This Week in Startups - Quiet hiring, Semafor’s $10M SBF buyback + M3GAN and The Last of Us with Lon Harris | E1661

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Molly and Jason kick off the show by discussing the concept of 'quiet hiring' (1:53) and the SEC's proposed rules making it easier for LPs to sue VCs (9:37). They also cover Semafor's buyback of Sam Bankman-Fried's $10M investment (20:50). And Lon Harris is back to discuss the new box office hit M3GAN (31:00) and the premiere of The Last of Us (45:45).  (0:00) Molly kicks off the show (1:53) Jargon Watch: What is “quiet hiring”? (8:29) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (9:37) SEC proposes new rules making it easier for LPs to sue VCs (19:21) Supergut - Get 30% off with code TWIST at https://supergut.com (20:50) Semafor to buy back SBF’s $10M investment (29:44) Formulate - Get 25% off at formulate.co/twist (31:00) Blumhouse and Atomic Monster’s potential merger + M3GAN’s marketing campaign (45:45) The Last of Us Premiere + more on video game adaptations FOLLOW Lon: https://linktr.ee/lons FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey, everybody, we have a great show for you today. You've heard of the great resignation. You've heard of quiet quitting. You've heard of boomering hiring. But have you heard of quiet hiring? We're going to talk about, and not surprisingly, have a minor but not complete this agreement about whether you should be asked to do more at your current job for the same pay. We're also going to have a little discussion about a potential SEC rule that would make it easier

for LPs to sue VCs for failed investments. and we have finally learned how much Sam Bankman-Fried invested in the media outlet semaphore. Let's just say we were off. Our estimates were love. And then, of course, it's Thursday. So Lon Harris joins us for another edition of this week in streaming. It's basically my hell because it's all horror stuff. The horror box office hit Megan,

its viral marketing campaign, the Last of Us premiere HBO's horror series based on the hit PlayStation game and some other horror recommendations I'm never going to watch. but it's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a sock to report fast.

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year. Yes, we love it. You know, like, by the way, Jargon Watch used to be a, uh, a little section in what's called a magazine. And this magazine was called Wired. It's a magazine. It was like they would kill a tree and then they would put together a bunch of hot takes from podcasts. And then they would package it in a magazine and give you the magazine. And then everybody would read the magazine in the same month. And when you went to dinner, you talk about it. Did you read that in the magazine? I mean, it was a game changer. There I was in college with my nerdy boyfriend. and he got what was probably the third or fourth issue of Wired in the mail.

And it was like the big tabloid style. And I was like, this is the sexiest thing I ever saw. It was amazing. It was a big. It was like Mando 2000 wired. There was sort of this, these zines started coming out to cover. Cyberpunk tech,

whatever. But anyway. No, we're stealing it. We're stealing Jargo Watch. We heard about quiet quitting. Yeah, just keep collecting a paycheck,

but don't do any work. And just, you know, be on strike while working. There was the great resignation. There was quiet quitting. There was boomerang hiring where the people who great resigned, greatly resigned. I guess then we're like, I've made a terrible mistake.

Please take me back. And now there's yet another. Hit me with it. Quiet hiring. Okay. We should be clear that even quiet quitting was like totally overblown. It was just people giving a name to something that wasn't even that big of a deal. But now apparently, according to the TikToks,

Jason found this one. There is a new trend of Bruin. Quiet hiring will dominate the U.S. in 2020, says HR expert, and you need to prepare for it. Quiet hiring will dominate in 2023, says HR expert. You need to be prepared for it. Quiet hiring is when a company acquires new skills without actually hiring new employees. Essentially, shuffling current employees around or hiring contract employees. People are upset because they see this as companies paying people the same.

or less for more work. If this happens to you, you should be compensated more for going above and beyond and delivering high quality work. If your jobs just change significantly without any pay or change the job title, you should talk to your boss or HR. You could say the new work that you're assigning me outside of my job description requires a new contract. HR experts.

I don't recommend you do that. Let's make sure to do it right to prevent burnout and do the right thing. Yeah, do not take this guy's advice. No, you should definitely. If your boss dumps morch on your plate, after letting some people, you do it. people go and you're being quiet hired. I suggest you just say, yeah, you got a boss because you'll be next on the job. I feel like this is just bait, by the way.

This is the producers just dropped this in so that they could do so fight. They were just like, come on, go, go, go. Shout it out. Quiet firing was like firing people with no support. Quiet quitting was people just doing. That was not a real thing. That was the first year of remote work. But it was not a real thing.

And then this quiet hiring is a real thing. is a real thing. Yeah. If you were at Microsoft and they'll let go of 10,000 people and you've got a group of 10 people and they cut two and you're eight, obviously the work of those last two people is going to fall on the other eight. I mean, yeah, the end. That's the way this works, folks.

There is like a, you know, I mean, this is, TikTok is not going to do this in a nuanced way. There are some states that have actual labor laws about your, about substantial employment change. That's a real thing. Yeah. Like if your job, uh-huh. I'm pretty sure is one of them.

I'd never even heard that category. Your job description changed. Okay. Substantially. Okay. Substantial employment change. And it can, that can mean like your salary is reduced or your job totally changes or you're

kind of fired or you were asked to relocate with no notice when the conditions of different location. When the conditions of your job were X, you know, like it's remote, but now all of a sudden you have to change. So like, if a bunch of people got like, it's nuanced, if a bunch of people got laid off in your company and work has to be redistributed, you may end up with additional responsibilities on your plate. That's a pretty common downturn situation. Of course. It is unavoidable. Yeah.

