Joe Weiscalante live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, I might
sound a little different. It sounds a little FMI, I think right now.
But I'm we're broadcasting live from Burbank. Actually sometimes I lie and I
say we're in Burbank and we're early in Seal Beach, But today we're in
Burbank. Sam, good to see you face to face here and the iHeart
radio studios. You never age. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Yes, I'm like Tom Cruise, but I have gray hair. But I'm
sure he does too. Let's be honest, we just don't get to see
it. That's fine, you know whatever. Um, we're gonna talk about
Tom Cruise mission. This is two hours of the business end of show Business,
live from Hollywood, cross the street from a Wiener Schnitzel over here that
I just drove by. Sells beer. If you ever want to have a
beer in a probably the worst atmosphere you could ever have a drinking, come
on down. They've been sponsoring the show for generations. Yeah. Um,
try the new North Korean fusion tacos. They're on sale this week and let's
see you. It is July sixteenth, twenty twenty three. So this is
real live radio. If you're driving around on the freeways. This is what
it's like. This is what this is what it's come to. But it's
free. It's worth every penny. And we're going to talk about the business
of show business and the Hollywood community. A lot of people are on strike,
and maybe now it's not the time to get into show business, but
you know, we're going to talk about it anyway. I'd say this is
exactly the time to talk about show business. It really is, because if
I stop one person from moving to Hollywood to join show business, UM,
I might be, you know, doing the world of Favor or that person
of favor. What? Um? What is uh? I had a question
for you, but I forgot it. Um. Oh yeah? Are we
breaking the strike? Are we after this? Does this station have anything to
do with AFTER? I never got I me personally, I'm not union.
I'm a member of after SAG. After so does after A fall in line
with SAG on these kind of American Federate Federation of Radio and Television Artists.
Yeah, Rule number one, don't do non union work here. I am
been here for I mean, you know what SAG you want to come down
here and pick it. I've been doing this for since two thousand and six.
No one's ever come to me and said, hey, UM, we're
gonna know you negotiate a better deal for you on your radio thing. I
just get less and less every year. But you know what, I don't
worry about it. I'm not saying people shouldn't worry about it. Um so
that the actors are on strike now, so I'm a member of SAG after
it used to be. I used to just be a member of SAG and
then they merged after and SAG merged. Um. But there are a few
things that um it. The only thing that is that is strike. That
is um you're not allowed to do right now are the things covered by the
main agreement that covers actors, um working on TV and film. There's other
agreements actors doing reality programming like hosts that those are not technically striking right now.
So you can do that kind of work. But let's start with the
movies like we usually do. I don't want to get off track here.
We're gonna get to the strike. I got some information for you, information
you're never gonna hear anywhere else. By the way, and uh, we
got about Disneyland, we got celebrities by behaving badly, we got some crazy
lawsuits as usual. So let's go to the box office. Though, number
one movie in the country right now, Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part one from
Paramount Pictures did fifty six million for the weekend. It had a little advance
again Wednesday Thursday thing, so it's like eighty million total for the weekend.
So that's eighty million. I think they're happy about that. People are happy
about that. It's gonna make a lot of money. It's gonna make his
money back, evidently, and Tom Cruise knows how to make money at the
box office these days, so we can all thank him. And he took
He kind of brought the movie theaters back single handedly by insisting that Top Gun
was going to be held and put in the theaters. And he did it,
and it was a smash, and people went to the movies that hadn't
been to the movies in years. And I think this one's going to draw
people to the movies as well. Have you seen it, Sam, I
have not, Well I have. Let me tell you, it is a
blockbuster. It is everything you wanted to be um, Tom Cruise is,
um, yeah, he's he's clearly aging. But yeah, who cares um
the women because I complained about the woman in Indiana Jones and the Dial of
Destiny. She's the fleabag Ladies's great in Fleeback. I don't I didn't like
her as a you know, a bombshell in a in a popcorn movie.
But there's a lot of bombshells in Mission Impossible. They all work, they're
all different, and I don't know that's important to me. Number two,
Well, I should tell you a little bit more about Mission Impossible the very
end without spoiling anything. The special effects in the very in at the big
final climactic scene are better than any I've ever seen, and they're more thrilling
than about anything I've ever seen in a movie. And I saw it in
the D box. Shaky seats, the vibrating seats. Oh yeah, yeah,
you saw moon whatever. I saw Moonfall. Arguably maybe the worst movie
of the of the decade, but it was maybe one of the most entertaining
movie experiences I've had just because of that. Yeah, well, this one
is is that the kind that sprays water? Yeah? Okay, no,
this isn't that I did go see a film in that before and it was
kind of fun. Forgot the name of the movie is Forgettable, but um,
this one is just uh it's called d Box and it's at the the
Cinemark theaters. Okay, I'm sure other theaters have. But it doesn't spray
water. But it's more like a um simulation experience, similar to star tours
at Disneyland. Oh cool. So you're in the you're in you know,
if someone shoot somebody, you feel it. If someone gets punched, you
feel it. If you're in a car and you're driving around, you really
feel it. So I did that. It was a little more. I
was like twenty one dollars a seed or something. I did it because the
movies four hours through two hours and forty three minutes, and I didn't want
to fall asleep, and I knew I would two hours and forty three minutes.
I've been like kind of, you know, pretty tired lately from Jude's
doing a lot of surfing, a lot of trips to the mountain. It's
like, oh, I'm going to fall asleep. So I splurged and bought
those tickets. My wife agreed, and we loved it. Not because we
were so thrilled to be taken on this roller coaster ride of a mission impossible
stuff. It's because every time I got a little rousy, hey wake up
long at someone just got punched. So it was definitely, I mean,
for two hours and forty three minutes, I really needed it and I got
it. So anyway, a great movie. Go see it. Number two
movie in America. Can you take a guess, Sam, Oh, I
know what it is. The Sound of Freedom. You're right, The Sound
of Freedom, which I believe was the number one movie last week also and
then I was wondering why did it get more money? But they didn't call
it number one, and you know, there's technicalities. But now I know
it. There's people that are against this movie. Now that I've now that
I know how that people are against this movie, people are attacking it.
So we'll get into a little bit about that. This is the movie that
is a true story of a guy named Tim Ballard who brought down a child
sex trafficking ring in Colombia, and it shows you know what he isn't you
know? Action adventure movie shows what he did. So anyway, this movie
did another twenty seven million, so it's at eighty five million. Right now,
I'm going to get into maybe into the some of the financial aspects of
this movie. Sam is going to blow your mind how this all went down.
It's it's fascinating. Number three is insidious the Red Door. So that
was a number one last week, even though it made less than Sound of
Freedom, but they called it number one, and now it's number three because
it has a sixty one percent drop off. The drop off for a for
Angel Studios, Sound of Freedom is negligible. Actually, when you look at
just the weekend numbers, it actually went up thirty seven percent because it added
more theaters. Indiana Jones is down fifty six percent. That's the disappointments.
Made one hundred and forty five million, cost two hundred and forty million or
something like that or something ridiculous wow, or maybe two eighty and elemental um.
