September 21, 2025 • 37 mins
Joe Escalante's weekly plunge into the business end of showbiz. This week: Joe goes in-depth into the events leading to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, following the death of Charlie Kirk, as well as the role the government and the FCC has played in the process. Joe also discusses the latest box office numbers (Japanese Anime Demon Slayer movie is #1), as well as the most recent movies he's seen from his Letterboxd.
There's another Elvis movie on Netflix, and Disney settles a class action suit from cast members to the tune of $233 million! Hopefully, this leads to better conditions for the workers at Disneyland!
There's another Elvis movie on Netflix, and Disney settles a class action suit from cast members to the tune of $233 million! Hopefully, this leads to better conditions for the workers at Disneyland!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
And now it's time for Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood.
If by Hollywood you mean Burbank across the street promo
meaners Nitzel that serves beer.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good evening America.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yes, we are back here with the business affairs of
Hollywood every Sunday right here in k E. I B
eleven fifty on your AM dial. A lot going on,
not much of the box office. We'll get into that,
but wow, let's start with the Jimmy Kimmel because you
might want to hear what I have to say about it,
(00:44):
because why not? I want to hear what I have
to say about it. Jimmy Kimmel, Okay, funny guy. Not
gonna say he's not funny, very funny guy, but for
some reason he fell into a trap.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I think that trap.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Was I feel like I'm kind of undeserving of all
this fame, accolation and money for just joking around on stage.
I mean, how important is that people want to be important?
I think that's the main driving force in most people's lives.
(01:23):
And if you realize that that people want to be important,
you can make people feel important and they will like you. Now,
some people, let's just stick with entertainers. A lot of
entertainers have such a desire to feel important. They feel
like they're going to use their platform to change the world.
And even though this guy was hired to tell jokes
(01:46):
and make people feel a little bit comfortable before they
went to sleep at night, like Johnny Carson, did they think, well,
you know, I've got to be more than that, because
you know the world. Maybe it's the Internet. I don't know.
I've got to be more than that because people are,
you know, depending on me to use this platform for
(02:08):
important things, and I have such an influence.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I've got to do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Okay, Well, the problem starts when this celebrity believes that
they have all the answers and they know the right thing,
and if you disagree with that, you're evil.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
That's just not really going to work out very well.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Ever.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It's like saying I like the Rams, you like the Raiders,
the Rams are good, you're evil.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I like.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Pepperoni pizza, you like Pineapple. Pepperoni's the best. People who
like Pineapple evil. It's no different. You like Donald Trump,
I don't like him. I like Joe Biden. People who
like Donald Trump evil? Really, how do you know I mean,
(03:01):
there's so many things going on in government, you're like, Okay,
the Palestinians, they're right, I don't know, the Jews, they're right.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I could look into it really deeply and go, here's
my opinion, but in the end, who knows. Now you
could say, well, this guy lived in Palestine, or this
guy lived in Israel, or this guy worked for Donald Trump,
or this guy worked for Joe Biden. So they know,
(03:34):
But okay, I don't know. There's always something more to
the story. So to profess that you know everything and
everybody else that disagrees with you is wrong is you know,
maybe okay in the scholarly world, but when you're the
host of a late night TV show that is supposed
to be having something for everybody in the country, you're
(03:54):
going to run into a trouble. And that's exactly what
he did. So specifically, Jimmy Kimmel said that the guy
who killed Charlie Kirk is a Maga Republican, And there's
a lot of people trying to get that out that
he's a Maga Republican. But I don't know who would
(04:15):
know for sure at the beginning, at least So I
don't know why someone would say that, And they would
only say that because they want to reinforce their thing
that they have the answers. They are right and you
were wrong, and if you don't disagree with them, then
you're evil.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Now, in the.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
News of Charlie Kirk first broke out, Yeah, there was
a lot of people saying that guy is a Republican
because his parents were Republicans and they were Mormons. Obviously
he's a Mormon if his parents. Have you ever met
am How many Mormons do you know that follow the
Mormon religion that are like, you know, ones that you
associate with, you know, their parents are Mormon and they're
(04:58):
you know, there's so many of them are just not.
They just didn't want to carry it on. I've got
a lot of friends that did carry it on and
they're very happy, but there's so many that aren't. So
I don't know why people would jump to that conclusion.
But of course they want to reinforce their thing that
you know, pizza with pineapple is good and pizza with
pepperoni is evil. So he did this, he said, this guy,
(05:23):
anybody who it's more than just saying I believe this
guy is a Republican or a maga guy. It's like,
you know, the way he says it is mockingly sarcastic,
condescending and smug, saying these buffoons over here wasting their
(05:44):
time trying to prove that this guy was anything but
one of them. So this was pretty much after enough
news came out to where you would at least question
whether it was true that this guy was a mega Republican.
There was plenty. The guy's got ten writers. Somehow they
(06:04):
let him go on. So you got to wonder what
is it about this program where they they where they
believe it's okay too after the enough facts have been
out there that say like, wow, I don't know he
had a trans girlfriend, and he had all these Antifa
(06:24):
writings on his bullets some of the when you see
that stuff, you go, wow, we don't really know about
this guy. Is this guy mocking this stuff or is
he for real antifa? Trantifa it's a new word I heard,
I don't you know, So you just there's not enough there.
So I don't know why all ten writers are having
any writers they would say they have would think it's
(06:47):
okay to come out and definitively not only say that
this guy's mega, but also mock anyone who would disbelieve that.
And that seems to me, that's what I got out
of it. It's like, if you believe this, you're an
idiot that you know, the whole crowds joining in if
you think he's anything but one of them. I mean,
these people are just nuts, you know, wasting their time.
(07:10):
So you feel like you're a fool if you disagree
with him, because he's right. So the it got him
into trouble because the way television works, and as you
might know, I was, you know, in the thick of
it at CBS for many years. We have CBS or
ABC is the same thing.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
You are.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You're a network and you shoot your program out of
the country and they have to be picked up by affiliates.
So you make deals with all these affiliates, and you
want enough affiliates to cover the whole country. So ABC's
got their affiliates. You know, when you go on vacation,
you see, oh look, ABC's not on channel seven anymore,
(07:53):
it's on channel four or something. So ABC's got their affiliates,
and they own some of them. They're called owned and
operated ono's. They own some of them. They don't own
all of them. They can't. So it's too much money.
