TRIGGERnometry - Has Hollywood Reached Peak Woke? - Critical Drinker

Episode Date: February 25, 2024

The Critical Drinker reviews, analyses and commentates on various forms of entertainment, primarily movies and TV shows. His YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJPFQdZwrOutnmSFYtbstA) has nearly 2 million subscribers. Check out our first interview with him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3rAZEvwCLM Sponsors: Get 15% off using the code TRIGGER when you buy a GALAXY PROJECTOR 2.0 at https://galaxylamps.co/trigger Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com/ Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest. She treats Ken like a piece of shit, from what I recall. He just wants a little bit of respect, and apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie. Bizarre.

The idea that it's best picture, really? You couldn't find anything better than that? Do you think that's a political decision? Oh, 100%. Yeah. If we look at the Oscars now, what is the point of the Oscars really? Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail

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sitting at the end of a very long table. It's great. I feel like a Bonneville in here. It's fantastic. Well, it's awesome to have you back on the show. We had you on about a year and a half ago. and we spent, it's not an uncommon thing for us quite a bit of time talking about whether wokeness is destroying Hollywood and the movie business and we had a great conversation

that's done really well. So we wanted to talk about a bunch of stuff that's happened since, a few of the movies, you know, Barbie Oppenheimer, the controversy with the Oscars and all of that. But first of all, actually, be interesting to get your take on coming back to the conversation we had last time. Is Hollywood getting more woke, less woke? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse?

What do you think? I think last year really saw a lot of changes in that industry. I mean, I think for one thing, it was the demise of the superhero movie last year. And, you know, that really became the benchmark for, I guess, woke politics being pushed into movies. When you look at the Marvel stuff that had been coming out, I think they got away with it up until a point. And then last year was really the point where Ed. all reached critical mass and everyone just really rejected it. Partly it was the politics, partly it was just really terrible writing and low-quality movies and like superhero fatigue.

But yeah, I think probably last year was a bit of a turning point for all of this stuff in Hollywood. We're still going to see more of it. For sure, it's not going to go away overnight, but it's definitely the point where it's no longer financially viable. That's really interesting. And the superhero stuff, is that literally just as you say, fatigue? Or is there another dimension to why those movies are not getting made as much anymore? It's probably a whole bunch of things that have come together. Like I say, to reach critical mass last year. It was superhero fatigue for sure.

It's oversaturation of the market. Like, we've had nothing but superhero movies for the past 10 years. It's declining quality because they've spread themselves so thin, trying to make so many different projects. Inevitably, the quality suffers. I think also perhaps hiring people based on things other than merit to do the writing, to do the directing. doesn't help either

and yeah the political dimension of it I think it's just become tiresome so all of those things combined together to just really crash the entire genre so I'm not going to be sad to see the back of them for a while I think we're all getting a bit bored of that sort of thing

isn't that a real problem though for the Hollywood studios because in an era when young people are going less to the cinema they seem less engaged with movies as a whole because of social media the superhero movies What a guaranteed way for those studios to print money in a way?

They were, and they were partly responsible for this gradual creep in cost as well for movies. It used to be that any movie that went over the $200 million mark was rare, and that was a big event. Now, it just became the norm. That was the minimum, really, to make a superhero movie. It was $200 million. You were getting into the realms of $300, $350. And when you're doing that, when you're spending that amount of money,

you have to play it safe. You know, you need a guaranteed return on that investment. And the way to do it up until recently had been superhero movies because they were making a billion dollars apiece. It was great. You know, it was like printing money. But when you start to get tired of that,

when the audience interest starts to decline and you're not even able to get to five, six hundred million, you're losing. And you can't keep doing that. You can't keep losing money on your films. Yeah. And one thing I found really interesting is that accompanied by the rise of the superhero movie was the death of the indie movie.

If you go back to the early noughties, you saw these incredible indie movies being made for relatively low budgets with big-name actors, and they were these fascinating projects. But those have kind of died as well. Certainly at the cinema, the summer movie season became entirely dominated by the big budget, tent-pole superhero movies. For the obvious reasons, like I just said, they made a lot of money. And so they did end up dominating the scene. But then you saw last year the biggest movies were the Mario Brothers movie, Barbie, Oppenheimer,

you know, movies that had nothing to do with superheroes or comic books or anything like that. So it was a definite shift there. But what I found the, let's talk about Barbie and Oppenheimer, because I don't think many people would have predicted, maybe Barbie. You go, look, you know, every girl played with Barbie when she was younger. okay, I get the nostalgia elements where why people would go and watch that movie. But Oppenheimer?

