November 20, 2023 • 39 mins
Joe Escalante's weekly look at the business end of showbiz. This week: the latest from the box office. Also, Joe is really pissed at PBS for blatant lies told in their new Monopoly documentary. Also, Joe still hates Killers of the Flower Moon. And, in this weeks celebs behaving badly: P-Diddy settles a rape charge (that was quick...), and Ron Jeremy is out of prison... Not sure if he's aware of that fact, but he's out!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Joe Escolante live from by Hollywood,I mean Burbank, across the street from
a Wiener Schnitzel that serves beer.And we are live tonight, which is
November the nineteenth, twenty twenty three, and last week we were not on
the air because I was in aI went on a cruise, punk rock
cruise with the Vandals flogging Molly andStiff Little Fingers and Pennywise into Baylee's in
(00:37):
Mexico, and I went to Orlandoto Disney World since I was out there.
We're gonna do something a little differenton this show. We're not gonna
start with the box office. We'regonna start with stories, and we'll do
the box office in the next segment. My first story is about a documentary
that I was interest until I foundout true. So this is that I
(01:06):
was very excited to see Ruthless andit is the story of the origin of
Monopoly. I mean, come on, Oh does that sound interesting? Sam?
That sounds really cool? I gotit. I'm so, this is
this a Netflix documentary? Where where'sit at? No, it's a PBSBS
okay, yeah, extremely well made, interesting characters, interesting subject and it's
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right for this show because it wasabout a trademark, the Monopoly game,
trademarked by the Parker Brothers company.And then some guy thought that the values
that the game Monopoly a celebrated,meaning you know, wild capitalism and one
(01:57):
winner and everyone else is a loser. He thought that he was offended by
that. He thought, why can'twe have a game called anti Monopoly and
the goals to not get a Monopoly, I don't know, share the money
with everybody. So this guy wasa professor and college professor, and he
(02:20):
he reworked the game to be ananti Monopoly game, and then he put
it out and people liked it.It was doing pretty well, and then
Parker Brothers sued him and said,that's a violation of our trademark. And
he's like, well, really isit really? You know, I'm just
so he had his reasons, like, you know, I'm doing something different.
Things are different. I'm not using, you know, all these elements
(02:40):
of yours. I got my owngame. But they didn't like it,
and so they went after him andhe didn't stop, and he fought them.
And it reminded me a lot ofthe time that I was sued or
the vandals were sued by Variety magazinebecause we did a parody of their logo
(03:04):
and wrote vandals similarly to where theywrite Variety, and our album was a
parody on you know the Hollywood,you know the casting couch basically, and
they went after us and they triedto ruin us, and they did everything
they could. So I could reallysympathize with this guy that this big company
was trying to ruin him because Varietytried to ruin us, and he didn't
(03:28):
have enough money to fight it.We didn't have enough money to fight it.
We settled it the first time,and then they came back at us
and said, oh, we've seenyour logo on YouTube, and I go,
yeah, we don't put it therelike the old logo. It was
released. We took it off themarket. We gave them, you know,
they made us put stickers on topof all the releases and never use
it again, destroy merchandise, allthat kind of stuff, all because we'd
(03:52):
send it to them. They're artists, liked it, so we sent them
some hats and some albums and somestickers, and they said thank you and
then showed it to their bosses,and their bosses tell their lawyers and their
lawyers suit us. Anyway, weended up winning that, but it took
year's out of my life and Ihad to get admitted to the federal bar
(04:15):
to do it myself because all thelawyers I talked to had terrible advice.
So this guy's fighting this thing theand he's fighting a giant company Parker Brothers,
of course, a giant corporation.And he gets offered money to settle,
(04:38):
won't take it. He's going towin, and he wants to be
able to put his game out andhe wants to be able to talk about
it. And they're saying, no, we want to give you some money
and you don't talk about it,you don't put your game out, or
you can fight it us. Sohe fights, he fights them. You
know, it's like a sad story. He's getting bankrupt and then and then
in the end, this is spoileralert. In the end, his he
(05:00):
goes to court and they rule againsthim. And then according to the documentary,
this man just wouldn't stop and hetook his papers. This is straight
from the script. He takes hispapers and he marches. He goes to
Washington and and because he's such arugged individual, he knocks on the door
(05:26):
at the Supreme Court and he getsthem to take another look at his case,
which is a Davy and Goliath case, and they rule in favor of
him and he is now the winner, and Monopoly Parker brothers lose. And
then you're and then I'm thinking,and I've gone to my wife. I'm
(05:48):
like, wait, how do youknock on the door of the Supreme Court
and get something get a decision togo to the Supreme Court? It takes
first you have to go to Circuitcourt, and then after you get a
determination there and there's like appeals andthen at some point you can submit it
(06:10):
to the Supreme Court and then youknow, would take a year for them
to look at it and say,okay, well we will take this case,
and then they will hear it andthen they will make a ruling on
the lower court's decisions. And that'spretty much what the documentary said happened.
So I go, that's kind ofstrange. I don't know how they do
(06:30):
that, So I looked it up. It's a complete lie. Even though
this monopoly thing on PBS was wasinteresting, but it's only interesting if you
don't know that it's a lie.So what really happened when I went to
research it is the court lower courtsruled against him. Then the circuit courts
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reversed that. So the Ninth CircuitCourt reversed. He's done. He won.
Now Parker Brothers goes to the SupremeCourt and begs the Supreme Court to
hear the case, and they finallydo, and then the Supreme Court says
no, they finally don't. Theynever hear the case. So this is
so this guy. This documentary actuallysaid the Supreme Court heard the case and
(07:17):
voted in favor of this guy thatinvented mante monopoly. They didn't even take
it. They they denied to takeit. Okay, they said we're not
going to hear this case, andso it just went. It stayed with
the Ninth Circuit who had already wereruled in favor of this guy. So
this PBS documentary trying to create somedrama, just made up stuff, and
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you know, stuff that offended mebecause I go, that's not how the
courts work. I'm very interested inthis from a trademark standpoint, because can
monopoly even own the trademark? Areis it a valid mark in the first
place? And what is the processthat he went to prove that they didn't
(08:01):
own the trademark or they shouldn't ownthe trademark. Was fascinating to me,
but it didn't really the people whomake the documentary and PBS, I didn't
care what was true. They're tryingto tell some story. They were trying
to tell a Davey Angelia's story,and they had written script and then backed
the facts into the script that theywanted to. And then I felt a
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little bit manipulated because you'd think adocumentary on PBS would have the utmost vetting
and integrity and they would want totell the truth. Why do a documentary
and just make up lies to tella good story? And then it made
(08:46):
me doubt what else in this documentaryis true and not true? What else
at PBS is true and not true. I'm going to take a break right
now and we come back. I'llget a little more into the actual case.
And what if Parker Brothers does owna valid trademark? When should they?
Now that I've got the lies outof the way, and you're listening
(09:07):
to Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood,Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood, the business
end of show business. Every Sundayhere in k e IB, we were
talking about the monopoly documentary on PBS, which I discovered is kind of full
of lies. And for what Imean, this is a good story.
