Here we go, Joe Escalante. Life from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you
mean Burbank across the street from a Wiener Snitzel that serves beer. We are
two hours of the business, end of show business, every Sunday. Here
and k E I B eleven fifty on your AM dial as you're driving around
LA or tinkering in your garage, whatever you do when you're listening to M
radio. Maybe you're on iHeart Radio all over the world. Sam, Sam,
are you there? I am here. People can listen to us all
over the world. We are worldwide. This is incredible. I wonder why
they don't. With the fan base in Dubai is thriving, I maybe that'd
be interesting. If you're in Dubai, call the nine the line right now.
What is the number? It's eight hundred and five to two oh one,
five three four. I thought it was eleven fifty. I can't do
the letter thing. It might be eleven fifty, but you know, yeah,
eleven fifty's that's in doseerent numbers. But cool anyway. Uh, okay,
so let's get to the big stories of the week. I want to
go right to uh what everybody's talking about, which is Scarlett Johansson. Okay,
maybe they're not talking about that, but do you know what's going on
with Scarlett Johansson. Isn't she married to the dude from SNL? That's about
all that I pay attention to. I think that they're an awesome couple.
They're they're they're like Hollywood's underground power couple. Yeah. I like them as
a couple. I mean, I didn't meet her until after I got married,
so you know, it was just it's complicated, but uh, she
used to be my favorite, then it changes because over time. Now do
you know who my favorite is? Now? Oh, there's so many though.
Florence Pugh. Florence Pugh, you ad you number one? Uh?
I was it a Aubrey or Audrey Plaza? You love? She's good,
she's fantastic. And I'm executive producer of a movie that she's in, and
the and the the director didn't call me when when it was time to interview
her, so oh bummer. You know, I don't need that. I
don't need that in my life, but I do. I'm a married man.
I'm not co parenting a kid somewhere. I'm married guy sitting in my
you know, I'm living my life. Okay, let's get to the stories
before this gets creepy. Okay, Open Eye Open AI. Okay, this
is a real company. They make chat GBT and everybody's using it to,
you know, make AI versions of their homework or recommendation letters. I use
it for a lot, and I used it to make a speech on trademark.
I think we talked about that in a while ago. I did a
speech for the Southeast Bar Association or something like that. That's all the lawyers
and judges from the southeast District of LA County. And you know, I
made an outline using it was pretty helpful, and then I you know,
you can't. It never really works all the way for something, but it
gives you a couple ideas. It gives you a good framework to work off
of, but don't base everything off you're doing word for word for it.
Because there was a story I think yesterday that we ran on the news where
they gave ingredients for a recipe and one of the ingredients was something called non
toxic blue. That sounds toxic. That sounds delicious. So open EYI has
some new product like Virtual Assistant that they're developing, and they needed a voice.
So everybody's saying that when the voice came out, it sounds suspiciously like
Scarlett Johansson. Even Scarlett Johansson's lawyers have contacted chat GBT or apen ai and
said, why does that ask? Why does that sound like Scarlett Johansson?
Does that sound like a problem to you, Sam? It can be,
yeah, because you could if it sounds exactly like a person, you can
get that AI voice to say just about anything that that person would not want
to have their name associated with. Yeah. But it's even worse because Scarlett
Johansson has a right to sell her voice and sell her identity. She has
a right of publicity. Every state or not all states, actually most states
have these right of publicity laws. There's no federal law against it, so
you have to use these state laws. But if you are if you've got
a voice and you're selling a product or using a commercial commercial venture and you
sound just like a celebrity, that celebrity has a right to get paid or
decide whether they want to do it or not. So this kind of blindsided
her, I guess, and all the people online were saying it sounds just
like her, all right, let's listen to it. Yeah, Hi,
how you doing? Hey? Is your voice supposed to be Scarlett Johansson.
No, my voice isn't designed to replicate Scarlett Johansson or any specific person.
All right, so you heard that it sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson.
Sounds exactly like her. Yeah, okay, So the problem is they reached
out. Normally they could say yeah, we didn't, it's a coincidence.
But they reached out to Scarlett Johanson and asked her if she would be the
voice for this, if they could use her voice, and she said no.