There's too many affiliates, I mean, it's too many cities,
so local. So they license their program to local stations,
(08:14):
local affiliates, and they are owned by either a conglomerate
of companies like Nextstar or Sinclair Television, or they're owned
by maybe even a family, just an individual. Family might
own the ABC affiliate in uh, you know, Peoria, Illinois.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Who knows.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
But this is this is the business model. Now, when
we come back, I'm going to let you know whether
these affiliates must carry the program from ABC, or if
they can deviate and say I'm not going to air that,
or if they don't want to.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Joe's Scalante Live from Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Oh, air breathers, this is Fungebob square Pants, and you
are filling your ear hold with Joe Ascalonte.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
We are back, Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood by Hollywood
you mean per A Bank. Okay, so we're talking about
Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel, the TV show is fed out
over the airwaves through affiliates. Now, if it's an owned
and operated affiliate, I mean owned by ABC, they got
to carry everything. That's just they're gonna They would never
have an excuse. They'd be fired for not unless there
(09:19):
was like a local emergency or you know, something really
crazy happened. Now, if it's not owned and operated affiliate
and it's owned by someone else, they have a contract
that says, will we promise to air all your programming
unless there's some content in there that is this obscene, offensive,
(09:42):
or would be harmful to our community standards or violated
community standards in our local community. Because everybody knows that
that people like in Salt Lake City are different than
the people in New York City and they have different
community standards, so they have an escape clause. And in
this case, when Jimmy Kimmel went so far as to
(10:03):
at that point in the cycle of the Charlie Kirk
news story, still trying to hammer away at the point
that his political enemies are responsible for killing Charlie Kirk
rather than his political allies, which is an outright political statement,
(10:26):
Bill Mars said it was wrong. Bill marsh said that
was wrong to say that because it just wasn't true.
So other people are saying, well, I don't, you know,
I don't see anything bad with what he said or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But I think we got to take Bill Maher's.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Viewpoint seriously because he's kind of that he's on the left,
but he's got you know, right tendencies and something, so
he's like in the middle of the road, maybe an
arbitrator that people would trust. Bill Maher said it's wrong,
it wasn't true, and it was politically self serving. Like
if you're up there and there's a I mean, just
(11:04):
don't talk about it if you think it hurts your car.
If you're so into your cause that you go that
the news comes out and something hurts your cause. Here's
my advice to Jimmy Kimmel. Just don't talk about it.
Tell a joke instead, rather than saying, let's mention it anyway. However,
let's use our taxpayer supported format owned by the people,
(11:28):
and let's use this format to tell people a lie
and try to twist them to believe the opposite of
what is true because it is in lined with our
political beliefs. Okay, now, I'm not saying that's what the
affiliates thought in their community standards are violated by that,
but they did call Bob Iger, the president of Disney,
(11:51):
and said, hey, we're not going to run Next Star.
First called, they said, we're not going to run this
this show anymore because it's over the top. I mean
not And what I'm hearing it wasn't just for this
one incident. It was the totality of the of what
Jimmy Kimmel does by using his show to support a
(12:13):
certain political belief and never ever do having guests that
would be popular with the people he doesn't agree with. So,
I mean, the affiliates are just saying, our communities, our
viewers don't want this. Now what happens when they don't
(12:36):
show it. When they don't show it, they can't then
then ABC doesn't get the advertisement from it. So ABC
gets it. We're going to give you this TV show. Okay,
We're going to pay you some affiliate fees to play it,
and we're going to give you some advertising.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Space.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
We're going to take these many minutes and this affiliates
can have these many minutes.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You can sell those.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Now, Look, I'm giving you a hot If I'm giving
you a hot program like Dancing with the Stars or
American Idol or CSI Miami or whatever. You're gonna be
able to sell that advertising for a lot of money.
I'm given that to you. I'm giving you an opportunity, okay.
So and in turn the affiliates saying, well, I'm giving
you all these other minutes, which are more minutes than
the affiliate gets. I'm giving you these minutes where you
(13:23):
can sell advertising.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Now, when they take that away, a whole station group
that has twenty or thirty stations, you've taken away, you
have to go back to the advertisers who paid. Advertisers
pay at the upfronts. They go and they pay. They say,
I'm going to buy all these hours of the Voice
for fifteen hundred dollars a minute or whatever. And if
(13:48):
you if if if you get you know, two million
people per hour. If you get less than two million people,
you have to give me back credits and put my
ads on other shows too. So it's a gamble, or
you can buy them at the last minute when you
kind of later in the season, when you see what's
(14:09):
popular and what's not. That's like the spot market. I
think they call it something. And then you say, oh,
I'm going to buy them, but they're going to be
more expensive. You could get a bargain by buying them
at the beginning of the year. But if you buy
them and they don't deliver the promised amount of people,
they got to give money back. So now ABC is going,
wait a second, we have to give all the money
back for the people that the next Tel used to
deliver to us because we promised our advertisers that they
(14:32):
would get up the whole Nextel audience. Oh my gosh,
we're so screwed. Now, Sinclair Television calls them and says, hey, Bob,
you probably know what I'm calling about. Yeah, we're not
going to run Jimmy Kimmel anymore either. The guy's out
of his mind. I mean, our community standards have been violated.
(14:52):
It's gross. Okay, now you lost Sinclair. Now you lost
all that money. Now you're losing millions. The show already
loses money because it's a late night show and they're
very expensive and bloated to produce, especially in their like
eighteenth year or whatever this is. So you're already losing money.
Now you can't even get any any advertising money that
you are you have to give back advertising, So you're
losing money all over the place. Okay, so you get
(15:15):
you're out of there. You got to get rid of
this guy.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Then the head of the FCC is hearing about all this,
and he's saying, oh, yeah, this guy's.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
An idiot.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
He's using he's using government airwaves for political propaganda for
his for the Democratic Party. I mean, that's what that's
the position of the FCC guy. That's that's nominated by
Donald Trump. People voted to have an FCC guy in
there like that that would say things like that. So
there he is, he's doing his job. The Next Star
people in these Sinclair people are more worried about their
community standards. But this guy saying, you are violating the
(15:55):
FCC laws. The FCC has licensed you these airwaves. The
airwaves come from from the federal government and they're by
the people, and if you're using them for a democratic boondoggle, yeah,
we could revoke your license. It's possible. But the Next
Star and the Sinclair had already pulled their the program
(16:20):
off the air, and Bob Iger that was enough for
him to say, I can't make money this way. I'm
losing money. We can't lose money this way, so we're
going to suspend the show. Put something else on and
hopefully those affiliates will show what we're going to put
on and then we can still continue to sell the advertising.
So it's one hundred percent a money thing.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
If you want to say it's a censorship thing, well,
the FCC guy didn't do anything, but he did say
the guy could lose his license, and of course ABC
doesn't want to lose their license, so that would make
him shiver with fear. But they already had enough reasons
to pull it off the air because these the affiliates
(17:03):
had said they weren't going to air it. So they're
just millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars flying
out the door. You got to do something, you panic,
You say, okay, we're putting it off the ear. We're
going to put something on there that's uh safe, and
call those affiliates back and say, well, you show this
so we can still keep our advertising revenue and deliver
and we don't have to give back so much of
these dollars of these ad revenue spots, these ad spots,
(17:23):
we don't have to give back. They call them make goods.
The make goods are you didn't make you have to
make good on the the and the eyeballs you promised.
They don't want to do that, so they already enough
to pull it, and then the government gets in and
then everybody starts screaming censorship. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that when we come back right here.
(17:45):
Joe Scolante Live from Hollywood. Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood.
We aren't back the two hours of the business, end
up show business. Okay, we're talking about the Kimmel thing,
and we're talking about how much money was lost when
the two station groups, Sinclair and Nexstar pulled the show
(18:08):
from the air. This was definitely enough to get the
show suspended. Absolutely, you have to cover the whole country
to get the eyeballs that you promised the advertisers. And
if the station groups entire it's not just one station's
whole groups of stations. If they pull out of it,
you cannot deliver the eyeballs you promised your advertisers got.