(09:28):
I think we could have made somethinggood out of it. But what I've
discovered is they're so interested in makingthis Davy and Goliath a narrative, just
front and center and clarified. Justlike so the poor guy whoever's making this
documentary, maybe he wanted to orshe wanted to tell the truth, but
somehow the lies ends up on thescreen. The guy, this guy named
(09:54):
mister Ann Sanch I'll get a littlebit more into the actual trademark case and
the last say, we're just talkingabout how I figured out a lot of
it wasn't true. But mister Anspatchis a guy who's a professor at San
Francisco State. He invents anti monopoly, he releases it, Parker Brothers sue
him. He just goes on arampage of research and figures out where that
(10:18):
trying to figure out maybe their trademarkisn't isn't valid, and he discovers where
Parker Brothers got their trademark and wherethey got where they got the game from.
They bought it from a guy namedCharles Darrow. Now Charles Darrow is
a guy who played Monopoly with hisneighbor and I think they called it Finances,
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and he played it there with hisneighbor. He liked it. It's
like in the thirties. He likesit. He calls him up afterwards or
sends him a letter, you knowpeople are back then their letters, hey,
and he says, can you writedown the rules for me? That
was really fun to play, Andhe wrote down the rules. And then
Darrow started making him himself and hetried to sell him to games and told
(11:09):
everyone he invented it. And thenthe guy that the neighbor who really invented
it sent to was like walking bya store one day and he saw a
bank and it said, come andmeet Darrow. Mister Darrow and the inventor
of the new sensational game Monopoly.And so he just really and he made
(11:31):
up a whole story about how heinvented it. And that's like, so
it has some story. Monopoly endsup buying our Barker brothers ends up buying
it from him, and so thisanspatch guy has got to prove that that
trademark is not even valid so hecan have his anti monopoly. Now that's
a good story, that's a goodfight. So all you got to do
is figure out that they stole itor and then find out where they got
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it from and say theirs is invalidand challenge it and say that is not
valid because they stole it, theguy that they got it from didn't own
it, and other people were makingthe game simultaneously. So you can't just
get a trademark on something because youwant to win. It's already out in
(12:16):
the marketplace. Now part of itis the Trademark Office's fault for giving a
trademark to something that was already outthere in several different forms. Some people
were calling it finance or the Landlord'sGame. I think the person that really
invented it was a woman named LizzieMcGee that had something called the Landlord's Game
and who knows where she got it. And the documentary is very interesting because
(12:37):
they follow the path of these kindof games. They're called folk games,
and they get handed down from generationto generation. People make their own versions
and they you know, they actuallywrite them down on a board or paint
them on a board and they're likefolk music, hand it down. So
this guy you know in the end, as I told you in the last
(12:58):
segment, hands up been winning it. But the case is that they tell
you he won by is by provingthat it wasn't then it was stolen and
he did all this research, andthen the research uncovered people who had already
played Monopoly before and found the guyyou know that they found even the people
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that the guy Darrow stole the Monopolygame from. But it's not really how
the case went. The case waswas decided from the point of can you
trademark the word monopoly in association withthe game? Is it a word that's
already being used for in that purpose? And other people were using the word
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monopoly, So can you trademarket orcan or can't you? The first court
said you can, they can trademarkthat, and they have the reasons.
Did anybody ever tell you the reasonin this documentary? No nobody told the
reasons. But eventually it was settledon whether or not this is a common
term like band aid or murphy bed, one of these terms that if you
(14:05):
don't enforce it, you lose it, so they enforced it. They didn't
force it, so they kept it. Then over time the Circuit Court said,
nah, it's not you can't haveit. You can't trademark that it
was used too many times by otherpeople. But we never heard that from
the documentary. All we heard fromthis documentary is this Davy and Goliath story
(14:26):
that they It's all they wanted totalk about. So anyway, I mean,
I don't know. I felt alittle violated. Should I do?
I recommend it kind of if youalready know there's a lot of good history
in there. Maybe I don't know. As I'm telling you, I go,
how much hot? What else isa lie? In this documentary?
What else is a lie? OnPBS? Similar to how I felt when
I watched the Flower Moon movie.Not only was it too long, but
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it appears that they had one villainin there that was a Native American and
they turned him into a white person. You know, I found his picture.
I go, wow, this guywas not even Native American. Now
when I look in the Internet,I can't even find a picture of that
guy of any sort. So theconspiracy theory in me says, many they
(15:11):
took that off the internet, becauseit's a very complicated thing to think about.
If in the Flower Moon movie,the Orsese movie, they were Indians
who are villains because they want tomake it black and white, right,
I just think you got to worka little harder on these things to make
them interesting but still tell the truth. And I get a little bit bugged
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because you know, the people Iwork for. I make docuseries things for
Fox Nation, which is on byFox News Channel, and when I tell
people this is what I do,they you know, some people say I
love Fox News, and then otherpeople say, oh, that's just all
lies, lies, lies, lies. But there's no lies in anything I
make, and no one's telling meto lie. I mean, mine are
(15:52):
like paranormal stuff. Somebody's lying maybeif they said they saw were abducted by
aliens. But I don't know.I just don't. I don't get that.
But that's a reputation and here's PBS. These are demonstrable lies that are
being told, and you know,I don't know, maybe you're not as
mad about it as I am.So let's go back to the box Office.
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Okay, that's who we usually startthe show, and the box Office
this week is the leader is Sam. Can you take a guess? I
have no idea. Okay, what'splaying at the theater that you live on
top of? At this point,I haven't really gone downstairs. I actually
was at the Burbank wine Walk yesterday, so I got to wander around and
(16:37):
stuff, but I didn't actually lookat what movies were playing. That.
That's why movies are doing so badis because people are coming up with too
many things for adults to do,like municipal concerts in the park, wine
walks, pub crawls. Pickleball.This is killing the movie industry, Sam,
pickleball is killing the film industry.Yes, you heard it here,
(17:00):
because pick a ball. It's noteven like exercise. You stand there and
hit the ball back and forth.It's not like tennis. I'm just trying
to make pickleball people mad at me, Glory. I'd like to see you
play picklebull against me. Oh,why the court with your butt? Okay,
all right, let's go to thebox office. Number one is The
Hunger Games, Sam, directed bysome guy who Francis Lawrence, who directs.
(17:22):
He's famous for directing other Hunger Gamestrolls. Number two Marvel's number four
a total and utter disaster of amovie. But you and I are going
to go see it tonight. Okay, excellent, I'm down. Okay,
Actually I'm going to see Priscilla tonight, so I can't join you. But
(17:44):
when you go see it, youtell me what the verdict is. Number
three is Thanksgiving Eli Roth movie fromSony Pictures. Eli Roth is famous for
like like Saw movies, Not GonnaGore, porn and Thanksgiving. It has
a plot, siwhat in't interesting tome? Sam about like a Black Friday
rage turned into horror. It's ashopping theme some for the ladies. Five
(18:10):
Nights at Freddy's Still hanging in there. Number five. That's one hundred and
thirty two million dollars and that's that. That movie is the moneymaker. Holdovers
number six, Number seven Taikey White, Titi's next goal Wins, which I'm
sure is funny. I'm just notin that big of a hurry. Taylor
Swift. Number eight, it's kindof an outlier. Number nine. Priscilla
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has made sixteen million dollars. Itprobably costs twenty five to make his my
guess, but it's an eight totwenty four movie. Though they will squeeze
twenty or thirty more million out ofthat and ancillary markets and other territories.
Killers of the Flower Moon. Theworst movie you ever made is number sixty.
(18:55):
Is sixty three million dollars that it'smade and costs i'll be three hundred
million to make. Have you seenit yet, Sam? Not yet.
