Really Now, Really, really.
Now, really Hello, and welcome to this episode of Really No Really. Todanyk, Jason Alexander, and Peter Tilden are joined by actor, producer and director Alex Winter to discuss his documentary The YouTube Effect and the Bill and Ted movies, All Tech being porn adjacent, performing Magic, Keanu Reeves, and Alex's years on Broadway. My only wish for this episode is that we get to hear Jason and Alex sing some show tunes together. And now here they are Jason, Alexander and Peter Tilden with Alex.
Really Welcome to Really No, Really.
Just don't make Jason and I sing any show tunes.
Is that gonna be Is that gonna be harrible for you?
No?
It would actually be amazing. He's he's a substantially better singer that I am. But nonetheless, I.
Haven't heard you what you know, Alex? Just Fredy Alex Wonders joined us. We won't make you do songs with Jason, thank you, But but I got to mention, you know from Bill and Ted and you know him from the Circle. By the way, you were just you were so freaking good. I thank you.
I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it because of the strike. Am I here?
I don't know. Don't promote you know you were. Don't promote, just talk about it properally.
Yeah, okay, it's already coming gone, so I can't believe it yet.
You were great. You were I wanted to do as my lawyer because you were very stern with it, like, yeah, all right, hit me with it, very very cool. Yeah. But I didn't realize your child. I forgot your child. You were on stage with JL Brenner, I was King, and and Sandy Duncan. Yep, you were a Broadway child. I was from from what age?
Uh? Well, as Jason knows because he was there. I moved to New York City in nineteen seventy seven and I joined a management company that Jason was at.
This kid.
Yeah and uh and you know, it was a very active sort of environment. They were training us to sing and to sort of get her act together. So I was twelve thirteen and I'd done it child acting in where I'd come from, which was Saint Louis and London, but nothing on the level that I got parachuted into because they suddenly needed a kid on Broadway to replace a kid that was on before they took the national tour.
So there was this urgent training. It was like something out of a bad martial arts movie, right, where like we're gonna teach you kung fu in like two weeks. You have to go in front of one of the toughest musical directors on Broadway and sing an entire song, and you were not a trained vocalist. So I was a trained actor at that age, but not a trained vocalist. So they like boot camped me into singing.
And I went, did you enjoy it? Do you remember about I still train?
I love it? I love I love it so much you.
Love I always say to Jason, I will also tell you because I mean, it's a very handsome man, this guy, I will tell you as a fairly head of sexual man, adorable child, I mean, with curly blonde hair and just like one of those little cherub looking killed Marjor.
Gordoner right exactly. So I'm sorry for that reference. Looking at it always fascinates me. Brought brought it that. It's so judgmental, it's so difficult, and it's so repetitive, right that if you don't like it, or if you're going through a bad time, you still got to do to matinee in a regularly. No.
I did eight shows a week. I did King and I on Broadway for a bit, then on the road. It was all about a year all told, including at the Pantagious. Then I went back and pretty much immediately went into Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan. Did that for almost three years. So that was all of high school. Eight shows a week. You know this animal, Michael john I was John Johnny.
What was your life? It was? It was funny.
I was talking about someone about this earlier who went to professional children's school, which is where all my friends went. And my family was like, we're not putting you in that place because you're just going to become like a maniac. So I went to a public high school in New Jersey and I took the bus in every day and they let me out early on Wednesday. So I had this weird, bifurcated life where I had all my normal friends, all my normal kind of suburban life, and then I had this crazy.
Point if you went to school, got out early, Yeah, took public.
Transportation, took a bus into the port. Authority, did the show, went and did the show, and then got back on the bus and went home, and I did my homework on the bus.
Here's what's crazy. What time did you get home?
Eleven thirty or so?
And you know, nowadays, oh my god, I even think they would allow a child actor to do that anymore.
Like Matilda on Broadway. Yeah, there were four Matilda's and they all went on every week. Yeah, a bus. How were you coming home? I was?
I was, well, I was, you know, Times Square working on forty sixth Street from nineteen seventy. I was in the Times Square from seventy eight to eighty three.
I guess, so you were what about sixteen? I was?
I was, Yeah, I was thirteen to seventeen. Yeah, and doing your homework doing you're hanging out at night and going to shows with the other cast members and you know, but.