Yeah, it's hanging in there. One hundred and twenty five million.
Spider Man still making money. Three hundred and sixty eight million total Transformers yawn,
no hard feelings. Great film. It's made forty six million dollars so
far. It's making money. It's an R rated comedy. You expect to
see more of those. Jennifer Lawrence, joy Ride, the Asian Ensemble Comedy
ten Million. Yeah's hanging in there, and then you get into a little
Mermaid Askesteroid City, which you should see if you like Wes Anderson, you
should like Wes Anderson. All right, that's enough for that. Let's take
a break and check the traffic and we'll come back. I'll tell you a
little bit more about what's going on with the scandals behind Sound of Freedom and
the finances that are making this a very interesting release, and expect to see
more like it. Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood. Joe Scalante, Live from
Hollywood. This is the business end of show business, every Sunday here on
KiB eleven fifteen, your am dial. We just went through the top ten
movies of the weekend. So of course Mission Impossible, it's a blockbuster,
but Sound of Freedom. So a lot of news about Sound of Freedom.
Sam, have you heard it? Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of
the controversy. I didn't get too deep into the into the weeds with it.
You know. The controversy is that, um, only kookie, right
wing qan on people would like this movie because there's that you know. Well,
let's let's go to the Rolling Stone article. Rolling Stone writes an article
about this movie and this movie. First of all, this movie is made
five years ago. There wasn't even a qan On wasn't even a word five
years ago. So so, um, I don't really know QAnon is it's
some like oracle that speaks really weird right wing conspiracies. That might have been
the early days of q So it could be a QAnon production then, but
I mean like super early before it became more mainstreamed. Okay, so what
these people that This is a Rolling Stone article and it says the headline is
Sound of Freedom torched by child trafficking experts, so the child. So what
it's trying to tell you is don't go see Sound of Freedom. That's what
Rolling Stone magazine is telling you. Don't go see it because experts have torched
it. This guy, the guy that they made the movie about, it's
Tim Tim Ballard. He was a It's about a guy who was a law
enforcement operative that busted sex trafficking guys and he became disillusioned because yeah, they
would keep busting these guys. And he says at that you know earlier point
in the movie, how many kids have you have you saved and rescued?
And the guy's like, you know none. I mean, you know,
we get these guys and we lats our we lock him up. Don't think
about it too much. He thought about it and thought about it, and
he couldn't live with himself. He said, he's got pictures of kids that
are being trafficed. He wanted to save them, so he went down to
Columbia and he saves them. And he still saves them. But evidently there
are experts that are smarter than him and know more about it than him,
and so you should not pay attention to his story or this movie. So
and it just says, odh to statistics. Really this is this is the
terms people are using it. This is an issue that's being ginned up and
exaggerated by right wing people when it's not really much of an issue as they
say it is. So it's being torched. Don't go see it. That's
what Rolling Stone is saying. I don't see any reason to do that,
to be to try to torch this movie or prevent people from seeing it's disgusting,
to try to prevent people from seeing this but that's what Rolling Stone Magazine
is doing. They're trying to prevent people from seeing this movie. They're upset
about it. Now, when you see this movie, you bring awareness to
sex trafficking, and it's a gross topic. Nobody wants to talk about it.
It's hard to sell these movies into TV because executives don't want to be
associated with it. So they did this movie and they sold it to It
was originally done by financed by twentieth Century Fox. Twenty Century Fox got sold
to Disney, so then Disney had it. So the movie was made and
it's probably what did they pay for it? Probably ten million dollars or something.
So let's see Disney has it. They give it. They they spent
ten million dollars for it, and they were going to put it on Hulu.
Now, if Disney, who owns Hulu most of it, puts the
movie on Hulu, they're not gonna get ten mo dollars for it. They
can't pay themselves ten million dollars for a movie, so they would probably Hulu
would give them two million, and they would just write it down. They
had one column, Okay, you're giving us two million dollars over here,
and the guy who lose probably bombs he's got, I want to take my
two million dollars and I'd like rather rather buy something else, and goes,
now, well we got I don't want to lose all my money on this.
So and why would no one take it? Interesting because it's a very
good film and it's about a true story, and nobody wants it. And
my opinion is there's a conspiracy around there. And you know, the conspiracy
is now in plain sight because the Rolling Stone is telling people they're panicking now
that it's in the theaters, don't go see this movie. Experts say it's
psum, so they they find. So what happens is Eduardo Varastigi and his
people come in and they buy the movie. They said, what was Hulu
going to give it to you? We'll give you that much, so maybe
they give them two million, and then they so they have enough money for
the two million, but now they need to market it, so they crowdfund
the marketing and they get all the money, maybe five million, to do
all the marketing because you got to do that and get it distributed, and
then they put it out in the theater and they it's gonna make eighty five
million dollars, So that's like, you know, ten million eighty five minus
tillion, there's gonna be like seventy million dollars or more. Who knows how
more? How much more is going to be is going to be they get
to keep, we'll give it to the investors. So it's it's a smash
financial hit as well as bringing awareness to the sex trafficking situation. But now
there's rumors of people sabotaging screenings. Uh there's some video one TV where someone
turned the lights on during a screening. There's other stories. I don't know,
you know, if this is true, we don't have um we can,
we'll probably not figured out. I think the only thing we can figure
out is that Rolling Stone magazine doesn't want you to see a great movie about
an important topic. And I'm a witness to this because I saw the movie
and it was great. The topic is important, it's a true story.
They show video from the actual people. You can read up on it.
If if someone said there's this many people sex trafficked and there's only that many,
then uh, you know, I don't know. Whatever, you're gonna
pick a pick it apart and tell people not to watch it now. And
so what it comes down to is politics. Like everything, The Rolling Stone
sees Jim Caviezel as a conservative and at Eduardo Vardastagi, who's a devout Catholic.
They both are, and they want to stop him because they're gonna pick
well, if he's a Catholic, then he must also be in favor.
This is if you're a Rolling Stone journalist, you're a you're a you're a
lefty, and you're gonna say, like, well, if he does.
Most lefty journalists, we all journalists are lefty. Basically, most of them
go all right, good for you, you know what, maybe we're gonn
all get behind this. But these people are so freaked out, and that's
why people are freaked out. Rolling Stone and the people that are supporting them
are so freaked out. You know, they're telling you not to see this
movie because of the politics of the people behind it. So they're gonna let
the I mean, what if that what if that ends up with more people
being trafficked. It sounds like they don't care because their politics are, you
know, more important, and they want to stop these people from having success.
And so in the meantime they're going to downplay the sex trafficking and to
tie these guys to nutcases. Now are their nutcases in the in the pedophile
world. Yeah, there's people who say people are getting raped in pizza parlors.
