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October 27, 2023 46 mins
Joe Escalante's weekly sojourn into the business end of showbiz. On this week's NFL pre-empted episode: the latest from the box office, as Joe does a deep dive into Killers of the Flower Moon, and why he just doesn't like peas. Some people like paying to be outraged. Does Joe???

Nope! Especially not for 3 hours and 45 minutes. For the love of God, Scorcese... Do you actually want people to watch your film, or use it to cure insomnia?
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Okay, Live from Hollywood. It'sJoe's Balante by Hollywood Demean Burbank across the
street from Wiener Snitzel that serves beer. And this is the podcast edition for
October twenty second, twenty twenty three. We were preempted by the NFL game
today on KiB so Sam is hereand we're going to do a podcast version

(00:29):
of the show, which means straightthrough without commercials, unless they drop in
commercials at iHeartMedia, which they've beenknown to do. Sam, can you
hear me? All right? Allright? Loud and clear? All right.
So let's go to the movies.There was a big release today,

(00:49):
probably the most anticipated movie of theyear. I would have to say,
I don't know if you would agreewith that, Sam, but under Killers
of the Flower Moon. I keepwanting to call it under something because the
word moon is in the title Killersof the Flower Moon. It was the

(01:10):
title of a book and now it'sa movie and the title is a little
bit what did you call that titlelike that? Pretentious? I don't know.
It's a artistic It's a artistic,artistic, subtle indirect Taylor Swift movie

(01:30):
number one at the box office.Sam, it just destroyed this Scorsese picture
Robert de Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio anddirected by Martin Scorsese. A legend,
a living legend, Sam, ButTaylor Swift wiped the floor with it.
It is even though Taylor Swift movieis down sixty seven percent from last week,

(01:56):
the new movie Killers of the FlowerMoon didn't even come close. Number
three Exorcist Believer, which I stillhaven't seen. Number four Paw Patrol you
have that peg for an oscar andnumber five Nightmare Before Christmas, of course,
and six Saw x seven The Creator, which I think is the best

(02:20):
movie in this top ten. Numbereight The Haunting of Venice. You saw
that you liked it, It's prettygood. I don't know a creator.
I would say great, fantastic.Number nine is none none two and number
ten Hocus Pocus, so I refusedto see. Okay, so well,

(02:43):
what happens? Sam? I mean, this is the biggest most anticipated movie
of the year and it can't evenbeat Taylor Swift. What's going on?
It? Did never underestimate the powerof the Swifties. Man, Yeah,
twenty three million at the box office. That can't be what they had in
mind. The Swifties no, thatthe or the under the moonfolk, the

(03:10):
people the Moon for the Moonies,it's called that. Yeah, we can
call them the Moonies. I guess, yeah, I think they. I'm
guessing they didn't think that, uh, Taylor Swift's film was going to be
as powerful as it is. Butalso it's a completely different audience. Swifties
are a bunch of like, youknow, everything from little girls to preteen

(03:31):
to some adults, versus a veryyou know, like refined audience for this
film with Scorsese. Well, andactually Scorsese's films don't really generate a lot
of box office up front. They'renot Disney movies. They're not you know,

(03:54):
Pixar things. They're they're they're notMarvel or DC. They're they're not
art house, but they're you know, they're made for like, you know,
grown ups, adults. It's nota huge audience. You're not getting
little girls to go see it.It's so the little girls, of course

(04:15):
went to see Taylor Swift. Haveyou seen Taylor Swift? Not yet,
No, and I'm not sure ifI will. My kids aren't into Taylor
Swift for Fortunately for me, mykids are not Swifties. Okay, what
are your kids, Like, mydaughter is into like Beyonce, and my
kid, my boy is like,uh if he sings what's it called Tears

(04:40):
for Fear songs? Okay, sohe's super cool. The Beyonce girl has
got a movie. Beyonce's got amovie coming out soon. So maybe you'll
have to see that. Yeah,I'll let her mom watch that with her.
I don't. I would kind oflike to see the Taylor Swift movie.
But I'm I mean, what justgotta see? I didn't see what

(05:01):
all the better? I can't go. I can't go by myself. That's
a creepy that creepy creepy towne.So this is scorsesees they're calling it is
his best start for a Scorsese moviesince twenty ten Shutter Island, which did
forty one million, and the thirdbest of his career, following the two

(05:23):
thousand and six movie That Departed.Now that was a real good movie,
The Killers of the Flower Moon.And they're blaming Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de
Niro not being able to promote thefilm because of the strike. That's also
the problem. But the problem,Sam, have you seen Killers of the

(05:46):
Flower Moon? Not yet I'm lookingforward to it, though I usually try
to catch Scorsese films in the theater, unlike I guess most people. Yeah,
let me tell you. I sawthe was the last one, the
Irishman. I saw that in thetheater. It was really but I thought
it was good. This. Atwhat point do you think I walked out
of this movie? Oh, geez, I'm guessing within the first twenty minutes.

