summer. And it's really changed my, like, state of mind and really opened up the aperture. So as somebody who spent 30 years in New York and probably didn't leave for more than five or 10 days at a time, max, I kind of got addicted to New York. But there's a lot of, there's a big world out there. Seattle's a big world. It's fine. And a lot of smart people out there. Great place to start a company.

I will say that. Because you have all these incredibly successful Microsoft and Amazon people just hanging out. And a lot of them have money and can be angel investors. So you can really start a great company. there. And I think it's a pretty great lifestyle, if I'm being honest. All right, Adam asks me, I have been working as a web app security consultant. Oh, nice.

For 2.5 years, because I wanted to get a skill set that was recession proof, is now a bad time to jump to a fang. When you say fang, people, of course, know that's like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, you know, these kind of companies. Alphabet, I think,

they're now called Google. So, now the time to go to one of those big companies. Maybe, if you can get a job there, they're always going to be hiring security people. So the idea that like the security people wouldn't be hired because of the freezes, probably not true. And they're probably going to reset all the RSUs. Like the stock options are going to be cheaper, right?

So you probably get in when the stocks are cheap. So we're at the bottom of cycle. I do think if you are thinking of a career change and you're really good at what you do and you're in the app space, man, startups and apps are like just a golden ticket. So either start your own company or co-founded a company with a bunch of other folks. Go to TechStars, Y, Combinator, launch accelerator, maybe come to Founder. out university, which I'm teaching starting November 14th, founder dot university. But make apps. I would, you know, work with somebody and just make apps. If you can do the security part,

you can learn the other parts. Uh, don't go for max money. Go for max fun and max impact and max upside. If you are a developer, I think going for max fun, uh, max creativity, max challenge, right? And max upside because you're, you're always going to get the hundred 50, you know, base salary. So what more do you need to live? So get your hundred 50 and then work on something that that has the ability to go to 150 million valuation. I mean, why not? Why not have that optionality? If you go work for one of the fangs, I mean, yeah, do you care about your dry cleaning

or free food? Trust me, those things wear off real quick. You know, once you're paying for your dry cleaning is like, who cares? You know, and getting free food, who cares? Like, what are you going to be, gavone? You're going to go in there and you're just like have two lunches and stay an extra hour to get an extra dinner. Like, who cares?

You're an adult. You don't need free food. I just have a little salad. You have an omelet in the morning. I'm making myself a nice French omelet with a little cremline. with a little creme fresh on, some chives. It cost me like two bucks with, you know, organic eggs and great crem fresh galleons. Food's not expensive.

It's a gimmick, this free food thing. So, like, the fangs. You'll go there and, as my friend Elon called it, it's a bit of a honey trap. Great developers go in. They don't do their best work. And five, ten years of their great years. I'm saying this, Elon didn't, but he called it a honey trap. Careful you don't get stuck at one of those.

As you saw, like, in the TV show Silicon Valley. It is a bit of a honey trap. Great developers come in. do they actually do great work or do they just kind of rest invest? Talk to people who work on those places. I think most of them, four out of five, will tell you, yeah, if you want to rest invest, you want to work two hours a day, three hours a day, great. I saw somebody on Twitter, a developer was applying for a job at a startup.

And they said, listen, my job at one of these great, big, you know, fang companies only takes five hours a week. Can I keep that job and take the job at a startup? You're like, no, that's unethical and possibly illegal and you're breaking your agreements with them. and that's just immoral. And he's like, yeah, but they pay me. I did it done in five hours.

They don't seem to mind. Like, really? Maybe ask them if they mind. I'm working five hours a week. They might want to recapture the other 35 hours a week they're paying for. All right, great question. You know, I've been on a health kick recently, and I don't know, one of my secret ingredients, of course, it's athletic greens

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and you've got a bootstrap company. I'm going to make up a scenario. You've got $100,000 in profits on $50,000 a month in revenue. So you're making $600,000 a year, you're profit $100,000. A VC might come in and say, hey, can you triple it year over year for three years? What would that take? And you say, well, we need two more sales executives and we'd probably have to increase our product velocity. We're going to need another two developers and say, okay, two plus two, four, four, four people paid a hundred, fifty year total comp, you know, 75 base for the salesperson, 75 commissions,

two developers, 150K. Oh, you're going to get them offshore, 100K, whatever. You need 500 extra K a year. I'll give you $1.5 million. You can add those four people over the next three years paid for. I'm paying for the whole thing. Plus you got an extra 100,000 years

on marketing experiments to run. And you're like, okay, yeah, I can definitely triple. I can get from 600 to 1.8, and I can go from 1.8, I think, to, you know, five or six, and I can keep the margin at 15, 20%, or I can just reinvest that money. And so that would be the reason to take their money. Do you think you could accelerate the growth and do you want to?

And if you don't want to, and you don't want that expertise, then don't take the money. You want 100% of your business? that 1.5, you might have to sell 20% of the business to get that 1.5 million, you know, or 15% of the business. So you have, then you're saying, okay, do I want this jet fuel? Do I want this person who knows how to scale businesses on my board? Or am I going to find this annoying? And if I go down that route, well, it doesn't end. So you're, it's not like you can be like, I'm going to take that

1.5. I'm going to triple the business. And then I'm going to say, you know what? Now I'm going to go into slow growth mode. I'm going to triple, get to 2 million. And then I'll lay off a couple of people and I'll have 500,000 in profits, 750,000 of profits, and I'll distribute, let's say you got to a million profits, I'll distribute 150K to that VC, and I'll take the other 850K for myself, give a bonus to my team, and call it a day. Once you get on the VC train, people are going to expect you to keep going, which means then you have to do a series A after you, if that was the seed round, you have to do a series A. So once you get on that fast track, kind of hard to get off the fast track. You'd have to buy out the VC, you'd have to piss them off, be contentious,

especially if things were going well. And we've actually had this happen. I had one founder, you know, God bless them. It's just like the business got to a couple of million dollars. And they were like, we'll buy your shares back. And I'm like, but this is grown. And, you know, like it just puts us in a weird position because now we've got you down in our books, in our audit as like one of our breakout companies and you just kind of want to grow it 10, 20% a year. What are we doing here? And it's like, well, it's making a profit. I can sweep money off the table. I don't want to go fast. I don't want to risk it. So that does happen. And so I just told them, like, we'll just sit on in our investment. I have a feeling even if you grow 20% a year,

