Podcast Title Writers on Strike - podcast episode cover

Podcast Title Writers on Strike

May 14, 202339 min
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Episode description

Joe Escalante's weekly trip down the business end of showbiz. This week: the latest from the box office, and all the legal ins and outs of the writers' strike, and how it impacts the everyday guy working the sets, the writers, the actors, and the studios. There's a lot of money to be made, and everyone wants their fair cut. You know what that means... MORE REALITY TV!

Transcript

Joe Escalante live from Hollywood. By Hollywood, you mean Burbank across the street from a Wiener Schnitzel that serves beer. And this is two hours of the business end of show business that we do every Sunday on five from five to seven on KiB on your AM dial at eleven fifty Sam producer slash engineer. Can you hear me loud and clear? How are you doing that right? If I'm doing good, I'm doing good. Busy busy week. Didn't get to see a lot of movies. I got to see a grand total of

zero. Did you see any? Unfortunately no. I was hoping to actually catch Renfield, but there was an issue with the payments, so we ended up not doing that. But we're going to see that this week. Renfield one of the best films of the year and one of the best performances by any actor with Nicholas Cage and as a vampire. This is the universal vampire. You know, this is this is Count Dracula. Um so, uh, you gotta see it. Great performance. I mean it's good, it's

as better, it's as good as anything that's been done. It's good. It's it's as good as anything that was nominated last year. Uh, it's just it's just like dynamic and hilarious and spooky and you know, tortured. That's a great actor. We're lucky to have that guy around. Absolutely. Uh. If you if you don't know enough about Nick Cage watched was it The Unbearable Weight of Immense Talent or whatever it is? Yeah? Ooh, good lord, one of the funniest movies I've seen. Yeah, another great

movie. Yeah. So uh yeah, so that movie. I think I know a little bit about Dracula because my grandfather, I don't know if you know this was Bella Legosi, insurance agent. Really, yeah, he was Bela lago See insurance agent. You've got a very very deep Hollywood family. He was also the insurance agent of Salmonio and Ah, I forgot some of their a few other people. Anyway, he was connected in the insurance game in Hollywood. Yes, Thomas O'Reilly insurance agent to the stars Inglewood, California.

Come on by, Ah, good old Thomas Um no longer with us, as is my mother no longer with us, Um, So happy Mother's Day to her. I'm here celebrating with my Suegraa, my mother in law because she's you know, you marry young. You got a young brie mother in law. So h happy birth Aftere Mother's Day to Gloria. How about you. You have any mothers floating around? Yeah? My mom still around. Happy Mother's Day. I wish we could have had chance to hang out, but my son was sick, so we ended up not going. But

also sad. And it was my best friend's mother passed away this morning, so it's a it's kind of a rough one. Yeah, that's kind of rough for him right now, so we're all going to roll it around him. Oh yeah, all right, Prayers to your friend's mother. What was her name? I don't know her name. I know my friend's name, Lamar. You got to know her name so we can pray for her. Yeah, we can't just pray for random people. Way, I will find out the name so I can send you the text message so we can cassion

on that prayer. I will do that. And you've got to get your head in the game, Sam. Okay, the box office this week, Um, you know what, box office is pretty strong. Still. We got Guardians of the Galaxy still at number one, dropping off. I'm not sure if they anytime you drop off less than fifty percent, it's like not a disaster. But what are you hearing on the street in your nerd world about Guardians of the Galaxy? Yes, no, what mixed reviews. Some

people are saying it's the best thing since Endgame. Some people are saying it's just another you know, like post end Game movie that's just you know, gonna go out there and everybody's gonna watch it. But it's not going to be anything as good as what we were spoiled with earlier. Okay, all right, what's a good good take on it? Super Mario Brothers, you saw it, probably absolutely the Super Mario Brothers. I saw it only dropped

