This Week in Startups - Breaking down the FTX book + film rights & Michael Lewis’s involvement with Lon Harris | E1615

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Lon Harris joins for the FULL show to break down the most recent FTX book/film news (2:26), the business of horror movies (30:42), Apple’s MLS deal (46:43), and more! (0:00) J+M tee up today’s show (2:26) Lon joins to catch up on the most recent FTX book/film news (14:16) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (15:24) FTX’s new CEO comments, mapping out FTX content based on the coming Michael Lewis book, CAA’s leaked email (29:29) Dell for Startups - Apply for Dell for Startups and get an additional 10% off at http://dell.com/twist (30:42) Business of horror movies: Blumhouse looking to merge with Atomic Monster (38:39) Linode -  Apply to Linode’s Rise program for up to six figures in discounts at https://linode.com/twist (40:08) Giving Andor its flowers (46:43) Apple’s deal for MLS streaming rights, White Lotus talk, and Lon recommendations! FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood FOLLOW Lon: https://twitter.com/lons Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody, welcome to Thursday. That means we have one more day and we're done with this week. Sunday, we start again, of course, with this week in climate. But today we have Lon Harris back on the show. It's an all long show. There's so much to talk about. And we're going to go deep into the FTX Michael Lewis book rumors. Yes, Michael Lewis, of course, of Big Short and Money Ball fame has evidently been following SBF around for six months. And a leaked email reveals that CAA, the big agency, is all. already shopping the film rights before Michael Lewis has officially even written a word. And you can see why. Because every time you even glance at the Twitter, there's some new insane development in this story. And it appears that the major streaming platforms are going to sign this, but not only this, they're looking at MLS streaming. Apple Plus is, you know, working on that deal. The NFL Sunday tickets coming up. So we can talk a little bit about what the sports deals are going to look like. And of course, I'm going to give flowers to Andor. What I think is the best, I think, Molly, this is like the best addition to George Lucas's vision to Star Wars.

I'm just so enamored with this show. Yeah, same. Love it. It's absolutely wonderful. And it's going to be a great show. So stick with this. This week in startups is brought to you by Odo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. O-Doo is now offering all of their award-winning applications, services, and maintenance for under $25. To learn more, go to Odo.com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. Dell for Startups provides key solutions for all your startup needs. A dedicated tech advisor will get to know your business goals and deliver customized solutions for rapid tech enablement with top business class PCs and accessories.

Apply for Dell for startups and check out Dell's Black Friday sneak peak sale at Dell.com slash twist. And Linode. Apply to Linode's Rise Program for founder-led early stage startups and get a $500 credit, up to $120,000 in infrastructure credits in year one, cloud consulting, and so much more. apply at linode.com slash twist. It's Thursday, so that means this week in streaming with us again, Lon Harris. You can follow him on Twitter. L-O-N-S.

He loves, if you tweet at him and say, I love pistachio gelato. I also love Bickram Yoga, hot yoga. And I'm a fan of the, you know, of Taylor Swift. You give him three pieces of pop culture information. Taylor Swift, Pistachio. It's easier for something to watch. And he will tell you something to watch. So based on that Taylor Swift and Pistacio Ice Cream, what do you recommend?

I know, Taylor Swift, she's in a few things. You could watch Where the Crawdad's saying this week. That's got an original Taylor Swift song in it. So number one movie on Netflix right now. So there you go. Okay, there you go. See what I do. But now you would have to cross-referenced in your database.

Delicious, pistachia. You know what I also just watched is 3,000. years of longing, that George Miller movie that's now on VOD. Delightful, wonderful, Tilda Swind, Idriselba. But pistachios come up as a plot point in the film. So a perfect counterpoint for some pistachio dilato ice. I rest my case, folks. To see these neural connections be made in real time is seriously a wonder.

It's a guy. He's a gin. He's like a genie. So one of the things he can do is just create whatever delicacy or whatever he can just poof, you know, make it for you. Three thousand years. of longing. Well, listen.

It's on, just for rent this week, you can rent it on VOD site. So like Amazon, I think it's like five or six bucks. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was delightful. So the world is colliding, Molly. I know. We've been talking about FTX for two weeks. I can't promise.

It never stops. Oh, my gosh. Literally, there's nothing on HBO Max at the moment. There's nothing on Hulu. That is as compelling as watching Sam Bankman, Freed meltdown in public. I mean, somebody's writing the show. Right, right now. I guarantee you,

are people in Hollywood already thinking about who's going to play this guy next year. Like a sentence that was, I mean, I want to step away from that. I really, really do. Like, I want to put down the Twitter and I cannot. And incredibly today, we have the ability to talk about both things at once, which is not only who's going to play them, but like, what, how are they going to handle the polycule nudes? An actual sentence that was sent to me in text yesterday. Have you seen the polycule nudes on telegram? I was like, that's not a sentence that should be doing this. This is not. It's going to make such a compelling series. Showtime's going to eat this up.

Are you kidding? And apparently this whole time, Michael Lewis of Moneyball, the Big Short and Lyers Poker Fame has evidently been following him around. Yeah, for six months. To have Sam Bankman-Fried, yeah, for six months to be the subject of his new book, meaning that the film rights have already been options. It's already, yeah, it's a done. We already have the source material being composed by Moneyball,

Big Short author Michael. Did you see that tweet? I don't remember who said it. But there was like me being followed around by the author of Big Short for six months. Is this good? Red flag, red flag. Yeah, probably not good. Probably not good. I mean, this is going to be like, you know, Adam Newman famously smoked weed. Sure. On a G650s on a private plane, smoked weed. The ground the plane gets in a lot of trouble. Now we know what would happen if Adam Newman, prefer speed or cocaine. Like this kid is Adam Newman, but with speed.

Yeah. No controls. And a nerd. And a nerd. He's like a nerd on speed. Speed is like a horrible drug. And listen, I don't want to make any judgments of people who are prescriptions for Adderall, etc.

But this seems to be a cult that involved a lot of unique personal attributes. One of which was, I don't know if you know this lawn, they indoctrinated everybody there on speed. And these are like ideally kids. Yes. So we are now like dealing with no financial controls, no governance, and a drug known as speed. Now you probably remember Edie Sedgwick and the Warhol factory.

Sure. Lawn Harris, of course. They got into speed as well and things got dark. Speed is like, this is, epitamines and stuff. This is really dark, man. It's a really prenicious drug. I don't know why you're so hung up. on the drugs, though, as compared to the complete amorality that seems to have been at effect here.

Right? Like, I mean, we had it all just in the last couple days. It was like the DMs with the box reporter where he's just like, oh, yeah. No, I just like made stuff up. Multiple reporters. He's talking to them constantly. He's like built in a back door. He's like putting his heart out to them.

