Joe Escalante live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank, across the
street from a Wienerschnitsel. It serves beer. And we are talking about the
business of show business like we do every week here on KiB eleven fifty on
your AM dial. Get the podcasts later in the day listening, listen to
them wherever. But let's get to the movie. Sam, h biggest movie.
Well last weekend. We weren't live last weekend, but I saw two
movies last weekend. I know you saw a movie and but very exciting movie
times. Right now, let's go to the top ten. Number one still
Barbie holding on to a spectacular ninety three million dollars in second weekend. It
will be the seventh biggest second weekend for a movie in history. Sam,
Wow, what was number one? Well, just this one's just a shade
of head of Mario Brothers, which did ninety two million. What's number one
in the second weekend? I don't know, I just come up with that
stat. Well, it's obviously just living above a movie theater. I can
definitely tell you that the traffic is still there and everybody's wearing pink, So
I'm assuming everybody's there to see the Barbie movie. Still the lady the canter
at my church this morning was wearing pink as soon as she steps up to
the ambo. My wife and I look at each other and just went,
she saw Barbie this week. And then the Oppenheimer still doing, Well,
that's the one I saw. Okay, so you saw Oppenheimer. Yeah,
I saw Oppenheimer. You chose to see Oppenheimer, not Barbie. Let's go
let's let's talk about that. But let me let me go over the top
ten just a little bit, because people just have to know what the top
ten is. I mean, number one is Barbie, as we said,
Number two Oppenheimer, Number three Haunted Mansion, which I will see after we
sign off today on the program. Number four Sound of Freedom. Sound of
Freedom has done a four hundred and forty eight total gross one hundred and forty
eight million. Mission Impossible has only done one hundred and thirty nine, which
is number four. Talked to me from a twenty four did ten million.
That's new this weekend. Indiana Jones is one sixty seven Elemental one forty four
million total, and Insidious The Red Door seventy eight million total Spider Man Across
Spider Verse three hundred and seventy eight million dollars. But let's stop. Let's
let's take a brief look at Sound of Freedom. I think it will drop
off. I mean, it's added a bunch of more theaters. It's just
everywhere now. They added one hundred and twenty six theaters and they dropped thirty
seven percent. But that is the movie about the sex trafficking bust in Columbia
where this guy set up a sting, set up a fake pedo island,
and busted a bunch of pedophiles, and they made a movie about him,
and you know, all that stuff. A lot of controversy. People say
that if you see that movie or some kind of quan on nutcase. But
you know, if you're a pedophile, you don't want people to see that
film either. I've been hearing rumors that it's getting astroturfed. A lot of
the people are buying out tickets for the theaters and selling them out, but
nobody's there. Could it could happen, could happen? People could be um
just trying to support the idea of these two Christians, and these are hardcore
Christians. Eduardo Vedastigi and Jim Caviesel. These are conservatives politically there, you
know, lightning rods for controversy. Some people wanted. There's two things.
We're hearing. Screenings are being disrupted. They're turning the lights on, they're
turning the air conditioning off. They're trying to keep people from seeing these movies.
And now we're hearing, well, some people are buying up the whole
theater and no one's even there, indicating it's not really that popular, and
pedophiles islands are not really that bad. I guess, so, h if
you support this movie, it is one way to reduce sex trafficking. And
I think the reason why people don't like it because not in the movie,
but in the after, after, after, after the movie, trying to
solve the problem, you go, well, you got to close that border.
One thing you know you could do. You got to close that border,
the southern border to the United States. If you want to solve this
problem, close that border. And that is controversial. Now that be now
now it's become a political thing after you say that. So um, yeah,
so you're gonna have people on both sides now speaking of both sides of
a pedophile argument or a thing before we get to the movie. Well,
I'll talk about that, and that remind me of a similar story in the
music business when we get done with this. So you saw Oppenheimer, What
did you think. I was underwhelmed. I thought it was I thought it
was nice that it was the only movie that I've ever seen that was three
hours long that moved. It was. It didn't have a moment where it
felt like it was there was a lull. It was it's coming at you.
