Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: Handle here on a Monday morning, June twenty three, and
Speaker 2: now the world is waiting for the Iranian response to
Speaker 2: the American attack on the nuclear facilities in Iran by
Speaker 2: B two bombers and other aircraft, American aircraft that bomb
Speaker 2: those facilities. Let's move to a very local story, and
Speaker 2: that is Hollywood. Hollywood being Hollywood, and this of course
Speaker 2: is the movie capital of the world, except it.
Speaker 1: Really isn't anymore.
Speaker 2: If La County were a country, the economy we be
Speaker 2: among the world's twentieth largest, but it is heading south.
Speaker 2: Payroll employment is one percent lower than at the end
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: For the rest of the country it's up.
Speaker 2: Five percent, and a big reason is the fall in
Speaker 2: film and video production. La County employment in motion picture
Speaker 2: and sound recording is down ten percent in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: The number of shoot days, that's the number of days
Speaker 1: that are.
Speaker 2: That's how they measure the amount of production. One measurement
Speaker 2: is the number of days that they blocked off the
Speaker 2: street going into my house and I had to go
Speaker 2: all the way around. And they call it shoot days,
Speaker 2: because that's what you want to do to these production
Speaker 2: companies when your street is blocked off.
Speaker 1: Shoot days are days.
Speaker 2: In which they film feature films, TV commercials. That fell
Speaker 2: for the first third straight year in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: California's share of global projects.
Speaker 2: Now, keep in mind, Southern California was the world leader
Speaker 2: still is, but it's falling in film production around the world.
Speaker 2: It was twenty three percent in twenty twenty one. It's
Speaker 2: now eighteen percent. So the President wants to fix it.
Speaker 2: We all want to fix it because Hollywood is Hollywood
Speaker 2: or the film center of the world. That's how we
Speaker 2: got to be famous all over the world. The Hollywood sign,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is sort of magic. Although if you
Speaker 2: actually go to Hollywood, you're not going to see many
Speaker 2: movie studios. There never were movie studios in Hollywood. They're
Speaker 2: all in the San Fernando Valley or they're in West
Speaker 2: LA where.
Speaker 1: The Sony studios are.
Speaker 2: So the President proposed his favorite solution, tariffs on foreign
Speaker 2: made films. Well, the Hollywood folks saying no, tariffs aren't
Speaker 2: going to work.
Speaker 1: So here's what we want. More tax incentives.
Speaker 2: And less red tape because the permitting process is crazy.
Speaker 2: And how about more housing because people have to live
Speaker 2: here and it has become prohibitive. And that's the story
Speaker 2: we're going to do over and over again. So the
Speaker 2: governor has proposed more than doubling the California's film and
Speaker 2: TV text credit to seven hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons.
Speaker 2: That production is moving so quickly out of Southern California
Speaker 2: is real simple.
Speaker 1: It's the cost, that's it. It's way too expensive.
Speaker 2: There are tons of reasons why it should stay here.
Speaker 2: Why film started here, actually started in New Jersey with Edison,
Speaker 2: but and it quickly moved here at the turn of
Speaker 2: the last century and Southern California, particularly quote Hollywood, became
Speaker 2: the center of the entertainment business in terms of films
Speaker 2: and later on television. Film television production has dropped and
Speaker 2: is dropping dramatically, and it's really affecting our economy big
Speaker 2: time because the entertainment business is huge for Southern California.
Speaker 2: So what is going on, Well, a big reason for
Speaker 2: the fall in film and video production. Just to give
Speaker 2: you an idea, La County employment in motion picture and
Speaker 2: sound recordings down ten percent since twenty nineteen, the number
Speaker 2: of shoot days, as I said, fell for the.
Speaker 1: Third straight year in twenty twenty four. It is not good.
Speaker 1: And well, let me give you an example.
Speaker 2: Disney's Marvel Studios, you know where they film Atlanta or
Speaker 2: the UK. Netflix just expanded a production facility in Albuquerque,
Speaker 2: New Mexico, broke round on a huge complex in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: And here's one in in.
Speaker 2: The UK, there is more square footage of sound stage
Speaker 2: than in southern California.
Speaker 1: Two key reasons.