I've heard that. Don't pay attention to it. Pay attention to what's
real. Well, it's real is video of kids getting snatched on the streets
and a peto file island. This guy made a pedo file island. He
created a sting. He went down there, found the pedo files and said,
you're all coming to this island. We're gonna have a party and there's
gonna be kids. And they all came and they brought the kids. One
guy, some organization brides of the kids. Other guys pay to be there
at the island. Once the kids are on the island and the petos are
there, the Colombian government comes in and shuts it down, puts the guys
in jail, and arrests all these kids that have been kidnapped and missing for
a long time. That's the story. This guy doesn't want. It's a
guy named Tim Ballard. He's a hero. So it's a big gross but
the finances are amazing. They're gonna make a lot of money. We'll talk
a little bit more about it when we can come back. Joe Scalante Live
from Hollywood. Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank,
we're talking about movies. And number two movie in America is The Sound
of Freedom. But definitely the most controversial movie in the country right now is
a Sound of Freedom. And a lot of controversy is because of people who
are denouncing the film, saying that it's exaggerated or it is connected to people
who are nefarious, so you shouldn't see it. And there's an article in
the Rolling Stone magazine where he quotes people. I mean, this is like
Rolling Stone has an agenda. They want this movie to not make an impact.
And I'm not saying they're doing it because they're part of a pedophile conspiracy.
They are just hyper political. They don't they the people behind this movie
are more conservative than they would like them to be, so they want they
don't want them to maybe have credit for this or have successes, because then
they might have successes and other things. But what maybe also at play is
the fact that if you recognize that trafficking is a problem, and if you
recognize then you have to I don't know how to solve sex trafficking, but
I know one thing that helps it continue, and that is an open border.
So the people that are for this open border don't want it to point
attention to that because that would be a solution and then you'd have to close
the border, and for some reason, people don't want to close the border.
So same with fentanyl. If you want to fentanyl, I don't want
you to search people and they come across the border and see if they have
fentyl. But nobody seems to want to do that. They want to make
a law that's going to punish China for making fentanyl. Jeezus anyway, So
that seems to be I'm trying to piece this together, like why you would
want to torch this movie and make people not see it. But it's just
hyper politicization of even the welfare of children. Now we've seen Rolling Stone do
this before. Rolling Stone, as you remember, had to pay I think
one point sixty five million to the fraternity at Virginia, the University of Virginia.
You remember this one, Sam, Yes, yes, they A girl
said I was gang raped at a party blah blah blah, and instead of
checking it out, they just ran this horrendous story about a fraternity because they
wanted to write the story. The story. The script was already written,
and the script was the story was, if you go to this fraternity,
you will get raped and they will get away with it. And it turned
out to not be true, and it was just a you know, defamatory
scandal that almost ruined Rolling Stone. I'm surprised people don't remember that because I
remember meeting a guy at Rolling Stone right when that happened, and he was
dejected, couldn't get any ad revenue. But somehow they bounced back to UM.
But you know, that's the same company that's sitting here saying that you
shouldn't see the Sound of Freedom. It should just probably. You know,
you got to choose your battles, So choose a join with the people who
made Sound of Freedom and fight sex trafficking. And if you think someone there
is getting crazy and going to tell you there's something you don't believe, like
in a pizza parler or whatever, then you know you can denounce that by
helping them. But you don't want to. You seemed a little suspect when
you're telling people not to you know, you're telling people not to go see
it, and then you're interviewing people haven't seen it and saying, um,
yeah, this is it could be worse than they're I mean, they're all
over the map in this rolling Stone thing. Oh that's gross, pretty gross.
So I will I'll leave that topic behind. Good news for the movie.
It is making millions. It's just one of those stories like just you
know, they with they believed in it, They bought the movie back from
the distributor, they crowdfunding for some marketing money, and it exploded even though
despite people trying to stop it. So if you haven't seen it, go
see it now. Another movie you might want to go see is um the
most anticipated movie, Sam. It's my favorite part of the It seems like
no matter what movie's playing, there's always a movie it's better than what's playing
is about that hasn't come out yet. Do you ever notice that when you
go when you look at the movies, Yeah, the one that you're always
looking forward to, the anticipation movie of the year. It's always next week
or a couple of weeks. And then you got to sit around and watch
Insidious, not just kidding. I'm sure in Cities is great. Oh okay,
So what are people anticipating, Well, they're certainly anticipating. Barbie opens
July twenty first, that's I guess Wednesday, and Oppenheimer open on the same
day. And Oppenheimer, of course was shot in an IMAX and is taking
over all the imaxes. So they're going to kick Mission Impossible out of the
Imaxes, kicking everybody out of the Imaxes. It's only going to be Oppenheimer.
And I'm gonna go see it at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas because
I will be there with my Punk Rock Museum Tours. This is now a
commercial from my punk Rock Museum Tours Sam. If you want to go see
if you want to go to the Punk Rock Museum and have me be your
tour guide. That will be starting on Wednesday, the twentieth of July through
Sunday the twenty third, three pm, twelve pm and three pm. And
it's fun. You go to punk Rock Museum dot com and find the guided
tour section, go to the date you want and pick. It's twentieth to
the twenty third. Is only time I'm gonna be there, so you gotta
pick those dates. Um. And then yeah, I'm gonna see up on
Heimer on Sunday, Barbie. I don't know when I'm gonna squeeze it in,
but I definitely want to see it. The other movie I'm anticipating,
it's The Haunted Mansion. Are you excited about the Hunter mention? You've seen
the trailer, right, I've seen the trailer. I'm dying to see Danny
DeVito in it. That's the thing that's like the big draw for me.
Well, they had a premiere, Yeah, Danny DeVito, Yeah, just
I don't know who the other guy was in the in the scene with him,
but he was funny too. Yeah. Yeah, So I can't wait
to see that. Um. They had a premiere and the director's justice Justin
Simeon, and he addressed everybody at the thing, and the elephant in the
room was there were no actors at the premiere. The actors could not go
because they are on strike. They can't go, they can't promote their movies.
So I don't know what that'll do to this movie, but we'll see.
Now we talked, I think we talked about it last week with the
Oppenheimer actors walking out of the premiere. Yeah, that's a big thing.
The actors joining the writers on strike gives a lot more leverage to the writers
and the actors if they have to unite. Well, we'll see, we're
gonna talk about this. Let's see, we'll see. Before we take a
break, let me tell you about another movie that I'm excited about and everybody's
anticipating. And that would be, like I'm moving around in my notes here,
here it comes snow White, the live action snow White. I didn't
even know that one was happening. This is you're breaking news right here.
Well, that's the thing. There's so many anticipated films coming up that really
a lot. Next weekend is gonna be Barbenheimer Weekend apparently, so we gotta
we have that to look forward to. But yes, snow White, apparently
that's now a thing. Yes, but there's a controversy. Set photos purporting
to be from Disney's live action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs received
backlash for its politically correct depiction of the princess's famed companions. The article entitled
snow White and the Seven politically Correct Companions which claim to show leaked images from
the Disney set, was taken in Bedfordshire, England, in July the July
thirteen. In the photos, and actress appeared to be dressed to snow Whites
in her signature yellow and blue dress with a red cape, accompanied by a
cast of diverse male and female actors playing seven characters. While the woman in
the photo bears no resemblance to Rachel Zegler, who portrays snow White in the
upcoming live action film, The Daily Mail claimed that the photos featured two stand
in extras who stood in for post production photography. So do the question is
do they have dwarfs or do they not have dwarves? So we don't know
yet and but it's causing a controversy. But if they call it the Dwarf
snow White and the seven Dwarfs, it seems like you already did that.
