Barbenheimer: The Fallout

Joe Escalante live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank, across the street from a Wienerschnitsel. It serves beer. And we are talking about the business of show business like we do every week here on KiB eleven fifty on your AM dial. Get the podcasts later in the day listening, listen to them wherever. But let's get to the movie. Sam, h biggest movie. Well last weekend. We weren't live last weekend, but I saw two movies last weekend. I know you saw a movie and but very exciting movie

times. Right now, let's go to the top ten. Number one still Barbie holding on to a spectacular ninety three million dollars in second weekend. It will be the seventh biggest second weekend for a movie in history. Sam, Wow, what was number one? Well, just this one's just a shade of head of Mario Brothers, which did ninety two million. What's number one in the second weekend? I don't know, I just come up with that

stat. Well, it's obviously just living above a movie theater. I can definitely tell you that the traffic is still there and everybody's wearing pink, So I'm assuming everybody's there to see the Barbie movie. Still the lady the canter at my church this morning was wearing pink as soon as she steps up to the ambo. My wife and I look at each other and just went, she saw Barbie this week. And then the Oppenheimer still doing, Well, that's the one I saw. Okay, so you saw Oppenheimer. Yeah,

I saw Oppenheimer. You chose to see Oppenheimer, not Barbie. Let's go let's let's talk about that. But let me let me go over the top ten just a little bit, because people just have to know what the top ten is. I mean, number one is Barbie, as we said, Number two Oppenheimer, Number three Haunted Mansion, which I will see after we sign off today on the program. Number four Sound of Freedom. Sound of Freedom has done a four hundred and forty eight total gross one hundred and forty

eight million. Mission Impossible has only done one hundred and thirty nine, which is number four. Talked to me from a twenty four did ten million. That's new this weekend. Indiana Jones is one sixty seven Elemental one forty four million total, and Insidious The Red Door seventy eight million total Spider Man Across Spider Verse three hundred and seventy eight million dollars. But let's stop. Let's let's take a brief look at Sound of Freedom. I think it will drop

off. I mean, it's added a bunch of more theaters. It's just everywhere now. They added one hundred and twenty six theaters and they dropped thirty seven percent. But that is the movie about the sex trafficking bust in Columbia where this guy set up a sting, set up a fake pedo island, and busted a bunch of pedophiles, and they made a movie about him, and you know, all that stuff. A lot of controversy. People say

that if you see that movie or some kind of quan on nutcase. But you know, if you're a pedophile, you don't want people to see that film either. I've been hearing rumors that it's getting astroturfed. A lot of the people are buying out tickets for the theaters and selling them out, but nobody's there. Could it could happen, could happen? People could be um just trying to support the idea of these two Christians, and these are hardcore

Christians. Eduardo Vedastigi and Jim Caviesel. These are conservatives politically there, you know, lightning rods for controversy. Some people wanted. There's two things. We're hearing. Screenings are being disrupted. They're turning the lights on, they're turning the air conditioning off. They're trying to keep people from seeing these movies. And now we're hearing, well, some people are buying up the whole theater and no one's even there, indicating it's not really that popular, and

pedophiles islands are not really that bad. I guess, so, h if you support this movie, it is one way to reduce sex trafficking. And I think the reason why people don't like it because not in the movie, but in the after, after, after, after the movie, trying to solve the problem, you go, well, you got to close that border. One thing you know you could do. You got to close that border, the southern border to the United States. If you want to solve this

problem, close that border. And that is controversial. Now that be now now it's become a political thing after you say that. So um, yeah, so you're gonna have people on both sides now speaking of both sides of a pedophile argument or a thing before we get to the movie. Well, I'll talk about that, and that remind me of a similar story in the music business when we get done with this. So you saw Oppenheimer, What

did you think. I was underwhelmed. I thought it was I thought it was nice that it was the only movie that I've ever seen that was three hours long that moved. It was. It didn't have a moment where it felt like it was there was a lull. It was it's coming at you. Yeah, it was constantly in motion and then it was moving along, so it was entertaining. I was just expecting less fluff and more just you know, more concrete stuff, and there it was very much. It was

very much. I had a lot of accuracy, and it was, you know, true to a lot of the stuff. But it felt more like the Elvis movie did in relation to Elvis's real life, and like then it did to actually Oppenheimer's real life. If they went with Oppenheimer's real life, I get the feeling it would be a really boring movie. Yes, um, although I guess he was a sex maniac, but um uh oh, they made life. They made note of that in the movie for sure.