this will be a profitable investment for us. So we'll be patient. And so I like to be patient capital in that situation. Other VCs might not take that approach. They might demand you pay them back and pay you back at a valuation that you may not have the cash to do. So you have to be careful if you, I don't want to say it's like, you know, taking money from the mafia kind of situation where, you know, they want you to pay them back like 10% a month or 5% a week. You know, that's like the Vig if you were a gambler. You might be at, to pay, you know, you're down $10,000. I may tell you, you know, to keep that $10,000 on the books, I want $500 a week, and you still owe the 10K, and that's growing by 5%. So it's going to keep going

up, and the juice is going to be 5% a week, the vig, vigorous, if you've heard those terms. So it's not quite as sharky as that, and you're still in control of your company, but just creates an awkward position. You know, you said you want to go fast, and now you want to go slow. So just if you're going to go fast, you go fast. You made that commitment. That's basically for the life of the company. To unwind it can be hard. because then if it does go well, the VC might say, can I have, you tripled the business and you 10x the profitability.

Okay, I want 10 times my money back. I put it 1.5, I want 15. You're like, I don't have 15. I have a million coming off the business every year. I'd have to give you a million a year for 15 years. And they're like, no, I want 15 million right now. You know, that's the awkwardness that can happen. So be thoughtful about it.

And there are other ways for you to make money. And there are other ways for you to raise money. You could, if you had a profitable business, go to one of the factoring companies and sell your receivables and, you know, for a 15% interest rate, like a credit card interest rate, they might give you a $250,000 loan or $100,000 loan every, you know, 60 days for you to kind of build and get a little bit of your money in advance. So just keep in mind that this is expensive capital and be thoughtful about it. There's nothing wrong with wanting to own your whole business.

Launch and this being served up, I own 100% of it. I can raise venture capital for it tomorrow, but I want to be in control of my destiny. I don't want to have to go to some board meeting where somebody's saying, hey, you didn't grow this fast, grow faster. I don't want to do unnatural acts. I just want to make great investments in companies and be thoughtful about how I build this investment firm and things like the syndicate. Does it mean at some point I would spin off the syndicate and make it its own platform

like Angelist I could have thought about it. People have discussed it with me. But I kind of like the way it's going right now. I like owning it. I like not having to have any interference and not have to do with investors. So be thoughtful. Friedberg did say that he loved There Will Be Blood on the show. So it's a great film. The performances in it are extraordinary. And it shows a period of time in America

where anybody could just go west and make their way in the world. It's a pretty extraordinary story of resiliency and man's desire to be successful, and I'm using the term men, specifically here as a gender or men of that ilk, to be successful in a way that is unhealthy. I think that demon that you see in the lead character, his need to win is so acute, it is so intense that he's miserable. And he makes everybody around him miserable and he suffers. And so this is why it's very important as an individual for you to think about your own success and exactly how much pain and suffering you want to go through. Spoiler alert. Opening scene is the guy breaks his leg and, you know, but finds a mine and finds like a big find,

but like drags himself with a broken leg to cash in on it. And so it's a incredible film, just aesthetically, performance, script, everything, dialogue, storytelling, directorial, you know, prowess. Everything is just extraordinary about the film. But I think that's why it appeals to folks, because exploring that darker side, I think for men specifically

and watching like a man ruin his life to hit like certain notes or just lead a horrible, brutal life and have no joy. You do see that sometimes in business where people are not actually enjoying themselves. What's the point? You know, we live in a very advanced society now. There's plenty of ways to make money. You're not going to die of starvation in America, at least. There's plenty of food.

There's plenty of jobs available here. We still have 10 million jobs available even in this trow of the recession and stock market correction. so nobody in America is not going to have a job or food on their table. So that kind of like Maslow's hierarchy baseline is there. In fact, you could go work at Amazon and get 20, 25 bucks an hour and health benefits. Starbucks is an incredible deal. Uber DoorDash, people are making 25, 35, 45, 45 bucks an hour. I mean, all these opportunities are there.

So one has to wonder, like, do you need to? in your life be so cutthroat that you ruin your own life. You make yourself miserable for checking off some success or some numbers. I have seen people who get very successful never reach happiness or any kind of enlightenment. And so that's where purpose comes in. And I think probably why people like to see those stories is they like to think that they have that energy, right? They want to have that energy that I'll win it all costs. I'll drink your milkshake. I'm so combative. I'm so tough. that truth is you don't need to be.

You could actually have a lot of fun and joy and be successful. That's one of the things I've learned. You know, like I tried to be successful for a long time. Probably put myself under too much pressure, trying to be successful, probably too intense, probably work too hard. And now I look at it and I'm like, you know what? I want to ski every day. I want to, I did 40 days of skiing last year.

This year I want to see if I can have 41. I want to see if I can ski not only at Lake Tahoe. I like to see if I could see Hokkaido or maybe go to the Alps or France or something. And to me, that'll be as successful this year. any investment I make. If I can go skiing with my daughter's 10, 20 days and get out there on my own and maybe see another country, to me, that's going to be as equal success for me as whatever I accomplish in business. But that's me at 51. I know I got so many years on the slopes left. I want to make the best of them before I'm gone. So be thoughtful about those decisions you make

in your life. Don't forget to stop and smell the roses and enjoy the journey. And in that movie, he does not enjoy the journey. Is there an age cutoff that you'd invest in? How old is the oldest founder you've invested in? Great question. I don't want to ask people's ages, so I don't actually know the specific oldest age. I would think we get pitched regularly by people in their 30s and 40s.

And so we've definitely invested in countless people up to 50, like just off the top of my head, right? And in over 50, I don't know that we see many pitches from people over 50, if I'm being totally honest. I think a lot of people who get to 50, maybe they don't want to start businesses or in some cases they can raise the money themselves. So I don't see a lot of 50-year-old starting businesses.