It was kids just spitting out, spitballs to each other, and you're going out a really tough night last night Women in the third Row?
Was I mean, if you have an adult experience at night? Oh I did, yeah, very much. So, oh oh my god. Yeah, I made a documentary about showbiz kids. Yeahbo it ain't pretty, it was. I'm lucky. We're all lucky.
I am always you know, I've worked with enough kids now as an adult, and I always wonder what the experiences for them. Yeah, I think the kids that I've worked with have have actually had decent experience lives and experiences.
But I know that that.
It can go a number of ways.
Alex, want to look at you. Most kids have a hard time just doing a homework. We're taking public expectation. Yeah, it's an adultified world. I mean in every conceivable way. And the thing about it though, is to you know, yes, it's hard work. But as Jason, as you know from having.
Done so much theater, I remember the very first day I went to rehearse because you'll Berner basically ran king and I didn't take a director's credit, but he directed the whole show. He did the audition, did everything, and because the show was already running on Broadway, he had to rehearse me while the show. The only way to get me adapted to the stage was to rehearse me
while the show was going on. So there'd be a scrim and certain scenes would happen in front of a scrim, So for those like ten minutes I had to work on the set. And so there was on this giant Broadway was the Gershwin right, the eras on this giant Broadway stage by myself in the dark because of the way a scrim works, as you know, they can't it's like a two way mirror. They can't see through it,
but I can see them. So there's like fricking eighteen hundred people and you'll Brinner with a spotlight on him singing his song.
Yeah, And here I am thirteen years.
Old, like fresh off the bus from Saint Louis, and I was like, I never want to do anything else, like this is paradise, like I mean, so I was so happy in that environment that it made all of the stressors.
Well, the juice that you got as a thirteen year old was the applause. Was the crowd was he does?
I mean, Berner wouldn't stop. Now they do it with every show bit much. But Brinn wouldn't let people go home till they gave him a standing ovation. So the curtain call every night it was the standing ovation because he literally wouldn't let them leave. Now, pretty much every show you go to everyone gets on their feet, which is kind of you know, but but so it was.
It was spectacular. I mean it was very much his show in consence Towers, who was Anna, you know, it was Lewis, I did my thing whatever, I wasn't starring fast.
We're in a fascinating start and that will will leap ahead. We'll get back to Bill and Ted later and all the other stuff. But the really, no, really was we're all dealing with these algorithms. We're all dealing with the three companies that are running social media, and you.
Point all of technology.
I would say, but all of technology, and you pointed out two of them and showed that there's no silent between them. That's right, it's it's it's the YouTube and Google. Yeah, and you had access to the CEO, you would access to the guys who start, the guy who started, which was that made me laugh at people don't realize that the big social media platforms are all porn adjacent. That's right, they all started to explain if they haven't seen the document.
Basically, every every technical innovation scales because of pornography. That's kind of a well known thing in technology. Yeah, I know that's shocking, right, but including including PayPal, which the only reason PayPal took off was because people were using it for for porn transactions and fact, if you look at in the social network. In the film, they talk about how that started as basically you know exactly and
you know what that was about. And then YouTube started with a service called Hot or Not where they were like, Okay, finally we have the most robust technology to get video online which no one had ever figured out before. We're going to use it to cure cancer. We're gonna we're going to allow like old people to see their their their young family before they passed. No, we're not going
to do any of those things. We're going to create Hot or Not so you could rank how hot or not hot someone who's video based on their video.
And by the way, the money came from for humanity, the money came from PayPal, which was porn related, and the two guys who started the three guys Yeah sold it within a year year and a half.
Yeah to Google four one point six billion in two thousand and five, which is like trillions in today's money. It was crazy, It was unprecedented.
So that was the intent of this was that innocent, innocent. It was rating. It was to rate people and then it grew.
It did, but to be fair to the founders, one of whom Steve Chann is in the film, they they saw its potential beyond Hot or Not immediately and began to it wasn't hot or not when Google bought it right by home. Yeah, by then they realized that, no, this is actually a service that is going to change the world in certain ways in terms of what I mean. We all know this if we work in media, that there's so much power to the visual image, right, and
a moving visual image. And in two thousand and five is as recent as that is, was really hard to move around online. It was almost impossible, and like people have been doing it since the nineties, but it was hard. And suddenly this thing comes along where there's just like I can upload my cat, I can upload my daughter taking her first steps. And it blew people's minds and it scaled immediately, like within within the first year of you two buying it, And everybody made fun of of Google.