(06:11):
No, no, I would neverdo that. About two hours into
it and there was still an hourand forty minutes left. Oh jeez,
it's an hour and forty five minutes. Three forty five, three forty Okay,
yeah, no, I don't blameyou at that point. That's a
kind of movie like that Tarantino didwith The Hateful Late. He had a

(06:33):
four hour movie and he had afifteen minute like like intermission so people could
get up and go pee and eatand like yeah live. Yeah, this
could have this could have used anintermission. It was it just this is
like a like a one hour episodeof Dateline where Satan came in and added

(07:00):
an extra three hours to it.So it's a story that could be told
in forty minutes, and they've madeit three hours in forty minutes. Now,
why did they do that? It'snarcissism, just plain and simple.
We are so important. This moviehas to be really long. This issue

(07:20):
is so important. These historical eventsare so monumental. And you're welcome,
by the way, for having usbring them to you and tell you and
beat you over the head with itand make you eat your peas for three
hours in forty minutes. So beautifulfilmmaking. Sam After like, you know,

(07:44):
you're an hour into it, yougo, you know what, I'm
so lucky that I'm living in anarrow where Scorsese is making new movies.
Leonardo DiCaprio is excellent, Robert deNiro, what a legend. And then
but that's that's an hour. Now, you got two hours and forty minutes
left, so they got a goodhour to after that to tell you,
hey, we're wasting your time.You get it. We've told you what

(08:07):
this is. It's a bunch ofwhite people being bad too Indians, and
it's bad. It's terrible. Youget it. It's bad. Okay,
yeah, I get it. It'sbad. And you're you're showing everything's cool.
A great actor has great set's youknow, the authenticity with the O
Sage Indian tribe culture and the songsand the and the costumes and everything beautiful.

(08:28):
But oh lord, that just keepscoming. And then this guy did
something to Indians and he's and thenthis guy, this guy, this guy.
It's a little over the top,and you start to not believe it.
You start to say, well,human beings don't really act like this,
so this is like a cartoon version, like the fake news version that

(08:50):
is so overblown. That's what you'refeeling. There's no way people are like
this. And then you start gettingirritated, and then it goes on and
on and on. I okay,I do get it, and I think
what these did people did to theseto the Indians is bad. I do

(09:13):
believe it happens. You know,I have no reason not to. I
haven't read up on this subject priorto seeing the film, But I get
it. Why are you beating meover the head with it so much?
This movie could have been made,like I said, it could have been
an hour dateline episode, or itcould have been a really, really good
two hour Scorsese movie. But Idon't believe he has the ability to tell

(09:35):
a story in two hours. Andthat's the problem if I if I write
a movie and it's three hours andforty minutes and I hand it in,
an editor from the network comes inand says, all right, here's what
we gotta do because this is waytoo long. Okay, three is three
hundred and forty pages too long?Yeah, it is, so we're gonna
cut it down. So maybe cuta little bit of this, less of
this, less of this. Thisis redundant. Look, we already established

(09:58):
this, so you could cut thiswhole now and then let's tighten this up.
And that's how you make a goodmovie. But he doesn't do that.
So he might be Martin Scorsese,but he makes here, he made
a bad movie. He made abad movie because we don't have time to
be beat over the head for thatlong. So I couldn't take it.

(10:22):
And I'm just like, I'm gonnawait and if they keep doing this,
I will leave. And they justkept doing it and doing it and doing
it. So if you don't knowanything about the story, it's the Osage
Indian tribe. Uh, you know, it was pushed into some lands that
the US government thought was terrible landand didn't It wasn't gonna amount to anything,
but then struck oil, so theybecame very wealthy. And then white

(10:45):
people came in and tried to figureout how we're going to take this oil
money away from these injuries, andthey did it by like marrying into the
tribes and manipulating them and then thenSam murdering them. It's a great story,
but if you turn it into threehours and forty minutes, you're not
gonna tell it to too many people. So what's the point. Can only

(11:09):
show twice a day in a theater, so that's going to hurt your box
office and everybody that invested. Andby the way, who did invest in
this, Sam, Well, itwasn't Netflix who lost all the money on
The Irishman. It was another companywith a ton of money that would like
to be in business with DiCaprio andde Niro and Scorsese. It was Apple.

