This Week in Startups - “Crisis” Director Nick Jarecki on the opioid problem in America, post-COVID film distribution & more | E1177

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Crisis release dates: Theatrical: February 26th, 2021 VOD: March 5th, 2021 Check out Crisis: Twitter: https://twitter.com/crisis_movie Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crisismovie2020 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crisismovie FOLLOW Nick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/njarecki FOLLOW Nick on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/njarecki FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

This week in startups is brought to you by Roman. Erectile dysfunction used to be tough to talk about, but now there's Roman. Go to get Roman.com slash twist and get $15 off your first order of ED treatment, a free online visit, and free two-day shipping. LinkedIn jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash twist and DigitalOceans App Platform, a new Platform as a service solution to build modern cloud-native apps. With App Platform, you can build,

deploy, and scale apps and static websites quickly and easily. Use App Platform for free and receive a $100 credit for any upgrade at DO.co.com. twist. That's DO.co.co. Slash twist. Crisis releases in theaters on February 26 and will be available on demand on March 5th. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week and startups. I'm your host Jason Calacanis. And today, a special treat on the pod. We're going to talk about movie distribution and the addiction problems we're having in the country with fentanyl and opioids with the director Nicholas Derecki. He has a new film. out called Crisis and you may have seen his previous film Arbitrage or some of the documentaries

he's done. Welcome to the program, Nick Jurecki. Thank you very much. Jason, pleasure to be here. I thought we were going to maybe talk about your opioid dependence. Exactly. Well, in San Francisco, I mean, it's interesting that your film is coming out now. You probably were working on it three years ago, I guess, four years ago. Yeah, it's been a bit of a journey. Yeah. And now you look at what's happening with fentanyl in this country, it has become a super crisis to, you know, reflect the name of your film. This is a huge crisis in America. What made you want to do this film? What was the genesis of it? And I guess, how is the early reaction been? I watched the film and full disclosure, I'm a part of a group that put a tiny bit of money up to help the film get realized. And

super proud of the end product, by the way, the film is just a great film on a cinema a basis, but also makes you really think about how we got ourselves into these problems. But tell us a little bit about the origin story of crisis. First of all, thank you very much. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the film. I started the project, you know, it's about 10 years in the making because I had a good friend that I lost to opioids quite a while back. And this was before much was known about the issue. And, you know, he's a very bright young man, passed away at 29. And he had gotten, It was a bit of a drug experimenter, just recreational, whatever. But, you know, then he ultimately found his way to opioids.

And what happens, I think in a lot of cases, is people get into it. You know, it's a monkey that can sneak up very quick. And everybody's brain chemistry is different. But some people are really impacted by it. And so it took hold of him. And, you know, he was well to do. But it really can be quite expensive if you're, you know, if you go doctor shopping and then at a certain point, you can't do that anymore and you have to buy it from the street, something we examine in the

film. And so I think he had a habit costing three, four, five hundred dollars a day. You know, and you can burn through a lot of money fast with a problem like that. And so ultimately what happens, what happened in case of him, you know, people turn to heroin because it's cheaper. Now they turn to fentanyl. And so that took hold of him and, you know, it led to him passing on too early. So, you know, it registered with me, but people didn't understand it. And they weren't talking about it. There was more of a culture then of blame the addict. You know, people didn't understand these drugs and how they work and how they've changed the mind. They reprogram the human body in the case of some people.

And so then this topic got more and more known as the problem became widespread. So I had finished arbitrage. And, you know, what I really like is, look, first and foremost, I'm an entertainer. I'm a storyteller and I'm trying to make movies that people will enjoy, give them, I like the thriller genre. So it'd give them some thrills, twists and turns. a good story, all that. But I think at the same time, what I like to do is take a look at something in society that maybe feels a little bit off whack to me. So in arbitrage, we did the financial crisis. And we had the character of a billionaire, a hedge fund manager, and, you know, the corruption

that he ultimately got involved in and how it affected him, his family, and all these other people. Here I said, okay, well, look, the opioid issue is something that's touched people I know. It touched another woman in my life just a few years ago. She's still around. But I had seen that it could really interfere with people's lives. And I thought, well, this is something that has not been explored cinematically at all. There's been no movies on the topic. And, and, you know, now I think you're seeing a few, my friend Barry Levinson's got a TV show coming up later this year that's going to touch on it as well. But, you know, it started for me with that personal thing, and then it went into research. And so I started work with some reporters at the Los Angeles Times who had broken some

wonderful stories about the pharmaceutical companies, what they may or may not have known about the drugs. And I also, like you, have investments in certain things. I have investment in a biotech company. So the woman who runs that a brilliant scientist, Dr. Riemerlehy, she really educated me about how drugs are tested and animal testing with mice and, you know, the different phases that you go through in FDA. So I started putting together a story with all this information. Then the LA Times people gave me this wonderful undercover cop, Steve Offerman. He's retired now. But he was head of the LA Prescription Narcotics Task Force. And so he went around and busted people making illicit fentanyl and running pill presses. And so he showed me this

whole world. He took me to the pill places, took me to the doctor clinics. You know, he had busted some crazy doctors who got whacked out on their own product. He said one guy he busted, he was writing scripts as the DEA came in the door and shoving things in his pocket. He was totally whacked out. And he go, you know, so what I like to as a filmmaker is say, I don't believe there's any villains, you know, maybe the occasional despot aside. But, You know, usually the things we see in society are a result of some type of incentive for bad behavior. And then greed gets the better of us.

I think it was Balzac who said, behind every great fortune lies a great crime. And so I like this idea of taking a look at societies we did in arbitrage with the hedge funds and saying, well, maybe incentives happened here for people to cut the rules and that led to the housing crisis, you know, with the collusion of the ratings agencies or whatever. here, what happened that these drugs got so massively prescribed? Did they influence doctors? Did they have conferences where they encouraged over prescribing? Did they maybe not acknowledge some of the health risks that were known about the potential

for dependence with these drugs? And I thought, isn't this a kind of wonderful terrain to take a look around? Because when I make a film, yes, I want to entertain you, but, you know, I hope to push people to consider some larger issues. And I think that's the power of film that it can do that. Right. Well, I mean, and just to give people the proper context here, it is a great film. It is a great piece of cinema.

You're a great director. And if you look at the cast you pull together, this is not like you are preaching to people, hey, don't take drugs or we have to arrest these people. You're exploring it and still making it entertaining. Gary Oldman plays a doctor in the film who's doing research. An incredible performance, I think, you know, one of the best, I mean, since Tinker Taylor was at the other film he did that I really enjoyed. Like he really brings it, you can tell he cares.

