This Week in Startups - ChatGPT vs Hollywood writers and the WGA strike with Lon Harris | E1750

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

This Week in Startups is presented by: Embroker. The Embroker Startup Insurance Program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today at http://embroker.com/twist. While you’re there, get an extra 10% off using offer code TWIST. Hyperice. Warm up and recover faster with the Hypervolt 2 massage gun and Normatec compression therapy boots. Save $50 off your order of $150 or more with code TWIST50 at checkout on http://hyperice.com/. Release. Large enterprises pose unique challenges for SaaS startups. Unlock customers with unique needs for private and single-tenant hosting without the toil of DIY with Release Delivery. Get your first month free at https://release.com/twist . * Today’s show: Lon Harris is BACK to discuss the WGA strike and how ChatGPT can (and will) impact Hollywood writers (6:18). They also break down how streaming services can appeal to show writers, Spotify’s planned AI-for-ads, and more! (19:56) Follow Lon: https://twitter.com/Lons Check Out Binge Boys: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/binge-boys/id1535514923 * Time stamps: (0:00) Lon joins Jason (1:44) Jason discusses his new reality TV show (6:18) The WGA Strike and the misconceptions of Hollywood (13:29) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist (14:33) Employing writers and the lack of transparency in the film industry (19:56) Breaking rank as a streaming service (24:21) Hyperice - Get $50 off your order of $150 or more with code TWIST50 at http://hyperice.com/ (25:30) Hollywood writers’ thoughts on ChatGPT (37:14) Release - Get your first month free at https://release.com/twist (38:41) Creating Adam Sandler movies with ChatGPT (42:15) Jason and Lon breakdown if Succession will go down as a top HBO show (48:51) Jason’s advice to the writers union and streaming services (53:06) HBO debuts Max (1:00:13) Spotify’s new use for AI (1:06:09) Highly anticipated releases, plus Jason and Lon’s thoughts on how TikTok is affecting society * Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo & Apply for Funding Buy ANGEL Great recent interviews: Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow Jason: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

This is what Netflix should do. They should just go and say, you know what? These are the top 20 most consistent people. We're going to pay them 75 grand a year plus this bonus program, plus these raises, plus these benefits. And if you are the writer and you want to get paid more but work more like a gig worker, two months on, three months off, fight for your next gig, get it, don't get it, whatever. And, you know, be a freelancer fine. But man, I would just come in and I'd buy the top 50 riders and I'd have them come to an office every day. I would give them lunch, I treat them great, and make a campus where they felt like, man, I come here and I'm just creatively fulfilled and I feel safe.

Like I get rent every month taking care of. I've got my, you know, my mortgage is like, you know, I have some amount of security. Yeah. We have practical evidence that this is the right approach. This weekend startups is brought to you by and broker's startup insurance program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today at Embroker.com slash twist. And while you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist. Hyperice.

Warm up and recover faster with the Hypervolt 2 massage gun and NormaTech compression therapy boots. Save $50 off your order of $150 or more with code Twist 50 at checkout at hyperice.com. And release. Large enterprises pose unique challenges for SaaS startups. Unlock customers with unique needs for private and single-tenant hosting without the toil of DIY with release delivery. Get your first month free at release.com slash twist. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.

It's been a while, but we have to touch on all the stuff happening in the entertainment and technology and streaming space. So with me again, back on the program, Lon Harris. you're doing, brother. Been a minute. Pretty good. How about you? Yeah, it's been a little while. Well, it's a little crazy right now in my world. You know, both podcasts doing really well. All in has become a bit of a phenomenon, you know, like this podcast is, you know, self-contained. It's about startups. It's, you know, very narrow niche thing. I've never had a podcast that was about essentially everything, you know. It's a little more wider.

and it's strange. It's gotten so popular that it's crossed over in a pop culture a bit, you know? So, yeah. Certainly, you know, I think the,

as the all in podcast is becoming more popular and, you know, the, the, the, the, you guys on it are touching into so many different areas and feels making,

making news besides just doing the podcast that I think one drives the other. It's now becoming a little bit like that. So, yes, like Sacks, going to be an Elon or having Ron DeSantis on Twitter spaces. Exactly.

I mean, that was the exact example I was thinking of is like, you know, guys with the all-in podcast are making real news headlines, you know? Yeah. Beyond tech. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm doing a reality show. So I was meeting with one of the major streamers and one of the networks in the past week. So I'm going to take a shot at doing a reality show again.

around my, you know, early stage investing. I had done a show with NBC that never got on air. As the person who I was in partnership with turned out to be a monster. I'll leave it at that. You've got a weird industry over there. Well, it's very strange because in Hollywood, like, literally year one of going out and meeting everybody, this person was a god. And the next year, this person was a pariah and rightfully so.

So, you know, like, but I was like, wait a second. When did that happen? You guys were just literally, you know, you go to these, this is back in the in-person meeting days for reality shows. You know, we go into a major network. We go into a major studio. You know, back then, I guess there were television production companies that, you know, would somehow be involved. I mean, that is still, yeah. Yeah, you go in and they would line up 15 people for this person to come out and be greeted.

And it wasn't just the people in the studio. it would be the presidents of the wider, larger conglomerate, you know, the ATN or whatever of the world. There is a... The Waystar CEO would come out. Logan Roy would be there. There's a notable cult documentary about this person before the scandals. And one person asked another, they're talking about him and they said, how much power does this person have in Hollywood? And the other person answers, all of it.

Wow. They were the most powerful person in Hollywood at one point. For a minute, yeah, for like a 10-year period, they had their hands in artistic films and the top reality TV shows and, and, and, and, and, and. So, it's very interesting. But then, of course, the pilot comes out great. I'm like, okay, I'm learning about this stuff. And then it was like, anything this person has ever touched is now so toxic, burn it to the ground, can never reference it again. his name shall not be spoken.

And so, but anyway, I'm back on the horse. I got a great partner. I would talk about that. But, you know, one of the legendary. It was always a good idea. Like, to me, the concept was always like what what Gordon Ramsey kind of does. Yes. The kitchen nightmare style of bringing the personality and the expertise and the experience

and then, you know, helping other people who are maybe coming in, you know, more aspiring, you know, coming in from the other. side. That is the that is the analogy that comes up pretty frequently. And then this show will have a little bit of a, yeah, how do I say it? Well, anyway, I don't want to tip my cards too much. But yes, it's basically around me, angel investing in companies, me, you know, investing. So I'm getting my own. But everything was interesting was when we had the call yesterday, I was like doing the debrief.

And I was like, well, how does the rider strike impact all of this? and it was like, well, that actually is in our favor in some ways, because if this is extended, reality TV got its big boost the last time there was a writer strike. But now I understand. It's a little bit qual. I think the trope that is wrong, people tend to be like, the explosion of reality TV was the last writer's strike. That's not really true.

Reality TV already was going strong. This kind of like expanded, you know, like it. It got reality TV got a boost out of it. But it was like American Idol was already popular. Like people already like reality shows. It just, you got a real flood of them in 0708 because, you know, production took a pause for six months or whatever. Yeah. And so let's educate the audience on what's happening with this writer's strike because it seemed like this was something that was coming.

You know, there's a deal. Yeah. They had. And I don't know if it was a 10-year deal or whatever it was. but it was a long deal. It's been a while since this has been a strike. Essentially, right, the 2007, 2008 strike kind of codified a lot of the rules that have been in place ever since.

And I mean, if you think about how much has changed since then in 2007, 2008, you know, Netflix had just introduced Start what, you know, watch now like that. It was a brand new service. YouTube was this very new Wild West frontier. They're, you know, Hulu, I think was 2008. So we're talking about a very, very different landscape. And we haven't figured out things like residuals and credits and all these little rules that really allow writers to make writing into a career.

