Joe Ascalante Live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank. I am here with engineer Sam and producer NICKI.
We are going to talk.
About the entertainment industry. This is two hours of the business end of show business. But since this is a podcast episode, because we're preempted once again by the National Football League, we are just going straight through the stories and your podcast company might add a commercial.
I don't know, Sam, can you hear me?
Yep, loud and clear.
How you doing, Joe, I'm good, good. I saw a lot of movies. Nick Key's here too, she's saying movies. And first, before we get to the movies, let's talk a little bit about a couple of legal cases that are going on right now. The one is very exciting to me. It is the guy named M. Knight Chamalan Shamalayan. How do you say that, Niki?
I think it's.
Did you really?
Yeah? M Knight Shamalama ding dong?
How old are you like seventy?
Yeah? Totally.
Well, he's getting I.
Have so many stories I'm gonna have to scroll around.
For this one. He's getting sued now.
I mean a lot of people get sued when someone steals their movie or movie idea or a television idea. But very rarely, almost never do these things go very far. Someone throws it out or they settle. In this case, the guy has they're in trial right now. They're in riverside on. There's a trial going on. It is a trial. It's from the plaintiff, this woman, filmmaker, Francesca Gregorini. That's
a pretty good name, right, Francesca Gregorini. She alleges that the psychological horror series Servant copies elements from her twenty thirteenth film The Truth About Immanuel. Both works feature narratives where a grieving mother cares for a lifelike doll as if it were a real child apple where Shyamalamaj Shyamalan
has his servant. They say that their project was independently created by a guy named Tony Bascallap, who began developing it in two thousand and five, pre dating Gregorini's film Okay, this isn't aside. This guy starts this in two thousand and five. It is now twenty twenty four and he's barely got it off the ground, and then he gets
a big lawsuit. That is the entertainment business in a nutshell? Okay, what was what was this guy bascalop doing that whole time, just running around with this and other projects that are going nowhere, and he finally got a break here and then someone says, you stole.
It from me.
And they're also suing the director because he's famous m Night Shayamalan. And the trial started on Tuesday. Okay, that's guess where it is. It's in Riverside. Why I haven't been not able to figure out. But Francesca Gregrini is suing him an Apple for eighty one million dollars, a legend that they stole key elements and that there would
be no servant without the truth about Emmanuel. Her attorney is like, are showing you know clips of the of her movie and his movie and this courthouse and Riverside.
These people are probably thrilled.
It's the biggest thing to happen in Riverside since that new in and out. Now here's a problem. We've talked about these cases. What do you need for an infringement case? Well, I'll tell you you need substantial similarity and you need one other thing.
What is it? Geis? Do you know I really don't you need access something you find access access would be.
Let's say Francisca Gregorini wrote this film and then produced it, but it never came out or it only showed in Italian cinemas. Then he would have no access. These people would know, they wouldn't know it existed. So if they don't know it existed, we never charged someone infringement. It would have to be a complete copy. And even then, you know, it's like the room full of monkeys in a with typewriters and eventually though bash out of Shakespeare
and drama. But it'll take millions of years by accident. So did it happen by accident? Well we don't, you know, we don't want. We don't live in a society that wants to penalize someone if they came up with the exact same thing, So they have to have access.
You can't.
But the more access you have, like if you were like looking over the shoulder of Francesca Gregorini and you put out something that's kind of similar, you would you would be in trouble. But if you never ever, if you came from another planet and you made something similar, people would just say, that's just a coincidence. Now, have you guys ever seen a movie about a reborn doll?
Yes, yeah, you've seen a few.
Okay, so that's the defense that m night Yamielan is saying. Look, this is a movie about a reborn doll. Happens all the time. You can't own that. You can't own facts.
I don't know.
I don't really know why they call it a fact, but it's just like, but they're trying to, you know, throw a copyright excuses into the mix.
Here, but it's it's not really a fact.
It's just like, well, I guess they're saying, dolls are reborn in literature, all in all kinds of literature, and she can't own that forever, and just say, I made a movie in twenty thirteen about a reborn doll, so no one can.
Ever do it.
So there has to be more than that. So now they're going over in front of the jury, going through all the programs and saying, is there more than just the reborn doll here? Did they steal something like maybe a character's name, or maybe a character's job or something like that that could give evidence that they really stole it? But how hard would it be to change those things if you were really stealing it. So that's why these things really never go anywhere, and they really only go somewhere.