Yeah, so you know, if real life could have been even more exciting, I guess. But it's funny you mentioned Elvis because I was explaining the movie to a friend of mine at the Dodger game on Friday night. You might have seen me on the screen the he was. I was trying to explain it to him, and then so, yeah, yeah, like you should see it. Then I remembered he was the guy who I recommended, yeah, go see Elvis, you'll love it, and he hated it,

m okay. And then so I pulled back and I said, you know what, this movie was a lot like the Elvis movie, and it's just Oppenheimer Elvis, and you might not like it. So I retracted my recommendation for him to see it. Then you're the only other person I've I've heard of that brought up Elvis in this for this movie. One thing I learned about before I saw the movie is, or after I saw the movie,

or during that, there are very few true Imax seventy millimeter screens. Yeah, yeah, it's a very but there happened to be one at my hotel at the Palms. I was doing the tours of the Punk Rock Museum last weekend and so you know that's in the day. So I got tickets for Sunday night and they got a seventy millimeter Imax screen right in my hotel only in Vegas. So that's like where you live, you live on top of a movie theater. I was living on top of a movie theater for five

days, but there was a seventy millimeter Imax downstairs. Yeah, that makes a difference. I saw it was fun. Yeah, I saw that they were doing seventy seventy millimeter screenings of it, and I when I saw that there they had the Imax seventy millimeter, I'm like, I gotta find a screen that has that, because really, that is the kind of movie that you want to see on a big screen. Watching it on a small screen

will never do it justice. The Brendan Theater in the in the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas so nice and there's very few seats because it is a luxury theater, like you're you're you're far away from people and the aisles are really wide. Very interesting. Um. It was closed for a while until the

Yamava sem Manuel Indian tribe bought the the hotel. But wow, what a place to see it, and I enjoyed it, but yeah, it was a little like, um, just coming at me so much stuff, and some people the criticism also is, you know, there's no they left out a lot of the didn't show. They didn't show, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki get obliterated like in a in a in a human way. They didn't show how many you know, it didn't generally hammer home how many people

died, although they didn't hide it, but they didn't. Some people were wanting more of that, more battle, or maybe even more talk about like I kind of want a little talk about Well, to me, the story is not complete unless you talk about how many people get killed in these Japanese firebomb things they were doing where they would set whole cities on fire, and hundreds of thousands of people were dying that way. And so the argument that oh, well this bomb saved lives, um, you know, I'm not

sure if I believe it. It's it's something that will be debated throughout history, but you know, I'm not I could have used a little more of that. But then again, it's a movie about Oppenheimer, so it's it's it's not called uh, you know world War two nuclear theories. It's Oppenheimer movie about him so great. I know, I know plenty about him. Florence Pugh always great in the movies. Sam, how much time do we

have. Let's take a break. Okay, when we come back, I will tell you what one of our listeners said to me about Florence Pugh. Some of you listeners went to my punk rock tours. Thank you next time, I'll expect more of you. Joe Sclante live from Hollywood, back after the traffic. Joe west Bolante Live from Hollywood. If Hollywood, I mean Burbang. Two hours in the business end of show Business, we were talking about Oppenheimer. Sam, you saw it. I thought Florence pu Okay,

here's what I was gonna say. One of the one of the people might where as I do these tours, two tours a day at the Punk Rock Museum for four days. One of the tours, we have a one of our listeners. Her name was Valerie, and she was very upset that I talk about Florence Pugh so much. She said she feels sorry for missus Escalante because I'm always talking about the delights of Florence Pugh. On the screen. But you know, what are you gonna do? Is a movie star?