And I think that's what I think the simple, the simple of, the most simplistic version is writers need to make more, which is true. But the real issue is what is compensated? I'm just curious, like somebody who writes on a show. What do they make? They make $1,000 a day. They make $25,000 an episode, a project. How does it work?

It used to be, if you thought about like the old days, shows ran longer. And if you got a regular writing gig on a TV show, that was functionally your job. David Simon talks about this. There's a great video of the wire creator David Simon where he'd be like, you get your show. You work on your show for 30 weeks out of the year and then you're off for 20 weeks. but you made enough on that 30 weeks a year to live for the whole year. And that's how you have a full-time job as a writer. And you're a writer on that whole process.

You're writing the show and then you're following the show through the production process. You're around. You're consulting. You follow the post-production process. You learn how shows are made. And that's how you become a David Simon, where you can be a showrunner. You can take the next show and shepherd it through the whole process. What the streamers came along and did, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, all these others.

They've innovated in a way. They figured out we don't need 30 weeks of a writer's time, a full 20-plus episode season. They're not all making law and order. Sometimes they're making six-episode shows, eight-episode shows, shorter. They don't need writers for as much time. So what's happening is- These would be in some cases like the prestige shows, the White Lotus or whatever. Exactly.

A six-episode, a severance, a succession, you know, those seasons are much short. It doesn't take a writer a whole year if they're working on succession. The writer's room for succession might be two months. And then they banged out the 10 episode season and you're presumably onto the next gig. But it's much, much harder, if not impossible, to build a full-time writing career out of the, you're now a freelancer. You're just the next gig, the next gig, the next gig, the next gig. You constantly have to find the next gig.

And what we're also finding is that we're not training the next generation of shit. showrunners and headwriters and producers. We're not, we're not, it's not a landscape that's conducive to the next Ryan Murphy, the next Shonda Rhymes. We're finding gig workers who then come in, do a show or two and then have to go back to Ohio because there's out of jobs.

Capitalism at work. The streamers are more like startups. They move faster. They're nimbleer. They found a new format that works better, which is prestige TV, shorter, higher quality, whatever, six episode,

10 episodes. Queen's Gambit, they only need people for two months. So they're like, well, we're capitalists. We're only going to hire people for two months. They didn't raise their salaries for those two months. I assume they wanted to capture, I guess, those profits. In some cases, people are making a little bit more relative to the amount of time they're putting in.

But overall, when you consider how much writers are making in the aggregate, even though the writing rates haven't gone down, writers are working for a lot, time, it's a lot fewer jobs to put together. So it's becoming harder to build a career, even though the rates themselves have not dipped dramatically. That's what can be deceiving when you see how much writers are getting paid. It doesn't drop off a cliff. It just stays sort of flat.

But there's more people coming to Hollywood and writing all the time. So that's being spread out over a lot more people. So there's competition. There's more competition for fewer jobs. The jobs are shorter time. So a lot of people just can't put together a full career as a writer. Even if you could find a gig here, a gig there, there's a lot more people in that space where it's like, I wrote for this show last year and I wrote for this show in January,

but now I don't have a job. And this is, I think, kind of one of the misconceptions about Hollywood. You think everybody's out there like living in a $10 million house. The truth is that era when people were getting rich was based upon the profit sharing, that residuals gave people and people would get this nice 10K check or 20K check if their show got you know, into reruns or something. And you build up two or three shows in a lifetime. And now you're making 100,000 a year, 50,000 a year on residuals. And you're making $60,000 a year on new work. You know, you got a six, there were a lot of writers in Hollywood that could hit six figures

a year, correct? Yes. And exactly what you said. The idea was once you got that gig, once you got that plum gig, that network TV writer. Like, if I finally get on, after years of toiling away, I land a job at Abbott Elementary. I'm in the Abbott Elementary Riders roof. That's it. I've made it. That show's going to go to syndication. Once the show goes to syndication, I'm getting passive income every year from residuals.

And what's happening now with the streamers is there's fewer of those jobs. And even if you get to 50 Netflix episodes, 80 Netflix episodes, well, like, what does that mean? The syndication rules don't apply. They're not transparent about how many people are watching every show. And so it's a lot harder for people to chase down compensation, even when a show they worked on was considered a hit. Listen, I work with super early stage companies at launch, like literally year zero. They haven't even incorporated yet. And then we hit the Series A.

People have thousands of dollars in MRR. And maybe they've only raised a couple of hundred thousand before that Series A. And they don't have their insurance set up. And in fact, we recently had a great startup that didn't have D&O, and we had to really stop everything because they were having board meetings. They were making massive decisions. There were legal issues. And they didn't have the basic D&O insurance that protects directors and officers.

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That's E-M-B-R-O-K-E-R dot com slash twist and use the code twist for 10% off. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. Yeah, so it's very interesting because it does not seem like this is the lion's share of the cost of making a show. Yeah. This seems like it's a small percentage. Now, I don't know what percentage the writers are of the overall production of a show, but I do know how much shows cost to produce. They cost 500 an episode to $3 million an episode. We've talked about this forever on the show.

And then some of the prestige ones can even be, you know, five or 10 million an episode. We've seen like the Game of Thrones. Right. When you start talking about Wheel of Time or Game of Threat, right, I've got to build sets in Northern Ireland or whatever. It could be 10. I mean, I think we've even heard like Lord of the Rings was, you know, 30 million an episode or whatever. So, you know, it starts to get into. Yeah, some of those fantasy shows, it starts to get into like a hundred million for a 10 episode season and stuff like that, which is those are.

But if we just go to a million, if you just go to a million an episode, you know, you blend it all out. And it's a 10 episode. There's 10 million dollars. What could the writer cost a million dollars? of that, 500,000 of it. I don't think they get some... Yeah, not even a million. Probably has 5% or 10%.

Yeah. I think we're talking about precedent. It's in addition to the money itself, I think the concern is they don't want to give in too much because, well, then SAG comes with their handout. You know, like, you set one precedent and then the rest of the streaming era

is just people asking for more and they have to make these, read figure these deals. I think there's kind of a don't, you know, like don't give too much up front so that we don't set those kinds of expectations. See, I think this is, you know, coming to it. Netflix.

The understanding in the industry that I've heard, I don't, there's not, this is mostly rumor. But what people are saying is that it's really Netflix that's the whole that because they have the most to lose. All of their shows are streaming. They're really the most committed to this mini room, churn things out quickly, make six episodes as a test. They don't want to have.

to commit to hiring every Hollywood writer like on a full-time basis and paying them all benefits like that. They're thinking long term, like 20 years from now, we're going to really resent being in that position. Well, this is part of the problem with the dynamic of a union. And those that I'm not making a judgment on pro-union or not union, but there are dynamics to each of these things. And it's not a free market right now. So you don't have, you know, say Disney or Fox or NBC or somebody taking a different position than Netflix because there's collective bargaining going on here. You're not having the free market dynamics. And if you look at the free market dynamics that happened between Uber, DoorDash, Lyft, Amazon, and then, you know,

people who needed workers like Starbucks or the Apple store. What we saw over time was, Uber wanted those drivers so much and DoorDash wanted those drivers so much that they put pressure on Apple Starbucks, Target at Walmart to raise their offering and then the flexibility that they offered then put Starbucks in a tough position because Starbucks was like,

we need you to work like this like onerous 6am to 11 a.m. Then we don't want you for four hours. Then we do want you to work the rush at night, whatever it was. And the market, you know, basically now, look at service jobs, we have had a massive escalation in this country of how much service workers get paid. It's up in the 30s now in major cities. And the minimum wage went to 15 in major cities. Now, we could debate if that's a livable lifestyle, whatever. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's very

hard because of the lack of transparency here, I think, is a huge issue, especially when you're talking about individuals being able to act on their own leverage. We even saw Seth Rogan a few weeks ago had the, he would at the red carpet for Platonic, his new Apple TV Plus show, he said, even he super producer movie star Seth Rogan, he has no idea how his stuff is doing on streaming platforms. It comes out. They tell him, hey, Seth Rogan, we like the show. It did great. And he's like, okay. But they don't, he doesn't get numbers. He, this is a guy who used to get, you know, he's a producer. He would get dated. Here's exactly. Here's the theaters where sausage party did best. Here's the exact age demo and breakdown.