So right there, you're like this happens all the time. There was
a case, there's a couple of cases. Bett Middler case in nineteen eighty
eight commercial. They asked her to be on a commercial and she said no,
and then they told the backup singers make it sound as the singers they
did. Get make it sound as much like Bette Midler as you can.
Yeah. So you can't go to Bette Middler and say do you want to
be in this Ford commercial and when she says no, go get someone that
sounds exactly like her, unless you said, like, this is not Bette
Miller. You know, but that's why you hear a lot on commercial's celebrity
voices impersonated. Then Tom Waits in the same year sued Fredo's because they used
his voice. And first they called and said, can we make a parody
of one of your songs for Dorrido's and he said no, and then they
got it sound alike. So this is exactly what they did here. So
the case law is really against this chat GPT open Ai company. And when
you look at the if you look, all you have to do is look
and see the CEO of this company. There's so much douche baggery like written
all over his face. You you got to Yeah, you gotta go look
at him and just go, oh, come on guy. First of all,
I probably wanted to meet Scarlett Johnson. Yeah. Well, there were
similar issues with Elliott Page, I guess then Ellen Page with the video game
for the Last of Us, where the likeness of the character was their of
the the main female protagonist was very similar to how he then she looked at
the time, and so there was a lawsuit about that and they because they
believe that they just took their likeness without permission. And that's one thing but
these are these are these are issues like that one and this one. These
are issues for the trier of fact, as they say, so the tryer
of fact is the is the jury. And in a jury, if you
can convince more than half of the jury in a civil case that hey,
this sounds just like Scarlett Johansson, then you got a big problem. But
the defense here is that that's a coincidence. But do you think a jury
is going to believe it's coincidence when they asked Scarlett Johansson and she said,
no, no, you're you're toast when that happens. And there's there's there's
one other aspect to this that is worse for Open AI that Scarlett Johansson actually
voiced a AI assistant in the movie her. Oh remember that yep. So
that's why when we played that recording it sounded, uh there was some there
was some of that was in there too. She is known for this and
then known for the movie her as an Open AI assistant or as some kind
of virtual assistant. Then when they were launching this product, that CEO A
tweeted out the word her Uh yeah, no, that's come on, that's
a little too on the nose. Yeah, this guy, I mean,
when you see it, it's just like that's that's that's dumb. Yeah,
that's not thinking straight. So what's gonna happen illegally? What can happen?
How much time do I have here? We have let's see what give me
a second because I didn't start the time around time? Actually, no,
we probably are because we how long was the audio clip you sent? Oh
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're toast. Okay, yeah,
let me just let me just say this, open a eyes in trouble.
They're gonna have to make a settlement. They already took it down, but
now they're gonna have to reach a settlement. And it's so Scarlett Johansson is
in the drive receipt here. Let's take a break, check the traffic.
We'll be back. Joe Scalante, Life from Hollywood. Joe Scalante, Live
from Hollywood. By Hollywood you mean Birdbank? All right, movies, let's
get to the movies. I went to the movies last night. We can
guess which one I saw after we do the countdown, and then I'll guess
which one you saw, Sam even if he didn't see one. Okay,
all right, Number one in the box office. Furiosa a Mad Max Saga,
doing twenty five million dollars at the box office in three thousand theaters.
Number two couldn't cut it. Garfield couldn't beat Furiosa. Garfield's a cat movie.
If from Paramount, Number three, Number four, Kingdom of the Planet
of the Apes. This is a hit. This is a hit movie,
still hanging in there in the top four. I know you and I both
saw it and liked it. The fall Guy is a flop according to Hollywood
standards, but it's still hanging on in there. And if you, you
know, if you couldn't get enough of Ryan Gosling in the Barbie Movie like
me and Sam, this is the movie for you. Number six The Strangers,
Chapter one, number seven site from Angel Studios. You know that's about
eight challengers from Amazon. It's the opposite of Angel Studios. Nine Babes from
Neon Pictures, featuring no babes as far as I could tell by the poster,
but I think that's the idea. I get it. Number ten back
to Black from Focused Features, and then blah blah blahs, it goes down
there. I'm trying to see anything on the list that might be interesting for
us. No, all right, guess which movie I saw? Sam?