I'm not going to spend money tosit in the theater for four hours to
be outraged. Not my thing,dude. I would love for you to
do that so you could. Maybeit's maybe I'm being too hard on it,
(19:17):
but yeah, three hours and fortyminutes. Whoa, that's longer than
this segment of radio. Yeah,let's take it to break. Okay,
we're going to take a break andwe're going to come back with more exciting
stuff from Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood. Joe's Scalante Live from Hollywood. If
(19:37):
I Hollywood, I mean Burbank withthe business end of show business every week
here on k EIB eleven fifty onyour AM dial. And we just finished
up the box office. There's acouple of movies. I haven't gone to
the theaters because of my my travels, and Sam, I know you haven't
either because of your travails. Yes, I did see a streaming film,
(20:03):
a brand new made for streaming filmcalled The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar About.
It's a Roald Dahl story, SamSo the guy who did Willie Wanka
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Jamesand the peach of this guy. He's
(20:23):
a legend. So he wrote thisin nineteen seventy six. I think are
released it in seventy three years orsomewhere around there. And it's very interesting
this. I guess it's a shortstory. I don't know, but all
Wes Anderson did really is have likeit seems like Benedict cumber Patch just reads
(20:44):
the book out loud and then theyact out all the scenes in Wes anderson
glory. You know what that lookslike. Oh yeah, so it's narrated
because the book is being read outloud. It's only thirty nine minutes.
Not much of a commitment, butcertainly worth checking out if you like Wes
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Anderson. If you don't like WesAnderson, you know. And then of
course there's just cameos everywhere, andyou have your Benedict cumber Patch and you're
sir Ben Kingsley, so definitely worthseeing on Netflix. I'm a big fan
(21:27):
of Wonder Snatch. Oh yeah,cumber Patch. This is cumber Patch being
cumber Patch. You know you gotyou want more cumber Patch. Henry Sugar
is wall to wall cumber Patch.Okay, you were. And then as
far as uh movies that we're anticipating, wish from Disney's coming out Napoleon,
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you got to want to see that. Joaquin Phoenix, what else is coming
out? Captain America? Nobody cares? Am I right, nobody cares about
Captain America. I'm sure people do. It's just I think everybody has superhero
fatigue at this point. We wantto see something quality that's not just like
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Loki or one of the Disney Plusseries. Give us something that makes it
so that we want to show upand make it more than just like the
post credit trailers or the post creditscenes. Please, yes, because that's
all really, that's what people areshowing up now for, is just to
see what's going to happen in thepost credit scenes. Yes, I am.
(22:32):
I am one of the people thatwait around for them. So you're
anticipating a wrestling movie. Yeah,it was an a twenty four film.
I saw trailer four called The IronClaw, and it's about the von Eric
family. If you know anything aboutyou know, pro wrestling, the von
Erics are like the you know,first family of Texas wrestling, and they
(22:56):
are a huge deal in Texas andthey almost I think all of the kids
died tragically within the family. Itis, it is one of the most
heartbreaking stories when you just hear thereality of it all. I'm curious to
see how because this isn't a documentary, it's a scripted film. I'm curious
(23:18):
to see how much Yeah, yeah, I'm curious to see how much they're
going to be you know, howmuch is going to be dramatization and how
much of it's going to be thereal deal stuff, Because like Carrie von
Eric, David van Eric, allof the von Eric brothers, they were
all some of the most physically giftedelite athletes out there. Without question,
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they were you know, they werethey were like all of them were alpha
male and all of them had suchtragic ends. It it is I am
very curious to see how this filmis made. Well, it looks like
you won't have to wait long.It looks like it's already shot and zac
Efron looks just like one of thosevon Erics, so that should be pretty
(24:03):
good. Oh yeah, okay,so we did that, and man,
Priscilla's doing well. I'm going tosee that tonight. Let us now shift
gears a little bit and go tothe the Uh okay, well, I'll
do a little bit on Las Vegashere. There's a Grand Prix going on
(24:23):
right there right now. Did youknow that I heard the Grand Prix Formula
one driving through the streets. Yeah, I heard that, like within like
the first couple of laps or something. They had to shut it down because
somebody knocked over a manhole cover orsomething. Yeah, they ran over a
manhole cover and it wasn't secured rightaway and it flopped up and did like
(24:44):
eight million dollars worth of damage tothat car and several million dollars. Do
you ever go to have your carin an accident and go get an estimate
and it's eight million dollars. That'senough to ruin your day. Well,
that's kind of what happened. Andthen the manhole I guess or the car
caused like, you know, twentythirty million dollars with the damages to other
cars and things, and so theyhad to scale back things. So there
(25:08):
were people who paid fifty thousand dollarsfor their tickets that got to see eight
minutes of racing. Wow, andit was done. You're out of here.
So there's a class action lawsuit.Happened to thirty five just a little
over six thousand dollars per minute,six thousand dollars per minute. It is
(25:32):
more eight minutes fifty thousand dollars.Oh yeah for the ticket price. Yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, you'reright about that. I was thinking about
the damages, the damage. Imean eight million dollars. That's a million
dollars a minute, and damages forthat one car. So they uh,
thirty five thousand people have filed theclass action lawsuit to get their money back,
(25:53):
and I guess it ended up thereended up being a race with no
audience because they had to just doit when they're all gone and it's a
mess over there. They were callingit the biggest sports spectacle ever staged,
and it is popular. The onlyproblem is this the hotel. What it
(26:15):
does to the to the hotel pricesover there makes it unaffordable for anyone to
go. But the super elite,and I know that Formula one racing is
you know, for the super eliteanyway, but there are you know,
there's regular people that really like itand they want to go, and you
know, and they might even beable to afford a ticket a few hundred
dollars. But then the hotel roomsare like when I checked, it's like
(26:40):
a place I usually stayed. Soit's over one thousand dollars a night,
and you're not even on the tracktrying to get on the track. Well,
anyway, it's I hear they're goingto keep going. But this was
very rough, a very rough startto the Formula one thing. And lawsuits,
(27:02):
Now, will people win these lawsuits? They might because these people were
arguably harmed. You pay fifty thousanddollars, you only get eight minutes.
You're looking for somebody to pay forthat. And perhaps on the other side
of the ticket it said sometimes carscrash and the races are delayed. Will
(27:27):
that language hold up? And I'msure the Formula one people are going to
be saying, hey, there,we had all kinds of waivers or clarifications
or I'm struggling with my English rightnow. But they told people I'm sure
(27:48):
anything can happen, and we're notresponsible if there's crashes and stuff like that.
But maybe there'll be a settlement,maybe the court will say I got
to do something for these people.But Sam, how sorry do you feel
for somebody who paid fifty thousand dollarsfor a ticket throwing that kind of not
one bit? No, I'm notsorry at all that they can if they
(28:12):
can drop fifty k on a ticket, they can go ahead and try to
double it up and make a fiftythousand dollars bet at a table and see
if they can go ahead and winit back. I'm not gonna get I
mean, really, fifty thousand dollarsfor a ticket. Yeah, you know,
buy the ticket t D. Yeah, here's what I'm saying. Watch
it on ESPN. It was onregular ESPN. Take that fifty thousand dollars,
(28:34):
donate it to the poor, andgo to heaven. That's a better
deal. Let us take the breakand come back with more of Joe Scolante
Live from Hollywood. Joe Alone,here's my lawyer, Joe Escalante live from
(29:12):
Hollywood. By Hollywood, you meanBurbank. Let's move to the celebrities behaving
badly, Sam Shalley, all Right, best time of the best time of
the show for me. Yeah,I mean this one is like, this
one's terrible. Did you hear aboutthe lawsuit against Sean Puff Daddy Combs,
(29:33):
otherwise known as Diddy? No?What did he? What did did he
do? Well? There's a womannamed Cassandra Ventura. She's an actress and
a singer, and she signed toP Diddy's label two thousand and five,
and the lawsuit alleged that Diddy broughtthe singer into his ostentatious, fast paced
(29:57):
and drug fueled lifestyle soon after shemet him and signed to his label in
two thousand and five. She wasnineteen and he was thirty seven. Think
about that, Sam, nineteen andthirty seven. That's a little inappropriate for
people to be getting intimate. Venturais now thirty seven and Combs is now
(30:18):
fifty four. But they began,she says, they had a pattern of
abuse and they're on and off relationship, which began in two thousand and seven.