Arnie Hammer, who's obviously had some controversy right now, but he's also fantastic in this. Evangeline Lilly plays a great mom. Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez. I mean, it is a really great cast from top to bottom. And you even put yourself in this one, right? Is it Army or Arnie? It's Army with an M, right?

I always get that wrong. And you put yourself in this one as well. But how do you balance in a movie like this, not being preachy, while still getting a message across when you're, because you wrote the screenplay as well, when you're writing that screenplay, how do you make it so you're not like talking down to the audience or hitting the chalkboard like a teacher saying,

here, you understand that this is bad? Well, I think, you know, we see that sometimes in films that maybe aren't as effective, a sense of, hey, watch this movie and you've got to eat your vegetables. You know, who wants to do that?

Yeah, it's a super annoying trend right now. I want to have a good time if I see a movie, and I want the movie to treat me as if I'm intelligent. So, you know, without getting myself in trouble here, I think there's a lot of movies for better or worse that have told me things I might already know, such as that black people are people too, women are people too. You know, and it's like you go to the movie theater, you're like, guess what? I knew that when I came in, you know? So it's not, there's no real revelation here to understand this group of oppressed people. They really had it. Yeah, I already knew that.

So I think always kind of treating the audience as if they are adults and they have reasonable IQ, you present the facts to them instead of setting up a situation of condemnation. And I think that's why looking at these root causes of saying, well, there's a problem here, but where is it coming from? Because we're all in the society together. We all make these decisions together. And we have a lot more power often than we think. Sometimes we feel powerless.

This movie also has a lot about, you know, arbitrage was about a billionaire at the top of the world. This is about three characters and their associates who are really more normal people, everyday people. And a question I think we ask in the film is, can one person make a difference? Can the little guy stand up and fight the system? And of course, the system is very much rigged against that. You know, there's almost a Machiavellian quality to it. You can't fight it. But I think in this film, these characters stand up and they do fight it.

And I think that's something audiences really respond to. I've always loved those films like Humphrey Bogart classics from the 1940s. You know, he's a downtrodden man or, you know, you have even Betty Davis films in the Precode era. You know, she's a woman of ill repute. But you know what? They stand up and they do make a difference because they have conviction and they have their principles and they see something wrong in society that they fight against. So I think the journey of that individual is always more interesting than seeing, you know, the evil villain twirling mustache. because the people that work at the pharmaceutical companies or, you know, drug traffickers or whatever,

I mean, they're the heroes of their own story. I had these wonderful actors, Luke Evans and Veronica Ferris and Martin Donovan, who you may know from Tenant or he was always a great independent film actor. He plays the owner of the pharmaceutical company. You know, I think it would have been very easy to make them kind of dark, tall, gallon hat type people. But it was, no, we don't want to do that at all. They think they're out there saving the world. and that what Gary Oldman's character is doing is junk science. He's casting aspersions on their new pain killer that's coming to market.

They're fighting for what they believe in. So I just think that's always more satisfying to the audience to really present everyone as the hero of their own story. It can be awkward and embarrassing to talk about erectile dysfunction, but we're going to do it right now. Usually you brush it off. We blame ourselves. But Roman is here to get the advice you want and the help you need with no shame.

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It was kind of considered like you'd hit the degeneracy of all drug use by getting to that point in your life that you would put a needle in your arm. And I don't know exactly how heroin is prepared. but you know, I always seen it in a movie where somebody's putting it under a spoon and lighting it on fire or something. And you just think, wow, I could never get there. That is just an insane behavior that I think is scary for people. And you would have to be some level of desperation in your life to want to do that. But then oxycodone came out. And it seems to be that that became a way for everybody to try heroin under a doctor's supervision.

and that company and that amount of money that was made, which I don't know the exact history of it, but it was definitely this Purdue Pharma company and this family and then distribution. What happened there? Because it's almost like they mainstreamed opioids. Am I correct in my cursory understanding of this, that they basically branded heroin and made it easy to consume for people?

I mean, I think we have to be careful here, to be fair to all sides. I've seen some early chatter on the internet from people who were a little bit worried about this film of saying, oh my God, he's not going to come out and attack pain medication, is he? Because my grandfather has terminal cancer or he lives with pain every day. And were it not for these pain killers, he would probably kill himself because he can't live with that degree of pain and his quality of life would be reduced.

And we have to understand that there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who live unfortunately under those conditions, if they've had a terrible back injury or whatever, they live with unconscionable pain. And without pain management, they would not be able to continue on. So it's not the hope of this film to get rid of pain drugs. What I think happened is, you know, this is just my opinion. But, you know, about 10, 15 years ago, there were some companies and oxycodone has been around for a long time.

These painkillers, you know, this started with morphine in the Civil War, where they would give to patients on the field. But as they found oxycodone, that became, you know, the main prescription for more serious pain, I think, you know, there were time release oxycodone medications developed in the 90s, one of which is oxycontin. But I think what happened is there became a perhaps an overprescribing of these medications. And doctors, there was a good deal of marketing work done to convince the medicine. professional and the doctors that these are safe drugs and they don't cause dependence.

Now, there were studies done that the LA Times unearthed showing that, in fact, these time release medications have a great danger of dependence among somewhere between 20 to 50 percent of those people who take them. So, and that perhaps that research was not paid attention to, it was, you know, I don't want to say suppressed, but it was, you know, cast over in favor of the miracle drug. I mean, one of the things that's interesting about pain in this country is that you can't measure pain. There's no pain meter. In fact, I think they point people to a chart of like a grimace of a face. And so if you want a doctor shop, you can just say, I feel that, the one all the way on the end. I am in extreme pain. Absolutely. You know, it was a confluence of circumstances led to this problem.

There's a great writer I haven't talked about yet, Barry Meyer, but he wrote a book a decade ago. And I think what happened is, you know, people rate their doctors. They say, did they have a good experience or not? Yes. And so, and as a result, the companies decide which doctors to hire because patient satisfaction is a component of that. So I think when it comes to pain, the doctor is trained to listen to the patient, point to the chart and say where you feel.

So if the patient's saying, I'm in pain and the doctor isn't giving them something to help them, they're going to get bad doctor ratings. And they don't want bad doctor ratings because they lose their job. And this was the story. that was told to the doctors, perhaps by boosters of the pain industry or not. I don't know if you just saw McKinsey just came forward. I think it was McKinsey and admitted their role in helping facilitate promotion of opioids. So, you know, also there were conferences and there were sponsorships and, you know, bribes is not the correct word. It's not a bribe. But, you know, always grift.

