We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Johnski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. We are joined once again by Christian Toto. He
is the host of the Hollywood and Toto podcast and you know him from the
Hollywood and Toto website. Christian, thanks for joining us. Pleasure and it's
it's just Hollywood and Toto dot com right, That's where people absolutely got to
keep it simple and I keep that brand consistent. Well, you've been grinding
away there for years, and there's there's so much for you to write about
and now so much for you to podcast about. I actually want to start
with something that's looming large over the conversation on a business level and on a
let's say ideological level in entertainment sphere right now, and that would be the
reality now facing rumble now facing actor turned I guess political commentator Russell Brand,
who has been accused of a very very serious, facing, very serious accusations.
They're they're old accusations, they're sexual assault accusations that they are, from
my perspective, very serious. They're not entirely unsurprising. Russell Brand has come
out and said that, you know, he's he's I believe, gotten sober,
he's This is kind of baked into the arc of Russell Brand. Doesn't
make it okay, does make it unsurprising, to to say the very least.
But this is kicked off another one of these major me too conversations about
sort of the threshold for cancelation because Rumble is facing pressure literally from the government
of the United Kingdom to demonetize like YouTube did, Russell Brand's content on their
sites. Russell Brand hosts a regular show that is very popular, gets a
lot of views on Rumble, and Rumble has basically said, hell, no,
Christian, you have been following this, maybe even more closely than I
have. What do you make of the situation? And then we can kind
of get into what it could mean for Hollywood, what it could mean for
the news media going forward. None of this is surprising. I share your
alarm at the allegations. I think the combination on his hedonism in the past
and his addictions make it more likely this could have happened. But again,
he is innocent, will proven guilty. These are older charges and the timing
is certainly curious. Big as he you know, years ago I used to
cover him and he was a socialist and he would you know, you know,
use his platforms to push those agendas. And now I don't even know
what it is now. But he is a he is a rabble rouser.
He is someone who's willing to speak up against media corruption, against big government,
against censorship, and I support most of the ally above. So you
know, he has changed in the public's mind in very radical ways. And
the conspiratorial side says, well, that puts a target on you, and
then the other side of me says, well, these are four different people
claiming similar stories and that's horrifying. But I think there are bigger issues in
play here. I think we're looking at a cultural landscape that is censorious in
nature, that is looking for an excuse to shut down different points of view.
That know, is that to cut out a creator's knees by muck demonetize
again is very effective. And you know it's if the slippery slopes always seem
like an outrageous argument until they happen again and again and again. And I
actually maybe connect all of this back to Alex Jones, who I loathe with
every fiber in my being. But when he was censored on social media,
I thought, and other people thought, what's next? And I think we're
seeing what's next. And as much as I hate what Alex Jones is up
to, I don't think he should be censored, and I think that we're
seeing the consequences of it now. I just think it's happening more and more.
And you know, you've got to give Russell brand the benefit of the
doubt. He's got to be able to speak his mind. He's got to
maybe face his accusers. I don't potentially in court, but to say he's
guilty without a shadow of a doubt and remove his ability to make a living
is just wrong. It's also this horrible return to the standard that kimil pie
I wrote about this in the Highwood Reporter in the middle of Me Too.
She wrote that the idea that of an artist as a good person. She
called it quote sentimental conard of Victorian moralism, which is such a perfect polyiaism.
But it's also impossible for people to consume art that returns money to the
artists in a way. That is, let's say, in a way like
you have to reward bad people for making good art if you want to consume
art at all. That isn't to say that the only kind of people who
can be good artists are bad people. It is just to say that,
you know, we're all fallen, and some chunk of people who make really
good art are going to be bad, and we can't rid ourselves of that
art because it might financially reward bad people. And it's not an easy question
to grapple with, but it is one that seems sort of obvious to me.
I don't know what your take is on that. Christian Yeah, yeah,
there's two signs of this. You can look back in history and say,
you know, artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, we're horrible people,
but their work has been around for decades, stood the test of time,
and it seems silly to cancel them or not appreciate what they did.