I saw that what's his name from Mars sharknank mark. Humans said it is one of the dumbest investments.
But everybody did. Susan caught so much flak for being so so bullish about wanting to acquire this company, Susan, they started googling. Yeah, very very bright lady from a very bright family, full stop. But she really did have the vision early on that a lot of other people lacked. And it's hard to quantify how big this thing is, which is why people don't talk about it very often.
Right.
They think about it as a social media platform, which it really isn't. It's it's it's all of humans recorded history in one place, which you can't find anywhere else. It's it's obviously influencers, and it's DIY, and there's a social media component, and it's all of those things. But it's also all of our media, all of our music, all of our entertainment, all of our news, and all of our search for certain demographic That's all under why.
I was shocked, because it is used.
This is where I have never used it, but I guess a lot of people do. I. I do use social media to get some news sources, but I've never thought to go to YouTube.
That's right. Is that really a big component of you?
My I've got three boys. My eldest is about to turn twenty five. They're all like super balanced great kids. None of them got rabbit Hold or red Pildar, any of those things. But they live on YouTube and they don't really use anything.
So did my son twenty seven. Yeah, and I when we watched this together. That's what curates his news. That's what that's I mean, it's.
Not only his music and everything and everything.
Yeah. When I say TV or streaming, he goes, what, Yeah, it's all there.
Yeah, I mean, Jason, they're going to know you by watching either all of your stuff or clips of your stuff on YouTube.
And what is my residual payment for that?
I would say that somewhere between zero and zero.
That is that abides with what.
I yes, which is why we're striking right, because if all the other companies could have that model, they would absolutely.
Use forever. Just use that and put it up forever. And that's why I want to have you into. You didn't demonize it, you didn't say it was evil and the enemy. The negative is nobody really understands the algorithm, but we do know, or it's implied that outrage is entertainment. So instead of getting clicks, this is not clickbait. This is get you in and keep you with. And that's what I want to talk to you about the algorithm
that accelerates what you're watching. And I saw the interviews with quite a few people on your on your documentary to take some down rabbit holes that are quite dangerous, and they go to on ramps as you point out, which are innachio. So I think you pointed out self help or whatever mental health which can end up taking you to some really dangerous places. And Jason, it's interesting because there's a naivity about how can can't you control how that happens? Can't you resist having that happen?
Yeah, what's interesting and what we get into in the film is is that we're now kind of even past an algorithm slashed rabbit hole era. Where YouTube, unlike any of these other platforms, is once you get pulled in, you're not just watching a five second or thirty second or two minute little video clip you're watching. You're connecting with an individual who has a channel that probably has a lot of money behind it and an enormous amount
of viewers that's talking to you for an hour. And because of the way you tube works, it's like that person is looking in their webcam. So there's the connection between you and that influencer, that person on that channel is extremely powerful, much more powerful than an anchor on TV who's sort of vaguely talking to the fourth wall myriad cameras, but you're sitting at home. You don't feel like you have any kind of personal connection to that person.
I think that what YouTube didn't e and see coming that I think still not talked about enough in the news is that this is more of like a parasocial issue than an algorithmic issue, Meaning these people feel they have a deep bond, like a personal intimate bond with the person on the other end of that webcam who they really don't know at all, and so that has been that has led to a lot of dangerous propaganda and people being incited to violence and all kinds of stuff.
Sure you can get into party politics, but this is a human nature issue because a everyone responds to outrage, no matter what the outrage is. But it's also being monetized by this company, by any of these companies, because they are ad based. So the more they keep you on platform, the longer they've got you on these channels. Watching whatever show is like pulling in and they've got ads attached to it. Then the more money they make,
and that's where you end up with a problem. So I've been arguing for a while, which other people have too, that this is no different than what like pull ups are and Aharst did right for their newspapers back in the late eighteen hundreds. This is like grab people with the most salacious stuff you can and then monetize it.
