Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, across the street from a Wiener Schnitzel that serves beer. And we are two hours of the business end of show business, every Sunday from five to seven here on k e IB eleven fifty on your AM dial. And it is February eighteenth. The baft Awards happened this weekend, and that is definitely a precursor to
the Oscars. If you're still interested in the Oscars. If you talked to most people on the street, they're like, I don't watch that anymore, or I don't go to movies, or I don't care. But we still like it, right, Sam, Yeah, yeah, I mean we're in Hollywood. This is part of the blood of the city. We serve the Hollywood community here on Live from Hollywood. You know this is the company town. It's a company business. We're talking about it. Let's talk about BAFTA.
BAFTA is the British version of the Academy Awards and Best Film, Sam, what do you think at a guess? Barbie Close, Oppenheimer excellent same movie, Best Actor, Killian Murphy in Oppenheimer, Best Actress Emma Stone in Poor Things and this Do you see Poor Things? No? I didn't. I heard a lot of very good things about it, though I heard it's very good movie. It's a moral offensive masterpiece, is what it is. Emma Stone, she's a producer on it. They made her look so ugly
there's no way they could have been and weird. There's no way she would have done gone for it, and so much sex scenes and stuff like she had to be a producer, Like you couldn't have a producer tell her to do these things. She had to be the producer tell herself to do these things. Wow, but you know she's committed. I'll say I'll say that the Zone of Interest won Best British Film because this is, you know,
the hometown favorite. A lot of people think that's a German film, Sam because it's in German and it's takes place with this family and their really idyllic home that happens to be in Auschwitz. Number Okay, what else have we got? Best supporting actress Divine Joy Randolph in Holdovers. She Divine Joy Randolph. She's been in a lot of stuff. A lot of movies came from from Broadway and she was great in it, and you know, congratulations to
her. I think she got the Golden Globe too. And Holdovers was one of those low key, really good movies. We'll talk about it. I sense that you didn't like you saw it much. No, I did like it. I did like it. I did like the movie. Best Supporting Actor Robert Downey Jr. In Oppenheimer, where he plays like a different, you know, kind of character that's not all weird marvelized, so great, happy for him. Best Director Christopher Nolan and Oppenheimer. No surprise there.
Best film not in the English language zone of interest. So it's weird how a British film wins this. This win's Best British Film and Best not English Film, even though it's still British. Best Documentary. This is a movie called Twenty Days in Mariopole. It's a Ukraine War documentary. It's one best documentary. I have to believe it's nominated in the US for best Documentary.
It is. You can watch it right now on YouTube for free. On the if you go to the PBS YouTube page or just look for twenty Days in Maripool, you'll find it. It's free. Best Original Score Oppenheimer. Best Animated Film, The Boy in the Hair on which I still haven't seen. That's the Hyo Miyazaki final movie. Specially Best Special Visual Effects. Poor Things. That's not undeserved. It's crazy. It's a crazy universe and poor things that every scene and every it's kind of like Tim Burton but a little
class here. And you're gonna like it. I mean, unless you're you don't even have to be easily offended by the stuff in this movie. If you're offended at all. Actually, I wouldn't recommend anyone seeing it. But it's a good movie. I mean, it's well done. They did it. Let's see American Fiction. Best Adapted Screenplay, American Fiction. Did you see that, Sam No, I did not. It's a It's written, I directed and starring, scored Jefferson. It is is again, nothing wrong
with that, it's just the way the move. They don't make a lot of these like Oscar type movies anymore, These like you know, mid budget artie films. You know, they don't get not often don't get made, it seems like. And there's ten nominees for the Oscars, so American Fiction is nominated. But to me, it just came off like a a Netflix movie, like a Netflix almost a rom com but not funny. Why was it even nominated if it didn't feel like it was, you know, enough
bang for the buck. I don't know. You can maybe you watched it and you tell me. But the Best Adapted Screenplay is like a bone. I think they threw to it. It wasn't that great of them. It was just it's good. I'm glad I saw it. A very interesting topic.