The lawsuit alleged that he was proneto uncontrollable urge savage beatings in which
(30:40):
he punched, kicked, and stompedher. Yeah, the allegens applied her
with drugs and forced her to havesex with other men while he pleasured himself
and filmed them. According to thelawsuit, Ventura was trying to end the
relationship in twenty eighteen because she didnot like being punched, kicked, stomped,
and applied with drugs and forced tohave sex with other men while he
(31:04):
pleasured himself and filmed them. Andthen Combs forced her into her Los Angeles
home at that time when she triedto get away from him and break it
off. She then he raped her. This is according to her state.
(31:26):
So she files a lawsuit against him. She just couldn't take it, okay,
Well, see, I mean Ithink she already broke off with him,
but then she at some point,you know, with the Me Too
movement, she felt empowered to cometo go public with this. Now.
(31:48):
I don't know if you know anythingabout p Diddy, but he's you know,
one of the most influential hip hopguys. Him and Russell Simmons.
This also happened to the founder ofbad Boy Records and a three time Grammy
winner. He's worked with a slewof top tier artists. I don't know
if you know this, Sam,the Notorious b I G Yes, Mary
(32:13):
J, Mary J. Blige,Usher, Lil Kim, Faith Evans,
and crazy Town. I made upthe crazy Town part. Okay Yeah.
This year he released his fifth studioalbum, the Love Album Off the Grid,
first studio album in seventeen years.This has got to put a damper
on that. So in last September, he was presented a key to the
(32:38):
City for New York by embattled MayorEric Adams. And he was born in
New York City and Ventura. Shegained fame with a hit single called Me
and You, which was number oneof the Bolt Billboard Hot R and B
in two thousand and six. Onlyif you remember that jam. But it
was their only studio album. Butthen as actor, she was on Fox's
(33:00):
Empire. So the lawyers for PDDY, they are saying that this woman had
for the past six months persistently demandedthirty million dollars while threatening to write a
damaging book about her relationship with Combs. And the lawyer said the demands were
(33:22):
rejected as blatant blackmail. So hebut then some people say he offered eight
figures to silence her. What's eightfigures is that like, six figures is
one hundred thousand, seven figures isis a million, and then eight figures
(33:45):
will be ten million at least.Well, Sam, what do you think
of this case? I can't haveany opinion. I don't know enough of
the details. It sounds like,you know, it's a case from what
years ago? Yeah, twenty three? I mean these are always rough two
thousand and seven. Yeah, Soit's it's hard to be able to say,
(34:07):
but I I know, obviously sympathiesare always going to go with the
victim in this situation, but I'dlike to hear more before, you know,
making judgments one way or the other. I felt the same until I
now have discovered the new the latestnews, the latest news, ish p
(34:29):
Deeddy has settled with her and writtenher a check to make her go a
way. So well then, Imean, would you know? Yeah,
it's like, well, to me, it's like, if you are not
guilty, you're outraged by this andyou're going to fight it. Yeah,
and you're and you're gonna and you'regonna clear your name and you're gonna get
(34:51):
out there because the bad news isalready out there. They couldn't get any
worse. So you're going to goand even though your name is going to
be in the papers and they're goingto go through your history, but you
are going to make sure everybody heknows this is a lie and they're not
allowed to bring other things in,you know, show a pattern. Usually
you can, if you have goodlawyers, you can. You can you
can keep it to this specific thesespecific charges with this one woman. I
(35:14):
mean, sometimes you can do that. Sometimes you can't. So there's an
argument, maybe, well I don'twant them to I don't want them to
find out find you know, otherwomen that have made up this phony story.
So I'm going to settle with her. But I think the smart money
is that enough of this is trueto where he did. He's paying her
to stop. And probably in thatsettlement is you cannot write that book.
(35:35):
This is enough money for you notto write that book. But uh,
yeah, anytime you see somebody settlingthat quickly without putting up a fight,
typically I'd be like, yeah,you did it, Yeah, that quickly.
That's the point that quickly he didn'tlike, uh you know, there
(35:55):
wasn't a long negotiation and try toget her down to a reasonable thing,
get her to calm down and thenfile some legal motions to let her know
that you might win. It's justlike I am going to lose. So
I'm going to write you a checkright now. Yeah, I'm going to
make this all disappear right now.Enjoy your thirty million dollars. Yes,
(36:16):
I think I think thirty million couldbe could be close to what she gone.
Maybe I guess twenty God I'm throwingout there because you said eight figures,
I'm guessing's she said for that.They did say she asked for thirty
million. That was her demand,according to them. Then I'd say that
that's what they settled down. Ifit happened that quickly, I don't think
(36:36):
that. You know, maybe maybeyou can hack five million off of it.
So p Diddy Russell Simmons, I'mtrying to think of the hip hop
bad boys that are the real badboys. But this guy's a bad night.
Sug Knight's the real bad boy ofall of them. Sug Knight is
a bad boy. I was alwaysoffended by this from hip hop because when
(36:58):
I was early punked in the eighties, the punk bands were not allowed to
play shows. The police said,you know, prevented you know, threatened
promoters if they put on these punkshows. It was a while where we
couldn't play, and it was reallybut these hip hop shows were going on
and they were nasty and people gettingshot. But what are you gonna do?
(37:22):
I went to a lot of thesehip hop shows. I like the
music, yeah, but then therewere riots, and yeah, I stopped
going. Okay. In the othergeneral news of the entertainment industry, Sam,
of cases we've been following, yourfriend and yours, ron Jeremy has
(37:43):
been released from prison. Uncle Ronnieis out. Yes, he's been released
to a private residence, less thana year after he was formally declared incompetent
to stand trial on more than thirtycounts of sexual assault. If you see
the picture that's floating around of him, wow, does he look bad.
He's suffering from dementia. He's placeundered his conservator earlier this year, and
(38:06):
he's been in the men's Central Jailin downtown LA. I don't know if
you've ever been there, Sam,but I understand it's not a nice place.
And he's been waiting for an assignmentto a state medical facility. But
on Friday, a judge granted arequest to release the seventy year old to
a private residence where he will receivearound the clock medical care after it was
(38:27):
determined that no medical facility will takehim, according to an email obtained by
the Los Angeles Times, so noplace will take him, so someone probably
said I'll take him. So yeah, that is. I think we're about
done with this segment because I believewe're running up against the clock. Am
(38:52):
I wrong? No? And themusic is going, so yeah, time
to roll. Yeah, Okay,didn't have time to talk about the washed
up torso found in the ocean,which is believed to be the body of
a famous Irish director, But we'lltalk about that next week. And I'll
tell you what I thought of Priscillaand the other movies I see. And
I will now leave you with justthe taste of the greatest song ever written.