It gets a little more complicated when you have modern artists who are still working
today, the Woody Allen's and the Roman plan Skis, who are either accused
or admitted to terrible things. That gets it gets the conversation gets messier from
there. But you're right, and listen, there are plenty of people in
Hollywood who are doing horrible things behind the scenes that we don't know about,
and you're doing horrible things that we know all about it. And I can
mention Alec Baldwin, who is a very talented performer, funny, he's got
dramatic chops, he's got it all, a great voice, and he seems
like a terrible human being. I mean, really does. I mean,
just the snippets we see, the evidence has out there, but I don't
want him demonetize. I don't want him on the unemployment line. And I'll
put the he accidentally shots someone to death on a back burner for now,
but just as an example of someone who's been behaving badly for years. So
yeah, I don't think that's a helpful situation. But also it's so selective
because you know, Rosanne Barr shot out one awful, terrible, racially charged
tweet and she was wiped away, gone, Her career is over and she's
had to basically rebuild it on her own terms, which is fine. Maybe
by her standard, but it shouldn't have to be that way. And then
you have to start the flash Ezra Miller, and that actor's track record of
terrible behavior is extensive. But if the Flash actually made a couple of dollars,
you would see Ezra Miller in the Flash two. So you know,
the hypocrisy is off the charts, and it just points to the fact that
this isn't really about making the world a better place. There are other factors
here. It's being weaponized and that's wrong. And yeah, that's a good
way to put it. Because we obviously have to have common social standards.
We should hold people the very high standards of behavior where you should be shamed
that it turns out you have seis sexual assault allegations against you, and when
those are litigated in the court of law to the extent that they can be,
not just in the wrestle of brand situation, but many situations where you
know, statute of limitations have elapsed or et cetera. These get so difficult,
but you know, when they can be tried in a court of law
and we can have a serious legal battle and hopefully get some closure, we
should, and we should, to your point, allow people that process while
also enforcing that we have standards of shameful behavior. Hollywood standards of what constitute
shameful behavior are wildly a hypocritical and be terrible. I mean, like I
remember when the movie Quties hit Netflix, people were like, well, it's
not actually pedophilia, it's this interesting look at you know, they created this
sort of like intellectually gymnastic exploication. And it's like, okay, well,
still, in a healthy world, this would not be getting marketed the way
it's getting marketed. There's no way. Their standards are also crazy, and
so it's almost impossible to have this conversation in that context because there's just so
much going wrong in Hollywood anyway. Yeah, and I think part of this
all is that we don't have any conversations. It's very black and white.
He or she is canceled, he or she will never work again. What
did he or she do? And I look at the Lewis c K Louis
c K situation, because he exposed himself to multiple women. That's disgusting,
it's vile, there's no doubt about it. He admitted it, and he
essentially lost his career. He lost I don't know how many millions of dollars
he became a social pariah. He know, every gig he had dried up.
I mean, he was having a wonderful career. Now he has built
things back as a solo artist, as an independent artist. But there is
a segment out there that wants him forever band, forever, punished, forever
on the outskirts of society, and that just feels to me as well,
he really did suffer because of this, and this will never get off his
permanent record. Where he did is awful. Now, you can't make it
up to those women they had that experience. It's terrible. But life does
have to go on, and he can't just be sent to some you know,
social media purgatory where he never gets to be seen again. You know,
if it's different if he's not apologetic, it's different if there are no
consequences. But you know, his case is radically different than like a Roseanne
Barr who sent out one gross suite that hurt no one, maybe hurt some
feelings, and yet you know she's been punished in ways that are just outrageous
to me. So it's it's all these different standards. It's the it's the
inability to have these in depth, in depth conversations. And I want to
just circle back to you know, the Me Too movement was technically great and
necessary and important, and it got bad and records time and one of the
I think the worst memories for me was when mad Damon came out and said,
you know, there is a difference between the Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulting someone
and you know, Senator Al Frank and taking a picture where a woman was
sleeping and he was holding his hands above her clothed breasts. Yeah, there
is a difference. And he was shouted down and shamed and he basically slinked
away and said my bad. And I thought, oh, what a terrible
moment. I totally forgot about that, and me Too is just this,
Yeah, it is. So it's such a tangled knot like I forget about
all of the different threads that like dominated the media every single day for a
better part of a year. And actually, that's an interesting point because I
know that you've covered this for conservatives. There's something very difficult about Me Too
in that, on the one hand, it did expose some of Hollywood's deep
hypocrisies and deep moral failings. On the other hand, it then went so
far in the other direction that the the burden of proof became untenable and ridiculous.