I mean, it might be the way to say it. Yeah, there were encouragements and inducements provided to those who prescribed pain pills. And so I think, you know, there was a, my father's a doctor. He's an MD. You know, they'd never prescribe opioids for anything in his day. And, you know, I remember as a kid, if my arm wasn't hanging off, you know, from a buzzsaw, he would be like one Advil for you. That's it. You know, so there was a much more care.

So I think what happened is, you know, the promotion of these pharmaceuticals got out of control. The safeguards got taken away. The, the medication, the time release stuff increased it. And so, and it was a big money machine. So, you know, you see all these things come together. It's no surprise that the restrictions on prescribing these things loosened. And you speak about how do they get to the needle? You know, it's a great question.

I mean, this is a story I heard over and over again. Someone injures themselves at work, as Evangeline Lilly's character does in the film. They have a back industry, a construction worker, he falls on the job. He gets a prescription for pain medication. Let's say it's oxycodone time release. He takes it. He's one of those 20 to 50% of people who his brain doesn't take it easy. He gets very dependent on it very quickly.

Okay, he goes back to the doctor. He still got pain. Doctor doesn't want to give you another one again. He plays this game with his doctor for three to six months. Finally, the doctor says, hey, Joe, I can't give you anymore. But what do you mean? He's addicted now. He has to have it.

So he goes to the street. He gets it from the street at 20 to 30. a pill, which is where the dealers in the movie are bringing it. And then after that, he burns through his 401k. He's out of money. He's still addicted. He's more addicted than ever. What does he do? Now it's time to go to heroin because instead of $300 a day, it's $10 or $20 a day and he can make that work. Is that really the difference in price? Wow. Didn't realize that. So when you look at a complex system like this and you do research for years and you make a piece of art like this, you start to realize this is a system that has many players and many,

factors that just basically spiraled out of control. And at the core of it are a group of individuals basically not taking ownership of what they're doing. You know, the doctors are basically looking to get better reviews. They're being generous with the prescriptions. There are consulting firms that are getting paid off, you know, through maybe it's a consulting fee or maybe it's a green lighting of something. And then finally, This super drug comes out fentanyl. And I think that this is the part of the story where we start to realize, my God, we made this terrible mistake by overprescribing pain medication, reprogramming people's brains.

And then somebody had this idea that fentanyl, which is unbelievably powerful and unbelievably cheap, is going to be the next super drug. When did that come into the picture? because I don't know if it was maybe three or four years ago I heard about fentanyl and how deadly it was. But now we see in San Francisco here where we don't do any enforcement that fentanyl has taken over. It's being shipped from China. People can order it on the dark web. And my understanding is three or four tiny specks of it is the proper dose.

I'm not telling anybody proper dosing here, but there's a picture on the internet of vials. So to be clear, don't take fentanyl. The amount of heroin in a dose versus fentanyl is like a fraction. And it's a fraction of cost. So we went from $3 to $500 a day to get an illegal prescription off the street, then to $20 for heroin. And then what is fentanyl in terms of the price to high ratio? It's insane, right? Well, you know, fentanyl is not new.

It's been with us. I think it was first synthesized synthetic opioid. It's been first synthesized in the late 50s. And it came into widespread use in the late 60s. Well, not widespread use. It came into use in the late 60s. So it's been around. There was, I think, Doregizek, which was this.

a fentanyl patch of gel came into use in the 90s. I remember I actually used to know a woman who was a drug addict she would cut open the duragesis patch or the duragel patch and take the fentanyl and put it on her gums.

I mean, this is the length people will go to because their brain pushes them to do it. But I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, as with most things, it's an economic matter. So fentanyl so cheap to produce, can be produced in so potent, can be produced at now a fraction of a cost of, say, oxycodone.

And it is being made in precursor form in China. And then up until a couple of years ago, at least, you could go on, I think, by do or Alibaba and buy it. You didn't have to go to the dark web who is freely available for sale, the precursor elements. So you could get a whole batch of fentanyl, cook it up in your basement, as in fact the Hell's Angels were involved in doing that in America and different biker gangs that Steve Offerman had busted in California and make a whole batch of fentanyl. And it's so potent that during some of these raids, you know, the cops, the undercover cops, they go in, they have to wear a

hazmat suit. And yeah, some of them have died, right? Yeah, if they get a few, you know, micro-cernals on their hands, it could be a fatal dose. It's insane. So it's, it's extremely potent, extremely be powerful. It has its uses. If your grandfather has terrible pain, he may want to take fentanyl, it may help him. But this is not a drug that should be played with. And so I think because it's, you know, a few cents a dose to manufacture, this is a great boon to the illicit drug industry. And that's why we've seen it growing and being mixed into heroin to give it more kick or, you know, even, God forbid, mixed into cocaine or people take it and then they have a, you know, up and down reaction, a heart attack goodbye. So, you know, really one use of this could be. I mean, that is the

this could take you out. Prenicious eventuality that came from all of this, which is we got all these Americans addicted to it because they had some varying degrees of pain. They start doctor shopping. And then we turned off the spigot at a certain point. And they said, you know what? Too many people are abusing it. We turned it off without a plan from what I can tell of how to deal with those people who

were addicted. So we never addressed, hey, who was giving all these prescriptions? How do we give them an exit? ramp here, a safe landing. And of course, they go to the streets. And then this is where it becomes really pernicious. They were taking fentanyl. And as in the movie you show, they make pills out of it. They're making basically oxies that are a magnitude more powerful because they're using fentanyl instead of whatever's an oxicon, correct? Yeah, I mean, I think that's well said. Look, this is kind of the American way, isn't it? We create a problem. You know, we create an economic incentive that creates a problem.

It spirals out of control until there's a big explosion. There we go, oh, gee, now what? And by the way, unfortunately, now what in America usually means, hey, sweep these people under the rug, let's move on to something else. But in the case here, unlike the housing crisis where you've got economic devastation, you have loss of life here. You have loss of blood and treasure. You have hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from this. And it is not drug addicts from the inner city. This is your brother.

this is your mom. I just saw a post on the internet the other day. Someone brought to my attention or a 16-year-old son died a few nights ago of a fentanyl overdose. This is Gary Oldman said, you know, this is hit like category five. You know, you have normal regular people. It's cutting across all walks of life. And it's so innocuous. It starts with a little pill.