Yeah. He's like trying to confess constantly. It's very strange situation. I just, you know, I, it's, I hadn't seen very. video of any of these people until seriously the last few days. I had just been reading names. And in the last few days, I've started to see some of these clips coming out where they're like the Alameda team doing interviews and talking it. It's like, it is hard for me to wrap my mind around people giving these folks their life savings. This group of like I, this group of 20 somethings who seem

very out of their element, who don't seem like seasoned business people, the kind that you would turn over all of your money to. So, like, it is fascinating that they were able to get to this level where they were even able to access this amount of capital. Like, that's what so staggering. None. No actual financials. Like, it seemed to be that they would meet with VCs and show them like a post-it note and had

no, because the new guy that came in, the guy who did the restructuring for Enron, there was a piece today where he's like, in the bankruptcy, he's like, yeah, I've actually never seen anything like this. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. It's a complete disaster. There are no effectively zero financials. Right. And so many of these other stories are always about the young founder,

the idealistic or the future scam artist or whatever. They had to link up with someone powerful or someone established who brought them along. Like that's the Elizabeth Holmes story and that's the Travis Kalonik story. But somehow Sam Beggen-Free just got them. They're on his own with his, you know, all the people he used to date from MIT or whatever. And people just gave him tons of money. I can't wait to you. Here's billions of dollars to invest.

There are two points here. Number one, his pedigree, his parents pedigree were a big part of this. We're talking about Stanford professors. And, you know, he obviously and his team are like MIT, Harvard, like all this. And they're connected to financial industry wise as well. Correct. And he had been like a. a world-class trader at some very famous firm, I believe. So there was this like pedigree building

up. And this is one of the things in Silicon Valley when I came into it worked against me. In the early days of Silicon Valley when I came out here, all the signaling was, did you go to Stanford? You go to MIT, yada, yada. And there was like less focus on people who didn't. In fact, that's why Santo Road is in proximity to the Stanford campus. For those of you don't know, there's a place called Santo Road. All the VCs are camped out there. A very bucolic, beautiful place and across the street is the Stanford campus. Like literally entrepreneurs go from one, you could walk from one to the other or take a short bike ride. The reason I, if you will, it's like, yeah, the reason I am so obsessed with the speed factor of this is having had some friends

close to me who, you know, you know, were on this, or just multiple friends, even when I was in New York who were on amphetamine, it's like prescription ones. Like I've said on the show before, like nine out of 10 told me like, oh my God, this was a mistake for me. I think they're over subscribed, but running a firm on speed. This is not an individual making a choice. This is indoctrinating people into the use of this to enhance performance, I think, explains some of the edge behaviors, Molly. So whatever bad decisions and immoral stuff they were doing, I think it like 10x is it or creates like a blindness or like to it. So I think it's both of those things. But here People in the chat are also bringing up the connection with Adderall, because Adderall is like a prescription amphetamine, dextro amphetamine.

And so, you know, in the same way that we can kind of think of like this weird jump that people can make from prescription opioids to things like fentanyl or heroin or the far more dangerous version, we have seen a pathway for people who get hooked on prescription drugs like Adderall than making the jump to becoming, you know, what we would think of in a previous generation. like speed freaks or amphetamine addicts. Yes. When we had this video, did you want to? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, so this video was crazy. When you see somebody shaking like that, you can't, unless you're looking for it, you won't see it.

Now, he has done countless media appearances. So I don't believe that he's shaking because he's nervous. That to me looks like somebody who is hopped up on a drug and can't control the shaking. And, you know, like, listen, I don't want to make this like super personal and talking about, like, stuff, but this is the storyline here. Like, they, they were publicly tweeting about this, like, speed addiction. So anyway. Yeah.

I think it's at, I would argue it's a storyline. It's a big one. And it compounds what was already, however, from the jump, it is clear that there were never financial controls that setting up these two businesses to be sisters with each other was always a conflict of interest. Yeah. Like, there was no accounting. We, we talk about accounting in.

Our investment meetings as a firm. Basically, every week, what is the accounting? Does the startup have the, we teach it and we talk about it in Founder University. We talk about it in the accelerator. Like, I don't think that you can separate the continued funding storyline from even that, right? So it's like, sure. Okay, at some point, somebody from A16 or even Sequoia met with this guy when he was shaking his chair. Yep.

And he gave them like a post-it with a rough idea of what the financials were. And still nobody stopped it. I don't think people even went into due diligence. I think people were looking at the amount of money they were putting in in relation to the overall value of the business, right? Because people say, shake your diligence to the scale of the investment. So what that means is if somebody's raising $10 million and you're an angel investor putting in 25K, right? You're not even 1% of it. You're kind of like you rely on other people to do the paperwork, to do the diligence.

And this might have been the height during the mania of people saying, I'll just rely on other people to do diligence. And that is a huge breakdown here. When seed funds are doing more diligence than billion dollar funds, something is wrong here. Now, there was outright fraud here. So we don't know yet, but I suspect that this really bright group of individuals, and clearly they're brilliant or in their own spaces, I think they actually doctored. This is my guess. I think diligence did occur, Molly. I think they doctored it, just like they created a backdoor.

I think this was like an outright. This is my signaling. Outright premeditated fraud. at the deepest level. Oh, yeah. In the same way Bernie Madoff did it. I don't think this is the, I do think the funds are who invested and the investors are at fault, but I think they were actually duped in a very sophisticated way.

I think that's what will come out. I don't know. I mean, I can't speak to that sophisticated. But yeah, it definitely seems like this was a always design premeditated, like the FTX almost existed in some ways to fund Alameda investments. And it was just a, I don't believe that this was like, ooh, we didn't realize. we were mixing like, come on, you're smart people. Looking for a better way to manage your company without tons of expensive disconnected software

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To learn more, go to odoo.com slash twist. That's ODO.O.O.com slash twist. Get more done in less time for a fraction of the price with Odu. Let's read that. Okay, I want to read this quote from John J. Ray the 3rd, the new FTX CEO, because, again, this is the guy who came into Enron to clean it up, right? And then I want to talk about them. Wait, what's the guy's name again?

Actual streaming. Yeah, also, awesomely, his name is John J. Ray the 3rd, which sounds made up and hell. I mean, when John J. Ray the 3 comes in, man, stuff's getting cleaned up. John J. Ray. Who's played John J. Ray the third? You know me? I don't you think he's got a big old Texas, like he's got a big old Texas cowboy hat and like a like a cigar. J.J.R. the third is coming in, man. Hot.