And here's you went to see it Friday night versus Saturday morning. This is a strategy to, by the way, just so you know, like being a corporate free market monster myself, I can tell you the strategy from the inside, which is if you obscureify the data and then you can, you know, not give people, you have a leg up in the negotiation. Whereas with Uber drivers or DoorDash drivers. Apple can tell them like, look that show did okay. Right. Apple and DoorDash drivers, they know exactly. how much the ride was, you know, and there's transparency. Oh, you know, this DoorDash was 30 bucks.

They can see the receipt. You know, and they're looking at all of those things versus each other. There are apps that tell them, hey, take this ride, do this DoorDash, do Postmates, do Uber Eats, do whatever, Grubhub. There are apps that are telling them which rides are the most profitable, right? So that transparency makes for a more efficient market. I think what Netflix and these folks should do, everybody who's involved in this, is if it was a truly free market

and being the free market monster I am and capitalist, I would look at this and I'd say, you know what the power move here is? I think the studio should break ranks. I think they should break ranks. And what I would do is I'd say, you know what?

We have two ways for you to work. Here's the gig offer and here's the full-time offer. And I would take a Toho Studios approach to this. I don't know if this is legal right now, but Toho Studios, as you and I know, having both read Akira Kursawa's biography, something like an autobiography. I think you read that, yeah?

Something like an autobiography? I haven't. I have not. Oh, well, there's your tip. I've got to read something like an autobiography. It talks about how Toho Studios, you know, everybody worked full time. And then they would go to a mountain retreat,

an onsen in Japan, and like a spa kind of place, and they would write. They'd have the actors in the room. They'd have the director, cinematographers, come in. They would, you know, workshop stuff. They would start building scenes.

But they were all full time. And they would do this three times a year. They would write to a three, screenplays and then they would pick the best ones. And so to Shura Mufune, Akura Kurosawa, the lighting person, the sound person, they almost got into a rhythm together, right? This is what Netflix should do. They should just go and say, you know what, these are the top 20 most consistent people.

We're going to pay them 75 grand a year plus this bonus program, plus these raises, plus these benefits. And if you are the writer and you want to get paid more but work more like a gig worker, two months on, three months off, fight for your next gig, get it, don't get it, whatever. And, you know, be a freelancer fine. But man, I would just come in and I'd buy the top 50 riders and I'd have them come to an office every day. I would give them lunch. I'd treat them great and make a campus where they felt like, man, I come here and I'm just creatively fulfilled and I feel safe.

Like I get rent every month taking care of. I've got my, you know, my mortgage is like, you know, I have some amount of security. Yeah. We have practical evidence that this is the right approach. There's a show on Netflix right now called The Night Agent. I don't know if you've seen it. I've heard of it, yeah. It's about an FBI agent.

He works overnight in the White House answering, it's like emergency phone, and then he gets tipped off to a mole. There's a mole in the White House, and he's the earlier. So anyway, it was created by this guy, Sean Ryan, who the Sean Ryan did the shield.

The shield, right. Burn Notice, I think he worked on a, he's worked on a few big popular franchise shows. So this guy, he created this one. And he came in and he said, I don't want to do the usual Netflix mini room thing. I'm sick of it. I want an old school writer's room. So he brought in a bunch of young writers. They followed it. They stayed with him the whole time. They wrote the show together. They came to the set.

He showed them how to be a showrunner. He brought them into the editing room. That show is now, it's like the number six most popular Netflix show of all time. Like it's a huge juggernaut. They're bringing it back for multiple seasons. It's, that's how to do it. We know how to make a TV show that people like. It's compelling. And we know how to get writers to build these careers. We sort of stop because there's a more cost-effective way of doing it. Ryan or one of these major producers who makes all this money, right? Because they're the ones who really get the bank.

Why don't they just take their top five or ten people and say, listen, you're going to work here full-time for me. You're going to write spec scripts. We're going to work on stuff. We're going to punch something. I mean, and they become like a law firm or something. Yeah. That's Shonda Land, Sean DeRive's company. That's Ryan.

Ryan Murphy's got his two or three people that created, you know, Dommer with him and Glee with him and American crime story. So that is, there is, and I mean, Tyler Perry would obviously be like the biggest example of he's got his own studio in Atlanta with his own teams of people making shows. So that that is a model that I think is viable. You have to get to a. Scale.

Bridgeton, Gray's Anatomy level of success. Dick Wolf would be another example of a guy who's got, you know, the law and order, one Chicago guy, you know, David E. Kelly would have a team of people. But I guess if they do that, then they would be breaking all the WGA rules. And so they would get the, I mean, right now, yeah. You'd have to get people to break their union rules to go work full time. So I think just giving more options to people is how business is headed.

There are people who want to come to an office. There's people who want to be freelancers. People who want to set their own schedules. I think in this modern era, you got to give people an option of how they want to work. Listen, are you sore and tired? all day. You know, you're working really hard. You're probably working out. You're walking around. You're doing runs. Well, I have been using the HyperVolt 2 massage gun for weeks. It is amazing. And, you know, I started running again. I was reading this Peter Attila book about my health span.

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Get 50 bucks off an order of 150 or more with the code twist 50 at checkout. And just had to Hyperise.com and use that code twist 50 for $50 off your purchase of 150 or more. I think you have to have a more sustainable road to a professional TV and film writing career because that's a high skill job. Despite the idea of maybe we can have, you know, chat GPT do it or we can just pull young people out of, right out of film school and have them write the show. I mean, of course, writers are using it to brainstorm, right? Just like they read old scripts. Of course. Are people using it to knock around ideas to outline things?

I'm sure they are. I'm sure many, many people are. I'm sure it's already in use out there. Naturally, obviously, of course. I don't know how I've tried to use it. I don't know how useful it is, at least yet. Maybe one day. You know, new innovations are coming every day.

But for right now, I think it's... Whose dialogue do you look? Whose dialogue do you think is fantastic in a movie? I mean, we were talking about David Simon, I think it's hard to top the wire. David Chase, the guy who wrote Sopranos, Matt Weiner, who wrote Mad Men, Vince Gilligan and his crew did Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. So if you were to ask him, give me some dialogue from the Sopranos. But I mean, try it. It's still at the level of like a very precocious child.

Yes. Like if you asked a very precocious child, write me a TV scene, you wouldn't expect them to write you a scene that would actually be on television. If they could write you anything that was in screenplay format, you'd be like, oh my God, you're only seven years old. That's very impressive. I think that's where chat chiefity. Like, we're amazed that it can do it because it's software. Yeah. But it's not yet at the point where I would be like, this is a great scene. Put this on television. Like, it's not creative. It's not funny. It's just amazing that a robot. can do that at all, I think, is where we're... Yeah. I mean, and I think that's where, like, when you have ideas, you know, you could very quickly ask it, hey, make me a scene, a hypothetical dialogue around Tony Soprano, polar walnuts, you know, stealing Bitcoin. I think we wish... I think there's a wish that it would work that way. Like, you could break writing down into a factory assembly line and, like, I'm over here,

putting the final thing together, but you've got a robot over there banging out widgets, but That's not, it's, it, I do think it's going to be, yeah, I don't think it's how people creatively work, but I do think it's how people brainstorm. And so I think if you think about brainstorming, if you were going to brainstorm, you would watch old soprano sapo shows, you'd pull, you know, you might pull some scripts. And I mean, everybody, yeah, you make super cuts. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm sure it's, it's helpful in that level for a lot of people to just, what are the 20 places a scene like this could happen or what are. That's what I think the magic is. 30 characters who could pop up in here. Sure. I'm not. And if you,

so if you believe that, then the next thing is, do you believe, if you believe that, then the question becomes, do you believe a writer could be faster? And obviously, writers are faster because of things like word processors or final draft, I guess, as a standard. So how much faster could they be? I think they'll be 30% faster. Now, do you want to have the same cost structure? Do you want to save money?