But I want to ask you about that with because we're almost coming up
on the five year anniversary of Me Too, I think I'm actually six.
I think maybe six year anniversary fro Me Too twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen.
In was the beginning of October when the Harvey story dropped in the New York
Times. With some distance between those frenzied media cycles, Christian, which should
conservatives look back on, like, what is the headline from Me Too?
Now that we're some years in the distance from it. Well, I think
as a culture, there are too many men abusing women. There are too
many men getting away with it, And I think the whole structure of Hollywood
makes it so ripe for that kind of abuse between an actress who may want
to curry favor with an executive and may push things in an uncomfortable direction,
to a director or a producer misusing his or her power in that way.
I mean, I think that the whole movement initially and the conversation was very
legitimately good and helpful and necessary. I just think it became political. It
became believe all women, and you could, you know, insert the record
screeching stop when Joe Biden was accused of something by terror read and then I'll
let sell this Simbolano. You know, the sorcerer supreme of Me Too said,
well, when we say believe all women, what we actually I mean?
At that point you knew was it was essentially over. And then when
the Me Too organization joined forces with the governor of New York who was accused
of not assault but of inappropriate behavior, and basically gave him talking points,
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And Yeah, I think we've talked about this before, but again now that
there's some time in between those early days of me too and then sort of
the backlash to me too, which was well deserved, do you have a
sense that this exposure and especially exposure that conservatives have have rightfully focused on of
Hollywood's abuses of women. Do you have a sense that things did fundamentally change
or did it just sort of slowly creep back to normal. You know,
I'm not behind the scenes, so I can't know for sure, but I
do think that more men are wary of it, of getting caught, of
knowing that women have more power and more agency, and that's their word is
sometimes used in interesting ways, but it's true in this case, so I
think that doesn't matter. But I also think it shipped away at Hollywood's alleged
moral authority. You know, I think I think we all knew that there
was hypocrisy behind the scenes. We all knew that some of their political posturing
was bogus. But to see the industry reveal itself in ways and also one
of the most horrifying elements of the me too move it in Hollywood was that
they knew. So many people knew. And you know, it could be
Brad Pitt who had his own encounter because he was dating Gwyneth Paltrow and Harvey
tried to do something with Gwyneth, and then Brad pitts, I'll knock your
lights out essentially and a good for him and beat but he didn't sign sound
the alarm, and then people, I Quentin Tarantino, I think there were
two women in his life. One was romantic and one was professional, with
Thurman and Mira Sorvino, who had their own exchanges with Harvey, but he
didn't sound the alarm either. So you know when people who have power and
have clout, when they stay silent, and bad things keep happening, And
that's what happened in Hollywood. They just wanted to keep that secret. It
was so toxic and so noxious, and they did. They were very successful,
and I think the movie she said, from a year or two ago,
while it made about eight dollars in the box office, was actually very
good and did show the hard work that good journalists can do to expose something
like that needed to be exposed. What is your sense of Rumbles, let's
say, importance to this kind of alternative economy that's definitely developed in the entertainment
world. You and I both have covered the Daily Wire very closely and some
of these other ventures. Rumble steps into the void and is now defending ardently.
They've given you leftist Glenn Greenwald, who's fantastic, A big fan of
Glenn's and leftist Russell Brand, whose show is very interesting. They have defended
Brand they're they're really going to the mat for him. It is a hill
that they absolutely and rightfully are willing to die on with this pressure from the
UK government. From a business perspective, that's smart because it is the one
thing that distinguishes them from YouTube, which is already demonic Russell Brand. But
what is your sense also, just like in general, the fact that they
were giving shows to people like Glenn, they've been supportive of people like Russell
Brand, they have been growing. It seems, at least from the outside,
what role are they playing in this kind of realignment. It's a vital
role, as a critical role. And if they buckle, I shudder to
think what happens next, because they seem like they're in the spotlight right now.
They are in the crosshairs and powerful forces, including as you mentioned earlier,
the British government want them to take a knee, and they're saying no.