off thirty percent last weekend. So this has legs five hundred and thirty five million dollars at the box office in the US already. The next one is these man these old ladies with the book Club, the Jane Fondas and I don't even know if she's in that, but you know all those old ladies that are in these movies these days, like eighty for Brady. Yeah, I think we've got another hit in her hands here with I mean, I don't know how much they have to pay these people to make all these menopause

jokes. But six million, six and a half million at the box office could be worse. Um, And I think we've got to be grateful that they make movies like this. You know they didn't they These kind of mid budget fun movies. Um. You know are are few and far between between because we have so many superhero movies and so many horror movies like The Evil Dead Rise. I believe that's a horror movie. I don't know a lot

about it. From Warner Brothers did sixty million so far. Now number five is the movie I did see, Are you there God, It's me Margaret. I know I lied, I said, I said it didn't see any movie, but I did see are you there, God, It's me Margaret. I gave it four stars, four out of five stars on my letterbox account. If you don't have letterboxed, I suggest you get it. It's where you It's like social Uh, it's like you know, it's like face,

it's like a Friendster for movies. Um. Yeah, So lions Gate puts out are you there, God, It's Me Margaret, a Judy Bloom book that came out of fifty seven hundred years ago, and why hasn't it been a movies thus far? Wow, Judy Bloom must be difficult, that's all I could say. Um, But they made it finally and it's a

hit, A great movie, great movie. I want to go back to something you were just talking about, the idea of like it's good to see certain movies, like you know, the the movies with the old ladies in it, those those kind of movies being made and getting you know, theatrical

releases and making money. And I want to kind of go back to that because it's a It's an interesting point because after the pandemic, the only movies that we were really seeing coming out in theaters were gonna be the major blockbusters and everybody was gonna you know, there was the big Yeah, those couldn't

be stopped. Yeah, And like you know, I remember a couple of the Marvel movies that came out made a lot of money and Rotten you know, that was more or less what was available at the time, aside from a couple of other movies that you could tell, you know, the production value were was, you know, during the pandemic, so it didn't quite hit the right way. And now we're seeing the movies that we the kind

of movies that we would see pre pandemic now being released here again. So that, yeah, there's something really good about even though I may never see any one of those movies, I'm really happy to see them in the theaters. And the studios are seemed very committed to these to these kinds of movies, and they're there. You know. Even Warner Brothers, I mean Warner Brothers said, we're putting our movies. We're putting our films in the theaters.

Amazon's putting movies in the theaters. Apples putting movies in the theaters. Uh. Netflix not so much, but they better, you know, get with it. And so this is all good except for a few if it goes back to you know, where there's hard to buy tickets like it used to be, where you would you know, you had to get your tickets three days in advance. That's going to irritate me. But I will I will take it if more movies are made to go into the theaters, and

then I'll just leave it there. As far as the the top movies of the weekend movies, We're looking forward to The Little Mermaid, Fast X and Transformers, movie coming up this summer, right, and Spider Man Across the Spider Verse from from Sony, and of course Barbie, Yeah, coming up on July. I think it's a first week in July, first weekend in July, and Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan's film comes out the same day as Barbie.

Oppenheimer always has that first week in July when he wants to release movies and Barbie's going up against them. We'll see how that goes, and will take a break right now out and we'll check the traffic and we'll come back with Joe'scalante Live from Hollywood, Joscalante Live from Hollywood, by Hollywood and meet Burbank. We're talking about movies, and something's going to interrupt movies, but maybe

more so television. I mean, we can talk all we want, sam about our favorite movies that are going to get made and TV shows, but if they have a writer strike, everything is going to be different. And they do have a writer strike, because the writers want on strike like you know Monday I think it was, and so they're gone. They had to, you know, stop work. Yeah, I know a lot of people on the crews who impact and they're all eager to get back to work because

they want some money. Writers at A lot of the writers tend to have more money in the bank, and allow of the people and the crew tend to go more paycheck to paycheck sometimes. So yeah, they've been kind of sweating it out. Well, what I heard is the Writer's go which I don't belong to, even though I'm a television writer, so can be done. I don't um they have about four months of worth of money to help