The guy is a author of a black He's a black author, and he just wants to be an author, but everyone keeps the only books that sell are books that are like show black people as criminals or in you know, gang infested gang areas, and he just wants to write normal stories. But the pressure is to write these kind of stories. And I won't give away any spoilers, but it's great. It's a great Netflix movie. I just don't understand Best Picture nomination. But I liked it. Same with let's
the other one we talked about Holdovers. I love that movie. Best Picture. Now, im you have a Fall I haven't seen it looks really cool. Best Original Screenplay. It's about like a man that falls off a balcony, and then the only one around is the wife, and so you know she has to prove she didn't do it or whatever. Best Costume Design, poor Things, Holdovers, Best Casting, well, yeah, sure best. They don't have that award in the United States, Sam, you know that
casting directors don't get anything. But this year that would be a great word. I know plenty of people friends of mine that work is you know, in casting. That'd be awesome if they can actually be up for an award. This year is the first year they're going to have it, and the ward will go to the most diverse cast. I guarantee you Best Makeup and Hair, poor Things, Best Editing Oppenheimer, Best Production Design, poor Things,
and Best Cinematography Openheimer. So you can look at that and you can kind of see what's gonna if you're handicapping the oscars themselves, which are coming up a couple of weeks. Right, let's take a break, Sam, is it time? We actually have an extra minute? But if you want, we can cut early and do the next segment a little long. Yeah,
let's take a break now and then we come back. We have some complicate his stories I don't want to get into, right away, and I'll talk a little bit more about these movies and other movies I saw this week right here on Joe Scalante Live from Hollywood, Joe A. Scalante Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank, And we are two hours of the business end of show business right here every week on k e IB eleven
fifty on your am dial. Sam, we were talking about the Bafterwards, the precursor to the Oscars, and it looks like poor things got more attention than anything. The big prize goes to Oppenheimer, a couple big prizes, best Director, best Actor, the supporting Actor, but all the technical stuff went to poor Things, and they really pushed the envelope. So it shows that the Academy likes. Academy a bunch of perverts, Sam, What can I say? So? March tenth, twenty four is the the the Oscar
telecast here in Hollywood. But who who among us? Sam? Are not perverts? So really all of us in our own ways, but the Academy is letting loose. We are perverts. Well, the BAFTAs are the Bafta people are perverts, and we are kinky and we like we like it really weird. That's what we like. You want to win a BAFTA. Get real kinky. Hey, they're letting that freak flag fly. That's exactly what
they're doing. Sam, you couldn't have put it better. Okay. So we talked a little bit about the movies that that you and I saw. So you saw the Holdovers. I loved Holdovers. I just it's just odd to me that it's the best picture. But I have nothing against it. I don't know you thought it was best picture of quality. I mean the this really was the first year since the pandemic where everything started to get back to high quality filmmaking. It felt like. So I feel like this movie
was very, very good, and I think it was. I think it's just one of those industry darling movies, one of those sweetheart movies that everyone in the industry liked well. Alexander Payne, the director, is a favorite of mine. He's made some of the best movies ever made. About Schmidt two thousand and two, good movie masterpiece, Citizen Ruth. You've seen that
one with Laura Dern and she gets pregnant. She's a paint huffing unwed mother to be and she's being trying appropriated by both sides of the abortion fight in some small town, and it's hilarious. It's a great subject for a movie, and he did it very well. He did sideways paulgi. I guess he likes Paul Jamotti. I think it's Paul J. Mooney. Uh yeah, and Paul Jamotti's in this. He did the descendence. But he hasn't done that many movies. And if you look up his Wikipedia, it's as
an area of twenty seventeen to twenty twenty two. He had a career slump. I guess it was and oh the movie Downsizing. I guess he had a trouble during that period. I guess maybe that's why he didn't make that many movies. But if he makes a movie, you got to go see it. And I can highly recommend The Holdovers. I just thought it just wasn't like just just like a mesmerizing best picture experience. But a lot of the best pictures are you know, they don't make as many movies anymore and
not and they have twice as many category. So I just I guess I have to recalibrate my expectations. Usually I'm used to seeing movies that I think are really good, but they're not going to be in the Best Picture category. But good for Alexander Payne and good for Paul Giamati and all those people. Another movie that I actually saw is a movie called But before I get to that one, let's go back to the American fiction. American fiction,