So just in terms of the pipeline, I'd say the sweet spot of the pipeline. And the statistics and the metrics do show this as well, is that founders between 30 and 50, have, especially if they're serial founders, have enough experience, scar tissue, to weather and not make some silly mistakes. What are the silly mistakes? Getting distracted, not talking to your customers, not building a great team, not building a great product, getting in legal trouble, whatever it is, not having enough cash in the bank, not knowing how to fundraise, not knowing how to do marketing or PR, not knowing growth techniques. So there is a series of mistakes that people make as first-time founders or just as young people, inexperienced people. Put age aside and let's use just the term experience. Because age could be triggering for people. You could have somebody who worked, you know,

in IT their whole life and they're 40 years old and they've never run a business. So they have no experience. You have somebody who's 25 and they're on their fourth business and they've sold to, right? That does exist in the world. So, I mean, look at Palmer Lucky. I mean, I think he's under 30 and he's on his second billion dollar company. So you have, you know, the experience of having built a company, it really actually helps. What people will say quietly behind closed doors to not get themselves in trouble is, does this person have the energy or the desire?

do they have that fire to be successful if they were 50 or 60 years old? I think that's a valid question for an individual to ask themselves, certainly. Okay, I'm 50. My kids are 10 years old or 15 years old or 20 years old and I've already got money in the bank. Like, why am I doing this? I've only got 10 years left. I've only got 20 years left on the planet if you're 60 years old. I actually don't think that way. I think like any number of years, you want to do it. I'm here for the pitch. Let's go. do you think people would have to ask themselves that, right? You would have to ask yourselves, okay, if you were starting a business at 60, let's say, do I have the desire, the hootspah, the energy to work five, six days a week, or am I going to sit there working on this going,

hey, I'm going to be dead in 10, 20, 30 years or less? And you never know when you're going to go. Do I want to spend my last 20, 20 years since, or do I want to go on vacation? Do I want to ski 50 years, 50 days this year? So being thoughtful again, wow, this part's coming up a lot these days. think it through, make sure that you yourself, as a person who's up there in years, actually have the fire desire to do it. And if you don't, then pick something you want to enjoy doing. You know, go work on a nonprofit, be an advisor to a company. Maybe you're not in the captain seat. Maybe you're in the second seat. I think that I've seen a lot too, where people are like, you know what, I want to start this company with a team that maybe has more energy, more passion,

desire, time than I do, time on the planet, you know, time every day to put towards a and I'll be the executive chairman. What's an executive chairman? A chairman or chairperson, somebody on the board. Okay, they get together monthly, quarterly, whatever with the team and help them set the direction. An executive chairman might be somebody who comes to the office two days a week. Maybe they're there Monday and Tuesdays working with the team.

They take over some specific functions and they do actually some work at the company. So give it some thought. I don't personally have any limitations on this. I have a 70-year-old came to me with the next best idea and had a killer product. I would be like, yeah, you're 70. Great. I mean, I guess practically speaking, you might want to have a secession plan in place if you get up there in age. I don't know when they start talking about secession planning for executives of public companies,

but I would think in somewhere in their 60s because the average man lives 72 or 74 years in the United States, I think is the number. So you'd probably want to start thinking about that somewhere around 10 years before then. So probably at 62, 64 is when secession planning as a topic comes up. And certainly in venture, you didn't ask this, but in venture, people say, start thinking of rotating people out by the time they're hitting 60. So you saw Doug Leone, Michael Moritz, Bill Gurley, a lot of people who were in their 50s or maybe, I don't know, even in their 60, maybe weren't in the latest fund or were transitioning out, right? Because I think a lot of people think that VC venture capital, the ability to invest is a young person's game. And then

you have some people like Alan Patrickoff, who is, you know, way up there, I think is in his 80s, one of the early New York venture capitalists. Alan Patrickoff, I understand. Somebody told me is sharp as a, sharp as a tack, and he's still investing and still super engaged. And that'll be me. You'll be sitting here watching me,

and I'll be 87 years old doing this weekend startups, talking about some AI robot, you know, downloading some consciousness into my system and talking about the iPhone 96 when it comes out. One fact that you need to know about startups. Finding engineers is super. time-consuming and super expensive. It's the biggest pain in the neck in startups. I would say raising money is easier than finding great developers. Well, if you're looking for qualified

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wait for it. GitHub, Forre, Karda, Indiegogo. Kickstarter. I mean, this is a who's who of successful companies. So go to ravelo.com slash twist and mention twist to get 20% off your first three months. Plus, they offer 100% risk free 14 day trial period. If you're not satisfied, you pay nothing. So head to r-e-v-e-el-o.com slash twist and mention twist to get that 20% off. All right, everybody, welcome to Thursday. That means this week in streaming with our friend, Mr. Lon Harris. If you don't follow Lon on Twitter,

amazing Twitter. You're going to get Lon interacting with a who's who, Hollywood nobodies. Literally, everybody you don't know who actually makes shit in Hollywood is interacting with Lon. It's not the celebrities. It's not celebrity directors.

There are a few celebrities in there. I got a couple celebrity follow. Tom Lennon from the state, big screenwriter. He follows me. Okay, well, that's what I'm talking, my exact point. There are a bunch of screenplaywriters, producers, people like that. That's true. I do have a great, I have a great following among, yeah, there's a lot of like showrunners in there.

I just added the director of Lightyear. Do you see that that Pixar film Light Year? Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was praising it, and he and I started talking. So now I'm followed by, I understand there's a little controversy with the Light Year. I didn't see it, but Light Year. That's the same one is that, you know, it's, they, There is the acknowledgement.

Yes. Well, that's the big one is, yes. Now it's Chris Evans is voicing Lightyear instead of Tim Allen. But it makes sense because I don't know if you know the premise of Lightyear as a standalone film. Yes. In the 90s and the kid from Toy Story went to go see this movie. This was the big movie when he was a kid that sold kids on Buzz Lightyear. Yes.

And then he got the boy. So the voice in the movie wouldn't necessarily be the same actor. they'd get to voice the toy. I see. But Tim Allen seemed a little upset about it. Well, that's a big payday. I mean, Tim Al, like, if you're thinking about it, if you're Tim Allen, you know, your number one iconic character, Tim the Toolman Taylor from Home Improvement, in my opinion.

Yes. Okay. After that, it was late here. I mean, that's, you know, it may be Galaxy Quest, although I'm now trying to think of his name from Galaxy Quest. I'm struggling. Galaxy Quest. Jason.

Completely underrated sci-fi comedy. Amazing. It works on multiple levels. It works because it's a heartfelt film. Right. It's like really doing a sci-fi adventure. It's not just a joke.