You might as well have dwarfs. If you don't have dwarfs, who would
you call it? Snow White and friends? Can we get the rock as
one of them? Know? What about the guy from Guardians of the Galaxy
tracks? Yeah, so this looks like a fake controversy because they were possibly
stand ins but that the world is buzzing. Are they dwarves or are they
not dwarves? But if they call it dwarves, I mean you've already done
that. Anyway, I'm looking forward to that other movies we're anticipating. Before
we break here, I will just kind of scan the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mutant Mayhem looks amazing. It's very funny. It has the same I can
say amazing. It has the same kind of visual arts style as the Spider
Man movies. Yes, yeah, so I'm used to that kind of animation
now, so I could sit through a Ninja Turtle one. There's a lot
of cool actors, you know, doing voices and stuff. It was cool.
What about the live action Wonka origin story. That's I'm looking forward to
it. I'm a big fan of the entire Willie Wonk thing, all the
way from Jane Wilder through Johnny Depp. I want to see how it goes.
Yeah, I'll be there. All right. Well, I think we
better check the traffic. And I don't know if you should believe the traffic
because that last traffic report did not give you the full impact of what I
went through on the five freeway getting up here from Seal Beach, So stay
off the five. That is your your pre traffic report from Joe's Scalante Live
from Hollywood's Lante Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank, So
we're talking about Hollywood. So we do on Sunday's KiB and you get the
podcast later on iHeart Radio or any other podcast place, and that'll that'll happen
a little bit later tonight, right Sam, yep. Okay, Let's talk
a little bit about the strike, because everywhere I go, everybody asked me
does it strike affect you? How does it strike affect you? And nobody
cares really, but it's a conversation starter. Um, But let's just talk
about how it affects people actually work in these guilts. So you have several
guilds, the writers Guild, they Directors Guild, the actors Guild, and
then you have the below the line guilds, IATSI teamsters, you know,
make up costumes. Now, of course we know the writers want on strike
and they want more residuals. They want something that's called getting paid in success,
and they want promises that no one's going to replace them with AI all
right. And then you have the actors who similar things. I wouldn't.
I want more money and I want AI promises and I want um residuals for
things. I want to be paid in success, Sam, do you want
to be hiding success? I would like that yes. And in failure actually
that'd be amazing too. Well, those are what the executives get paid,
and failure they get they get promotions and stock options. I think an exercise
and failure. So I think both of these are different. The writers Guild
and the actor's Guild. I don't think you can conflate the dude the two
that much because, um, it's it's two, it's it's it's a different
situation. Now the actors. You're talking about, like, it's not going
to kill the studios to give the actors a little bit of a raise close
to what they want, maybe even exactly what they want. And you're talking
about raises the people who make minimums because you make a minimum, we're talking
about SAG minimums. That's what people don't understand. We're talking about SAG minimums.
Now, if you if you're making one hundred and thirty eight dollars a
day as an extra, Um, you know what, how long you've been
making that, you know, how's inflation? Give them more, you know,
give the actors more. That makes sense. I don't Some people say
it's not even a real fight because many cynical people, Sam, believe that
the streamers are just they need a breather from all the spending they're doing.
So it's just like, all right, you guys want what and they like,
you know, no, we can't afford that, just like I guess
you'll have to go on strike, won't you. Yeah, And like Netflix,
especially Netflix, like we've got a backlog of stuff, international stuff,
We've got stuff that's not covered by the gills. We've got so many things,
Sam, you ever think about like, hey, I think I've seen
everything on Netflix. I think I'm gonna cancel it. I've gotten to the
point where everything that I've wanted to see I've seen. Yes, Yeah,
but I don't think I'll ever get to the point of canceling it, just
because Yeah, even if they run out of even if there's no stranger things,
they're gonna pull out stuff and they're gonna give you they can buy stuff
too. Yeah, it's already done. They just can't produce stuff, so
they could buy things. I've got a couple of movies in my catalog they
could buy. Um, you know, I just thought of that. Maybe
I'll go some some of my movies. So the idea that Netflix is gonna
get so squeezed that they're going to come to the table, is I think
of fantasy now that other people are gonna suffer. Or there's so many way
that some you know, some people can stuff for some people aren't. But
let's let's stick with um, the the actors for a while. Um.
There's an article in the Trades Hollywood Reporter about an actor named Sean Gunn and
he is slamming Netflix because he's for a lack of residuals for the Gilmor Girls.
Maybe you know the Gilmore Girls. I think goes, I think I
saw your trapper keeper. Yeah, I'm a huge fan. Yeah. Um
he's um. So he's complaining about it and what you're getting, like anything,
there's a lot of I call it misinformation or um just not the full
story. So it's hard to get the full story on whether these actors um
that are that are making the most noise can really really argue for the right
things, or if someone really dug down. Would they find out that,
you know, what they're saying really isn't true. For instance, there's a
rumor going around one of the issues says AI is one of the issues being
disputed in Hollywood. According to sag After's chief negotiator, Studios proposed that our
background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day's pay, and
their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should
be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want,
with no consent and no compensation. Sounds terrible, right, It sounds
potentially damaging to people whose images and likenesses are being used without their consent.
Yeah, but did anyone really say this? It seems like when I first
go an so, I think it's crazy to believe someone a chief negotiator to
propose this, because it is insane. And like, I'll tell you what,
We're gonna take a break and we'll talk about what they really said.
And a couple other things, like with this James Gunn article where he's saying
he's so deprived. Um, we'll see what it really means and then we'll
go to the actors the writers strike and see if they've got a better handle
on things. Joe Is Kalante Live from Hollywood. Shot live from Hollywood by
Hollywood, I mean Burbank across the street from a Wiener Schnitzel it sells beer.
This is two hours of the business, end of show business. And
we're an hour number two live from this my Heart Radio Studios and Burbank.
Sam, it's good to be back. It's good to have you here.
Good to back, Good to be back. For hour number two, we're
talking about the strike right now. Last you get the podcast, you can
hear what we talked about in the first hour, which was a lot of
movies, a lot of stuff about Sounds of Freedom and the controversy surrounding that
movie. It's pretty compelling. And the finances, wow. They you know,
someone took some risk and made a ton of money. Um, and
you know, I don't know if they put that in their pockets or they
give it to the sex trafficking organizations or whatever, or if they just buy
pizza. I don't really know quite Uh, they got a lot of money
that's probably gonna make I'd say they I'd say there, they could be into
the I guess that the seventy million dollars, I would say, is maybe,
um, what's coming in that's profitable after paying for the movie. The
distributor paid for the movie, you know, or whatever they gave them as
an advance, and then they've got to cover all their expenses, payback the
investors, and then then you probably got like thirty million each between the distributor
and the the Coviazels or the Vrastegi's the guys that put it together. Uh,
it's a lot of money for I mean, my numbers there. If
they're listening to this, they're like, oh, there's not anywhere near that
we have this on that to pay for. But there's a there's many millions,
tens of millions, trust me, So good for them. Go see
the movie if you can. It's very good. Go see Mission Impossible,
also very good. The um strike very bad, very concerning this strike because
there's just there's so many angles, so many spider webs of stuff going on,
and and the stuff you're hearing might not be you know, accurate,
just it's you know, there's emotions are running high. Fran Drescher is is,
uh, you know Frandu right, She's the head of the union.