innovative fun just not a best picture to me. But again I got to recalibrate Hassim and so, okay, great, fine, I can recommend American fiction and Holdovers. And then I saw a film called The Taste of Things. Now I'm shocked that this is not nominated. It it was just a wonderful film. It could flawless film. The filmmaking match the story and the mood and the the acting and everything. Like I think there's a little American fiction and the Holdovers are very uneven. It's just like, wait, this
looks really cheap? This part? Does this part looks cheap? In American fiction, a lot of stuff look really cheap, would look like it was it was, you know, like part of it looked like what is this Sex and the City or something, you know, just look like a TV show that, But then it would get really deep and good but uneven holdovers, uneven taste of things. It's a French movie about a by a Vietnamese director, Tran On Hong. I think her name is. I think she's
French, but she's Vietnamese and it's about food. Basically, it's a guy in France and it's a period piece, so it's a it's a while back that I didn't really tell you when it is. It's just like, okay, there's a long time ago. They don't have electricity. But he lives out in the countryside. This guy, dough Dan is his name, and he is a master culinary expert and chef, and I think he's like a
duke or something. So he's like, you're kind of wondering, why does this guy have so much time to worry about how good food and wine could be? And then he has a cook that he hired and the cook has to be the best, so it's kind of the relationship between him and his
cook and there's a little apprentice coming up. But man, the visuals, I mean, don't see this movie hungry, because you will be in pain the entire time because the food looks so good and the wine and the pastries and the kitchen is like, you know, it's like an old country kitchen from the French countryside. And you know, my wife just wanted every single one of their crazy stoves into ten souls and the way they could make fire and all that. So it was very, very enchanting. So I highly
recommend the taste of Things. And I saw that at the theater. I saw it at the Bellatara right here on Huntington Beach. There a lot of these movies that are you know, these art movies or form movies. You know, see them out back here in Orange County. You know, that's what I missed about living, you know, right in LA you see all these movies. But so that was a rare one. It's there were there anybody in the theater and watching it. Man, I know everybody was over
watching the One Love Reggae movie. But I'll see that. Bob Marley, Yes, Bob Marley, Bob Narley. You know. The last movie I saw was Naiad starring Annette Benning and what's your name? Crepol When you're sixty one? This happens net betting, Could you Indulge Me? By Jody Foster? That was it. A see I just needed to think about it for a little while that I did a couple of tours in Las Vegas yesterday too, a little running on fumes. I drove home from Las Vegas this morning.
I did the tours at that punk rock museum and I forget names there to by the way. So any other movies you saw, oh wait, now yeat? Okay, So I didn't say anything about Night Nya is a movie about a lady that swims from Cuba to Key West. She's famous. It's a little irritating because she's a complete narcissist, so it's hard to listen to her talk. It's hard to watch he or do anything. It's cringey. But then you go on YouTube and see what she was really like.
Oh my gosh, net Betting nailed it, just nailed it. And Jody Foster is great in it. And it's directed by two people that looks like they used to do wildlife films or something. I don't know, I don't know. I can't pronounce her names, Elizabeth Chai and Jimmy Chin. Okay, I pronounced that anything you saw, Sam I saw a Strays, the movie with the dogs that was horribly obscene yet hilariously funny. Oh yeah, that was potty mouth, Peepy poopoo everything as a cartoon. Pretty funny.
It was entertaining. And also I rewatched Death of Stalin because it's a great movie. Oh yeah, I that The Death of Stalin is like on my list of like, like you know, I've never seen it and it's on my list of like there's a couple of movies that like, you know, like they Live that's a great that's a great movie. But Death of Stalin may be one of my favorite all time films. That is a great movie. Where did you watch it? It's on one of the free streaming side
right now, like on What to Be or Pluto. It's flowing on that one right now. The Death of Stalin. Yes, I put that on my list just like last week. I'm like, why haven't I seen this? The way that they blanket the atrocities with such just biting, beautiful humor is so great. Really a unique film and it's great movie. Actually it's playing on the Disney Plus bundle that we're going to talk about a little bit and how much time do we have in this segment. Let's take a break
and then come back. Okay, So We're going to talk about this bundle that Disney is offering Disney, Warner Discovery and ESPN and Hulu that is supposed to solve all your sports problems. But is it legal? Joe Scoalante Live from Hollywood back after this, Joe Escalante Live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood
you mean Burbank. So, Sam, what do you think of this new bundled service that's being proposed by Disney, Fox and Warner Discovery that is supposed to just be your one stop sports viewing hub for all sporting, all your sporting needs. It makes it very convenient. I guess I already have the ESPN app and like I'm signed into that. I know that they somehow, I think they acquired Fox Sports and now they're trying to incorporate a lot of the Fox Sports content. So you're going to see a lot of sports.
