Joe Escalante live from Hollywood, if by Hollywood Amid Burbank across the street from
the Wiener Schnitzelda sells beer and today is a special podcast version of the show
because the NFL was preempting or live broadcasts on k EIB eleven fifty am,
where we normally broadcast from. But this is the NFL season, so I'm
going to be preempted quite a bit, maybe every other week, maybe more,
but that's just the way it is. What can I do? You
know? Okay, let's start off this Sunday, September twenty fourth with the
box office from the weekends. Number one is the None two otherwise known as
Monha Dose and only dropped off forty two percent. Really good for a movie
in its second week to only drop off forty two pers sense, So I've
got sixty nine million dollars probably cost sixty nine hundred to make the expendables.
There's a new movie, you know, Sylvester Stallone and Dolphin Green and all
those people. I'm not gonna go see it. It's more of a video
on demand type thing, but it's in the theaters. Did eight million from
lyons Gate Haunting in Venice. The Agatha Christie thing still doing pretty good,
twenty five million total gross. Probably worth making this movie. Maybe they make
another The Equalizer three no thank you, number four and Barbie still hanging in
there at number five. And my big fat Greek wedding three nom that's number
six, number seven. It lives inside from Neon Pictures. Well, dear,
what the heck is that interesting? I don't know a lot about it.
It's about an Indian kid. Okay, maybe you go see it.
If you go see it, tell me a number eight. Dumb money about
the investing in the stocks like game Stop and AMC Theaters and all those like
those bros that got unread it and made stocks go up. They weren't worth
anything with their own power over the internet. I'm gonna see it, Blue
Beetle, don't want to see it, Oppenheimer number ten. It's a good
movie. What are the most anticipated movies that people are talking about? Now?
We have Hunger Games coming out. The last Hunger Games I saw was
really really boring in about two hours too long. The Exorcist Believers coming soon.
We got a Lord of the Rings Aquaman saw ten hah, jeez.
Anyway, let's go to the movie that Joe was Scalante saw. Joe Scalante
saw film and this film was called Cassandro. Cassandro is a movie about a
what it's called an exotico. Have you ever heard that term? In exotico?
Let me spell it out to you. An exotico is a you know
the Mexican wrestling the Lucca Libre. Well, there's a thing where they have
these kind of trans wrestlers and they come out and their men, and they're
dressed like women, and they have their own characters and their own storylines.
And this is a story about a wrestler in El Paso who was struggling.
He lived in El Paso and then he would go over to Juarez to fight,
and he was struggling. And then someone said, why don't you become
an exotico, trust like a woman, shave that mustache, become an exotico
dancer. And then he finally decided to do it, and then he becomes
a sense rises to the top. And the exoticos are not allowed to win
in the wrestling Mexican Lucha libre world. But he said, I this exotico
will win, and he did win. But even if he lost, he
was still a big star. And but in the end, yeah, I
think the movie is about the loneliness of a gay Lucha libre wrestler, even
though this trans thing is kind of common. But I think maybe they weren't
gay. Some guys that think I just like a woman, I got a
character, I make more money, get more fights. But this guy really
was gay and he decides to be this Cassandro and he's It's a lonely life.
Very good movie directed by a guy named Roger Ross Williams who has really
only directed documentaries before this, I think, but he won an Academy Award
for Best Documentary Short Academy Award Oscar winner, So it really does a really
good job. I mean, the movie takes you inside a world kind of
like a documentary. It's a biopic, and it takes you inside this fascinating
world of Lucha libre and the role played by the exotic coos. Now,
most exotic coos, like I said, are just straight men adopting a character.
But this guy was gay. He was going to create an exotic coo
that would win and not get beat up, but would beat up other big
wrestlers. And I recommend it and it's hard to find in the theaters,
but it's on Amazon Prime for free right now. So if you got Amazon
Prime there it is. Is the best free movie you're going to stream all
month my opinion. Now, the big news in Hollywood this week or just
last couple of days is the strike of the Writer's Guild. Strike is over.
They have reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television
Producers and everything is agreed on in principle. They just have to draft it
up and sign it. What does that do to the Screen Actors Guild,
Well, they have congratulated the WGA on a tentative deal and they urged the
studios to return to the table with the actors. So they're still on strike.
What are the differences, Well, the differences are pretty big because the
WGA was was fighting to get more writers in the writer's room per show.
The actors it's like, you know, you're an actor, you're either you
got a role. It's like one to one, you got a role.