You know, I know that in real life she doesn't look as half as hot as my wife because they're putting makeup on her and stuff like that. But you know, what are you gonna do? What's my wife doing while she was watching Ryan Gosling? If my wife had a radio show, would be nothing button Ryan Gosling. In fact, the show would probably be called Ryan Gosling. So but my apologies to listeners who I am offending with my Florence Pugh talk. Um. Okay, so you didn't see Barbie, No,

but I'm gonna see it this week for sure. Well, I saw Barbie also at the Brendon Theater at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, and I saw it on a big screen whatever big the non imax, but fancy bigger screen there they had that that was also delightful, funny, And criticism of that movie is like it gets a little weird. Well there's the woke

criticism. Everybody, Oh, this is a woke movie. I think you're really short changing yourself if you describe this as a woke movie and you're and you're going to base your decision on seeing it before that for that reason. First of all, this is Hollywood, Okay, all movies are woke to some degree or another, you know, going back to since like I think Apocalypse now is the last big movie that wasn't woke. Probably, Um I'm just making up these these stats. I don't really know, but I just

threw that out there. Um now, Barbie, Yeah, who cares? Woke? Woke? That put your mind in that world? Is it funny? Are you watching funny things? Are they they're they're making the criticism is these um sometimes people said it was anti man or the the these the rants that were being made by the star um or the one of the stars, America Ferrera. Uh you know what these are. It's like, you know, it's a woman power movie, but it doesn't. It's not black and

white. It just asked to me, that's what it's asking questions about what it is to be a woman, how hard it is. And then they go they get in the you know, the conflict between being beautiful and being uh you know, empowered or whatever. I think that's interesting, so let's

have that debate. But then they get they started going well. Then then then then as the plot goes on, they gotta you know, they gotta overcome some hurdles, you know, like story structure stuff, and they go, well, here's here's where, here's our problem, here's how we're gonna fix it. It got really confusing, Sam, like you're like, what, wait, what are they going to do? How's that going to fix things? And so hard to follow at times, but it's still fun.

Who I mean, I don't follow every movie perfectly. I mean, try following any Christopher Nolan film, but I would say Barbie was almost as hard to follow as Oppenheimer at times. But then you know, and then and then they wrapped it up and you think, how are they going to wrap it up? And they wrap it up and you're like, you're you're satisfied, you're laughing. The criticism for my wife was not enough ken and not enough song and dance. Uh you know, flowery productions with all the because

there's a few dances and she wanted more to that. Uh, I get it. Um, So I'll see Hannah Mansion tonight looks funny. I'm hearing mixed stuff like, hey, it's okay, but the trailer's cool. Every single employee at Disneyland has seen it. They have screenings for them, and I feel a little left out. You should be able to wiggle your way into one of those screenings. I can't see why not I should. I wiggled my way into the employee former employee Facebook page like cast member former cast

member. Okay, due to my stint at the Disneyland Hotel selling nutt and boatman I made out of iron when I was ten years old, Sam, Wow at a job. It's my first job, Disneyland Hotel And explain that to the people to Facebook and they go, Okay, you're in. None of the kids in my recess the next day would really believe that I worked at Disneyland, because that's what I would say, I ok at Disneyland Hotel and they didn't believe me. But I was really tired at school because it

was it went to eleven. It's like from like six to eleven Monday through Friday. And my teachers would go, why so tired? I go, I worked till eleven and I'm ten. It's going strong at this kid, what are you reading Deliverance? Give me that typical day at my Rush Elementary school? Okay, um, so what movies are people talking about. It's kind of like it's almost over, except for the summer's over for blockbusters other than Teenage Mutant, Ninja Turtles, Mutant Mayhem, and Mega Ladon two.

And that's it. Who kept Blue Beetle? Sam? What are you buying into the Blue Beetle? No? The trailers look nice, but I'm DC has to give me something that doesn't suck before I'm going to waste money, right, I'm with you? And yeah, beyond that, almost time for a Blue Beetle. Yeah, yeah, Disney snow White looks dreadful. Um, so we'll see, all right. I did see another moving but it was a movie, but it was on It was on streaming that counts.

It was on Netflix. It was The Clone Tyrone with Jamie Fox and John Boyega. That sounds fun. It was really fun. It was a really entertaining movie. I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun watch and get Rotten Tomatoes. People love it. It's scoring super high on Rotten Tomatoes. Entertaining movie and that's free if you've got Netflix. Yep. Right, Therefore, you came out last week and highly recommend it. Very fun movie. A Clone Tyrone you heard it from Sam Okay. I want to get

to my stories. There's a TV story in a legal story, because this is ostensibly illegal show kind of in a way. Chuck Norris has just settled a thirty million dollars suit against CBS and Sony over Walker Texas Ranger profits. Usually I don't do stories about profits because it involves a lot of math and people don't understand it on the radio. But basically, I'll break it down. He has twenty three percent share of all profits from that series. How