It's not the negotiator. But um, she went off to to Rope or
England or something and did some work and made some money at a um,
I don't know where it was. It was fashion show like and got paid
by like Givanshi or someone to go to a fashion show. And then she
got some backlash. Why how dare you go out and make money? So
she came back and made a big announcement. It was very stern. It
was one of the harshest uh Screen Actors Guild Leaders messages you know. Ever
they're saying, it's just it was really harsh. So she's she's Some people
say she had to make up for her sins of going out and making money,
so it gonna be extra harsh. So she was extra harsh. Um.
But earlier I mentioned this actor it's gun. Well, first of all,
before we get the gun, there is work out there for actors.
They don't They can still do commercials that's not covered. They can go do
commercials, And you say, well, why wouldn't they aren't they just not
work in support of their brothers. Well, the people making the commercials have
not wronged them, and they have a contract they're happy with theoretically, so
go work for them. Soap operas. Did you know that, Sam,
They can do soap operas. Wow, Um, those deals. But those
deals will expire eventually, and they will often negotiate. Maybe they will they
will go on strike. For right now, they can do soap operas,
they can do variety shows. They can do late night talk shows under something
called the Network Television Code. Now we know that the writers are not doing
are the Writers Guild agreement covers talk shows. So that's why you're not seeing
any other talk shows besides Great Gutfeld on the air right now. So,
but the actors can go do the talk shows even if the talk shows come
back. Sometimes the talk shows might come back and they will do them without
writers, which is interesting. You know, you're do them without writers.
They did like one of these award shows recently without writers, and it's just
like, okay, we have no writers. Um here introduced the nominees.
Yeah, go out there and wing it. Yeah, you can do that,
and it can't be any worse than these A lot of these awards shows
anyway. But they can do a talk show without writers and say, okay,
here's here's a guest. I'm gonna ask her questions about her latest movie.
But then there's some rules against promoting your movies. You can do acting,
but I think maybe you can't promote your movies or something like that.
Anyway, there's stuff for people to do and they don't have to end,
and a lot of them are flocking to the theater, Sam, live theater,
not movie theater. Well, they're probably flocking to the theaters too because
they got time in their hands so they can go see Mission Impossible, Dead
Reckoning Part two like I did. I'm on strike, Sam. I don't
know if you know that. What are you picking in? Well, I'm
a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, then i am. I'm on strike,
not doing any work except for this non union probably sketchy work I'm doing
right now. But I'm not. I'm not. I'm you know, technically
i'm strike. I can't. I'm in the union. And why are you
in the union, Joe? Well, you know, mainly because when the
vandals. So I'm not an actor. I've done some acting and some internet
shows, but when the vandals play in a movie like we did this movie
Saving Silverman, where we recorded a version of Evil woman for Jack Black to
run around too. Now you could be in the like Musicians Guild UM or
you can. You know, they tell you what gild you're in. If
you say you're in the Screen Actors Guild, then you get royalties through them.
So I get royalties from appearing having playing music in a movie as a
member of SACK and I did, yeah, a couple of things. I
did voice for a cartoon called The Little Bush. It's Comedy Central. Every
once in a while someone asked me to do something. I've auditioned for a
few things. It turns out I'm a terrible audition er, Sam, so
I shouldn't ask you for advice on how to audition for different roles. When
I was on morning radio, a lot of the casting directors, and by
a lot, I mean I would say one at least contacted me and say
come in and read for these. It was mainly, uh, not Disney
movies, but like the dream Works movies. Say this one casting director,
how many come in and read for everything? Okay, read for parrot number
one, parrot number two, or this one Pete, all kinds of them.
And I just couldn't get it, couldn't he couldn't. He's like,
man, I gotta get you one of these roles. Try it this way,
now, try it that way. It was hopeless. Sam. The
one time someone asked me, hey, we got a commercial where they're looking
for someone that sounds like Joe Escalante from Indie one h three one, And
we thought, why don't we call Joe Escalante from Indie one oh three one
and see if he would like to audition? Like, oh, well,
I'm certainly gonna nail this, aren't. I didn't get it. It didn't
sound enough like Joe Escalante. Yeah, and then I had to listen to
the guy who got it. Did he sound more like you than you a
little bit? Wow? Man? Had to listen to him on the was
on. I mean, you could see the hundreds of thousands of dollars being
being earned by this giant commercial. So that's what it's like to be me.
My life is good. So yeah, okay, So the screen actress
guilt strike. I used to think it was called the film actress guilt because
that's what they called it in Team America, I think, but I realized
that's not a real that's not real's not a real entity. No, it's
the screen actor skilled sag Aftra, So I am sympathetic to them. I
think they have the better argument, much better argument. Pay these guys.
Why aren't they paying them? I think there's a little cynical shenanigans afoot.
They're not paying them because they want a breather perhaps, but you're getting a
breather from the writers anyway, so it really doesn't matter. So I think
they're maybe being toyed with. And the real deal is this writer strike.
We got to solve that because they're far apart and there's a lot of lunatics
involved about, like, you know how far apart they are, and it's
pretty ugly. And the screen actorc deal doesn't really matter. But the screen
actors guilled, they are, they're I think they're enjoying this. You know,
they send out a thing who wants a strike and it was like eighty
seven or nine, some really high amount of people that voted to strike.
But the amount of people that work in the screen actress guild, I mean,
I'm in the screen actress gild. We just talked about how pathetic my
acting career is. It's made out of thousands of those people. And then
a tiny fraction that actually work. Now, there's a lot of people that
work that make more than the minimum says, we're really negotiating over minimums.