But when you're dealing with four point six billion views a day, which is what YouTube gets, which is way beyond anything else on the planet, including every media conglomerate, every TV channel, and every social media platform, and you're monetizing that kind of traffic, that's where dangers.
Look.
I'm fascinated by the ad component and the ad revenue component because again I'm apparently using YouTube in a very pedestrian way.
But I have never paid attention to an ad on YouTube.
I can't, you know, if they give me the five second thing, I'm counting it down as stats as I can go. There are some you can't get rid of, but I have never swayed to a product or a thing as sold to me by YouTube. I can't believe that people are spending money to advertise on it. I is it effective?
It's it is massive when you look at the numbers. And look, when you make a doc, you don't go in knowing everything. You go in knowing generally what something is about. Maybe was you know, a specific understanding of the landscape. But every week on this thing is I was working, the numbers just kept blowing my mind. I mean the ad revenue. And to be fair, look during COVID, everyone was stuck on YouTube. They made they made, you know, more than most countries.
Do you know the number? Do you know the numbers?
I mean it's in our movie. I think it's three hundred and twenty six billions. Hundreds of yea, hundreds of billions. Yeah, well, I mean Google is worth in the trillions. But yes, you're dealing with billions as far as YouTube is concerned. And I think it's you know, hundreds of millions per anim but you're dealing with an enormous amount of eyeballs on content. So if you're an advertiser, it absolutely matters
to you. Like if someone is seeing forget TV advertising, forget the Super Bowl, it's like the Super all day every day is how they look at it, So yes, they And the thing other thing to remember is that. You know, I encounter this a lot of times, people saying, well, I don't do anything on YouTube other than like figure out how to put a triple a battery into my remote, or you know, want to learn a song or something. But everyone is doing that all day and those and
they're doing it all over the world. It's not relegated to our country or just North America. So the entire planet is glued that. I mean, the number one most viewed website in the world is Google. The number two most viewed website in the planet is YouTube. There are more people watching YouTube than anything else on the planet. Google's mostly text, right, so there's more eyeballs on this thing than anything else. So for advertisers, matter chased.
In a sense to people listening. One of the moments that blew me away. And we were trying to find this kid, but you got the kid. And you know, I'm talking about the Ryan Ryan talk about talk about Ryan's little business on YouTube.
Well, yeah, that family's side hustle is they had a kid who started on YouTube at three. He's now nine. I mean, amazing kid and to be fair, really amazing parents. He's super lucky because his parents are really smart. They must be making between one hundred and fifty two hundred million dollars a year doing going on and saying, hey, this started when he was three, right like, hey, I'm going to look at this new toy. I got come look at it with me. And so then people started
watching him playing with toys. Toy manufacturers kind of perked up and went, oh, let's get him to play with our toys. So okay, well that's going to cost you. And then advertisers perked up and said, oh, this is a great place for us to advertise because he's getting hundreds of millions of views on these videos. And next thing, you know, it's an industry. I mean, it's a formidable industry.
Kid is a rock star.
Yeah, it's huge, I mean it's I mean, these are huge numbers.
But also you pointed out interestingly that it was an easy loophole for other people to start monetizing on children's programming on YouTube and they're putting horrible stuff up. Yeah, there was a pure stuff.
Yeah, there was a period, and to be fair to YouTube, they shut it down on YouTube kids. But there was a period when people were gaming the algorithm and putting incredibly horrific, volatile, violent content into the kids programming, and
we talk about it in the movie. I think the issue right now that is significant there with the kids, and we talk about this generally, is that, you know, we were talking about us being on you know, in the business young Yeah, at least we had like the Cougan Act, and we had you know, there were and now I think you have quite a few safeguards. I do a lot of stuff directing the kids too, and there's like not just a tutor, but there's like a making sure you're, yeah, taking care of the kids properly.
And none of those safeguards exist in YouTube. So you have all of these kid influencers and it's really and they're just like, hey, just upload the content and they're doing deals with them. So it's a little duplessitous because YouTube is involved to a degree, right, but there's no real there's no standards and practices, there's no safeguards, there's no laws, there's no regulation. It's just the while West. So you've got to hope everybody's parents is great, which,
as you and I both know, it is not. What's going to happen with every kid who's making five to one hundred and fifty million dollars.