(39:15):
Make sure you go and buy thoseChristmas show tickets because the Vandals Christmas
show tickets are on sale right now.
Joe Escolante live from by Hollywood,I mean Burbank, across the street from
a Wiener Schnitzel that serves beer.And we are live tonight, which is
November the nineteenth, twenty twenty three, and last week we were not on
the air because I was in aI went on a cruise, punk rock
cruise with the Vandals flogging Molly andStiff Little Fingers and Pennywise into Baylee's in
(00:37):
Mexico, and I went to Orlandoto Disney World since I was out there.
We're gonna do something a little differenton this show. We're not gonna
start with the box office. We'regonna start with stories, and we'll do
the box office in the next segment. My first story is about a documentary
that I was interest until I foundout true. So this is that I
(01:06):
was very excited to see Ruthless andit is the story of the origin of
Monopoly. I mean, come on, Oh does that sound interesting? Sam?
That sounds really cool? I gotit. I'm so, this is
this a Netflix documentary? Where where'sit at? No, it's a PBSBS
okay, yeah, extremely well made, interesting characters, interesting subject and it's
(01:33):
right for this show because it wasabout a trademark, the Monopoly game,
trademarked by the Parker Brothers company.And then some guy thought that the values
that the game Monopoly a celebrated,meaning you know, wild capitalism and one
(01:57):
winner and everyone else is a loser. He thought that he was offended by
that. He thought, why can'twe have a game called anti Monopoly and
the goals to not get a Monopoly, I don't know, share the money
with everybody. So this guy wasa professor and college professor, and he
(02:20):
he reworked the game to be ananti Monopoly game, and then he put
it out and people liked it.It was doing pretty well, and then
Parker Brothers sued him and said,that's a violation of our trademark. And
he's like, well, really isit really? You know, I'm just
so he had his reasons, like, you know, I'm doing something different.
Things are different. I'm not using, you know, all these elements
(02:40):
of yours. I got my owngame. But they didn't like it,
and so they went after him andhe didn't stop, and he fought them.
And it reminded me a lot ofthe time that I was sued or
the vandals were sued by Variety magazinebecause we did a parody of their logo
(03:04):
and wrote vandals similarly to where theywrite Variety, and our album was a
parody on you know the Hollywood,you know the casting couch basically, and
they went after us and they triedto ruin us, and they did everything
they could. So I could reallysympathize with this guy that this big company
was trying to ruin him because Varietytried to ruin us, and he didn't
(03:28):
have enough money to fight it.We didn't have enough money to fight it.
We settled it the first time,and then they came back at us
and said, oh, we've seenyour logo on YouTube, and I go,
yeah, we don't put it therelike the old logo. It was
released. We took it off themarket. We gave them, you know,
they made us put stickers on topof all the releases and never use
it again, destroy merchandise, allthat kind of stuff, all because we'd
(03:52):
send it to them. They're artists, liked it, so we sent them
some hats and some albums and somestickers, and they said thank you and
then showed it to their bosses,and their bosses tell their lawyers and their
lawyers suit us. Anyway, weended up winning that, but it took
year's out of my life and Ihad to get admitted to the federal bar
(04:15):
to do it myself because all thelawyers I talked to had terrible advice.
So this guy's fighting this thing theand he's fighting a giant company Parker Brothers,
of course, a giant corporation.And he gets offered money to settle,
(04:38):
won't take it. He's going towin, and he wants to be
able to put his game out andhe wants to be able to talk about
it. And they're saying, no, we want to give you some money
and you don't talk about it,you don't put your game out, or
you can fight it us. Sohe fights, he fights them. You
know, it's like a sad story. He's getting bankrupt and then and then
in the end, this is spoileralert. In the end, his he
(05:00):
goes to court and they rule againsthim. And then according to the documentary,
this man just wouldn't stop and hetook his papers. This is straight
from the script. He takes hispapers and he marches. He goes to
Washington and and because he's such arugged individual, he knocks on the door
(05:26):
at the Supreme Court and he getsthem to take another look at his case,
which is a Davy and Goliath case, and they rule in favor of
him and he is now the winner, and Monopoly Parker brothers lose. And
then you're and then I'm thinking,and I've gone to my wife. I'm
(05:48):
like, wait, how do youknock on the door of the Supreme Court
and get something get a decision togo to the Supreme Court? It takes
first you have to go to Circuitcourt, and then after you get a
determination there and there's like appeals andthen at some point you can submit it
(06:10):
to the Supreme Court and then youknow, would take a year for them
to look at it and say,okay, well we will take this case,
and then they will hear it andthen they will make a ruling on
the lower court's decisions. And that'spretty much what the documentary said happened.
So I go, that's kind ofstrange. I don't know how they do
(06:30):
that, So I looked it up. It's a complete lie. Even though
this monopoly thing on PBS was wasinteresting, but it's only interesting if you
don't know that it's a lie.So what really happened when I went to
research it is the court lower courtsruled against him. Then the circuit courts
(06:56):
reversed that. So the Ninth CircuitCourt reversed. He's done. He won.
Now Parker Brothers goes to the SupremeCourt and begs the Supreme Court to
hear the case, and they finallydo, and then the Supreme Court says
no, they finally don't. Theynever hear the case. So this is
so this guy. This documentary actuallysaid the Supreme Court heard the case and
(07:17):
voted in favor of this guy thatinvented mante monopoly. They didn't even take
it. They they denied to takeit. Okay, they said we're not
going to hear this case, andso it just went. It stayed with
the Ninth Circuit who had already wereruled in favor of this guy. So
this PBS documentary trying to create somedrama, just made up stuff, and
(07:41):
you know, stuff that offended mebecause I go, that's not how the
courts work. I'm very interested inthis from a trademark standpoint, because can
monopoly even own the trademark? Areis it a valid mark in the first
place? And what is the processthat he went to prove that they didn't
(08:01):
own the trademark or they shouldn't ownthe trademark. Was fascinating to me,
but it didn't really the people whomake the documentary and PBS, I didn't
care what was true. They're tryingto tell some story. They were trying
to tell a Davey Angelia's story,and they had written script and then backed
the facts into the script that theywanted to. And then I felt a
(08:24):
little bit manipulated because you'd think adocumentary on PBS would have the utmost vetting
and integrity and they would want totell the truth. Why do a documentary
and just make up lies to tella good story? And then it made
(08:46):
me doubt what else in this documentaryis true and not true? What else
at PBS is true and not true. I'm going to take a break right
now and we come back. I'llget a little more into the actual case.
And what if Parker Brothers does owna valid trademark? When should they?
Now that I've got the lies outof the way, and you're listening
(09:07):
to Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood,Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood, the business
end of show business. Every Sundayhere in k e IB, we were
talking about the monopoly documentary on PBS, which I discovered is kind of full
of lies. And for what Imean, this is a good story.
(09:28):
I think we could have made somethinggood out of it. But what I've
discovered is they're so interested in makingthis Davy and Goliath a narrative, just
front and center and clarified. Justlike so the poor guy whoever's making this
documentary, maybe he wanted to orshe wanted to tell the truth, but
somehow the lies ends up on thescreen. The guy, this guy named
(09:54):
mister Ann Sanch I'll get a littlebit more into the actual trademark case and
the last say, we're just talkingabout how I figured out a lot of
it wasn't true. But mister Anspatchis a guy who's a professor at San
Francisco State. He invents anti monopoly, he releases it, Parker Brothers sue
him. He just goes on arampage of research and figures out where that
(10:18):
trying to figure out maybe their trademarkisn't isn't valid, and he discovers where
Parker Brothers got their trademark and wherethey got where they got the game from.