people that have quit paying jobs to join the picket lines. Yeah, and I don't think like if you don't have a paying job, I'm sure there's some relief you can get, because maybe you were going to get one. But as we know, these things like if you need a hand out and people are handing things out, you know, you can state your case and

get some help. But in general, I think it's like if you're working and all of a sudden, bam, you get nailed by the strike, you go to the you you got to go sign up and pick it and then you can get some relief. I got a letter from the Screen Actors Guilt that I belonged to for some weird reason, and they said, you know, for us to go out there and join them in the picket line

and we would get a T shirt for as long as supplies last. That wasn't enough for me, Sam, I want to guarantee T shirt guaranteed. Okay, Um, so four months? Yeah, okay, So um the strike, as we know, Um, they want more money. We'll talk a little bit about the strike. Why are they striking? Their royalties? Their residuals are down, like they're down by a certain you know, percentage of what they used to be. So they're you know, looking around going

why are the why why are the royalties residuals? They would call them, Why are the residuals down so much in um that we're getting well, maybe because the rates are too low, Maybe because there's more enforcement or more reasons for things to generate royalties, because there's some things that just you know don't generate them. Um. So they, I mean, this happens, uh every so often. They when it's it's when it's time to renegotiate, they come up with things. Uh. Uh. You know, they will say

that the streamers, A lot of us blamed on the streamers. Record profits from these streamers. They will say, I mean depending on how you look at it, and that if they don't, well I lost my train of thought there, because this is so fricking boring. Get in the room and write a show, all right, serious jeez. Uh So the streamers, you know, they think they're making a lot of money. Maybe they are, maybe there aren't. Maybe they're losing billions, and they're saying, you

know what, you know what our problem is. When I owned a record label, and there was always articles in the uh Internet and papers like royalties are too low and music and this is kind of how I look at it sometimes because I was on the side of the management in the music business. I got a record label, and I gotta tell you, after Napster and all that stuff and CD burning, the problem with the music industry wasn't me not paying enough royalties. That was not the problem. But people were,

you know, always writing articles about how cheated the musicians were. And I'm a musician that I've put out like, you know, fifteen sixteen, seventeen albums. You know, I know what it's like. But they're getting cheated. And but yet the music business is going under because there's not enough money because record sales go down and promotion costs go up. That's the one thing

that people don't understand. To promote these things, especially now with a crowded field, it is staggering the cost In the record business I used to have. I used to have one thing that happened. There was a magazine called Alternative Press, and it would put punk bands like Yellow Card and Newfound Glory on the cover. And then my bands, the Atari's and uh Tsunami Bomb are useless, id Audio Karate, these kind of smaller bands, Hey,

how come we can't get on the cover of AP? And I would say, well, because you have to give AP forty thousand dollars um to buy an ad and then another forty thousand dollars to pay some guy to to paste the posters of the magazine all over Hollywood or wherever. So that's eighty thousand dollars gold. Then why has Yellow Card on on the on the cover of the magazine because they're on a major label. The next question was, well,

how do we get on a major label? See? You know yeah, um so uh, you know, the studios and the streamers are like, you know, there's this is all everything's costing us a fortune. And now you want more money. Um, they've offered one, you know, increase and the other guys want it increases, like a couple hundred million more. They're there, are there, They're one hundred million dollars at least apart um pros and cons. It's hard to find an article about the good arguments

the studios are making. When I say studios, you were talking you know, Amazon, Netflix, uh, Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers. They have an organization and they're of producers and they negotiate with the guilds. Now, if you're in the guild, you can only write for these people in the association or people that are registered with the w GA. Like the Screen