did you get that twenty three percent? Sam? How do you think he got them? He threatened to do a roundhouse kick to their face if they didn't. No, I gave it to him. You get them the roundhouse kick. Now, I back in the nineties, I made this deal. I I constructed the profit definition that Chuck Norris is suing under, and I gave him his twenty three percent. After some negotiations, he wanted more and

he ends up with twenty three percent. But what and so what they do is they'll add so many fees and costs of distribution that you get see statements and there's nothing on them. And then you got to sue to have a judge look at him, go, what you guys are nuts? This This is not fair. It's not what he bargained for. So he already did

that. Now he's anyone, and now he's suing Forum that they're they're putting it on like a subscription video on demand channels and and they're saying that that doesn't count or something, and they're not and they're trying to not give him his preferit. So he went back. This is what people have to do in TV. He went back and sue and he got his money from uh, the series, but you know, the series generated six hundred ninety two million dollars in revenue, so far he wants his can't say I hate him

for it. Yah, you know what I mean? You gotta pay the man. Yeah, and I'm serious. He the dude doesn't do push ups. He pushes earth down. You don't want to mess with Chuck Norris. You do not want to mess with Chuck Norris. I heard that. And uh, if you I've probably talked about this before. If you watch the reruns of Whatker Texas Ranger, you're gonna hear Chuck Norris sing his own theme

song. And that was at my at my urging, because he sent me to take a cassette of a song that someone had written at the end of season one or during season one about called the Eyes of a Ranger, and he goes, what do you think of this, Joe? What do you think I had to do with this? And I think he was thinking that should we release it? I go, this should be the new U, this theme of the series, and you should sing it. Long story short,

I got him a vocal coach. He didn't. He protested, but we got him in the studio and he sang the theme song and it's still there. So I got that going for me. Let's take it the brain. We will be back in a bit and we will talk about some bad celebrities out there, some good news about bad celebrities. Joe's go want live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank, all right, talking about Hollywood, what do you think we do here? Cardi B? Have you

seen this on the YouTube or the TV? Cardi B? She's playing in New York or in Las Vegas. I don't know how she's doing it. Last weekend, it's like one hundred and seventeen out there. She's doing some outdoor show and someone throws a drink on her, but I can't tell if they were just it looked like a large Del Taco soda full of water and ice, so look like but it could have been a sprite. And and it hits her, goes all over her, and then she throws her microphone

just right at the guy. So that's big news. The thing I thought was funny is how nobody mentioned that as soon as she threw the microphone at her, at the at the at the perpetrator, somehow the she was still singing. It didn't nothing changed. She's extremely talented, I gotta tell you. So she was yelling at this person throwing it at but her vocals were still permeating the air and perfect. It sounded just like the record. So you might want to look at that on YouTube. It's kind of funny,

and there's no mention of it in the article. I think because she's a victim here, she's beloved by the press, and she just got something thrown at her, and so she throws the mic. Everybody. It's very satis find watching her throw the mic at this idiot, and then you just don't want to bring up like Hey, what the hell's gone on here? But

she lip sinking, but of course he's lip sinking. Um. The other story about bad celebrities I have is, um they are Remember the show about the Crizlies where the guy went to prison, Well, he's all the guys that a lot of reality starts have gone to prison. One of the most high profile and flamboyant of the reality bad boys is h is Todd Chrisley from krizly knows best. I tuned into this show and I don't know why. Why are you guys famous? I'm fine if someone's famous, even just they're

just famous for being famous. I don't understand them. The only that I think the draw is how gay the husband is and how I could see elephant in the room and the wife doesn't know this guy is gayer than Liberacci from space and he it turns into like embezzling, and you know, these people are trying to keep up a lifestyle. And this guy goes to present but now he's petitioning because he says the um, the prison conditions are are just

terrible. You know, there's rats, and there's squalor, there's one hundred and degree temperatures, No air conditioning, no nothing. Um, it's a nightmare. But it's like this, you know, people don't feel sorry for him, should they? Maybe, I mean maybe it's terrible, but you know, he just kind of pops back up in the news and people hate him even more. There's a lot of Um I want to talk about the