It's not space balls. Right. But it's also got that level of Star Trek sort of parody over it. Yes. But also, I think it was an early example of, it's a, it's a, It's about nerds and nerd culture, but it's not just making fun of them the whole time.

It's not just that get a life, you dorks. It has real respect for and love for the nerds. You love that show. And that was like very forward. Back in the 90s, that was not cool. You made fun of nerd. Yeah. Right.

And so I think it was an early indication that the culture was sort of shifting in the nerds favor. Just hilarious. Who's the guy who played like the Spock character with the head? dress and everything. Oh, that's Alan Rickman. The great Alan Rickman of diehard fame. I think Alan Rickman, this is like one of his great performances, because he plays like a true thespian.

Right, like a Shakespearean stage actor. Who now lives with the curse of being known as this character and being beloved as it when he just wants to be known as Macbeth or whatever. But then he kind of comes full circle. when he realizes like, there is something to this pop culture icon that he created that he can embrace. Right. And it's beloved by he's having the impact he always wanted to have on people,

even though the material is sillier than he thought. Okay. So speaking of being typecast, I watched the first episode and change, started the second one and had to stop watching the Jeffrey Dom story. Oh, yeah. Yes, Monster Dahmer, the Jeffrey Dahmer story or whatever. This is an incredible performance.

I don't know who is playing Jeffrey Dahmer in it. Evan Peters is that guy's name. He's in a lot of the Ryan Murphy stuff. He was in American Horror Story. You know, he's been in a few other Ryan Murphy sort of projects. He's also Quicksilver in the Fox X-Men move. The guy runs real fast. Oh, he's amazing.

Like a teenager with the goggles, with the silver hair. I didn't realize that now I now I've put the connection together because I couldn't put together who he was, nor did I want to type in Jefferson. Remember they had that cameo and wand division where it's like,

oh, isn't that her brother from, Quicksilver is an underrated character from the underrated X-Men series of the first class. Right. When they throw back. The Fox re,

yeah, the remakes. I love the first class movies. I just watched all of them. There's, I think, three or four of them in that genre. I want to say four.

Because, yeah. There's four because they're the Phoenix. Future. Apocalypse and then Dark Phoenix. Dark Phoenix. I watched them with my daughters. They all love it.

They love it. And that character, now I see it, plays Jeffrey Dahmer in this incredibly disturbing portrayal. The first episode is, I don't want to, you know, it feels so realistic that to make the comparison to the,

you know, most famous serial killer of cinema, Clarice. Oh, Hannibal Lecter. Have the lambs stop crying. Who has this man, you see? You look back on that, and as terrorizing as that was, it seems overplayed now. Whereas this one, I don't know how you feel about this performance, but it seems so realistic and disturbing.

I almost felt like I was watching a doc. I'm not a huge fan. I listen, and I get that there's a lot of back and forth about true crimes. Some people feel very strongly negative about it. I get that it has its place and that some people are very fascinated by these stories. I don't think that's like, I don't think there's anything like morally wrong with it. But it does make me, it does make me feel uncomfortable and creepy. And I don't really like that, that feeling that I'm getting entertainment out of just crime and depravity.

With this show in particular, because there's so much focus on the victims and like they're recreating, you know, the victims in court. and they're having actors like reenact. There is a lot of like, are we re-traumatizing these people? Like the people who survive, they lost loved ones to Jeffrey Dahmer. Many of them are still alive. This wasn't that long ago. So we could file this under too soon, perhaps. Yeah, it's like, I don't know.

Yeah, just like people are saying in the comments and say, like when it's real people, it's recent history, it's this brutal, unthinkable stuff that happened to them. Turning it right away into a TV show does feel a little, it feels a little, It feels a little off. It feels a little crass to me. Feels like you're perhaps capitalizing on just the most tremendous suffering and pain you could ever imagine. I understand their argument completely. And I also understand the argument of art and people being able to create things in the art world.

But this all comes together through the lens of massive distribution. So in another time period, this might have been a boutique independent film. I'm seen by, but, you know, there's a bunch of Jeffrey Dahmer. There's my friend Dommer, and there's one just called Dahmer with Jeremy Renner playing Jeffrey Dodder. There's, but we, I mean, that's the other part of it is that we've done,

we've done this. We, we, it's not like there's no Jeffrey Dahmer content out there. In fact, Netflix has another, you know, they have that conversations with a killer series. Yes. They have one of those coming out about Jeffrey Dahmer soon as well. And obviously, it's synergistic for them. It's a tie-in. But how much.

Dommer content do we really need? I mean, is this Ryan Murphy saying too that he's focusing on, you know, the victims and the police and why didn't they catch? It's not just reveling in the crimes. It's like digging into the case file. And I guess there's some value there too. For most of us learning a second language in school, it was a joke. I remember like three words. Probably learn nothing from that Spanish or French or Italian class you took. Well, that's the thing of the past. There's a better solution now. It's called Babel. Babel is a learning app that's sold over 10 million subscriptions. And instead of using AI, and instead of using AI, their lessons were created by over 150 language experts. So we're talking to the best people in the world. Right now, producer Nick is learning Italian, eh? So he can talk to his Italian side of the family in their native language. He says he loves Babel's quick hit 10-minute lessons.

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slash twist. That's babble.com slash twist for up to 55% off your subscription. Babel, spelled, B-A-B-B-B-B-A-B-L, language for life. There is a massive breakout success here in terms of consumption. So I think that is what the story is here is if this had flown under the radar with a million viewers, we wouldn't be having this conversation. This crossed over into pop culture, correct? Yeah, this is a huge hit for Netflix. Their second biggest hit of the year after Stranger Things season is starting to look like a sort of an all-timer in terms of English language. season like probably going to be in the top five or 10 English language seasons

of TV they've ever released. And the other big thing is this is the first big hit from their mega deal with Ryan Murphy. The guy who came in he'd done Glee and he had that screen queens, an American horror story, an American crime story. They made this $300 million

mega deal. It was one of those initial huge deals. We have you exclusively for whatever you make. Exactly. And Shonda Rimes was another one of these that Netflix made that led to like Bridgerton, you know, the scandal producer who came over and now made Inventing Anna and Bridgetton. And Murphy's been making content for Netflix. He did Ratchet, that Nurse Ratchet, Cuckoo's Nest prequel show. He did Hollywood, this one about it, it was sort of like a fanciful reimagining of Hollywood history. Like,

what if Hollywood had been diverse going all the way back to the 30s and 40s? He did a show called Halston with Ewan McGregor about the fashion designer. He's done a few other things. Nothing has really hit so far. Got it. And this is why people were questioning the platform deals. Are these things that pay off? Were these things done in the peak market?