Actors Guild too has the same thing. If you want to hire a Screen Actors Guild member, you have to register with the Screen Actors Guild and then you're part of the negotiating when these when these contracts come up. So the the actors, okay, so the pros and cons, the pros, we know, that's easy to find. It's hard to find arguments against the act the writers. The pros are more money. Of course, people should get

more money. And if they're not getting if they're getting less money, and it's harder to live, and the other and the and the studios aren't, you know, bankrupt, then let's we we've got to negotiate, and we got to get more money to the writers. Streaming transparency, this is one of the things they're asking for. And um, they want to know what the streaming numbers are. Um, that one. I don't. I don't. I don't think it will help them. I really don't know. I

think that's fighting for something. That's maybe the studios could just give them that as a give the streamers and tell them how many people are watching each show. But um, you know, streamers are new. They they don't have Nielsen ratings and stuff like that. They don't tell people who watches their stuff, and they have reasons for doing that. They don't. Nobody knows how many people subscribe to Apple TV their thing, did you know that? Sam?

Really nobody nobody knows. Um. Netflix is a publicly traded company, so more stuff has to come out, but they still don't share everything, can you. So I don't think they you know, I don't think they'll help them. So I think they're if they're fighting for that, if that's really that important to them, studios give it to them cares. Now we get into things called like guaranteed staffing. The writers are pissed because they, you know, there's a lot of writer rooms that are sixteen people, sixteen

people writing one show. You'd hand a couple of scripts to people and then they go out home and they you know, they start writing it and you go back to the writer's room. I realize you're almost out of time. But so we'll pause this a little bit. But a lot of it is about what goes onto this writer's room and how big this writer's room should be. Should there be a law or a guild requirement that a writer's room should have a minimum number of writers for each show. That's a question, and

that's one of the things they're fighting about. So when we come back, we'll talk about whether that's a good idea or a totally stupid idea. Joe's Galante Live from Hollywood, Joe Live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood I mean Burbank two hours of the business end of show Business every week on Sunday nights, KiB eleven fifty on your AM dial. Sam. We were talking about the writers Guild strike. Um, we're talking about mini rooms. So one of the gripes, Oh, I should call them not gripes. That sounds

mean right, They're not gripes. These are demands for relief. So a mini room, what is a mini room? The mini room is a I got offered to write for a mini room. These are these are offensive to the WGA. Someone called me up and they said, hey, this is what we do. We're gonna put you in like six other writers are gonna put you in a room for two weeks. You're gonna hash out the storylines for a ten episode series about whatever it was, and then then you guys

are gone. So you're only gonna get paid for two weeks or three weeks or four weeks or I forgot whatever it was, maybe it was six weeks. Then you're gone. Then who writes the series? Sam? Other writers? Yeah, maybe one, one guy two. At the most in a

sum writer's rooms have sixteen people in him. In this case, you would, like, you know what, sixteen people would be nice, But that's a lot of people to pay, you know over a you know, ten episode thing of forty weeks or something that's that's an enormous amount of money. So if you came into this situation and you're trying to reduce costs. Like Bob Iger at Disney or someone else said somewhere else, you would say, what's this? Why are we paying all these people? Sixteen people? It's

a little bit shocking, though I'm doing that. Shocked you a little bit, Sam, It is a little shocking. But if they have the money then and they have the if all of those writers are creative enough to be in the room, then all good. But I could see where companies would

be like, that's a little excessive. What if we do this? I got an idea, someone said, one day, let's put them all, Let's put only Let's take eight of those people and let's pay them for a month, and they're going to hash out twelve episodes and the stories little outlines like a niggation outline, and then when they're done, we'll get rid of them, and then we'll bring in who created the show, Bill, Okay, then Bill can write them. Why can't Bill write them all? In

many series, one person writes everything. Some places have sixteen writers. Some places have ten writers that don't do anything, while one person does it. All that goes on a lot like they've got this writer's room. I'm pretty sure the writers goes, Oh my god, these goes are clowns, and it just writes them all. I think David Kelly's like them could be wrong. So these things when someone who used to get paid for like forty weeks