If it's like maybe they were partners back in history and they broke up and then one guy released it and I says to mine and you were in my office the whole time.
But in this one they are.
I don't think she's going to win. I'm surprised it went this far. The reason why it went this far is probably because Apple and SHAMAI Alon have terrible attorneys.
That's my guess.
And now that I've been, you know, in the high stakes world of music for the last year, I've seen some bad attorneys.
There's one other thing. Both sides. This is the interesting thing about this case.
They're trying to both sides say that they came from humble beginnings and the other people came from wealth. As some part of the equation here, the one attorney noted that Shayamalan's attorney said he was born in India and raised in Philadelphia without any entertainment industry connections, and then noted that Gregrini's father was an Italian count more privileged than an Italian count, and count Shacula I think was his name here. I don't know how to pronounce Chocula. Yeah,
and her mother was a bond girl. That's pretty elite right there. And her stepfather, oh Ringo Starr, one of the Beatles. That's a band. And uh, Emmanuel was partly financed by a German princess, Tatiana von Furstenberg.
Yeah, I'm just picturing. I'm just picturing a count there going one Lassu coming ah ah ah blah.
Cola Furstenberg is a fixture in New York. She's been around. We have mutual friends. But this is gonna This is great because they're gonna reach a verdict and this verdict will will serve to clarify copyright cases infringement cases in the future. We almost never get them, so that's why this is kind of exciting. I'm going to go over one more thing.
Well, actually, just to to add on to that really quick.
I don't know if you guys heard about the I think it's the lawsuit happening because of Molana too. There was someone who I guess had shown or shared parts of their script with Disney before even Molana one, and now they're suing for I think what ten billion dollars over Mowana two similarities to I guess this film that they were going to title Bucky the Wave Warrior that has some.
Unique connections to Polynesian culture.
Now he didn't, I'm sure he did not invent Polynesian culture. But I would be really curious to see how like kind of an animated adventure style heartwarming Disney film script would have similarities between you know that and Molana.
Well, that will be an interesting one to see.
I will be surprised if it goes anywhere, because they never do. That's why this one is going somewhere. Now, Yeah, I haven't heard of them Molana to one, but we'll follow that. And then there's a couple of people came to me, Oh yeah, I see them Mona two one. Yeah, it's five days ago. This guy is like run around ten billion. I mean that's just like irresponsible shooting for ten billion. But there's the Disney movie read not just yeah,
I think it's well as Park Disney. Who's a pixel Christmas movie, the Christmas movie about Red one or whatever, Santa Claus gets kidnapped, whatever like that. They have to bring in the government. That one someone came to me and said, hey, look they stole my script. So if a movie's success, but that was before the movie was successful.
It turned out to be pretty successful movie. Now, the problem with the fun Furstenberg film financed film is that they produced evidence of how much that it that it played, you know, in theaters and it and it earned like nine dollars.
Awesome. Yeah, I think the source that I found they were sharing said nine dollars from one viewer.
Movie and it was probably the counts is I think I got to watch this thing my money.
Okay.
So here's another story that I like, I want to get to before we get to the movies. There's this guy named James Dolan. He owns Madison Square Gardens, and he's my new hero. He's the owner of the New York Knicks and the Rangers. And he's under scrutiny for using facial recognition technology at Madison Square Garden to ban attorneys from firms engaged in lawsuits against his companies. This policy has led to legal challenges and debates over its
ethical implications. Dolan's tenure has been marked by controversies. A lot of people don't like him for various reasons. It's sports. People hate people for whatever reasons. But what he's doing is this lawyer said, there's a lawyer named Barbara Hart, and she's part of a law firm called Grant and Eisenhoffer, and they are suing MSG over some overpaid somebody overpaid for the MSG cable network or whatever, and saying that Dolan received unique benefits from the acquisition to the detriment
of stockholders. That's like a shareholder, sir, that's a nuisance lawsuit if you ask me, from a disgruntled shareholders.
And he said that.
She said she attempted to do an attendant concert at the garden in October twenty second, unaware that Madison Square Garden had instituted a policy of banning lawyers at firms currently suing the company.
While I'm at.