Do you want to have seven writers? instead of 10, or do you want to still have the 10 writers and just make better content? And since this is such a de minimis... I think we're in very theoretical territory when we start saying chat GPT is going to make people significantly faster in writing, because I don't think the things that would make you faster at writing are not the things that chat GPT is going to... Example? Like a lot more brainstorming.

Just like we said, it's useful for brainstorming, but that brainstorming is not the time-consuming part of writing. The time-consuming part of writing is when you have your outline done and then you're sitting in front of a blank page and you're like, I have to create this world from scratch. I have to think about Tony Soprano as a person and figure out how he would express himself and move through the world. For right now, and I'm not a futurist, I can't see 30 years from now. Maybe computers will get very good at this. For right now, computers aren't very good at that. For right now, computers are very good at what are 30 possible locations a Soprano scene could take place in? And it could go, oh, the boardwalk in New Jersey or a ta.

So what it's going to be really good at is, I think this is the thing they're trying to stop. This is where I think the WGA strike is so fascinating to me, is that they're striking at the exact time that this stuff is getting 10% better a week, which means every two months, it's basically twice as good. And I think that's where. Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, I'm not. Absolutely. Like watching. Is it getting 10% better?

in the aggregate at everything it does a week, sure. Is it getting 10% more funny and creative every week? I haven't seen any change in that at all yet. Not one since it debuted to today. It's not any funnier. Yeah. So you, you know, let me just share something with you here. Hold on while we were talking.

I mean, is it getting better at taking the L set? Absolutely. No argument. It's getting a lot better at stuff. like that. I've seen it with my own two eyeballs. And I think it's getting better at conversation. Like when it first debuted versus today, it feels more organically like a real natural conversational

voice that you're talking to. Yeah. I agree with that. But I don't think it's getting a, it's not a better creative writer. I just made, I just made a thing here. I'll just read it to you. So I asked it to do a Bitcoin like Sopranos episode. And interior, Bada Bing, Tony, Tony, Paul, and Sylvia? I'm like, okay. Yeah, that's a good place to do it.

Okay. Tony, what's this I'm hearing about Pauly? Some kind of magic internet money? Polly. It's called Bitcoin, T? It's not exactly magic. More like mathematical. Sylvio.

Mathematical. What, are we back at school now? Paulie. Nah, still. It's like digital gas. It's like anonymous untraceable, like cash money online, but Tony, sounds like a scam to me. Paulie.

Some people say that, but look, it's been around more than 10 years now. They say it's worth a fortune. Sylvia, who's they? Pauli, the internet's still. So you're saying you can't, you can steal this, Bitcoin, and no one will know? Paul, well, in theory, yes, but it's not like robbing a bank tea. It's all code, computers hacks. You get the idea.

And so like, again, it's, it's impressive that it knows the Bada Bing. It knows these characters. It can do that Jersey Italian guy voice. It knows to call him tea. It knows he calls him tea. Yeah, that's wild. Like, it's a very impressive technological feat, no argument. But that's not a good Sopranos episode.

If you filmed that with those actors, you'd be like, what the hell is this? But what I look at it, what I see is like the ideas like, oh, magical internet money. Like, that's a funny place to kind of like fork and be like, Matt, yeah, we could workshop that, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess, but like, I don't know. It doesn't, it doesn't have a, it doesn't have a experience in the world. It doesn't have a soul. It doesn't have feelings. Those are the things you tap into when you're writing creatively.

Not all kinds of writing. When you're writing ad copy, maybe it's going to be great at that. You know, like, different kinds of writing are different. So I'm not saying this is true about that. The writers are asking that no training data will be put into AI and that AI will be bad for the writer's room. I think for Hollywood writers, there's two key things. One is we don't have to collaborate with AI. Like, we're not going to be asked to like, here's a script that AI turned out, you fix it.

And then I think the other thing, which is even a bigger one, is AI can't be the originator of copywritten material, which is like, we couldn't ask an AI, give me 50 pitches for a new Adam Sandler movie, take the one we like, and then just hire a writer to write that. I think everybody recognizes the danger there, which is that creative people would cease to own any of the ideas. Hollywood would studios would own every idea because they would churn them out

with computers and then they would just hire writers as gig workers to come and fix their computer pitches. Don't they do this a bit now when they say, we want a show that is X and they kind of do an RFP

for a request proposal. Don't the studios say, hey, we're looking for X, Y, and Z. Oh, sure. Sometimes. They definitely put out, they let people's managers know, like we want action comedy, we'd like it to, you know,

give me a, give me a Jason Momoa type character, give me a this type, you know, yeah, of course, of course. But they don't try to overreach and say, hey, we've got a new character. His name is Bames John and he's like Jason Warren. Because then it's who owns it, you know, like that. And that's for money. As far as money and deals go, who owns the idea is such a huge. Like, that's what made Shonda Rhyme, Shonda Rhymes, is that a lot of people worked on Grey's Anatomy, but she came up with Graz Anatomy.

That's the thing. And if a computer came up with Graz Anatomy, then nobody makes that Shonda Rimes money. How does this end? What do you think is going to happen here? Because this seems to me to be the worst possible time. It's bad. To be negotiating with the studios, because the studios have overspent, and they're trying to make less content, right? the streaming services are losing money.

We're going into a recession or we've had this like 18 month period where their stocks have been crushed. Disney's cutting costs. This is the absolute worst time to negotiate. Well, yes and no. I mean, for everything you're saying, it's true. The bottom has fallen out from the streaming marketplace. Digital ad market is crashing terribly.

These companies are losing money going out of business. AMC's in desperate straits. Got it. So yeah, the timing's not great. But on the other hand, they do have a lot of leverage right now. All of these studios recently came out with these huge new platforms that they've marketed for years. And they've made a lot of promises to their audience. I mean, the new HBO Max Max is literally came out yesterday.

So it is a very visible time to be like, oh, yeah, well, if you want content for all your shiny new platforms, you need to come make better deals with us. So, I mean, there's never. What are the writers want? Do the writers want full-time work or do the writers want, like, do the writers want security or do they want flexibility if you have to pick one? I think it's more about security. I think it's more about a lot of people are looking that there are fewer and fewer reliable full-time jobs that you can build a life off of, that you can build a career off of. If you're 22, you can come in and work a bunch of mini rooms and make a bunch of money and be fine. But people who want to have a house and a family based on being a TV writer.

Got it. It's becoming almost impossible to do that. And three or four years ago was the boom time. Three or four years ago was the boom time. People were just sweeping the money. I heard they couldn't get riders. They were adding riders like crazy. So it's a boom bus cycle.

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Release.com. What a great domain. up to $10,000 in value at release.com slash twist. Here's, uh, all right. Well, let me just see. You said pitches weren't going to work. So here we go. We'll pull this up on the screen here.

I didn't say they weren't going to work. I said, right now. Let's see, let's see what happens here. We'll pull it up on the screen. We'll make it two times bigger. Oh, well, they did Adam Sandler movie pitch. Here's what Chat GPD thinks Adam Sandler movies. Hollywood Handyman.

This is one of the three picture deals we're doing with Adam Sandler. Sandra plays a bumbling handyman to the, stars in Hollywood, accidentally messing up their homes, but always solving the problem in an uninspected and hilarious way, has to navigate the delicate egos of A-list clientele. Hmm. Unorthodox methods. There's something there. I like Hollywood handyman.

Surf's down. Listen, could a clever writer turn that into a movie? Sure. I mean, I think that's why we're having this. That's why this is such an important debate, because. In terms of a log line, yeah, chat GPT could come up with a logline. What's a log line? The hard part is execute.