(11:30):
So they're going to lose all themoney on this. And it's just
sad because when we're trying to getpeople to go back to the movies,
this really isn't the way. SoScorsese is not the way to make people
go back to the movies. Iwould say Gareth Edwards, who made The

(11:50):
Creator, which is still in theaters, and you should see that guy is
making people want to go back tothe movies. Scorsese should not be allowed
to make movies there. I saidit, it's done, made some good
movies, but this, this was, this was It's painful, but there

(12:15):
are some good there. You know, there's good stuff in DiCaprio's good in
it. And they're saying, ifyou read up on it, the DiCaprio
is improvising too much, and soScorsese and de Niro said they were rolling
their eyes. Oh my god,he was just he just kept trying to
rewrite things and and improvise. Buthe's the best thing about it. And

(12:37):
I think he's They said he's talkingtoo much. So what they wanted is
a dialogue free, three hours andforty minute movie. Rehbe. We talked
about dialogue free movies last week.Yep. So I guess that's what they
wanted. So it looks like Scorsesewanted to make it even worse by not
letting DiCaprio do whatever he was doing. The Native American actress Lily Gladstone that

(13:01):
plays the female lead is excellent.There's there's no bad performances in here.
When I got done, I gothome, I watched I go you know,
this is a fine dayline thing.So I watched a YouTube documentary.
And that's what I encourage you todo. People should know about this,

(13:22):
the story, this horrible story ofwhat happened to the Osage Indians. Go
to YouTube and watch a documentary.There's a few of them in there.
They're less than an hour, andthen you'll you'll get it, and then
you you want to know the storythere it is. So. It wasn't
so much that this movie, Likethe usual joke about Scorsese films is that
they tend to insist upon themselves.This one didn't seem to insist upon themselves.

(13:43):
It just seems like you felt itwas too preachy a little bit.
It did. It did insist uponitself. It was too preachy. It
was eat your peace, you eatyour peas, because you have to eat
your peas. And and we're notgonna make you have to eat three hours
and forty minutes with the piece becausethis is so serious, and I think
they mask the mistakes they've made inmaking this movie so long and rubbing your

(14:07):
face in it by their self aggrandizement, their persistence in telling people on the
panels they've spoken on and interviews howimportant this is. And if you don't
like this movie, you know youdon't get it how important this is.
And if it was important, ifthey really thought it was important, they

(14:30):
weren't just self serving. They wouldmake a movie that was accessible to people.
If you want people to know whathappened to the Native Americans, make
a two hour movie and make itbalanced. And when I say balanced,
I mean have a plot, showthe bad stuff, show someone coming in

(14:50):
and fixing the problem and overcoming hurdles, and have some resolution at the end.
I didn't see the end. Ikind of know what it happed.
I'm not going to to tell youthere was a trial. I missed the
trial. I would like to seethe trial, so someday I'll look at
the trial. I assume they havethe trial, but I left. Okay.
So when I watched the documentary,I noticed one thing that was just,

(15:13):
you know, it's all I reallyneed to know. It's all you
need to know. When they wereshowing the real people that were in this
movie. There's one character in thismovie. His name's Bill Smith, and
the whole movie, they're using BillSmith as a punching bag. Bill Smith
is the worst guy in the movie. He does the worst things. He's

(15:33):
harmful to the Indians, and he'sharmful to Leonardo DiCaprio. He's arrogant,
he is hatable. Okay, allright, fine, And everybody in the
movie is white, is hatable inthe character, and that's kind of the
story. So that's even okay.Of course, tell the story of the

(15:56):
truth. But then when you watchthe documentary about the Osage Indian murders,
Bill Smith was was an Indian.Bill Smith was an Indian. They made
him into a white guy in themovie. Your reaction, Sam, I've

(16:17):
seen quite a few people playing rolesthat they didn't fit as far as the
race or ethnicity goes. He washe was one. It was. He
was a white guy. He portrayedas a white guy. He was a
white guy that married an Indian girl. So they could show you one more
white guy that married an Indian girland harmed her, okay, and then

(16:37):
he then he marries another Indian girl. This one dies, he marries he
marries her sister. But that characterwas not a white person in real history.
That person was a member of theO Sage tribe. So they took
this character and they made him awhite villain when the real character was an

(16:59):
O Sage Indian. But why didthey do that? Well, you know,
we're trying to make a point hereand just just make him a white
guy because it's a little too complicated. We don't want to you know,
we don't want to disparage any ofthese O Sage Indians. They just made
them look stupid. It's what theydid. And there it's not noble.