MSG, I was identified as a banned g and e. Eisenhoffer attorney via facial recognition software. MSG employees stopped me and asked for my ID. After I refuse to give it to them, they correctly identified me as Miss Barbara Hart. Come with me, please, yeap, escort it out of the building where she belongs.
No Knicks basketball for you?
Wow?
Yeah, I mean to me, I don't know how you guys feel. I like it.
I mean I feel like you know, parties have similar door policies.
You know.
It's like, if you can't hang with me, you don't get to come to my party.
So if the guy owns Madison Square Garden, I can understand why he wouldn't want his haters to be uh enjoying his awesome situation.
You know, he's using the only power he has as a poor, humble arena owner to keep these people from dancing, you know, just rubbing his face in these injunctions or in these lawsuits. So he so it goes to court and then one it's gone like back and forth through the courts. But right now the courts are saying, all right,
you can't just those people. You can't throw them out after you've already sold them tickets and use your facial recognition stuff to throw them out, probably because they you know, in the ticket, they had a right to it.
They bought the ticket. There was a right to attend.
It's kind of a license of a seat, and they bought the license and they got to go in. But the court said you could refuse to sell tickets. To those people in the first place if you want, go ahead, so you could tell them, hey, all you people suing me,
you're not coming to Madison Square Garden anymore. Now, someone might say that has a chilling effect on those people's right to sue, because it would hard to be hard to get an attorney, because all those attorneys in New York are they want to go to Knicks games.
So interesting. But still I like it.
Hey, I get it.
You know, that's a level of spite that I wish I could achieve.
I I just I mean, there's I got a list sam people that I would not let in my arena. So and another thing before you get to the movies, TikTok has been restored, so you can breathe a sigh of relief.
Nikki.
It's very interesting that you was removed in the first place, and both the President Biden and President Trump both wanted.
It not to be banned.
I remember we remember Trump used to say it's you know, it's dangerous, but he now, I guess, wants it to be sold to an American company. But he didn't want to just take it off. I think nobody wants to be the person that takes away young people's TikTok. So but now Trump Yeah, it was.
Yeah exactly.
There's like a there's the I think the warning message that announced that TikTok was being banned was changed. There was one wording that came out first that was a little bit more vague or just you know, just only addressed the US ban.
And then the second.
Wording that was like an updated version of this band message included President Trump in it.
You go to but he will be yeah, yeah, you go to TikTok right now. It says President Trump did this all a favor here, let's all celebrate him. So President Trump is having quite a honeymoon even though his term hasn't started. So people are hostages, are getting free TikTok is back up, he's milking it. So, yeah, we have There's one other thing that might that is a little bit of an issue for some. I mean, any issue with Trump is going to be an issue for
half the country. But it seems to me that it's becoming less than half in a way, it just seems like less than half. But there's still people that just you know, hate this man and want to kill him. As you know, when people you know tried already. Two people tried to actually kill him. One got pretty close. But there is some concern in the television world because he has nineteen people that he has hired in his new staff that are Fox News employees or formal employees.
So people are thinking, you know, how's this going to work. They're preparing to cover for a government filled with former network employees. Now the president and executive editor of Fox News Media, He's emphasized the network's commitment to journalistic integrity, stating that their newsroom operates independently of any political affiliations.
This development raises questions about the relationship between media organizations and government, highlighting the movement of personnel between the two sectors. And this has always been going on, Like the Biden spokesperson, that one, that's Karine Jean Pierre. She came from MSNBC and Jensaki is now in MSNBC.
So they both do it.
But it just seems like Trump really did it. I mean, everybody. My Apello guy is now the Secretary of the Interior. I heard.
You're not laughing at that. That's the best I have.
Sorry, you're you're who my Pello guy, the my pillow guy, the Mypello guy.
Hey, come on, Nikki, Nikki, do you have a television? You know I don't just watch movies. Yeah, okay, well let me tell.
You the movies and and tiktoks.
You know that, well, you know they You're lucky because if you did watch cable like I do, you'd have to you'd be bombarded with commercials form mypellow dot com. And uh so it's con He's constantly on Fox selling is my pellow dot com pillows?
Oh see cultural cultural divide here.
Yes, there's a cultural divide. The Mypello guy is uh now in the cabinet. Hilarious, Joe, Okay, never mind, all right, let's go to the movies.