Yeah, it was constantly in motion and then it was moving along,
so it was entertaining. I was just expecting less fluff and more just you
know, more concrete stuff, and there it was very much. It was
very much. I had a lot of accuracy, and it was, you
know, true to a lot of the stuff. But it felt more like
the Elvis movie did in relation to Elvis's real life, and like then it
did to actually Oppenheimer's real life. If they went with Oppenheimer's real life,
I get the feeling it would be a really boring movie. Yes, um,
although I guess he was a sex maniac, but um uh oh,
they made life. They made note of that in the movie for sure.
Yeah, so you know, if real life could have been even more exciting,
I guess. But it's funny you mentioned Elvis because I was explaining the
movie to a friend of mine at the Dodger game on Friday night. You
might have seen me on the screen the he was. I was trying to
explain it to him, and then so, yeah, yeah, like you
should see it. Then I remembered he was the guy who I recommended,
yeah, go see Elvis, you'll love it, and he hated it,
m okay. And then so I pulled back and I said, you know
what, this movie was a lot like the Elvis movie, and it's just
Oppenheimer Elvis, and you might not like it. So I retracted my recommendation
for him to see it. Then you're the only other person I've I've heard
of that brought up Elvis in this for this movie. One thing I learned
about before I saw the movie is, or after I saw the movie,
or during that, there are very few true Imax seventy millimeter screens. Yeah,
yeah, it's a very but there happened to be one at my hotel
at the Palms. I was doing the tours of the Punk Rock Museum last
weekend and so you know that's in the day. So I got tickets for
Sunday night and they got a seventy millimeter Imax screen right in my hotel only
in Vegas. So that's like where you live, you live on top of
a movie theater. I was living on top of a movie theater for five
days, but there was a seventy millimeter Imax downstairs. Yeah, that makes
a difference. I saw it was fun. Yeah, I saw that they
were doing seventy seventy millimeter screenings of it, and I when I saw that
there they had the Imax seventy millimeter, I'm like, I gotta find a
screen that has that, because really, that is the kind of movie that
you want to see on a big screen. Watching it on a small screen
will never do it justice. The Brendan Theater in the in the Palms Hotel
in Las Vegas so nice and there's very few seats because it is a luxury
theater, like you're you're you're far away from people and the aisles are really
wide. Very interesting. Um. It was closed for a while until the
Yamava sem Manuel Indian tribe bought the the hotel. But wow, what a
place to see it, and I enjoyed it, but yeah, it was
a little like, um, just coming at me so much stuff, and
some people the criticism also is, you know, there's no they left out
a lot of the didn't show. They didn't show, you know, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki get obliterated like in a in a in a human way. They
didn't show how many you know, it didn't generally hammer home how many people
died, although they didn't hide it, but they didn't. Some people were
wanting more of that, more battle, or maybe even more talk about like
I kind of want a little talk about Well, to me, the story
is not complete unless you talk about how many people get killed in these Japanese
firebomb things they were doing where they would set whole cities on fire, and
hundreds of thousands of people were dying that way. And so the argument that
oh, well this bomb saved lives, um, you know, I'm not
sure if I believe it. It's it's something that will be debated throughout history,
but you know, I'm not I could have used a little more of
that. But then again, it's a movie about Oppenheimer, so it's it's
it's not called uh, you know world War two nuclear theories. It's Oppenheimer
movie about him so great. I know, I know plenty about him.
Florence Pugh always great in the movies. Sam, how much time do we
have. Let's take a break. Okay, when we come back, I
will tell you what one of our listeners said to me about Florence Pugh.