If all of a sudden, your company is like, yeah, I'm going to need you to do this completely different job. that has, you know, whatever, 30% more hours and it's a 15% pay cut or whatever. Like, yes, you should talk to it. Come on. Like, there are rules about that kind of thing. I mean, communication is super important. In a downturn, like, it's a lot of stuff is going to change. And the companies who abuse their quiet hiring rights, right, that they have now all of a sudden, like now all of a sudden companies have more latitude to ask for more from employees.

and they will and they have to because austerity. And the companies who abuse this new reality will lose those employees with the market changes. That's how it always works. Yeah, or if they're good now,

they can probably find a job now. Exactly. As always, in America, I think the reason we tend to win is because everything's at will. Employees can quit anytime. Employers can make changes anytime. We haven't what's called at will

on either side. Anybody can leave. And now it's going to get even more interesting because I think this like I think Lena Kahn's going for getting rid of non-competes outside of California because there are places in Texas and

New England where you still are can be captured by a non-compete and I think they're going to do what California did but just get rid of them. Yeah that is just a that's an unalloyed good in my opinion like that is so restrictive and and it stops

it stops people from leaving companies and starting new companies Right? Like it's bad for the, that's bad for the founder universe non-competers. Yeah. I mean, founders sometimes have the ability to, you can get bought off the market. So you're paid to kind of sit. You know, it's like you have a contract. They pay you and earn out, whatever. So you're paid to not participate. That's actually legal. It's just illegal to have a non-compete if you're not paying the person. Yeah. But you can accept and you'd have to have a lawyer and you have to have a contract for this. you can't accept payment for not competing.

But you would have to opt into that. Right. And that would be a contract. Exactly. Okay. If you're a SaaS or a services company that stores customer data in the cloud, well, you know it. You need to be SOC2 compliant from a third party to close those big deals.

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Vanta.com slash twist for $1,000 off your sock, too. Let's cruise through. We got a couple of minutes to cruise through a couple more stories here. This has been kicking around and may in fact be getting kind of real. New proposed SEC rules that will heavily impact our industry. these rules have not been approved yet but it is sounding like the SEC is getting closer to approving rules that would make it easier

for LPs to sue VCs. Okay. I mean, LPs can sue VCs right now. Right. I don't know if they would win. This would kind of create a new legal framework, I guess, because right now you give money to a VC fund, you are trusting the fund manager to make those investments.

You don't really have a recourse as to what they invest in. And that's why they're able to take really crazy chances and invest on a cab company like Uber or a... Exactly. You know, a bet and breakfast company like Airbnb or Coinbase or Google or Facebook. It's kind of as an LP you want your GP, general partner, the person running the fund, to make crazy bets. So there is a kind of understanding that individual bets are not what you should look at. You should look at the, because of the power law, hey, did you hit an outlier or not? That's what you're betting on, at least in a VC fund, a private equity firm, which is still a private company fund.

You're kind of buying companies that have established revenue streams. So you're taking less risk with less upside per company. And according to Politico, these rules, in fact, would not just apply to VCs, but also, like you said, PE firms, hedge funds and real estate investors. And the way it works now is that LPs can sue for gross negligence, which covers reckless or purposeful acts. So, for example, if you knew that FTCX was going off the rails and you. you invested anyway, that would be gross negligence versus just doing minimal diligence and having them go off the risk. Right now, you probably wouldn't be sued for the minimal diligence part.

But if the rules change, it would expand liability to simple negligence so that if you just didn't really, really, really dig into what was happening at FDX, then your LPs could come along and sue you. Do we have in the notes, sorry to go off script for a second, do we have in the notes gross versus simple negligence? As a, as a definition.

That's a concept, it's a definition. Okay, I'm just pulling up here, Molly, simple or versus gross negligence. I'll be honest, I don't know the difference. Me neither. The term negligence. And the other one is lazy. I don't know.

I mean, I can guess. Yeah, that would be like it's degrees of negligence. but how do you even gross negligence, gross negligence. I'm just pulling up the first Google result here. I should ask chat GPT. Oh, we have a chat. By the way, we have a chat GPT. Oh, yeah, I'm going to Slack room.

So maybe go to the Slack room where we connect the chat GPD. Remember I said on a show? Imagine if chat GPT was in a Slack room? What is that Slack room called now? It's called AI testing. I'm doing it. What is the difference between gross negligence and simple negligence? Yeah, so we have a chat room here.

AI dash testing. our Slack. We connected it to a chat GPT account and it is really great. Here we go. Okay. Gross negligence is a more serious form of negligence which makes an individual entity liable for any damages caused by their careless behavior. It is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care which results in a heightened risk of harm. So it's more like intent. You have the like you knew but you did it anyway. Simple negligence is a less serious form which consists of a person or entity failing to use reasonable care that would be expected in a certain situation. This type of negligence is usually unintentional and results in a lesser degree of harm.

So in the case of FTX, simple negligence, I'm going to try to do an interpretation here. Right now, the producers are just like shaking their wish. They're just like, oh God, oh God, oh God. They just went to AI testing. It got the answer before we get. We did. Here's the idea. Do things, producers that sit on top of the chat chibati.

in the FTCX case gross negligence would be according to this you had heard that FTCS wasn't keeping good books, right? You were conscious of it maybe

and somebody said, yeah, you know, these books are a mess and you said, yeah, who cares? We can skip the diligence process this time. I don't figure it out. I don't want to insult the person, they'll figure it out. That would be to me gross, right? You consciously and voluntarily, you consciously knew about a problem and you voluntarily

ignored it. Like blatant disregard of reality. Now, simple might be, yeah, we're moving fast, we're getting deals done. Yeah, you know, we can do some light diligence on that, but we're just rely on the other people's diligence. And, you know, it might be like a simple, you know, disregard of it. In a down market, you know, here's the other reality of this. it's so hard to get into VC funds.

It's such a trusted long-term relationship that this is kind of silly. Like if you're going to opt into this kind of relationship with a fund, you're probably going to be in five or ten funds with this partner. You know, I mean, you should be getting to know them

and understand they're a thoughtful person and it's against their best interest. They only get paid if you make money. So it's kind of built into this. Yeah. The level of risk they're going to take is built in because you're aligned. There's perfect alignment here.