And then it came out at the same time? Yeah. That was weird. It was a bizarre phenomenon. I don't exactly know how it came about, but suddenly Barbenheimer was just the thing that dominated the summer. And, you know, we've said before

on my live streams and so on, I think Oppenheimer profited from that way more than Barbie did. Barbie was by far the bigger movie. And the idea that you've got this very long, very slow-paced, historical epic, you know, dealing with a subject matter that not everyone's going to be super invested in. It's kind of old news at this point. But the fact that it did as well as it did was just a testament to the fact that Barbie had such massive momentum behind it. And people were seeing them as a double feature.

It was a strange thing. Not something that you see very often in modern Hollywood, but it somehow happened. Fair enough, it was interesting. And was that contrived? Was that deliberately done? Or did it sort of spring up organically that it was packaged up like that? I mean, certainly the success of Barbie was very well engineered through a brilliant marketing campaign.

I mean, they made this the movie that everyone had to go and see for the summer. So they did their jobs spectacularly well. Like you say... We'll start to jump in. Tell us more about that because I know that the marketing budget for Barbie was bigger than the budget for the movie. But money doesn't necessarily equate to outcome. So what is it that they did that made it such a big movie in the end?

I think they just obviously tapped into that nostalgia aspect for the toys. You know, like most girls in the Western Hemisphere will have played with a Barbie doll at some point in their lives. And so there's a big probably emotional attachment to it there. You had a star like Margot Robbie there who was finally coming into her own as a A-list star because she'd struggled a little bit weirdly. the thing that people forget about her is that she'd had a lot of movies that hadn't done necessarily great, like the Birds of Prey movie, trying to launch her as an A-Lister, but this was the point where she finally reached that A-list status. So that certainly helped. You had Ryan Gosling, who was super popular

as well at the time. And the whole aesthetic of the movie was just very different, very interesting, certainly not like what we were used to seeing. It didn't look like a superhero movie where there's big explosions and big grand spectacular CGI, kind of looked like, as you'd imagine, a play set for little kids. And so it just looked visually interesting, and it really, the marketing somehow made it seem like it was going to be an event. I don't know exactly how they accomplished it, but I think they brought together all of these elements of having two big popular stars.

Certainly a popular director in Greta Gerwig, who, if you're a feminist, for example, you're definitely going to be aware of her and following her work. And so I think it became that kind of, what did they call Black Panther, a cultural event? I think maybe this was like Black Panther, but for feminists. Yeah. Pink Panther. So it was a piece of genius, how they marketed it. It was very well done. And it's interesting because, like, my wife and I, we've got a young child at home,

so we don't go and see a lot of movies, even though we love them. but it was one of the ones, one of the very few that we did go and see. And, you know, we had our own opinion on it. What did you make of it? I'd be lying if I said I had a great time watching it. Watching this film was one of the most miserable, demoralizing, unpleasant experiences I've ever had as a movie critic and genuinely made me question where our society is heading.

It was a strange movie. I feel like the actual telling of the story and the entire telling of the story and the internal consistency of it, the characters, the things I generally look for in a movie, was entirely subsumed by the message of the film. The only problem is the film wasn't particularly clear on the message it was trying to get across either. The obvious one being, you know,

women have it terribly hard in the modern world and we need to appreciate how difficult it is for them and cut them some slack. Okay, fine. It's been the theme of every movie ever for the past 10 years. That'll be 500 million. dollars. Yes, exactly. I think they could have done interesting things with it by perhaps exploring that, you know, in the world we live in today, men don't always have it easy either, and there's

perhaps expectations put on them, or there's unfair imbalances in how they're treated, that sort of thing, but clearly the film wasn't willing to go there, so fair enough. And I think, you know, it became a bit toothless, because I understand what people say, but it was also a critique of modern-day feminism in that it puts on realistic expectations on women. They have to be super successful and make it look easy and all that stuff. But it felt like it was never willing to really critique it. It was just paying lip service to that. So it was an imbalance sort of movie. It clearly wasn't a movie made for someone like me. So let it be its own thing, I suppose. All I could do was give my impressions of it. Certainly as a person who tries to be to judge movies based on the key

elements, like I say, storytelling, consistent characterization, all that sort of thing. It definitely fell flat because it was all subsumed by the message it was trying to get across. And what was interesting about it is because we're talking about wholeness, but it was a pretty woke film. Some of the central tenets of wokeness you could see running right the way through that movie. I think so, yeah. I mean, it's not to the degree of other films where, for example, Barbie becomes this action hero who can fight men. and beat the crap out of them and stuff. It was a more, I don't know if thoughtful is the right word,

but it tried to at least go into the methodology and the philosophy behind feminism and guess how women are treated today, which on the face of it is fine. Like you can explore all this sort of thing. It's all down to the implementation of it. And I guess, yeah, if you want to apply that term to it, it would be considered woke because it's really,

it doesn't treat men, and women equally, I guess. And the way the film resolves itself is essentially in the fictional world of Barbie, where you're supposed to be identifying with, men are put firmly back in their place. And I just thought, that doesn't seem like a very nice way to end it. I feel like maybe if you were to go for an equal balance, you know, where they recognize, hey, men and women are both really important for society. And if we keep them, if we keep one side down and elevate the other, it's not really fair.