Some of you listeners went to my punk rock tours. Thank you next time,
I'll expect more of you. Joe Sclante live from Hollywood, back after
the traffic. Joe west Bolante Live from Hollywood. If Hollywood, I mean
Burbang. Two hours in the business end of show Business, we were talking
about Oppenheimer. Sam, you saw it. I thought Florence pu Okay,
here's what I was gonna say. One of the one of the people might
where as I do these tours, two tours a day at the Punk Rock
Museum for four days. One of the tours, we have a one of
our listeners. Her name was Valerie, and she was very upset that I
talk about Florence Pugh so much. She said she feels sorry for missus Escalante
because I'm always talking about the delights of Florence Pugh. On the screen.
But you know, what are you gonna do? Is a movie star?
You know, I know that in real life she doesn't look as half as
hot as my wife because they're putting makeup on her and stuff like that.
But you know, what are you gonna do? What's my wife doing while
she was watching Ryan Gosling? If my wife had a radio show, would
be nothing button Ryan Gosling. In fact, the show would probably be called
Ryan Gosling. So but my apologies to listeners who I am offending with my
Florence Pugh talk. Um. Okay, so you didn't see Barbie, No,
but I'm gonna see it this week for sure. Well, I saw
Barbie also at the Brendon Theater at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, and
I saw it on a big screen whatever big the non imax, but fancy
bigger screen there they had that that was also delightful, funny, And criticism
of that movie is like it gets a little weird. Well there's the woke
criticism. Everybody, Oh, this is a woke movie. I think you're
really short changing yourself if you describe this as a woke movie and you're and
you're going to base your decision on seeing it before that for that reason.
First of all, this is Hollywood, Okay, all movies are woke to
some degree or another, you know, going back to since like I think
Apocalypse now is the last big movie that wasn't woke. Probably, Um I'm
just making up these these stats. I don't really know, but I just
threw that out there. Um now, Barbie, Yeah, who cares?
Woke? Woke? That put your mind in that world? Is it funny?
Are you watching funny things? Are they they're they're making the criticism is
these um sometimes people said it was anti man or the the these the rants
that were being made by the star um or the one of the stars,
America Ferrera. Uh you know what these are. It's like, you know,
it's a woman power movie, but it doesn't. It's not black and
white. It just asked to me, that's what it's asking questions about what
it is to be a woman, how hard it is. And then they
go they get in the you know, the conflict between being beautiful and being
uh you know, empowered or whatever. I think that's interesting, so let's
have that debate. But then they get they started going well. Then then
then then as the plot goes on, they gotta you know, they gotta
overcome some hurdles, you know, like story structure stuff, and they go,
well, here's here's where, here's our problem, here's how we're gonna
fix it. It got really confusing, Sam, like you're like, what,
wait, what are they going to do? How's that going to fix
things? And so hard to follow at times, but it's still fun.
Who I mean, I don't follow every movie perfectly. I mean, try
following any Christopher Nolan film, but I would say Barbie was almost as hard
to follow as Oppenheimer at times. But then you know, and then and
then they wrapped it up and you think, how are they going to wrap
it up? And they wrap it up and you're like, you're you're satisfied,
you're laughing. The criticism for my wife was not enough ken and not
enough song and dance. Uh you know, flowery productions with all the because
there's a few dances and she wanted more to that. Uh, I get
it. Um, So I'll see Hannah Mansion tonight looks funny. I'm hearing
mixed stuff like, hey, it's okay, but the trailer's cool. Every
single employee at Disneyland has seen it. They have screenings for them, and
I feel a little left out. You should be able to wiggle your way
into one of those screenings. I can't see why not I should. I
wiggled my way into the employee former employee Facebook page like cast member former cast
member. Okay, due to my stint at the Disneyland Hotel selling nutt and
boatman I made out of iron when I was ten years old, Sam,
Wow at a job. It's my first job, Disneyland Hotel And explain that
to the people to Facebook and they go, Okay, you're in. None
of the kids in my recess the next day would really believe that I worked
at Disneyland, because that's what I would say, I ok at Disneyland Hotel
and they didn't believe me. But I was really tired at school because it
was it went to eleven. It's like from like six to eleven Monday through
Friday. And my teachers would go, why so tired? I go,
I worked till eleven and I'm ten. It's going strong at this kid,
what are you reading Deliverance? Give me that typical day at my Rush Elementary
school? Okay, um, so what movies are people talking about. It's
kind of like it's almost over, except for the summer's over for blockbusters other
than Teenage Mutant, Ninja Turtles, Mutant Mayhem, and Mega Ladon two.