(18:32):
So there's a panic. You're going to pull it no
matter what, and pull it, and then you're going to
try to talk to the station groups and say, okay,
what can we do negotiate? Go back to Jimmy Kimmel
and say what can you change? Can you apologize? All
that kind of stuff, And I think that's all they
were saying, that they wanted for him to apologize. But
I think the guy is just in a trap where
he's just so influenced by his Hollywood friends that he's
(18:54):
got to be the standard bearer for a political movement
that is very popular in Hollywood. To me, not only
is it a poor business decision and does, it's just
it's not brave. It's not brave to go out on
television and say I hate Donald Trump. So it's not
impressive to me. If you hate Donald Trump, fine, I
(19:19):
don't care. It's not that you have an opinion. The
next guy has an opinion.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Who cares.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
But it's not brave to go out and say in Hollywood,
I hate Donald Trump. It's like low hanging fruit. It
doesn't take a high IQ. In fact, in his position,
it takes a low IQ because you look at all
the people he put out of work for his belief
that he had the answers and the answers and the
opinions of others were evil.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So that's that's his stick. That's a hill he's dying on.
I am right.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Other people who disagree with me are evil, and so
I'm going to die on this hill. And now look
how many people lost their jobs. They're going to be
paid for like one more week and then they're out
of work. Now what did that do for anybody?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
No one.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He's not moving the political dial. I mean, maybe he is,
but he shouldn't be using the airwaves to do it.
It's wrong. So we'll see what happens. I mean, I
hope he comes back. I hope he apologizes. I hope
his show becomes less political and he does more TV
because I think he's got I think he's funny. He's
(20:30):
got a funny staff, and it's a great format. And uh,
I just hope. I hope he bounces back, and I
hope he learns something from this. Okay, kind of exhausting, right,
So let's go to the box office.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
How's that.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Do you see any movies this week? I did, of
course I did. I did it because I do it
because I love you. I want to give you my opinion.
I just want to recommend movies, you know, all right?
This weekend in the box office, Number one Demon Slayer
Commitsu no Yabo, the movie Infinity Castle.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
So that's two weeks at the top of the box
office for this Demon Slayer thing. Let's just you know,
Japanese spirits fighting each other and like that. Number two,
the movie hym from Universal number three. I haven't seen it,
The Conjuring there Were Last right, still a number Then
(21:30):
what a joggernaut one hundred and fifty one million dollars
Downtown Abbey sixty three six six million, three hundred thousand
for the weekend thirty one million. That's a lot for
a movie like that.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Let's talk a.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Little bit about we'll get through this. We'll talk the
Long Walk. It's horror stuff. That's from lions Gate. Number five,
A big, bold, beautiful journey. It's kind of like, oh,
what is it, like a rom com or something like that.
Doing pretty good with three and a half million, but
I guess you want to be higher than that in
(22:10):
your opening week. The Senior from Angel Studios Christian movie,
That one enters the charts at number seven two zero
point seven million. Toy Story. I guess that's some kind
of revival. And then Sit and Sound number nine, Citan
(22:32):
Sound presents Daniel Live. This is a weird new thing.
They're putting on like religious plays, musicals in a theater somewhere.
They're filming it and they're showing it at the theater.
And this one did one point three million dollars worth
of box office this week and they probably only showed
it on one night. From Fathom Events Number ten, Weapons
from Warner Brothers still hanging in there. With one hundred
(22:53):
and forty nine million, that's pretty good. I think that
was a good movie. It looks expensive, I mean, but
I'm sure it didn't cost one hundred and forty nine
But you know, when I say it costs one hundred
and forty nine million, does that mean they're going to
make money if they make one hundred and forty nine
million at the box office. No, because they have to
pay for all the prints in the advertising, and so
they need more than that.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Maybe double.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Okay, So Downtown Abbey I saw it. When you're married.
This is the kind of movies you go see. I
don't mind, though I like Downtown Abbey. My wife loves it,
and then I love to watch her love a movie.
And then you know, I mean, maybe I wanted to
(23:36):
see something else that I went to see Downtown Abbey Okay,
so yeah, it added over six million dollars in its
second weekend. It's down a little bit but still in
wide release. And the story is the Crawley family and
the staff are you know, are all set up for
one last chapter centered on the future of the estate
(23:58):
and the shifting social order. Long running relationships and responsibilities resolved,
a few surprises designed to give major characters a final
curtain call without leaving or leaning on big twists or
franchise reboots or anything. Now, what I liked about this
film is the scandal of the castle at the time
(24:20):
is one of them got a divorce. So the daughter
of the American is like two like the head of
the manors the one guy and his wife is an American
and their daughter got a divorce. First she was a widow,
and then she married some playboy and then.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
She divorced him.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Okay, this divorce was the biggest scandal to ever happened
in England from the way this movie goes. And then
when word got out that she was divorced, she was
at a party and someone brought news of it and
she had to leave the party. They said, you have
to leave the party because we've now found out you're divorced,
(24:59):
and there were some high profile royal family people were
coming and if they saw a divorced woman in this party,
it could be a scandal that the royal family could
not recover from being in the same room with a
divorced woman. So I immediately instituted a rule in my house.
I told my wife that we we we have to
(25:20):
be careful and not and make sure that no divorced
women are ever seen in our house if we ever
get together, because some other person could be scandalized by
their presence.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So, you know, this movie is.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Is a it's a safe bet for focused features to
do it. You got a high profile ip these period.
These people don't make a lot of money because they're all,
you know, kind of their their their salaries are kind
of there. It's a franchise, so they've they're all on paper.
They're all kind of wrapped up to do whatever they
have to do.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
There.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
They already know.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
The number, so there's no surprises, there's no visual effects.
You know, you just stick it in the theaters for
a while and then it's gonna go on Peacock and
then people will watch it on Peacock because and then
they'll watch the other two movies because they got to,
you know, be completists and see them all. And then
they're gonna go back and watch the TV series and
(26:18):
so it's a big winner. And uh, and it's also
a counterprogramming. It's all these horror films that are out there.
I mean when I looked at this late movies that
were available for me to go see with my wife,
I looked at them all it was like horror, horror, Uh,
Japanese cartoon. I'm like, you know what Downton Abbey is
(26:39):
for us. It's directed by a guy named Simon Curtis
who did My Week with Maryland. Maybe you saw that.
Stars Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dackery, and a cast of hundreds.
So we'll see how it does in the next couple
of weeks. It's supposed to. It's it's kind of these
kind of movies. Don't expend, don't don't don't depend on
a big, front loaded campaign. They're just like, yeah, I
(27:00):
sitting them in the theaters for a while. Let the
numbers creep up as people get around to seeing it.
For lack of a better way to describe it, and
let's take a break and we will come back after
the traffic with more and Joe Scalante live from Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Right here on k E.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I by Joe Ascalanti.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Here's my lawyer.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
You don't want money.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
We are back Joe Scalante live from Hollywood, and let's
talk about the King. There's another movie about Elvis on Netflix.