What would be the.
What would be the incentive to put inappropriate material into the kids channel?
If you is it just for the thrill of being able to do it?
That's exactly right, That's exactly right. There's I mean, the way the internet functions, especially what YouTube is interesting in that it's it's has so many eyes on it, and yet it has a social media component to the degree that if you go into the comments section, that's where everybody hangs out. So if you think about the Internet, you think about what's going on in Twitter and sort of other areas. And there's been a lot of stuff written about this sort of the kind of troll world.
And this can get political because people control for political reasons, right, but a lot of that is really just is just anarchistic. It's just it's just blow it up, right because we can. It's like the it's the terrorist version of just like calling your local ball in alle and asking if they've got ten pound. Well, right, but now you're doing that with an audience of four and a half billion, says, you know, on every phone line in your house. So there was a multitude of reasons why to do that.
But also there's a lot of pranking that has legis, suicides and things like that that so it can get pretty serious. You're dealing with children's mental health and things like that.
My takeaway from you, and tell me if I get this right, was, and I think I got it right, was you said this generation is not going to fix it. The ones here now because you got basically Congress, you got eighty two year old guys with the clock blinking red on their BCR. Still they're not the ones going to solve it. The next generation is going to solve it.
But you said ten fifteen years away. But on the twenty fifth of August in Europe they just passed legislation or the starting to pass legislation to try and control this and social media and these platforms. So what do you think about that?
Look, I don't want to drag us into a kind of a thorny complicated area. I've been during the strike. I've been very involved with pulling people together with AI experts and other people to try to help them understand this area because it's extremely complicated. I would only say that I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the AI and Internet regulation that's going on in Europe at the moment. I think they're getting a lot wrong. I think, especially in the kids space. There's been a
lot written about it. There's a lot of kids legislation that's being pushed right now here in the US that's being sort of copied from the legislation in the EU, which I think is not great legislation. I'm not by any means alone that you literally google these things and
you'll see a lot of criticism. And the reason for that is that there's an understandable fear of these new technologies that have got everybody's kids on them all the time, that isn't matched with an understanding of those technologies by many people, especially of our generation and older. So they're just like, well, we've got to do something, and they grab the biggest mallet they can find and they start
whacking at it really hard. And we saw that happen with Napster, and like the mess that happened after that that in many ways led to the streaming crisis that's now got us on strike. I think that new generations that are coming up that understand these technologies better but also understand the risks if you, for example, and I won't bore everybody with draw like what's going on with this legislation, but part of what's wrong with it is
is they're fighting really hard for ID verification. That can be really bad, especially for kids. You don't want to have your ID being fed into the Internet where all kinds of bad actors can get access to it, and that has led to a lot of really terrible things happening to most either children or LGBTQ other marginalized groups who use the Internet in a more anonymous way and
need to remain anonymous. It's very very important. They're also looking to break encryption, especially in the EU, very bad idea that will unprotect a lot of people who need to stay protected. So I'm sort of more in favor of more nuanced ways forward that will take longer to get to, but we'll keep people keep they won't won't break the Internet, and it will keep more people protected.
I have always believed and advocated for the idea that one of the reasons that the Internet can be such a cesspool is because of anonymity. Just Twitter, Yes, I'm I'm verified. It took a lot to get verified. Yeah, as long as it's coming from my account and I haven't been hacked. If it's on there, I said it,
I'm accountable for it. I have a feeling there'd be a lot less trolling, a lot less miss and disinformation if it wasn't anonymous, if you had to stand behind the things you put out into the market sce that accountability would be a very big factor in cleaning some of this mess up. Now You're you're proposing is that there are vulnerable people who rely on anonymity, But do you really feel that the scale tips to that side rather.
Than the one I'm describing.