And that's it. Who kept Blue Beetle? Sam? What are you buying
into the Blue Beetle? No? The trailers look nice, but I'm DC
has to give me something that doesn't suck before I'm going to waste money,
right, I'm with you? And yeah, beyond that, almost time for
a Blue Beetle. Yeah, yeah, Disney snow White looks dreadful. Um,
so we'll see, all right. I did see another moving but it
was a movie, but it was on It was on streaming that counts.
It was on Netflix. It was The Clone Tyrone with Jamie Fox and John
Boyega. That sounds fun. It was really fun. It was a really
entertaining movie. I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun watch and
get Rotten Tomatoes. People love it. It's scoring super high on Rotten Tomatoes.
Entertaining movie and that's free if you've got Netflix. Yep. Right,
Therefore, you came out last week and highly recommend it. Very fun movie.
A Clone Tyrone you heard it from Sam Okay. I want to get
to my stories. There's a TV story in a legal story, because this
is ostensibly illegal show kind of in a way. Chuck Norris has just settled
a thirty million dollars suit against CBS and Sony over Walker Texas Ranger profits.
Usually I don't do stories about profits because it involves a lot of math and
people don't understand it on the radio. But basically, I'll break it down.
He has twenty three percent share of all profits from that series. How
did you get that twenty three percent? Sam? How do you think he
got them? He threatened to do a roundhouse kick to their face if they
didn't. No, I gave it to him. You get them the roundhouse
kick. Now, I back in the nineties, I made this deal.
I I constructed the profit definition that Chuck Norris is suing under, and I
gave him his twenty three percent. After some negotiations, he wanted more and
he ends up with twenty three percent. But what and so what they do
is they'll add so many fees and costs of distribution that you get see statements
and there's nothing on them. And then you got to sue to have a
judge look at him, go, what you guys are nuts? This This
is not fair. It's not what he bargained for. So he already did
that. Now he's anyone, and now he's suing Forum that they're they're putting
it on like a subscription video on demand channels and and they're saying that that
doesn't count or something, and they're not and they're trying to not give him
his preferit. So he went back. This is what people have to do
in TV. He went back and sue and he got his money from uh,
the series, but you know, the series generated six hundred ninety two
million dollars in revenue, so far he wants his can't say I hate him
for it. Yah, you know what I mean? You gotta pay the
man. Yeah, and I'm serious. He the dude doesn't do push ups.
He pushes earth down. You don't want to mess with Chuck Norris.
You do not want to mess with Chuck Norris. I heard that. And
uh, if you I've probably talked about this before. If you watch the
reruns of Whatker Texas Ranger, you're gonna hear Chuck Norris sing his own theme
song. And that was at my at my urging, because he sent me
to take a cassette of a song that someone had written at the end of
season one or during season one about called the Eyes of a Ranger, and
he goes, what do you think of this, Joe? What do you
think I had to do with this? And I think he was thinking that
should we release it? I go, this should be the new U,
this theme of the series, and you should sing it. Long story short,
I got him a vocal coach. He didn't. He protested, but
we got him in the studio and he sang the theme song and it's still
there. So I got that going for me. Let's take it the brain.
We will be back in a bit and we will talk about some bad
celebrities out there, some good news about bad celebrities. Joe's go want live
from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, all right, talking about
Hollywood, what do you think we do here? Cardi B? Have you
seen this on the YouTube or the TV? Cardi B? She's playing in
New York or in Las Vegas. I don't know how she's doing it.