(17:22):
I don't think there's much nobility atall in this thing. But yeah,
so when I saw that, Igo, oh, I mean, how
do you trust the rest of themovie If they did that, it's not
it's a dramatization. How much ofit are we going to trust? There's
so many films out there that arebased on real life but take creative liberties
in the name of convenience. Yeah, that was very convenient for them,

(17:45):
because they their convenience was we havewe have a story we're telling, and
we have a script prewritten, andthen we have to back everything out of
it that reaches our goal, andwe can't have anything that that conflicts with

(18:07):
our argument. I mean, andyou what about this, Sam, Why
don't you cut Bill Smith out ofit? If you don't want to show
a negative, an Indian negative,negatively portrayed, why do you turn him
into a white guy. Why don'tyou just cut him out of it?
What do you do when you notshow him? Yeah? So anyway,

(18:30):
it's it's it's and you can doall of that, but doing two hours,
all of that is forgivable. Ifyou do it in two hours,
three hours and forty minutes, forgetit. It's like this podcast, this
podcast is going to turn into threehours and forty minutes. But I don't
know. Your feelings on this seemto go pretty deep. We may be

(18:51):
able to fill the time. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, if
you're if you think you're missing outon this, I think that's my point
of the movie is if you thinkyou're missing out by not seeing it,
you're not go to YouTube watch anO Sage Indian documentary terrible story, and
then just forget about forget about Scorseseas a movie maker, just just forget

(19:18):
about it. It's it's and Irealized there's like they're not going to give
him a lot of money for verymany stories, and this is the kind
of story he can get a lotof money for, so he went in
and got the money. But holycow, is it terrible. At the
same time, it's good, goodfilm, liking you know, the first
first parts of it. You're milesis very impressive. All right. I

(19:40):
feel like there's a lot of moviesout there nowadays that are catering to people's
sense of outrage, and I getthe feeling this might be one of them.
It is an outrage movie, andand and it's you know, and
the outrage is beat your beat overthe head with the outrage. And that's
fine. I again, for twohours, that's fine, but not for

(20:02):
two days. All right, let'smove on from this negativity and get into
something more positive, like Netflix learningto took a couple of TV stories.
One of them is Netflix is learningto have shows sponsored. That's their new
thing to make advertising revenue. They'regoing to sponsor shows series and this is
not for that. If you havethe ad free version, you're still going

(20:25):
to be watching shows that are sponsoredby a brand name. And they kind
of act like they invented this.But this is like as old as time,
you know, this is the it'sas old as the crypto dot com
arena or the you know, hostthis Twinkie sun bowl, et cetera.

(20:49):
So, but but what they startedwith is there's a show called Love Is
Blind. Are you familiar with theshow? I'm aware of it. Yes,
I haven't seen it, but everybodyhas been mentioning it. People that
I know watch it and they speakhighly of it. Yeah, so love

(21:11):
is Love is Blind? Some datingshow of some kind. Well, now
it's called the it doesn't exactly rolloff the tongue. It's called the Freedo
Lays Smart Food Love is Blind.Yeah, that's a proper reaction. It's

(21:33):
just a joke. I mean,this guy, why could they come up
with something that like is related tothe show, Like like let's have a
you know, like something about loveor something anything. What does smart foods
freedom Lays have to do with that? Yeah, they're all proud of themselves

(21:53):
too to make a big announcement.It's like, all right, I mean,
there's so much, so much inthe world. A friend of mine
calls it the age of Bungling.Bungling still beginning with like the Iraq War,
you know, the weapons of massdescription or whatever, like the age
of bungling everything bungled. After that, elections, bungled, wars, bungled,

(22:15):
the pandemic bungled, lockdown, bungledthe vaccine bungled everything, mask orders,
mask repealing, bungled bungled bungled.Now we got the free doo Lays,
smart food Love is Blind bungled bungledrollout of a advertising scheme. Okay,

(22:42):
why didn't they just put them thesponsor at the tail end of the
name of the show. Well,maybe they do what I'm you know,
that's what they're calling it in theseadvertisements. Yeah, no, that the
advertisements should be so like Love isBlind brought to you by Smart Foods Freeolay.
Well, after this radio show,they're probably that's probably what they're gonna
do, after they listened to meand start to you know, listen to

(23:07):
reason. Okay, son. Anotherinteresting thing that's that's on the horizon is
all the you know, the Winniethe Pooh movie, the horror film Winnie
the Pooh people. Yes, whyis there Winny the poo horror film?
And why would Disney let this happen? Well, it fell into the public
domain because things like that are like, you know, there's all kinds of