Number one at the movies this week? Yes, do you want want to guess?
Enlighten us?
What do you say? I said?
Enlighten us?
Oh, enlighten you? Okay?
Yeah, Sam, do you have a guest number one movie of the week?
I have no guests whatsoever right now. I BET's probably the same one as last week.
It isn't.
It's kind of a surprise. One of them days.
This comedy the best friends Drew and Alyssa are about to have one of them days when they discover Alissa's boyfriend has blown their rent money. The duo finds themselves going to extremes in a comical race against the clock to avoid eviction and keep their friendship intact. It's just two black female comedies, just comedians, and they've they're tearing up the box office. It must be hilarious. That's what I'm saying.
Is that the one with Keiky Palmer?
And this is a yeah, it is yeah.
I do actually really want to see that one.
Palmer. How do you pronounce the other person? You know?
It's so funny.
I loved her music when I was in high school, and I had no clue how to pronounce her name. And then one night I had a dream where like in the dream, she like sits me down and she explains it's pronounced sizza, and then I woke up and it was correct.
Okay, So there you go. That's the that's the only girl's dream that's ever been told to me that actually benefited me and didn't waste a good portion of it. Thank you.
Okay.
So that's number one New movie Number one. Number two Mufasa people Love It Making Money. Number three is Wolfman from Universal four, Sonic The Hedgehog, Narber five, Dinneres Part two, Pantera number six at Mohana two, which is now like another billion dollar movie for Disney. So all the people that are saying Disney's Studios going downhill and they're gonna dry up, they're making money. They got Mufasa and they
got Mohana in the top ten right now. Noseratu from Focused Features tried to see that, but it just didn't work out. A complete unknown. I'm doing documentary number eight, number nine, wicket number ten, Baby Girl, and then there's a tie for number eleven and number twelve. Maybe we're gonna call it flow. Let's talk about flow. Anyone see flow? What is slow?
I had not?
Flow?
Is the movie about is a movie, an animated feature about a cat from Janis Films that survives like an apocalypse of some kind. They don't really explain it because it's about animals and what happens. There's the kind of a utopian situation going on and there's only animals left and they don't talk. So the animals, it's a movie cartoon of the animals that don't talk.
Have you ever seen that? It can't talk?
It looks really cute.
Oh, it's the best. It's a great movie. It's pretty short, so it would be nice to see it in a theater, but I don't think.
You have to.
I did.
I broke my rule and I left the cinemak world and went to the AMC World in the Long Beach.
Have you ever been there?
Oh?
My god?
And it's wild and I saw it there.
It was super fun. Wild Robot still hanging in there in the top fifteen. A couple other movies that I saw, and we'll talk about like Conclave on Nora. We don't need to talk about that, we already have and September five, So Nikki, let's start with you. Let's start with Sam, since we know he didn't see a movie because he's got all these kids. Sam, what movies did you see this week?
None? Thank you very much. I saw Ostriches yesterday. Actually you saw what I saw Ostriches. I went to an ostrich farm yesterday.
Oh, I was like, when did that come out?
Yeah? Actual actual animals and the outdoors.
You okay?
Where Nikki? What did you deprive yourself of Vitamin D this week by watching? So you usually watched like classic movies and old movies and things like this.
Yeah, this week was a little This week was a little busy.
So I only did a rewatch of The Substance with a handful of my friends who all had not seen it yet, and I went to the AMC at the Glendale Galleria.
I have to say I was shocked at the audience. They were so rowdy and ridiculous.
I I my friends and I I mean, hey, we're all film students, so maybe we just have a little more respect for the cinema than the average joe.
But these people were like hooting and hollering and going like, oh no, she didn't.
At Oh no she did.
No. I'm like, yeah she did, like be quiet and acknowledged that she did. Okay, what the hell?
So I was like, yeah, she did everything quiet, and like they were being so ridiculous. If they're like especially with the naked bodies, I'm like, can you please just be chill about this and not make it some meme or joke in your head because you just can't handle a little bit of artistic, you know, expression that maybe challenges you for a second, but you have to you just have to.
Crack a joke.
And there were three people on their phones taking pictures or videos of the screen, and people were yelling in the audience, off your phone, we can see your phone.
I was like, if you, if you really need to be addicted to that thing, like, get out of the theater. This is so ridiculous.