Oh. Matthew McConaughey. Okay. Okay. Okay. John Jay Ray, the third is here. Okay. Here is going to overlook into some of these here financials.

Let's take a look at the book. New York Times article that dropped today in a blistering court. filing. I'm reading from the Times. Mr. Ray described an astonishing level of disarray and said he had never seen such a complete failure of corporate control. He listed a series of, quote, unacceptable management practices, including the use of an unsecured group email to access sensitive data and said the financial information maintained by FTX was deeply untrustworthy. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated, and potentially compromised individuals.

For sure. Come on. This situation is unprecedented. Hold on a second. I just want to make a point here. Your honor. Your honor. This is an unprecedented malfeasance that I have never seen.

And I would like to point out for the court and the sovereign state of Mississippi that I I handled the dissolution of Enron. I mean, right? The guy did Enron and he's calling this unprecedented. And he's like, that's the president. Enron's the president. He's using the word unprecedented. Okay, so now let's talk about this becoming a movie.

You don't need to be a financial genius to know. It's hard to get you can't dip into your investors money for your own. Like, it's just, it's the most basic thing. You know, I said, trying to play it off like, well, I just didn't realize I had the accounts labeled wrong. It's like, come on, man, everybody. I love all the people who are like, you know Michael Lewis was going to write some super smoochy thing about this. Oh, course. And many accidentally ended up there at the end of it and was like, oh.

Oh, I'm going to win a Pulitzer. Now I'm going to get Oscar. Now I'm going to get Adam McKay on the phone, you know. So the question, okay, does this become a film? Does it become a series lawn? How would you do this? You're in charge again. This is a series for sure.

This is a six to eight parter, just based on what we know now. If it keeps going, who knows, you can get seasons out of it. But I actually, because we were talking before about the crypto queen. You remember that story we were talking about? That was nothing. I feel like there is an, this is really, it's an, it's an FX anthology series is what it is. And every season is a different crypto scheme that blew up or crypto. big visionary crypto project.

You do a Mount Gok's season. You do that Crypto Island gets a season. The Crypto Queen gets a season. And then this is a season of that show. To me, see, we don't talk about Mount Gawks line. That's why I'm still working. But I mean, let's somebody make that show right now. Like that's going to win a great show.

If we're talking five, ten years ago in the, you know, the social network era. This would have been a movie. Barbarians at the gate was kind of like a weird thing that happened, that that became like a TV movie, a miniseries four-part. We're in the golden era streaming. People are going to want to flesh this out. So no movie. We lose the two-hour amazing cinematic experience, but we gain, we gain, you know, dopesick. I love this from dope sick. That could have been a movie. Your SBF actors are automatic Emmy Possible with something like this, for sure. I'd say my girl, Macy Williams, gets the part of the album.

Oh, she'd be great. Yeah, she's a good one. That's a good one. Give Macy Williams. So here's the full text of the leaked email in which CAA is already shopping the film rights to Hollywood. So here's the email. Of course. Oh, of course.

Thanks to C.A. for leaking this, by the way. But this, like, gives us the plot to, like, where they're going to go. For the past six months ago or so, Michael Lewis has been traveling with and interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried. His childhood, early success on Wall Street, embrace of a. effective altruism and the creation of a crypto empire that catapulted him in record time into the ranks of the richest people in the world seemed more than sufficient for a signature Michael Lewis book. But of course, the events of the past week have provided a dramatic surprise ending to the story. It also highlighted the rivalry between Bankman Freed and Binance Head,

Changpeng Xiao. Michael likens them to the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of Crypto. Crypto. Michael hasn't written anything yet, but the story has become too big for us to wait. Let me know if I've piqued your interest. I mean, literally every streamer is on the phone with these guys. Like, for sure. Like, this is happening right now. Everybody's trying to nail this one for 2024 or whatever because it's a guaranteed. I mean.

Chongping Zhao, of course, by the way, is CZ. Yeah, CZ is the Vader in SBF story. Like, he's the Skywalker and that his enemy is. It's a little. It's a little hand-handed, but I know that, you know, whatever, that's how Hollywood works. It's like the Darth Vader of blah, blah, it's like how you say it's the Uber of this and that. You find, like, the next up-and-coming, like, who's a huge Chinese Hong Kong star, and you get that guy and you make him a celebrity in America. Let's do casting.

You squid game. You squid game somebody, you know. Do we think Aaron Sorking going to do this? Is this going to be Aaron Sorkin dialogue? I mean, Sorkin, like, I feel like Sorkin would have his interest. the internet though. Piqued by the... Right. I feel like personality wise, yes, but I feel like it's a little... I don't know if it...

I don't know if it's right in his zone. No, but speedy dialogue's kind of his wheelhouse, is it not? All those speeches from the newsroom, I really like the newsroom, but the speeches and the way people spoke was as if they would like compose their dialogue and then went to a conference

room and were like, hold on a second. Okay, here's my reaction to today's front page. He's great at dialogue, but I don't, I mean, he is so historically hostile to all things digital. I don't know. Everything Sorkin ultimately becomes like Aaron Sorkin. Like he takes over the project and it becomes more about him and his perspective than the people he's writing about. So I don't know if he'd be my ultimate choice here.

You know who would write the crap out of this actually is Joss Whedon. Yeah. Even though we had complicated feelings about Josh Whedon. You would have Josh Whedon who did the dropout would nail this. Like she would nail this to the law. I said, bring her back. Give her another run. The Larry David.

Give me the dropout lady. Super Bowl commercial. I give Larry David credit. He secured the bag. He's getting sued now. But here's a thing. When he does the commercial, they're going to play the commercial. And he goes, nah, not for me.

You know? That's true. In the commercial, it's Larry David saying, I don't think you should invest it. No way, the wheel's going to work. I'm not into this crypto thing. No, not going to work. So he literally tells the truth in the commercial. I think Larry David took the bag. Tom and L.D. are all being a class action lawsuit was filed against them for that commercial. Larry David's going to counter sue and win. Seriously? Yeah. How much money do we think that Tom Brady actually lost in that? Because there were reports ranging from, you know, their initial investment. meant to like their whole fortune.

And I was like, just I was smart enough to get paid in euros. I feel like they did not not put their all their money in FDX. It's definitely not their whole fortune. I mean, they probably lost a chunk of money, but probably not that significant to Tom Brady or just has it all. It literally has it all.

I mean, Jonah Hill, people are saying the Notties are saying Kendall Roy. Oh, yeah. No, I was saying Jeremy strong.

He's too old to play Sam Beckman-Fried, but like he would kill it. God, he would be the perfect guy for a part like that. I also feel like Ben Schwartz would have been great, but he's a little too old now. You know, Ben Schwartz, John Ralphio from Parks and Rec. Yeah, that's honestly.