and it just leads to more conflict. But the movie didn't seem to want to go down that road. No, it didn't. Fair enough. And it was interesting because I was watching it and I actually went in and I wanted to like it. I wanted to like it. And this is genuinely what I thought.

I was watching it going, I think Barbie's a bit of a bitch, to be honest. She treats Ken like a piece of shit from what I recall. Because, you know, people talk about this. Like he's like the actual hero of the movie where all he wants really is a little bit of recognition. and to be seen by her. He doesn't even want to be worshipped

or like be the ruler of everything. He just wants a little bit of respect and apparently that makes him the antagonist of the movie. Bizarre. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile Bill. Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news. Bring your AT&T or T Mobile Bill to Verizon

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Best network based on route metrics, best overall mobile network from the U.S. second half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person regained me the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply. It is bizarre. And then, so I didn't actually think it was a particularly good movie. I don't think the, the narrative was coherent. I thought the, to me, it was a badly structured movie. However, it's got best picture. it's got, well, it's nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars. That is hilarious. And then Greta Goeig didn't get nominated for Best Director,

which then precipitated the inevitable meltdown on social media and whatever else. So what's your take on that? Man, these guys should be grateful that that movie got nominated for anything. Like, I can see it get nominated for like Best Production Design or something. And Best Costume. Yeah, a very visually interesting movie. But the idea that it's Best Picture, really? Like, you couldn't find anything better.

that, that's baffling. Do you think that's a political decision? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, it's a movie that says all the right things, presents all the right messages, and obviously has this massive cultural movement behind it. And so, sure, of course, they're going to try and give it every award ever, you know. And it was quite funny that people were raging, you know, that Greta Gerwig didn't get

best director, Margot Robbie didn't get best actor or nominated for it. whereas Ryan Gosling did. I mean, Gosling was actually the best thing about the movie. I think so, yeah. I mean, he's obviously a charismatic actor, and even though they present Ken as this bumbling, dufous, you know, who you're not meant to empathize with, you absolutely do. And partly it's on the strength of his performance. And I think Marga Robbie, to be fair, she's a good actress,

not taking anything away from her. And at times, gave a pretty good performance as Barbie. You know, she can certainly emote, but, you know, Is she like the best of the best for the whole year? Clearly not. I actually thought that I don't remember what other movies came out in the year, but I, Tanya, is a movie that she is absolutely amazing as an actress, like so, so shows her range very well and very, very persuasive.

It's not just a pretty girl type of thing. Yeah, she's very much willing to do smaller projects and take risks and take on more challenging roles, which is great. And, you know, I've heard it said before that perhaps like the fact that she is so beautiful in a conventional sense, which worked so well for her in Barbie, maybe work to her detriment in some other films because you almost have to look past that

and realize, no, this person's actually giving a really good performance as an actor. Yeah, I remember realizing Brad Pitt was a good actor, like quite a long way into his career, because it's hard to look past the looks and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. But speaking of visually arresting movies, I thought Oppenheimer was so cinematically beautiful. And that one,

It was a movie that I really loved. I really enjoyed that. Were you similar to that? Very much so. Certainly up to the point of the end of the Manhattan Project. The third act is obviously the... I was going to say the fallout from that. That's the wrong word.

The later life of Oppenheimer, you know, the trials, very much devolves into a lot of very dry legal proceedings and so on. I probably would have trimmed that down personally because the movie does start to get a bit long towards the end. You do feel the extra length. It doesn't sound like Christopher Nare. I know, exactly, yeah. But as a visually interesting and brilliantly acted,

brilliantly structured movie, yeah, I can't fault it. It's nice to see a movie get so much attention, which is actually thoughtful, intelligent, well put together, made by an actual artistic director who actually has something he wants to say and he has a really strong creative vision, as opposed to someone that's just been cast in the role of director by a big studio.

So it's, if nothing else, like, the good thing that came out of Barbenheimer is that a lot of people got to see that movie. They got to see Ocklenheimer who perhaps wouldn't have done otherwise. And I don't know if you're sorry. Yeah, go for you. I don't know if you felt this way, and you probably don't. But my issue with Christopher Nolan is I always feel like with some of his movies, he's very prone to disappearing up his own ass.