You know one actor in television you got to you got a story. You
might have sixteen writers. So the actors are going to fight over AI and
transparent see in streaming, and they might look to the WGA to see how
they settled that because they want to know, Hey, I want to get
a bonus when when something is a runaway hit. Problem is, they don't
want to tell you when it's a runaway hit. They just want to say,
yeah, this is good. Here's a little bit of money. So
we'll see what happens in that world this week. Now, what else did
I see? I saw a live Las Vegas show. I went to Las
Vegas on Saturday to see Wayne Newton. Now, I was originally going to
see Steve Martin and Martin Short on Friday, Wayne Newton on Saturday, then
go to the party at the Punk Rock Museum. But Steve Martin I think
got COVID or something. And people again, people are testing themselves for COVID
against my advice. I'm not licensed to practice medicine in California, but you
don't see me testing myself for COVID. Okay, Now, saut Wayne Newton
Saturday night at the Flamingo the Bugsy's Cabaret at the Flamingo Hotel. Yeah,
small room, but I gotta tell you, if you haven't seen Wayne Newton
he's a living piece of history and he's performing in Las Vegas every night for
a while. And if I were you, I would go on stub Hub
or whatever. I would buy a general admission ticket something. This is a
good advice for you. It's general admission tickets like eighty bucks or something like
that. And the room is so small it's like general admission means you are
sitting in the eighth row instead of Section three B for three hundred and fifty
nine dollars, where you're in the second row. So take my advice,
go see him. He is a living connection to Elvis Presley, Dean Martin
and Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. His you know a bunch of stuff
with Elvis Presley, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason. And he does this you
know, multimedia show, so you get to see him, like maybe pull
out a video of him playing as like a ten year old or something with
a maybe an eight year old, I don't remember what it was, but
playing the steel guitar. Now, steel guitar, that's not easy. This
guy's playing the steel guitar his head underneath the thing, with his hands on
top of it, not even looking he's a he's a savant, plays all
these instruments, can't read music, but just can play anything. And then
he pulls out the slade guitar and plays it right in front of you on
stage as an eighty one year old plays the same song. So how his
career took off was basically he had this baby face. He was a child
prodigy. Him and his brother had an act and he would sing these kind
of cheesy songs like even you'd sing a song like when the Saints go marching
in, you're like, okay, who needs to hear that again? But
when it's sung by this baby face little boy, he's so into it.
And then and then after a while he brings out an instrument and just shreds
on this instrument and you can't believe it because he's so little. And he
ended up just working in Vegas like six nights a week, six shows a
night, over and over and over. Then he graduates to the showrooms and
then he becomes a headliner and he's on all kinds of TV shows, Banan's
Vegas Vacation, tons of stuff, Ed Sullivan, you name it. And
here he is still at it. He's doing your favor, So get out
there and see it, and people will say, oh, Wayne Newton,
that's cheesy, mister, Las Vegas. Maybe a psalm in Vegas Vacation.
He shows clips from that Dunca Shane, the song sung by Matthew Broderick in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's that's his hit, and he plays clips of
Ferris Bueller and then he sings it. Anyway, stop what you're doing and
get tickets to see Wayne Newton at the Flamingo Hotel in the Bugsy Cabaret general
emission. Remember that. And before that, I went to dinner at the
this is pretty amazing the steakhouse. It's called the Steakhouse at Circus Circus,
and I kept hearing how there's this amazing steakhouse at Circus Circus. I hadn't
been to it, and finally we made the reservations I wanted to before.
But every time, you know, I plan like a dinner in Las Vegas,
someone always comes in and tells me about some great new chef, a
celebrity chef, or something you gotta try at a Michelin star rated restaurant,
and that's I go. But and it's always good. But I still have
this thing like I just want to find the oldest thing in Las Vegas,
even if it's not good. I usually eat at the Golden Steer Steakhouse,
it's always good. But this these steakhouse at Circus Circus, I'm gonna say
it's a lot better. And it's kind of interesting. It's like a speakeasy
that is tucked away in the back of a building and they walk into and
it just looks like people, but like a lost group of people looking for
social services, or maybe it's a Walmart or you know, who are these
people? Oh, Circus Circus. It's like the cheapest hotel in Las Vegas,
but you know, people with not a lot of money, you can
get a hotel room. So put it this way. The hotel rooms therever
for like seventy dollars when I was looking, and then at the Palms where
I usually stay at the for the the punk Ark Museum stuff seven hundred and
eighty eight hundred dollars, so you kind of know what you're gonna get when
you get in there. The valet is shut down and you have self park
and you walk in and it's it's a little bit nuts, but you get
to the steakhouse. It's an oasis. Why is this steak how still there?
If it's so good, what's it doing in there? Well? One
of the things is I thought that there's no celebrity chef that wants to be
in the Circus Circus, So there's not like, Oh I found an ideal
place. So I'm gonna gonna buy this, buy out this steakhouse and get
this prime spot at Circus Circus. No, so it's gonna be there for
a long time. But if are, we would go there. My waiter's
name was David. He was very good. The steak, excellent, potato,
all that kind of stuff. But they sparagus best. My wife said,
best asparagus she ever had in her life. I hate asparagus, but
I tasted it and was so good. I ate it all. Bottle of
wine, you know, I mean, is it pricing? It's about half
of what you pay one of those Michelin star things. But that's not it's
not cheap. You know, it's pricing, but it's not like over the
top. That's these steakhouse at Circus Circus. Sounds like a commercial, right.