I don't know if you've seen it. You've probably seen
it in your queue or something, but it's called Return
of the King, The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley. Now,
(28:05):
first of all, when I see Elvis Presley thing, I
want to know if the estate is involved. Priscilla Presley
is in this, so I feel a little bit better
about that. I don't need these hatchet jobs or scandalous things.
Elvis Presley's very complicated, heroic figure, and I'd rather have
his family involved. That's just my preference. This one concentrates
(28:27):
on the nineteen sixty eight NBC Comeback Special, you know,
when you wore the big leather jacket and went out
there to relaunch his stagnant career, which was kind of
suffering from all these terrible movies that Colonel Tom Parker,
his manager.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Made.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I don't know if you saw the Baz Luhrmann film
where they you know, they really villainized Colonel Tom Parker
in that one, and he just seems like he was
just really gross, a really gross carnival type manager. In
a full disclosure, the Vandals, my band used to be
managed by an employee of Colonel Tom Parker. It's like
(29:04):
Colonel Tom Parker used to manage Ricky Nelson, and then
Ricky Nelson's tour manager was the manager of the Vandals.
And so I remember I was just trying to justify
to my dad why I was choosing this music career
over law school. I told him, I go, well, in essence,
I am being managed by Colonel Tom Parker, Dad, So
let's you know, just let's all just sit back and
(29:24):
absorb that. Okay, I've come a long way anyway. The
film is on Netflix right now. It's been there since well,
I think I've been there for a while, longer than
I knew. Directed by Jason hare Here here don't how
to pronounce that, but he is known for the Last Dance.
(29:44):
That's a sports film with I was talking, it's like
Chicago Bulls, like nineteen ninety seven ninety eight championships and
it's yeah, it's got some like high profile interview people
in it, like Priscilla Presley or Bruce Springsteen, and it
(30:08):
tracks how Elvis, after years of these assembly line film roles,
he defied his manager, Colonel Tom Parker and he who
wanted him to do some Save Christmas TV program and
he insisted on doing a raw back to my roots
performance with the leather jacket and an intimate audience, a
(30:29):
live band, and this became the pivot that revived his
career and his public image. And I lived through this
because Elvis was, yeah, becoming kind of silly because of
these movies in nineteen sixty eight. I'm five years old,
fully aware of Elvis Presley at five years old, and
(30:49):
you know, older brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles.
I mean, that's you know, it's all people talked about
when this thing came about. But then after that, you know,
there was a there was a decline line eventually, and
then he became Fat Elvis, which.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Was I didn't care. I liked fat Elvis. I liked it.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I had one night, one of my one of the
saddest evenings of my life is my friend, a neighborhood guy,
was going to take me to see Elvis at the Forum,
and my mom, well, she overlooked the fact that this
guy was an older guy in the neighborhood that wanted
to take a young kid ten years old or whatever
(31:30):
to a concert. I Mom didn't care about that. She
trusted the guy. But then she just said, you're not
going to Inglewood, you know, because that's why our family
like kind of came from Inglewood before we moved to
Orange County and my mom on my mom's side there
from Inglewood, and she goes, you're not going to Inglewood
(31:51):
at nighttime. You're not, So I didn't get to go,
so that ticket went unused. The I recommended this movie
to the singer of Sublime where I Manage.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Because it was just.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
There was just so much information there about the pitfalls
of being a rock star. Maybe I just wanted him
to always say, hey, could be worse. Your manager could
be Colonel Tom Park. But a movie like this for
Netflix very good business decision because even though it's music,
(32:28):
a lot of music licenses to be purchased. You're basically
dealing on this one concert, the nineteen sixty at NBC
Comeback Special, and you get the music from that and
you if you got if you license that whole thing,
you can use that music the whole time. You hardly
need any more music. And the you know, clearances for
the footage, you know, all part of one package. Do
(32:51):
some interviews. You got a winner on your hands. And
here's another thing about movies like this on Netflix and
the business' is supposed to be a business show, right, These
movies are good because when Netflix makes their own original
script in movies, you have all these localization costs, and
localization would be it's in the streaming business. It's how
(33:13):
do we do this for the local areas in India
and in South America, in China, I guess they don't
do China probably, but you know in Japan and stuff
like that, they have to do these localization things. So
they got to pay to have them dubbed. Do they
go dub or do they do the subtitles. Some places
would prefer subtitles and that works for that community. But
(33:38):
in Latin America they love dubbing. Dubbing is great to them.
Just please double ay these things. But that's very expensive,
and you think about it, dubbing you have to just
get in a computer and put the words at the
bottom of the screen.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I've done it.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I've done it on countless episodes by myself creating the files,
uploading the files to the network. It's a one man
operation dubbing. You got to hire actors, folly artists, and
casting has to take place, and then you got to
you know, you have to make a new script when
you're double someone's got to comport that with the new
(34:12):
language and the and the expressions. It's it's a very
very expensive process. And Netflix, for a other movies, they
have to budget this. And then if you're making a
new movie for them, they might they might say, like,
I'll buy your Elvi special because I don't have these
localization costs, and I'll give you this amount of money.
But if you bring me a stupid scripted thing that
I got to deb all over the planet to ten
(34:35):
twenty thirty different languages, it's going to cost me. So
if I buy that, you're not going to make much money.
So that's a little business decision they might make. Okay,
now let's go to some heavy heavy Disney news. Disneyland news.
A two and thirty three million dollar wage lawsuit settlement
has been approved, so California judge has given final approval
(34:58):
to a two hundred and thirty three million dollars class
action settlement between Walt Disney Company and more than fifty
one thousand cast members. Let's do some math. Fifty three million,
it's like forty five hundred dollars a cast member if
lawyers got nothing, So whatever that was, you see how
(35:22):
and let me tell you the lawyers are going to
take forty percent of that. So yeah, the cast member
is going to get, you know, two thousand dollars to
twenty six entred So you know, it sounds like a
lot of money, But what does it mean to the
actual employee?
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Not a lot.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
But they probably got a raise out of that and
some better working conditions. So hopefully the workers had a
ledge that Disney failed to meet Anheim's local minimum wage law,
which demands higher wages is for businesses receiving tax subsidies
in the city. Burn Okay, if you're going to get
tax subsidies from the city, you have to.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Pay more money. So that's a good one. It's a
good law. I like it.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Under the settle, about one hundred and seventy nine million
goes to the affected workers. Roughly seventeen million to California's
Labor in Workforce Development Agency to be embezzled and misspent
on stupid stuff, and thirty five million to attorneys. Okay,
well the attorneys didn't take it all. Disneyland says now
(36:21):
that ninety six percent of its cast now make more
than twenty two dollars an hour above the current Anaheim
minimum under measure l Well, they only had to sue
their asses raggedy to get it. Some is one of
the largest wage disputes resolved for disney Land, and it
shows the legal risk for large employers when local wage
(36:41):
laws aren't followed. Because Disneyland, how much did they spend
on lawyers for that? Just given them their money? That place,
is it? Okay, let me tell you something. I like Disneyland. Okay,
I like a Disney corporation. Yeah, they're a little woke, fine,
but in the grand scheme of things, they've delivered amazing
(37:02):
things to people. But they make so much money at
that park. Give it to the workers, okay. Make it
the hardest place to get a job because they pay
so much. When I grew up, like I said, I
don't have time to tell you about when I grew up.