They bought it from a guy namedCharles Darrow. Now Charles Darrow is
a guy who played Monopoly with hisneighbor and I think they called it Finances,
(10:46):
and he played it there with hisneighbor. He liked it. It's
like in the thirties. He likesit. He calls him up afterwards or
sends him a letter, you knowpeople are back then their letters, hey,
and he says, can you writedown the rules for me? That
was really fun to play, Andhe wrote down the rules. And then
Darrow started making him himself and hetried to sell him to games and told
(11:09):
everyone he invented it. And thenthe guy that the neighbor who really invented
it sent to was like walking bya store one day and he saw a
bank and it said, come andmeet Darrow. Mister Darrow and the inventor
of the new sensational game Monopoly.And so he just really and he made
(11:31):
up a whole story about how heinvented it. And that's like, so
it has some story. Monopoly endsup buying our Barker brothers ends up buying
it from him, and so thisanspatch guy has got to prove that that
trademark is not even valid so hecan have his anti monopoly. Now that's
a good story, that's a goodfight. So all you got to do
is figure out that they stole itor and then find out where they got
(11:54):
it from and say theirs is invalidand challenge it and say that is not
valid because they stole it, theguy that they got it from didn't own
it, and other people were makingthe game simultaneously. So you can't just
get a trademark on something because youwant to win. It's already out in
(12:16):
the marketplace. Now part of itis the Trademark Office's fault for giving a
trademark to something that was already outthere in several different forms. Some people
were calling it finance or the Landlord'sGame. I think the person that really
invented it was a woman named LizzieMcGee that had something called the Landlord's Game
and who knows where she got it. And the documentary is very interesting because
(12:37):
they follow the path of these kindof games. They're called folk games,
and they get handed down from generationto generation. People make their own versions
and they you know, they actuallywrite them down on a board or paint
them on a board and they're likefolk music, hand it down. So
this guy you know in the end, as I told you in the last
(12:58):
segment, hands up been winning it. But the case is that they tell
you he won by is by provingthat it wasn't then it was stolen and
he did all this research, andthen the research uncovered people who had already
played Monopoly before and found the guyyou know that they found even the people
(13:18):
that the guy Darrow stole the Monopolygame from. But it's not really how
the case went. The case waswas decided from the point of can you
trademark the word monopoly in association withthe game? Is it a word that's
already being used for in that purpose? And other people were using the word
(13:43):
monopoly, So can you trademarket orcan or can't you? The first court
said you can, they can trademarkthat, and they have the reasons.
Did anybody ever tell you the reasonin this documentary? No nobody told the
reasons. But eventually it was settledon whether or not this is a common
term like band aid or murphy bed, one of these terms that if you
(14:05):
don't enforce it, you lose it, so they enforced it. They didn't
force it, so they kept it. Then over time the Circuit Court said,
nah, it's not you can't haveit. You can't trademark that it
was used too many times by otherpeople. But we never heard that from
the documentary. All we heard fromthis documentary is this Davy and Goliath story
(14:26):
that they It's all they wanted totalk about. So anyway, I mean,
I don't know. I felt alittle violated. Should I do?
I recommend it kind of if youalready know there's a lot of good history
in there. Maybe I don't know. As I'm telling you, I go,
how much hot? What else isa lie? In this documentary?
What else is a lie? OnPBS? Similar to how I felt when
I watched the Flower Moon movie.Not only was it too long, but
(14:48):
it appears that they had one villainin there that was a Native American and
they turned him into a white person. You know, I found his picture.
I go, wow, this guywas not even Native American. Now
when I look in the Internet,I can't even find a picture of that
guy of any sort. So theconspiracy theory in me says, many they
(15:11):
took that off the internet, becauseit's a very complicated thing to think about.
If in the Flower Moon movie,the Orsese movie, they were Indians
who are villains because they want tomake it black and white, right,
I just think you got to worka little harder on these things to make
them interesting but still tell the truth. And I get a little bit bugged
(15:31):
because you know, the people Iwork for. I make docuseries things for
Fox Nation, which is on byFox News Channel, and when I tell
people this is what I do,they you know, some people say I
love Fox News, and then otherpeople say, oh, that's just all
lies, lies, lies, lies. But there's no lies in anything I
make, and no one's telling meto lie. I mean, mine are
(15:52):
like paranormal stuff. Somebody's lying maybeif they said they saw were abducted by
aliens. But I don't know.I just don't. I don't get that.
But that's a reputation and here's PBS. These are demonstrable lies that are
being told, and you know,I don't know, maybe you're not as
mad about it as I am.So let's go back to the box Office.
(16:15):
Okay, that's who we usually startthe show, and the box Office
this week is the leader is Sam. Can you take a guess? I
have no idea. Okay, what'splaying at the theater that you live on
top of? At this point,I haven't really gone downstairs. I actually
was at the Burbank wine Walk yesterday, so I got to wander around and
(16:37):
stuff, but I didn't actually lookat what movies were playing. That.
That's why movies are doing so badis because people are coming up with too
many things for adults to do,like municipal concerts in the park, wine
walks, pub crawls. Pickleball.This is killing the movie industry, Sam,
pickleball is killing the film industry.Yes, you heard it here,
(17:00):
because pick a ball. It's noteven like exercise. You stand there and
hit the ball back and forth.It's not like tennis. I'm just trying
to make pickleball people mad at me, Glory. I'd like to see you
play picklebull against me. Oh,why the court with your butt? Okay,
all right, let's go to thebox office. Number one is The
Hunger Games, Sam, directed bysome guy who Francis Lawrence, who directs.
(17:22):
He's famous for directing other Hunger Gamestrolls. Number two Marvel's number four
a total and utter disaster of amovie. But you and I are going
to go see it tonight. Okay, excellent, I'm down. Okay,
Actually I'm going to see Priscilla tonight, so I can't join you. But
(17:44):
when you go see it, youtell me what the verdict is. Number
three is Thanksgiving Eli Roth movie fromSony Pictures. Eli Roth is famous for
like like Saw movies, Not GonnaGore, porn and Thanksgiving. It has
a plot, siwhat in't interesting tome? Sam about like a Black Friday
rage turned into horror. It's ashopping theme some for the ladies. Five
(18:10):
Nights at Freddy's Still hanging in there. Number five. That's one hundred and
thirty two million dollars and that's that. That movie is the moneymaker. Holdovers
number six, Number seven Taikey White, Titi's next goal Wins, which I'm
sure is funny. I'm just notin that big of a hurry. Taylor
Swift. Number eight, it's kindof an outlier. Number nine. Priscilla
(18:34):
has made sixteen million dollars. Itprobably costs twenty five to make his my
guess, but it's an eight totwenty four movie. Though they will squeeze
twenty or thirty more million out ofthat and ancillary markets and other territories.
Killers of the Flower Moon. Theworst movie you ever made is number sixty.
(18:55):
Is sixty three million dollars that it'smade and costs i'll be three hundred
million to make. Have you seenit yet, Sam? Not yet.