It starts with popping a pill at a party that or a doctor gave you because you twisted your ankle. The New Year is here. that marks a fresh start for your small business. We're hiring a bunch of people out launch in 2021. We need a second producer, a third video editor, a community manager, operations people, and more. Things are going gangbusters for us. The podcast is sold out. We're going to three, four, five days a week. The syndicate is blowing up in a good way. And our fund is hard at work doing the launch accelerator, so we need help. And you know where we're going to find the most qualified candidates. You know it. I know it. We all know it. LinkedIn jobs, of course. We love using

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LinkedIn jobs is all about. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn jobs. And now you can post your job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com slash twist and post your job for free. You have to use that special URL, LinkedIn.com, D-D-S-T-W-I-S-T for a free job posting right now. Terms and Conditions, of course, apply. And the doctors, there was no central, this is the other thing I was surprised. There was no central registry for prescriptions. I wonder when you were doing your research, it seems like the prescription industry

where you're just right on a piece of paper and then something gets shipped and they don't check and there's no central registry. So I remember the Corey Hame who died, the actor who was friends with Corey Feldman. I guess they weren't a bunch of movies together. He died of some overdose. He had 10 doctors and was going to 20 different. I'm just making a number here, but he seemingly had a dozen doctors. If I remember the story correctly, was going to all these different pharmaceuticals, all

or pharmacies all around Los Angeles. And that was basically his job was to go around to a different one every day and get some. So he doctor shopped as a celebrity. And there's no central registry where. the Walgreens or the CVS on different sides of the street even know that you've got two different doctors ordering two sets of opioids? Well, I mean, that was the case that for many years. There is now a central registry. So if you go in, they do try to check if you've been doctor shopping and everybody's got to go through a clearinghouse. I think it's up to the states whether or not they

want to adopt that. There's a federal database. But, you know, it's only come online in the last few years and it's a reaction to the enormous number of people who've died. So I think, you know, society is catching up now. I think doctors have become more aware, hey, this is not a one for all. You know, this is a dangerous controlled substance that you really got to use only in the right circumstances. Don't be so liberal with this. Don't listen to what the companies are telling you. They tell you it's safe. That doesn't mean it is. So I think we're seeing strides and steps forward. And I think society now is starting to hold some of these companies accountable for their role in perhaps ignoring the signs. Huge settlements, right?

I mean, we talked about McKinsey. They settled for $600 million for their role in all of this. And then the Purdue Pharma company, which was owned by the Sackler family, that makes OxyCotin. Is there two names for it? OxyContin is a time release oxycodone. Got it. And so they were making this and they made tons of money. And I think you kind of did a little nod to them.

because the Sackler family, which took down 10 billion or something because of this in profits from just a cursory Google search, they were donating like crazy to art galleries and, you know, benefit dinners. So you had them buying off essentially the halls of power and society by just splashy cashy donating money everywhere. And you did put that in the film. Was that like a little parallel there? well i i i i you know it's up to people to draw their own conclusions right it's a fictional story based on any one person or group but i think you see you know that that that that type of situation is um you know it's not it's not it's not in only set upon one person or one company i mean there's you see that in politics all the time big donors you know whether it's nron or whoever um you know and and and i

mean the sackler's a very interesting people uh you know fans that in many ways has done a lot of good and always been patrons of the arts. But, you know, if they had knowledge, and I'm not saying they did, if they had knowledge that the product was harmful and was not safe, then it would have been nice to have disclosed that earlier. Again, hypothetically, I don't know, I don't think all the facts have come out and I think they will continue to come out who knew what and when. I mean, they did have executives, the company plead guilty to things, I believe, even 10 years ago. You know, that's for the Justice Department to figure out, and I think they will in due time figure out what the accountability has to be.

But ultimately, you know, this film is about just opening people's eyes to what it is, taking a look at it from these different sides so that people can know the complexity of the problem because that's the thing people say, oh, well, what's the solution? What are you going to do with these drug addicts? You know, you called it. It's like, what happens to the people now that got into this thing, you know, and for sure there's hundreds of thousands of them left. Let's discuss that for a knowing what you know now and the research you've done, and I'm not painting you as an expert in recovery, but it is incredibly hard to recover from opioids.

It is perhaps the hard issue. You are basically guaranteed to relapse, even if you do go, and it might take multiple times. Is there a way to really at scale, you know, get people to recover? We used to call people junkies, people who were specifically addicted to heroin. This new group, I guess, I don't know if that, is that term derogatory now or not, I'm not sure. But the basic belief was a junkie cannot be cured.

Once a junkie, always a junkie. Now with people on fentanyl, is that still applying? Is there any hope for people to recover? Or is this just a debt sentence? Well, listen, I think, you know, things like recovery, very complicated. I mean, historically, there have been very low rates of recovery from opioid addiction. I mean, we're talking about maybe lifetime recovery rates of 10 or 15 percent. You know, oh, that's who makes it.

But, you know, I just thinking about that for a second, Nick, I mean, how does that even address public policy of how to deal with it? We basically are saying nine out of ten people are not going to recover. Nine out of ten are not going to recover. I mean, that is staggering. I mean, that's the past. Hopefully there's paths to the future. you know, there's new treatments. You know, for a while there was, you know, heroin alternatives.

Now, Suboxone has become, you know, popular. There's also experimental treatments with, I think, Ibogaine or other things. I don't know how good they are. They've even looked at CBD as a treatment path where they found some promise. And I've gone to some lectures. I went to one in New York at one of the hospitals, I think Columbia Presbyterian, where they looked at that as a potential. road. So there is, you know, what's the answer? The answer is just like anything else. Let's put some

money into it. Let's make awareness of treatment. Let's destigmatize addiction. Let's get, you know, proper treatment facilities. I mean, I went to when I was researching the film. I went to some of these places, the quote unquote treatment places in Detroit. You know, the film set in Detroit. My mom's from there. Part of the film set there in the ghetto and eight mile. You know, I went there. I mean, you go into one of these recovery places. It looks like a bomb shelter. You sign in at the front. You don't even have to show an ID. They give you your Suboxone. You just get. them 50 bucks. And, you know, some people have figured out a way to get high off suboxone or whatever. So it's like that's not the place where you're going to go and get cured. You know, you need proper

medical facilities. You need some investment. You need a destigmatization of the attic, which I think is coming along. I think people are understanding now addiction is a disease and you could be a victim of circumstance. You're not a garbage human being. And I think you just need additional funding put into treatment. And you need, you definitely need the decriminalization. I mean, that's one of the tragedies of the American drug war, putting people in jail for having a drug problem. Let's talk about that for a second. We have a very acute problem here in San Francisco where they're not doing any prosecution of criminals. And from my reading of it, when you don't prosecute fentanyl dealers or any dealers, you lower the price of drugs and increase consumption.

If you enforce the arresting of people selling drugs, obviously, the cost of drugs go up, the usage goes down, it's harder to get. And San Francisco has basically become the mecca fentanyl where you can get the lowest prices and you literally can smoke it in front of a police officer and not be arrested. So we're actually trying that experiment and it's caused incredible chaos here in the city.