I would think so. And yet, this is America and somebody will sue. In fact, Bloomberg found at least one anonymous investor who was like, you know, the value of my holdings are down considerably. The thing is that especially if you've got. That sounds like sour grapes. Well, exactly, though. But now if the SEC goes through with this rule, then sour grapes become enough to sue. And that is completely, I mean, yeah, I think this would be a huge mistake on the part of the SEC.

This is risky capital and risky capital needs to exist. Because if it doesn't exist, you can't make major changes. You can't disrupt. You can't innovate. And so the idea of like making it easier to sue over this, like you knew what you were getting into when you signed up. It would be gross negligence on behalf of the LP. Yes.

To sign up to invest in the riskiest class of investing and then be mad when they lost of money. Buy bonds. Buy the index fund. Buy bonds. Do a perfect. bonds, 60, 40, whatever you choose, of equities, foreign equities, bonds, cash, equivalents, treasuries, put it together in a wealth fund perfectly, chef's kiss, blended portfolio,

protect your upside and downside, mute your returns. That's what you should be doing. There are other places to go. And if people want to go down the private company rabbit hole and look at all these opportunities, you've just got to be willing to have a crazy amount of variance. You'll lose half your money, you 10 extra money, it's a very wide swing of possibilities

in a venture fund. Yeah, I hate this idea. I absolutely, I think it's absurd. Do your own thoughtful, but listen, your training's complete. You're now by default taking the side of capitalist and capital allocators. You're a free market monster. You're like,

SEC, give us less rules, let's go crazy. Perfect. I was like, get out of my business, SEC. I mean, there are places where I think the SEC SEC should be spending their time and I think the number one place is education and then reasonable rules that for the people who have less experience

can contain the amount of losses they have so the bet size matters and so if you made it so that people had to sign an affidavit I'm going to join this venture fund I'm going to join this private equity fund I'm going to invest this private company. I am certifying when I signed this document that this investment is less than 10% of my yearly income or 10% of my net worth. Just a 10% of my net worth.

This is less than either of these two. 10% of my net worth or 10% of my yearly income over the last two years. Boom, on average. That would just at least say, well, you could survive that, right? 10% of your net worth? 10%. You made this decision. Oh, you signed five pieces of paper and you did 10%, and you did 50%.

and you did 50%, you also took the course that said don't put 50% of your net worth into risky stuff, okay, you made a decision to gamble. You cannot legislate stupidity. You can put into rules to limit the downside.

But you can put up speeding signs. And when people leave the exit ramp and it says 20 miles per hour, like when I was in my youth, I had like a little game in my Corvette. I would take the exit ramp at 20 and I might double it. Right.

And go a little faster than I should have. I wasn't exactly looking at it, but, you know, I probably took exit ramps a little too fast in the Corvette because it was made to do that. And the 20 sign, and then you get a little older. And you got kids and you want to stick around. And you know what? Yeah, I have cars that can handle the exit ramp on over 20 months per hour. I drive the speed.

I'm like in the right head lane now because I have three daughters in my car. It's just like those 401K bands, right? Like you can take the high risk one. Yeah. Like the aggressive one when you're young and then the medium one and then whatever. But like you, this to me, even just having a quote from an investor who's like my investments are down substantially I'm going to sue is like boohoo, buddy. That's your choice.

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It worked for me. I hope it works for you. Yeah. And, you know, in other related news, remember I said semifor? Yeah. Remember there's a new publication semifor? Or as I've been calling it, Samafreed? That's so perfect.

All right. Samifor is a, it seems like a reasonably high quality. product with great budgets and it seems like they're paying people really well. And they raised $25 million, which everybody was like, whoa, that's a lot of money for a cold start. And what was the valuation on that? So I was talking to people at Semaphore who were asking me for quotes on like Twitter or whatever.

And I'm like, don't talk about my friend's companies. Thank you. You can talk directly to him. And I was like, but hey, I got a question for you. And I asked the principals over there, how much did you take? And they're like, yeah, we haven't disclosed that. And I'm like, yeah, that's why I'm asking you. How much did you take?

I'm just curious. Like, it feels like since you're not saying it, like just advice, I gave them advice. I talked to two different people there. I was like, you really got to get ahead of this, like media guy to media guy. You should say, I, you know, how much you got. And if- Because it came out, to be clear, like, it came out. Of course it was.

They were among the outlets that had taken some money from Sam Bankman-Fried as he was sort of splashy cashy to various media outlets. So we knew that they had taken some money. There was some delay. and tap dancing on their part about whether they were going to give the money back. And your advice was like, you need to give the money back. And then you made a guess about how much you thought they had taken. I said, oh, of the 25 million, it had to be at least five.

I said at least five because if it was one or two, they would have just immediately given back. If it was 20%, if it was less than 10%, they would just give it back. But if it was 20%, that could materially affect their plans, that, i.e., they may have built a budget where they're burning a million a month for 25 months, and now they've got to, if they got to get back $5 million, that goes your runway from 24 to 19 months. So I'm just thinking practically. Yeah.

Well, this is one of the few instances in which you were wrong by a factor of 100. Oh, I was wrong. They took 10. I said at least five. You said at least five, and they took $10 million of their $25 million round. 40% of the round. 40% of the round came from SBF, which you can now understand

why they were tap dancing around trying not to give it back. And so the New York Times reported that they have apparently sequestered the money and are going to try to raise more money for a media outlet in this economy to try to pay it back. Cut the staff in half is my best advice.

Cut the staff and half is the only thing to do. Or like go to the staff and say, listen, we lost 40% of our revenue. Everybody's going to take a 25% pay cut until we race is funny. You got to do something immediately. or they have a year left. Just based on like back of the envelope math about,

you know, they say they're bringing in $15 million in revenue. They probably are paying people an average of $140,000, but that's maybe more with benefits. Like, this is bad. This is bad for them. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how many people they have, but they did hire like great riders. I'm guessing the riders are a buck 50 each, yeah, maybe 200 in some cases. And that's not counting expenses. And this was, by the way, the most capital.

This 10 million was the most capital. that SBF gave to a non-political entity. So they got pretty much the biggest media nut. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, this is going to go down on the books. Like, what an incredible, uh, splashy cashy. This guy did.