Yeah, we did that one. We did that one, and I think that's perfect. He would have been great, but he's a little. He's too old. He's just, he's in his 30s now, and you got to, you have to find some young, you know, it has to be like a guy who's like that young, you know? It's, it's, I mean. It's Timothy Shalame is who it's going to be.

No, that's enough with the Timmy She shallom. I don't want to say his, I don't want to have to spell that name. I don't want to have to say Timothy Shalamee for another six months. Enough. Enough with him. Timmy Tum? Literally enough. Salome.

Too much Timothy Shalameh. Nobody should be getting this much attention. I love to Paul a Trades. I thought he did a good job. In which film? Did he? Dude. I saw him in. Call me by your name.

That's the only thing I've seen him in. You didn't see Dune? I got like 30 minutes into Dune and my daughters were like, this is boring. I love Dune. Oh, I thought I was going to go back to Dune. That's on my, that's not my, I read the book. Have you read the book, Dune? You should read the book.

I read all the books during the pandemic, like all of the Dune series, which gets like pretty weird. Yeah. I got it for a du thing. Around the fifth or six, yeah. If Chalomey puts on 100 pounds and he plays like, you know, SBF like is a little robust. I think he could do it. Maybe I'll change my position on show. I think he could get there.

Yeah. I will grant your position, though, based on his real life behaviors. Like every time I see him interviewed, I'm like, ugh. But then he's a great actor. He's a very, he's a weird guy. But he is a weird guy. Anyway, here's Larry David. TX.

It's a safe and easy way to get into crypto. And I'm never wrong about this stuff. Never. I mean, that's iconic. Give it up for Larry David. They take him a million bucks to say that it's not going to work. The fourth guy, the other guy being sued is Steph Curry. So it's, it's Tom Brady.

Giselle Bunchin, Larry David, and Steph Curry, got sued. Seriously? Because they made ads for ROTX encouraging people to invest. Oh, give me a break, you losers. You thought you could get rich quick. You put your money there. I don't think you could actually go after celebrity endorsers for bad investment. I'm sorry.

Matt Damon better watch out. The only thing you can do is if they were tweeting about it as well and they had some knowledge of problems or they tweeting about it without putting the ad explicitly on it. Like we've seen with the Kim Carrey. Dashiian fines and the Floyd Mayweather fines. You can't do covert advertising when you're securing a bag. So I bet you there's going to be a little of that. You're going to sue Tom Brady, but not Sequoia.

Like, again, like that make, and I'm not advocating that anybody sue Sequoia. I'm just saying, like, if you look at that, that makes no sense. It makes no sense. No, I mean, if Sequoia was getting paid in tokens or Idris and Hart, which was getting paid in tokens to promote something, yes. That's a lowercase. It has to be a law behind this stuff. Like the law, what law was broken.

I think, yeah, it's right. A bad investment is not breaking the law. Exactly. Not doing good diligence. And promoting a bad investment is not breaking the law. I think it's also if the, I think there's some. Unless you know it's sketchy, yes, but that's where it's also. Because that's the component of if they're like an investor, if they're like behind the company in some way versus just being a celebrity endorser.

Like that it's easier to be like, well, they are part of this company. They knew what the company knew as opposed to like, I don't think Larry David was doing due diligence. out here. The reason we're having a little disagreement here is because there was a confluence of influencers mixing their influencer business, aka celebrity business, with their investment business. So when you put these two things together, we have to untangle what were they doing with their behavior? Because we have this new class of influencers investing in companies. You know, if Kim Kardashian's talking about her company skims, well, she's an entrepreneur, just like any other entrepreneur talking about. But if she's talking about or our Kardashians talking about the fire

Festival and they got 100K to promote it, but it's not their entrepreneurial thing. This is where the public is trying to parse. We don't even know what the Tom Brady-Jazel situation is. Did they put 100 million of their own money into it? Did they put 10 million of their own money into it? Where they paid 10 million? Like you're saying, Molly, like, these are savvy people. They're probably not putting cash in. They're probably using their celebrity to get equity. I think so, but I have no idea. Right. Well, that's the Fire Festival Jarl's story, too, is that he was listed as one of the founders owners key people behind Fire Festival. But right, it wasn't like he was spending his own money to set up Fire Festival.

They went to him and they offered him a chunk of ownership to be like, I'm Jarl. Come see me at Fire Festival. So it's a weird. We never got a narrative version of that. We got two docs, but we never got a narrative version of that. Yeah, Seth Rogen was working on one. And then I think he had a comment like, it's over exposed.

And everybody's kind of done with Fire Festival. And it takes so long to get a script. The stakes were kind of me. Like, it's not like you really felt that bad for the influence. Who lost the, right? As, as stakes go, like, at least FTCS, you're going to, you are going to, I have just been very cavalier about it, but you are going to find people who lost real money, who bought into this in some way and were, you know, and suffered financial harm. And it's billions of dollars. So the stakes are a little bit higher, I think, then like, oh, no, some influencers had to eat a cheese sandwich.

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And that happens to be my favorite. I got one here. And I got one right here. Like I said, I recently bought that really fast alienware. laptop. I plug it into that Dell 39-inch monitor. It is extraordinary how powerful this thing is. It is fantastic. Okay, apply for Dell for startups today and get up to 50% off on Dell's sneak geek. Black Friday sale. Just head to Dell.com slash twist. That's Dell.com slash twist. One thing I think is really interesting that's going on. I know we're going to run out of time here,

because streaming takes over our lives and everybody's got an opinion on everything. But I have been very enamored by Blumhouse Pictures. Sure. This is, there's a guy, Jason Blumhouse. And... Blumhouse is the company. He's Jason Blum. James. Blumhouse is the company.

Right. Now, I know this. Clever. Good name. Because once in a while, watch a horror film on like a, you know, it's not exactly my thing. But there's been a ton of movies that Blumhouse has done. And they seem to give people very small budgets to do what they call in the business a genre film.

Yes. And genre films cost nothing to make. Like Annabel cost six and a half million grossed 257. Get out. There were two films. $4.5 million, quarter billion dollars in, you know, gross. He made this discovery. This is incredible to me.

Paranormal activity and saw. These were the movies that kind of informed the Jason Blum formula where it's like you spend no money. They're, I mean, think about paranormal activity, you literally just set up stationary cameras on a room and then saw one room three. actors, you keep it real simple, a few million dollar budget, you promote the hell out of them, you sell them hard to horror movie fans, and they can make $100 million to set up a whole franchise or whatever. So that started him. And now, yeah, every year, there's three or four

of these low budget, you know, easy to produce. Actually, this even goes back further. There was the Blair Witch Project. I remember when I was a journalist in the 90s. Before you came on, yeah. And that had a budget of 200,000. Actually, they had told me back when I was covering it, it was like 90,000 to make. A couple hundred thousand in finishing. That did a quarter billion dollars, but that did that in 1999. So this kid in Blumhouse gives folks who want to break into this genre films, the chance. He gives him very small amounts of money.