is now getting paid for four weeks, and that's outrageous. So he goes to his guild and he says, how can this be? I can't work, I can't pay my expensive boat payments or what do they? I mean, they're payment they're private schools. You live in LA and you're a writer, you have to send your kid to a private school. You can't go to those public schools. They are terrible. So that's what a mini writer's

a mini room does and they're offended by it. And I got offered one and I was like, you know, to me, it made sense. I just like that, it makes sense. But I mean, I have a lot of different streams of income. Some people are just like got one, and when it gets cut off, it's terrible. So they're fighting for that. That's it's all really basically money. If you paid me more money to be in a mini miniroom than in a regular room, and I'd be

fine. So the question is this, should should there be a law, a rule, or a guilting that requires a minimum amount of staff on each television show, like a bare minimum sam? Should there be I honestly don't know. That's the kind of stuff that the unions and the studios are going

to have to hash out that is completely out of my pay grade. Yeah, I mean there's certain things are like I think they got to hash out, like their royalties are down like twenty three percent, or the residuals are in general the WGA, So how can we get them back up, you know, to twenty three you know, how can we make up for this

lost income? I think that's a reasonable question to ask. But when you start putting minimums on on hiring staff or a writer's room, if you think about it, the other side of it is, and this is that they could hurt writers is less shows get picked up because now they're looking around and saying, look, every show has to have a minimum of ten writers paid for, you know, the entire duration of the show. So now we can only pick up this many shows. And you would say, well,

it's gonna employ more writers. So because there's gonna be a minimum. But then some of them are are shows that there are only one guy writes, like I just did. I did my first show. I was gonna have a writer's room. My first show on Fox called Monsters Across America. I'm putting together a writer's room, and then the pandemic happens and everybody's you know, I got more time on my hands, so I write all six episodes

of the first order. I wrote them all myself. Now, if I had a minimum requirement, I would have to pay people for doing what I could have done by myself, and what I definitely would have done better because it's my show. I created it, so it would have been a worse show. I would have made less money, and then arguably it wouldn't have gone to second season. I got a second season because I wrote all the episodes and they were great. I got a second season. Very hard to

get a second season. I got one. Now, if we've done the other way and all and I have a minimum requirement, we have a we have a worse season because everything is worse that there's six people doing it. Then if there's you know, one, it's not just one. Because I have people at the network that you know, check me and collaborate and stuff. Chances are it's going to be worse, um, and it's gonna cost a lot of money and I'm gonna make less money. So already I don't

like it. So that's the that is the idea. But I'm I'm in this position. There's a lot of hals and have nots things going on here too, because there's people like me on my show. I'm the show runner. I'm gonna make money no matter what. I can't get fired. And then there's a couple of riders that could have had jobs and they didn't get them, and I did it all myself. Maybe that's unfair. But if you the argument is, if you make that a demand of a guaranteed minimum

staffing, that's that's a little bit weird. Does more writers equal better writing? Not necessarily, And I could see the problem that springs up is that people who are fans of scripted shows and want the writers to be taken care of. This is kind of a strange demand just because, like you said, it will make it so that studios are going to be less likely to pick those shows up and we're going to be stuck with more reality programming. Which which for you is outstanding. Yeah, I don't look at it.

I make reality programming, but I don't look at it. It's like, oh my gosh, there's gonna be a This is good for me because number and I'm a fan of television a Number two, when this kind of stuff happens, what these guys do, the famous ones, like the big names and scripted TV. They start making reality shows and then they're competing with me. And now I'm competing with David Kelly or a very um or Shonda Rhymes or something in the reality space, which I don't need that. So I

want them to, you know, resolve that. I want there to be a good mix. But um, it's just like there's so many things in TV. Number one thing that comes to mind is the quotas and the woke agenda that have a tendency to make programming worse, albeit perhaps more fair and inclusive and better for humanity in this one sense, But they already tend to