It reminds me, the only time I remember splashy cashy happening at this level was Ripple, who's under SEC investigation. If remember, Ripple was just giving away tons of cash to celebrities. I believe they were like on the Ellen show. They, I heard rumors they were giving Ripple, uh, as like donations to schools and stuff like that. I don't know if it's true or not. But I just, you know,

I've been hearing all these rumors from the back channel, that they were just giving everybody this printed token. And I think, you know what's going on here. It's like they're trying to build goodwill by giving people money, aka a bribe. And that's what I think this is. I think it's best described as payola or a bribe. I think they were trying to buy good coverage.

Yeah. From folks. I mean, you know, you just painted all of lobbying as a bribe, but I think we can all be honest at this point in American politics. It is. It's all bribes. I mean, of course it is. It's all bribes. It's all corruption. If you're using money like this, it is too corrupt. It's a bribe. It's quid pro quo. Always. So media outlets taking this money. Also, I think they were giving donations to ProPublica and other places.

So, you know, you just have to wonder, like, why are they giving donations? To me, it answered a very large question. And this is a bit, this is a bit of like pissy journalism gossip. but to me it added answers a really big question, which was these two guys came out, the two Smiths, with effectively no plan. Oh, right,

I remember that. Like when they were on their media tour about how they were raising money for a new thing, it was basically just like, well, it's just, it's just, it's going to raise money,

it's going to be awesome. And they never really had a plan, and then it changed all the time. And then they were like this. And then they were like, all journalism sucked, but we're way better. And they got a ton of unearned media for it.

And then it was like, where the hell did they raise $25 million? And now we know that, fully half of it was sketch money. All right, here's Jamie Diamond as we end talking about. Jamie Diamond, shall we? 57 seconds of JP Morgan Chase's CEO, Jamie Diamond,

from the World Economic Forum. Davos. We pretty much always have some crypto conversation with you. I'm just curious because I don't think we've talked to you since... I think all that's been a waste of time and why you guys waste any breath on us totally beyond me. Because you just think the whole thing just is... Going to zero? zero and it's fake?

Bitcoin itself is a hyped up fraud. It's a pet rock. You're back to that? Really? Of course, yeah. So what do you make then of BlackRock and other firms that are investing in infrastructure? That's different. Blockchain is a technology ledger system that we use to move information.

We've used it to do overnight repo, intraday repo. We've used it to, we're going to use it, we've used it to move money. Right. So that is a ledger. That's a technology ledger type of thing that we think will be deployable. Remember, we've been trying to. That for 12 years, too, and very little has been done. There's some tokens that I agree with you on, but Bitcoin's based on a distributed ledger.

It has all the characteristics of a store of value. It's immutable, it's scarce. Totally untrue. It's... 21 million. Well, yeah, really. How do you know it's going to stop at 21 million? Because it's...

I've mentioned this to people... Everyone says that. Well, maybe it's going to get to 21 million, and then Satoshi's picture is going to come up and laugh at you all. And say, nah, nah. There isn't a picture. And by then, Satoshi, you'll take it out. of dollars. I like Hot Tottie Jamie Diamond.

Yeah, he's, oh, would you call him Hot Tottie? Hot Tottie. He's had several Hot Totties there at Davos, and he's like, I'm done with this conversation. He's just exacerbated like I was. At crypto, it's just when you... Well, when you do something real for a living where you're like, I'm investing in real companies that are trying to sell software, build marketplaces to help people with an actual product, and you just keep asking me about some stupid shit.

At some point, the hot Tottie is going to kick in and I'm just going to go Hot Tottie Jamie Diamond. I'm Toddy Jamie Diamond ain't having it anymore. Stop asking. Yeah. By the way, people are like, why are you not at Davos? I can't invite it to Davos many times. They wanted me to be on their like young adults or young leaders bullshit 20 years ago.

I'm cheap. They pitched me on this nonsense for like $40,000, 15 years ago when I was running weblogs Inc. And they were courting me and I was, they're like, you get to hang out with all these people and you come. And I was like, I'm sorry, $4,000. Like $40,000 to join. to $40,000. Is how much they wanted from you? From me to be a young leader.

And then they wanted you to pay to be a young leader? Yes. Oh, hell no. That's some Ted scam right there. I was just like my same reaction to when Ted tried to charge me $50,000, like again, 10, 15 years ago, same time period, to buy a five-year pass in advance to Ted. And Ted at the time was like $6,000 or something. And they were like, we have this special VIP thing.

You get to come to this VIP dinner with Chris Anderson. and it's $50,000 for five years in events. And I was like, they had just seen I sold my company. So they thought I was a mark. And I was just like, yeah, you know, not for me. And then people were like, oh, you want to have, literally is going to go, oh, you want to have, Obama wants to have lunch with you. And I was like, he does?

You know, he does. What does you want to talk about? Oh, yeah, he's going to have me. He's going to make, he's barbecuing at his house. And I'm like, okay, that sounds amazing. And they're like, come on the, you know, we're going to fly a private jet. I was like, okay, that's great. Like, yeah, I'll send you the paperwork.

And I'm like, Pay more? 50 grand to go hang out with Obama and whatever. And I was like, okay. Anyway, great show, everybody. Great show, everybody. Don't fall for the grift. Don't fall for the grift.

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I'm honest here this weekend streaming. Lots to talk about, I think. Some stuff. La, la, la, la. Some stuff. Some stuff. This is where the year is now progressing. Everybody's back at the office in Los Angeles.

So we're starting to get some deals, some news. Things are happening again. Got it, got it. Everybody's back in the flow. It is really amazing how it takes until the third week of January. Like, January is the most stutter start month. and all of a sudden, like, literally, I feel like yesterday is when I was like, oh, I have nine meetings today.