Which movie did you see? That's a pretty good guess. I thought that
was a good one. Actually, I saw Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga
number one movie in America, pushed over the top by my attendance at the
cinema in Huntington Beach. So you're the one that kept Heathcliff down. Yes,
so super fun. I mean, do you like Mad Max. If
you like Mad Max, you got to see this movie. It sounds like
it's one of those visual delights. It's a visual delight, Sam, That's
exactly what it is. Yes, Yes, you got to see it in
the Turkish Taffy for the eyes. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure,
you got to see it in either what's it called IMAX or xd XD is
the version of IMAX that the cinema theaters have. I saw it in that,
and it's not like the seventy milimeter true Imax or whatever. But it's
a big ass theater and it's so big you can see through the visual effects.
Wow. Yeah, yeah, it's so big. It's kind of like
if I was a director of this film, I'd be like, this is
too big because I've made a couple movies and people ask me, why aren't
you gonna have this in theaters, or why don't you care about theaters?
I just you know, I owned a record label, so we made movies
and we for the punk audience, and we you know, we didn't We
didn't go to screenings, we didn't go to film festivals, and we just
shipped them straight to the people who it was made for. Wasn't made for
festival judges. And also didn't want to see my movie plastered on a big
screen because I didn't want to see my mistakes. But in this movie,
it is hilarious. It is fun. There's so much going on, and
the visual effects are crazy, but they're not you know, they're not lucasfilm
or whatever. You know, they're not. They're they're they're just fun.
Like the fire. There's so much fire going on, like flame throwers.
Everybody's getting hit by a flamethrower. Everyone's got one, and there are flamethrowers
on motorcycles. There's a motorcycle chariot like with three motorcycles like the Hemsworth.
Chris Hemsworth rides around in this on this motorcycle chariot thing. It's exactly what
you think it is. Instead of horses, it's being pulled by three motorcycles.
But you know there's no one on the motorcycles. He's controlling them with
his you know, throttle. I guess that's cool. Yeah, as soon
as when you first you see that, you go, okay, that's cool.
And there's so many cool vehicles and then there's like, you know,
so many cool like flying machines, and it seems like they only in this
post apocalyptic world they only have they have gasoline powered motors and microphones and speakers
is the only technology they have. Everything else is like you know, they're
making their clothes from spinning wheels and things like that, and you it's sometimes
it's hard to follow, like who's on whose side, who's killing who?
But man, h it is it is super fun. Ah. It stars
Chris Hemsworth and Anna Taylor Joy. Anna Taylor Joy from you know, the
the the Chess Thing on Netflix where she became famous, but then but in
in this movie Furiosa, I mean, you know, they made her look
like a post apocalyptic ah, like just grungy action hero. She's dirty the
whole time. Her face looks like her her weird stare. She's just they
just made her ugly. So I mean, this is if you like Anna
Taylor Joy as an ugly woman, this is a movie for you. But
it's not about beauty in this movie. It's about filth. And you know,
it's like a thunderdome in there. You know, have you ever been
to a thunderdome? Sam not in the last couple of weeks. Now,
let me tell you. I mean, it's kill or be killed in this
thing, the Queen's Gambit. That was the chest thing she was in.
But I don't know. She's a great actress. But you know actresses,
they get anarexic and they get and they do weird things to their face.
And so far Florence Pugh hasn't done that. Yeah, so I don't know,
but I definitely recommend furiosa. Did you see anything this week? I
did not. I stayed home and I've been playing video games. I'm catching
up on my backlog of video games. All right, good for you.