I'm not going to spend money tosit in the theater for four hours to
be outraged. Not my thing,dude. I would love for you to
do that so you could. Maybeit's maybe I'm being too hard on it,
(19:17):
but yeah, three hours and fortyminutes. Whoa, that's longer than
this segment of radio. Yeah,let's take it to break. Okay,
we're going to take a break andwe're going to come back with more exciting
stuff from Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood. Joe's Scalante Live from Hollywood. If
(19:37):
I Hollywood, I mean Burbank withthe business end of show business every week
here on k EIB eleven fifty onyour AM dial. And we just finished
up the box office. There's acouple of movies. I haven't gone to
the theaters because of my my travels, and Sam, I know you haven't
either because of your travails. Yes, I did see a streaming film,
(20:03):
a brand new made for streaming filmcalled The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar About.
It's a Roald Dahl story, SamSo the guy who did Willie Wanka
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Jamesand the peach of this guy. He's
(20:23):
a legend. So he wrote thisin nineteen seventy six. I think are
released it in seventy three years orsomewhere around there. And it's very interesting
this. I guess it's a shortstory. I don't know, but all
Wes Anderson did really is have likeit seems like Benedict cumber Patch just reads
(20:44):
the book out loud and then theyact out all the scenes in Wes anderson
glory. You know what that lookslike. Oh yeah, so it's narrated
because the book is being read outloud. It's only thirty nine minutes.
Not much of a commitment, butcertainly worth checking out if you like Wes
(21:04):
Anderson. If you don't like WesAnderson, you know. And then of
course there's just cameos everywhere, andyou have your Benedict cumber Patch and you're
sir Ben Kingsley, so definitely worthseeing on Netflix. I'm a big fan
(21:27):
of Wonder Snatch. Oh yeah,cumber Patch. This is cumber Patch being
cumber Patch. You know you gotyou want more cumber Patch. Henry Sugar
is wall to wall cumber Patch.Okay, you were. And then as
far as uh movies that we're anticipating, wish from Disney's coming out Napoleon,
(21:48):
you got to want to see that. Joaquin Phoenix, what else is coming
out? Captain America? Nobody cares? Am I right, nobody cares about
Captain America. I'm sure people do. It's just I think everybody has superhero
fatigue at this point. We wantto see something quality that's not just like
(22:10):
Loki or one of the Disney Plusseries. Give us something that makes it
so that we want to show upand make it more than just like the
post credit trailers or the post creditscenes. Please, yes, because that's
all really, that's what people areshowing up now for, is just to
see what's going to happen in thepost credit scenes. Yes, I am.
(22:32):
I am one of the people thatwait around for them. So you're
anticipating a wrestling movie. Yeah,it was an a twenty four film.
I saw trailer four called The IronClaw, and it's about the von Eric
family. If you know anything aboutyou know, pro wrestling, the von
Erics are like the you know,first family of Texas wrestling, and they
(22:56):
are a huge deal in Texas andthey almost I think all of the kids
died tragically within the family. Itis, it is one of the most
heartbreaking stories when you just hear thereality of it all. I'm curious to
see how because this isn't a documentary, it's a scripted film. I'm curious
(23:18):
to see how much Yeah, yeah, I'm curious to see how much they're
going to be you know, howmuch is going to be dramatization and how
much of it's going to be thereal deal stuff, Because like Carrie von
Eric, David van Eric, allof the von Eric brothers, they were
all some of the most physically giftedelite athletes out there. Without question,
(23:40):
they were you know, they werethey were like all of them were alpha
male and all of them had suchtragic ends. It it is I am
very curious to see how this filmis made. Well, it looks like
you won't have to wait long.It looks like it's already shot and zac
Efron looks just like one of thosevon Erics, so that should be pretty
(24:03):
good. Oh yeah, okay,so we did that, and man,
Priscilla's doing well. I'm going tosee that tonight. Let us now shift
gears a little bit and go tothe the Uh okay, well, I'll
do a little bit on Las Vegashere. There's a Grand Prix going on
(24:23):
right there right now. Did youknow that I heard the Grand Prix Formula
one driving through the streets. Yeah, I heard that, like within like
the first couple of laps or something. They had to shut it down because
somebody knocked over a manhole cover orsomething. Yeah, they ran over a
manhole cover and it wasn't secured rightaway and it flopped up and did like
(24:44):
eight million dollars worth of damage tothat car and several million dollars. Do
you ever go to have your carin an accident and go get an estimate
and it's eight million dollars. That'senough to ruin your day. Well,
that's kind of what happened. Andthen the manhole I guess or the car
caused like, you know, twentythirty million dollars with the damages to other
cars and things, and so theyhad to scale back things. So there
(25:08):
were people who paid fifty thousand dollarsfor their tickets that got to see eight
minutes of racing. Wow, andit was done. You're out of here.
So there's a class action lawsuit.Happened to thirty five just a little
over six thousand dollars per minute,six thousand dollars per minute. It is
(25:32):
more eight minutes fifty thousand dollars.Oh yeah for the ticket price. Yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, you'reright about that. I was thinking about
the damages, the damage. Imean eight million dollars. That's a million
dollars a minute, and damages forthat one car. So they uh,
thirty five thousand people have filed theclass action lawsuit to get their money back,
(25:53):
and I guess it ended up thereended up being a race with no
audience because they had to just doit when they're all gone and it's a
mess over there. They were callingit the biggest sports spectacle ever staged,
and it is popular. The onlyproblem is this the hotel. What it
(26:15):
does to the to the hotel pricesover there makes it unaffordable for anyone to
go. But the super elite,and I know that Formula one racing is
you know, for the super eliteanyway, but there are you know,
there's regular people that really like itand they want to go, and you
know, and they might even beable to afford a ticket a few hundred
dollars. But then the hotel roomsare like when I checked, it's like
(26:40):
a place I usually stayed. Soit's over one thousand dollars a night,
and you're not even on the tracktrying to get on the track. Well,
anyway, it's I hear they're goingto keep going. But this was
very rough, a very rough startto the Formula one thing. And lawsuits,
(27:02):
Now, will people win these lawsuits? They might because these people were
arguably harmed. You pay fifty thousanddollars, you only get eight minutes.
You're looking for somebody to pay forthat. And perhaps on the other side
of the ticket it said sometimes carscrash and the races are delayed. Will
(27:27):
that language hold up? And I'msure the Formula one people are going to
be saying, hey, there,we had all kinds of waivers or clarifications
or I'm struggling with my English rightnow. But they told people I'm sure
(27:48):
anything can happen, and we're notresponsible if there's crashes and stuff like that.
But maybe there'll be a settlement,maybe the court will say I got
to do something for these people.But Sam, how sorry do you feel
for somebody who paid fifty thousand dollarsfor a ticket throwing that kind of not
one bit? No, I'm notsorry at all that they can if they
(28:12):
can drop fifty k on a ticket, they can go ahead and try to
double it up and make a fiftythousand dollars bet at a table and see
if they can go ahead and winit back. I'm not gonna get I
mean, really, fifty thousand dollarsfor a ticket. Yeah, you know,
buy the ticket t D. Yeah, here's what I'm saying. Watch
it on ESPN. It was onregular ESPN. Take that fifty thousand dollars,
(28:34):
donate it to the poor, andgo to heaven. That's a better
deal. Let us take the breakand come back with more of Joe Scolante
Live from Hollywood. Joe Alone,here's my lawyer, Joe Escalante live from
(29:12):
Hollywood. By Hollywood, you meanBurbank. Let's move to the celebrities behaving
badly, Sam Shalley, all Right, best time of the best time of
the show for me. Yeah,I mean this one is like, this
one's terrible. Did you hear aboutthe lawsuit against Sean Puff Daddy Combs,
(29:33):
otherwise known as Diddy? No?What did he? What did did he
do? Well? There's a womannamed Cassandra Ventura. She's an actress and
a singer, and she signed toP Diddy's label two thousand and five,
and the lawsuit alleged that Diddy broughtthe singer into his ostentatious, fast paced
(29:57):
and drug fueled lifestyle soon after shemet him and signed to his label in
two thousand and five. She wasnineteen and he was thirty seven. Think
about that, Sam, nineteen andthirty seven. That's a little inappropriate for
people to be getting intimate. Venturais now thirty seven and Combs is now
(30:18):
fifty four. But they began,she says, they had a pattern of
abuse and they're on and off relationship, which began in two thousand and seven.