Okay, we're back. Like, here we go. There's a great new film out that I was able to see that you have a 13-year-old right now who's putting the PG-13 and PG-13. We should put the 13 in PG-13. And this movie's called Megan with a 3-S-E. It's a Blumhouse production. And the film, you know,

not a horror guy, as it were, but it's a clever film. Surprisingly has a lot of themes that if you were in the tech industry talking about chat GPT every week, Molly, when you see this movie, and the premise of which is a little girl, loses her parents, has to be with her nerdy aunt, who is

essentially the, I've got the, I don't know if she was... Alison Williams. She's from Get Out. Girls. She was on girls. She was on girls. She was on her.

Right. Right. Williams' daughter, Alice Williams. Yeah. And so she plays, like, essentially the, a little bit like Aspergery, you know, Manex-Hentist type. Unable to parent, parent, new mom who has to take over for her news.

And, yeah, she makes her a little AI friend. Yes. Which never goes wrong. Well, you know, you give them the prime directives of, like, you have to protect this person. And of course, as we've seen in like Robocop and any other movies where you give prime directive to robots, I guess IRobot being the classic one, directives can go wrong. And so chaos ensues. But a lot of great themes about parenting as well. This was written by the same screenwriter as Malignant, Akella Cooper.

And Malignant was also like way better than it had any right to be and really fun, like a cool take on the sort of B. movie horror premise and yeah, she's really good. She keeps knocking these out and they're always like a cut above what you're expecting. I feel like one other really interesting aspect to this movie. I mean, certainly we've talked a little bit about the Blumhouse, Atomic Monster, like the two production companies coming together. But the other thing I think is really interesting about this is that it's a, like, you know, there's

TikTok songs now on Sirius. This is almost like the first TikTok movie. It had a totally viral marketing campaign based around this doll dancing that it sounds like they were originally going to save for the movie. And then it kind of sneaked into the first trailer and became like a TikTok hit. Yeah, Jason Blum, like I read an interview with him and he was saying when he first read the script, he was like, well, this is great. Obviously, I want to make this movie, but before I agree, I need to figure out how are we going to realize Megan? Like, how is it going to work technically? What's Megan going to look like? And he was like, I have to see it. And then I can decide if the movie's going to work. And it's a young dancer slash karate expert.

They found a young woman who's both a good dancer and martial artist. So she's portraying, she's embodying Megan. And then there's a voice actress who's supplying the voice. And then it's an animatronic face. And he said, once he saw that put together and we can make it dance and we could give it these snarky clips of dialogue, it was like, obviously, in that instant, it was like, well, this is a hugely marketable character. We got to make this movie. And, and yeah, I mean, I think that's a big, if you could get people like excited to see this new character, to hear the dialogue, to connect the memes with the movie, like, that's a hit. That's how you make people want to go see a movie. Exactly. All of that, yes. But really,

really hone in on the clutch thing here. They made a TikTok dance. If you want to win in today's world, you make a TikTok dance. Here is a compilation then of all of the, oh, good, she has a sword. What could, oh, God, this is so scary. Yeah. Yeah, but I think, so this is her original dance and then this is all the people now doing the dance. Of course.

And if we saw the same thing with Wednesday, which became like the biggest Netflix hit ever, if you give people that, that like something to latch on to and connect with, Michael Myers guy, that they can recreate on their own. and remix and revisit that it gets them excited. Seriously. It's so fascinating though because just we,

it's not just virality. It like Morbius went viral. Exactly. It's more than that. We've been talking, spoiler alert, I've been talking about I've been rewatching

snakes on a plane for a video I'm writing next week. And that's another, specifically because of this because that's an example of everybody loved snakes on a plane for the six months

before it came out. It was every meme. You know, I'm tired. these M-Fing snakes or whatever. And then nobody went and saw the movie. So it's not just virality. It's you got to hook people.

You gotta have word of mouth. Right. It's not to be interactivity. To see for themselves not just make fun of. It's interactivity also. Yeah. And so I think I'm predicting now that by the end of 2023, we are going to be so tired

of movies manufacturing TikTok dances. Well, that at least in this. But at least in this moment, we should give Megan its flowers. Sonic the Hedgehog flossed in his movie, too. I mean, it's been going on. They've known about the TikTok Fortnite dance angle for a little while now. We've been knowing this. There was a Chargers halftime show, apparently.

There are like flash mobs outside the Today studio. It worked. It is something right. I do think there's something about the look. It's the branded character. This character has a look that is memorable. it like she says funny things. I think that like that has something to it as well

that people just want to go be, they want to see more of this persona. They want to learn more about this IP, you know, like that. I think there is something to that now. Halloween is solved. Everybody gets to go as Megan O'Sulli. Exactly.

Well, here's the other thing. It harkens back to the relationship with the Terminator and Terminator 2 and John O'Connor. Is that right, John O'Connor? Sarah Connor John Connor. John Connor. John Connor. Are you Sarah Connor?

Yeah. Exactly. But right. I mean, if you think about it. I mean, another master of this, James Cameron, with every new sequel, it's not just a follow up. He's giving you a new, fascinating entry point. What is this?

Like in Terminator 2, this liquid metal Terminator and have you seen this boy and that Robert Patrick performance? So memorable, so iconic. He created that. liquid metal visual effect for that movie. And like, that's the kind of stuff that you need to do now. It's such a hard task to get people excited to go to a movie theater. And, you know, for parents, you know, whoever wrote the screenplay, I just give them a little kudos.

Who is it again? Akila Cooper is her name. She also wrote Malignant. She understood, like, parents are going to take their daughters to see this, etc. there's a lot of like injected parenting like you're not a good parent you are a good parent what is parenting today in the age of ticot what is parenting are you just like hey this doll is better at parenting this AI is better than parenting than I am because there is of course the standard what do you call folks who like the helicopter social worker there's like a social worker

who's like you know checking in on the child who has been adopted because they're parents parents have died. And she's like, wait, what is this Megan Dahl doing here? What is this about? And, you know, this sort of dialogue is going on about like, what is good parenting, screen time, how much time with the doll, yada. Yeah. But the doll also sings Cia's titanium. What are my favorite, you know, anthems. So that's like her way of singing her to bed is like, you know, you're bulletproof. You're titanium. And it's super cute. While she's like murdering little boys who are torturing this young girl. I'll leave it up. Spoilers.