Yes. And he didn't on this one, which is what made it palatable to a mass audience. And I include myself in the man. I'm not a cinema critic or anything. It was a movie that was actually consumable by a normal person like me. And that seemed to me a really important thing in telling what is actually a huge element of the story of world history, Western history. Yeah, I think the key difference is that this is not a work of science fiction. And that's where sometimes Christopher Nolan can go off the rails because he has got this gigantic mathematical space brain

where you can conceive of the most fantastical ideas imaginable, the problem is, like, the average person can't always digest it. And interstellar starts to go down that road towards the ends, where you get into hard, hard sci-fi. And then Tenet was probably the worst example of that, where I watched it twice now, straight up still baffled by what's going on. It's so intellectualized that it's difficult to even connect

what the narrative is there, particularly because it is straight up going backwards and forward. And I think that's his problem. He's, I hate to say it, but he's almost too intelligent for his own good sometimes. And he needs someone to rein him in sometimes and say, you know, the average person is not going to be able to understand this. And I think he even made this excuse when he was taking criticism for Tenet. He said recently, oh, you're not necessarily meant to understand it.

I think that is bullshit, my friend. You cannot say that about your movie that it's intentionally impenetrable to a normal person, you should be able to understand it at least. Yeah, the fact that he said that is both shocking and at the same time completely unsurprising. Yeah, yeah. So with Oppenheimer, it's great because he's dealing with real events, real people, and I'm surprised actually he didn't go into more of the science behind the actual atomic bomb. Like, I don't know, maybe he was prevented from it. You don't want to tell people too much about how these things work. But yeah, it's very much him just dealing with real events and not allowed to

indulge his worst tendencies too much as a writer. Do you think part of the reason that Oppenheimer was so successful, and is actually, if I'm being brutally honest, one of the reasons that I loved it, there was no political lectures. There was no talking about, you know, politics. It was just a story that was well told, well acted, well written, well shot. I think so. I mean, your only political dimension to it is like the universal idea of science going too far or creating something that is going to have unforeseen consequences.

They're rushed to develop the atomic bomb. Where's this going to lead? A whole world filled with these things. And what happens when people start using them? And so that is a pretty universal theme that doesn't try to take a stance necessarily one way or the other. It's just an interesting philosophical idea to explore. And yeah, it was nice to not be lectured by a film and just allow the audience to draw some of their own conclusions from what they see.

Going back to the ocean. Can I just disagree with both of you? on this, by the way. There's a massive political dimension to the movie that gets smuggled in that it's so well that both of you didn't notice it, which is the McCarthyism thing. Okay. The whole film is about McCarthyism.

Do you not notice that? The whole film is about him and people around him being persecuted for being communist or not being communist. Oh, right. It's not about that necessarily, but it's a dimension of it. It's a facet of the film. The core element is what have we created

in this thing, but that serves as a backdrop to his life and a reflection of like the persecution that he goes through. Yes. But the reason I say this is we recently interviewed Michael Malice, is a good friend of us, talking about the concept of McCarthyism that Hollywood likes to portray. May not have happened quite like that, not least because Hollywood was absolutely infiltrated with communists. And so they're quite keen to play that down.

So what I would say is the political. dimension was very well hidden in this film. But anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw that more as a kind of historical element to it. But I take your point nevertheless. If we look at the Oscars now,

what is the point of the Oscars really? Because the last time anybody really talked about the Oscars in any great detail was when Chris Rock was assaulted. Yes. And that was nothing to do with the movies or anything. It was just, you know, one man punches another. kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know. At this point, it's becoming increasingly irrelevant. It's reflected in the viewing figures, really. It's pretty much just Hollywood kissing its own

arse for an entire evening. The degree of self-congratulation, the arrogance of it, and the fact that you've got all these people who flew in on their private jets to be there for this ceremony, they're wearing suits or dresses that cost more than we make in a year, and they're going to lecture us about climate change and being, you know, and saving the environment and cutting back on things, like, you're singularly unqualified to have opinions about any of this stuff. So all that is just, people just aren't interested anymore. And that to me, even though it was the Golden Globes, but it's pretty much the same thing, why Ricky Jervais's monologue went hyperviral. Yeah, I loved it. It's one of the most cathartic things you can see,

because he's exactly right on every respect. And the reactions from people in the audience are just glorious. It's like he's going against the script. He's not supposed to be saying this stuff. So yeah, he was bang on then and I respect him so much for doing that. But does it mean anything anymore really that an actor wins an Oscar or a movie gets nominated for Best Picture? Because I remember, like, as a huge cinema buff when I was a kid, if I saw a movie got nominated for an Oscar, I would actually say to my friend, should we go and watch it? and they would look at me like I was nuts. But to somebody who was obsessed by movies, that was a big thing.