And if they do take that knee, if they are forced to stand
down, what happens next? I mean, the cascade of censorship could be
significant. And one thing I want to mention, and maybe it's slightly off
topic, but maybe it's completely on topic, is that it's one thing that
Hollywood says they basically sig on censorship. It makes me stick to my stomach
because someone who loves Hollywood product. But the fact that journalism by large and
journalists have basically cheered on censorship or defended censorship or are not outraged by the
censorship we're seeing across the landscape is one of the most shocking stories of the
year of the decade, and I think we'll look back on it with appropriate
alarm. It's not hard to spot they're rooting against free speech, and it's
everywhere. I mean, it's it's the Washington Post, it's the New York
Times, it's just it's Rolling Stone magazine, which I call free speech reverse
now in the twenty first century, that's shocking to me. So what Rumble
is up to is important. They're not saying Russell Brand is innocent. They're
not saying he's a saint. But they're saying this is a process that has
to play out, and until it does, he should be deemed innocent until
proven guilty, and we can't demonetize him because then what do we do next.
But you know, if they fall, you know, it'll be like
that parlor moment when Parlor was the up and coming Twitter alternative, and then
Apple and Amazon and all the biggies ganged up on it and shut her down.
It's never been the same and no other platform has really risen up in
its week. That is a perfect one to one. And again that was
the specific thing, and Parlor knew it, But that was the specific thing
that distinguished them from Twitter, and the one thing that distinguished Rumble again from
YouTube from what Google is doing. The fundamental thing was this broader scope of
ideas and speech. You really have to be careful if you're creating content for
YouTube and you make a joke about Trump and the twenty twenty election, you
like this, This is the real thing. They do demonetize. They do
penalize people who make jokes for crossing the wrong side of their speech code.
And you don't get that on Rumble, and so Parlor understood that that was
a fundamental difference between them and Twitter. The pressure was so immense from all
of these big tech companies, and you know, they made life very difficult
for Parlor. But since then there has been this growth in that kind of
alternative economy system ecosystem where you have things like Public Square, which I absolutely
love. You have things like, you know, different all kinds of different
places. True, there's true social there are all kinds of different places for
people to post content. Do you think some of the stuff christian is really
here to stay? I hope. So, I mean, we have to
have Plan b's and Plan c's or we're all in trouble. You know,
you mentioned demonetizing or punishing someone for a joke. What's what happened Roseanne bar
she was on Oh Theovan's podcast and she joked about Holocaust and Island. It
was clear for a she's Jewish, be she's never said that the Holocaust didn't
happen. And see, she was just being she was going off on a
riff, on a tangent because she's a comedian, that's what she does.
And that was punished. And I've talked to a lot of different comedians and
they've suffered from tech censorship. You know, it's not dramatic, it's not
draconian, but it's there. And often it doesn't involve nudity, doesn't involve
this or that. It's often about well you made front of the wrong target,
and that's that's chilling. So what we have now is we have locals,
We've got podcasting. Uh, Anthony Komi has got compound media, his
own little pirate ship in a sense, and Adam Grola has a literal pirate
ship, that's what he calls it. So I think we are seeing all
these different platforms pop up where it's free or speech. There's more ability to
speak your mind, and you would think that that would have a really powerful
competitive effect on the YouTube's of the world, because you know, if if
if comedians start fleeing the ship, then they they're going to have to you
know, they're going to face some consequences there. But it doesn't seem to
be Uh, Listen, I use YouTube all the time. It's it's a
it's a wonderful platform. There's so many different voices and topics and conversations and
everything there. So it's it's it's very hard to topple these behem as at
this point. But yeah, we need these these these other ways to get
the jokes out, to get the commentary out, and you know, for
people like Russell Brand and eng Glenn Greenwald and man Taiebi, they are essential.
And I should mention substack as well, which seems to be a pretty
solid platform for alternative views, you know. I mean, if you're having
a conversation or even a debate with someone, you could just say, listen,
hey, a lot of what we thought about COVID nineteen was wrong.
It's just wrong. We know it for a fact that it was wrong.