Yeah, not too many spoilers. But also the scores are crazy. Like, you know, we talk often on the show about like what did the Rotten Tomato show? Yeah. I mean, it's usually the opposite. Like the audience on a pop culture movie like this would be higher than the crax. Horror, it's very weird and tricky with horror because a lot of, a lot of horror fans,

if a movie is sold as a horror movie and then they go. it's not people being murdered a lot and it bloody and R-rated and it doesn't feel like a scream movie or a James Wan movie. Then they're like, this is not a horror movie. Man, you know, so like a lot of like malignance, another good example of a lot of horror fans love it. And it became like a cult thing as soon as it popped up on HBO Max. But a lot of mainstream horror fans were like, this isn't the conjuring. I want jump scares. I want, I want conventional horror movie expectations.

And, you know, like sometimes these clever kind of new takes on it don't meet those expectations. And so a lot of the time, the audience score on horror films seems weirdly low, even if the movie is good and there are a lot of people who liked it. That's kind of, that's an interesting insight on the scores because it was, they don't seem to make a ton of sense. No, this is a, this is a weird horror thing, especially it happens. It's extreme when you have like a 24 horror movie. And it's very artful and it's slowly pace and it's not doing the usual horror movie thing. A lot of horror fans just hate that and they reject it out of pocket. So stuff like this is what's kind of Screen 5 was sort of making fun of.

Stuff like the Babadu or It Follows. Like they're very popular with some segments of the horror universe. Their art genre fit. There's like there's horror genre. Then there's like this new art genre. They call it elevated horror. But right. There's like horror movies that are trying to really have his massive fan.

horror gatekeeping. Or just like, I mean, there is a certain breed of horror fan that is just like, I don't want a thoughtful movie. I don't want a movie that's about themes. I don't want a movie that's really about story. I want somebody who's terrifying and he's trying to murder people and they're all very scared and people get their heads bashed in. Got it.

Yeah. I mean, there was that mid-so-mar. Is that an example of an art house? Ariaster is definitely one of these elevated guys. People love those movies and they have huge fan bases, but Hereditary probably has a weirdly low audience score because it's like, well, this isn't a ghost movie. It's terrifying, but in a weird, gets in your head, unsettling way. Exorcist kind of way. Right, not in a Michael Myers' stalking teens through suburbia kind of way, which is what a lot of Harfafel.

A lot of Harfids, they just want the conjuring. That's what, that's what horror is. There's bumps in the night and you're looking out and then, something jumps out at you and it's a demon and that's it. I think this is a theme though. This Jason Blum guy is pretty smart because haven't other directors or I should say producers said, show me the monster. Let's get the monster and then I'll make a decision to green light the pick or not.

He didn't invent that. Did that happen in Jaws as well? Did they make the shark first or like do a shark scene or something? Jaws got it. The flip example where Bruce the shark barely worked. And so Spielberg's Spielberg was like, you know what? let's just not show the shark on camera and I'll make it suspenseful and intense about how you don't ever see the shark. That was necessity because the shark was malfunctioning most of the time.

And makes it more Hitchcock-like where you don't see it. Right. But definitely, Jason Blub did not invent this concept of like, I need to see how it's going to look on camera. I just think now that's sort of like having this brand that is immediately recognizable in this character that everybody knows that you can franchise out and put on everything and how. do the Fortnite dances and make into a Halloween costume. And like, that's such a huge thing in pop culture in 2023. It's all about branded characters and IP. You know, there's whole movies of just like, oh, Optimus Prime is going to meet Chuckie in this.

And so, like, being able to create your own from scratch is massively valuable in 23. Like, beyond, like the best thing you could possibly do. Oh, I see a business opportunity, Molly. My mind is such like a entrepreneur. You're like, how can I make money? Capital monster. Let's go.

I'm just thinking, you know, if you were one of these people who works in Hollywood who makes monsters, you know, makeup artists, etc., you should just go out on the weekend, one weekend with a couple of your friends, sign a contract that you're going to create a couple of IP characters that you will share ownership in. Make a couple of monsters. Make not a short film, not a 10-minute film. Make a TikTok. But a little thing, they put a little bit of copy and then they show the monster, reveal the monster,

and then be done with it. There's a... Then go sell the character, give it a great name. There's an Eli Roth started an internet brand called Crypt TV, and this is what they do. They make shorts,

and they make web videos, and they make movies about, they just create their own monsters, and then they put them in a bunch of videos, and then it's like, you know, here's birch, the tree lady or whatever. You know, like that's the idea.

It's like, how can we just like, a house for churning out these kinds of characters. It's hard. I mean, it's hard to make something on the level of Megan that everybody wants to be part of. But you could see, I mean, Disney understands this to every new big Disney Plus show or Disney movie. Like, that's what they're trying to do.

It's like, how do we make the cute little guy from this thing a character? Everybody's going to love and remember and want to buy a plushie of and want to go on a ride and put on a shirt. Like that's exactly. Like they're very, like, gross. is like the ultimate, you know, version of this. Yes. Or as we call him, Baby Yoda.

Well, today, let's, uh, let's keep talking about properties that this, today is like my nightmare show because I'm a giant chicken. So I'm not, uh, and likely will not watch either of the things we're talking about. But the other thing that's hitting hard this week in streaming is the last of us on HBO, which had the second highest viewed premiere after House of the Dragon. and I find this fascinating because where projects go to die has historically been video game adaptations. Yeah. And The Last of Us is a game that people feel really strongly about it.

It's super. It's very emotional content. I remember one E3 where they rolled out a trailer for Last of Us installation and all of us. Like everybody cried. Oh, wow. Literally everyone. And everybody was tweeting like, why are we all crying at this stupid thing? This isn't a zombie game.