Basically, a logline is a one-sentence description of your project. So, like, Adam Sandler plays a bumbling handyman to the stars in Hollywood. That would be the log line for that. Here we go. Second one. That's the sort of thing that ideas like that are relatively cheap. It's the execution that's everything. Surf's down.

Serfs down. Sandler is a retired professional surfer who must come back for one more competition to save his old beach hangout from being bought by a ruthless corporation. This is great. I will say, I will say a fun thing you could do there was you'd obviously cast like a very good looking hunky guy to be like young Sandler. Like make that the joke that you get like this, this Jacob and Lorty 23 year old like huge muscular guy. 90s guy just killing it. And now Sandler is Sandler. And now he's this.

Shlub who's Adam Sandler and he's got to get back to you. Right. And you get this like chubby guy on a board doing sick moves and beating all the... Yeah, she did. Chatty-T didn't come up with that part. I thought of that. Yes. Along the way, he must face his fear of big waves resulting from a past traumatic event.

Wow. So yes, the thing that took him out of competition was a big wave. He got dragged under. He almost drowned. He got saved by a dolphin. And now he's got to do a huge one. The help is old crew. But the newcomer kid.

The dolphin is the funny part. And you just added that. That's true. That's true. I'm punching it up. Me and Chatchie Peece. You're punching it up. They rekindled the spirit of surfing the community and take the corporate on the corporate.

This is kind of like the corporate giants in, you know, local hero, one of my favorite films. The Mark Knopfler soundtrack, you know. That's the other. It's a trope. We're talking about this very practically. But on a conceptual level, it's the same thing. Like, writers are saying, this is not original. Like, the robot didn't think of that story.

It's just cribbing from. Billions of other stories written by years and years of other writers. It's just taking tropes from old school. Yeah, but that's what happened to tell you. When people come in and say, hey, this is Blade Runner meets the Goonies. And you're like, okay. But they took that, they fuse those ideas together themselves creatively into something new. Museum misadventures.

Here we go. This one is interesting. This one's completely stolen. Museum misadventures. Sand their phase a disgruntled night at the museum. Wait a second. This is a night at the museum. That's a Ben Stiller movie.

Wait a second. Chad GPT is going to get super plagiarism. We figured it out. A lot and I figured it out. Listen. This is my message to the streamers. General Zazlov, Bob Iggy, all of my people there. The writers are crushing it right now.

They're crushing it. Man, that shows a session? I was like, okay, four seasons, whatever. And, you know, and then obviously, if you, listen, if you haven't watched it, you know, just fast forward 10 minutes here, we'll just keep it to under 10.

The absence, we're going to go for 100 minutes like we do with tar. Listen. No, but I mean, they kill Logan Roy in the third episode, and you're like, well, there's the show. And I'm like, wait a second, but the show is called secession. So, maybe we'll find out who actually, you know, you know, it's in the name.

We're going to find out who gets to run this company. down to it now. We're going to get our answer this week. And literally every week, we're sitting here going, oh, my God, that was the best episode ever. That was the best episode ever. No, that was the best episode ever. That was the best performance ever.

That was the best line ever. This thing is going to go down as a top 10 show in HBO's history, yeah? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They're absolutely killing it this final season. The performances are just, you know, like, because the Roy kids, Brian Cox, obviously, they're getting a ton of praise, deservedly so. Kieran Colkin's been amazing this year.

your Sarah Snook's been so good. But the one who really stood out to me, Alexander Scarscar as Lucas Mattson is amazing. And like there's so many levels to it of like he's always playing games with people, but there is this kind of weird sincerity, this kind of creepy oddball eccentric. A lot of icebergersy, quirky. He's doing so much.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can see like it's a very original like he's his own guy. It doesn't feel like he's doing. an impersonation, but it does, it feels like he's touching on so many different real people. There's a little Daniel actual Spotify. They kind of, exactly. The Spotify, you know, because it's from a Nordic country, they kind of took that.

And then they kind of took like a little bit of a burning man and wacky culture. He's a little bit. He's got a little Jack Dorsey. It's a little bit. It's a lot of different beats. It doesn't feel like he's playing one person, but it feels like this is a guy that I could see fitting. into the tech business in 2023. Like, I understand

who Lucas Mattson is. Yes. Really good. He's really good. And they nail Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone, but really Rupert, you know, with Logan Roy. Yeah. And then with the kids, you know, especially this season. Yeah. Yeah. And with the kids, you don't, you know, you don't know James Murdoch. I do. I've met him a bunch

times. Like, um, I don't know. I don't think that the kids are total screwups. Um, they're very smart, but they also just happened to have this iconic dad who has done things that are cutthroat and I mean that I don't know who his brother who plays his brother on the show James Cromwell James Cromwell whoa James Cromwell comes in and just you know like dunks it on the entire cast and then here in Cawkin comes in and gives the heartfelt of the you know like is my dad in there can we get him out you're like yeah that's what happens when your dad dies you get crushed right it's the

You can't believe that that's everybody's dad dying. And then you have a lunatic method actor. Jeremy Strong. Jeremy Strong comes in. And he's like, you know what? Great job. Now I'm going to come in and I am going to say, my God, I hope I have that monster inside of me. Because capitalism and getting things done and the strong man in the world is an important role in the world.

He does this whole Anne Rand thing. And I'm like, oh, my Lord, what have we just witnessed? Like, they just summed up. And those three eulogies, they summed up. And I don't mean to leave Shiv out of it, but she was just heartbroken and crestfallen and, you know, just still hasn't reconciled what it means to be a woman in this world with her dad, right? And just that was pretty great too. But it was fit a whole woman in his head with the life. Which is incredible.

Well, I mean, and so now in four eulogies, what have we seen the entire range of humanity in the 21st century? So hard to do, too, because the whole show, we've known this is coming and it's been building up to it. It's still like sort of surprises in that way. And it tied it so beautifully with the election night episode. You know, they've all spent this whole show dreaming of becoming their dad, trying to become their dad, wanting to replace their dad. And then here's this moment of, you know, truth where it's like, well, here's what your dad would have done. Here's the kind of person he really was. And they're facing that moment.

And, you know, do they have the guts to really go through with it? only Roman was really ready to go through that door. The others were like, oh, I don't know. He's kind of a bad guy. He's kind of white supremacist. Yeah, and Roman was like, doesn't matter. Who cares who is president? This is what's good for us.

This is the play. And it plays. It's going to be ratings. And we got him in our pocket. He's willing to play ball. The other guy doesn't play ball. Exactly what he said. Like, what would dad have done?

That's what dad would have done. Yeah. Yeah. So what a show. So anyway, my message to the writers. The one other one I wanted to mention, because it's relatively new still. Are you watching Silo on Apple TV Plus? You know, it literally just came up because one of the ways...

Highly recommends Silo. Well, one of the ways I determine what is a good show to watch is I go Rotten Tomatoes, a Metacritic. And then I look at what trends on, like the dark web, like on Bitnet and not Bitnet. That's the precursor of the internet. BitTor. BitTor. And, you know, if you look at the BitTor at 100, which is, I literally used, because I pay for everything. I don't need to steal anything, but I get the BitTor on 100.

Just to see what people are watching. Globally downloading. And Silo was like three or four of the top ten. And I'm like, well, this must be good. So I'm going to, but it's a sci-fi, so I have to wait for my wife. That's my deal with my wife. Yeah, it's like, noori sci-fi. They all live in this very elaborate underground bunker.

Right. And they don't know, you know, something happened. The environment's toxic. They can't leave the bunker, but then it becomes like investigating the nature. Who built the bunker and what really happened outside? And why can't we go out? Let's go. Love it.