Elon Musk trademark for the new Twitter using the word X yeah. Um. And it's it's hard to come up with a name that isn't going to be challenged when you're if you're a high profile like that. They usually in the trademark world, there's a bunch of people like somebody comes up with a trademark, big thing, and then there's all these little people that are like,

hey, wait a second, so that was my trademark. Now, the Trademark Office is supposed to be the guardians to say I cannot give you a trademark that will harm another person's mark, and or they call it false designation of origin. People might think twitter is comes from some other source because it's also too close to the name of some other trademark, or people might think that that the trademark that was already there is funded by Twitter and Elon musk,

so it can cause a lot of confusion in the marketplace. And remember, trademarks are are issued more for the protection of customers rather than the trademark holders. Unlike the copyright. A copyright is issued to protect the author of of a work and so something no one else copies them. The trademark is a little bit different. It's trademarking, you know, a service or a

product so that the consumers know where it comes from. And you can't have a Disneyland in your backyard and put up a little roller coaster because people might walk by and say, oh, Disneyland has a little satellite roller coaster over here, and then you would they would get on that roller coaster and then they would be flung into a ditch or something and they would go, well, I thought Disneyland had safety standards. But the government has said, well,

no, we won't let people use the Disneyland trademark. So that's going to come into play with this X thing. And there was one article that just said there are like nine hundred products and services already with the X as their trademark. Yeah, and it's so generic. At first, At first, I was like, what, it's the worst thing I've ever heard of. Um, it's not it's not, in my opinion, not a very

intelligent move. No, I don't think so either. But then when you hear he has all his other like SpaceX, and he has all these other EX companies, and he's trying to consolidate it into an X thing, and he thinks he can win and he can buy off people and he can fight, and then then he has this EX world. I get that. So we'll see it's gonna be a lot of trademark issues and a lot of um, a lot of litigation and a lot of stories for Joiscalante Live from Hollywood.

Um, how how are we doing on time? My clocksmissed up? We got about three minutes. Uh. Yeah. One point I want to make is like that tweeting is something that's like a brand. It like y, Twitter is a real, a world recognized brand. Tweeting, the act of boosting stuff and retweeting is some thing that you can go to other pages, other like sites that do some more things and you're still retweeting. It's like something that's part of the brand. So anybody using X is going to

be tweeting and calling it tweets. Yeah, exactly and that the problem that I now see is like he took a brand that was world famous, wildly profitable, and now it's like he's doing everything he can to disassociate from that. Yeah, I'm I'm in agreement with you, but you know, we'll see it seems like one of those things where they retract it, like like Coke new Coke. Um, So I think it's a new coke, is what we can call it. A lot of people using they throw that term

around new Coke a lot for mistakes and businesses, some of them. Most of the time it doesn't apply. I think this applies. This is new Coke. Yeah, so, yeah, good for you. Here's another there's a piece of music news here. We're gonna do some music news in the next couple segment, but i'll preview this one. There was a there was

a legal or a city council vote in Irvine. That's you know, Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, where the Irvine City Council killed the negotiations with Live Nation to run their amphitheater in their city because they're building this giant park in Irvine. It's going to be a bigger park than Central Park. And it's got an amphitheater. And once this came out, it used to be like these sweetheart deals or like a Live Nation comes in and says,

look, you guys don't know what you're doing. We'll run the amphitheater and we will pay you rent three million a year in this case, and we'll make forty five million a year out of it, or something like that. And the city council doesn't know what to do because they don't have to run an amphitheater, and the city council members like they don't want a lot of work, so they just go for it. Here in Irvine, the city council, like three of the members stood up and said, we're sick

of this. We don't think this is right. And it was a it was a weird, very very interesting battle. And now it's one of the first places where Live Nation didn't get to like walk all over these people. And now they said we Live Nation said, well, we'll let other people

have concerts in this amphitheater. But in practice, what I understand is you only get like Monday nights if you're some outside promoter or whatever, so you're you're stuck with anything that Live Nation is going to give you, and they control all these tours and they put them in these amphitheaters and then there's no one else is allowed to to and there's many other you know, promoters.