In fact, it came up on the Owen podcast the other week where David Sachs were saying, hit the back channel here in Hollywood, was that they weren't doing any more deals and that these platform deals were a sign of like the peak Netflix stock price. Right. But this thing has over 300 million hours viewed in its first week of availability. So people are clearly binging it. I don't know how many unique users that is. If it's a 10-hour series, or it's a 5- or 10-hour series, I'm guessing?

Yeah. I believe it's eight episodes, maybe 10 episodes. All right. If everybody watched four hours, you're talking about 100 million people, 75 million people. Is that possible? 50 million people? How many people do you watch it? Globally.

I mean, worldwide, there's a big audience. for English language, English language content is one of those that sort of transcends a lot of the market geographical boundaries. We're seeing Korean shows have a lot of breakout. Spanish language shows have a lot of breakout. Squid game, yeah.

Squid game, obviously, number one. But also, extraordinary attorney Wu from Korea was a huge hit this summer. So, like, we're seeing that now that Squid Game kind of broke the seal or opened the barrier, international audiences are coming to more Korean shows, and Korea is having a sort of a big international.

moment right now. Spanish, obviously, because there's so many Spanish language countries. Spain is a huge powerhouse for churning out content. But English language content goes really well. So, yeah, I mean, I do think it's reasonable that a very high profile show about a very famous individual from a big creator, because Netflix also has a lot of power. I mean, if they put it all over the front page in every market, it's going to get a lot of clicks that they can create a phenomenon sometimes.

Now, this show does not lend itself to advertisers, of course. Now, there might be some advertisers who would be okay with it. There would be some who say, like, absolutely not, right? You're not going to, like, get a McDonald's commercial in the middle of a Jeffrey Dahmer show. Right, yeah, it's a little bit more. You know, some other TV show or, like, you know, might want to. I mean, there's certainly disturbing FX shows or what have you that still get sponsors and ads. Sure.

Sure. So Netflix is going to launch their advertising-based things. these number of hours, based on this kind of content, we could see these number of hours jump dramatically when they have their... It's not going to be a free tier. It's going to be a discounted tier. No, like $7.8. Disney's is going to be $7.99 with ads and then $10.99 for no ads.

So that's be the same thing here, I'm guessing. It'll be roughly. I would say Netflix will probably be roughly at mine. If Netflix had a free tier with only a selection of shows and only shows that were, let's say, 90 days old. Right, like what Peacock does? Yeah, what is the, what would the viewership of this be in 90 days? Oh, my Lord. I don't know if they want to do that because they would train people to not pay for it and just wait it out.

But my lord, I wonder if they did like you get the first three episodes of every show and then you have to pay. How brutal would that be on consumers? She could watch the first three Jeffrey Dom's first three stranger things and then it upsells you on paying. That was what my, my mom has that on Peacock and she gets so frustrated. I almost feel like just based on anecdotally based on hearing her complain, I feel like it's not a good strategy. You don't want to you don't want to tease people. It's taunting. Yeah, I think you want to deliver sometimes.

You want to give people a positive feeling about your service. And if you're constantly cutting them off after they've seen two episodes of a new thing, they like, that's not a great experience. You know what they should do is they should do like a Netflix week where Netflix is open for five days just to get everybody to download the app. Well, I mean, I think we've stumbled into one of the biggest problems that these services have, which is how do you have both a paywall but let people know you've got great stuff behind the paywall without giving it all away.

I mean, it's the showtime problem in a nutshell that they can't really figure out how to use Paramount Plus to get more people to sign up for showtime. so they're just going to end up having to basically give them showtime. Like, it's not, they're trying now to like, oh, give us an extra five bucks a month and we'll give you all the showtime shows. But if you can't watch Yellow Jackets, you don't know you want to see Yellow Jackets. If you watch the first few, you'd get that you want to see it. But otherwise, it's just like another name of a show you've never seen. Yeah.

I mean, Apple, too. It's the same thing. Like, I can tell you severance is great, but it doesn't sell you like putting it on TV would. Netflix has spent $500 million I think on Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy and Kenya Barris Yeah, well, the Kenya Barris deal already over. It's over, yeah.

He's jumped over to, I believe, BET he went to now. Oh, okay. He's creating his own in-house studio over there now. Oddly, Trevor Noah, and by the way, Netflix's earnings is coming out on October 18th, but I may need to make a J-Trade there. We'll see. I mean, we're in fascinating times with all this now,

I feel like every quarter where it's like a wait and see like who's doing what. It's really coming down to the wire on a lot of these. Well, yeah, I think that is a sign that there's a lot at stake here. When you see this kind of hand-wringing, when you see this kind of investment, when you see this kind of dogged competition and pricing tweaks, it means there's a lot at stake. And so when there's a lot at stake, it's because it's probably a very big prize at the end. And people are fighting it out for, you know, what will be.

I, as I have said many times, I think somebody, I think two people will have one billion subscribers. I think the consolidation has only begun and I think Netflix and Disney are my top Netflix Disney and WBD Warner Brothers Discovery, those are my top three candidates to hit a billion and I think you could see

consolidation from here going forward. All right, network TV is dying. That's the other big note here. Yeah, it's winding up. The big one is Peacock this week that the NBC Universal announcement. What happened there? Jeff Shell, the president of NBC Universal.

He basically, there have been rumors and the trade stuff floating around. NBC affiliates are going to get back the 10 to 11 p.m. time slot on summer hall. The Hensry Blue slot? Yeah. So NBC's going to basically stop making shows for some nights from 10 to 11 and return those hours to local, you know, your local NBC station will get that hour back to do with whatever. whatever they want. It is a, you know, obviously for Shell's explanation, it's a cost-saving maneuver.