I like this. To me, this is like, this guy's like some super savvy entrepreneur. This makes a lot of sense to me. And now what he started to do is, you know, it's like once it started to grow, now he's, you know, picking up some of these franchises. And so Blumhouse does the new Halloween films that, you know, like he's got Michael Myers now. And like, so it's growing. And the purge films are Blumhouse as well.

So they've got franchises. And, like, they, it's been a very clever sort of thing to see him kind of grow it over the years. And this is, these numbers are like bananas. Paranormal activity cost $230,000. Production only costs $15,000. It was the post-production and marketing that was, the other 215, and then it grows to $193 million, which Nick says may be the most profitable movie of all time on a net return basis.

And then Get Out was another big milestone moment for them as a production company because now it's not only winning over genre fans getting people into the audience, but it's Oscar Cread and one of the busiest movies of the year. And you can even turn one of these little movies into like a sleeper hit that's in the top ten movies of the year. year. So the big news here is this merger, right? So you've got Blum who describes himself as a business person, not a filmmaker. And then you have James Wan of Atomic Monster, who is mostly filmmaker, less business person. And they are talking about joining forces. Right. And it's a natural James Wan

directed Saw. So it's a very natural collaboration. And James Wan, you know, you're talking about the conjuring franchise, the insidious franchise, you know, the malignant last year. So we got this relationship with Warner Brothers, but between the two of them, they're the big, they're the two biggest names in horror right now. So this is a juggernaut kind of deal you're creating when you bring these two together. I'm never going to the movies again. I'm a chicken. This is not a good outcome for me. To me, this is like entrepreneurship, just really chef's kiss. I was talking to my friend who's a filmmaker. I've only backed like one film in my entire career. My good friend, Nick Cherokee, you know, I just made a small little bit just to

support him. He's, you know, he's supported me in some different endeavors. And, you know, I've been talking to him about this. And I was like, you know, I have the syndicate.com. And, you know, like there's a lot of rich people who would love to get involved in a film. And I looked at it, and I was like, maybe I'll do like a little fun thing for myself where like we back some documentaries or whatever. But the more I dug into it, the deals are so unfair for the investors. They basically cap the investors. Molly, imagine if we had in our documents, you invest in the startup, you put in, you know, we're going to raise a million dollars, pass the hat style, 50 people putting in, you know, whatever amount each 20K.

You're capped, Molly, in the documents, you get two and a half times your money back, max, and then you don't have equity in going forward. So they're really like just like, you're an idiot, you're just getting some, you know, little token amount of equity. So I was like, well, that's stupid. I was like, why don't we set this up so we make documentaries? And I was talking to one of the most famous Oscar winning documentary people

who had reached out. And I won't say who it is, but they won a couple of multiple times they've won Oscars for documentaries. I will probably tip it off. But anyway, he said, you know, I said, well, what if we own the documentaries and we just license it to the streamers or whatever? But then we had a company where, like, the people who made the documentary had equity in that little LLC, that little thing.

And then we just exploited for all time. But the parent company owns it. And then we give people equity in the parent company, whatever. And he's like, yeah, that's not how people work in our industry. They just want to, like, get paid, like, to be a director of photography. They don't want equity and stuff. And I was like, that's the opportunity. Thank you, Molly.

I was like, that's the whole thing. Because if something like paranormal activity, as, you know, Nick just did the math for us, an 840X. Oh, yum, yum. Like, you just have to think about, I mean, documentarians specifically, if I'm going into becoming a documentary filmmaker, if I'm making that decision, it's probably not. It's probably not about the money for me or I would become Sam Bankman-Fried instead because. But could it be, does it have to be documentary? Couldn't it? Because it could be any other, like, there are all these independent movies.

Like, you were just saying before the show started line. Everything is comic book movies or horror right now. Yeah. I mean, if you went to people who are making, right, horror, specifically, a lot of people are making horror movies because they think it's a way to get, make money and get into the industry. Documentary, I still think is a little bit more like. Essentially any film, Molly, that you could produce for a million dollars or less. That's what I'm saying. And then, you know, you had a pairing company that had a couple of executives who were savvy who could just maintain a hundred percent ownership of the asset while allowing it to be. be distributed by other folks for some window of time.

So that over time, instead of, you know, giving the rights to these things over to giant companies, you kind of would be slowly building your giant company. It sounds a bit like Avedueverne's company Array works kind of like this, where she, she goes to like festivals, looks for indie films, brings them in, cuts in the, makes a deal to cut in the filmmaker, and then she takes the films to usually Netflix. Most array films go to Netflix. but Netflix doesn't own she's not it's not a Netflix original

it's an array releasing film on Netflix She and the filmmakers still own the rights so if they want to make a sequel or take it out somewhere else or whatever Yeah, when I talk to folks Molly they said like it oh yeah no we own the rights to the film We've just sold it to Netflix for you know whoever for 50 years I'm like well we'll be dead by then like what are we talking about here like yeah I'm talking about keeping it too Aved Gerdin she's got a theater where the where the Bob

Barker Marionette Theater used to be, where she'll actually like screen these, like, she'll acquire them, she has a screening room and they'll host like events and stuff because she owns the film still. So it is, it is a workable model. You know, I don't know if it's a way to make billions of dollars, but it is a workable model. Linode startup program is called Rise, R-I-S-E, and it offers more than just free credits. Let me tell you about Rise. The benefits are nothing short of amazing. You get up to $10,000 per month in your business.

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and get $500 in free credits. You can also apply to their startup program, Rise. Rise members receive up to $120,000 in free infrastructure credits during the first year and up to 50% discounts thereafter. Let's just end on Andor. I just want to say, I just watched the 11th episode, the 10th episode was a banger. Episode 11, which I guess would be the Penn Ultimate, the second to last. The finale is next week.

So for Tuesday, midnight. So episode 11 was last night's episode, right? This week's episode is setting the stage for next week's season finale. So you saw the prison break episode. I'm through the prison. Yeah. Which is freaking incredible. Incredible.

I just want to say this show, I want to give the show, it's flowers. I'm going to give the flowers right now. It is light on action. There has been some action towards the end of the, and episode 11 has a great, you know, dog fight kind of scene. It's like a dog fight, yeah. Which we, you know, is always great Star Wars, but it took to episode 11 to get a dog fight. It took to episode 10 to get like a serious blaster flight going. Am I right there, along? Was there any blasts? Oh no, there was a little bit of blasters in the first.