Can you be in favor of drug legalization for a class of drugs? But then say, you know what? For this class, opioids specifically, they're just too dangerous. Nothing is good. There's no way. in my mind of how you would ever compare cannabis, MDMA, cocaine even, or LSD or mushrooms or any of these

other controlled substances, too fentanyl. Am I correct in that? And maybe these things have to be judged differently? I don't have the answer. No one's had the answer to the American drug war. I think what we know is that prohibition as it has stood in this country for the last 50 years has not worked. We had a record number of people in prisons, disproportionately black, Hispanic. You had the disparity with crack. That was the last scourge, remember, and you got ten times as much time in jail

as if you had powder, cocaine, even though they're the same thing. Mandatory minimums, federal sentencing, kingpin and trafficker laws. I mean, more drugs than ever come into the country. So did they succeed? I don't think so. And there was a devastation that that wrought.

What is the answer? I don't know. I do know that a big component of the answer is education and getting the word out to the public about the dangers of these drugs and specifically opioids. And I think, you know, that's been where we've seen some really good reporting in the Times, LA Times, the York Times, and we've seen a lot of pretty top scientists step forward and try to educate so they at least get rid of the doctor problem. I mean, this is a worldwide problem, but it is kind of the epicenter of it here is America,

and that must have something to do with the pharmaceutical company incentives and the prescribing. So I think what I try to do in the film is you see, you know, the other characters are kind of on the street level. And Gary Oldman, he's fighting the pharmaceutical company up at the top. I tried to show that how the decisions in that boardroom, the decisions, the decisions, the ramifications they could have as they come back down the chain. And maybe I made a little bit of indictment of FDA politics and, you know, whether the FDA was too lenient with some of these organizations. You could criticize me and say, oh, I'm too hard on the FDA. It's a great organization, whatever. But I I mean, the fact is these controlled substances, they didn't come because drug addicts sought them out. They came because they were promoted to people. And that's what caused the problem. Yeah. I'm thinking about the legalization issue. It seems to me, like, as we've legalized cannabis and created a path for other drugs to be legal,

obviously people are working on MDMA and I think psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is decriminalized in a lot of places. we see crime from those categories of drugs go down. I'm wondering if allowing people to take those drugs would prevent people from maybe going all the way to this drug, or maybe they're just too independent phenomenon occurring simultaneously. It's hard to say. I mean, we've seen experiments in other countries where they've decriminalized hard drugs, and it has led to a reduction in usage and a reduction in deaths.

I mean, maybe because, you know, if you can get your, you know, drugs from, some government injection place. I mean, it's not going to be spiked with deadly fentanyl. You know, and maybe they'll be more apt to send you to a treatment program. I mean, you talk about San Francisco. I read, there's a great writer Philip Bourgeois. He did a wonderful book, A Righteous Dope Feend, which was a photo essay of the heroin addicts living under the San Francisco Bridge Overpasses.

And, you know, that was a big inspiration for this film. And you see, these people wanted to get clean. They were struggling. They were addicted. They would go to treatment programs. They wouldn't have a bed. they would get kicked out. They go back to the homeless camp.

I mean, the system is not really set up to help these people, you know. So I think there's got to be a lot more funding towards treatment. And I think, you know, even that in education, by the way, maybe there's got to be more funding to developing, say, for alternatives to these drugs. I don't think anyone wants to play Russian roulette with fentanyl. You know, they have a need. They're an addict. They have a need.

They're filling their need. So we got to look at the top, at the root causes. Let's look at the pharmaceutical industry. Let's look at regulation. Let's look at investing money into safer alternatives. Let's look at treatment. You know, putting, you know, Mr. Big in jail for his illegal shipment of fentanyl. Listen, if society has taught us anything, if history has taught us anything, they will be another smuggler who takes his place.

That'll be 10. Yeah. This week in startups is brought to you by our friends at DigitalOcean and their app platform. This is a new platform as a service solution to build model. modern cloud native apps. With app platform, you can build, deploy, and scale apps and static websites quickly and easily. Simply point your GitHub repository and let the app platform do all the heavy lifting.

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professional. Starter is great for basic sites. Basic is better for prototyping apps and professional works best for production apps. Use app platform for free and receive a $100 credit for any upgrade at DO.co.c. Twist. DO, as in DigitalOcean, dot co slash twist. I wonder if you have any insight into our relationship with China, which is where this fentanyl is coming from. It does seem like they're sending just enough drugs here to kill 100,000, 200,000 people every year, whatever it is.

It's close to 100,000, I think. I mean, shouldn't we just put our foot down with China and just say, listen, if you don't stop this, if you don't solve fentanyl coming here, you know, we're going to stop making our iPhones over there. Well, you know, listen, it sounds to me like you're very good at asking a lot of provocative questions, which maybe could be considered audio clickbait. So you're not going to as the host. Okay, you're not going to get me on here.

No. You don't watch your phone. You don't like your movie to get banned China? Well, listen. Look, honestly, I don't know. I'm not in the State Department, so I don't know all the interdessen stuff that goes on up there politically. I did read that China had taken enforcement measures.

to try to crack down on the illicit fentanyl. Do I think there's a government-directed death campaign? No, I don't. I think it's always the same thing as Gary Oldman says, follow the money. You know, if there's money to be made in smuggling, if there's money be made in illicit diversion, someone's going to find a way to make it. So I think, you know, do we maybe have to get tougher on the border? Do we have to get some cooperation from the authorities there and know that they're really

cracking down and that you can't bring these precursor chemicals in here? That's probably a good idea. If there can be state intervention, it would help. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the movie business. You made this film before the pandemic. Pandemic happens. Theatrical was always challenged, or not always challenged.

It's been challenged in the last decade or two. And so now all movie theaters close. You are a fan of cinema and making great, you know, thrillers. What is your outlook for your movie and movies in general? because it does seem like there's a group of people were saying theaters are never coming back. It's over. And they were already having a challenge. What are the dynamics of making a movie like this, an independent film, guessing 20, 30 million dollar budget, something in that range?

What happened to your film during this whole pandemic? And now that it's coming out, what happens to the economics of it? Thankfully, the budget a little bit less than that. Look, it's a strange time for cinema. I mean, cinema was already challenged by home entertainment. And I've been on both sides of this. You know, I love the theater experience. My friend David O. Russell, he says, you know, people need a tent.