Local sports are gonna like a lot of Fox Sports have affiliates in different locales, so you're gonna get more local programming region or access to it nationally regionals. Yeah, yeah, so it sounds good. People talk about the price. Price might be like thirty five dollars a month, not you know, seven, ten, fifteen or nineteen thirty five dollars a month. Now, how do you feel about it? It sounds like the kind of thing that I would be tempted to order once and then like forget that I keep getting
charged for it. Yes, exactly, give it a try, and then it's one of those things where your wife goes, you don't watch this, but maybe maybe we will. I'm not sure, but I'm a little confused because I just, you know, got used to the Disney Disney ESPN plus Hulu thing, So that was that. When I get confused, Disney pluses ESPN plus Hulu is a new bundle. Now we have something. This is different. This is uh ESPN, Fox and Warner Brothers. Yeah, basically
Disney and ESPN being the same thing. Uh. Well, I mean it all sounds great and until someone says, hey, wait, that's a big, giant monster and I don't want I don't want it to exist. Now who might want it? Not want it to exist? That would complain about it and call the cops and be a tattletale. Probably, I don't know at this point. Jeez, like Big the Big ten Network and some other like little tiny performers. Well, it's Fubo. That that that sounded the
alarm at first. Are you familiar with Fubo? You're familiar with this? Yeah? Yeah, it's like one of these uh streaming apps that has a lot of sports. Like sometimes if you're looking at like, hey, there's an NFL playoff game and you can't find it anywhere, and you go, why isn't it on my TV? And you start searching and searching, and then here comes Fubo. I got it for you. All you got to
do is subscribe Fubo. As soon as it was announced, they filed the complaint with the Department of Justice. Now, the why would the Department of Justice care about this? Because the Department of Justice oversees competition, and we have something in this country called the Sherman Antitrust Act and other various anti monopoly regulations that prevent you from becoming too big, even though we you know,
we think we live in a free enterprise country. But if you get too big, the government will come in and say you have to They might break you up, like they did with the phone companies in the seventies I think it was the sixties seventies. They might They did it with the oil companies
a while back. And if you are growing so big that you are creating barriers for other people to enter the marketplace, then you may have an illegal monopoly if you are growing so big that you can dictate prices, or if you're or if you maybe you're not getting big, maybe you're just small. But you go to all your competitors and say, hey, let's get in a room and decide what price we're going to charge for these competing goods.
And then we'll charge a real high price. But everyone in this room has to agree to charge the high price, and then we'll all make a bunch of money. We'll have a windfall of money because no one will be able to go anywhere else, and we have all the market here together with all the people in this room, and you know, we'll get rich. That's not a way you're allowed to get rich in this country. That's called price fixing. So in this instance, the Fubo complaint had said they would control
sixty to eighty five percent of all sports content. Now that could be trouble for the consumer. Charge whatever they want if they're the only ones so they so the government might come. Is the big news is the government is going to scrutinize this and they're going to see if this should even happen. And that happens anytime somebody combines companies, like if you know, when when Discovery Bot Warner Brothers, you know, the government comes in and just make sure
that they're not creating something that is anti competitive. So we don't really know
if this will work. But Disney has other problems there. There's like activist board member or activist shareholders that you know, they're just always going after Disney saying I don't like the way you're doing things, and I own a bunch of shares, so I'm gonna make a big stink and and I have some power, and you better be. You better hope that I don't get together with other people and create real problems with Like if there's a big voting block
wants to make changes, or they can sue also Sam, they can file a derivative shareholders suit I think it's called, and they sue the board and say you are acting against the interests of the shareholders. You're breaching your fiduciary duties to raise the price of the share so to just you know, improve the business. It's going on right now with Disney. This one's kind of
silly. I think it's they're accusing the board of hiding who they are donating money to, and that looks like they're mad because Disney is giving money to gender transition companies or paying for people's gender transition operations, and the people like you shouldn't do that because research is uh, you know, it's undecided whether that's good or harmful to people. That's their position. But on the other hand, regardless how you feel about this, I think you can really get
that. I worked up about it because and accused Disney. You see what they're trying to do. They're trying to say Disney is too woke, you know, so they and and Disney knows they're too woke. And Disney, you know, has made some changes and is trying to swing the pendulum back
the other way. But this one, I'm not sure it applies. Because in the world we have today, if someone could sue the employees, could sue them, say I need this, uh this treatment because other if you don't give me this treatment, you're discriminating against me because of my sexual orientation, and I will take you to court. So Disney's you know, between a rock and a hard place, and bob Eyger is probably just like,
what was I thinking? You know, just play golf, although you know, second I ever, was he ever really going to go play golf? Now he was going to start something. So we'll see what happens with those people. How many shares do you got, Sam of Disney? Yeah? Currently, I think I've got maybe seven hundred. Look at you? Are you? Are you the active a shareholder trying to yes, I am, make them, make them be more transparent on their transgender care they're giving.