A couple stories before I go Lizzo more trouble. She's been getting sued
by her employee or employees for being oddly enough fat shaming. It's one of
the one of the charges the embattled the Lizzo. She has another lawsuit now,
a wardrobe. The woman who designed the wardrobe for her dancers on last
year's tour. Her name is Asha Daniels, and she filed at a LA
Superior Court and she said there was a sexually racially charged illegal work environment.
And it says the Lizzo management made racist and fat phobic comments mocking black women,
and that Daniels was denied worker medical care and forced to endure degrading sexual
harassment. And in August, three dancers who were part of the singer's retinue
filed suit claiming they were also weight shamed by the EMI winner as well as
the recipients sub sexual, religious, and racial harassment. According to the paperwork
that was just filed, Daniels was looking forward to working with Lizzo and her
team because of the values Lizzo portrays in public, i e. A healthy,
diverse environment with virtues of respect and empowerment of women. Unfortunately, the
opposite turned out to be true. The lawsuit states citing experiences of degradation,
forced physical labor, denial of medical care, sexual harassment, and racial harassment.
So Lizzo's management said, nay, that's she says it's not true.
So what will happen legally, Well, they will send letters, maybe make
demands to pay for her damages or try to reach a settlement, or they
will continue to pursue her in the courts, and then probably it will get
settled somewhere along the way for an undisclosed sum, and Lizzo will either be
vindicated because she'll say they drop their charges even though she'll probably have to pay
the money, or it goes to trial, and wow, that'll be a
good one. This one I thought was interesting though. This is a court
in New York that has said that this Manhattan prosecutor, Linda Fairstein is going
to be allowed to sue Netflix and won't throw out this case, and there
will be a trial or the you know, the case will go on.
Now this is over Linda Fairstein's Fairstein's portrayal in a twenty nineteen crime drama about
the Central Park five case. The Fairstein alleges that Netflix director Ava du Vern
and writer producer Adica Locke acted with actual malice, as to five scenes in
the movie The Netflix Thing When They See Us. The series dramatized the story
of five black and Hispanic teenagers who spent five to thirteen years in prison after
being wrongly convicted in the nineteen eighty nine rape of white jogger in Central Park.
Another man confessed to it in two thousand and two. So what do
you got here? You got a woman who prosecutes these guys, and she's
so good she can prosecute innocent people, I guess. So nobody likes to
see innocent people go to jail. But what the judge says she's going to
be allowed to prove is that Netflix kind of took her character. And then
it just kind of what do they want? You know, they write the
script first, and then they check the facts, and they kind of backload
all these facts. They reverse engineered the plot points to a tribute, actions,
responsibilities, and viewpoints to Fairstein that were not hers and are not supported
by defendant substantial body of research materials. So they said, you know,
what should this prosecutor be like? That convicted these people wrongly and they just
put a bunch of bad personality traits into her because that was easier to write
a story about like that. She's a real person and you're allowed to say
things about her that are true, but you can't make things up about people
if they are defamatory and make people want to spit on the ground. So
they said a bunch of bad things about her in that thing When They See
Us, When I saw When They See Us, when I looked at it,
I didn't even watch it because it looked sensationalized. And it was during
that time where it seemed like Netflix would only broadcast shows about people wrongly convicted
of crimes, not about any kind of other kind of justice where people would
rightly be convicted or you know, victims would get justice. That wasn't happening.
I don't know if it's happening now, but it just seemed like everything
we had to be someone wrongly convicted. You got a wrongly convicted guy,
there's going to be a TV show about it, And it seemed like they
were a little bit cookie cutter. So I didn't watch this one, and
I'm glad I didn't, because evidently it wasn't truthful to make their point that
these guys got their lives are ruined. They tried to ruin someone else's life.
Doesn't seem fair. So the judge is said, this can go on.
It can go further because at the beginning of a trial people file motions
to throw it out saying, oh, this is free speech or whatever.
Says No, she go ahead and have a trial. You're gonna if she
can prove that this happened and that these people acted recklessly with their portrayal of
her and caused her harm, they're liable for defamation. So we'll follow this
case of the central part case with the prosecutor suing for defamation Linda Fairsteam see
how she does. All right, I'm a little bit tired, so I
think we're going to cut it off there, and I will see some movies
this week, and I'll talk about him next week. And I'll now leave
you with just a taste of the greatest song ever written, and go get
your way Newton te