There was even a guy next to me who was going like not even just laughing at every scene, He's going, oh my god, oh I can't believe it.
Ahahaha.
At every scene. I'm like, Okay, not only is it a horror movie, but it's like I don't it's it's too it's too good for this behavior. I was so displeased. I felt like a sorry.
I felt like a boomer in this moment, a real I felt like I was aging my I was like, two young people don't know anything.
I don't.
I don't approve of that. And and that's why I picked my theater. My theater doesn't have that a lot of it. It's it's mostly if there was one group that you could like identify that sees movies at my theater, it's young Vietnamese kids, and they're you know, they're just very quiet in general. They're quiet people. And then there's some old people and they're quiet and there's not much teenage routiness going on at the Beltara in Huntington Beach. But in their defense, I'm going to say this, that
movie was very interesting. What do we call it, like a psychological thriller?
Is that we were sure?
Okay, so it's a classic psychological.
Thriller until the last half hour when it becomes a teenage gore horror movie that does attract people that are gonna yell at the screen. So that was that guy's choice. That was an amazing movie until that last part and then you're like, what what am I watching? It got it got over the top, and I think word got out and said let's go see this movie and get crazy.
Yeah, I mean I understand during the last scene, like the third act, where you know, it goes from being kind of psychological and they're being suspenseful moments and some stakes to just all out mayhem. That is okay to laugh at because it is truly so bizarre that I can understand the comedic element, okay, but like nothing else until that point is worth really like lolling about, which just I think I was like huffing and puffing, just so irritated.
By the whole thing, come to come to adulthood.
Yeah, but I could feel my prefrontal cortex just like hardening.
In that moment.
I was like, I'm really coming into myself here then out of whatever the hell that was?
Did you see?
Did you see any So if you want to see the substance, don't go to the Glendale Galleria. What's the is that an AMC.
Or it was an AMC and the first time I saw it.
This is actually I can recommend seeing it at the Culver City Theater because that's where I saw it the first time in October. It's right next to an arawon and also a like skin or dermatology clinic that does botox and other crazy facials and whatever. And so walking by the Arawon and then also by that and by the way, like that one skincare clinic looks a lot like the bathroom in the substance.
So with my boyfriend and I.
When we went to go watch it, we like looked at both of those buildings and had our fun poking at them. Right, But after leaving the substance quite disturbed, we had to pass by them again and that was a nice little add on going like, oh no, get out of there, you know, all.
Right, Well, I know you have to go soon, So I want to rush through the rest in the movie, or at least my letterboxed list, unless you have any other ones you want to you want to say that you saw it.
Yeah, I watched a lot of arrested development this week.
It's been okay.
So what I saw is I saw The Conclave, and uh, you know, it's beautifully shot, beautifully directed, great actors in it, but it's just as a Catholic, this is my domain, guys, and you guys are just out of your minds, just like you know, whenever it's somebody, if any movie makes it to this level, these stars and this budget, and it's about Catholicism, it's anti Catholic. So this was this was no different. So it's just like it was embarrassing.
Uh still still like well crafted, but like such low hanging fruit like that of their attack on the church. And so I pity their souls, That's what I'm saying. I pity their souls, everybody who made the con Club. I'm gonna pray for you guys. A couple of days later, I saw Better Man. Better Man is the I'll just read my review. Not since Lancelot Link Secret Chimp went off the air have I had such a good time
watching anything. All I can say, right, all I can say is that if you're the guy that made the Bob Dylan biopic or any biopic in the past five years, you would just hide after seeing this movie and hope nobody ever brings it up again. There's tons of genius at work here that no one else ever thought of. However, I always go back to my religion. His grandmother was buried in a grave with a cross on it. I bet she gave him some fear of God that they left out of the script. But I'm gonna only ding
him a half a point of that. And I gave it four and a half stars. I think that's my first movie of the year with four and a half stars. It's all about this guy and his grandma. I raised him, uh and he he's he's Robbie Williams who's a huge star in in a boy band, then becomes a star in his own right. And his grandma's advice is always you know what guides him. But he turns into a junkie. So I don't know how great of a grandma she was, because you know, my grandma gave me advice that that.
You know, Wait, did they grandma's better than his grandma?
Is what I'm saying.
Did they actually have to get a junkie monkey to play him?