They're going to produce less original content. They're going to worry about filling, you know, three or four less hours a week with shows. But it's another obvious indication that NBC is not where it's at anymore for debuting new content. And that's not where people are watching it. And it's just, you know, it's worth it to save the money and effort for them rather than make new goals. Why wouldn't they have a deal? Like if you were NBC Universal has the peacock streamer, but I guess can you imagine if Hulu or Netflix had access to that time slot? And they just ran.

This is what we're like they may. I mean, like if it goes back, imagine your, you know, Bay Area NBC station. Oh, right. You do a deal with Hulu and say, we're going to put dope stick on. They can do whatever they want with that 10 to 11 slot. They could license content and air it for. 10 to 11 on NBC. I never understood this like local affiliates thing.

I guess they wanted the local affiliates. I guess it had something to do with the FTC and how they gave out these licenses. It literally made sense. This system was designed in like the 50s. So this had to do with like ensuring the public good was. It was public airwaves was what they were worried about and thinking about. And that was it. There wasn't cable underground.

There wasn't satellite TV. This was it. This was your TV service. Streaming. Yeah, so this is like a vestige. I wonder what happens to these assets. It reminds me of radio stations. Like, who's using radio?

There's still people using radio. But I remember I spoke 10 years ago at a podcasting conference called Rain. And I said, listen, here's what you do if you're a radio station. You forget about the fact that you own time slots, whatever. You are just a content creator. You make shows. You have to make shows that are so good that people will seek them out. And you have to publish them as podcasts independently with advertising on them and put them on air.

and when they're on air, you tell people to download the podcasting, and you go rank in the podcasting apps, and you have both. You have people who don't know how to use their phone or podcast catchers at the time was podcast catchers. I said, and you have them here, and then go find other people who want that show and license it to them for their local market as long as they say, you know, you can download the podcasts if you missed episodes. And eventually you, you know, you basically get both.

That's what should be happening here. NBC should be saying, like, just get Peacock to get this whole library, and they should be putting reruns on or whatever. whatever, but I guess it's a sort of vestige. Functionally what they're going to do. They're just farming that work out to the local stations instead of NBC corporate figuring out what to air nationwide during 10 to 11th. This is just competition.

You know, like when you have a, when you have this dogged of a competition. Yeah. The streamers have, and I see this in startups, Lon, if you have to convince people to take their wallet out and pay for something, my lord, you are focused on getting, uh, the content to a real, memorable place, you know, so it spreads by word of mouth, as your point was with severance, you know, or any other show. Uh, you really have to get people talking about, because it's not like they turn on their TV and you have the default distribution of, you know, whatever,

the four channels that people get over the air. Right. And that is, um, you know, the beginning and end of this. They have been out hustled with better, better content and their content just doesn't keep up with what's, uh, I mean, I think peacock actually, I think peacock has some really good shows. I think Peacock's biggest single issue is just being so late to the game and not having they don't have their breakout, they don't have their must-see, they don't have like their rings of power. There isn't that P-like the office. I think they were kind of counting on the office being that draw.

We bring you in with office reruns and then we show you Girls FiveEva or Rutherford Falls or one of these other good originals. I don't know if they've got compelling enough originals to bring people in, but as a Peacock subscriber, I watch stuff on peacock. I don't feel like I'm underusing my peacock. It just feels like they're going into a, you know, a gunfight with a knife. They're going in.

Yeah, they have a real like second class status that I don't know how you drop at this point. I think they need to do some real big moves to get out of that Paramount Plus ghetto of being not the top tier. You know, they're not seen as one of the top tier essential services. Well, this is this also led to us. having a discussion offline on text, you and I were talking about how some of these folks had great content, but they let it slip away.

Oh, yeah, well, Comedy Central, we were talking about that. Yeah, explain that. Comedy Central had built up, you know, over many, many years, this, like, huge library of comedians and shows and, like, cool, you know, they were, they had, like, if you thought of what a Comedy Central show was, you would form that. It had a brand. It had a voice. It was like kind of indie alternative, skewed a little younger, but not like that adult swim stoner comedy,

like smart 30-something, you know, like that they had a little like place in the firmament. And if they can key and peel, inside Amy Schumer, South Park, like that era, you really knew what Comedy Central was. I mean, originally they were Chappelle Show, correct? Chappelle Show, right, exactly. And I think that what we've seen is a lot of those comedy center, They stopped making original live action comedy central shows. I think corporate was one of the last ones, workaholics, that late era.

A lot of those shows got farmed out to HBO Max as opposed to Paramount Plus, which is owned by the same parent company as Comedy Central. So now, if you go on Paramount Plus, there's a Comedy Central hub. It's got some old stand-up on it. They've got the key and peel reruns. But it doesn't feel like a hub, a vital place to go for new comedy the way that it should, considering the prominent...

Is South Park available on HBO Max and on Paramount Plus? I think only the most recent season is... I don't know. The Pam Plus has those... It's very confusing as a South Park fan. Where do I find it? The big compromise they made was the South Park Library lives on HBO Max,

but they're making those original specials. You know, like once every... month there's like a South Park, the streaming wars, a special movie. That's how they're, they're supplying new content. Totally confusing. So it's kind of, they're doing both. Super confusing. I don't like it.

It's not great. And it's just, and I mean, that especially South Park at this point, that's the number one Comedy Central brand identifier. Like, you've got to lock that down. That's like them losing Yellowstone. It's like their anchor. Yeah, yeah. It's like them losing Hill Street Blues.

What's the story with Hacks? Now, Hacks I very much enjoyed. This was a great. They're the team behind Broad City, the hacks team. So they created Broad City at Comedy Central, and they were this in-house Comedy Central team, and then Comedy Central let them go. They were like, we're not doing live action, scripted anymore.

They went and got a deal at HBO Max. Very first show to emerge from their no-deal, Hacks. Emmy-winning. Emmy-winning? The woman, both of them won or one of the? I think Gene Smart. The older one, the older comedian, Gene Smart one.

Yeah, Deborah Vance. She plays Deborah Vance, who is like, I guess, a Joan Rivers type. Yeah, exactly. Did you know that Hannah Einder, the younger comedian, is Lorraine Newman's daughter from Sarah at lunch? I did not know that. Original SNL cast member Lorraine Newman, that's her daughter. That's amazing. She is quite charming in that role.