Speaker 2: One, other locations are offering lucrative, less restrictive incentives. They're
Speaker 2: offering not only tax breaks, they're offering to underwritight to
Speaker 2: pay for film production up to the point of thirty
Speaker 2: percent of the cost of making a film. And here
Speaker 2: in southern California there's no place for anybody to live anymore,
Speaker 2: housing shortage, shortages aggravated by the wildfires. While the cost
Speaker 2: of living here is prohibitive. Now La is a great
Speaker 2: place to film. There's a reason why the film industry
Speaker 2: really started here. Ocean mountains, desert within a few hours drive.
Speaker 2: You can shoot almost any movie of any kind here.
Speaker 2: And in terms of going outside on location, almost any
Speaker 2: day you can shoot. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 2: the weather because of our weather A god of them.
Speaker 2: Ben Everard, a former chairman of Film LA, says it's
Speaker 2: worth paying more for the talent pool here because of
Speaker 2: the superior quality of the shows on the screen. However,
Speaker 2: and this makes sense, we're living off of Hollywood's endowment.
Speaker 2: The difference is the cost of filming is so great
Speaker 2: now here that the films and TV shows don't have
Speaker 2: to be as good. They just have to be good
Speaker 2: enough because the cost is so high. And then you
Speaker 2: have the recent raids and the protests. Now there's not
Speaker 2: too many illegal migrants that work in the film industry, granted,
Speaker 2: but it's about uncertainty and business hates uncertainty.
Speaker 1: And think about this.
Speaker 2: The big name actors and the big name directors still
Speaker 2: are here in southern California. It's the mid level people
Speaker 2: that can't afford to be here. Same thing with Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: The high end people are there, the mid level people
Speaker 2: are out. They can't afford to be there. Wall Street
Speaker 2: top executives are there in New York, but the mid
Speaker 2: tier jobs or go to other places. Cheaper housing, lower taxes,
Speaker 2: and just the cost of doing business here not just
Speaker 2: the taxes, not just the housing. But for example, the
Speaker 2: cost of producing using a dog on the set is
Speaker 2: almost one thousand dollars. That's one day for a dog.
Speaker 2: Now you go to one of the major studios in
Speaker 2: Hong Kong, it's a couple of dollars per day. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't even pay to bring them back to their trainer.
Speaker 2: They either let them go where they eat them. It's
Speaker 2: just cheaper get them to the crafts people and you
Speaker 2: have them for lunch. And this is a dog that
Speaker 2: you hired to be on the set. It's a shame.
Speaker 2: And so what the governor wants to do is increase
Speaker 2: the tax the underwriting and the tax break. And here
Speaker 2: is the problem, and this is where the cost the
Speaker 2: taxpayer dollars. Does the film the filming of that movie
Speaker 2: or that TV show and giving tax breaks and underwriting
Speaker 2: it with tax money, does it do more for us
Speaker 2: than not? Does it actually make money for the town
Speaker 2: or does it cost money? And the detractors are saying,
Speaker 2: if it costs us money, why do it. And for
Speaker 2: people that argue we still want to keep the reputation
Speaker 2: of Hollywood, go to Hollywood. Yeah, it's a nice place
Speaker 2: to visit, but it's all tourism. It's all tourists. How
Speaker 2: many people actually live in Hollywood walk along Hollywood Boulevard
Speaker 2: or walk along Sunset?
Speaker 1: Who live there?
Speaker 3: You know, bill Wyn Tracy, my wife and I first
Speaker 3: got married, We lived in Hollywood for two and a
Speaker 3: half years, three years something like that, and we would
Speaker 3: go in that area every now and again for things
Speaker 3: that we needed. And we'd be walking through there and
Speaker 3: you have to you're bombarded with people trying to sell
Speaker 3: things a tourists and you'd have to go live.
Speaker 1: Here, live here, live here, live here, and just.
Speaker 2: And you were one in thousands. For example, go to
Speaker 2: Las Vegas. How many people that live in Las Vegas
Speaker 2: ever get near the strip? It is one hundred sent tourism.
Speaker 2: You know, our friend Saville, my partner, you know, lives
Speaker 2: in Vegas, and uh, when I go to visit him
Speaker 2: and we'll go to dinner along the strip one of
Speaker 2: the high end restaurants that he pays for, thank you,
Speaker 2: it's two three times a years when he actually goes
Speaker 2: along the strip. So Hollywood is really a myth, but
Speaker 2: it's a nice myth and it and at one point,
Speaker 2: and not too many years ago, Hollywood was really a sewer,
Speaker 2: a toilet where they had adult film, these little adult
Speaker 2: film palaces and dance clubs and strip clubs. And it
Speaker 2: was actually Disney bringing the Capital Theater back that reversed it.