But so it's like a walking dead kind of. of like zombie video game adaptation with heart, right? If I'm getting that correctly and seems to be hitting. Yeah, I mean, the game is basically kind of an experiment in, you know, if you mix that kind of like a Resident Evil, survival, horror kind of video game, but what if you really leaned into the story? What if you, you know, really wrote it like a show or a film, invested a lot in the characters, brought in the best voice actors in the business to really

sell it. I really focus on making it as cinematic as possible and narrative and telling a story. And people loved it and it really worked well. And so now the challenge with the show is, well, if you played the games, you know the story. They can't totally change the story or they'll upset the fans who want to see the story. But how do you keep it feeling fresh for people like me who already know mostly what happens? And so so far, I think they're nailing it. But that's a big challenge. It seems like it. It was controversial too. Yeah, 90 minute, because you had that, you have a 30 minute prolog that's really not in the games. The game's sort of open and it's already the post-apocalyptic future. We kind of gather what happened to Joel through backstory. And the show made this bold, I thought it worked really well. Like the whole first half hour is like, let's just see Joel's story play out. Which other was very effective. That's a Tanduey Newton's daughter played Joel's daughter. in that opening half hour.

I don't know if you guys knew that. She was great. It is definitely. It was definitely emotional. And I did see a lot of people who are into the video game. It brought that built-in audience. But this, unlike some of the other shows,

like, correct me if I'm wrong here long because I'm not really into video games. There, you know, for something like Angry Birds, which became a movie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokemon, Doom became a movie, and then also Halo became a movie. Show.

A show. Halo and the Witcher and the Witcher are the two big kind of shows. But Witcher was also a series of novels before it was a game. So that's a little bit of a weird one. Okay, yeah, that's a weird. Oh, that's an interesting one. Game to video game to Shoeba.

It was books and short stories, and then they made the game out of it, and then the Netflix is kind of going back to the writing, but it's sort of all together. Well, here's the thing. And correct me if I'm wrong here. Cinematics in video games have become much more rich and robust and they're longer. So I remember when video games started adding these little cinematic things.

So between levels, I guess, cutscenes. Yeah. It would do like 30 seconds and then, you know, like kind of entertain you and move the story forward and then I can now play this level kind of a situation. I mean, if these consoles get more and more powerful, their processing speed. You know, they can handle much bigger,

more of that. Well, they also have the budget though, right? So to make a cinematic episode. So what I thought was kind of interesting is I saw that this movie has lots of cinematics.

Just like the Star Wars video games seem to. And somebody was tweeting, you see here on the screen, scenes from the video game, cinematics, not the gameplay, right?

The cutscenes. Versus the actual, realize to you show. Yeah. They're tight. Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of thing I'm saying is like, I feel like you have to do some of that so that the people who played the game feel, you know, like, okay, this is an adaptation of the thing I love.

They're doing it. They love the property the way I do and they respect it. And it's not like, because this is what's going on with The Witcher right now. As the Witcher creative team that made the show came in, and they're like, look, it's a show, we're not making books, we're not making video games, we've got to do this our own way. And they're making a lot of big, bold, decisive changes to the source material. And fans don't really like it.

In fact, the rumor is, and I can't say this, I don't know if this is true. The rumor is that's why Henry Cavill, who's a hardcore fan of the games wanted out of the show, because he's like, we're not, I don't, it doesn't feel authentic to the games in their world, and I don't want to do it anymore. So that's why you say. People are losing their minds over blood origin. Like losing it. Okay, but it's so interesting because it doesn't seem...

What's Blue Origin? Blood Origin is a prequel series they made that Netflix made. It's like a thousand years before setting up the events of The Witcher. But again, I think they're playing a little fast and loose with the mythology as established in the books and the games and people don't. people don't like that. Michelle Yo. Yeah. Michelle Yo stars in this, yes.

I had to watch like, you know, my son showed me at 12 minute YouTube. It's just like an angry guy ranting about which are blood origin and how it's nowhere near. Nothing about this is in the games or the books or the da-da-da-da-da. And it's an abomination. And the whole time I was just screaming back at the TV. I was like, and how's Michelle Yo? Like, I'm watching the hell out of this. Lighten up, kid.

Halo is the same thing. It's like, Master Chief's taking his helmet off and he's like in love with some woman and it doesn't feel like the game. So you have to, you don't have a choice. You can't just go totally off the reservation and make your completely own thing that doesn't feel like it, the heart of the original

IP is still there. Why hasn't Blumhouse gone public? He should take this company public. They have to be... I'm just trying to make a Jay Trayer in our eyes. Blumhouse is a genius. Jason... Jason Blum is a genius. I mean, yeah, a visionary guy. I need to talk to Jason Blum because I actually reached out to somebody who knows Quentin Tarantino.

I reached out to my Quentin Tarantino Connect after listening to his book. And I said to him, I said, you know, there's QT, you know, as they call him, you know, you're friends with him. I'm not friends with him. I met him once. I said, does QT own his own movies?

And they said, of course not. He sells them. And then he made a ton of money. Well, that was, this is what was going on with the Pulp Fiction NFTs. He was in this whole fight with the earma. I said, you know, I've been watching these syndic kids do very well.

And somebody on his stature, he already wants to do a TV show. What could a TV show cost? Like, you know, $5 million an hour or something, I don't know, 10 million an hour, like,

which is what this, you know, high size IP, but maybe he could do it for much less. Right, yeah, it could be if you're making Game of Thrones, it's for it. Yeah,

it could be like a million or three. I was like, I wonder if like a syndicate with Quinn Tarantino's fans owning pieces of his IP, because he said he wants to do a TV show, he wrote a TV show, he said,

Spielberg, I heard this week, wants to do TV. Yes. To do some long-form thing. You could have, like some other artists have actually funded their own TV shows and then just delivered them to the networks. Based on the fan base,

I was like, do you think it's something he might be open to? Because I might want to try that. I wonder if you could actually put a syndicate together. And then everybody's in the syndicate. You have their name as a producer and a title card. There's a company about the premiere. There's a company called Legion. in Hollywood that's doing this.