Hey, it's a matter of gender affirming care and if that affirms their gender then cool. All right, Well, yeah, so some people are not cool about it. I'm okay with people having their feelings about it. Yeah, yeah, that's how I feel about It's like, you know what, I'm not smart enough to know what is actually the the right way to handle this stuff, but we have to let everybody have their deeply held beliefs,
and you know, it gets weird when they push them on people. So okay, I don't mind when people are getting mad at Disney for if they're pushing an agenda, Okay, all right, then you don't buy their stuff or don't take your kid to Disneyland. Good luck. But in this case, I don't know Disney. Disney's got to do what they got to do to avoid lawsuits. I got some famous people acting badly, Sam, let's save it for the next segment. Then, Okay, we got some new
news about less Moon vest and Vince McMahon and expelled representative. Oh Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmell behaving badly? Or is he Joe Scalante from Hollywood back after the traffic Yeah, h m hm hm Joe Ashanti, he's my lawyer. You don't want money, Joe Wiscalante life from Hollywood? If by Hollywood you mean Burbank. Okay, we're in the celebrities behaving badly section. Let's start with Jimmy Kimmel. Uh. Jimmy Kimmel is uh yeah, I mean,
I know you're gonna think this is funny, but is it right? He is using CAMMI, you know, cameo app where you get so you can pay celebrities as a happy birthday to your friend or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. So evidently the disgraced ex Congressman George Santos who was expelled from the Senate. I guess he was a senator. It was crazy how that guy became a senator. Oh no, he's a just a representative. So he got expelled for lying. And he's just a freak and of
kook. But so he's a So Jimmy Kimmel goes after him for comedy. He's he hired him. They got phony people to get cameos out of him, and they broadcast those on Jimmy Kimmel for content. Okay, uh, that's pretty funny. It's funny. You know it's funny. I haven't seen it, but I guarantee it's funny. That's pretty But right, you just you want to see it now. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel is funny and his writers are funny, and they can do this. But is it a low blow? Is it? Is it? Is it a low blow?
Is it? Is it unfair? Is it? Is there a better way to create comedy work a little harder than just just trying to destroy some guy, even though he might be a kook. But now I could say if they if they say, hey, it's Jimmy Kimmel, I'm here, it's me Jimmy Kimmel, I'm giving you five hundred dollars and I want a cameo, and he goes, oh, hi, Jimmy Kimmel. Hi, everybody on Jimmy Kimmel, this is me. I have a great show today.