But you could go on YouTube and find countless videos of people saying that you
know, the vaccine stops at cold and you won't get it if you have
the vat I mean, just things like that. So why isn't that demonetized
or banished? It's all thought control. There are certain things we can talk
about and not and I think every creator has to do that math in his
or her head. If you're a comedian, is it worth putting that joke
on YouTube? If I'm a I'm a writer, I run my website,
you know, I mean, at this point, what do I do?
Can I talk about trans issues in any capacity that can be challenging to me
and my revenue stream, And I'm just a solopreneur. I'm scared to death
about it. So all I can do is I can support free speech and
support the artists who are pushing free speech and shame the people who are not
on board because free speech is everything. It's it's it's it's ball game at
this point, and if we lose it, I think we're done. You
know. That's so interesting on a personal level too, that like, your
your small business, and these concerns absolutely affect how you operate. And actually
speaking of the behemoths who really are getting to set the rules and that sort
of famous like Baptists and bootleggers type of like the type of system of control
that we've seen so many times where the bootleggers get you have this this huge
company sets the rules. It's chrony capitalism. They say. It's like they're
just you know, trying to create guardrail through the economy or whatever. But
it helps them get a leg up on their competitors. I think we see
so much of that going on in this space, and I want to ask
you you've been looking at Disney. Obviously, hilariously they brought back Bob Iger
to save the day after they started seeing a nose dive. Some of that
is clearly attributable to politics. Some of that is attributable to just this intensely
difficult media climate. As we're recording this, we just learned that the Writer's
Guild, not the Screenecker's Guild, but the Writer's Guild seems to have reached
a tentative agreement in their their strike. What is the future for Disney right
now? Christian, because they're facing serious headwinds, some of their own making
politically, they stepped into that. But they're in a really tough spot right
now, and I think, you know, some of us are sort of
cheering for them to keep struggling, and by that I mean me. But
people might not want to see their demise quite yet. Yeah, it's interesting.
I think for a while now, I've been saying Disney will be fine.
They've got too much money, They've got too many iconic properties, they've
got too much of this, they've got too much of that. And now
I'm not quite so sure, because I think the marketplace is so challenging,
because I think they've taken this bulletproof brand that any company would just slay for
and they've they've they've damaged it, possibly irreparably. I mean to get political,
to get inside the culture wars, to insert messaging within their family friendly
content that a large portion of the population doesn't want to see. In kids
programming. It's just it's just amazing to watch. I mean, I think
that business, you know, courses will be taught on what happened with Disney
for years and years, that you can take a company that was so beloved.
I mean, you know, it's you know, Disney was like Betty
White, who didn't love Betty White, who didn't love Disney, who didn't
grow up on Disney. We didn't have warm feelings about Disney. The parks,
the movies, the characters, the mouse ears. It just was this
brand that we passed down from generation to generation. We loved it, and
you know, maybe we grew out of it at times as we got older,
but we'd want to have our kids and grandkids watch those classic movies.
And now they're at the forefront of this culture war and they're I just I
just can't believe it. I can't believe. No one was There was no
adult in the room. We said, we've got to stop this. This
is this is hurting us. And you know, at the end of the
day, why does Disney need to get in the culture wars? Why Why
do I need my toothpaste company to be woke? Why do we need Apple
to be caring so much about the environment. I care more about the great
products. I mean, I think we can work on the environment through you
know, government methods, through uh, you know, organizations that help make
us a cleaner planet. I'm not against any of that, but just seems
odd that Disney would go to the mat and the subject and fight with Governor
DeSantis and they're losing. And this is all coming at a time where the
whole econom mcmodel is changing and or collapsing. I mean, most of the
streaming companies are just bleeding money at this point. It's just not a viable
model. They've got to figure out what the plan is. And then here's
Disney just saying, Okay, we're going to alienate whole bunches of people again
and again and again, and then when we get caught, we're not going
to apologize. We're not going to course correct. We're gonna have Bob Iger
saying we're going to lower the temperature on the conversation with that any real action
behind it, I don't think he means it. So it's fascinating and as
an observers, it's often more entertaining than the Disney product itself. Hey,
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good Disney movie about some nameless behemoth entertainment giant Christian. How much of it,
though, is attributable? I mean, like, it's hard to obviously
put like a quantified percentage on this, But how much of it do you
think it is politics? Because sometimes when we talk about this in the context
of politics, I think people who don't cover the business side of it quite
as closely might overstate the influence of politics. I still think it's really important,
but how much is one versus the other? Do you think? It's
hard to quantifize specifically, But you're right. I think you know, you
and I are in this business. We follow these things, We read the
headlines, and the average American doesn't. But you know, I think some
of that does reach the average American, whether on social media or maybe just
the films they're watching. So I think there is a trickle down effect that's
happening. But I also think the Disney product just hasn't been very good.