Speaker 2: You have to give Disney, Michael Eisner a lot of
Speaker 2: credit for bringing Hollywood back.
Speaker 1: So it was similar. Pardon Times Square? I think was
Speaker 1: it Disney that did Times Square too?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 1: I think that was.
Speaker 3: What's his face? The Who's gone nuts?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Was the Mari at the time?
Speaker 1: Oh Giuliani?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, switching gears here. There is a guy by
Speaker 2: the name of Derek Mobley who was looking for a job,
Speaker 2: and he is an IT professional in North Carolina, and
Speaker 2: he applied for more than one hundred jobs during a
Speaker 2: stretch of unemployment from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen, a
Speaker 2: couple of years, and even after that, and back came
Speaker 2: rejection or silence. He was ghosted, and sometimes the rejection
Speaker 2: emails arrived in the middle of the night or within
Speaker 2: an hour of submitting his application.
Speaker 1: And he is not alone.
Speaker 2: Millions of US job hunters every year or US job
Speaker 2: hunters submit millions of apps every year online and they
Speaker 2: get gusted, ghosted, or automatic rejection and never know if
Speaker 2: they got a fair shake from.
Speaker 1: Whom from the algorithms.
Speaker 2: That's why MOBILEI noticed that a lot of these companies
Speaker 2: have applied for used an online recruiting platform from a.
Speaker 1: Company called work Day.
Speaker 2: And this platform called Applicant Tracking Systems, Well, it helps
Speaker 2: employers track and screen job candidates. He sued him, suited
Speaker 2: him for discrimination, saying the algorithm screamed him out based
Speaker 2: on his age. He's fifty, race, he's black, disabilities, he
Speaker 2: suffers from anxiety and depression, and he's a black graduate
Speaker 2: of Moorhouse College. And he said he applied only for
Speaker 2: jobs that he was qualified for. And he says there's
Speaker 2: a standard bell curve in statistics. You can't have a
Speaker 2: failure rate of one hundred percent. By the way, MOBILEI
Speaker 2: has since gotten hired the old fashioned way, and so
Speaker 2: his lawsuit is now coming up, and it's a pretty
Speaker 2: significant challenge because virtually every highering decision made these days
Speaker 2: is based on an algorithm. And a federal judge said
Speaker 2: that the age discrimination claim could proceed, and the judge
Speaker 2: said it was it was not on purpose, so that
Speaker 2: part of it punitive damage is not going to fly
Speaker 2: yet he still has a case. Work Day says claims
Speaker 2: have no merit because the software matches keywords on resumes
Speaker 2: with chob qualifications and then it scores the applicants and
Speaker 2: therein lies.
Speaker 1: I guess the secret.
Speaker 2: I mean when I hired for people for my surrogacy agency,
Speaker 2: I looked at keywords, and I looked at qualifications, and
Speaker 2: I looked at do they have experience in the field
Speaker 2: I wanted? And it was sort of an algorithm, but
Speaker 2: it was done individually. We looked at it. This one
Speaker 2: is done via the internet, and this one is done
Speaker 2: with a very sophisticated algorithm. And how fair is that?
Speaker 2: If you don't match those keywords, you're screwed? Now work
Speaker 2: They says. Those keywords are part of a resume and
Speaker 2: your background that lists whether you are qualified or not.
Speaker 2: The problem is is, what if you don't put in
Speaker 2: the right keywords and you're qualified? Is that discrimination? What
Speaker 2: if you admit your age or even worse, they know
Speaker 2: how old you are because there's data mining and they
Speaker 2: know everything about you. For example, how do they know
Speaker 2: that Mobili was depressed and suffer for anxiety. It's not
Speaker 2: like they got his medical records. It's like throughout his
Speaker 2: chats and what he posted and I'm not feeling too good,
Speaker 2: I'm depressed today. Put it all together and he said
Speaker 2: there was a pattern there, and so the lawsuit goes on.
Speaker 1: Now I have a question, and.
Speaker 2: That is do you use artificial artificial intelligence use AI
Speaker 2: to then figure out when you're looking for a job
Speaker 2: and it puts the words that you need to at
Speaker 2: least get an interview. And do they have an AI
Speaker 2: program that realizes that there is a program of AI
Speaker 2: that is putting in those words.