The lawsuit alleged that he was proneto uncontrollable urge savage beatings in which
(30:40):
he punched, kicked, and stompedher. Yeah, the allegens applied her
with drugs and forced her to havesex with other men while he pleasured himself
and filmed them. According to thelawsuit, Ventura was trying to end the
relationship in twenty eighteen because she didnot like being punched, kicked, stomped,
and applied with drugs and forced tohave sex with other men while he
(31:04):
pleasured himself and filmed them. Andthen Combs forced her into her Los Angeles
home at that time when she triedto get away from him and break it
off. She then he raped her. This is according to her state.
(31:26):
So she files a lawsuit against him. She just couldn't take it, okay,
Well, see, I mean Ithink she already broke off with him,
but then she at some point,you know, with the Me Too
movement, she felt empowered to cometo go public with this. Now.
(31:48):
I don't know if you know anythingabout p Diddy, but he's you know,
one of the most influential hip hopguys. Him and Russell Simmons.
This also happened to the founder ofbad Boy Records and a three time Grammy
winner. He's worked with a slewof top tier artists. I don't know
if you know this, Sam,the Notorious b I G Yes, Mary
(32:13):
J, Mary J. Blige,Usher, Lil Kim, Faith Evans,
and crazy Town. I made upthe crazy Town part. Okay Yeah.
This year he released his fifth studioalbum, the Love Album Off the Grid,
first studio album in seventeen years.This has got to put a damper
on that. So in last September, he was presented a key to the
(32:38):
City for New York by embattled MayorEric Adams. And he was born in
New York City and Ventura. Shegained fame with a hit single called Me
and You, which was number oneof the Bolt Billboard Hot R and B
in two thousand and six. Onlyif you remember that jam. But it
was their only studio album. Butthen as actor, she was on Fox's
(33:00):
Empire. So the lawyers for PDDY, they are saying that this woman had
for the past six months persistently demandedthirty million dollars while threatening to write a
damaging book about her relationship with Combs. And the lawyer said the demands were
(33:22):
rejected as blatant blackmail. So hebut then some people say he offered eight
figures to silence her. What's eightfigures is that like, six figures is
one hundred thousand, seven figures isis a million, and then eight figures
(33:45):
will be ten million at least.Well, Sam, what do you think
of this case? I can't haveany opinion. I don't know enough of
the details. It sounds like,you know, it's a case from what
years ago? Yeah, twenty three? I mean these are always rough two
thousand and seven. Yeah, Soit's it's hard to be able to say,
(34:07):
but I I know, obviously sympathiesare always going to go with the
victim in this situation, but I'dlike to hear more before, you know,
making judgments one way or the other. I felt the same until I
now have discovered the new the latestnews, the latest news, ish p
(34:29):
Deeddy has settled with her and writtenher a check to make her go a
way. So well then, Imean, would you know? Yeah,
it's like, well, to me, it's like, if you are not
guilty, you're outraged by this andyou're going to fight it. Yeah,
and you're and you're gonna and you'regonna clear your name and you're gonna get
(34:51):
out there because the bad news isalready out there. They couldn't get any
worse. So you're going to goand even though your name is going to
be in the papers and they're goingto go through your history, but you
are going to make sure everybody heknows this is a lie and they're not
allowed to bring other things in,you know, show a pattern. Usually
you can, if you have goodlawyers, you can. You can you
can keep it to this specific thesespecific charges with this one woman. I
(35:14):
mean, sometimes you can do that. Sometimes you can't. So there's an
argument, maybe, well I don'twant them to I don't want them to
find out find you know, otherwomen that have made up this phony story.
So I'm going to settle with her. But I think the smart money
is that enough of this is trueto where he did. He's paying her
to stop. And probably in thatsettlement is you cannot write that book.
(35:35):
This is enough money for you notto write that book. But uh,
yeah, anytime you see somebody settlingthat quickly without putting up a fight,
typically I'd be like, yeah,you did it, Yeah, that quickly.
That's the point that quickly he didn'tlike, uh you know, there
(35:55):
wasn't a long negotiation and try toget her down to a reasonable thing,
get her to calm down and thenfile some legal motions to let her know
that you might win. It's justlike I am going to lose. So
I'm going to write you a checkright now. Yeah, I'm going to
make this all disappear right now.Enjoy your thirty million dollars. Yes,
(36:16):
I think I think thirty million couldbe could be close to what she gone.
Maybe I guess twenty God I'm throwingout there because you said eight figures,
I'm guessing's she said for that.They did say she asked for thirty
million. That was her demand,according to them. Then I'd say that
that's what they settled down. Ifit happened that quickly, I don't think
(36:36):
that. You know, maybe maybeyou can hack five million off of it.
So p Diddy Russell Simmons, I'mtrying to think of the hip hop
bad boys that are the real badboys. But this guy's a bad night.
Sug Knight's the real bad boy ofall of them. Sug Knight is
a bad boy. I was alwaysoffended by this from hip hop because when
(36:58):
I was early punked in the eighties, the punk bands were not allowed to
play shows. The police said,you know, prevented you know, threatened
promoters if they put on these punkshows. It was a while where we
couldn't play, and it was reallybut these hip hop shows were going on
and they were nasty and people gettingshot. But what are you gonna do?
(37:22):
I went to a lot of thesehip hop shows. I like the
music, yeah, but then therewere riots, and yeah, I stopped
going. Okay. In the othergeneral news of the entertainment industry, Sam,
of cases we've been following, yourfriend and yours, ron Jeremy has
(37:43):
been released from prison. Uncle Ronnieis out. Yes, he's been released
to a private residence, less thana year after he was formally declared incompetent
to stand trial on more than thirtycounts of sexual assault. If you see
the picture that's floating around of him, wow, does he look bad.
He's suffering from dementia. He's placeundered his conservator earlier this year, and
(38:06):
he's been in the men's Central Jailin downtown LA. I don't know if
you've ever been there, Sam,but I understand it's not a nice place.
And he's been waiting for an assignmentto a state medical facility. But
on Friday, a judge granted arequest to release the seventy year old to
a private residence where he will receivearound the clock medical care after it was
(38:27):
determined that no medical facility will takehim, according to an email obtained by
the Los Angeles Times, so noplace will take him, so someone probably
said I'll take him. So yeah, that is. I think we're about
done with this segment because I believewe're running up against the clock. Am
(38:52):
I wrong? No? And themusic is going, so yeah, time
to roll. Yeah, Okay,didn't have time to talk about the washed
up torso found in the ocean,which is believed to be the body of
a famous Irish director, But we'lltalk about that next week. And I'll
tell you what I thought of Priscillaand the other movies I see. And
I will now leave you with justthe taste of the greatest song ever written.
(39:15):
Make sure you go and buy thoseChristmas show tickets because the Vandals Christmas
show tickets are on sale right now.
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