(23:30):
different copyright links, but in generalit's like life of the copyright owner plus
seventy years or ninety five years fromcreation if it's from a business, if
it's owned by corporation. So someonewas clever enough to say, hey,
Winny, the poo's coming out ofthe public domain. Make a horror film.
So they did, made one hundredthousand dollars horror film and it made

(23:51):
two and a half million at thebox office. So somebody made a little
bit of money there. And nowthere's a but I always tell you it's
people. It is not your firstmovie. So whoever made that and I
made a distribution deal, they wouldask me, should I sign this it
seems one sided? Or am Igetting ripped off? I'd go, you
sign that and you make your movie, and then your second movie is where
you're gonna make your money. So, now, how much money do you

(24:11):
think this genius is going to makeon the second movie? Second movie is
going to have a director fee,you know, in the millions, perhaps,
but you know he's gonna pucket alot of money. So he took
a chance in the first one.He didn't make a big deal out of
it, and he's getting rewarded.Good for him. What other movies and
or what other characters are falling intothe public domain soon? Well, here's

(24:33):
a small list Mickey Mouse in twentytwenty four. Pluto, Oh my goodness,
Oh yeah, yeah, Oh,there's going to be so much there.
Yes, and I'll get to youall. There are some limits,
so let me able to read thisto the small list here, and then
then we'll get to a couple ofdetails. Pluto in twenty twenty five,
Donald Duck twenty twenty nine. Coolcounts to mc screwge. You're not probably

(24:56):
not. Superman twenty thirty three,Oh cool, everybody in the Hobbit twenty
thirty three, James Bond twenty thirtyfour. Oh, I can see some
really twisted stuff with him being made. Yeah, Batman twenty thirty four,
Captain Marvel twenty thirty four, TheFlash twenty thirty four, Captain America twenty

(25:18):
thirty six, Aquaman twenty thirty six, and Wonder Woman twenty thirty six.
The legal scholar that wrote this article, I don't necessarily agree with them,
says the limits on something like Supermanwould be, Yeah, you can use
Superman, but you can only usednineteen thirty three Superman. Nineteen thirty three,

(25:44):
Superman couldn't fly yet you can onlyjump tall buildings, so you can't
have your Superman fly. I thinkthat would be a matter a try for
the trier of fact. I don'tthink that's clear. You know, here's
here is Superman. Make them dowhatever you want. Don't bring other characters
and other storylines that are copyrighted.But how do you copyright somebody flying?

(26:07):
You know? How do you like? That's? It falls into the doctrine
of scenes affair. I think whereif he's a superhero, he's going to
have magical powers or superhuman powers.One of those might be flight. That
would be the number one think youwould think of in a superhuman power.
So I disagree with this. Ithink someone could make Captain America or Superman

(26:29):
fly in twenty thirty three. It'ssomeone a little paranoid here and Mickey Mouse.
You're only going to be able todo the Mickey Mouse from nineteen twenty
four and not the one that lateris, you know, wearing a red
outfit and has white, big whitegloves and all that stuff. That one

(26:51):
this article sais you can't because laterthey would, you know, copyright that
one and you can't take it,but the original one they copyright it from
nineteen twenty four. He's all skinny, you know, like steamboat Wi.
Yeah, you can you can makeyou can make a horror film with that.
So okay, that sounds terrifying butdoable. Yeah. Yeah, So

(27:14):
that's coming up and there'll be lotsof lawsuits and we'll cover all of them.
Also in the advertising world is alet's make sure didn't miss anything.
Uh, Jack in the Box hasa horror film. Have you seen this
the restaurant, Yes, well restaurant, I mean loosely using that word.

(27:42):
Jack in the Box has a horrorshort. So you can find this on
YouTube by just typing in Jack inthe Box and horror or Halloween and it'll
come up. It looks like itcosts about six million dollars. It's very,
very well done, and it mightbe the best horror film to be

(28:02):
released this year. So I beena strong year for horror films too.
This man, It's tough to be. It's about a a food truck it's
offering free It's called the Angry MonsterTruck and it's offering fee free Monster tacos

(28:22):
if you dare take one from it. And the movie is called Feeding Time,
so I would this is like myfriend over at In and out Burger.
I was talking to him about this. Now, in and out Burger,
why are they doing this film?Why are they spending six mini let's
give it the number six month.Why are they spending six months? They're
spending six million so they can marketthe taco because the taco's coming back,

(28:45):
the monster taco's coming back. Thatyou know, the Jack in the Box
menu is always changing. They're alwaysyou know, pepper Jack, Chili Burger,
Taco, Monster Taco, New Breakfast, all this stuff, and they
have to market all that stuff becauseit keeps changing, so they need a
six million dollar commercial. In andout Burger, on the other hand,