Yeah. Great, great. Got a little bit of lost in there, a little bit of lost. Like we're going to reveal what happened kind of situation. A little bit of loss, a little bit of severance where it's got, it's a sci-fi mystery, you know, and it just keeps getting weirder. And yeah, like Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins. It's really good.

I think be generous to the writers and lock them down. This is my free market. months for advice. I think the unions are blowing it here. The unions should go for full-time employment. That's what they should be leveraging here, is they should have two paths. Here's the freelance path. Here's the full-time writer path. And try to create options for people. This is what I've learned in business. Running inside.com, running the investment firm, investing in 300 companies. I used to think like, okay, it can only be one way, you know, because it had only been one way. And then what you realize is after the pandemic, well, it can be a couple different ways.

And if you make it so people get to choose, then they have agency. And when people have agency, then they take more responsibility and they stop acting like worker bees and they start acting a little bit more like owners. And the agency here would be, I can be a full-time writer. I can sign a two-year deal. And maybe they're two-year deals. I'm going to go full-time for Netflix for two years at this rate. And my pay is going to be spread out here. And I have, and I have, and I, and I have to work on whatever they tell me to work on for 40 hours a week. Or I'm over 75K and it's a staff position and I, you know, I'm expected to put it in 50, 60 hours a week, whatever it is. This is what the writers are sort of asking for.

It is not necessarily, you know, a pathway to making this a reasonable job that you could really work. I think the exact deal you're talking about if you went to a lot of these striking writers and said, here's what we're offering. I think they would take it. I think that the thing that people are upset with right now is that it's not this, a writing career in Hollywood is not very sustainable until you get to that very, very top tier where you're Vince Gilligan. And then whoever cracks, this is my advice to the other side, Zazlov, Iger, Reid Hastings. One of you jump the fence. One of you break ranks. And you say, here's our proposal.

we don't need to negotiate as a group. We're offering the full-time employment option. And then whatever you guys work out, you can work out in your own time. Whatever the freelance thing is, have at it. We'll agree with whatever you all come to terms with. But we're going to hire 100 full-time writers, and we want to have these folks,

and we're giving them Disney, Netflix stock. We're going to give you stock options. And if your show is great, we're going to give you bigger bonuses. So if you come up with silo and you work on silo and it hits these benchmarks you get more stock in Disney, in Netflix, which would then put them on the level. They would align these folks, the creatives, with the CEO of the company.

That's what you want. That's what Apple has. That's what Google has. That's what Facebook has. That's what we do in Silicon Valley. Take a page from Silicon Valley. Netflix doesn't have to take a page from this. They need only break ranks from the WGA and the, whatever the group.

They're the ones who are holding. They are. The AM, yeah. A.M. P-T-T-P. PTP, yeah. The American motion picture and television producers. What a terrible acronym. Anyway, the studios, the streamers, the studios should break ranks.

Trust me, this would be the best for everybody at the top. And you say, first 100 riders in, get the gigs. We're going to hire great riders and the race is on to get one of these 100 full-time seats. And then when we have overflow work, yeah, we're going to do freelancers and let people have. Because what you're proposing is, it's very much like old Hollywood, like the studio, like RKO would be hiring like a room full of writers and everybody. You, you're doing a wrestling picture. Go right. You know, like you were getting assignments.

And you know what? With chat GPT, you can catch up pretty quick because you have the chat GPT. And then this whole thing of like, oh, do chat CPT help me? It's like, who cares if it helps you? You're a full-time employee, write great stuff. If you write it fast, if you write slow, it doesn't matter. Just write great stuff. You still need, writers still need to have.

call it some sort of ownership in the things they're creating residuals. Again, that's how you build a longer. That's why I like stock options. Why would you want just residuals in one show when you could own Disney stock? Own the Disney stock. I mean, as long as you worked out, as long as you worked out some alternative like that, that also provides compensation, sure. And that gets short.

All right. Let's rip with through some other news here. We also have HBO Max. It's going to be called Max. No more. It's just Max now. Well, it's more than double. in size because it's got all the Discovery shows now.

I don't, I mean, I like shark stuff with my kids. I like nature documentaries. Yeah. So that's good for me. Literally, they, 35,000 hours of content in the new Macs, more than double what was on the old HBO Max. And it's, same price. And it's, you know, now it's got HGTV, Discovery, Food Network.

I may be down with some food network. Yeah. I'm down with some food network. So, like, right, if you want the complete diners dive-ins, drive-ins and dives, that's now on Mac. Yeah. And yeah, it's a, you know, pricing, pricing is the same. So, so there you go.

Commercial free tier remains $15.99 a month. Ad support tier, 10 bucks a month. They added a new tier. And they've got a $20 new tier. Yeah, with HD. So it's 4K. Max ultimate ad free. What does that mean?

It's, you can stream in 4K and they have that offline. So like you, just like Netflix, you could download a few episodes of a show. Oh, that's what I want. on the plane. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I like that. So that's the new $20 max plan. Great.

I love it. Great job. That works for me. I think, and I guess people are a little, I guess they're a little, some people are hand-wringing about HBO Max versus Max. Who cares? You get used to it.

There was a little saltiness in general. Like, they're doing some weird stuff in terms of how they credit. Like, they used to list credits by like, directors, writers, and all, you know, now they're just lumping all the credits in this, like, little box called creators. So, yeah, you can see here, like, the creators of Raging Bull include Peter Savage, Barton Scorsese, Paul Schrader who wrote it, Jake LaMotta, who it's about. Or, like, it's just a weird thing that writers are not, not super happy about.

Yeah, that seems unfair. That seems like a power move. That seems like what we call in the business a D move. Like, it's a D-Bade move. There's some powerplay there to Right, well, because now nobody, who directed it? Nobody. These people created it.

It's another attempt to like put all films, TV shows, YouTube videos, Twitch streams. It's all just content now. It's not, you know, like they don't differentiate it. So people are a little salty about that. And in general, it's not a great time to be David Zazlab in Hollywood. He's got a lot of negative buzz.

Oh, did you see him getting booed? He gave, uh, yeah, did you see this clip? I'll play the university, yeah. Yeah, we'll insert the clip right here. I have the honor to present David Zazloff for Boston University's honorary degree. He was at Boston University and the graduating class chanted pay your writers. So, right, I feel like that the launch comes at a bad time for them, but I don't think people are that upset about just the idea of discovery content teeming with HBO Max content. And I think that, you know, I think they're right in some ways that this is a more well-rounded

catalog now, whereas HBO Max before leaned in favor of prestige shows, stuff that appeals to people like me who love HBO kind of, that kind of peak TV content. This now has a ton more family stuff. It's got a ton more reality TV, unscripted documentary style shows. But if I click the HBO button, I'm in the HBO world. So just like when I'm in the Disney app, I click the Star Wars button or the Marvel button. I'm in that world. and I don't have to see the other stuff.

You can still find your HBO stuff. You can still find your Warner Brothers movies and your Harry Potter films and whatever. There's some HBO show that was at Cannes that they're saying it's like about a pop star or something, but it's kind of like the new Euphoria or something. Yeah. I think it was Hank Azarian in it or somebody?

Yes. Yes. Hank Azaria is in it, I believe. Cool. I love Han. Sam Levinson who created Euphoria. He's Barry Levinson, Rain Man director Barry Levinson's son.

He co-created it with the weekend. You know, the guy Blinding Lights and the R&B singer. They're saying it's got some shocking scenes in it. Shocking. It's very device, very controversial. The setup is the weekend plays this guy who's a club owner in L.A.

and also like a weird, like cult leader guru and this young pop star, Lily Rose Depp, Johnny Depp's daughter. Oh yeah. She plays this up and coming pop star who kind of falls into his web of influence and sort of he becomes like kind of this Spengali kind of force in her life controlling her.