They took the Star Wars franchise and they can't even get a new movie off
the ground. Every every new day there's a big a list. Director says,
I'm not making a movie about Wars anymore, and then the Star Wars
shows that people we almost watched them, almost like it's we're supposed to,
but we don't seem to have the passion and the energy behind them, like
The Mandalorian, which really did recapture the glory of Star Wars for two seasons,
and it seems like the Loss its way in season three. But yeah,
it's a combination of things. We have to kind of make sure that
we're not thinking about we're reminding ourselves that life is in Twitter and vice versa.
But I do think that people do get exposed to what they do hear
about it, and I think if they're not directly hearing about it, they're
seeing the content the results. And it just hasn't been any classic Disney films
in recent years that I guess maybe Frozen was the last property that really just
blew everyone away and was wonderful and you know, became a cultural sensation,
and The Mandalorian as well. But I think there's a lot of other films
that are just clunkers. They're just unmemorable, and that has a more powerful
cumultive effect than any you know, te tweet storm about how woke Disney is,
but they don't discount that either. Yeah, I was gonna say,
and how do you think that's affected, because you know, we were talking
about me too? And just to sort of bring this full circle, obviously
there were artists, Matt Damon being one of them. But even during the
whole cancel culture, when we were really in the throws on a daily basis
of these cancel culture news cycles, facing celebrities facing average Americans, Jennifer Aniston,
after some of the dust settled recently, came out and was like,
and I don't get the point of cancel culture, and it kind of criticized
it. Maybe she wouldn't have done that a couple of years ago. I
think it's still great that she did it now, But there was definitely a
time when all of this was more pitched and frenzied. Has that like me
too? Maybe has that really changed the content that we were seeing common of
Hollywood or has it almost changed it for the better? That's going to sound
crazy, but there was something that felt so And I don't mean this in
the sense that if any of our readers have read Stan Evans and these defenses
of Joe McCarthy, I hear you, but it felt kind of McCarthyist about
cancel culture, and it seemed like a lot of artists, especially in Hollywood
and everywhere else, took note of that and wanted to kind of do their
own thing. You know. Shane Gillis is out on Netflix with the special.
Now they've been supportive of Dave Chappelle, Gillis has only gotten more popular.
In a sense, has the cancel culture sort of fever peaked and improved
art or at places like Disney, has it actually made the content so much
worse because people are now even more risk averse, not wanting to wade into
those waters again. To feel like the debate's almost been settled. There's a
lot of answers to that question. I'm going to try to tackle them as
my brain catches up to them. I do think it's two steps forward,
one step back as far as we're making progress against cancel culture, than bow
something happens, we're back to square one. I do think that the main
dream content providers are getting more and more safe, and more and more weary
or leary of offending group A, B and C. And I think what
that does is it gives space to a Shane Gillis, who is really smart
and really funny and really provocative and very interesting. And you can just tell
when you watch his stand up that he doesn't have a mean bone in his
body. But I think he goes in some challenging directions and he does it
with wit and style and a bit of humility. So I think it's a
complicated time. I think that there are many, many people who are just
scared of offending someone. I think that absolutely impacts art. I actually opened
my book Virtue Bombs with a made up scenario that was scrubably, very real,
fake bite accurate. As Dan Rather would say. As you know,
imagine that you're a screenwriter. You open up your laptop and you want to
start writing a story, and then you think, well, well, this
character is Asian, maybe that he shouldn't be doing what he's doing for cultural
purposes, and what if I do this character. I mean, there are
so many things invading the creative process, short circuiting the creative process. That's
not good. It's not good. You know at the end of the day
that the audience should be the ultimate arbiter. Did you go too far?