Yeah, like episode two, we had that like he had to get away. And then there was the Aldani heist. That was a little action. Okay. So there have been some action beats, but it's not an action-heavy show. And I think that's how you do 12 episodes. You know, Kono He's only Boba Fett, Kenobi, they're doing these six-episode ones. When you break that out to 12 episodes, you don't want to double the budget. Well, you'll do more dialogue. These sequences are set in an office. You know, you've got a few key sort of locations you could reuse a lot.

And then you build up to like a big dog fight. What I want to say here, Molly, and long, as I give the flowers to Andor, is that this is the first time since Rogue One, which is obviously connected to this. it's part of the same timeline. But this little Rogue One and or experience is the first time that somebody has built something on top of George Lucas's vision that has been a creative to the original vision. In other words, a fancy word for has added substantially

to the original piece of art. I feel like the sequels were terrible, you know, things like... I like last genital. I still like last genital. This is really making me wonder about your taste. But it's not like new material, right? It's not like... It's opening up an aspect.

I think Ryan Johnson did a pretty good job of... I guess it does have aspects of it. If JJ Abrams had followed Ryan Johnson's lead instead of trying to reverse everything he had done, it would have had more of an impact. That's true. I did like blowing up the creating a universe of Buffy's. Anyway, sorry. Yes. Anyway, if anybody, if there had been some consistency and that wasn't rushed, sure, maybe the sequels would have worked.

But there was no vision there, obviously. But this one has a vision to tell the story. of the Senate, of the political underpinnings, of the formation of the Republic, of people and characters that were so cursory, but done so well that it has, it has built in a fabric to George Lucas's vision that he never went to, but he alluded to. He alluded to this in the prequels when he said, like, you know, hey, there's a trade federation, oh, there's taxes, like this war is being started because of a blockade and taxation. And you're like, what? Like, that's what this is about is.

People are getting taxed and there's some group of like weird, I don't want to like get too political here, but like Asian fetish and Jewish fetishized weird creatures that are. I mean, there is some. The Trade Federation guys are pretty stereotypically. Very stereotypical. It's not great. As was Wato. I was back in also. I'm just saying backing away from that is a good idea now.

But anyway, they backed away from. that and they just said like, listen, it's just political power, you know, and money and sex and power and all these other things that are part of the human slash existence condition. And then on top of it is an evil person who's using the human condition to take people down the dark path. That to me was just like some, if it was done so well, Molly and Lon that I feel like it worked and it expanded and built the fabric of Lucas's vision in a way that I haven't seen the other stuff do. The end.

Yeah, that's it. Gershifiers. Two about, like, we've been talking to about how deeply he's been thinking about the way revolutions happen and rebellions happen and looking at like historical connections. And that's something that, you know, Star Wars, it always kind of works on this like sort of pop art, throwback, retro, adventure, serial. Like, that's what George Lucas went for in terms of toe. and every other filmmaker who's done Star Wars stuff

tries to sort of keep that, make it feel like the 70s movies feel, you know? And I think Tony Gilroy just doesn't seem to care and is adopting a different tone and is taking these things more seriously and taking a different perspective. And it's still in the Star Wars world, but it doesn't feel like any other approach we've ever seen.

And I was reading this week, a person wrote about how there are echoes of a real, in like 1907, the then-Bolsheviks, revolutionary Bolsheviks who would form the Soviet Union did this big bank robbery that helped to fund their project that Joseph Stalin organized. And that inspires the Aldani heist in Andor. And like to go that deep with it is so incredible. Like nobody's ever brought that kind of attention to real history to Star Wars before. That is incredible. I'm going to just throw Metacritic out.

74 out of 100? At least wrong tomatoes got it right. 92% approval. I don't know what's going on with the Metacritic algorithm. I tried to buy that site. There's always somebody. This thing's 100. This thing's 100.

Well, those are also just to add it. Metacritic around tomatoes, they're not. It's not a score anybody's giving. It's a survey of all critics. So 75% just means three out of four critics liked it, not they gave it a 75 out of 100. And there's always one. Those 75% of critics who liked it may have all given it an A plus for all meeting. My brother's obsessed with there's like one critic that he always finds on Rotten Tomatoes,

who is always the guy who hates everything that everybody else likes. Like he literally is like obsessed with this guy by name. He'll be like, here he freaking is. Is it Armand White? I'm going to have to find out. He's the most famous like he hates everything people like and he praises everything people hate. Like he just is the most contrarian critic.

But he's great. I mean that in the best way possible. Well, let's, yeah, I can't let us go before we talk about Apple Plus's streaming deal for MLS season pass, major league soccer season pass, which it's going to be like monster business, but also kind of interestingly provides possibly a blueprint for what Amazon or Apple could do if they won Sunday ticket. Right. Because it's the same kind of idea where it's like a separate subscription that sort of lives within Apple TV Plus. And if you're a subscriber, okay. Apple, of course, acquired the rights to stream Major League Soccer, which is not that big here, but huge everywhere else. Let's remind everybody, like, the biggest sport in the world or

whatever. And there will be a discount for Apple TV plus subscribers. Major League soccer is not a big deal around the world. That's the like US League. But the, in the U.S. is a much more important NFL Sunday ticket streaming deal is what's coming up in 2023. So the way it's going to work for consumers, the MLS pass, is that it'll be $15 a month or $99. the season, but if you're an Apple TV plus subscriber, you get a discount. So it'll be $13 a month, exactly, or $79 a season. And so we could imagine if they did that per cent of ticket, just trucks full of money. You also keep in mind that that's for every game. So if you buy the season pass, you get every single major league soccer game all year. Now, if you have Apple TV Plus and

you don't pay the extra fee for the MLS pass, you're still going to get soccer games, like four, six, eight, they're still deciding, you're going to get like six or eight free games a week just with Apple TV Plus. Yes. If you want all the games, you pay for the extra thing. So that's also something to consider like, we don't know what the NFL is thinking. Will you get any free football games? Just if you have, you know, if it's Amazon Prime Video presents NFL Sunday ticket, maybe you'll

get one game a week free if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber. Or maybe no, it's all behind the paywall. We don't know. Hmm. The big thing I'll point out here is obviously you got NFL Sunday ticket. You got NBA League pass. And obviously people are going to slice and dice these things into chunks. They're going to give some free, some collection.