make of shows worse by making these quotas and things. So if you add another thing on, and by the way, we have to have a minimum ten writers in every show, I don't know, it's it's not going to make for better TV necessarily, so they have to. Um, So the writers, I think that's not a good one. I think I think just more money, try to get more shows made. And if a show needs more writers, you know, they're going to get hired, and if it

doesn't need them, they're not going to get hired. So I don't know if you can control people like that. Um. The last one we'll talk about is AI. They're they're saying no AI, artificial intelligence, and you can't. You know, that has to be you know, you got to forbid that. That's a problem one too. Do we have time to talk about that one? Or should we do that in next singment? Let's do

that next segment. And I want to I'm going to ask if it has to do with specifically the writing process or if actors and their voices or likenesses and AI are included in that. But that's a that's a writer's guild versus Screen Actors Guild. So yeah, yeah, we'll get into that, Okay, Yeah, And they do have stuff about that in the Screen Actors Guild Agreement sag after agreement rather Joe Scalant Live from Hollywood, Let's check the traffic.

Joe's gone, here's my lawyer. You don't want money. It does it all for you and he knows all its joy. Oh, yes, he knows what it's all about. Joe, Joe's Coolante live from Hollywood. If by Hollywood you mean Burbank. Okay, all right, we're still talking about show business until we do every week here from five to seven. I'm talking about the w g ah there, um uh. I'm the side of our part and they we're talking about the the AI demands that they don't want

AI artificial intelligence to be a part of the writing process. And of course, I mean it's like if you're a union, I mean you're sitting there, you've been this is as old as time, Sam. It's like to not use automation to replace a workers. We need to preserve jobs. And the whole point of a union is to get more work for more people, more members, more work from members. Actually it's some would say it's to get less work for the members, more money, more money, less work.

That's basically how a union works. But you don't want AI. AI is free, arguably, and can AI write a script? I say, not yet, but soon you can write a lot of things. So this one too is rough because when you start making laws against some technology, it's like making a law against Napster and all these disruptive technologies that have come along for a long time. It's hard to to do that because it's almost like you have to make peace with the new technology. Part of me thinks AI

is just like public domain. If you punch something, if you write something in to tell an AI program, a chatbot or whatever to write you something or do something for you. Whatever you whatever you typed in is your creation. Whatever comes out as public domain. It's that's one way I think of it. So it comes out as public domain. Can you use public domain because anybody can use that? You can't, Well, you can't really copyright

it because this this robot made it. Right, Yeah, So you can copyright the the what you typed in to get it that was a creative something that was created. If it's minimally creative, that would be you can't. You couldn't say, write book and then copyright that because right, book is

not minimally creative. But to copyright something it has to have a certain minimal standard of creativity involved in it. So you type in something like um write a story about a parasitic twin that is able to take all the classes in the person's minor and then so that the host body could be have a major, and the parasitic twin would would take all the classes of the minor,

and hilarity ensues. Let's say you've typed that in. Now what I just typed in is creative if I don't say so myself, even though I just thought of it. That is protected copyrightable. But what comes out of the thing is made by a robot, and arguably you can't copyright that it was made by It wasn't made by me, it was made by robot. So then what is it? Well, let's call it public domain. Can you make a TV show using a lot of public domain? Yes? I do

that all the time. Was some of my reality shows are like, this is public domain. I write stuff and then I take stuff from the public domain that's not protected. But should the guild say, don't take stuff from public domain? Don't do that, Joe, don't take some speeches by army people about aliens and put them in your show. You need to hire a writer to write those army speeches. Really, you know, I mean it just gets weird. So I don't know if you can do anything about AIM

other than make peace with it, but they can try. And but right now the AI is not that good you I mean, But what Here's what they would do. If I was the AI guy, I would say, instead of the miniso the mini room, let's get instead of eight writers in the miniroom, one writer and chat GBT to just keep plugging in stuff into AI and come up with these scenarios. And then he's going to come up with twelve outlines a lot faster than eight people would have because he has this