Did you push it in directions that are unfortunate, and just very before we
had the chance that one of the mics, as they say, I heard
that there's an Office reboot in the works, and it's funny. I've never
seen The Office until recently, which is my fault. I dismissed it and
I started. I started to binge it, and I am on season seven
and every night is a joyful experience because I know I have at least two
Office episodes waiting for me, and I'm so sad that it's going to end
soon, and I'm thinking, a, you can't do this again. Be
Mindy Kaling is basically said as much, you can't do this again. She's
even embarrassed of some of the work that she did. She said this,
she's not even sure she would show it to her children. And then Steve
Carell, who is flat out genius in the role of Michael Scott maybe one
of the greatest comic performances in TV history, has said, I couldn't do
this today. So we're going to reboot The Office in this cultural climate where
you can't do this and you can't do that, and you're going to zap
away what made this show so magical. It just breaks my heart. But
again, these are opportunities for the Shane Gillis types of the world to kind
of work on the perimeter of Hollywood. It's so much great comedy going on
right now, but it's on YouTube or rumble, it's not on SNL,
it's not on the late night shows. But gosh, there's a group called
Free the People, and they are crushing it. Their stuff is amazing and
funny and satirical and biting and just over the top grade. And they're just
some outfit they I mean not to disminish what they do, but they're not
NBC, they're not Netflix. They don't have all the resources at their disposal,
but they have a modest budget. Their clips look great, they've got
funny concepts, and the technology is allowing them to compete on that level.
So that's maybe we're the whole ultimately lines that all the week keeps getting shamed
by outsiders. You just broke devastating news, Christian. The Office is going
for reboot. I mean, I guess I'm not surprised, and I almost
always support reboots. But to your point about what Steve Carrell and Mindy Kaling
have said, this is going to ruin the legacy of one of the greatest
comedies ever almost surely, and I think you know that knowing them, they'll
still have fun with these things. But man's uh, that's really that's that's
hits hard. And I also, I'm so curious why you think you've never
watched The Office before, Christian. Well, you know, it's weird.
I'm a movie guy and I have to for my job watch movie after movie
after movie. And there's a little bit this weird click in me, at
this weird tick that if I missed something in the beginning, it's like,
it's too late. I missed the boat like and I actually did catch up
at Breaking Bad and I was mesmerized by it. But a Game of Thrones
I started to watch, I couldn't get it. My HBO lapped. I
just never I just I just felt like I missed the moment and then I'm
like to go back. Seems silly, and maybe that argument is silly,
but it's just this weird thing I have in my head. But I don't
know. I just started getting bored with all the movies that were available on
my streaming platforms, and I thought, but the hell, why don't I
just work to the office and here I am, you know, of course,
corrected on a dramatic level, you know. And I also I want
to be a little critical of Steve Carell, because when Steve Correll says,
and he's right, oh, I don't know, we can make a movie
a character like Michael Scott anymore. His next syllable should be a boy.
Isn't that a horrible thing? Because Michael Scott is ignorant and selfish and childish
and irredeemable at times, and you love him, you love him, and
that's the genius of his performance. And it's this deeply flawed soul that even
the office workers love him too, despite themselves. And even though he's a
moron, it's much a wonderful, layered, fascinating, deeply funny character.
And yes he is ignorant, and yes he says racist stuff, but he
doesn't even mean it. He's actually trying not to be ignorant and dumb.
But because he is who he is, he can't help himself. How how
fascinating is that that template? And how many actors could have pulled it off?
Maybe a handful, maybe less, But Steve Correll did it right to
make Michael Scott sympathetic. Is just it's a feat. There's no Archie Bunker.
Ask maybe on steroids, yes, yes, And actually you know that
I'm going to keep pelting with questions on this because it's it's such a time
capsule, but in the way that you know things. It used to take
us a hundred years or more for our culture to change so dramatically, but
this is within everyone's recent memories and I'm totally Actually, I love your explanation
for why you never got around to it before, because I'm the exact opposite.