(29:07):
they never change I'll change your menuat all. So I was kind of
joking of, hey, you gotto make one of these things, and
then I saw then I rethought whatI had said and said, you don't
need this because your menu never changes. So you save the six million dollars
in marketing because everybody already knows,uh what your what's on your menu,
and you don't have to tell peopleyou steal your general you know, minimal

(29:32):
advertising, let people know you're there. You know what advertises for in and
out burger are probably better than anythingis the traffic surrounded by the ones you
drive by, Yeah, in thelong line, because when you see that
and you remember it is so good, all those people are willing to go
through this. So you don't reallyneed a horror film. But the horror
film was good, and maybe thehorror film could be waiting in the line.

(29:56):
I mean, there's a lot ofthings could happen at any at any
fast foods restaurant, but I mean, like the goal at the end of
it all is the delicious. Thething that pulls you out is the in
and out burger. Well, whyI'm saying they don't need a line can
be terrifying. They don't need anything, They just don't need it. People

(30:17):
go there, they might you know, they might need that back east when
they expand, because those people areare they're not like us, and they
don't you know, have the sameaffinity to be in that burger, so
they might want to think about it. Your poor line thing. Maybe Okay,
there's a do you know there's awar going on? Sam, I've

(30:37):
I've heard as such. I've beenburied in my books. So there's a
conflict now at c AA, that'sthe Creative Artist Agency, Uh, where
a top agent Uh forwarded a apost Twitter. It's always gets you know,
that's where that that's where all thesestories start to go bad. And

(31:04):
her name, she's like a superagentlike people love her. She's Tom Cruise's
agent, Madonna's agent, and hername is Maha Dakil. And she forwarded
a post that said, you're currentlylearning who supports genocide? That's the line
for me. She then posted asecond photo caption, what's more heartbreaking than

(31:30):
witnessing genocide and what is the answeris witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.
So you can see where this is. This was her supporting the Palestinians,
but that didn't go over well inHollywood. So she apologized made a
mistake and said she was re educated. She removed the post, and she

(31:56):
had to resign from the internal boardat CIA. I don't know what really
what the internal board is, butshe did pay a price somewhat but not
like the ultimate price. But shemight lose clients. So we have more
news. Sam On rust, thegift that keeps on giving, Rust keeps
going. This is incredible. Yeah, it really is. So here what
we have now is they are theyare we hinted at this last week I

(32:21):
think it was of the week before, and aren't really sure, but they're
going to file charges again, involuntarymanslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin, which means
they think they got it, They'vegot the evidence. They're putting Hi in
front of the grand jury in thegrand jury room, most likely indict him,
and then they'll go through the samestuff as lawyers will say, oh
this is a joke, throw thisout. He's there's no evidence or this

(32:45):
or that. But they say thatthey believe that, based on their lengthy
and detailed investigation, that it isappropriate for a grand jury in New Mexico
to make a decision on whether thecase should proceed. So it's, y
know, we just think that,you know, the grand jury should should
decide and then the sod the chargerscould take up to eighteen months in prison

(33:08):
if he's convicted. But I thinkalso we all know this guy's not gonna
spend a day in jail. AndI think everybody involved except for maybe the
armorer has learned their lesson. Andthen the husband of the victim, the
one who died so someone else wasshot. The husband is now an executive

(33:34):
producer on the new the continuation ofthe film, so he's satisfied. So
I don't know, and I youknow, but as again I have said
about Baldwin is a polarizing figure.So there's probably some people there that don't
like him. And you know,that's another thing. If you want to
get on Twitter like that lady atc AA, tell everybody what we think.

(33:55):
If you really, everyone must knowwhat you think. No, it
was a price to pay for that, So that lady's now a villain in
Hollywood when she was a superagent.Now we have Alec. Baldwin might go
to prison because he just you know, he should have it didn't have been
better off being a little more quiet. But that's hard to do for some

(34:17):
people. I get I had someoneSam, but I had a block on
Facebook. Then I blocked on Twitter. It was like an old girlfriend.
Really what happened? Well, Iall started with Donald Trump and I needed

(34:42):
a hotel in Las Vegas, andI ended up at the Trump Hotel.
It was the cheapest, decent placein town two hundred and forty dollars as
opposed to nine hundred dollars where Iusually stay. So I stayed there.
It was a lovely hotel. AndI don't care if it's Trump's hotel or
not Trump's hotel. I've stayed atthe Plaza Hotel in New York City when
I thought Trump was, you know, the most irritating man on earth,