And I think it's interesting comment because films in a way in culture in the past have been something of a religious experience. You know, you've seen the godfather, you've seen Iron Man or you've, you know, and everybody gets together and there's this shared group in a dark room and you feel a sense of connection to your neighbor and you feel like there's a cultural conversation. and also the sound and video picture. I mean, I did have shot this all on 35 millimeter on film because it's, in my opinion, the best origination format, still much better than digital in its fidelity and its quality and how it reacts to light. And so it was all designed. This was mastered in a great mastering stage with Dolby and all the, you know, it's all designed

for this incredible ride in the theater because I think the film is quite thrilling. Yes. But okay. well, now we were already facing competition to get people out to the theater from home entertainment because a lot of people are more comfortable being at home. Okay, the pandemic basically killed the theater business for the time being. Now, it started to recover in some areas where the COVID has gone down. We're releasing this film in a few hundred theaters nationwide, yeah, on February 26th. And then we're following it a week later with it being available in the

home. And so this was a strategy we did on arbitrage where we saw there was a a certain contingent of people that wanted to see movies in the theater and wanted that experience, then there was a certain group of people who were just as happy to have the experience at home. And I mean, I remember not to sound self-congratulatory, but we had gotten notes from people who were disabled or in a wheelchair, whatever. They couldn't come to the theater, but they loved that they could see arbitrage at home and participate in that first run part of the conversation. You know, this is what's in the culture.

So I think offering it to people in multiple formats is okay. I hate to see the theaters going away and I hate to see the theater is being programmed exclusively with the blockbuster because I think American culture in a little bit, it's not, you know, they say, oh, well, that's what they want, that's what they want. It's not only what they want.

You know, they want to an extent what they're given. And so if intelligent adult films are relegated only to the home viewing experience, I do think something will be lost. So be lost. So I hope, you know, I'm using a company called Quiver Distribution, which is a new startup company, very nimble, run by some,

friends of mine. And, you know, they were very down for the mission of let's do the theaters where people are, where it's available. So we're in Texas and Virginia in different places, you know, where people feel comfortable with that. And then let's go at home where they're not comfortable with that. Let's use these two to feed into each other because still films that go in the theatrical ecosystem will receive more press coverage. They're a bit more of a moment. You know, you know that it has that mark of first run theatrical quality. Someone was willing to spend millions of dollars to put it out, which is what it takes. When you did arbitrage, that film was, and then that was 2013 or 2012?

2012, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was one of the first films to do this VOD and it set a record for revenue. And then I think eventually it will hold the record, I believe, for the highest-grossing independent film to ever be released day and date. Yeah, and that really has changed the economics of this in a good way or in a bad, way because DVDs we know kind of disappear. That was a money printing machine for Hollywood. But you still have, you know, foreign territories that will fund a film. And then you have this VOD. Are the VOD providers advancing money or is it a clear path to profitability or not? Well, it's interesting.

You know, so arbitrage we did back then. I think we were only in a couple hundred theaters. We managed to do in today's money, almost 10 million. Then we had about 15 million on VOD. This is just from North America. In the rest of the world, we did a traditional release, no VOD, grossed, I think, 30 or 40 million overseas before television. But looking at the American market, interestingly, they were never able to repeat that VOD success after arbitrage. And I spoke with my distributor then, which was Lionsgate, about why and a roadside, Howard Cohen, who ran that. And he said, you know, the stars hadn't embraced it as much. The public hadn't embraced it. You know, they did for that movie. But they never got there again.

So now we see the pandemic, things have changed, and they've been doing these home releases and people have gotten more comfortable with it. So we hope that we will have people transact and rent the film from us. I mean, it is a performance. You know, film business in some ways for all of its problems and its favoritism, it can be very democratic in the box office. So we live and die by whether or not people pay $6.99 to rent this movie or $7.99, you know, when it comes out.

And if it has good word of mouth, like, I mean, it's still the industry, word of mouth play some role, people enjoying a film. I would think it would be more pronounced for a VOD release, right? Absolutely. I mean, I always think of what you told me once about the gun, the idea of the gun, you know, the great reviews and the, you want to have, you know, your, your, your, your stars looking like that or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. Lots of five star, some four star, and then very little three to one. Yeah, it's definitely, uh, so let me ask you an artistic question as, as we wrap here. And thank you so much for people who, um, and thank you so much for people who, are at home right now.

Go ahead and just order a crisis and watch it. It's a great film. I guess some people might say similar to Crash. Is that a compliment, I would think? Absolutely. I mean, I was a big fan of all of these multi-plot movies, and I felt like they disappeared. Traffic, Pulp Fiction, 21 grams, L.A. Confidential in a way.

Crash, I think we said. So, you know, I love that storytelling from multiple perspectives, especially with a topic that's broad and complex like opioids. You know, to focus in on one thing, okay, that's for a certain type of film, but to give you a kind of the scale and scope, you know, and this is partially an action picture, partially a thriller, partially a drama, you know, it just felt like it was befitting of that treatment or the treatment befitted, you know, and it was fun for me as a director because I love actors, you know.

Yeah. So you have Michelle Rodriguez, Lily Depp, you know, Gary Oldman, all these great people who can come in the film. These people really work for nothing and gave of themselves in their time. because they were interested in the topic, and because I called and harassed them endlessly. Thank you to my friends who did it. But it was fun to have a canvas like that to paint with, and to see what they brought to it.

I really love the actors, and I'm very stimulated by their input. So, you know, I like to work with them in developing their character and let them bring their own humanity to it. As a director, we're seeing people have a real tolerance for the miniseries all of a sudden. Queens Gambit. Zach Snyder is doing

Justice League over again as I guess three, two hour parts. So it's a six-hour superhero film. So not quite a series, but something in between, like a miniseries. Is that appealing to you as a director? Or do you like the two to three-hour

go-to-a-theater style of art creation? Or do you think that there's something new happening where everything kind of becomes one thing? And I know your friend and I'm a fan of Brett Easton Ellis, he's been talking about this on his podcast, the Brett Eastonelawks, which can sign up for on Patreon a lot. It does feel like there's some singularity going on here where what you do as a film, like this could have been a six hour or an eight hour series as well. So did you think about that? And are you thinking about that as a storyteller of, hey, maybe I can get eight hours to really unpack this and really make it richer? Or do you like this? beautiful bow that a two-hour, three-hour movie creates where you drive to a theater, you give yourself over for those two or three hours to the film, and then you afterwards go have coffee or a drink and talk about the film. How do you think about it artistically?

Well, as Harvey Kytel once said to me, when I get there, I'll come back and tell you about it. But, you know, so I haven't done that yet. I've been, I was raised in the film. I loved, you know, we would go to the movies together. and we would talk about the Angelica. The Angelica, where you're trying to kill the guy for a visit. And, or, or, what was it? Where was it?