They made that, they made that Nicholas Cage, uh, horrible, what was that called? Hang on, I'll look it up. Uh, and this is,

this is their idea. They, they, like the public, you could buy shares in projects, and then they actually, like, turn those things into movies.

And then, you know, I don't, I don't know how the ownership works, like, if you, if it actually gets, uh, it's color out of space.

That's the Nicholas Cage horror movie I was thinking of, color out of space, which is, based on a lovecraft story. So it's a similar kind of idea where it's like crowdfunding these projects and then the fans get to vote on which project they want to pursue and which filmmaker and whatever. So it's like semi-democratic in terms of how the movies get funded.

But I think it's a fascinating idea and I do think filmmakers who is like a great example is, I don't know if you guys have heard about Skinnamarang. No. super low budget horror film that this guy made in his parents' house for like 20 grand, and it's managed to get distribution. It's in theaters right now, mostly because of a viral TikTok campaign where people are finding weird clips from this movie. It's like these, it's a very lo-fi.

It's about these two kids who have been left alone, and there's some kind of presence in their house, demon in their house, and they're like running around hiding in the house trying to stay away from it. But anyway, a guy like that. Blair, which project, ask? Sure. Well, it's just like a very experimental, very low, low budget, not really narrative-driven, just like the experience of these two kids getting increasingly freaked out in this dark house by themselves

and using a lot of like sound and other kinds of small, small subtle elements to make it scary. But a guy like that who can turn in a movie for, you know, 20, 30 grand. Imagine what he could do with 100 grand. It would make perfect sense for someone like that who's got this viral fan base now to like, yeah, fund the next movie entirely from the internet. Why take A24's money? Yeah, interesting, fascinating.

I know. Pedro Pascal is the person in... And the last of us. The story, for those who are not familiar, the story is that Joel is a guy. So this takes place 20 years after modern civilization was destroyed. Joel is this main character played by Pedro Pascal

who's hired to transport Ellie who is played by Bella Ramsey who played Leanna Moormont in Game of Thrones Also from Green of Thrones both Game of Thrones actors there Oh yeah, right who is a 14 year old girl

who needs to be saved, rescued taken out of this quarantine zone to an unknown destination. 20 years ago there was a fungal outbreak that turns humans into zombies. You get infected

by this fungus that takes over, mutates your body in a lot of disgusting ways, and turns you into, well, we would recognize a flesh-eating monster chasing you around, shambling zump. So it's very walking dead-ish.

We're sort of jumping 20 years after civilization fell. There are these quarantine zones where people live huddled together in safety. And then most of America is just this vast, scary, who knows what's going on out there, wasteland, you know. I forgot that Pedro Pesk, gal was Oberon.

Yeah, yeah. The Viper. He was awesome. So good. That was where most of us sort of discovered him for the first time. You should have been in our last three trailers out, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I know.

I saw it during a sporting event, the Bucks game. Yeah. Star Wars fans get so much more stuff out of that than I do. Like, I feel like I'm a Star Wars fan. And then there's a trailer like that. And everybody's like, oh, my God, did you see Grubus Bleeblow? He was in there. I can't believe we're going to planet Shandrax.

Don't start Star Wars. We got to, don't start Star Wars. We got to wrap. Jason will give us the entire history of glue blob, bleeplar, if we're not careful. Lon, what, um, okay, I'm almost done with kaleidoscope. We'll talk about that. What else should we be, what else should we be watching? There is a fascinating peacock show on right now called Paul T. Goldman.

I don't know if I told you guys about this one before. It's the guy who did Borat, too, and he worked on a bunch of Nathan Fielder's stuff. So he found this guy. this regular real person guy who wrote a book about how he got married and his wife was lying to him about who she was and he untangled this whole vast conspiracy. He's nuts. I mean, this guy is not a sane man. And he wrote this story that basically cast himself as an action hero taking on this

international criminal conspiracy. And so Jason Wollner, the Borat two guy, was like, okay, we're going to turn it into a show. So the show was both an adaptation of his story. And a behind-the-scenes chronicle of making this show with this lunatic, this like self-deluded weirdo. It's very funny and strange. Awesome. I think you did mention it, but I'm still going to watch it. Sounds amazing.

Yeah, I enjoyed that one. Also, Servant is back for its final season on Apple TV Plus. Nobody's watching Servant. It's so freaking good. M. Night Shyamalan produces it. It's like this weird. It's got horror elements, but very, very rarely does anything actually. horrifying happen. It's all slow burn. But it's just Lauren Ambrose and Toby Campbell are this rich

couple in Philadelphia and they have a baby. There's more to it than that, but I don't want to give anything away. And they hire this weird girl who turns out to be a refugee from a cult to be their new nanny. She almost seems like she's got supernatural powers, perhaps. There's some very mysterious stuff about her. And it just all builds and builds from there. Also, Rupert Grint, Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films is, is, uh, is, uh, is also in here. I am not, I'm just going to say this and then we will end. I am not stoked about the return of horror as America's favorite genre.

It's like the 80s all over again. As long as I get more, as long as I get more big budget crappy action movies to pair with horror like the 80s were, I'll be happy. It's not, it's not gory at all. It's like a psychological thriller. It's very weird and suspenseful. On a zero to 10 chicken scale, I'm a nine and a half. Yeah. The one other thing I was going to mention is Jeremy Renner's mayor of Kingstown is back on Parabot Plus for a second season.

It's another one of those Taylor Sheridan shows. And I think it's really good. I'm going to watch it just because I think there's a potential bromance for me, celebrity bromances. We're both up in Tahoe. Yeah. And we're both like, you know, real men. And he's back home. And he's, you know, he's healed up.

So on the men. He's recovering, recovering now. But Mayor Kingsdown, a really... You know, like, a chainsaw, he's got like a snowcat. You know, we're both doing dangerous... He's at their building vehicles and... Yeah. Yeah, just stuff that guy's...

We're going to go track down Jeremy Renner's email address, Lon. Thank you, as always. See you next week. Bye. Take care.