Last weekend, it's like one hundred and seventeen out there. She's doing some
outdoor show and someone throws a drink on her, but I can't tell if
they were just it looked like a large Del Taco soda full of water and
ice, so look like but it could have been a sprite. And and
it hits her, goes all over her, and then she throws her microphone
just right at the guy. So that's big news. The thing I thought
was funny is how nobody mentioned that as soon as she threw the microphone at
her, at the at the at the perpetrator, somehow the she was still
singing. It didn't nothing changed. She's extremely talented, I gotta tell you.
So she was yelling at this person throwing it at but her vocals were
still permeating the air and perfect. It sounded just like the record. So
you might want to look at that on YouTube. It's kind of funny,
and there's no mention of it in the article. I think because she's a
victim here, she's beloved by the press, and she just got something thrown
at her, and so she throws the mic. Everybody. It's very satis
find watching her throw the mic at this idiot, and then you just don't
want to bring up like Hey, what the hell's gone on here? But
she lip sinking, but of course he's lip sinking. Um. The other
story about bad celebrities I have is, um they are Remember the show about
the Crizlies where the guy went to prison, Well, he's all the guys
that a lot of reality starts have gone to prison. One of the most
high profile and flamboyant of the reality bad boys is h is Todd Chrisley from
krizly knows best. I tuned into this show and I don't know why.
Why are you guys famous? I'm fine if someone's famous, even just they're
just famous for being famous. I don't understand them. The only that I
think the draw is how gay the husband is and how I could see elephant
in the room and the wife doesn't know this guy is gayer than Liberacci from
space and he it turns into like embezzling, and you know, these people
are trying to keep up a lifestyle. And this guy goes to present but
now he's petitioning because he says the um, the prison conditions are are just
terrible. You know, there's rats, and there's squalor, there's one hundred
and degree temperatures, No air conditioning, no nothing. Um, it's a
nightmare. But it's like this, you know, people don't feel sorry for
him, should they? Maybe, I mean maybe it's terrible, but you
know, he just kind of pops back up in the news and people hate
him even more. There's a lot of Um I want to talk about the
Elon Musk trademark for the new Twitter using the word X yeah. Um.
And it's it's hard to come up with a name that isn't going to be
challenged when you're if you're a high profile like that. They usually in the
trademark world, there's a bunch of people like somebody comes up with a trademark,
big thing, and then there's all these little people that are like,
hey, wait a second, so that was my trademark. Now, the
Trademark Office is supposed to be the guardians to say I cannot give you a
trademark that will harm another person's mark, and or they call it false designation
of origin. People might think twitter is comes from some other source because it's
also too close to the name of some other trademark, or people might think
that that the trademark that was already there is funded by Twitter and Elon musk,
so it can cause a lot of confusion in the marketplace. And remember,
trademarks are are issued more for the protection of customers rather than the trademark
holders. Unlike the copyright. A copyright is issued to protect the author of
of a work and so something no one else copies them. The trademark is
a little bit different. It's trademarking, you know, a service or a
product so that the consumers know where it comes from. And you can't have
a Disneyland in your backyard and put up a little roller coaster because people might
walk by and say, oh, Disneyland has a little satellite roller coaster over
here, and then you would they would get on that roller coaster and then
they would be flung into a ditch or something and they would go, well,
I thought Disneyland had safety standards. But the government has said, well,
no, we won't let people use the Disneyland trademark. So that's going
to come into play with this X thing. And there was one article that
just said there are like nine hundred products and services already with the X as
their trademark. Yeah, and it's so generic. At first, At first,
I was like, what, it's the worst thing I've ever heard of.
Um, it's not it's not, in my opinion, not a very
intelligent move. No, I don't think so either. But then when you
hear he has all his other like SpaceX, and he has all these other
EX companies, and he's trying to consolidate it into an X thing, and
he thinks he can win and he can buy off people and he can fight,
and then then he has this EX world. I get that. So
we'll see it's gonna be a lot of trademark issues and a lot of um,
a lot of litigation and a lot of stories for Joiscalante Live from Hollywood.