Yeah, they have a junkie that's high on coke and uh as a sexual.
Addict like an actual monkey.
Well, I mean, you know, it's like a it's like a Mufasa monkey, you know.
Okay, oh okay. So I was telling my wife it's like kind of a computer generated kind of thing.
I was telling my wife, how can they How can that lady do all these sex scenes with his monkey because he must have really bad peanut butter breath.
Sammy, Sam gets that joke.
I get that joke very well.
In the old days, when we used to enslave chimpanzees for our amusement in movies and TV, we would give them a peanut butter and then they would try to lick it out of their teeth, and then we could dub in a dialogue while for that, because they look like they're talking when they're trying to get the peanut butter out of their teeth.
So seriously, Lancelot Link is just a classic. It's a treasure that people just let slip by, and it's gone off into obscurity. I'm sure we could find episodes of it on YouTube or whatever.
Yeah, you can find it, but it'll never be made again. Okay.
So four and a half Stars three and a half Stars to September five is the other movie I saw about the Israeli kidnapping at the Olympics in nineteen seventy two, old enough to remember this, and so it was really cool to see this movie. It's controversial because it's told only from the the point of view of these A TV network employees and executives, you know, and so there's no Palestinian TV executives.
Here's a sentence you never heard.
Oh, if these Palestinians didn't control Hollywood, I could maybe get ahead. So it's not exactly a balanced treatment of the of the topic of the Palestinians kidnapping the Jews. But technically I loved it. The the vintage television hardware and technical problem. It was like that movie apol Thard Team where they're trying to put together the I think that was the one they're trying to put together the rocket and before it crashes or it disintegrates.
I mean it looks like that.
They go, we got a problem, and we got all these big giants and weird technology to make Cairns and and go over to the satellite. There's only one satellite and they got to give it back to CBS at three o'clock. And we're having a fight with CBSA we have a world story here, and CBS is like, the don't care. We got to show Days of our Lives whatever.
A documentary or a dramatization.
Well, let me tell you that it's a good question. It's a dramatization. It's a script with good actors like Peter sarsgard. I think this is the day. But they use a lot of actual stuff, like the ABC Wide World of Sports. They use one guy, Jim I forget his last name anyway, Jim, the main anchor.
They're using this the.
Regular film of him from a long time ago. Peter Jennings. They use an actor and they don't use him, and I think it might have to do with life story rights. Maybe his family didn't want to give it up. Howard Cosell. They never show Howard Cosell, and that was the tragedy of this movie. Never showed but they play his voice, his actual voice, because he was there and he was help so very sad. And then to not see.
Howard cosell and I heard.
What the problem was is they were going to have Hierd Coselle was going to be played by a chimpanzee, and then when they found out about this Better Man movie, they just abandoned that idea because they thought people would think they were, you know, copying the Abby Williams thing, and no one wanted to do that, so they just showed his voice or you know, played his voice. Now this movie is since it only tells you one side, and it's just not not even just one side, but
it's a narrow vision of this thing. It's just whatever these guys knew while they're in the TV station, because they're like, oh my god, there's shoot, there's guns, there's shooting. We got to go what are we gonna do? We can't do this, we can't do that. Let's try this, Let's try that. Very riveting, keep you on the edge
of your seat. But I wouldn't go see it unless the next day you watch this other movie called A Day in September, which is a documentary from nineteen ninety nine, which won Best Documentary in the Oscars in the year two thousand. You can see it on MGM Plus, which is a faulty app because they make you stream.
It from your phone. Oh wow, it's true, but.
Still a fascinating documentary, and it's there on MGM plus. You can get it, and then you can get a free trial for seven days of MGM plus. Put on your phone, stream it to your TV and there you go. But if you're gonna watch September five, watch one day in September the next day, and that's like a complete picture of what happened, rather than the you know, the half story, which is, you know, really wildly entertaining. But it's not like a lot of people online were saying, now,
this is propaganda from only one side. No, it's telling it's only telling you what these guys knew. It's only what they knew. So that's the story. When in September the commentary, I gave it four stars and September five I gave three and a half stars. So that's it for me and movies this week. And I think that's it for us, right Nikki were getting you out on time, I think so, thanks guys.
All right, okay, so that's for.
Joe Scalante live from Hollywood, and we'll now leave you with just a taste of the greatest song ever written.