(35:05):
you know, thirty years ago.So anyway, I stayed another one whose
hotels. And then on Instagram,I didn't flatter him at all. I
just said I stayed at the verypet friendly Trump Hotel. And then everybody
that I know on my social mediais like, oh, very cool,
your dog's so cute in the hoteland stuff like that. And that Trump

(35:27):
Hotel. I tell you, ifyou have a dog, go straight there.
When you go to Las Veigas,they don't even ask you if you
have a dog. They just youhave a dog. That's fine, it's
your business. It can't be morethan fifty pounds. But if you have
a little dog, bringman and theyhave a little dog park, goverront little
poop bags for you. My dogloved it, and everybody commented that's really
nice. You went to see WayneNewton and you have your cute little dog.

(35:51):
And then some like old girlfriend fromlike when I was eighteen years old,
here she comes Trump is a racistfascist, and everybody's like, whoa
like nut, it's just uh,no one's talking like that here. Well
he's going to do this, andhe's going to do that, and he's

(36:13):
uh, and everyone kind of slamsher. And then I just kind of
deleted it, sent her private messageshape, don't do that. And then
then she kept going on and on, and then she found me on LinkedIn.
I did to delete the Instagram,then I added the link and I
didn't delink delete the the LinkedIn,but I it was so bad, Sam,

(36:34):
I had to report that the messagesthat were to me now they became
ad hominin attacks. And I didn'tdefend or it's anything political. I said,
just don't say anything it's not positiveon my thing. And then how
did I finally had a block herand she she wrote back, please don't
bok me. I I want tolet's just agree to disagree. I'll never

(36:57):
bring it up again. And Igo, you know what, as a
married guy, shouldn't have his oldgirlfriend sending the messages in commenting anyway,
So I think I'm let's just not, you know, communicate. Then the
vitrioll came out. You're an idiot, You're probably a Nazi. You probably
liked Hitler and like, you know, I know, and you know,

(37:17):
bringing up things from like eighteen whenI was eighteen. I'm sixty now,
the girls bringing up things from whenI'm eighteen and telling me that I fell
short. So I just, youknow, to block that one. Okay,

(37:38):
what else our ex's look at usthat we fell short? Yes,
I mean I get it, andI'm sure I did, and I apologized
during this conversation. You go apologizefor however I hurt you when I was
eighteen years old. Trust me,I'm a I'm a different man and didn't

(37:59):
I fell short again? But nowI feel really good blocking. Blocking is
pretty fun. It's like in theend. Okay, So what I got
a little bit of news here fromUniversal Music. They're finally a seventy five
million dollar lawsuit against Amazon backed AIfirm called I don't know AIBS or whatever.

(38:22):
I forgot what they called. Butso they're they're suing this AI company
because the AI company is ingesting lyricslike they ingest lyrics like Rolling Stones lyrics
and Beatles lyrics and stuff like that, and they get it all and then
you can type in, hey,you write me a song that's like the
Beatles. Now, all these publishers, Universal Music, Concord Music Group,

(38:47):
I think they handle a bunch ofmy publishing. And a company called Abkco
I never heard of. They arein court, Tennessee and they're going after
this AI company saying you're you know, you can't do this, So you
can't take copyrighted works and make copiesof them and manipulate them and spit them
out as you know, derivative works. I guess they would call them.

(39:07):
I didn't hear the see them usethat term, but that's what I would
call them, derivative works maybe orsam is it this? What if I
give you? What if you gobuy copies of all these records and then
you go home and you write asong that's like these because you're influenced by
them. Now are they going tosue you? Then? Maybe? Probably

(39:30):
not unless the songs actually like matchup with the songs that I'm influenced by
and like like literally stealing from them. Yeah, exactly, And that's another
question for the tryer of fact.Are these songs stolen or are they influence
and the robots writing them as opposedto some other person could write them,

(39:50):
And how do they know that?But they're just saying the fact that you
ingested them in into your software isthe copyright infringement, and they want to
block that from happening in the future, and they want these guys to pay
millions of dollars for doing it already. I don't know if we want to
live in a world where we haveto halt the creative possibilities in the world

(40:10):
of artificial intelligence because these guys publishersare mad. I'm a publisher. I
own a lot of publishing. I'mnot mad. I'm just like, well,
let's see where this goes. Sowe'll find well, that's just brand
new. We'll we'll we'll follow itin the in the future. The last
thing I'll talk about is the sagafter strike, which is really it's still