And then make fun of him all you want. But they were making him do things like congratulating a woman who for successively successfully cloning her schnauzer named Adolph. Okay, that's like I said, I get it. It's funny, but he doesn't know what he's doing. You know, he doesn't know that it's going to so they tricked him basically. So I guess the legal question is are you allowed to trick someone like this to create content for your TV show and to fame him in this way? What do you think? He's
a public figure. He subjected himself to this level of ridicule and buffoonery. I don't see any issue with it. I I don't know, I don't know. I don't know about it. I mean, I think you got I think you have to. Is it illegal? I don't know. It might be, it might be a fraud, it might be a consumer fraud, or depending on what the language is like he he got a platform, and he's paying a percentage of his income to cameo. You know, it's
a business. The person who engages starts wanting ad buys the cameo. I don't know what they fill out and whether they are violating the terms of that contract because they're lying. Maybe they're allowed to lie, Maybe they're allowed to be anonymous. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. If if it's anything goes and he was part of his deal. Because if I'm cameo, I would want to prevent being sued by any of this, So I would tell the stars, the people that are on Cameo, Hey, anybody can come
in and they might embarrass you. They might do something because some people have been embarrassed. They've been asking celebrities to endorse like controversial like Nazi organizations and stuff like that. Don't they have the right to refuse? Well they don't. Oh yeah, they can refuse, But if they don't know what it is, they don't refuse it. And they're aware of what's going on.
But the question is are they aware? I don't know. I think it depends on the terms of the service, like if but I would imagine if I'm cameo would I would have the cameo celebrity people agree that that this might happen, that you're you're you're going to get this money, but you're going to create them content. You have no idea what they're going to do with
it. You have no idea if it's going to be shameful. And that's what I would put in the cameo terms of service, so that they're freely uh entering into this with full knowledge that someone might take that footage, misrepresent themselves and do something really weird with it. Uh So if but it could it rise to defamation? H if if they trick, if they trick them and then they edit it in a way that causes people to spit on the ground in a diabolical way, and that it is as the prerequisites for the
malice for a defamation case. Could that happen? I think that's what the lawyers who took his case and are suing Jimmy Kimmel are bank king on that there is malice here and he was defamed with malice. They set out knowing this stuff wasn't true, and they set him up to defame him. Now, they couldn't have found a least a less sympathetic victim. So I think that's part of it too. Nobody likes this guy. But did they go too far? I don't know. We will find out. That's gonna be
interesting. Jimmy Kimmel, he's like, he's not worried about it. He's like, this is funny, and he's getting more. I mean, you know, he wanted he loves this, he says. Okay, so Les Moonvest the other guy that's, you know, the bad boy. This one isn't that bad. He was ordered to pay a fine of eleven two hundred and fifty dollars by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission for his role in a twenty seventeen lapd scandal connected to his downfall at CBS. Full disclosure. He
was my boss. Let's CBS. He had a woman named Philis Golden Gottlieb who accused him of sexually assault sexually assaulting her, and she filed the police report. There was a cop. The cop was named Corey Palka. That cop said, hey, I know less Moonvest. He hires me to be a private security I see this police report. I alert him and I send him a copy of the police report. Say, hey, be on the
lookout. This girl says you sexually assaulted her. And when I say girl, she died two years ago at age eighty six, so she was not she was pretty old when it has happened. I mean, you think of his victims as these you know, young on news, but this one's a different case. And he was so and then that allowed him to go after her. So this is really bad and he should probably you know, be
libele in the millions to the victim. But the fine for doing something like that was only eleven It was five thousand dollars usually, and since he's so rich and it's so serious, they said you got to pay eleven thousand.
So he's not really that worried about that. And after settling his thirty million dollar thing with the the Security and Exchange Commission, because let's not forget, he got in trouble and CBS got in trouble when all this is going on, and everybody knew within CBS knew that he was about to go down. They didn't tell the shareholders he was in trouble at all. So if you
would have told the shareholders, they would sell their stock. But they didn't, so they hid it and then by the time it was leaked, the shareholders were left holding the bag. Sam, how many shares of CBSD at Oh, I ditched them. I caught early wind of that and just ditched them a little insider trading. Oh are you are you connected to Corey Palka from the commander of the Hollywood division of the of the LAPD. I have I can't confirm or deny that. Now, Okay, what this slick investor?
You are? All right? I think we I think we've I think we've done enough for Hollywood today. What do you say? Yeah, I think we've done our damage. All right? All right, more more Oscar movies to come. Then I'm going to see this week and March tenth will be the Oscars and we'll be having our usual Oscar party at the Wienerschnitzel on what is it all of that street out in front of the studio here, Yeah, where they serve the beer, so the red carpet, the lights
and everything. You'll see it when you drive by. And I will now leave you with just a taste of the greatest song ever written. See you next week, Sam,