It's quite uncomfortable. And it's, dare I say, delightful to see a female-driven. comedy show because there's been this, you know, women aren't funny meme in comedy. You know, all women aren't funny, blah, blah, blah. I find the show hilarious. So I don't know. That's an example of, you know, they had that team.

That was a comedy central creative team that could have been making shows for Paramount Plus right now, but now they're off doing HBO Max instead. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Peacock and NBC Universal Streamings has 15 million paid subs. Right. That was the other announcement that Shell made the other day, Jeff Shell.

30 million, if you include, their free ads. Right, because they've got a free version. It's fine. I mean, look, the Peacock Free Service is actually pretty good for movies. It works a lot like a 2B or that kind of thing. They've got a lot of movies up there for free that you can just stream if you're willing to watch three or four commercials. I saw somebody tweet that they had to watch seven commercials. like in a row to watch something on streaming.

And I was like, really? I don't usually find it that cumbersome, but I'm also not a huge. I'm not a huge fan of that. Like, I kind of streaming is sort of trained to be off of watching a lot of ads. And it does kind of urge me, especially in a movie. A TV show, okay, that's one thing. But when they randomly cut into the movie as you're watching it, that's enough.

We'll talk about Andoran House of the Dragon next week when Molly's back. I had to take a week off from watching them because my wife went away for a couple days and she wants to watch them with me. So now I'm, I'm like, I gotta watch it for work, but I gotta wait. So I think we'll wait for Molly. We'll do it two for next week. We can, we can, we can get a chance to do them to wait a few weeks because they're really, they're in groups of three. The episodes, the episodes are meant to be watched three episode arcs. And so we're in the middle of an arc now anyway.

You remember how they- disclosed that? I remember they released the first three. I agree with you. I think they've sort of said it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, mini arcs within this full season, but when you watch it now, it's pretty obvious that, yeah, each story unfolds over three episodes. So you watch one for a week,

you're kind of seeing a third, a third of the story. I did like, we didn't talk about it yet, but I did like the intrigue of going to, you know, the inner workings of the Information Bureau, basically of the Empire.

I love that stuff. And they're just like, it was sort of like the Stasi in the lives of, others where they're like each trying to you know be responsible for a different group of people that they're tracking and trying to figure stuff out and yeah they're there's very like cutthroat like they're all they're all you know nothing right i i i love that tony gilroy who created this show he also wrote and directed the film michael clayton and i love the like he's doing

that again, it is kind of about the like conflicted morality of being a cog in this vast corporate machine and like what it feels like to be, you know, try to like make your own decisions, but you're just one part of this like huge bureaucratic organization. And I love that there's that commonality. That's not at all what you expect from the Star Wars show.

It looks so good aesthetically that I watched the fight between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader again. Yeah, which I loved at the time. And I just, it was stunning how much better this show looks to that one. And I was like, I feel like I got ripped off. They should have had the Obi-Won fight on a real set. I like that show. I liked Kenobi.

I still enjoy it. But yeah, there are some real limitations to that green screen box that they don't sell you on right away. They're saying, we can transport our characters anywhere. But it's very staging and claustrophobic. And it does limit their movements a lot. and or they're just in the woods. They can put the camera anywhere and shoot anywhere they want. That would have been a better look than this crazy, like, rocky, smoky planet that they had

this incredible lightsaber duel on. Like, that should have been done on a proper set. I agree. I think they were rushing to the finish line. It's just me being an older guy and I like stuff that looks like the stuff I remember, but I agree with you. Like, I don't really like this. Nothing to do with their age.

It's just aesthetically clear. One is better looking than the other. I'm now at the point where I can tell. Like, a scene starts and I'm like, oh, they're in the, they're in the green screen box. I know that my eyes can detect, even though I don't know how exactly, that they're not in a real place. What are you most looking forward to in terms of the end of the year, movies and your shows? What are you most looking forward? Do I know that Black Panther is coming?

Yeah, I'm really excited for Wakanda forever. That looks great. I mean, this Spielberg one, the Fablemans, got to be looking forward to that. Anytime Steve doing something deeply, you heard about this. It's basically, it's autobiographical. It's about a kid growing up in the 60s, loves movies, making his own movies while his parents are going through this very sort of traumatic divorce. And so it's sort of Spielberg doing like a Roma, like telling his own story. Michelle Williams already getting a ton of the Fablements.

Paul Dano is his dad. Michelle Williams is his dad. his mom. Seth Rogen is his uncle. Wow. Already getting, it's got a lot of Oscar buzz, already getting a lot of excitement out there. I can't, I can't wait to see that one. This looks incredible.

Wow. So it's basically, you know, it's very interesting. They said during the, uh, during Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, which was a very dark film, Ghalyama. And, uh, they said, it was a. it Spielberg going through a divorce at that time or Lucas? I think that was Lucas. Spielberg fell in love with Kay Capshaw on the Senate.

Anyway, they said that the people who are making the film went through some like very dark times. And that's why the film is so like bitter and cruel. Like you have children being whipped in the film. Oh, yeah. No, it's a mean movie that movie. It's a sadistic mean movie, right? People are being burned alive.

I love it, but it upsets a lot of people. Well, eating monkey brains. Like there's a so many. things. I mean, there's, that's a separate issue. There is a little bit of like Orientalism, a little, it's a little racist as well. On the margins, perhaps. Indian people in their culture.

And there's that, there's that. I'm not defending that. That's a separate issue. But I do, I really like the darkness. And I do feel like it's kind of a nod to like a lot of those 30s things. They're riffing on were kind of dark too with the pulling arts out of people's chests. Yeah, it's a little weird and gross. It's a time when you do an homage to a genre and the genre has some, you know, Yeah, here it is.

I'm also excited, by the way, for... Go ahead. Oh, as you just say, I'm just reading here, both Lucas Spielberg have expressed regret of how dark they allowed Indiana Jones in the tablet of dude again. After they had kids, they came out, were like, I don't know why we did this. Kids loved Indiana Jones and we made it really gross. Like, I'm sorry.

Yeah, they... Well, that also, that led to the PG-13 rating that movie. was that the one that was well it wasn't the first pg 13 movie but it was one of the movies that came out that was so violent they didn't know what to do with it and it sort of inspired them to rethink the that's right it's got the pg 13 yeah yeah it is uh wow this is amazing like these little moments in time um that these things happened right because you know that it's like kids loved raiders and in this character so they want to go see the new indiana jones movie but then it's like Yeah, they're like cannibals. It's like this crazy cult. They're drinking blood and possessing people. Both of them were in dark places. Lucas was going through a divorce at the time.