And I don't really think it is anymore. It's not, no. And it's just the whole devaluing of the brand and the trust in that Hollywood institution. Because like you say, it used to be movies that had real artistic merit, but there was a balance between them and films that people have actually heard of before, that told interesting stories that had really interesting performances, all of those things. Now when you see it, I think they've got quotas for the level of diversity, for example, that you have to have in your actors, your film crew, your production people

just to be considered for an Oscar. So when you realize that, when you realize that films mandate that certain people have to be put into certain roles just to be considered, you're automatically not getting the best quality end products because you're making all these concessions that you shouldn't have to. That's so ridiculous, isn't it? Because, and it seems now that we just get trapped in these endless arguments about, you know, should this actor play X role? People were saying, well, Killian Murphy shouldn't have played Oppenheimer because he's not an astrophysicist who happens to be Jewish.

And you're going, he's an actor. Yeah, my Jews are underrepresented, Polyde. It's, yeah, I mean, where does it end, I suppose, when it comes to this sort of thing? If you're going to do a zombie movie, do you have to cast actual corpses in it? Oh, yeah, you can cast Biden. But, I mean, yeah, that's the... When it comes to this sort of thing, though, people are making up their own minds. Because you, like I say, you see it in the viewing figures or things like the Oscars.

They just go down and down year on year. You know, they're dying of death, and they're bringing about their own demise. So, fine, let them do it. If people don't care about it anymore, they're just staging a really expensive show for nothing. Do you know, it never made a lot of sense to me why people would destroy their own industry in this way. We saw it actually in comedy in this country as well. Until I went to L.A. Have you been? I have not been to L.A., and I'm very proud of that.

I'm very proud of that. We went for work, you know, interviewing people and stuff. But when you are in L.A. and you meet people in L.A. and you see the world that they live in, suddenly all of this makes so much more sense. Yeah. Because the bubble that those people operate in, then the contrast between the stuff you might see on social media about, you know, this actress says, oh, yeah, we don't need men in snow white or whatever it is. And the world that we all, normal people live in, is massive. And it is because they just live in this bubble over there. And all of these diversity quotas and all of this other stuff, it makes perfect sense in that world.

which actually, I have to say, has made me incredibly skeptical about everything Hollywood produces because you're going, you know, the perceptions we might have of, you know, people in the American South or people in American, in a city or whatever, they're all shaped by that cultural creation that is made by people who don't actually live in the real world. And it's a fantastic eye-opening thing. I really found that. It really is. And you can understand it when you, like you say, you see the echo chamber that they live in. When you're surrounded by people who all say the same thing, you don't want to be that person who disagrees with them

because suddenly you're going to stand out. And I think really, it can end your career. If you ask the wrong questions or you say the wrong things within Hollywood, you'll just get blacklisted. And it'll probably be done subtly. You're not always, it's not a public shaming. You'll just stop getting recommended for roles or you'll stop getting opportunities.

And before you know it, you're just closed out of it. And yeah, I've read just really sad stories for people who are used to work in the writer's rooms, for example, for big TV shows or movies. And they essentially just don't get opportunities anymore. And they were told by their agents in some cases, there's no point applying for this show or this movie because they're not looking for people who look like you or your gender or whatever. So it's a waste of your time. And I just thought, what a crappy thing to do to people?

to take opportunities away from them just because you've said, well, this group or that group deserves it more. Which is funny because that is exactly what people used to do to ethnic minorities and to women in the past, in Hollywood,

and elsewhere, right? People would be discriminated against it. And then there was the attempt to resolve that, and we've just gone to completely full circle. I think so, yeah, because, you know, doing the opposite is just replicating the problem. It's not fixing it.

And it's not like I can sit here and say, yes, well, there's clearly an easy solution to this. There needs to be a bit more of that balance, though, and an opportunity for people to come in organically to the industry. Because what you get is people say directors who've got almost no experience being suddenly put at the helms of big budget movies. And the movies inevitably flop because they're not ready for a massive project like that. And so they then get the blame for it and they're not used again. So you're almost giving them one brief opportunity and then taking it away from them again, whereas you need a chance to gradually bring people up, I suppose, and allow them to build up their experience, build up their skills at doing this stuff,

and then give them the big budget projects. But it's like they try to jump from A to Z while missing out all the other letters along the way. And it's just, it doesn't work. It's so interesting that it's exactly. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue.

Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. What happened in the comedy industry in this country, but actually what you're talking about is also of, I don't know if you saw the affirmative action thing being struck down in America. And one of the arguments about affirmative action against affirmative action has always been that it means that students from certain backgrounds are being pushed into positions where

they don't succeed. And instead of going to a college where they would do well and they would be at the top of their class, they end up going to a place where they're not at the top of their class. They have a bad experience. They drop out and it's bad for them more than anybody else. Yeah. And it's also bad for the people who are ethnic minority. who have got there on merit as well, because then people go,

oh, you're just a diversity hire. It's like, no, mate, I've got the grades. Yeah. So then they're exposed to another type of bigotry prejudice, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. And like I say, I don't know what the easy or quick solution to this is, probably because there isn't one. But I'm trying to just force that solution on people.

I don't think it benefits really anyone in the long term. Yeah. And one of the things we wanted to talk to you about is obviously, as Hollywood moves in that direction, there are attempts being taken to actually counter that. How successful they are is a very different conversation. Yeah, I mean, you've got places like The Daily Wire who are now starting to make their own movies, their own TV shows, and, you know, it's a pin, yeah, it's a drop in the ocean really compared to what Hollywood can do in terms of resources, in terms of the volume of programming. But I think the demand is there for non-political, non-pushy content, I suppose, that's just there to entertain people. I don't know if necessarily the Daily Wire is the one to do it, but they've kind of opened the door and shown that it can be done, other people might start to do their own things and other people might follow in their footsteps. I actually thought, I haven't seen the Western. Apparently the Western that they created, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, which is a fairly down the line standard

Western movie. Terror on the Prairie, I think. What did you think of that? And then we'll get into Lady Ballers. Yeah. We'll go balls deep. Yeah, with Terror on the Prairie, yeah. It was just a stock Western, really. Nothing particularly new or innovative about it necessarily. It was just a standards Western kind of story about survival out in the

frontier. Fine for what it was. I think I would give them a little bit of slack because it's one of their first movies that they made, but if it had been just a mainstream Hollywood production, I would have said it's just pretty forgetable. Yeah. But it's an interesting little landmark, I guess, for them.

Oh, absolutely. And I was really heartened by that, especially when I was reading about it. Now, I didn't watch it because I'm not particularly a big fan of Westerns. It doesn't really appeal to me. But what I found very heartening about it was there was an absence of politics within that. And I thought, ah, they've hit on something here because what they're doing is they're presenting, they're doing a movie like you would have seen 30, 40 years ago. It's just a straight movie, simple narrative. And then I watched Lady Ballers. And I was disappointed because to me, and let's have a conversation about it,

I thought that they just did the mirror, the mirror of what Hollywood did. Yeah, very much agree. It's because they tackled a very contentious subject and it's obviously not things that mainstream Hollywood studios would be willing to take on, but they were willing to do it. But I think the key to get in that demographic people who are tired of political pandering and just want entertainment,

you've got to capture the middle ground then And so you've got to resist the urge to put your own politics into it. And that's, I think, the trap that they fell into there. You were essentially just replacing Hollywood's message with your own message. And it's just a mirror image of the problem. Again, it doesn't really solve it. So, yeah, that was probably the issue I had with it as well. It wasn't as funny as it could have been.

And it started to get quite pushy with all that stuff towards the ends, which it didn't need to do. wonder whether that's almost actually a financial stroke business decision because in the modern world, as we all know, things with a political message or political dimension create heat and he attracts eyeballs. And so if you just make a good movie, but you don't have access to the ability to push it out like Barbie, even though that was a political movie, you don't have the ability to push it out to cinema and movie theaters all over the world, then you almost feel like you have to insert a political message because then at least your base will watch it. Do you think that's part of the thinking? I mean, I think when you look at companies like The Daily Wire, they're obviously

a very strongly conservative company. So that's what they stand for and it's what they believe in. And presumably if you're a subscriber to their services, that's what you believe in as well. That's their audience that they're going to play to. So there is that. And I think it would be enough almost to just tackle a contentious subject like that, because it is a very politicised topic, what the Lady Ballers covers. But you can do it from that neutral standpoint of like, this is a bit silly, this extreme is also kind of silly, like maybe there's a middle ground that we can find here, kind of like what South Park does a lot of the time.