I think that the issue is more technological, meaning it's not as easy to get to the place that you just described as one would hope. That's all I'm saying. It's different for celebrities to verify because there's only one of you, right, and there's only one of most of the people who That was the problem with what Musk did when Twitter was purchased by him, was he suddenly allowed everyone to verify by throwing some money at it, and suddenly you had copycat accounts. And that's sort of
my point. It kind of proved the point that is very difficult to moderate content it's very difficult to properly
verify people. Really good even not so good hackers or will get around that and create fake counts, accounts that look verified in two seconds, so you will the Internet will always be a wash in some degree of Like, the nastiest people that we're most worried about are not going to get thwarted by verification requirements, right, They're gonna end run them, and they're gonna have a little AI photo that looks like a real human being with a name,
that probably has a driver's license, and they'll be whoever, there'll be some guy in Macedonia and a hacker farm. So it's much harder to get there. That's the point. Now, it's not to say we won't. It's not say we shouldn't be fighting for it, not say that there isn't all kinds of good stuff in the AI bill and some of the other stuff at the AEU. It just means we've got to be a little a little bit more nuanced with it.
So I try.
Not to say, oh, we can't ever do it, we shouldn't do anything like, oh God, I don't feel that way at all. I feel like I'm super pro regulation and there's a lot of people who don't like that. They want no regulation, no breaks, But I think we have to. We have to have regulations, standards and practices. We have to have guardrails.
You have to. But we got to, like you said, we got to thread the needle really carefully. We do. Yeah.
So the other thing I wanted to ask you, it's a little bit off the top, but I'm fascinated because I know you for so long. It seemingly you are on a very different path. When I mention you, you were a kid who seemed to have a singular passion. That passion had become demonstrably rewarding and positive. Your career as a as an actor and even as a director
was clicking and working beautifully. And then you pulled back, You went away, and when you came back, you came back much more in the guise of a director and producer and particularly kind of in this area, this arena. So I'm fascinated if you care to talk about it at all, because I'm fascinated by people that create different
second acts and third acts for themselves. What was it that said I gotta, I gotta pull away from this for a while, and what how did you find this other light to be guided by it?
I'm going that way.
They're oddly connected. And it took me a minute to figure that out. Because life is life. It's happening to you, right, So it's not like, you know, unlike George Lucas claiming he constructed all of Star Wars in advance, which nobody believed. You know, it just happens. Then you figure out retrospectively
why what happened happened. When I was doing the show Biz Kids doc for HBO, what struck me because I was My whole process with that was to get someone from a hundred year old like the first Silent movie child star, all the way up to like the big Instagram kid of today, and then everyone in between age wise into one conversation and see what the similarities were. And what blew my mind and a lot of the other subjects that I spoke to, was that everyone had
the exact same story. It didn't matter whether it was baby Peggy who was one hundred and two or you know, a kid who was like on a Disney show with twenty million Instagram followers. Everyone had the same trajectory. It was really bizarre. I guess if you're a behavioral psychologist, maybe it wouldn't be to you. You'd be like, oh, that's because blah blah blah happens to your brain.
Right.
But all of us had started really young, had had a certain amount of success, meaning we were doing it all the time, and pulled out of normal school, pulled out of normal life. Every one of us had bailed on the industry in our twenties and had taken a break and had come back later.
And every single I sat.
With, every pro was like, oh, you did that, and you did that, and baby peggotted like and everyone she like went away, I can't do this, and more came back had like And then a lot of people came back and just started doing it again, right like Henry Thomas is a good example, or Mara wilsoner you know, people a bunch of people who can think of and and I was listening to them, going, well, that's what I did, And I thought, why did I do that?
I mean, I knew at the time, around the time Bill and Ted two was done, I'd been acting every day since I was nine years old, and I was exhausted, like just emotionally, and I'd gone to film school, and I had other interests, but I was so on the treadmill. I had the agents, I had the manager, I had the public I had all this stuff. I was twenty four, maybe maybe twenty five, like my eldest son, I was about to turn in twenty five. I'm like, my god, he's a baby. I was like at the end of
a career already, you know. And uh, And I think I was just I just needed regular life, right, I just like developmentally, I left LA. I got rid, I mean politely, I got rid of my acting agents, like I'm not doing this, I'm not going on auditions. And I moved to New York and I started a production company in the UK because I have a British passport. He was just a regular guy. Eventually started a family, and I just lived like a normal human being with none.
Of that pressure or less just from burnout. Yeah, I think I was just fried.