If you are Fran Dresser and the nanny, you know, you're making one
hundred and fifty thousand an episode. So if they raise the minimums for actors,
give me a ten percent raise, how much does that raise the nanny's
salary? Honestly, I don't know ten percent as well. No, none,
because she gets over the minimum. So you're you're going you don't that
doesn't apply to you're getting over the minimum. Let me know. When you
know, we negotiate a contract that's so high it surpasses your giant salary that
we give you, then this will affect you. So they really are in
solidarity with the people that are are working for minimums. So but it really
is only covering those people and those people, you know, hats off to
the people who are losing money to protect the guys that are that are getting
the minimum because they need it and it's um, it's it's rough out there,
and uh, but I think the I think the studios could just give
it to him, give it to gave it to him. But I think
they want this breather. We'll talk a little bit about more after we check
the traffic, about the breather theory, and about how far apart the writers
are from the studios after this. Joe Ascolante Live from Hollywood. Joe Scolante
Live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, Uh? Yeah,
um. I thought that was pretty good until he started editorializing. What does
he know about music like those like Barbie? I like, uh, the
Spice Girls. That was really good. I mean really, this AI stuff,
for as controversial and as troubling as it can be, it does spawn
a lot of entertaining moments. That was one of them. Now, speaking
of Ai, Sam, the actors are saying, you're like, we we
um. We read that thing earlier that said we want to um, We're
gonna we There's a I call it a rumor or whatever. This is what
people are saying that the sag after his chief negotiators said um Uh proposed that
background performers should be able to be scanned to get one day's pay, and
their companies should be able should be should own that scan and the image and
their likeness, and they should be able to use it for the rest of
eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. Okay,
I think that was totally fake news. That's not what they proposed,
But they didn't propose something that might be equally as preposterous. But it's a
little more believable that it is proposed. They proposed that, let's see,
youre an extra, We're gonna scan you. Okay, make one hundred thirty
eight dollars a day as an extra. I'm gonna pay for one day.
We're gonna scan you, we're gonna use you in as many scenes in that
movie as we want. And but we're just gonna pay for one day,
thank you very much. Um Okay. Not only is that cheap and it's
just petty one hundred what's that going to do for the studios to say,
hey, we saved one hundred and thirty eight dollars times thousands of extras days.
That's not enough to be a sticking point in any negotiating. It's it's
just like it's like, to me, it just sounds like phony bologny.
You know, it's not like scanning them is free to scan some guy and
then you got to play some somewhere else. That sounds a lot more expensive
than just having the guy compare corodinate thirty eight dollars. You know, just
it doesn't make any sense. So um, okay, they want, you
know, fifteen percent, you off from three percent, and you can't.
You come out at ten percent or whatever. Even if you pay them the
fifteen percent, I think the studios can afford that. Paid in success,
that's a tricky one. We would like to be paid in success. Well,
how do you measure success? Because right now you get some kind of
residual for being played, but it doesn't it doesn't you don't get any more
if millions of people watch it rather than nobody. They'd say, well,
what if I'm going to hit the seasons hit series like like like Stranger Things.
I want to get paid because everybody's watching it. And the streamers are
like, look, let me sit you down, tell you something. We
don't tell you how many people watch these things. That's our We're not the
number because we don't have Nielsen. We don't tell anybody. We don't have
to. We made this thing, and let me tell you something, kiddo.
When I started Netflix, I made a lot of money selling DVDs or
renting them. And then at some point I switched to making programs and giving
people like you jobs, and then I started losing money and I lost money.
I lost thirty billion dollars, kiddo, thirty billion, And now I
just started making money. Made two million, two billion last year. Now
how much money does Disney plus they lose money, all the other ones lose
money. But Netflix is now made a thing where they're making money. So
yeah, I get it. You want more of my money, and I
you know, I would love to give it to you. But let's not
forget that I lost thirty billion dollars building up this streaming empire that I have.
So don't act like I'm the evil man on the hill hoarding all my
money, because when am I going to get back that thirty billion? Um?
Eventually? Yeah, and right now I'm sharing money with you, and
I didn't even I didn't even bring up my thirty billion. And tell you
tell today when you started, you know, complaining to me. And this
is me talking like if I'm if I'm Ted Serrandos and I'm not. I'm
just a guy who pays fifteen dollars a month for Netflix and I go and
have meetings with them, and they don't buy my shows. So I mean,
you know, I've got no dog in this hunt. But um,
but it is interesting. And then it takes me back to this article about
James Gunn's brother. He was in Gilmore Girls. He is named Sean gun
and he says, I'm here. It is really these are its quotes.
It is really a travesty. The actor said, studios and streamers really need
to rethink how you do business and share the wealth with people. Otherwise this
is all going to come crashing down. I don't know how it's going to
come crashing down, but the actor said, studios and streamers blah blah blah.
So he said that he came out particularly because he wanted to come out
and protest Netflix. I was on a television show called Gilmore Girls for a
long time that has brought in massive profits for Netflix, he explained. It
has been one of the most popular shows for a very long time, over
a decade. It gets streamed over and over and over again, and I
see almost none of the revenue that comes into that, though Netflix does stream
Gilmore Girls. The residual's gun is referencing come from Warner Brothers Discovery studio that
producing licenses the series to the streamers. So that's something one thing. Netflix
doesn't pay the royalties the studio does. That made it. So he's theared
it to complain about Netflix. Nowre's what Netflix did do. They did take
the show the show. Was this show syndicated into in like syndication is where
all the money's made. No, I thought it was. No, he
was sold to cable channels. That's not the same or it was sold to
It was never syndicated. It was sold to cable channels, and that's a
that's a very low amount of money. I think we're up against a break,
but we're really getting into the weeds, Serve. I think it's interesting
when you find out we're like how complicated this this whole thing is, and
how there's no real great answers and why it's you know, it's kind of
sad because without any answers, how they're going to find a solution. Joe's
Galante Live from Hollywood back after this, Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood by Hollywood,
you mean Burbank with the business end of show Business. Every Sunday on KiB
eleven fifty on your AM dial and one more announcement, Sam got um tickets
still available. I guess this is what you're saying when your shows aren't sold
out, but you can go see you can go all my tours at the
Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas July twentieth to the twenty third. There's two,
two tours a day, the twelve o'clock tour and the three pm tour
um the twenty third. Also doing tours is Fred Armison. I think of
that. Yeah, Fred Armison's tours, Sam are sold out. I don't.
I don't. I don't sense a speck of jealousy in that. Not
jealous. My life is good. I um. But you can still get
tickets for Joe Scalante and hopefully I'll get some some crumbs from his popularity.
And then there's the Don't Forget, also the Sweet and Tender Hooligan Sam,
Yeah, playing at the Pacific Ampi Theater in Coasta Mesa, California as part
of the Orange County Fairs Concert Series. That's a big room, Sam,
it's a big room. We need to fill that up. You know who?
I actually somebody that I met this week that mentioned you was Zach Good.
Oh, I met. I met with him. We were at the
same conference at the same time, and I spoke with him for a good
thirty minutes at the bar after the conference, and you came up as a
point of discussion, and we both were both of us speak about you in
very glowing terms. Oh, that's so good to hear. How was Zach
doing these days? He looks fantastic, good good, All right, let's
get back to the strike. Enough of this gin wag Now Sean Gun.
So, I hate to pick on Sean Gun, but it's just an example
of how we don't really know what we should know, and people are always
in labor spoots, you know, using emotions, complaining about things that sometimes
it's just not really. I mean, you gotta, you gotta come.