And then you get everything, the incomplete archive of all previous games. You get to go back in time, you know, this year or 20 years ago and watch playoff games, whatever. Right. All that is like... They're also going to do the NFL. I think it's Red Zone, they call it. So if you're at Apple TV Plus subscriber, if there's three soccer games, going on at once, they're going to have like a wraparound show that'll cut between all of them so

you don't have to switch. Red Zone is the jam. It's like they show you everybody. I mean, it won't work as well in soccer because you never actually know when someone's about to score. Right. But Red Zone, it's like when someone's on the five yard line or about to score, they just cut to that. And then the next one and the next one, it's amazing.

And Apple's going to have its own bespoke version of that, where it's like, so basically they take out the, the 80% that's boring and they give you just the 20%. and they put it back to back, so it's like a super rush. Yeah. Right. So if LA's about to score, we'll cut to them, and then we'll go over here for overtime, and then we'll go back, you know, like, that's how that's how we do it with. That's for gamblers.

It's where we drink. It's the greatest. And it is, it's, yeah. And it's all day long. It's just being in the sports book. It's that experience of everything it wants. Yeah, there's somebody switching to what's great here. The thing I will point out here, that's the most important for all this is who owns the

subscriber. And so I do think that, you know, the NBA and the NFL, maybe not soccer right now or other leagues, they're going to have to start thinking, do they want all of their subscribers to be owned by Apple, Netflix, and Amazon? Or do they want to have the emails? Disney used to give their content to Netflix famously, right? Daredevil and Punisher and all that stuff were Netflix, Marvel Productions that eventually got reverted back. But Disney did not know who was watching Daredevil as but one example. The thing I would be very concerned about as a business leader here is the ability to cross-sell

and to own a customer relationship is super important. And I wonder who gets the email address, who gets to upsell. When these deals end, does Apple TV now have the email addresses of all of these soccer people for all time? And then just the soccer league or the NFL eventually have to start over, where NBA have to start over collecting emails of their customers. The NBA and Disney have done a good job so far. It's a great point. And if they should take their lesson from the music industry,

which handed digital downloads over to Steve Jobs for almost a decade. This was not specified. I would wager that the majority of Apple TV Plus subscribers who happen to watch a major league soccer game, Apple just keeps their data. But if you sign up for this season pass, there may be some kind of sharing, I don't know, but... You hope that they

hope for their sake that they're smart enough to realize that, you know? Apple has been famous about not allowing that. This is why Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs were in deep negotiations. They did an app called the Daily. Actually, my friend Brian Alvey worked on that. My lifelong collaborator.

And the Daily, when the iPad came out, like, Steve Jobs was obsessed with Rupert Murdoch and getting his collection of newspapers on there. Remembering Murdoch was like, well, I need to get the contact information of these people who, you know, and they're like, no, you don't. We'll just, we'll do the billing for an abstract. And he said, well, that's my business. Disney made the decision.

Hey, this is going to be our core business. And I don't think Apple's going to give major league soccer or whoever this deal is with. I don't think they're going to give them the email addresses, but that's where this will all come to head. The decision will be made based upon is the party willing to overpay and take the risk. So if you are going to buy five years worth of My Sports League and pay more than we think we could monetize it for ourselves, yeah, we'll give up owning those emails for now. So if you overpay us, there's one more cash, though. If you are one of the several hundred thousand season ticket holders for any major league soccer club, you get the Apple TV plus Major League Soccer Pass for free.

It's included with your season ticket. So if I, like, have a season ticket to the LA Galaxy, I automatically get access to all the Major League Soccer games. Oh, stunning. That's data that Major League Soccer now has to supply to Apple. So I don't know if there's going to be more give and take in this deal than they're normally would just because there's that at. Does it also come with Perseco?

It's, yes, it's a, it's a, it's a Grotispolyato with Prosecco. Stunny. With Prosecco. Oh, Stunning. Stunning. I feel like that's stunning that you have the season. Yeah, it's season ticket holders. Why don't we have a stunning drop here?

I would just like to have stunning. And just Nick, you should just drop stunning. Like, if somebody makes a good point, Nick, I give you permission to give us a stunning. It really is stunning that they would be able to correlate your season ticket email with your season pass. But that's completely possible. Because then that's only the customer. And that's smart. But that won't be every customer.

I wonder if this could come, like, you wonder to what extent this could even come down to the negotiation, right? Like if Amazon and Apple are bidding and Amazon's like, we'll give you the customer and Apple's like, we will not because we're Apple and we never do that. Does Amazon get it for less? I say you guys that that UFC Disney article too, which I thought was really interesting. The president of Endeavor, which owns the UFC now was speaking at a conference this week, was talking about it's probably going to be Disney because that's who UFC has. historically had their deal with. There's a lot of ties between Endeavor and Disney already. So it makes perfect sense that ESPN would just re-up for another five years of UFC.

But they're going to hear pitches from Amazon, Apple, Google, some other players as well. But this guy, I forget his first name, but Mark Shapiro, I think is his name. He said specifically they weren't considering Netflix because they didn't want to be a guinea pig. They didn't want to be Netflix's first big live stream sports partner. So I think that's a good example of how all these other considerations do come into play. Like even if Netflix was offering more money, they didn't want to be like the test subject. They wanted to go somewhere that they knew like Disney where there's already ESPN and ESPN plus these very established delivery systems for their content. Fascinating.

All right, Lon, you're amazing. You gave me a couple of great recommendations. And I did watch Tulsa. Tulsa game. I fell asleep towards the end. But I, Soresta Salone on the screen

It's just compelling Yeah, he's funny It's funnier than I thought it was going to be I thought it was a little bit more serious Yeah, it's a bit like that early soprano's where it's like balancing comedy and drama more They clearly have gone 100% I was about to say they went full soprano Yeah

Full soprano I'm not sure if I'm going to love this or not But man I just I don't, the jury's still a little out for me as well, but I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm going to give it more time. I'm going to, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep at it for sure. All right. They have it. And then the other one you gave us the other week was, uh, what was the VR one, the William Gibson one. Oh, the peripheral. The peripheral. I'm, I don't remember the last time that I waited for the days to come. Like, I'm just waiting for Fridays to come now for the peripheral. Yeah, well, midnight. You can make it to midnight tonight. Oh, stop. Speaking of. Sopranos. And what was the Showtime show about the Middle East? That was so good with the CIA. Homeland.

And speaking of Homeland, because I think it has the Homeland after it. Maybe I actually give that another try, because I do love a spy show. White Lotus is a weird peculiar show, and season two is out, and it has Christopher Maltesanti in it. Yeah, the great Michael Pirioli. And he's amazing. And F. Murray Abraham is his dad. There are a lot of fun together.