But anyway, those guys paying some money. All right, that's
(37:23):
it for this round. Joe Ascalante Live from Hollywood. I
now leave you with just a taste of the greatest
song ever written.
And now it's time for Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood.
If by Hollywood you mean Burbank across the street promo
meaners Nitzel that serves beer.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good evening America.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yes, we are back here with the business affairs of
Hollywood every Sunday right here in k E. I B
eleven fifty on your AM dial. A lot going on,
not much of the box office. We'll get into that,
but wow, let's start with the Jimmy Kimmel because you
might want to hear what I have to say about it,
(00:44):
because why not? I want to hear what I have
to say about it. Jimmy Kimmel, Okay, funny guy. Not
gonna say he's not funny, very funny guy, but for
some reason he fell into a trap.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I think that trap.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Was I feel like I'm kind of undeserving of all
this fame, accolation and money for just joking around on stage.
I mean, how important is that people want to be important?
I think that's the main driving force in most people's lives.
(01:23):
And if you realize that that people want to be important,
you can make people feel important and they will like you. Now,
some people, let's just stick with entertainers. A lot of
entertainers have such a desire to feel important. They feel
like they're going to use their platform to change the world.
And even though this guy was hired to tell jokes
(01:46):
and make people feel a little bit comfortable before they
went to sleep at night, like Johnny Carson, did they think, well,
you know, I've got to be more than that, because
you know the world. Maybe it's the Internet. I don't know.
I've got to be more than that because people are,
you know, depending on me to use this platform for
(02:08):
important things, and I have such an influence.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I've got to do the right thing.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Okay, Well, the problem starts when this celebrity believes that
they have all the answers and they know the right thing,
and if you disagree with that, you're evil.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
That's just not really going to work out very well.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Ever.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It's like saying I like the Rams, you like the Raiders,
the Rams are good, you're evil.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I like.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Pepperoni pizza, you like Pineapple. Pepperoni's the best. People who
like Pineapple evil. It's no different. You like Donald Trump,
I don't like him. I like Joe Biden. People who
like Donald Trump evil? Really, how do you know I mean,
(03:01):
there's so many things going on in government, you're like, Okay,
the Palestinians, they're right, I don't know, the Jews, they're right.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I could look into it really deeply and go, here's
my opinion, but in the end, who knows. Now you
could say, well, this guy lived in Palestine, or this
guy lived in Israel, or this guy worked for Donald Trump,
or this guy worked for Joe Biden. So they know,
(03:34):
But okay, I don't know. There's always something more to
the story. So to profess that you know everything and
everybody else that disagrees with you is wrong is you know,
maybe okay in the scholarly world, but when you're the
host of a late night TV show that is supposed
to be having something for everybody in the country, you're
(03:54):
going to run into a trouble. And that's exactly what
he did. So specifically, Jimmy Kimmel said that the guy
who killed Charlie Kirk is a Maga Republican, And there's
a lot of people trying to get that out that
he's a Maga Republican. But I don't know who would
(04:15):
know for sure at the beginning, at least So I
don't know why someone would say that, And they would
only say that because they want to reinforce their thing
that they have the answers. They are right and you
were wrong, and if you don't disagree with them, then
you're evil.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Now, in the.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
News of Charlie Kirk first broke out, Yeah, there was
a lot of people saying that guy is a Republican
because his parents were Republicans and they were Mormons. Obviously
he's a Mormon if his parents. Have you ever met
am How many Mormons do you know that follow the
Mormon religion that are like, you know, ones that you
associate with, you know, their parents are Mormon and they're
(04:58):
you know, there's so many of them are just not.
They just didn't want to carry it on. I've got
a lot of friends that did carry it on and
they're very happy, but there's so many that aren't. So
I don't know why people would jump to that conclusion.
But of course they want to reinforce their thing that
you know, pizza with pineapple is good and pizza with
pepperoni is evil. So he did this, he said, this guy,
(05:23):
anybody who it's more than just saying I believe this
guy is a Republican or a maga guy. It's like,
you know, the way he says it is mockingly sarcastic,
condescending and smug, saying these buffoons over here wasting their
(05:44):
time trying to prove that this guy was anything but
one of them. So this was pretty much after enough
news came out to where you would at least question
whether it was true that this guy was a mega Republican.
There was plenty. The guy's got ten writers. Somehow they
(06:04):
let him go on. So you got to wonder what
is it about this program where they they where they
believe it's okay too after the enough facts have been
out there that say like, wow, I don't know he
had a trans girlfriend, and he had all these Antifa
(06:24):
writings on his bullets some of the when you see
that stuff, you go, wow, we don't really know about
this guy. Is this guy mocking this stuff or is
he for real antifa? Trantifa it's a new word I heard,
I don't you know, So you just there's not enough there.
So I don't know why all ten writers are having
any writers they would say they have would think it's
(06:47):
okay to come out and definitively not only say that
this guy's mega, but also mock anyone who would disbelieve that.
And that seems to me, that's what I got out
of it. It's like, if you believe this, you're an
idiot that you know, the whole crowds joining in if
you think he's anything but one of them. I mean,
these people are just nuts, you know, wasting their time.
(07:10):
So you feel like you're a fool if you disagree
with him, because he's right. So the it got him
into trouble because the way television works, and as you
might know, I was, you know, in the thick of
it at CBS for many years. We have CBS or
ABC is the same thing.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
You are.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You're a network and you shoot your program out of
the country and they have to be picked up by affiliates.
So you make deals with all these affiliates, and you
want enough affiliates to cover the whole country. So ABC's
got their affiliates. You know, when you go on vacation,
you see, oh look, ABC's not on channel seven anymore,
(07:53):
it's on channel four or something. So ABC's got their affiliates,
and they own some of them. They're called owned and
operated ono's. They own some of them. They don't own
all of them. They can't. So it's too much money.
There's too many affiliates, I mean, it's too many cities,
so local. So they license their program to local stations,
(08:14):
local affiliates, and they are owned by either a conglomerate
of companies like Nextstar or Sinclair Television, or they're owned
by maybe even a family, just an individual. Family might
own the ABC affiliate in uh, you know, Peoria, Illinois.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Who knows.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
But this is this is the business model. Now, when
we come back, I'm going to let you know whether
these affiliates must carry the program from ABC, or if
they can deviate and say I'm not going to air that,
or if they don't want to.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Joe's Scalante Live from Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Oh, air breathers, this is Fungebob square Pants, and you
are filling your ear hold with Joe Ascalonte.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
We are back, Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood by Hollywood
you mean per A Bank. Okay, so we're talking about
Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel, the TV show is fed out
over the airwaves through affiliates. Now, if it's an owned
and operated affiliate, I mean owned by ABC, they got
to carry everything. That's just they're gonna They would never
have an excuse. They'd be fired for not unless there
(09:19):
was like a local emergency or you know, something really
crazy happened. Now, if it's not owned and operated affiliate
and it's owned by someone else, they have a contract
that says, will we promise to air all your programming
unless there's some content in there that is this obscene, offensive,
(09:42):
or would be harmful to our community standards or violated
community standards in our local community. Because everybody knows that
that people like in Salt Lake City are different than
the people in New York City and they have different
community standards, so they have an escape clause. And in
this case, when Jimmy Kimmel went so far as to
(10:03):
at that point in the cycle of the Charlie Kirk
news story, still trying to hammer away at the point
that his political enemies are responsible for killing Charlie Kirk
rather than his political allies, which is an outright political statement,
(10:26):
Bill Mars said it was wrong. Bill marsh said that
was wrong to say that because it just wasn't true.