Fortunately for the audience, I don't play video games, so we can continue
with the movies. I saw a movie streaming on Netflix. I believe it
was called Tricky Dick versus The Man in Black. This is about the relationship
between Johnny Cash and Richard Nixon. As you can tell, you know,
in Hollywood, they're going to trash Richard Nixon, one of the greatest presidents
in the history of the country, and they did. And Johnny Cash one
of the greatest you know, singers, performers, songwriters in the history of
the country. They had a very interesting relationship. It's ten times more interesting
than you think it's going to be. And then my the other film I
saw streaming, which is The Late Night I definitely recommend a Tricky Dick versus
ever Man and Black. But another one I is a weird one called Late
Night with the Devil. Have you heard of this one? No? I
have not. It sounds nice, it's pretty good. But you know what,
let's take a break and we'll come back. We'll talk about Late Night
with the Devil, one of the most unusual films to come out of this
year. Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood. Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood. If
by Hollywood you mean Burbank. Here with the two hours of the Business,
End of show Business, every Sunday on KiB eleven to fifteen on your AM
dial or worldwide on iHeartRadio apps, et cetera. Yeah, I apologize we're
talking so much about the physical appearance of Anna Taylor Joy, but I mean,
she's an actress. She's charging me money to look at her face.
So you know, I think it's fair late night, Late Night with the
Devil. Have you heard of it? I have not. What is this
about? It sounds like an experience I had earlier this week, but that's
that's for another show at a later hour. This is a film by a
director team, Colin and Cameron Cairn, and they wrote it and directed it
and whatever it's about a late a well, it's framed as a documentary investigating
an unexplained event that occurred on the night of Halloween nineteen seventy seven during the
live broadcast of this successful late night variety show, not too successful, struggling
in the ratings, and he's competing with Johnny Carson and things aren't looking that
good. And then the Halloween Special is kind of supposed to drive some ratings
and it gets super demonic, and he brings on some people, like like
an Indian mystic. Then he brings on a woman that's gonna perform an exorcism
on a young girl. And then he brings on like a debunker, like
the Amazing Randy you know, this guy that comes on and debunks all mystical
Oh yeah yeah. And then when I was had my morning show on Indy
one O three one, I brought on this guy who was are these people
that were skeptics too? And they had a they had a check. They
were going to pay one million dollars for anybody that can prove any mystical occurrence
ever, you know, and uh, you know that to me, that's
they're never going to write that check no matter what. But that's just kind
of this guy. He had a check. He brought it to the show,
and so he was a saying that all this mystical stuff that the talk
show host had on his show was all phony. And then you know,
it just goes from there and it climaxes with all kinds of crazy stuff.
Very well done as far as trying to make you believe this is a nineteen
seventy seven talk show. The costuming, the you know, the kind of
the the aesthetic of a nineteen seventies television live television event. The host is
name what's his name, Jack Delray, Jack Delroy. Jack Delroy hosts the
show called night Owls. This is on like Amazon, you buy for six
dollars. Came out this year. It's pretty popular, but it gets a
little demonic. If you're not prepared for that, don't watch it late at
night. The actor, the lead actor, I'm not sure about the casting.
Lead actor is a guy named David das Mauchian. He's interesting, but
I didn't buy him as a as a talk show host. But still I
don't know. You tell me, you see it, it's it's I think
it's worth seeing. So that's the end of that. So it's kind of
a mockumentary. It's presented as a documentary of like, but it was actually
fictional occurrence. Yes, And you know how some of these mockumentaries go where
you just can't even tell anymore what you're where if it's if you watch,
if you're still watching the mockumentary, Like, yeah, I didn't really.
I didn't really know it was a documentary until I went back and they told
me it was a monumentary because you're kind of wrapped up in the weird stuff
that's going on. Excellent so uh now, let's get to the the the
can Film Festival. Can Film Film Festival concluded on Saturday, and the big
winner is a movie called Anura. A Nora is a film by one of
my favorite filmmakers and I'm sure he is yours, Sean Baker, who made
the film Florida Project. And The Florida Project was a super cool movie that
came out in I was like twenty seventeen about the motel near Disney World,
like some dirt, gross motel near Disney World where people live at it,
and it's a girl and her like prostitute mother, and you see it ringing
a bell. I never saw it, but it's obvious that you did.