There's not just Live Nation in the world, and so you get you get a pretty low variety of music if you in your town, if you're letting Live Nation run everything, and that's just like monopoly power anywhere. Um. You know, I got nothing against Live Nation technically my brother in law owns

it. But it's just better for everybody. And I never got to see it illustrated by until I saw this city council fight about like what it means for a big giant company to own the amphitheater and not let other or pretend to let other promoters use it. And it's not a good deal for the

city because they're not they're getting cheated out of profits. And it's not a good deal for these citizens who want more variety in the concerts that are coming, because these people down an Irvine are like, they don't want to drive to La to go to the Hollywood Bowl all the time to see the major

acts, and that's a Holly Bowl is rough Greek Theater is rough. Get the parking in and out, and so now they got their building they're trying to build, you know, the city and Irvine Nervine's a masterplan community. It's just like you know, they practically speak esperanto there. It's so you know, plastic in a way, but it's plastic in a good way. They built a city, pre planned, master planned city, and they want they want their Hollywood Bowl. So now thanks to the vote this week,

looks like they're going to get it. So if you see articles about the Irvine Live Nation thing, you can read those and it's pretty interesting. All right, how much time we got? Now break? Okay, we're gonna take a break and come back with mar Joescalante Live from Hollywood. Joe Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank. All right, a couple more things about Live Nation. We were talking about Live Nation and the

Irvine fight in the last segment. Live Nation is soaring profits. So there's two articles that the surface this week. One was Live Nation revenue soars amidst wrong concert demand. This year, the company reported more than one hundred and seventeen million tickets sold for Live Nation shows so far this year, which is up twenty percent a year every year. And don't get me wrong, I play Live Nation shows all the time. They're always good, but I also

like the competition. But then they they're being investigated because by Congress, and they're investigating there. They're always under a surveillance because when they merge with Ticketmaster, the government said, okay, you have to let us have a supervisor that can watch you and make sure you don't commit anti trust violations that are against the Sherman Anti Trust Act. And so they're always being monitored. But then then the Swifties come into this. The Swifties are so mad at them.

You can now be a politician and get points by going after Live Nation because they're blamed for all the Swifty stuff because of the ticket Master debacles, even though technically they're not even the promoter of these of these these uh Taylor Swift concerts, but they get all the heat. Um so uh, they

got this oversight and everything. But now the politicians are coming down on them because the Swifties are so mad that the ticket to buckles and how hard it is to get tickets and how expensive that that's the new they're the new punching bag. Um. All right, we're gonna get to the strike in just a minute. A couple other things. A security guard was beat to death Saturday night Sunday morning at the Dragonfly. Um, did you hear about this beat today? Beat beat to death? It was a you know, kind

of an indie hip hop rapper headlining at the at the Dragonfly. And uh, if I was a Dragonfly, I wouldn't book indie hip hop, wouldn't do it. Um. These guy's a big swarm of people came at two in the morning. All right, it's harassing the security guard two in the morning. You know, nothing good goes on up two in the morning in Hollywood and they beat the guy to death. That's so yeah, not cool.

Um. Not only would I not go to some indie hip hop thing, I've been to boo some indie I've been to hip hop riots that were in major venues and they're scary. But at an indie thing where there's you know, one security guy, I wouldn't go. Um. It's more dangerous than Tunetown. Did you hear that? Did you see these things with a Lana del Ray working at waffle house? I did. I thought that was.

I don't know what the deal is, but I always love it when you see people that are like really well known celebrities doing stuff like that. Yeah, so I thought it was at first. I believe did one hundred percent. You know, um Andy Coffin worked at Jerry's Delhi. It's probably the most famous ones of these. While he was on the air on Taxi that was performance art. Lana del Ray is just cool to doing something weird. I love it if it's true. But now I think it is true

because it's now being reported. Also in alongside the Ed, she ran working at Chicago's iconic The Wiener's Circle in Chicago. Yeah, I would like to. I would like to get a job at Award Wieners in Disney's California Adventure. But no one would care. They would just say, Okay, yeah, that's where you. I figured you'd end up here. You know. No one would say, like, huh, Joe, You're a giant celebrity working at Award Wieners. They would just go, that's just kind of sad.