(40:35):
going on and it doesn't look likeit's going to end anytime soon. And
the big problem is, in caseyou're worried or you're your care is the
actors, the screen Actors Guild.Full disclosure. I'm a member of that
guild. They are asking for tobe paid a certain amount of money for
every subscriber that the streamers have.I think they started out a dollar and

(41:05):
now they're not like fifty seven centsor something for every subscriber, and not
for every person that watched it,like a number for like a rating point
for everyone that watched the show.No, they want this money for every
subscriber. Then they want to takethat money and put it in a fund

(41:29):
and distribute it to whoever they thinkshould get it, and that's usually where
the their corruption comes. But that'swhat they want. In the studios like
Netflix saying no, we're not goingto do that, And one of their
arguments is these things already lose money. Netflix is the only one that's making
money, and they took them.They had to spend thirty billion dollars before

(41:51):
they started making money. Do youknow that's him? Yeah. Yeah,
they had to invest in a lotof different things, thirty billion. It's
not like they got that back.It's just kind of profitable now. So
they're saying, look, this iseverything's going down, and now you want
us to give you eight hundred milliondollars a year and just not going to
do it. And we will tryto find some way to when we have

(42:14):
hit shows to pay for things thatare doing. And these the actors don't
want to bunch. They just wantto. They want to they want to
get their foot in the door,like the Writers Guild died with their things.
Get the foot in the door,like they're saying, just give us
that, even if some people aresaying they might even accept like ten cents
per subscriber, but they want toget that in there so that they can

(42:35):
keep raising that every time. Andis it is that the the way to
solve the strike? Personally, Iwant the actors to get as much money
as they can get, but Idon't want them to be harmed. I'm
afraid with this kind of hardball thing. If you do get what you want,
because they just want to end thestrike, they're going to make stuff

(42:57):
with foreign countries and foreign actors andpeople that aren't in the Screen Actors Guild
and people that aren't and they're justgonna, you know, because that's their
their option to just go outside ofyou and not use you. Will they
have worse actors? Yes, Butif they want to save their business.
If they think it's saving their business, or if they're just too greedy,

(43:19):
they can do that. So yougotta be careful. If you ask for
too much, they'll just say,well, like I talked to another writer
last night at a party and hesaid, yeah, we're all, you
know, back to work, butthere's not going to be much work.
Ask them, I go, isthat because of like the theory that now
that they've given these concessions though,instead of being six hundred scripted programs next
year, they'll be three hundred Andhe goes, yeah, exactly, they'll

(43:42):
be less, so less people havejobs. Is that what they were striking
for? For less jobs? It'ssomething you got to think about. I
don't want to scare you, Sam, I'm terrified. And it's Halloween time,
so it's okay, okay, whatare you going to be for Halloween?
Where All Yankovic excellent choice. I'mgonna be, uh well, I'm

(44:07):
going to a party that's a theme. The theme of the party is Adam
Sandler movies. So you know there'sa character of Steve Buskimi plays and something
called something Hubby. I liked hisoutfit. I'm gonna be that no one's
gonna know who I am. Iprobably have to, you know, make

(44:27):
a sign or something. But Idon't do props, no prop content costumes.
I like to do costumes where ifsomeone takes my picture in it,
it might not look like a costume. Did you know my theory of activity,
Well, here's my theory on Halloweenfor adults. Halloween used to not
be for adults, used to beonly for kids. Now it's for adults.

(44:49):
And this is a whole new worldwe live in. We also live
in the world of the Internet.A giant percentage of photos taking out at
parties are taken on hallowe It couldbe like ninety percent of the part of
the photos from parties are on Halloweenparties. Maybe it's eighty percent, maybe
it's seventy five. So any ifyou add up your life, most of

(45:13):
your Internet photo life is going tobe you in a costume. So I
reject that proposal. So I don'twant to be I don't mind getting photographed
for the Internet. I care.But if I'm wearing a you know,
conteent for us costume, or I'ma like a member of the village people
or whatever, I don't want thaton the internet, like you know,

(45:37):
in like over my lifetime, likeseventy Halloween costumes floating around there. Enough
of that. You gotta be ahusband, You got to, you gotta
play along, you gotta you gottado it. Okay, So excep for
today. We will see you againnext Sunday. I don't forget the Vandals.
Christmas show tickets are on sale.There's a show in Ventura at the

(46:00):
vent of the Majestic Venture Theater andon December twenty second, and a show
on December twenty third at the Houseof Blues, Anaheim. So I hope
you're coming if you haven't seen thevandas Christmas Show something to behold. I
will now leave you with just ataste of the greatest song ever written.
It's all O.
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