Where was it? And we were at, we were watching Iron Man. And we clapped in the theater. And then this guy yelled out to me, kill yourself. Which became an incredible, like, inside jerk amongst ourselves. Yeah. And, but, but, but, but so, you know, we love that taxi driver, you know, Catherine Bigelow, a hurt locker.

Like, we love all that stuff. And, and I think, listen, that's the art form. I was trained in, but there has been the emergence of this new thing. We saw it start with the Sopranos and we saw it start, you know, in many ways with these, you know, longer format things. Now I think what's happened is it's shrunk down to these mini-series. And I do like, I love the Queens Gambit. I thought it was brilliant. Amazing production value. Yeah. And the story, you know, unlike some of the series where you see, unfortunately, they play themselves out because you don't really have 60 hours worth of stuff to say. So you end up with power plays and the kind of recent

cycle genre elements. Oh, the show jumped the shark. You know, even happens to the best of them, except for the wire where they seem to be able to go on forever. It seems like five hours or six hours, five or six seasons. It's time to, yeah, put a bow on it. It's time to wrap it up. Yeah.

Time to wrap it up. But I think for me, listen, it's something I would love to experiment with. I've yet to find a financier that's ready to back me in that pursuit. But hope springs eternal. And, you know, for now I'm still making films. but, you know, I think, I do think the television, especially the limited series, is a very valid form. I've loved some of them a great deal, true detective season one, you know, other things I've seen, you know, like this Queen's Gambit that are extremely powerful. So I think the form, you know,

the form can shift and move. And I think, you know, ultimately finding the story is the hard part, you know, so I got to keep working on that. What about this next, generations, you and I are Gen X, there's Millennials and then Gen Z. And one of the complaints I think people had about Gen X was that we were short attention span because of MTV. Now you have smartphones in this next generation. And I don't know if you have this experience, but when a movie's bad, you kind of have that device in your pocket and you're kind of want to look at it. One of the reasons I liked going to the movies was I had the discipline in a movie to never take my phone out. I would never do that. But I find when I'm at home,

if a movie is kind of hitting or one of these series is hitting a low point, I might look at my phone and then all of a sudden I miss something amazing. And I'm like, I have to have some kind of a discipline here. Do you have this experience? And what do you think this constant distraction is doing to people being able to just enjoy a piece of art for two hours and let their brain and kind of absorb it and give into it? Well, you know, one of my heroes, Quentin Tarantino, and I was lucky to meet him and Eli Roth. They were two of the people I met what I'm. I first moved to Hollywood, I was a nobody, and I met them at a Mexican restaurant, and they were nice enough to give me their phone number.

We stayed in touch all these years. So, but about eight years ago, 10 years ago, I was at a party with Quentin, and something came up about a movie. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I heard that was a piece of trash. And he got all really upset with me. And he was like, I'm sorry, what did you just say? I'm like, oh, yeah, that movie. Yeah, I heard that was trash.

And he goes, did you see it? I said, no, I just heard about it. He said, he said, how could you dare to speak about another artist's work that way if you haven't seen it and evaluated it yourself? And I was like crushed. I was like, oh my, my, and I like went. I remember I was my friend Richard Kelly, the director, and I went off and I'm walking with some premiere and I'm walking around. I'm like, oh, my God, Quinn just said I'm garbage. So Rich called me on my cell phone and he's like, where'd you go?

I'm like, I'm in the corner crying. You know, and he's like, get back here. We're going up to Quentin's house. So we went up there and then, you know, Quentin had a bottle of crystal and he's pouring out shots of crystal. And, you know, I told, I had the courage to now go back up to him. I said, listen, I thought about what you said and, you know, you're right. I'm not going to do that anymore.

And he was like, I know. He's like, I knew you knew. I was just, I didn't mean to be too hard. I just want to push you to really think about these things. You're an artist. You know, that's what you got to do. And so, you know, many years later, he's been very kind to me, but it's always stuck in my head. You know, you've really got to give the attention to a work and evaluate it and not evaluate.

Another horrible thing, sometimes I'll be watching a movie and check the rotten tomato score. And it's like, that's ridiculous. You know, sit down, make your own judgment, watch the work in its entirety, pay attention. That's the experience. If you're going to have the true experience, you've got to really take it in. And then you can call it a piece of trash if you want or call it whatever you want, you know, or say it was a great thing, you know. But I think that that's what was sort of beautiful about the theatrical movie experiences.

It really caused you to focus. And there's something about all of the electronic distraction that they can be tough. I don't know about you. Like I have a remarkable tablet, you know, or I'll read on a Kindle sometimes if I don't have a book available. I love that it doesn't have a text message or an alert. It's not sucking my attention away from it. You know, even Quentin on his set, there's, if you go to visit his set, I went to visit once a ton of time in Hollywood.

He has a thing at the front called Checkpoint Charlie, where you got to go and check your cell phone in. There's a man, his whole job is just to sit and take everybody's phones. And it extends to Leonardo DiCaprio just as much as it does to the caterer. And so because, you know, Quinn's point of view is like, hey, we're here to make a movie. We're not here to check our text messages. You know, we have to treat this art form seriously and give it the attention that it deserves. Now, that's not for everybody, but, you know, for us purists. let us obsess about it a little while longer before you take that away from us as well, please?

Yeah, it just seems like we have this incredible art form, and I think we don't appreciate it right now, and we'll only appreciate it when we've only got Marvel films to choose from and, you know, Star Wars spinoffs, and really there's so many other high-quality things that we could be consuming, and I'm hoping bidders come back in a big way. So it's been a full hour with Nick Jarecki filmmaker, continued success. Thanks for letting me be part of it. It just says a little disclaimer to everybody who's wondering,

I don't invest in movies. Please do not ask me to invest in movie. Nick and I have friends for a long time. I'll always back every movie he does. But please, do not send me scripts. I don't know what I'm doing. And I don't invest in movies. I do donate to Nick's.

But hopefully we'll see. Maybe we'll get a return or not. But it's an important film, and it's a really great film. Congratulations. You know me. I love thrillers. It's my favorite genre. It happens to be your favorite one to make.

And this is, you know, as good or better than arbitrage. You're really the cinematography and some of the shots are amazing. I'm guessing you were using drones for some of these shots or helicopters? Yeah. Drones. The technology has really come a long way. It was amazing. Some of these shots you had of, and there was one shot where one of the drug runners is like on a

sled going, you know, and you're kind of doing that, I guess they call it a tracking shot when they're running and you're kind of going at the same pace. And I was like, I wonder if that's a drone shot or not. That's actually a device called the cable cam, which is an extremely expensive thing that probably consumed your entire investment. But you put it on a string between two trees and then it's an automated device with motion capture and control and all that. So it goes at this perfectly fluid, smooth thing. So when you see the kid running, yeah, we've got a cable between two trees and a big giant 35 millimeter camera on their tracking them. 35 millimeter camera, are these still the giants, like huge devices, or have they also gone

through some revolution of becoming smaller and easier? No, not really. They're still big boys. They weigh a couple hundred pounds. And they make tons of noise. They make lots of noise. They have what's called a blimp on them, you know, in order to try to, you know, cut down that sound.