So other people are saying, well, I don't, you know,
I don't see anything bad with what he said or whatever.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But I think we got to take Bill Maher's.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Viewpoint seriously because he's kind of that he's on the left,
but he's got you know, right tendencies and something, so
he's like in the middle of the road, maybe an
arbitrator that people would trust. Bill Maher said it's wrong,
it wasn't true, and it was politically self serving. Like
if you're up there and there's a I mean, just
(11:04):
don't talk about it if you think it hurts your car.
If you're so into your cause that you go that
the news comes out and something hurts your cause. Here's
my advice to Jimmy Kimmel. Just don't talk about it.
Tell a joke instead, rather than saying, let's mention it anyway. However,
let's use our taxpayer supported format owned by the people,
(11:28):
and let's use this format to tell people a lie
and try to twist them to believe the opposite of
what is true because it is in lined with our
political beliefs. Okay, now, I'm not saying that's what the
affiliates thought in their community standards are violated by that,
but they did call Bob Iger, the president of Disney,
(11:51):
and said, hey, we're not going to run Next Star.
First called, they said, we're not going to run this
this show anymore because it's over the top. I mean
not And what I'm hearing it wasn't just for this
one incident. It was the totality of the of what
Jimmy Kimmel does by using his show to support a
(12:13):
certain political belief and never ever do having guests that
would be popular with the people he doesn't agree with. So,
I mean, the affiliates are just saying, our communities, our
viewers don't want this. Now what happens when they don't
(12:36):
show it. When they don't show it, they can't then
then ABC doesn't get the advertisement from it. So ABC
gets it. We're going to give you this TV show. Okay,
We're going to pay you some affiliate fees to play it,
and we're going to give you some advertising.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Space.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
We're going to take these many minutes and this affiliates
can have these many minutes.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You can sell those.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Now, Look, I'm giving you a hot If I'm giving
you a hot program like Dancing with the Stars or
American Idol or CSI Miami or whatever. You're gonna be
able to sell that advertising for a lot of money.
I'm given that to you. I'm giving you an opportunity, okay.
So and in turn the affiliates saying, well, I'm giving
you all these other minutes, which are more minutes than
the affiliate gets. I'm giving you these minutes where you
(13:23):
can sell advertising.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Now, when they take that away, a whole station group
that has twenty or thirty stations, you've taken away, you
have to go back to the advertisers who paid. Advertisers
pay at the upfronts. They go and they pay. They say,
I'm going to buy all these hours of the Voice
for fifteen hundred dollars a minute or whatever. And if
(13:48):
you if if if you get you know, two million
people per hour. If you get less than two million people,
you have to give me back credits and put my
ads on other shows too. So it's a gamble, or
you can buy them at the last minute when you
kind of later in the season, when you see what's
(14:09):
popular and what's not. That's like the spot market. I
think they call it something. And then you say, oh,
I'm going to buy them, but they're going to be
more expensive. You could get a bargain by buying them
at the beginning of the year. But if you buy
them and they don't deliver the promised amount of people,
they got to give money back. So now ABC is going,
wait a second, we have to give all the money
back for the people that the next Tel used to
deliver to us because we promised our advertisers that they
(14:32):
would get up the whole Nextel audience. Oh my gosh,
we're so screwed. Now, Sinclair Television calls them and says, hey, Bob,
you probably know what I'm calling about. Yeah, we're not
going to run Jimmy Kimmel anymore either. The guy's out
of his mind. I mean, our community standards have been violated.
(14:52):
It's gross. Okay, now you lost Sinclair. Now you lost
all that money. Now you're losing millions. The show already
loses money because it's a late night show and they're
very expensive and bloated to produce, especially in their like
eighteenth year or whatever this is. So you're already losing money.
Now you can't even get any any advertising money that
you are you have to give back advertising, So you're
losing money all over the place. Okay, so you get
(15:15):
you're out of there. You got to get rid of
this guy.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Then the head of the FCC is hearing about all this,
and he's saying, oh, yeah, this guy's.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
An idiot.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
He's using he's using government airwaves for political propaganda for
his for the Democratic Party. I mean, that's what that's
the position of the FCC guy. That's that's nominated by
Donald Trump. People voted to have an FCC guy in
there like that that would say things like that. So
there he is, he's doing his job. The Next Star
people in these Sinclair people are more worried about their
community standards. But this guy saying, you are violating the
(15:55):
FCC laws. The FCC has licensed you these airwaves. The
airwaves come from from the federal government and they're by
the people, and if you're using them for a democratic boondoggle, yeah,
we could revoke your license. It's possible. But the Next
Star and the Sinclair had already pulled their the program
(16:20):
off the air, and Bob Iger that was enough for
him to say, I can't make money this way. I'm
losing money. We can't lose money this way, so we're
going to suspend the show. Put something else on and
hopefully those affiliates will show what we're going to put
on and then we can still continue to sell the advertising.
So it's one hundred percent a money thing.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Now.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
If you want to say it's a censorship thing, well,
the FCC guy didn't do anything, but he did say
the guy could lose his license, and of course ABC
doesn't want to lose their license, so that would make
him shiver with fear. But they already had enough reasons
to pull it off the air because these the affiliates
(17:03):
had said they weren't going to air it. So they're
just millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars flying
out the door. You got to do something, you panic,
You say, okay, we're putting it off the ear. We're
going to put something on there that's uh safe, and
call those affiliates back and say, well, you show this
so we can still keep our advertising revenue and deliver
and we don't have to give back so much of
these dollars of these ad revenue spots, these ad spots,
(17:23):
we don't have to give back. They call them make goods.
The make goods are you didn't make you have to
make good on the the and the eyeballs you promised.
They don't want to do that, so they already enough
to pull it, and then the government gets in and
then everybody starts screaming censorship. And we'll talk a little
bit more about that when we come back right here.
(17:45):
Joe Scolante Live from Hollywood. Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood.
We aren't back the two hours of the business, end
up show business. Okay, we're talking about the Kimmel thing,
and we're talking about how much money was lost when
the two station groups, Sinclair and Nexstar pulled the show
(18:08):
from the air. This was definitely enough to get the
show suspended. Absolutely, you have to cover the whole country
to get the eyeballs that you promised the advertisers. And
if the station groups entire it's not just one station's
whole groups of stations. If they pull out of it,
you cannot deliver the eyeballs you promised your advertisers got.