Wait a second. Wasn't this like the Keisha, didn't the artist Keisha have somebody who was an abusive person? Dr. Luke, I believe, is that guy's name the producer? Yes. Yes. There are lots of weird power dynamic Hollywood music industry kinds of stories that I think this is playing off of. But it's, apparently the show is pretty sexually explicit and really dives into a lot of the

domination, submission kind of themes. And yeah, it's been very controversial so far. And Rolling Stone also published an expose about how it was kind of a wild out-of-control set and very chaotic. Well, that's what they said about euphoria, is that there was some uncomfortableness on the euphoria set as well. So I guess if you're pushing the envelope... These are rumors that have plagued Sam Levinson. Yeah. If you're pushing the envelope on some of this content, it's...

Yeah. Right. Interesting. I mean, Euphoria is terrifying. This terrifying as a parent. I admit. Yeah.

Well, I mean, just like kids doing. Yeah, and just kids doing like, really things. Kids shouldn't be doing. And you're like,

I guess some kids are doing things they shouldn't be doing. But this is really pushing the envelope. Spotify. It always, it always feels to me like that Larry Clark stuff. You remember like kids, that 90s movie kids and he did bully and a few others where it's like,

nobody's saying that they're, that this is not happening. at all. There are definitely kids like this, but it also kind of exists to be this sort of salacious, exploitative, like, make you afraid for the children. Yeah, it seems like it's a playbook of like, this is going to terrorize parents and it's going to create some, I guess, PR, whatever, or it could just be, yeah, Buzz, or it could just be artistically what they want to pursue, you know, in the way Scorsese wanted to pursue taxi driver. I guess it was, in some ways, people said the same thing about taxi driver. People said the same.

thing is about Pulp Fiction, which has essay in it. If you use it, I guess we should. Taxi driver got booed at Cannes for the violence. People were very disturbed by that, that final sequence where which is just everybody's, yeah. And that was black and white,

right? If I'm correct, and I think some of it is, yeah. I think you're right. I think it's black and white. So they kind of tried to obscureify it a bit. Yeah. Pretty interesting news in the podcasting space, which affects me. So I want to bring it up. Spotify reportedly developing bots to mimic your favorite hosts.

And so Bill Simmons, the ringer, Spotify purchased it for over 200 million, I understand. And he has a new show with Derek Thompson, who's kind of a cool podcast host and thinker. And here's a clip for Bill discussing this with the change. I'm glad you brought this up because I don't think I'm, I don't think Spotify is going to get mad at me for this. Like, we're developing that stuff.

and there is going to be a way to use my voice for the ads. You have to obviously give the approval for the voice, but it opens up from an advertising standpoint all these different great possibilities for you could have localized. Let's say we did a thing with like a ticket, ticket resale or something like that. You could geo-target that for each city. The more interesting thing for me with that is, could you take my podcast, like me and House and Jacoby talking about game two

Lakers Nuggets, which will be right. before this part of the podcast. Could they take that and make AI Spanish version of it? Could they put it in French? Could the AI people, could they take the translations and just quickly take our voices and just make a podcast in 35 languages? And the answer to that is yes.

We've been pitched on it by tons of startups already. So this podcast could be in 10 languages, but they would take our voices on. But here's my chief concern would be what happens when an advertiser advertiser contacts the ringer and says, hey, in this one episode, your host says this about our company. We don't, we don't like that. We find that offensive. Can you go and edit that and make him say something else? Yes. If you've already signed off and said the ringer's allowed to edit my

voice with AI, what's stopping them from putting words in my mouth? Yeah, this has got to be against the rules and the contracts. Luckily, I own. That's a, yeah, that's a big podcast. That's a big one. Right. You, you, in your situation that you don't have a producer who would come in and take the rate. But if I, if I'm on a ringer show, I don't own that show. There's an opportunity for me, which is if I misspoke and I said, oh, they have a billion subscribers and it was really like, oh, they have a million subscribers. In post-production of my team came to me and said, hey, we're just going to have the AI have you say millions, millions, she said billions by accident and fix it. Great. I would be okay with that. But yes. What's so fascinating about these things is it's always both sides of the

We can always think of a scenario where like, oh, this would be super helpful. Like, yeah, I totally get like, Bill Simmons could put his podcast all around the world and it's his voice and it sounds like him and people get to know him instead of a guest toast or a translator. I want to be big in Japan. Of course. Everybody understands the immediate appeal of an idea like that. But then there's, but then there's the flip side of like, but then what's stopping, you know,

him from going to somebody else's show and saying, you know what? I think he's unfair to fast 10. And I'm going to have his review be a little bit warmer. It's funny, too, because, like, I was thinking about the ad reads, and I was thinking, gosh, you know, like, one of the, you know, chores of a podcaster's life, you know, you have to do your chores in life is Bill Simmons reads a lot of ads. And Bill Simmons has to read a lot of ads because he's a figurehead. He will read ads for other shows in the network. And I'm sure that's kind of take a couple hours a week for him. And I bet you there's more advertisers who want to do custom things.

So I could do an ad for, you know, whatever Toyota. But if it was, like he said, if it's in New York, I could say and call, you know, Jimmy at, you know, Brooklyn Toyota and number 444-55-1-2-1-2 and be like, wow, Jimmy got a custom ad and they'll pay an extra 10% for that. That would be dope. And then if he didn't have to read it. Like when you used to listen to Howard, like, Howard Stern and every time they'd have a celebrity come in, they'd have them record like a bug like for the radio station. Like, you wouldn't have to have people come in and do that. You could just call their people and be like, hey, can we use Snoop Dog's voice to say, you're listening to KLSX?

Yes. Sure. You know, like, you don't need to bother these people. And like even Ryan Reynolds helps us out sometimes for honest trailers. Like, he's recorded, you know, as Deadpool. He'll do voiceover for us. He's such a nice guy. He's really great at helping us out.

Yeah, yeah. We wouldn't have to bother Ryan Reynolds the person anymore to like sneak off into the corner and record some Deadpool audio on your phone for us, he could just say, yeah, here's a, here's an AI deadpool. You can have him say whatever you want. I mean, if, I mean, can you imagine if, like, I could speak in Arabic and people could listen to the show in the UAE. I just got back from Dubai and the UAE and like, wow. I mean, that tech already exist. You could already basically make a, make a celebrity say whatever you want. Like, I've heard, oh, no, people are doing it with me already.

Yeah, people are having these, I mean, there was somebody who created an all-end thing where you could take any pop culture song, you know, like a hip-hop song and then have us sing it. Sure. And like, one of them has like the N-word in and I'm like, oh, guys, this is not like. No, it's, please. I think one thing, like, that sounded so scary, but I think that AI in some ways it's become so big that I feel like there is more awareness than I expected. Like, I feel like people are already a little more cynical than not, than maybe they would have been about like, people assume all of this stuff is fake.

Yeah. No, it's not Joe. It's so clear. Yeah. Like, there was that kid in Bowes Afraid. Did you see this? The young Joaquin Phoenix. They cast an actor to play teenage walking Phoenix in Bo's afraid.

A real young man. But people assume that it's a deep fake like they, because he looks a lot like young walking Phoenix. And so this kid did interviews where he's like, no, I'm real. I'm not an AI cartoon of Joaquin Phoenix's D. face, I'm a real young man. So, yeah, people are assuming things are AI that aren't even AI. Yeah, I think that's like people

are adapting to this. And so that is a smart move, is like, it's an adaptation. As we wrap here, I've been seeing these commercials for the Flash and I'm kind of getting hyped up to see it with my kids. It's going to be the best DC film in a while. It's gotten a lot of very

you know, it was a real trouble production. Everybody, Ezra Miller has been getting negative headlines. And they're kind of a problematic person. And the production was a very elongated, trouble production. So the fact that it's not a disaster is like kind of a minor miracle anyway. But no, the buzz has been, the buzz has been pretty strong. Yeah, people are.