Um, how how are we doing on time? My clocksmissed up?
We got about three minutes. Uh. Yeah. One point I want to
make is like that tweeting is something that's like a brand. It like y,
Twitter is a real, a world recognized brand. Tweeting, the act
of boosting stuff and retweeting is some thing that you can go to other pages,
other like sites that do some more things and you're still retweeting. It's
like something that's part of the brand. So anybody using X is going to
be tweeting and calling it tweets. Yeah, exactly and that the problem that
I now see is like he took a brand that was world famous, wildly
profitable, and now it's like he's doing everything he can to disassociate from that.
Yeah, I'm I'm in agreement with you, but you know, we'll
see it seems like one of those things where they retract it, like like
Coke new Coke. Um, So I think it's a new coke, is
what we can call it. A lot of people using they throw that term
around new Coke a lot for mistakes and businesses, some of them. Most
of the time it doesn't apply. I think this applies. This is new
Coke. Yeah, so, yeah, good for you. Here's another there's
a piece of music news here. We're gonna do some music news in the
next couple segment, but i'll preview this one. There was a there was
a legal or a city council vote in Irvine. That's you know, Orange
County, just south of Los Angeles, where the Irvine City Council killed the
negotiations with Live Nation to run their amphitheater in their city because they're building this
giant park in Irvine. It's going to be a bigger park than Central Park.
And it's got an amphitheater. And once this came out, it used
to be like these sweetheart deals or like a Live Nation comes in and says,
look, you guys don't know what you're doing. We'll run the amphitheater
and we will pay you rent three million a year in this case, and
we'll make forty five million a year out of it, or something like that.
And the city council doesn't know what to do because they don't have to
run an amphitheater, and the city council members like they don't want a lot
of work, so they just go for it. Here in Irvine, the
city council, like three of the members stood up and said, we're sick
of this. We don't think this is right. And it was a it
was a weird, very very interesting battle. And now it's one of the
first places where Live Nation didn't get to like walk all over these people.
And now they said we Live Nation said, well, we'll let other people
have concerts in this amphitheater. But in practice, what I understand is you
only get like Monday nights if you're some outside promoter or whatever, so you're
you're stuck with anything that Live Nation is going to give you, and they
control all these tours and they put them in these amphitheaters and then there's no
one else is allowed to to and there's many other you know, promoters.
There's not just Live Nation in the world, and so you get you get
a pretty low variety of music if you in your town, if you're letting
Live Nation run everything, and that's just like monopoly power anywhere. Um.
You know, I got nothing against Live Nation technically my brother in law owns
it. But it's just better for everybody. And I never got to see
it illustrated by until I saw this city council fight about like what it means
for a big giant company to own the amphitheater and not let other or pretend
to let other promoters use it. And it's not a good deal for the
city because they're not they're getting cheated out of profits. And it's not a
good deal for these citizens who want more variety in the concerts that are coming,
because these people down an Irvine are like, they don't want to drive
to La to go to the Hollywood Bowl all the time to see the major
acts, and that's a Holly Bowl is rough Greek Theater is rough. Get
the parking in and out, and so now they got their building they're trying
to build, you know, the city and Irvine Nervine's a masterplan community.
It's just like you know, they practically speak esperanto there. It's so you
know, plastic in a way, but it's plastic in a good way.