(18:32):
So there's a panic. You're going to pull it no
matter what, and pull it, and then you're going to
try to talk to the station groups and say, okay,
what can we do negotiate? Go back to Jimmy Kimmel
and say what can you change? Can you apologize? All
that kind of stuff, And I think that's all they
were saying, that they wanted for him to apologize. But
I think the guy is just in a trap where
he's just so influenced by his Hollywood friends that he's
(18:54):
got to be the standard bearer for a political movement
that is very popular in Hollywood. To me, not only
is it a poor business decision and does, it's just
it's not brave. It's not brave to go out on
television and say I hate Donald Trump. So it's not
impressive to me. If you hate Donald Trump, fine, I
(19:19):
don't care. It's not that you have an opinion. The
next guy has an opinion.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Who cares.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
But it's not brave to go out and say in Hollywood,
I hate Donald Trump. It's like low hanging fruit. It
doesn't take a high IQ. In fact, in his position,
it takes a low IQ because you look at all
the people he put out of work for his belief
that he had the answers and the answers and the
opinions of others were evil.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So that's that's his stick. That's a hill he's dying on.
I am right.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Other people who disagree with me are evil, and so
I'm going to die on this hill. And now look
how many people lost their jobs. They're going to be
paid for like one more week and then they're out
of work. Now what did that do for anybody?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
No one.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He's not moving the political dial. I mean, maybe he is,
but he shouldn't be using the airwaves to do it.
It's wrong. So we'll see what happens. I mean, I
hope he comes back. I hope he apologizes. I hope
his show becomes less political and he does more TV
because I think he's got I think he's funny. He's
(20:30):
got a funny staff, and it's a great format. And uh,
I just hope. I hope he bounces back, and I
hope he learns something from this. Okay, kind of exhausting, right,
So let's go to the box office.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
How's that.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Do you see any movies this week? I did, of
course I did. I did it because I do it
because I love you. I want to give you my opinion.
I just want to recommend movies, you know, all right?
This weekend in the box office, Number one Demon Slayer
Commitsu no Yabo, the movie Infinity Castle.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
So that's two weeks at the top of the box
office for this Demon Slayer thing. Let's just you know,
Japanese spirits fighting each other and like that. Number two,
the movie hym from Universal number three. I haven't seen it,
The Conjuring there Were Last right, still a number Then
(21:30):
what a joggernaut one hundred and fifty one million dollars
Downtown Abbey sixty three six six million, three hundred thousand
for the weekend thirty one million. That's a lot for
a movie like that.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Let's talk a.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Little bit about we'll get through this. We'll talk the
Long Walk. It's horror stuff. That's from lions Gate. Number five,
A big, bold, beautiful journey. It's kind of like, oh,
what is it, like a rom com or something like that.
Doing pretty good with three and a half million, but
I guess you want to be higher than that in
(22:10):
your opening week. The Senior from Angel Studios Christian movie,
That one enters the charts at number seven two zero
point seven million. Toy Story. I guess that's some kind
of revival. And then Sit and Sound number nine, Citan
(22:32):
Sound presents Daniel Live. This is a weird new thing.
They're putting on like religious plays, musicals in a theater somewhere.
They're filming it and they're showing it at the theater.
And this one did one point three million dollars worth
of box office this week and they probably only showed
it on one night. From Fathom Events Number ten, Weapons
from Warner Brothers still hanging in there. With one hundred
(22:53):
and forty nine million, that's pretty good. I think that
was a good movie. It looks expensive, I mean, but
I'm sure it didn't cost one hundred and forty nine
But you know, when I say it costs one hundred
and forty nine million, does that mean they're going to
make money if they make one hundred and forty nine
million at the box office. No, because they have to
pay for all the prints in the advertising, and so
they need more than that.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Maybe double.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Okay, So Downtown Abbey I saw it. When you're married.
This is the kind of movies you go see. I
don't mind, though I like Downtown Abbey. My wife loves it,
and then I love to watch her love a movie.
And then you know, I mean, maybe I wanted to
(23:36):
see something else that I went to see Downtown Abbey Okay,
so yeah, it added over six million dollars in its
second weekend. It's down a little bit but still in
wide release. And the story is the Crawley family and
the staff are you know, are all set up for
one last chapter centered on the future of the estate
(23:58):
and the shifting social order. Long running relationships and responsibilities resolved,
a few surprises designed to give major characters a final
curtain call without leaving or leaning on big twists or
franchise reboots or anything. Now, what I liked about this
film is the scandal of the castle at the time
(24:20):
is one of them got a divorce. So the daughter
of the American is like two like the head of
the manors the one guy and his wife is an American
and their daughter got a divorce. First she was a widow,
and then she married some playboy and then.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
She divorced him.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Okay, this divorce was the biggest scandal to ever happened
in England from the way this movie goes. And then
when word got out that she was divorced, she was
at a party and someone brought news of it and
she had to leave the party. They said, you have
to leave the party because we've now found out you're divorced,
(24:59):
and there were some high profile royal family people were
coming and if they saw a divorced woman in this party,
it could be a scandal that the royal family could
not recover from being in the same room with a
divorced woman. So I immediately instituted a rule in my house.
I told my wife that we we we have to
(25:20):
be careful and not and make sure that no divorced
women are ever seen in our house if we ever
get together, because some other person could be scandalized by
their presence.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
So, you know, this movie is.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Is a it's a safe bet for focused features to
do it. You got a high profile ip these period.
These people don't make a lot of money because they're all,
you know, kind of their their their salaries are kind
of there. It's a franchise, so they've they're all on paper.
They're all kind of wrapped up to do whatever they
have to do.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
There.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
They already know.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
The number, so there's no surprises, there's no visual effects.
You know, you just stick it in the theaters for
a while and then it's gonna go on Peacock and
then people will watch it on Peacock because and then
they'll watch the other two movies because they got to,
you know, be completists and see them all. And then
they're gonna go back and watch the TV series and
(26:18):
so it's a big winner. And uh, and it's also
a counterprogramming. It's all these horror films that are out there.
I mean when I looked at this late movies that
were available for me to go see with my wife,
I looked at them all it was like horror, horror, Uh,
Japanese cartoon. I'm like, you know what Downton Abbey is
(26:39):
for us. It's directed by a guy named Simon Curtis
who did My Week with Maryland. Maybe you saw that.
Stars Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dackery, and a cast of hundreds.
So we'll see how it does in the next couple
of weeks. It's supposed to. It's it's kind of these
kind of movies. Don't expend, don't don't don't depend on
a big, front loaded campaign. They're just like, yeah, I
(27:00):
sitting them in the theaters for a while. Let the
numbers creep up as people get around to seeing it.
For lack of a better way to describe it, and
let's take a break and we will come back after
the traffic with more and Joe Scalante live from Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Right here on k E.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I by Joe Ascalanti.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Here's my lawyer.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
You don't want money.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
We are back Joe Scalante live from Hollywood, and let's
talk about the King. There's another movie about Elvis on Netflix.
I don't know if you've seen it. You've probably seen
it in your queue or something, but it's called Return
of the King, The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley. Now,
(28:05):
first of all, when I see Elvis Presley thing, I
want to know if the estate is involved. Priscilla Presley
is in this, so I feel a little bit better
about that. I don't need these hatchet jobs or scandalous things.