I mean, people saw it this week. I think they let some fans see it and the fans are losing their minds. Cinema con was where it debuted and it got a lot of positive buzz. and now more fans have seen it. And yeah, the reviews have all been strong. People are, I think people are really hyped to get Michael Keaton back as Batman. I think that's a, that's a touchstone movie for a lot of people around my age. Yeah, no, it's going to be great.

That 89 Batman, yeah. Well, I mean, it's the multiverse just lets you play and as we've seen. And then this next Marvel volley of, is it going to be good? What do you think? Your expectations? The next Marvel phase, is it going to be good or not? Oh, okay, yeah, like Kang Dynasty, everything. Yeah.

They got a lot to figure out. I really loved Guardians three, the new one that's out right now. It's good. Yeah. I really like that one. I feel like they've been kind of an off. I haven't, I haven't been as into the Marvel movies lately. It's starting to get a little sort of generic and tropey and everything is filmed in that.

Yeah, I feel. Yeah, I feel repetitive. And they're shooting everything in that volume, that one green screen room they've got. Yeah, that's not good. Kind of a samey, boring look. Video game. Guardians James Gunn, James Gunn did a really nice job with it. It has an emotional core that they haven't had in a while.

So I think if they can lean into that, I think that sets them up pretty well. I'm excited for X-Men and Fantastic Four because I love those two groups. So that could be, but that's after the Kang stuff, right? Or is that towards the end of the Kang? They'll have those people start showing up. I think that's towards the end. So we'll do the Kang stuff and then that will probably introduce the Fantastic Four. and then we'll get a standalone fantastic four movie,

I think in 2025, something like that, 25 or 26. All right, so your recommendation for this show, Silo. Everybody go check out Silo. Anything else that's hot?

And I know the Bear season two is coming back. The Bear season two in June. We also get a new season of Black Mirror in June on Netflix, which is cool. That could be good. Finally, long awaited, long-awated new season of Black Mirror. I thought they just shut that down.

It's been about, it's been about three years, I think, since he came back and did any black mirrors. It was that it was that interactive one. Bander Snatch or whatever. I think that was the last new black mirror. But we've got a big new season with lots of, you know,

like Salma Hayek's in it, Aaron Paul is in it. And I think there's a, it looks like the Aaron Paul one is a continuation of USS Callister, the Jesse Fleming's Star Trek one. Okay, so that's, that's dope. If you can start having,

some continuation of those stories. Man, that makes that anthology series really interesting. Charlie Brooker's been teasing that it's going to be more like the Black Mirror verse and episodes are going to start interacting with other episodes, which is cool.

And then I think you should leave. We get more Netflix. I think you should leave next week. What is that? I think it should leave. Tim Robinson comedy sketch show on Netflix. It's where all the memes come from. Oh, that guy who's like the guy who says,

Really? Really? Yeah, yeah. Or in the hot dog suit. That's Tim Robinson. He was a Saturday Night Live writer. And now he has his own Netflix sketch show. 98%.

I've never seen it. Unbelievable. Funny a show. Is it really good? Oh, my God. So good. So there's two seasons now. They're only, it's 15 minute episodes and there's only six per season.

So it's like a movie every few years. But there's, so it's somewhere between a Saturday Night Live episode and TikTok. And it's kind of made to go viral. on TikTok. Yes, it's just short comedy sketches and they're all, and basically the whole show has gone viral at this point. You know, I realized something about TikTok and how prodigious it is.

I think it is ruining people's lives in that every single clip. Because there's people starting to put movies on there where like best of the soprano. So my feed is like food and best of surprise. Sopranos clips. And then I, you know, because I watched, you know, like a breaking bad clip, now I get a bunch of breaking bad clips. And what I realize they're doing is they're just firing your dopamine, whatever the great moments were in a season of a show, um, they fire off your dopamine, which then

fries your brain. So after an hour to have watching the best of clips, you know, which in a way YouTube did, you know, you get like into the Sopranos clips on YouTube and it's kind of. What this does is it ruins the, I think it fries your dopamine receptors because you're seeing some fight. That's a race fight, typically. You see some Karens. Then you see some great scenes from the Sopranos. Then you see a shark attack.

Then you see some incredible piece of food. What it's doing is it's hitting your limbic system and it's hitting your dopamine receptors. And it's just frying you out. And you don't need that much. And it's like this is doing too much damage to your dopamine receptors. I honestly think that this is messing up. And I think that's what the algorithm is doing this, you know, visual crack hits. And it's bad for you because it ruins art.

And then I think it makes people anxious. And it resets you. So you're only, you're only, you're only, And I'm trying to, in real time, frame this for people. I think what it's doing is it's just giving you these little mini hits without giving you the context around them, without letting them breathe a little bit. And it's very bad for you. I think this is ruining. I don't think our brains are designed to process this amount of input and stimulus and information all day.

I mean, even just like the news. Like the news used to be like you'd wake up in the morning and read the paper. You'd get home from work and there'd be like a half hour of news. And like, that was it. That was all the news. And now we're just flooded 24-7 with headlines and opinions and this news and that news. And we're not, our brains aren't made to process that amount. And I think it's the same with TikTok.

And I read a thing about how young people are using TikTok as a search engine now. Like instead of going to Google and searching whatever, you're looking for. You just hit it into TikTok and then quickly scan through videos until somebody is talking about what you're looking for. And like, that seems like such a chaotic, brain-frying way to engage with the world. I can't even imagine thinking that's easier than just typing it into a search engine. It's just a totally different way for your brain to be organized.

This is a Pavlovian, dystopian technique. That was codified, exemplified in a very famous disturbing film from 50 years ago that some people think is one of the most, like, at the time was considered one of the most disturbing scenes in a film. The film was called Clockwork Orange. They've got his eyes pried open and they're forcing him to watch ultraviolence. cry his eyes open and they make him watch horrible stuff, like ultra-violent stuff to try to do this aversion therapy where they shock him when he sees violence because he's a violent person. It's kind of what we're doing to ourselves.

And I think this is why, like, this stuff should not be, or kids should not be doing this. And I see kids sometimes, Lon, you know, friends, you know, whatever, you know, people in our orbit. And they're on this iPhone. They get this iPhone 13, 14, 15 years old. They're on TikTok. And they're curled up in a ball.

And it looks like clockwork. orange to me. That's what I see. Yeah. I'm always so hyper aware of being like the old guy who's like, it's too much. You know, like I get it. And like for them, it doesn't seem like too much stimulus and it's just natural to browse the internet that way. I get it. But yeah, it does, it does give me pause for sure. The just constant nonstop feed of information. I think it kills your attention span, your ability to focus on stuff. And what I've started to do now is when I watch something I love like secession.

I just put my phone in the other room and charge it. You got it. Put it on Airplay mode. Yeah. Because I don't want to miss scenes. I don't want to miss moments. If you talk about film and TV on the internet a lot, as I do, you start to notice that people don't always notice everything in the movies and shows that they've watched.

And I think part of that too is that they don't even know that they're missing stuff because they're on their phone. Like there'll be visually something is revealed in a movie and people are missing it. because they were not watching the screen at that exact moment. So I do think it's changing the way we watch sort of everything. You know, for me, it's like playing chess. You don't even think of it, you know? No, I was playing, you know, I'm playing Blitz Chess while watching a TV show.

I'm like, well, which am I doing? You know, like, what am I doing here? Like, I mean, I'm playing Blitz Chats and I'm watching the movie. Yeah, you're sort of doing both, but at 60% instead of 100%. Yeah, and it's just not a good experience because my chess rating's going down. Am I, I'm missing the great moment. It's all right. This has been Lonn Harris.

follow them on Twitter, Twitter.com. Slans, inside.com slash streaming. Any other plugs for a lawn? Where else do we find you? Oh, binge boys. Check out my podcast.

Bidge Boys, how about Nick and I watch whatever's going on in streaming and review it? We're talking about silos. Oh, Silo this week. Can't wait. Binge Boys.

Okay, everybody. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.