They built a city, pre planned, master planned city, and they want
they want their Hollywood Bowl. So now thanks to the vote this week,
looks like they're going to get it. So if you see articles about the
Irvine Live Nation thing, you can read those and it's pretty interesting. All
right, how much time we got? Now break? Okay, we're gonna
take a break and come back with mar Joescalante Live from Hollywood. Joe Joe'scalante
Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank. All right, a
couple more things about Live Nation. We were talking about Live Nation and the
Irvine fight in the last segment. Live Nation is soaring profits. So there's
two articles that the surface this week. One was Live Nation revenue soars amidst
wrong concert demand. This year, the company reported more than one hundred and
seventeen million tickets sold for Live Nation shows so far this year, which is
up twenty percent a year every year. And don't get me wrong, I
play Live Nation shows all the time. They're always good, but I also
like the competition. But then they they're being investigated because by Congress, and
they're investigating there. They're always under a surveillance because when they merge with Ticketmaster,
the government said, okay, you have to let us have a supervisor
that can watch you and make sure you don't commit anti trust violations that are
against the Sherman Anti Trust Act. And so they're always being monitored. But
then then the Swifties come into this. The Swifties are so mad at them.
You can now be a politician and get points by going after Live Nation
because they're blamed for all the Swifty stuff because of the ticket Master debacles,
even though technically they're not even the promoter of these of these these uh Taylor
Swift concerts, but they get all the heat. Um so uh, they
got this oversight and everything. But now the politicians are coming down on them
because the Swifties are so mad that the ticket to buckles and how hard it
is to get tickets and how expensive that that's the new they're the new punching
bag. Um. All right, we're gonna get to the strike in just
a minute. A couple other things. A security guard was beat to death
Saturday night Sunday morning at the Dragonfly. Um, did you hear about this
beat today? Beat beat to death? It was a you know, kind
of an indie hip hop rapper headlining at the at the Dragonfly. And uh,
if I was a Dragonfly, I wouldn't book indie hip hop, wouldn't
do it. Um. These guy's a big swarm of people came at two
in the morning. All right, it's harassing the security guard two in the
morning. You know, nothing good goes on up two in the morning in
Hollywood and they beat the guy to death. That's so yeah, not cool.
Um. Not only would I not go to some indie hip hop thing,
I've been to boo some indie I've been to hip hop riots that were
in major venues and they're scary. But at an indie thing where there's you
know, one security guy, I wouldn't go. Um. It's more dangerous
than Tunetown. Did you hear that? Did you see these things with a
Lana del Ray working at waffle house? I did. I thought that was.
I don't know what the deal is, but I always love it when
you see people that are like really well known celebrities doing stuff like that.
Yeah, so I thought it was at first. I believe did one hundred
percent. You know, um Andy Coffin worked at Jerry's Delhi. It's probably
the most famous ones of these. While he was on the air on Taxi
that was performance art. Lana del Ray is just cool to doing something weird.
I love it if it's true. But now I think it is true
because it's now being reported. Also in alongside the Ed, she ran working
at Chicago's iconic The Wiener's Circle in Chicago. Yeah, I would like to.
I would like to get a job at Award Wieners in Disney's California Adventure.
But no one would care. They would just say, Okay, yeah,
that's where you. I figured you'd end up here. You know.
No one would say, like, huh, Joe, You're a giant celebrity
working at Award Wieners. They would just go, that's just kind of sad.
So I probably won't do it. I would like to work at Disneyland
doing the canoes, though I don't care if anyone thought it was sad when
I was doing that. Also, some news about floating around that Sean William
Scott, who played Stiffler on American Pie, only got eight thousand dollars for
that. I saw that, and so he about a car for five thousand,
and then you know, he was still working at the La Zoo as
a churro guy. So I think this is floating around a show like how
hard it is to be an actor and how it's not you know, they're
not all rich. Even if some guy like Stiffler was a you know,
a sensation and that movie came out and hundreds of millions of dollars at the
box office and he got eight thousand dollars. But you think about it.
You gotta think about this. You're making that movie, you got a budget,
you're trying to reduce the budget, and they say, hey, this
movie is too expensive, go back and cut the budget. If you have
someone like Stiffler who's never been in another movie, why would you pay him
anything other than sag scale? So you pay him sag scale. So it's
not like they're cheating anybody that would just pay sag scale. So I guess
the counter to that is, yes, Joe, well, that's what we're
trying to do. We're trying to raise sag scale so Stiffler doesn't have to
work at the tchurroplace for as long as he had to work at the churiplace.