But they're not going to expand beyond their core audience. They're not going to expand beyond their base if they just keep pushing their own sort of conservative messages into it. because, yeah, the middle ground of people, the vast majority of audiences just wants to be entertained. They don't want one side or the other necessarily. There's two problems with that approach as well. Number one, when you have the comedy element,

if your comedy is strongly ideological, then you're going to be able to predict every single punchline. Because you know where they're coming from, what the point of attack is going to be, and therefore what the reveal is going to be. And number two, you're never going to get people defecting, probably the wrong word to use, from Hollywood, because they'll be thinking to themselves,

if I go and work with this strongly ideological studio, I may not be able to go back. Whereas if you work with someone who is just, look, we're not going to do the whole woke stuff, we're just going to make movies, that's all we do, then you're offering people an opportunity to be able to flip back and forth. I think so, yeah, because there probably are a lot of creatives in Hollywood who are just burned out with all of that. thing and they just want an opportunity to have artistic freedom again. And that's what a studio who's willing to just say that, they would thrive at this point. They'd attract some great talent and they would attract audiences as well. It's just hard to then, it's hard to break into that, I suppose,

because you're going to need someone with huge amounts of money and resources to be able to set up a studio like that and start producing content. And it's a pretty rare thing. Yeah, you're going to need a bunch of billionaires to get together. Yeah, yeah. Elon Musk, you should just make a movie studio. It's kind of tied down with X of the moment. Yeah. Yeah. But no, but it's an interesting conversation because I suspect

the part of the reason that they've made a movie that is that ideological, it's just that's, at least you know that a certain number of people are then going to watch it. And also, let's be honest, from a creative perspective, it's much easier to create something that's politically driven because it doesn't have to then be. is great a movie because people would be like, well, I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

And we're talking about these people who can create and who can change the movie industry. To me, there's very, very few people could do that. At one point, it was Harvey Weinstein who completely... Yeah, he really changed it. Yeah, he did. It's very different now. Yeah, it is. He made a great hero.

He made some great movies. I mean objectively. Yeah, he did. He did. No, anyway. But one of those people is, oh dear, that's getting clipped. Another one is Bill Cosby. Yeah, exactly. Great men in their own right. No. Is Tom Cruise? Yes. Tom Cruise is one of those people who started out as a pretty boy 80s actor as part of the brat pack and has now gone on to be arguably the most power. man in Hollywood at this point. You could say that he even single-handedly saved the movie industry through COVID with Top Gun and Cinemas. Is that a potential role for him? I guess at a certain point he is going to get too old to be doing these action movies,

probably when he's about 95. He'll stop running around and throwing himself off buildings. But yeah, maybe he'll start to get more into the producer side of things. But yeah, he is an extremely powerful force within Hollywood now. And part of that is tied to him being one of the last remaining actual movie stars that we've got, a bona fide name in Hollywood. I mean, I talked about this recently in a video where

actors aren't box office draws anymore by and large. You know, nobody's going to go to see like the latest Chris Pratt movie. They might go and see it anyway, but not because he's in it. It's just, you know, we've moved beyond that point. Tom Cruise has still got an element of that, I think.

But yeah, he's savvy enough to pick movies that he knows are going to be successful. He's got a tremendous body of work behind him. And with things like Top Gun Maverick, yeah, he certainly pulled Hollywood out of the doldrums. And it was just for so many people, it was such a relief to get a movie that was big budget, that was bombastic, that was patriotic, didn't make them actively feel horrible about themselves and wasn't some, you know, superhero movie with people just like flying around shooting laser beams out their eyes. It's so interesting the way you described it though because you described it almost exclusively in terms of what it wasn't. You threw in patriotic and a couple of other things. And that's kind of how I felt about it because I was like, this is good by virtue of not being crap. I think so. Do you know what I

that's our benchmark? But that's what I mean. I watched it and I was like, okay, cool, nice. But it was like a six and a half out of ten compared to the movies that you of that genre that you would have seen 10, 15 years ago. Yeah, I think we're all old enough to remember the 90s and the 2000s where big action movies were all the rage. And, you know, they by and large were not particularly political and they weren't out to pander to people or anything like that. They were just popcorn entertainment. And I think that's what we've been missing over the years. And so to get a movie like that, it was like this crazy throwback to a different time in Hollywood. So I think that was a real novelty for people as well.

It's partly why they loved it so much. Yeah. I was just, I guess what I'm saying is, I was just, the film is almost a reflection of the reason I'm disappointed in it. It's basically a remake with an old guy who's playing a role that's a little bit too, like you're almost like squeezing an older guy into a younger role and it doesn't quite fit.

And do you know what I mean? I think so to some extent. They talked at the time. actually about like we're looking for the next Tom Cruise, like the next movie star, the next guy who can sell box office tickets. And we couldn't get one. So then actual Tom Cruz had to just come back and do it again, you know? Do you think part of that problem just touching that with the death of the movie star is when we looked at movie stars, there were these bigger, larger than life characters. A lot of them were quite problematic people.