Speaker 3: See, it's a little strange because we use work day.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's the exact same thing, but
Speaker 3: we use work day. And I used to do the hiring, ye,
Speaker 3: and I use the filters to put them in a
Speaker 3: certain order, but I go through all of them. I
Speaker 3: did at the time.
Speaker 2: But that's the well, the point is that these are
Speaker 2: companies that don't.
Speaker 1: These are companies that don't. And I remember we talked
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: When you used when you would hire, first of all,
Speaker 2: you'd filllter out everybody who wasn't happy with minimum wage
Speaker 2: and would stay with minimum wage for the next ten years.
Speaker 1: There's a filter.
Speaker 3: You filtered out, we'd have no one working for us.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much what happens, isn't it. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: ye okay, I get it out of your system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're done with that all right.
Speaker 2: Around Mount Saint Helen's, the number of rescues just keeps
Speaker 2: on climbing.
Speaker 1: One man twenty one years.
Speaker 2: Old kayaked over a waterfall. Brilliant, huh, A spinal injury.
Speaker 2: A fifty four year old woman glaciated. I don't even
Speaker 2: know there was a word down Mount Saint Helen's. That's
Speaker 2: sliding down a snow covered slope. I guess just on
Speaker 2: her ass. She struck a rock and suffered a head injury.
Speaker 2: There are more and more of these coming up, and
Speaker 2: there are some shriff now because usually they're county rescue
Speaker 2: teams pondering sending you know, send them a bill, Send
Speaker 2: them a bill. The sheriff Summershire said, and this is
Speaker 2: I think, Sacamania County, I need to find a creative
Speaker 2: way to deter the current behavior we're witnessing while attempting
Speaker 2: to recoup the financial burden placed on our country, on
Speaker 2: our county. In May, in Sacramon County, the number of
Speaker 2: search and rescue missions just exploded compared to.
Speaker 1: The same month last year. By the way, He's not alone.
Speaker 2: Southern Utah Garfield County announced it was requiring permits for
Speaker 2: some of the most remote and challenging slot canyons. Effectively,
Speaker 2: it's an insurance policy. You want to go off the trail,
Speaker 2: you want to go in that area, you're paying an
Speaker 2: extra permit to pay for potential search and rescues. Nationwide,
Speaker 2: last year, over thirty three hundred of these rescues. Uh
Speaker 2: and man, you know that's just it's dumb for these
Speaker 2: people to go. Now, we're only talking egregious stuff off
Speaker 2: the trail, going into areas, going there in the middle
Speaker 2: of winter where there's snow.
Speaker 1: Why would people do that? Explain that to me.
Speaker 2: When I go to Brents, Delhi or I go to
Speaker 2: Anaheim White House, I don't get lost.
Speaker 1: People don't have to look for me.
Speaker 2: As matter of fact, they know exactly where I am.
Speaker 2: I mean hiking off are these trails?
Speaker 1: Amy? Do you hike? Nop good, Neil?
Speaker 3: I know I want to fall off the trail.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Nail, Neil. Do you hike what you hike? What
Speaker 1: can I know? I hike?
Speaker 2: Kno do you hike, no chance. See, we're going to
Speaker 2: live a while, all right. For those of you that
Speaker 2: hike and go off the trail and do these you know,
Speaker 2: weird sports. You know you're gonna die. It'll kill you
Speaker 2: every time. You know I'm here to help you. I
Speaker 2: want you to live a long life. Stop this crap
Speaker 2: hiking and off the trails. People should get nailed, by
Speaker 2: the way for that, because these these searches are a fortune. Yeah, Amy,
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, in some ski areas when
Speaker 2: you go out of bounds, they do charge.
Speaker 1: You good good, especially when you hit a tree and
Speaker 1: they have to come and rescue you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Sunny Bono story, you know, Offully one got
Speaker 2: in an argument with a tree. He lost, the tree
Speaker 2: won the argument. We're done. Coming up, Gary and Shannon.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow morning we start all over again on a Taco Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Amy and Will five to nine, five to six wake
Speaker 2: up call, Neil and I join a board at six
Speaker 2: right till about now. And of course you got Kono
Speaker 2: and and who make the show happen, which without them
Speaker 2: show would probably be better. All right, Gary and Shannon
Speaker 2: up next. This is KFI AM six point forty.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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