So Sarah Silverman is upset because she's saying she's going after actors that are
working. There's still a few contracts that are not that are kind of different
that you can still work as an actor if you're on this indie contract,
for example, and then there's some you know, kind of reality shows that
actors can still work and make money while the strike's going on. Sarah Silverman
is saying, no, no, no, no, don't do any of
that. We all have to be united. And if we're not united,
it's never gonna work because you're gonna make these And there's some famous actors I
guess that are in these indie films they're working right now. And Sarah Silverman
said her and her wealthy friends have turned down all the offers they've gotten,
and the other people have said, hey, I gotta make a living,
and my guild, the Screen Actors Guild, said I could be in this
movie and she's saying, well, shame on the Screen Actors Guild. We
all you know, she's this hardcore. You know there's different levels of union
labor protesting. She is hardcore. She says, she's really pissed. I
believe her. I'm just glad I'm not somewhere where I'm really pissed. I'm
in the Screen Actor's Guild. I would like these guys to make progress and
get more money for the actors. But I'm not really pissed. And you
know, it's just me. But it's the union that's allowing them to do
this. Another thing about the strike right now that's going on. We're approaching
the ninety day mark. The ninety day mark is in many of the agreements
with the writers who have overall deals, and this is gonna this is like
tragic for a lot of them. An overall deal in the TV writing business
is like the holy Grail. It's what you get after you've had a few
hits or many heads and then you say we're gonna make an overall deal with
you. I'm going to guarantee you four million dollars a year and you're gonna
write scripts and pitch them to us. Exclusively, and we're going to every
time you write one, we're gonna say, okay, we're gonna knock one
hundred grand off you wrote another one, and if you wrote so many that
got more than four million, then we'd start paying your cash. But we're
going to advance you four million dollars a year. That'd be a small one.
That's not even a big one. We're gonna keep paying you this.
And let's say our deal is we're going to guarantee you for two years.
Now, there's a clause in there called a force massure clause which we have.
We have to pay you this unless there's a force massure, meaning like
a pandemic, an act of god, something like a writer strike. So
after ninety days they can just say, hey, we're terminating. You're overall
theal and we're not paying you anymore. And will they will? Will you
get it back after the writers strike happens. Fat chance. So that's like
coming up a first. That's a rough one. Yeah. The other striking
news that we we're talking about during the break was the the accusations by the
writers of the Actors Strike strikers that NBC Universal has trimmed to their trees.
They have denuded these trees that used to provide shade for the it's for the
that's right outside our studio. There's these big trees all up and down,
the really old trees all up and down the boulevard, and they provided shade
to the strikers and they have been denuded, so there will be no shade
for you. NBC Universal says this is just routine maintenance. But there's an
LA official saying he's going to look into the matter. What do you think
see him? Well, we definitely got to see it. Apparently they had
already scheduled the tree trimming ahead of time, so it something that was already
there. But yeah, with the weather as as brutal as it is,
it was the one thing that offered the a lot of the protesters or some
kind of shelter from the heat, and obviously the people at NBC Universal had
no problem with them sweating it out. Yeah, it's very interesting. I
would agree with you that would like it's i mean, the tree maintenance.
It's like, you know, probably scheduled the routinely, you know, a
year in advance or something. But you know, so someone could have said,
hey, let's postpone that so that the strikers can have shade, but
that would never happen, so they just let it roll. So I don't
think that investigation is going to uncover anything, but you know, officials,
city officials and politicians certainly love to to get involved and stuff like that.
Have you been down there. You're not into guild. No, I'm not
union, but I've driven by it and I agree that they should get paid
their fair share considering how much money is flowing into streaming services and stuff like
that. I'm with you, Sam, all right. So you strikers out
there ain't tough, and uh I will leave you. It's just a taste
of the greatest song ever written.