Sean Baker is a guy who used to be a big, highly paid TV
show creator and he left all that to just make independent movies. Oh cool
he started. Yeah, he's got one called Starlet, Tangerine, Red Rocket,
and now this movie Anora, which won the big award of the Canned
Film Festival. So I'm very excited to see this. The plot is a
young stripper from Brighton Beach in a like Russian area on Clay in New York
City. She speaks a little Russian. Her boss fixes her up with a
Russian with Russian speaking clients. After meeting Vanya, the son of a Russian
oligarch, a romance kindles that leads to her to their elopement. The fairy
tale marriage is threatened when the man's parents travel to New York to force and
ann omen So basically, this Russian guy is going to marry this stripper and
then the Russians are coming to force an annoment. Sounds interesting enough, and
it won the big prize, so I'll definitely see it. Other winners coming
out of that that thing were a movie called Amelia Perez with Selena Gomez and
Selena Gomez in that cast one best Actress. Amelia Perez is about a cartel
guy who switches his gender to avoid police and I guess affirm his gender in
the in the in the first place with Selena Gomez. I'll definitely want to
see that, and then Kinds of Kindness also big winner over in con and
then conn is telling us what we're going to see in a few months,
you know, Emma Stone with the same guy who directed Poor Things Your Ghos
Lanthromos, and that one looks pretty interesting as well over the although I'm not
as interested in that one. But remember when we talked about the the bombshell
letter that was supposed to be delivered to Yeah, we were talking about this,
Yeah, we we got a we gotta take a break in about him,
maybe thirty seconds, just so you know, okay, Yeah, Well,
when right before con began in France, just gotta know that we're talking
France here, there was this report that a bombshell letter would be delivered,
uh to the press during the festival, that is gonna have a list of
all the basically the male rapists in in the in the European movie industry.
And let's take a break and when we come back, I'll tell you how
that all went down. Joe Scalante live from Hollywood, Yeah, Joey,
Joe Scalante, live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, heye,
Sam, Before we get to back to the movies, did you know
you know I manage the band Sublime, the newly reformed one, And they
released a radio single this week, debuted on Alt ninety seven or at ninety
eight, is that what it is? Ninety eight ninety seven, ninety eight
seven, yeah, ninety eight seven. It's both anyway listen for it.
It's called Feel Like That, and the band's very proud of it. I'm
very proud of it. And this is kind of my new day job.
It's just I have a partner in this project and band manager, so making
less TV shows in the future because I got to manage this band. But
it's going great. They played Coachella and now they got a radio hit.
There's a billboard on Sunset Boulevard, Sam, you might see over on Sunset
and Doheny, and then another one in in Times Square. It's kind of
fun. You got yourself some prime locations for those billboards. That's what you
want to have, you know, you don't want to have them in Dwarty
or Winetka. Okay, let's go back to the movies. So the bomb
show letter that they were delivering to con that's going to just bring down the
industry, Sam, it never showed up really, So there was actually and
I thought this was just stuff that we were like saying, this is going
to happen, and it was just a thing between us, But there was
an actual list that was being threatened to be released. Yes, I think
it was just there to make people nervous, or maybe someone got paid off
and it didn't get released, Sam, maybe someone got bumped off. The
maybe the underground French film industry, you know, got down to business and
and and just made this go away. I don't know, but it didn't
come. But what did come is a there's a little bit of news there
about this kind of stuff. There's an actress named Leah Seideu and she was
complaining because the French president Macrol evidently made a comment about the French actor Gerard
de Pardieu that she didn't like. And so this set off a big discussion
out there. And here's the basic issue, and you can tell me what
you think. Gerard Depardieu is a famous French actor. I mean, he's
been in a million French movies that we never saw. But then he first
was introduced to us, or to me anyway, in a movie called Green
Card with Anty McDowell in nineteen ninety You remember that one. Yep, that's
a great movie. Yeah. Yeah, So he's worldwide famous at that point,
but he's got some problems and like being he's going on trial. Sam
is in France. Did he get me too? He did? He got
me too? And he he is, he's seventy five now and he's going
on trial for assaulting two women, not like thirty five years ago, but
in twenty twenty one. Oh wow, so when he was seventy two.
Unbelievable. So anyway, he's going on trial. And this the actress got
mad because the French president, Gerard di Pardieu refused to like strip him of
some honorary you know title. You know how they have all his honorary titles
in Europe, you know, the Order of this and the Order of that.