So I probably won't do it. I would like to work at Disneyland doing the canoes, though I don't care if anyone thought it was sad when I was doing that. Also, some news about floating around that Sean William Scott, who played Stiffler on American Pie, only got eight thousand dollars for that. I saw that, and so he about a car for five thousand, and then you know, he was still working at the La Zoo as

a churro guy. So I think this is floating around a show like how hard it is to be an actor and how it's not you know, they're not all rich. Even if some guy like Stiffler was a you know, a sensation and that movie came out and hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and he got eight thousand dollars. But you think about it. You gotta think about this. You're making that movie, you got a budget, you're trying to reduce the budget, and they say, hey, this

movie is too expensive, go back and cut the budget. If you have someone like Stiffler who's never been in another movie, why would you pay him anything other than sag scale? So you pay him sag scale. So it's not like they're cheating anybody that would just pay sag scale. So I guess the counter to that is, yes, Joe, well, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to raise sag scale so Stiffler doesn't have to work at the tchurroplace for as long as he had to work at the churiplace.

So Sarah Silverman is upset because she's saying she's going after actors that are working. There's still a few contracts that are not that are kind of different that you can still work as an actor if you're on this indie contract, for example, and then there's some you know, kind of reality shows that actors can still work and make money while the strike's going on. Sarah Silverman is saying, no, no, no, no, don't do any of

that. We all have to be united. And if we're not united, it's never gonna work because you're gonna make these And there's some famous actors I guess that are in these indie films they're working right now. And Sarah Silverman said her and her wealthy friends have turned down all the offers they've gotten, and the other people have said, hey, I gotta make a living, and my guild, the Screen Actors Guild, said I could be in this movie and she's saying, well, shame on the Screen Actors Guild. We

all you know, she's this hardcore. You know there's different levels of union labor protesting. She is hardcore. She says, she's really pissed. I believe her. I'm just glad I'm not somewhere where I'm really pissed. I'm in the Screen Actor's Guild. I would like these guys to make progress and get more money for the actors. But I'm not really pissed. And you know, it's just me. But it's the union that's allowing them to do

this. Another thing about the strike right now that's going on. We're approaching the ninety day mark. The ninety day mark is in many of the agreements with the writers who have overall deals, and this is gonna this is like tragic for a lot of them. An overall deal in the TV writing business is like the holy Grail. It's what you get after you've had a few hits or many heads and then you say we're gonna make an overall deal with

you. I'm going to guarantee you four million dollars a year and you're gonna write scripts and pitch them to us. Exclusively, and we're going to every time you write one, we're gonna say, okay, we're gonna knock one hundred grand off you wrote another one, and if you wrote so many that got more than four million, then we'd start paying your cash. But we're going to advance you four million dollars a year. That'd be a small one. That's not even a big one. We're gonna keep paying you this.

And let's say our deal is we're going to guarantee you for two years. Now, there's a clause in there called a force massure clause which we have. We have to pay you this unless there's a force massure, meaning like a pandemic, an act of god, something like a writer strike. So after ninety days they can just say, hey, we're terminating. You're overall theal and we're not paying you anymore. And will they will? Will you get it back after the writers strike happens. Fat chance. So that's like

coming up a first. That's a rough one. Yeah. The other striking news that we we're talking about during the break was the the accusations by the writers of the Actors Strike strikers that NBC Universal has trimmed to their trees. They have denuded these trees that used to provide shade for the it's for the

that's right outside our studio. There's these big trees all up and down, the really old trees all up and down the boulevard, and they provided shade to the strikers and they have been denuded, so there will be no shade for you. NBC Universal says this is just routine maintenance. But there's an LA official saying he's going to look into the matter. What do you think

see him? Well, we definitely got to see it. Apparently they had already scheduled the tree trimming ahead of time, so it something that was already there. But yeah, with the weather as as brutal as it is, it was the one thing that offered the a lot of the protesters or some kind of shelter from the heat, and obviously the people at NBC Universal had no problem with them sweating it out. Yeah, it's very interesting. I would agree with you that would like it's i mean, the tree maintenance.

It's like, you know, probably scheduled the routinely, you know, a year in advance or something. But you know, so someone could have said, hey, let's postpone that so that the strikers can have shade, but that would never happen, so they just let it roll. So I don't think that investigation is going to uncover anything, but you know, officials, city officials and politicians certainly love to to get involved and stuff like that.

Have you been down there. You're not into guild. No, I'm not union, but I've driven by it and I agree that they should get paid their fair share considering how much money is flowing into streaming services and stuff like that. I'm with you, Sam, all right. So you strikers out there ain't tough, and uh I will leave you. It's just a taste of the greatest song ever written.