You know, a lot of them were drug addicts. They were drug addicts. They were, drinkers, they, you know, they enjoyed the company of women, shall we say. And that kind of stuff, I mean, it's pretty much frowned upon really now, isn't it? When you think arguably the last movie star, I would say, would be someone like Robert Downey Jr. Quite possibly, yeah. I think the bad boy of Hollywood seems to be a dying breed. You know, like when you look back to a lot of the lives these guys led, like you say, they were they were at partying all the time, they were doing drugs, they were doing all kinds of crazy stunts and dangerous things with their lives. And it's what made them exciting. It's what made them interesting. Now they seem a bit safe and

a bit stage managed by comparison. And the other problem is we've actually got to know them now. You know, with social media, the mystique that used to surround the movie stars vanished. And now you get to see every dumbthroat that pops into their heads. And it doesn't make for compelling viewing. And so they don't seem like a breed apart anymore. you realize, like, a lot of the time, they're just as dumb as I am. And that's a terrifying thought. Yeah, exactly. And it's not just that they're dumb. They're just not fun. No. You can't imagine. Even Tom Cruise, you wouldn't go, oh, I'd like to hang out with him. I remember hearing this story about Peter O'Toole when he was filming King Ralph and he was smoking

a cigarette. And this young actor came in and said to him, oh, do you have an ashtray? He went, and he went, make the world your ashtray, dear boy, and flick the same of the ass on the floor. And you just got, there's that sense of fun that when you watch Peter Otto, of course he was a magnificent actor, but there was there was this danger about him. You wanted to be around him. You wanted to hang out with him. You wanted, there was a part of you that wanted to be him. But you look at the actors now. And I mean, some of them are very good, very technically competent. But there's nobody who's got that charisma. They're a bit tame and soft. Like I say, they're just a different generation and a different breed. Yeah, there's some of the stories. about Richard Burton were amazing, because he vanished for an entire week while they were filming where he goes there, and he'd just gone on this crazy bender around Europe, and no one knew where he was, which I think is fantastic. But you wouldn't get that nowadays. It's just, it's a different world. So go for it, man. Well, if you've got more questions, I was going to say, why don't we ask some questions from

our supporters on locals? Cool. There was just one thing that I wanted to talk about very quickly, which is we've talked about movies, and we've kind of ignored TV, because actually, this has been the of TV. It hasn't been the age of movies. If you think of things like Succession, Breaking Bad, the Wire, the Sopranos, they've made far more of a cultural impact than any movie, really. They have, but then a lot of them are from a good five or ten years ago now. Yeah. And I think, I can't remember who said it, but they were talking recently about how we're no longer in that golden age of TV because it's been dumbed down. And partly streaming is the problem. Like,

you need to, you need to capture your audience and keep them hooked in. And so you can't have these big elaborate, like 20-episode seasons. They can't be as slow-paced and methodical as they used to be. It's got to be very immediate because people want to binge it now. And so it's contributed, I guess, to that sort of decline in the quality of TV production. There's still definitely good stuff out there, but it's not as mainstream as it was, like in the days when we had the wire, the soprano's breaking bad. Those are all very much like previous generations TV shows. So the more of the more of the... More recent ones would be Game of Thrones, for example, right?

And Succession. Yeah. And Succession is still current. Yeah. And Game of Thrones, well, we saw how that ended. The ending of that was so disappointed. What was interesting about that was it was almost like the entire series, they'd been resisting the urge to make it conventional into a conventional story.

And at the end, they were just like, you know what, fuck it. I think it was partly the writers were eager to move on to Star Wars because they had a Star Wars movie that they were promised to do. And so they, HBO were up for doing two or three more seasons with them. And they were like, no, fuck it, just get this out the way as quickly as possible. Wrap everything up in like five or six episodes. That's why you ended up with what you got. They could have kept it going.

And that's why, yeah, everything started to rush. Characters who would have taken an entire season to get from one end of the country to the other could do it in a single episode now. And it was all the big set-piece battles and everything. It was all a big spectacle rather than storytelling. And in the end, what they went away from is the thing that made Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones, which is it was unpredictable,

and it wasn't good versus evil, and good always wins in the end. I mean, it was slightly unpredictable towards the end, but not in a good way. Right. Well, listen, man, it's been great having you back on the show to chat about all this stuff. Before we go to a few questions from our supporters,

as you know, we always ask at the end, what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we should be? Why are visual effects so horrible in movies now? Like, they're worse than they were 10 or 15 years ago. I don't think we cover that enough anymore. It looks awful. Like, I look back to things like Pirates of the Caribbean.

That looked amazing back then. Not now. So that would be my thing. Very interesting. Well, follow us over to locals where we ask a few of your questions to the critical drinker. What's not to be the next big thing for the general direction of movies? Some follow the noise.

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