chatpot. Now should he they not be using those tools. It's a tough question, right Sam, Yeah, absolutely, And I'll go back to the question I had, what about with the likenesses and the voices of actors and stuff like that, because I've seen some funny parody stuff on YouTube on stuff like that with different celebrity voices and things like that. But I know I heard something to the effect of Bruce Willis was willing to use his likeness ever

since he had got that aphasia diagnosis. He was willing to use his likeness and his voice to do future work well. The Guild screen Actors Guild alway already has a lot of protections against using artificial versions of people's voices and likenesses, and I think that was part of their last strike. But what if they have it as like a person says, I am willing to sign off my likeness for this based off of the whims of my estate. Oh my

estate. Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that. People have a right to enter into agreements. The guild that the person might belong to might say, well, we don't allow our members to do that, So if you if you honor that contract, then um, we will boycott your studio because we don't want this happening willy nilly. But if they're gonna pay. If they did that and they paid royalties to the guild, the guild might say, hey, that guy's if that guy's dead, he's still a member

of our guild. So we're gonna we're gonna that money's gonna go to the estate. We're still gonna mat we're gonna have it go in their account. And then so fine, go ahead, as long as the guild gets their piece of it. That could be as long as everybody gets their money, right, Yeah, that's for sure. That's fascinating. The what's going to be happening with like the new laws that need to come in place to protect

writers and actors in different aspects of the filmmaking industry from artificial intelligence. Yeah, and uh, I don't know. I don't know if you can fight that. So, um, I don't know if it's a some people say that I've had I've heard some people say that's number one. That's the only thing I wouldn't give in on this AI. No, AIM, I don't agree with that. I think AI doesn't isn't that good yet, but it will be good. And I mean, I just don't know what you can

do. Yeah, you will. Actually, here's what you can do. We don't work with studios that use AI on their scripts, and so they can boycott and then the actor's boycott and the director's boycott, and then then the studio has to come to the table and say, Okay, we won't

use any of it. So that's what they're basically trying to do. I'm just imagining at the end of shows on the credits, that's going to be a little tagline at the end that said this script was written by one hundred percent men or women or human Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly all humans made this and no, no animals were harmed, No animals were harmed, and no AI was used. Yeah. Now, but people have to come to grips with these things. I mean, look what look what happened to

Kodak when they ignore digital technology. I mean, you got to you got to kind of make peace with this thing. And but if if the robots write better scripts, how long do we support these writers just by um sheer union strength? These guys have to work when if we can get if we in the future, if we can get much better scripts and TV shows and films from machines, then what do we do Do we sit through terrible movies when robots write them better? You know, I don't really see that happening,

um, but it could What if it does? So then there's there's a scale like at what point do you do you does that? Do we worry about it? At what point do we worry abote? So? And then you you'll be able to, I'm sure, get to the point where it's like, this is a great movie, but you like, you know, you could tell that it's AI written and it doesn't have that you know, like that feeling of that you listen to when you listen to Vinyl, the warmth of the music. You won't feel the warmth of the of the

writing. I don't know. There are terrible movies, like you know, Lindsay Lohan's The The Love Bug that that had like thirty five script writers, so the studios said, another rewrite, another rewrite, another rewrite. Pretty soon it's unrecognizable. Thirty five people took notes from thirty five executives and the movie's terrible. All written by people, So a lot of things can ruin a script. Yeah, all right, do we have anything else? How

much time do we have because we might have beat this today. We're a little over right now, but we're over the show. We're done, We're done for this hour. Okay, all right, well this is uh you know what? Do you listen to the podcast later if you want to, um, if you missed to anything. And this is Joe Scalante live from Hollywood, signing off for right now. But there's always more, leaving it with just a taste of the greatest song ever written, Happy Mother's Day.

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