I'm a TV person and I can't always bring myself to watch movies and
sometimes after a movie is like, I'm just not going to get to it,
you know, just it's done. Like I didn't weigh in, then
I'm not going to weigh in in the future. So why, you know,
strain my attention span? And The Office came out when I was I
started watching it. This is going to sound ridiculous, but the first time
I saw it was I think on one of my friends iPod videos. They
had bought an episode, they bought Office Olympics on iTunes and we watched it
on an iPod video. And that's just within like my living memory, Like
that's within like the last fifteen years. Do you get the sense as you're
going back through these episodes of how much they reflect a totally different world,
a totally different country. Yeah, And you know what you said about a
culture, It really it's really profoundly true that culture does change so rapidly,
and I think we still have to kind of wrap our heads around that.
I mean, I just think that I think we're all essentially immature when it
comes to social media used, like we haven't really matured and had the whizz
them to use it properly. Sometimes it's that revolutionary. But yeah, I
mean, you know, before I binge watched The Office, I was catching
up on Modern Family, which I had seen from time to time but didn't
do the deep drive. And when I watch a show like Modern Family or
even like The Office, I just watch I go, oh, you couldn't
say that today, or you couldn't do that today. And these are not
outrageous shows. These are mainstream productions and there's nothing political about them. There's
nothing culturally demanding about them, but not getting in a soapbox, but just
little jokes, little assigns and often it's the flaws of the characters which are
so profound, where you know, certain people like the gay couple on Modern
Family, well as Mitch as the Redhead Fellow, he's kind of a jerk
at times, and Cam is just over the top and crazy and jumps to
conclusions. But that's what makes him lovable, and that's what makes him human,
and that's what makes them funny. And I think we risk that where
my gosh, we're making a movie about a gay couple and they're fighting,
you know, they're fighting to see if they're going to be a you know,
they're going to stay together or not. But then can we make those
those gay characters with their flaws. I mean, the term Mary Sue jumps
to mind. That's the term where we have these flawless female characters like Ray
from the recent Star Wars films, or Kelly Marie trans character It was a
terrible characters. They're flawless, they're perfect, they're wonderful, they're noble,
they're strong, they're brave, boring. And that's one of the many,
many reasons why I Woke has been such a has had such a terrible impact
on the arts, because you get characters like that they're woke, but they're
not entertaining. Well, that's bleak. Is there something on the horizon that
you're most excited for? Movies? TV, stand up specials, anything that
you're looking at in the near term, you know, generally speaking, I
just I'm excited by these different platforms rising up. Blaze Media has got a
movie it came out a couple of weeks ago called Rio Eng which they just
bought from someone else. It was very good, and it seems like Glenn
Beck has been talking about being more active in this space. Obviously, The
Daily Wires is going all in on entertainment projects. I love that these different
comedians are able to put out so much great content on their own terms and
do it in a way that's professional and slick. So, you know,
as far as mainstream Hollywood goes, you know, the director Alexander Payne as
in a movie coming out of if it's called Holdovers. It's with Paul Giamatti.
He was a terrific director and they made one or two clunky films.
But I'm kind of hoping he goes, you know, finds his roots again.
Tarantino's teasing his tenth and final film. You know other than that,
I don't get as excited about the Oscar movie season like I used to.
I feel like I'm often more often let down than anything else. But I
do like the art bubbling up around the corners, and I think that's exciting.
It's rebellious. And I also think that the artists of today, they
really need to lean into this free speech message, this counterculture of non censorship.
That is a winning strategy. I think that will if America is still
America. I think that the average person left, right or middle will resonate
with that to a certain degree, and resonate with the people who are fighting
against the scolds. But I think the messaging has to be more powerful,
and it's gotta be laced with humor, because if we get out, if
you get up on our soapboxes and we lecture people and wag our fingers,
it's not going to work. But you know, if you watch a video
and it's funny and it's outrageous, but it's got a point and it makes
you think that it's a wonderful combination. Christian Toto is the host of the
Hollywood and Toto podcast. Also, of course, you can read Hollywood and
tooto dot com. All of Christian's coverage is there. Thanks so much for
joining us once again, Christian. Oh, I love it. Thanks again.
All right, well, you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist
for radio hour. I'm Emily Deshnsky, culture editor here at The Federalist.
We'll be back soon with more. Until then, the lovers of freedom and
anxious for the frame right. What you're wrong with me, scribes wrong