And so the French President's like, look, this guy's he says,
I refuse to participate in a manhunt against him, which I don't know why
they call that because it's not like he's hiding somewhere. He So Macron said,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna strip him of anything. He has a
right to defend himself in court and until then he said, we're proud of
this guy in his body of work. And so then of course people got
mad at the president, especially lia Sidiu said that's crazy, a bad image
for France. But you know what, that's it's just an actress being like
saying the right things. The actresses are supposed to say at the right time.
The President's to me of France is uh, you know, saying something
that's that's a little more courageous, like, hey, we're proud of that
guy's work, is he? Yeah? But he assaulted these two women,
and the President's like, did he? Let's you know, let's let's have
the trial. But why are we gonna use the guillotine before there's a conviction.
Now, this crime in France is interestingly, not punishable by guillotine.
But Sam, do you want to take a guest. I think I've asked
you this before. What year was the last year France used the guillotine to
punish a criminal? I will go with nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy one.
Ooh, I was close. You're pretty close the guillotine. I was
eight years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. I don't really,
but I just I don't know why I am fascinated by that. Do
you know that they still use the firing squad in this country? Interesting?
The firing squad, Sam, as you know, is the most dignified way
to be killed by your your peers. If you request a elect electric chair
is very undignified. But in some states you have a choice of how you
are going to receive your execution, and you tause one of them I remember,
not too long ago, and you can choose the firing squad. And
if you're listening in prison and you're on death row, my advice to you
is to choose who's the firing squad. It's it's it's it's the most dignified
of all the execution techniques. All right, here's some more movie news.
There's you know how, there's movies about Pirates of the Caribbean Ride, the
Haunted Mansion Ride. Now a movie rumor has surfaced of a Disney's Club thirty
three movie really from Goosebumps rider Darren Lemke and some company called twenty one laps
well. To me, this is yeah, And then you know everyone's talking
about this. I get a lot of texts about it, like what do
you know about this? Jill Brady McDonald in the Orange Kindy Register wrote it
about it. I gotta say, oh, the Jungle Cruise, remember that
one? Oh yeah, good one. Yeah, Okay. This has got
to be the worst idea anyone has ever approached Disney with. Now this isn't
necessarily Disney coming up with this idea, Somebody saying, Hey, I'm going
to pitch this to Disney, and they they evidently have gone to the next
step and there develop it and they've hired a writer and the writer is this
guy Darren Lemke. But so stupid from a business standpoint, because these movies
like Pirates of the Caribbean and The Jungle Cruise, you can't generate so much
revenue from getting people you know, on the rides, getting them in the
park, getting the merchandise all over the world. You can buy merchandise from
The Jungle Cruise all over the world, and it really creates another mini little
industry within Disney. You can't do that with Club thirty three because it's a
private club. You can't even buy this merchandise unless you're invited inside the club
by a member, and then a lot of the merchandise and the only members
can buy it unless they're planning to make this a public club and raise the
prices or something. It's still a stupid idea. So I'm not sure this
movie will ever get made. Who would Who's gonna pledge You're gonna need at
least like thirty forty fifty sixty seventy million dollars to make a decent movie out
of this. They said it's going to be like the movie Clue a little
bit. A guy gets invited to the club and a murder takes place.
Who's going to put up that money? That's just stupid. So I don't
like that. I'm gonna bet this movie doesn't come out. Yeah, I
don't like the idea either. It's a private club, it's a secret group.
It's like you want to keep the mystique about it. And when you
do something like this, it it takes something that's private, it makes it
very public and it raises a little and it seems like it goes against what
a lot of the people there would prefer. But if it's a good you
know, they don't know the club members anything, and they can change the
name of the club and all that kind of stuff. But okay, why
are you change the name of the club then what are you going to exploit
for your merchandise? So I don't know. As if I was a Disney
shareholder, I would say, boom, I know, we're out of time.
The only other thing I want to mention is the US did suit Live
Nation to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation, alleging monopoly abuse. But it's
just a lawsuit from the government against Live Nation. It doesn't mean anything's going
to change for a while. Just this is what the ever would like to
do, and you know what it is. I think it's partly political to
appeal to Taylor Swift fans that didn't get tickets, so I wouldn't pay too
much attention to do it, whether it's deserved or not. All Right,
I will now leave you with just a taste of the greatest song ever written.