If you can't, if you're not, if you're talking to past people or
over their heads or under you're never gonna reach a settlement on how this guy's
ever gonna be happy or if if This is a typical voice in the screen
actors skill. Um, but he's saying he's not um getting paid um by
you know, Netflix, and UM it's been But the residuals don't come from
Netflix, they come from uh in his case, I think they come from
Warner Uh, Warner Brothers Discovery. So but he's there to protest Netflix when
he should be protesting his studio. And but here's what Netflix did, And
I told you, I asked you did. Did this show never got syndicated?
It was on with the CW and you know it did okay, but
it didn't know one wanted it in the syndication market. So they sell it
to some cable channels, and the cable channels think it's got to run over
and over and over to generate any meaningful residuals, and it didn't, evidently,
and it's not really anybody's fault. But then it goes to Netflix.
And what Netflix does is they ordered a freaking sequel, so he got another
series out of it. So if that series, you got know how many
episodes that series went, but you know, for six episodes, I can't
imagine you got less than twenty five thousand an episode, So you know,
he got hundreds of thousands more, or at least one hundred and fifty thousand.
I don't know how much how long that went on, But so Netflix
paid him that and revived it when no one wanted it, they took it
and they generated some income out of it, and then they gave him money
and extended his career, and his career was obviously not going. It was
going in a direction where when someone said, hey, would you like to
come back and revive that old Gilmore Girls thing, he didn't say, I
can't do that. I'm working on a project with Martin Scorskasi at the moment,
you know, he said, yeah, I'll do it. That's thank
you, thank you for the work, and he took it. And now
he's coming here saying I'm protesting Netflix, like Netflix is the big villain.
I mean, Netflix has a lot of faults, but yeah, they lost
thirty billion dollars creating this program, so you know some for people think of
and I'm you know, I'm on the actor's side on this. I think
they should get more money. But you can't be running around saying things that
just aren't true. And then he said they are running around giving each other
bonuses and hundreds of millions of dollars. Then the finally the Holliday reporter had
to correct that the bonuses that he was saying the executives were getting Alix were
a result of them, you know, selling stock that they have stock,
they could sell it so completely wasn't true. It was it was a manufactured,
villainous activity that didn't happen. Do you know it? At Netflix you
can either get paid in stock or cash. So interesting. Yeah, so
some people have become wildly rich by say, well, you know what,
I decided to get paid in stock, and then when it went up three
hundred times, you can imagine what happened to those people. Other people said
I need the money. You have bills to pay. But evidently when you
go to a meeting and then Ted Serrandos is in there and you're he knows
whether you're a stock employee or a cash employee, and if you're a cash
employee, who's gonna listen to you? Yeah, you know, dedicated.
So m Yeah, a lot of fascinating things about the strife. Now the
writers, So anyways, the actors, what are they're doing. They're just
like, you know, they're coming up with all this stuff. It's all
true. They should get more the AI stuff. You got to remember this
too about AI. I don't need you just to scan. They're saying,
I don't want you to scan me and use me in other scenes and stuff,
you know. And I'm saying that's a kind of a false flag because
I don't think they're serious about that, because they's cheaper to get a human
to come in another day than to scan him and put him in something.
Yeah, there might be a thing where they want to scan him and say
we're going to put you in Ethiopia, and we can't bring you to Ethiopia.
Okay, we can argue about that, but that's still gonna be very
expensive for them. So let's not forget though that they don't need to use
extras anymore really for a lot of crowd scenes, because you can make AI
people that aren't that aren't people that are manufacturing. I've seen the AI people,
Sam, Yes, people that don't exist, and they and they and
they're always being created and they're copy and pasted. Yeah, and so you
can. You can you've seen if you've seen any arena scenes in a movie
lately, you know, they got like one patch of people and they just
copy and paste them until they have a full arena. And you can even
look at them sometimes say Okay, I'm right over here, I see the
yellow shirt next to the pink shirt and then you can look around and go
yellow shirt next to pink shirt, and it's you can see it was copy
and pasted all over the arena. They can do that with no actors.
I don't know if if they could ever say you can't do that, that
would be a tough argument. But that would get more actors work. But
I don't know how realistic it is, but they should get more money and
can they get paid in success Well, as we were talking about before,
they don't give you their metrics. So that's a hard one. If you're
on if you're on Stranger Things and you get a residual because it gets plaid
so many more times, you don't ge don't you don't get a bigger one,
but you do get to negotiate. I'm on Stranger Things, I have
a headache. I want my agent just uh it wants a new deal.
You know, because you have that kind of leverage, that's your success.
I think that's what they're that's the other side of the argument. Your success
metric is when you're on a successful show, you will be able to renegotiate
for a higher salary. But if you're right now, if you're on a
terrible show, you're going to get paid the same residual from Netflix whatever it's
called them that you're going to get paid if you're on a successful show.
They want a bump for success. And but then they would have to say,
well, then i'd have to tell you how many times people view it.
I don't have to do that, and I don't want to do that
and it's not part of my business model. And they go, well,
then you should use this a neutral system called Paradanalytics. That's what the guilds
are saying. There's a company called Paradanalytics, and they are the ones that
come up with these lists of what's in demand. So they don't use just
views because they don't have access to that, So they use like other metrics
of Internet, like presence on the Internet and mentions and searches and stuff like
that. Who gets paid from the merchandise because Stranger Things makes a lot of
money from the merchandise, T shirts, games, things like that, right,
Um, Usually all the TV deals that I negotiated for merchandise were always
two and a half percent of the net profit. Now net profit that was
just our studio. What we did at CBS net profit and you didn't give
it to everybody's somebody you feel someone was really big, you might give them
that and they might say, I want five percent of the net profit.
Okay, two percent of the knife is probably gonna be nothing anyway, because
especially the merchandise and TV shows. Stranger Things is an exception because that stuff
is all over the place, but most stuff is like by the time you
you you you deal with the costs of printing and distribution and discounting and free
goods and damage goods and lost goods and returned items. TV merchandise doesn't sell
that much, you're not going to make very much. And and so what
they do is they'll lod just the gross down the net. They'll just that
net down because there's so many costs involved. By the time you get it,
it's not very much. Now. In Stranger Things, when you those
kids, probably in the beginning he didn't get any. But then after a
while, you know, if you're renegotiating, then you're gonna say, oh,
I want March, and they're gonna give you something that's pretty crappy because
there's not a lot of money in merch anyway, So people aren't fighting over
it. And Stranger Things is special, so they might fight over it a
little more, but it'll still never be that much. But you were success
metric, the studios would argue, is when you're getting more money, you're
not even in the minimums anymore. You're getting five hundred thousand a million in
episode, two million an episode, So that's that's your success metric. But
what about the low guy? Can he get more for a show that's played
um way more than another show? Um, it's gonna be hard, uh,
but you know they can. They can argue about that, fear something
else. So now we got Now we'll go to how far apart the writers
are. We want to take a break real quick and then come back to
it. Yeah, we'll come back to that, Okay. Joeyscalante Live from
Hollywood, back after traffic, Joecalante Live from Hollywood. That's the show.