The filming was being put together. In Spielberg himself, it's seen a long-term relationship of his own fall apart. Interesting, Lucas Ford Spielberg, have become fathers not long before embarking on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Those weren't the only reason for the harsh. And then Lucas was trying to follow the path. Yeah. Right. Last crusades is this very like more family.

focused and funnier and lighter. Like they very obviously cut the other way. That one. Maybe a little too much. Lucas was trying to follow the path. He'd successfully followed with the Empire Strike Back. The Empire Strikes Back. But both have admitted it didn't help.

Wow, that's really great. I wasn't, this is Spielberg. I wasn't happy with the second film at all. It was too dark, too subparanian, and much too horrific. I thought it out-pultered, poltergeist. there is not an ounce of my own personal feeling in Temple of Doom. Wow.

I disagree with him on that one. I'm still a big fan, but... Yeah, I was going to say... Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say with the... There was just a picture at the Disney thing or something of the actor who played short round in it. Yes, well, he's in everything everywhere all at once, K.E. Requan.

Yes, and so there's a picture of him with that trended on social. Right, with him and Harrison together. I guess that was the first time they'd seen each other since the film they said, which is very weird when you think about that. You have this iconic thing. The short round, he hasn't been in films all along. He took a long time off and now is sort of back. Yeah.

Have you seen everything everywhere all it was? Yeah, you'd like that one of the films I watched in my new movie theater, which I have to have you come to talk so we can do a little movie festival. Yeah. I'm going to upgrade the, I've got like an eight-year-old projector. It's totally serviceable, but I've been looking at these laser ones that do these great darks. I've got a killer sound system, but I'm looking to it. I need, if anybody has ideas of like what's the best for a small theater.

It's like a, you know, it's not a huge theater. A home theater, though. It's kind of cool. It's my blog for me. I'm obsessed with this thing. It's 12 seats, I think, two rows of six. Wow, that's not bad. But these are luxury seats.

You put your feet up, you know. They're big, delightful chairs. Anyway, it's very nice. But I'm going to get that. I'm going to upgrade the old thing. But it's kind of nice to think about what movie you're going to watch, plan it out, the kids love it.

We have a popcorn. I got one of those, like, actual movie that are popcorn machines. You can buy it on Amazon for $100. But you may get more of an event. People pay more attention and you get more out of it. That's what we do.

I think that's a big thing with people, when they're talking about the theatrical experience. Everybody always thinks it's about sound. It's about the big, the size of the screen. You've got to see it on the big, the IMA screen with the sound. And that's part of it.

I'm not saying that's not a thing. But part of it is also you're in a room with nothing else to do. The lights go down. You're sort of primed to watch and take in what you're seeing instead of being, you know, distracted by a million things in your living room. And I think a home theater gets that as well. You plan it out. The lights go down.

You're in this comfy seat. It feels like being in a theater. And so your brain focuses on what you're watching more. And so I enjoyed the film. I thought it was very, surreal and interesting. It wasn't like my favorite film of all time, if I'm being honest,

but I'm glad that made it. No, it's not my favorite of all time. I feel pretty similar. I thought it was a lot of fun. I thought it was very creatively made and shot and like exciting from like, you didn't know what was going to happen next to where it was going to go and it was very inventive

and I really enjoyed that. And I thought Michelle Yo was fantastic in it, a great role for her. Oversold, maybe. People seem to be freaked out that this was a life change. it was far from it for me. Well, she doesn't get, she gets a lot of like the old lady who's going to teach you how

to do kung fu. Like she plays the same kind of parts in a lot. And I think that part of the, she's such a great actress. And if you watch Chinese films and Asian films, she plays all kinds of roles. And I think that it was nice to see her get to spread her wings a little bit. So there's part of it. And it's just finally she got a part where she's not just a tough old lady who knows how to do judo and is going to kick your ass.

She's got a real emotional arc in this movie. She gets to really play a character. So people have been fans, fans since the Super Cop era. Now I get it. Now I totally get it. This makes a lot more sense to me why people lost their mind over it because

I recognize her, but I have not seen a ton of films with her in it. If you're a Hong Kong action fan, she's been killing it since the 90s. Like she's been all over the play. You know, Crouching Tiger was 20 years ago. I remember her now from Crouchy Tiger, Hidden Dragon. which was like very unique and amazing an eye-opening at the time. But, you know.

They're swinging through the trees. It's, you know, I found those, you know, like that's like a very narrow genre that, you know, I find is a little repetitive to me. I like a lot of the martial arts stuff. I like them. I like them. I like them. But it's to me, it's like, okay. Yeah.

I was also going to say later this year, the one other one that I'm really stoked for is Knives Out 2. Glass onion. You know, I didn't watch the first one. I have to finish it. I watched the first 10 minutes and then I got distracted and then I was going to again watch it with my wife and then my... It's really fun.

I like people love it. Now that's the actor who... Rain Johnson? Ryan Johnson. Ryan Johnson. The writer director of Last Jedi, yeah. Who, yes, who got destroyed from Last Jedi.

I always see people like making that comparison. Well, this one film is extraordinary and that this film is terrible. I like this one. Polarizing. A little polarized. I got to watch it. I got to watch it.

Okay, so they're doing a sequel. They did a sequel. It was, I played it. It played it Toronto last month. It's coming in December. All new cast, all new mystery. Oh, it's just Daniel Craig. So it's the next.

My style icon. Right. He's doing, it's like an agit to Christy. Like he's going to move between the movies, but every movie is a new investigation. So this one is, they're in the Greek. It's Ed Norton is a billionaire, tech billionaire. He's having. a party on his yacht and then there's a murder and Benoit Blanc is there and he's going to solve

the case. I love it. I love it. Modern day, Colombo. Yeah, Colombo meets James Bond. Exactly what it is. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I got to get in on this. That's Lon everybody. Twitter.com slash lawns, L-O-N-S on Twitter. Follow him there. Inside.com slash streaming. Every day he talks about streaming world. I do. See you next time. I'm going to get back to right now.