I'm really enjoying them together. He was also in Homeland, right? Yes. Wasn't he in Homeland? He played this incredible, um, he was like the Iranian, you know,

double agent, I think. I don't remember who he, he was in there. I think season two, he was kind of like one of these gray characters, you know, who was kind of working with the CIA, trying to massage over,

making sure the world doesn't come to, anyway, he's a wonderful actor. That's amazing. Is Aubrey Plaza? I love, I'll pretty much watch that. That was where I was going.

I'll watch anything she's in. Did you ask the Laventura riff this week? I don't know how many people caught that. I was very curious. So in episode two, in episode two, Jennifer Coolidge has that whole speech where she's like, I want to be Monica Viti. I want to go out on a mov, you know, I want to go on a Vespa. What's the story with her eyes?

She's doing that on purpose, closing her eyes. Monica Viti star was the Italian movie star who started a bunch of, oh, started a bunch of Antonioni films in the 50s and 60s, including La Ventura, this very famous Italian art. art film. And there's a scene in that movie where Monica Viti is wandering around in Noto on the island of Sicily, and all of these men are watching her and crowding around her and it's very claustrophobic and uncomfortable. And it became this sort of like, it became this

sort of, it became one of the stereotypical, like, you know, that trope of Italian men or, you know, like cat-silly cat-calling harassing women. And they recreated that scene shot for shot with Aubrey Plaza this week in White Lotus when all the men are standing around and she's twirling around and the camera's spinning. It's a shot for shot recreation of love and her. It's a very, I was about to say Aubrey Plaza

who I kind of remember from being like some character actor funny. Well, Parks and Rec. She was April Legby. I did never watch an episode Parker Rex. Anyway, she is extraordinary in this. She's like a very interesting character. I know you plays kind of

type A, annoyed New Yorker. Go ahead, Molly. Sorry. No, I hit the mic while, because I got all excited. I know you probably did not watch Legion on FX. I watched Legion. I mean, I know you did, Lon, sorry. I watched a couple episodes.

I feel confident that J-Cal did not watch Legion on FX. I watched the first two episodes, yeah. Aubrey Plaza in her most, like, I don't know, I feel like Neo in the Matrix level of power, Legion was it for me. She was just so mesmerizing and creepy. She's incredible. Something very alluring about her. on screen. It's not traditional, but she pulls the screen in. And that scene specifically,

Lott, was notable because it was like, wait, what is this scene about? Is this like a surreal moment? Is she imagining this? And I didn't realize that that was a homage. So thank you for educating this. It's a purposeful riff on, which is also, I mean, and like a lot of, a lot of what Mike White's doing with this whole season, I think, is purposefully echoing Antonio. Because his stuff was always about idle rich. Their lives are pointing. Greatless. Nothing makes them happy. They're just wandering aimlessly through life. That's what a lot of those movies are about. And that I feel like he's touching on in this season two of these kind of like rich, aimless people who nothing is satisfying. Nothing makes them, you know, nothing is exciting anymore. Life has become a chore. Yes. Which is kind of Michael Imperiali's character. He's like a self-absorbed sex addict. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like Aubrey Plas and her husband looking at this wealthy couple that at first they're sort of. intimidated by and envious of and then recognizing like, oh, they're, they're just as miserable as we are just in a different way. And I feel like a lot of care.

You know, like even Jennifer Coolidge's assistant, like, what am I doing? And why aren't I happy to be in Sicily? And, you know, it's just a lot of that like, why can't we find happiness? You have to stay. You can't leave. Yeah, like, we have a serious question. A place of the world surrounded by opulus and luxury. How come nobody's happy?

Is Jennifer Coolidge closing her eyes that much as like an affect? or is that just her natural state of being? No, it feels... People think that's her, but if you see her being interviewed, I mean, she's obviously... She's an amazing actress. She's obviously like... She's extraordinary.

It's not, you know, a complete effect. Like, you would recognize her if she's being... But, no, she's doing a lot of this. She's putting on a lot of these affectations as part of the performance. That's not her. I want to see her interviewed compared to this character she's playing where her voice is high-pitched and she's got her... Like she's like, popped up on some prescription pills.

She's just doing a very, very exaggerated version of herself, basically. But it's, I just like the fact that this is like the Amman Hotel that I always talk about that I'm obsessed with. The White Lotus is basically the Amman Hotel. And it turns out they, it turns out they hate you, which is, you know, makes it harder to go there. All right. Lon, wonderful. You're amazing. Oh, thanks.

We'll see you. Oh, what's your recommendation? Next week. Only one. You got one for us before we go? Give us a sober bullet. Something that Lon loves. I got this.

This is perfect. Okay. On Netflix, there is this series of French action crime films. We're on the second one. They're called Lost Bullet. So there's Lost Bullet 1 and then Lost Bullet 2. It's like Francis Fast in the Furious. They're about this like brilliant driver and mechanic.

And he starts off being a criminal. And then he gets recruited to join like a police task force where they're chasing down other vehicular criminals. The fights are great. Car chases, Explor. huge action. They're funny. I highly recommend. Is it like LeCirco Rouge or Leone? No, I mean, honestly, think of their French fast and furious.

The transporter or something, but French action guys. And there's two of them now. They made one in 2020 and the next one just came out. The last one just came out like a few weeks ago. Lost Bullet and then Lost Bullet 2. Please follow at Lons on Twitter and go to inside.com slash streaming to get his daily Newsletter, well done long. Thank you. See you next time. All right. Thanks for Lon joining tomorrow. I sat down with our friend Glenn Kelman, Molly, from Redfin. We talked about layoffs. We talked about the housing markets, the pain, the joy of being an entrepreneur

in a downturn and a recession, all the stuff we've been talking about here. How amazing is Glenn for coming in and having a candid talk? You're going to love this interview. I love Glenn. I'm so sad to have missed it and I cannot wait. He's always so honest and he really feels the pain when he has to do layoffs himself. and I am really, I will definitely be refreshing my feed for that for my own show. Okay, there you go. Our own show. And then, of course, we'll have OK Boomer. You're kind of taking over.

You're running the roost. I don't know about that. I don't know, no, no, no. It's just weird when you listen to the show that has your picture on it. Like, it is a little weird. It's like, it's like, clicking on my own show. When I click on it, yeah, exactly. It's like a podcaster's nightmare to see yourself in the feed.

Yes. It's like, I suppose, for people who are on like a TV show or something, to be flipping through the channels and see reruns of themselves. And you're like, oh, that's me. Yeah, it's strange. But I will still make sure that I listen. And of course, we got Rachel reporting with OK Boomer. It's going to be the perfect Friday show.

Just tune in tomorrow. Okay. We're going to make it, folks. Friday's here. We're almost there.