Elvis Presley's very complicated, heroic figure, and I'd rather have
his family involved. That's just my preference. This one concentrates
(28:27):
on the nineteen sixty eight NBC Comeback Special, you know,
when you wore the big leather jacket and went out
there to relaunch his stagnant career, which was kind of
suffering from all these terrible movies that Colonel Tom Parker,
his manager.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Made.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I don't know if you saw the Baz Luhrmann film
where they you know, they really villainized Colonel Tom Parker
in that one, and he just seems like he was
just really gross, a really gross carnival type manager. In
a full disclosure, the Vandals, my band used to be
managed by an employee of Colonel Tom Parker. It's like
(29:04):
Colonel Tom Parker used to manage Ricky Nelson, and then
Ricky Nelson's tour manager was the manager of the Vandals.
And so I remember I was just trying to justify
to my dad why I was choosing this music career
over law school. I told him, I go, well, in essence,
I am being managed by Colonel Tom Parker, Dad, So
let's you know, just let's all just sit back and
(29:24):
absorb that. Okay, I've come a long way anyway. The
film is on Netflix right now. It's been there since well,
I think I've been there for a while, longer than
I knew. Directed by Jason hare Here here don't how
to pronounce that, but he is known for the Last Dance.
(29:44):
That's a sports film with I was talking, it's like
Chicago Bulls, like nineteen ninety seven ninety eight championships and
it's yeah, it's got some like high profile interview people
in it, like Priscilla Presley or Bruce Springsteen, and it
(30:08):
tracks how Elvis, after years of these assembly line film roles,
he defied his manager, Colonel Tom Parker and he who
wanted him to do some Save Christmas TV program and
he insisted on doing a raw back to my roots
performance with the leather jacket and an intimate audience, a
(30:29):
live band, and this became the pivot that revived his
career and his public image. And I lived through this
because Elvis was, yeah, becoming kind of silly because of
these movies in nineteen sixty eight. I'm five years old,
fully aware of Elvis Presley at five years old, and
(30:49):
you know, older brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles.
I mean, that's you know, it's all people talked about
when this thing came about. But then after that, you know,
there was a there was a decline line eventually, and
then he became Fat Elvis, which.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Was I didn't care. I liked fat Elvis. I liked it.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I had one night, one of my one of the
saddest evenings of my life is my friend, a neighborhood guy,
was going to take me to see Elvis at the Forum,
and my mom, well, she overlooked the fact that this
guy was an older guy in the neighborhood that wanted
to take a young kid ten years old or whatever
(31:30):
to a concert. I Mom didn't care about that. She
trusted the guy. But then she just said, you're not
going to Inglewood, you know, because that's why our family
like kind of came from Inglewood before we moved to
Orange County and my mom on my mom's side there
from Inglewood, and she goes, you're not going to Inglewood
(31:51):
at nighttime. You're not, So I didn't get to go,
so that ticket went unused. The I recommended this movie
to the singer of Sublime where I Manage.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Because it was just.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
There was just so much information there about the pitfalls
of being a rock star. Maybe I just wanted him
to always say, hey, could be worse. Your manager could
be Colonel Tom Park. But a movie like this for
Netflix very good business decision because even though it's music,
(32:28):
a lot of music licenses to be purchased. You're basically
dealing on this one concert, the nineteen sixty at NBC
Comeback Special, and you get the music from that and
you if you got if you license that whole thing,
you can use that music the whole time. You hardly
need any more music. And the you know, clearances for
the footage, you know, all part of one package. Do
(32:51):
some interviews. You got a winner on your hands. And
here's another thing about movies like this on Netflix and
the business' is supposed to be a business show, right, These
movies are good because when Netflix makes their own original
script in movies, you have all these localization costs, and
localization would be it's in the streaming business. It's how
(33:13):
do we do this for the local areas in India
and in South America, in China, I guess they don't
do China probably, but you know in Japan and stuff
like that, they have to do these localization things. So
they got to pay to have them dubbed. Do they
go dub or do they do the subtitles. Some places
would prefer subtitles and that works for that community. But
(33:38):
in Latin America they love dubbing. Dubbing is great to them.
Just please double ay these things. But that's very expensive,
and you think about it, dubbing you have to just
get in a computer and put the words at the
bottom of the screen.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
I've done it.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
I've done it on countless episodes by myself creating the files,
uploading the files to the network. It's a one man
operation dubbing. You got to hire actors, folly artists, and
casting has to take place, and then you got to
you know, you have to make a new script when
you're double someone's got to comport that with the new
(34:12):
language and the and the expressions. It's it's a very
very expensive process. And Netflix, for a other movies, they
have to budget this. And then if you're making a
new movie for them, they might they might say, like,
I'll buy your Elvi special because I don't have these
localization costs, and I'll give you this amount of money.
But if you bring me a stupid scripted thing that
I got to deb all over the planet to ten
(34:35):
twenty thirty different languages, it's going to cost me. So
if I buy that, you're not going to make much money.
So that's a little business decision they might make. Okay,
now let's go to some heavy heavy Disney news. Disneyland news.
A two and thirty three million dollar wage lawsuit settlement
has been approved, so California judge has given final approval
(34:58):
to a two hundred and thirty three million dollars class
action settlement between Walt Disney Company and more than fifty
one thousand cast members. Let's do some math. Fifty three million,
it's like forty five hundred dollars a cast member if
lawyers got nothing, So whatever that was, you see how
(35:22):
and let me tell you the lawyers are going to
take forty percent of that. So yeah, the cast member
is going to get, you know, two thousand dollars to
twenty six entred So you know, it sounds like a
lot of money, But what does it mean to the
actual employee?
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Not a lot.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
But they probably got a raise out of that and
some better working conditions. So hopefully the workers had a
ledge that Disney failed to meet Anheim's local minimum wage law,
which demands higher wages is for businesses receiving tax subsidies
in the city. Burn Okay, if you're going to get
tax subsidies from the city, you have to.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Pay more money. So that's a good one. It's a
good law. I like it.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Under the settle, about one hundred and seventy nine million
goes to the affected workers. Roughly seventeen million to California's
Labor in Workforce Development Agency to be embezzled and misspent
on stupid stuff, and thirty five million to attorneys. Okay,
well the attorneys didn't take it all. Disneyland says now
(36:21):
that ninety six percent of its cast now make more
than twenty two dollars an hour above the current Anaheim
minimum under measure l Well, they only had to sue
their asses raggedy to get it. Some is one of
the largest wage disputes resolved for disney Land, and it
shows the legal risk for large employers when local wage
(36:41):
laws aren't followed. Because Disneyland, how much did they spend
on lawyers for that? Just given them their money? That place,
is it? Okay, let me tell you something. I like Disneyland. Okay,
I like a Disney corporation. Yeah, they're a little woke, fine,
but in the grand scheme of things, they've delivered amazing
(37:02):
things to people. But they make so much money at
that park. Give it to the workers, okay. Make it
the hardest place to get a job because they pay
so much. When I grew up, like I said, I
don't have time to tell you about when I grew up.
But anyway, those guys paying some money. All right, that's
(37:23):
it for this round. Joe Ascalante Live from Hollywood. I
now leave you with just a taste of the greatest
song ever written.
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