We're here every Sunday, k ibn Am Dial and the podcasts get put up
on Sunday nights after the show. As soon as we think of a clever
name. What was the name of last week's Oh jeez, what was last
week's Something about Sound of Freedom? No, we were going to do Sound
of Freedom and then we did um fomo remember yeah, So well geez,
yeah, did you post it? I did post it? Did you really
though? I really did? Okay, it was fomo something fomo. Okay,
that was clever, so clever. I forgot it already. Okay,
I'll have the name of the second all right, Well we're talking about the
strike Ladies and Gentlemen of America. Oh yeah, so it was Juggalo fomo,
Juggalo fomo. And I think we only mentioned the the juggalo like conference
that they had, the four day long thing. I think we only mentioned
it for like thirty seconds. It was probably thirty seconds too much, but
it was a great title. Yeah, okay, so the strike, Um,
let's go to the writers' we've belabored the enough. Now the writers that's
a real strike because the actors, I mean, they're showing some solidarity and
showing support. And you could argue, a we could bring in non union
writers, but then you gotta bring in non union directors I mean actors.
I mean, what's going on and what kind of director is going to want
to work on that? You know? And the directors Guild has a deal.
They made their deal. Writers, Um, you know, same thing.
They want money, they want more resistent duels, they want hire,
they want success metrics, they want writers rooms, and it starts getting like
really serious, you want you want writers writers rooms? Like right now,
you know, I can make a show like I make my show with one
writer and it's me. If I was um, if they had their way,
they'd say, Joe has to hire a room full of writers, and
he has to hire this many and otherwise we don't work. And the studios,
you guys have to do. Yeah, you have to make it's who
we have a living wage and where we're working all year long and all this
you know sounds fair? Um, I don't know, you know, like
I said, the breather concept, the breath I believe in this. The
studios want this strike because it allows them to breathe and catch up with all
the money they've been spending. And then they can you know, they just
need it. And then they'll come back and they'll do something. I think
they'll give the actors more of what they want, but the writers. So
it gets a little trickier because you start to be well, you can't develop
shows unless you pay for every every time you turn around, you gotta pay
somebody. But also they try to get a lot of free work out of
the actors, I mean out of the writers. And they say, come
in for another meeting. Now do this, now do this. I'll tell
you what we don't. We don't want to have sixteen writers on TV shows
anymore. We're gonna hire six writers to bang out outlines for ten episode.
You guys sit around and tell me what these characters are gonna do all ten
episodes. Six people get together and they go, okay, the characters in
episode one, like the Mandalorian's gonna take the child and he's gonna take him
to another planet and he's gonna lose him. And then they're gonna put a
fake child who's an infiltrator and in his place, and then he thinks that's
the real child, but he's the wrong one, and then that causes problems.
Now we're gonna follow this. The real child's going to go off and
do all these things. Now the fake child is causing chaos and havoc with
the Mandalorian over here, and they're figuring all these A and B stories And
then they do okay, and they just make an outline it for ten and
then they get handed in and the people look at it and they go,
okay, there's ten episodes. That's pretty good. All right, I'll start
writing him, maybe him and one other guy or girl. Now you paid
those guys just for two weeks, and you and I could hash out ten
episodes of Mandalorian in two weeks of full time works and got coming in here
every day and just hashing them out, and it's some mo ountlines. We
could do that. It'd be pretty good. Yeah, I think we could.
Yeah, and then we give it to those guys and they would and
two guys would would would write them. All those guys are on salary anyway,
they're like getting the executive producer fees. Now these like working class writers
only worked for two weeks when normally they'd be working for months. Yeah.
So but the studio saved a ton of money and now they're can say,
now we can order more shows, and now we can do all this stuff.
So it's going to be hard. It's really complicated, and you know,
getting success metrics all that stuff. I just I And then new rumor
going around is that these studios. I don't believe anyone said this, but
Deadline is reporting that someone said it. They're going to starve these people,
and they're gonna and then when they are starving, because we got plenty of
content, when they come back, they're going to go to their leadership and
say, if this thing goes past Christmas, I'm gonna lose my house.
I'm not gonna have a Christmas for my kids. Come to the barting table
and just make it back. Go well, whatever, just get production going.
I don't care about all these things that I thought I cared about.
Get production going. And then now I think that's might be overly cynical,
But some Deadline is reporting that that's what some insiders said. So do we
know. We don't know, but we do know it's going to be ugly.
And I don't think the writers. I think the writers are gonna have
to come back. I mean, I don't know. Nobody really knows.
Who knows. All right, let's leave that behind us in the music department
A couple. I have a couple more stories. The Federal Reserve says Taylor
Swift's Eras tour is so massive it's boosting the economy. Yeah, The Philadelphia
Federal Reserve has announced that Swift is literally hoisting the hotel industry on her back
and boosting revenue in that sector for the first time since the beginning of the
coronavirus pandemic in the year twenty twenty. Central Bank released its Beige Book on
Wednesday, in which officials said the hotel bookings had their strongest growth in years
thanks to swifties. Goes on and on and on about that. Another news
handwritten document found in a Wretha Franklin's couch has been ruled to be a valid
will. Wow. Yeah. Two documents found in a cabinet and couch of
the later Eretha Franklin, which caused rifts in the family since twenty eighteen,
have cut under the spotlight, and the singer's handwritten will found in her couch
after her death is a valid Michigan will. A jury said, you know,
for will's like you know, witnessed and accurately states the intentions of the
deceased. It can be, it can be voud be handwritten holographic will,
I think that's what they call it. But stuffed in a couch, why
not? So that could be some foul play. Well, And that's the
thing. If there was a witness to it and stuff like that, then
how is I I can't see a scenario where there's a witness to that that
ends up with that will inside of a couch. Will you witness a will
and then the person takes it and then they do what they will with it,
get it and they and they go and they and they die on the
couch and or no, you know, they stuff in the couch, just
get stuffed into couch. A housekeeper, errant housekeeper. There's some foul play
here somewhere, Sam, I know. But um, for right now,
I'll tell you what. I'll get more into that case, and I'm going
to come back tomorrow or next week and we'll I'm that kind of an expert
on wills, consulting with legal Zoom for as long as I did. But
I want to get to these other stories. We'll get back to them.
Lisa Murray Pressley's cause of death has been revealed. She had weight loss surgery
and complications that were known like that they would tell you you might have this
might happen to you if you have this weight loss surgery and blockage in her
you know, digestive tract, small bowel obstruction. So our prayers are with
her family. And that's pretty sad, but don't get you. Gotta just
my advice live with what God gave you naturally. Heal your body whenever you
can, and don't have weight loss surgery if you're just don't unless you're going
to die from I never saw Lisa mur Repressley so overweight she was going to
die, So you know, I hope people around her, or people around
you. Listener, we'll talk you about of that. Sam. I don't
want you getting any weight loss surgery either. I won't. I promise Lady
Gaga will not have to pay five hundred thousand dollars reward to the woman who
conspired to steal her dog. The lady said she was gonna I mean,
she gave up and took the dog back and like, and then said,
okay, I don't want to go to jail because someone got shot, and
then she wanted to reward. Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood, leaving you with
pretty much nothing until next week