But you end up having to take out a lot of that in the post-production with, Oh, yes. And you still insist on doing that. You don't really think these 4K, 8K, red cameras, whatever, can do what film does. Well, what I love about film, you know, I've never gone off it. It has a certain beauty, inherent beauty and softness. You take it out of the box, you turn it on, and you don't really need to do very much else than light. You know, so it has beautiful fall off.

You know, this was a film about faces a lot. We shot a anamorphic aspect 235. And so the way the light plays on a face and film, the way it goes from light to dark, the deep, rich blacks that you can get, the grain and the kind of analog life that it brings, those are not qualities that I've yet seen appropriately simulated in the digital experience. So I would be more than happy to move to a digital camera if it could achieve what the 35-millimeter camera can achieve. Can you make it look that way in post-production if you want to spend months inside a color room?

perhaps, but there's a reason Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, many of the great filmmakers shoot on film. And by the way, half of the nominated films of the hundreds of films that were made, last year more than half were shot on 35 millimeter. So there's probably a reason for that. I'd say also a thing that's wonderful about it. It's alive. So when you call the actors together and you say action, they know that film is going through

the camera, you're burning film, it isn't cheap. So they bring their A game and it focuses everyone together. That's fascinating. So people's performance goes up knowing that you're burning thousands of dollars every time you say action versus on digital when they're like, oh, well, you just tape over it. Yeah, there's a casualness to digital. And that can work. By the way, if I was shooting a documentary, I'd never shoot it on film. You go insane.

You know, you can't believe how the Maisel's brothers did it in the past. But I think, you know, with the theatrical movie, I'm going to hold on to 35 a little bit longer. It really is the best image quality, the best resolution. Well, that's IMAX. I mean, that's Nolan. I would love to shoot on that. Maybe if, maybe you could sell some of your Uber shares

and will them to me, you know, I'll go get an IMAX camera. But those are incredibly expensive, right? That more than doubles the cost of it. Yeah, it's, nothing about it is cheap. But then again,

you know, if you're making a film like Christopher Nolan goes out and makes ten and for $200 million, you know, what? 2% of it was spent on the film. So that's not the, that's not the big expense here.

You know. Since we're wrapping, up here and I really respect your opinion on film. Give me your top two from PTA QT and a third director that you love. So you're, well, your top two, Paul Thomas Anderson, and you can work out one or two, but you're top two. And then your top two, Quentin Tarantino, you can work out your order that you just love to watch that you think are the best pieces of film they've ever made. Judge them however you want. Okay. Well, I would have to go with, um, Paul Thomas Anderson, I would say, you know, my top, of course, is there will be blood.

Okay. Because how can you not love Daniel Day Lewis saying, why don't I own this? I drink tall milkshank. I just thought of you and I, we could be somewhere staring at something. They go, why don't I own this? And then, of course, I just watched again, what a delight with my brilliant friend, Heather Graham, boogie nights. I mean, such a classic, incredible film. filmmaking, this, you know, imitating the style of Scorsese, but bringing it into his own new dimension

and great writing and what, you know, you can tell he loves his actors and it brings such richness and pathos to everything. With QT, I mean, I love, for some reason I love Jackie Brown. That's my favorite. Yes, you always have. Underappreciated in its time, I think its reputation grew, but, you know, the boldness of casting Pam Greer, you know, in that time, a, over 35 African-American woman as the lead, wonderful supporting turns, Robert Forrester, De Niro, Bridget Fonda at one of her best. I mean, cinematography and just so much fun,

so adult, so interesting. I mean, Quentin, you've got to say Pulp Fiction. There's no way that film revolutionized cinema ushered independent film into the mainstream, right in the 90s just as I was entering film school. You know, it was a triumph. If only had directed true romance, he wrote it. He wrote it.

But listen, ably directed by Tony Scott, a great movie. I would say the third director I might pick, interestingly, would be Catherine Bigelow. And, you know, was married to James Cameron, although that's not what defines her. But films I love from her, I love the Hurt Locker, of course, who did me. Amazing. Strange Days. And for me, it's a toss-up between Near Dark and Strange Days. I mean, near dark, one of the great vampire films, I think her first. film and just so much tension and then strange days i watch once every couple years i mean it's so good

brilliant visions of you know technology that doesn't exist allows you to experience other people's memories emotions so so weird realize the big scale and the the end of the world the white millennia uh you know and rife finds what a performance angela bassett i mean i'm not saying Angela Bassett kills it in that film. For me, on the Paul Thomas Anderson, I just watched Magnolia again because Breddy Sanellis was talking about it. And I was absolutely flawed at how amazing the performances were again. Philip Seymour Hoffman just extraordinary.

And then when you see Tom Cruise trying to compete with Phillips Seymour Hoffman or just trying to keep pace with him, just incredible. But so my order for Paul Thomas Anderson, every time I see the master, or there will be blood, it becomes my number one. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the master is just such a sneaky film that when you see it three or four times, it opens up and you start to realize the top three performances there.

Amy Adams has a very, you know, a much smaller role than obviously the two men in it. But she's extraordinary. I think it may be her best performance. And then you look at the other two. when film with Seymour Hoffman is on camera with Joaquin Phoenix, I mean, it's just... It's electric. It's funny. I remember I went to see that film.

I love the film as well. I'm a huge fan. And I went to see that film in the arc light. People don't like it for some reason. You went to see in the arc light. I was with my executive producer at the time, Brian Young, and we watched it. And we were just completely blown away, right? So we walked out of the theater in silence into the arc light parking lot.

And we saw an older couple who had been sitting near us. and, you know, we said to them, I was elated. I'm like, oh, wow, did you see that film? And they were like, yeah. And I was like, wow, I mean, could you believe it? And they were like, I know. I mean, it is the worst thing we've ever seen. Like, we were just like, we couldn't believe that anyone could look at that and not see a masterwork, you know.

So it's, I guess, a very powerful film in how it might divide some, but certainly provokes a depth of response. All right, listen, an hour with Nick Durecki. Go see the film. Order it, please. It's an important film. Tell your friends about it. And continued success. And we'll see you all next time on this week in startups.