I think that it was the early nineties and I had acting friends around me who were really like some died, like you know, it was that early. It was a tough era, early nineties for a lot like eighties like flamed a lot of people out, as we all know, so I didn't. I saw that happening around me, and I just thought, I don't feel like if I stick around, I'm going to be in the best place. So it
was kind of a sort of a survival instinct. And then what's interesting is that around in the back end of the eighties, when I had all this attention on me, Like from my perspective, I wasn't someone giant star anything, but I was not an anonymous person.
Sure.
I found the Internet pre Web, the Internet, which was in those days quite crude, like the BBS Usenet era, where you would have an anonymous user name. You would find these groups of like minded people. Will Wheaton talks about this very eloquently, cause he's even more tech savvy than I am, and he did the same thing. He like got the hell out of the business and kind of dove into tech. And I just felt very comfortable there and I could communicate. I've made friends, would communicate
eventually you knew who each other was. You know, there was trust, and you would de anonymize or whatever. And that was my interest in the birth of online communities because I had so much I got so much out of those communities, and there was even some form of online you know, for those of us who had any issues like with abuse or stuff like back in the child like there was a lot of anonymous online abuse communities almost like not group therapy, but you could just
go and talk about anything. Was very free, very open. So it was an extremely liberating environment. And then I just kind of stayed with that as I re entered the and I sort of had my time away, and as I was saying to you earlier, I started training again, started working with really good acting trainers, good vocal trainers, and kind of may started to make my way back into to the business again. But it was it was a while.
How many years How many years were you were away?
I mean I kind of I kept working. I made another movie in like the late nineties. I was writing and directing, and I was still you know.
You had a deal. You gotta tell when you did Freaks exactly.
It was after Freaked that I left, though, So that was my last I didn't act between really between Freaked and Bill and Ted three almost at all professional. And I didn't audition. I wasn't part of any circuit. When they came to you for Billed three, well they didn't Oh yeah, it didn't work that way. Okay, So no, we these are all like my closest friends. We started working together in our twenties. Counta is like one of
my closest friends. The two writers, Chris and Ed So we were hanging out all the time anyway, and a dozen years before we made the movie, we decided to make a third and started the very slow, laborious process of getting a script and trying to find financing, and so it was self generated, the four.
Of us and you you said best friends. He the nicest gund every story in a town that wants to tear everybody down. Anytime I see his picture, I know that underneath it is going to be that he donated bone marrow to a child.
Can you can you imagine how scary it is to be that person though? Where the the the media has decided you're the guy that you are literally walk on water and you're just a guy, because who isn't just a person?
You one day you flip a guy?
Yeah exactly.
It's like in the world of iPhones, like farm He doesn't, thankfully, but like I love him to death. I've known him a really long time, but I'm just like that is like one day, I.
Know, I know, oh my god, the face in the crowd or something. Oh wow, one of my favorite, one of the favorite movies ever made. Well, the movie was wonderful, thank you, I mean really wonderful, and that it wasn't judgment. It was really smart. And again I love when so many narrates his story and lets you go for the ride and then goes all right, I gave you all
all I got. Yeah, you figure with anything that we didn't get that after the fact you took away from this where you went even what not that I've gotten away from this. I did the movie. I sat and watched the movie.
Pull my Kids off YouTube. I mean, I you know, I think that that I think that COVID showed us there was a lot of kind of animals towards the growth of online communities, which again I know, there's a lot of bad things that go on. And to Jason's point, I've been trolled. It's horrible, right, I've been swarmed. I got Twitter sworn by like a bunch of neo Nazis on Twitter once. It was pretty bleak. But uh so
I'm well aware of the pitfalls. But you know, I generally have found that that most kids are okay, and that there there's a lot of studies now they're showing that it's a pretty neutral response. Actually, their participation on social media not necessarily a given negative response. So I think that that there's a lot of benefit to being
able to connect with your fellow human. This parasocial thing I was talking about that isn't a negative, right, So, and that's all just going to get more advanced, and you know, and the ability for someone in a micro nation somewhere to know what's going on and be connected to the world. I mean, I think it's an enormous good.
So, by the way, to that point, you said, what was on my landing, go to YouTube? Right, and what comes up on yours? It's the porn didn't come up big time, But so what's on yours? What's on your Okay?
So if you go to my YouTube home page, because I was I was going, you know, when I was hearing about all going down rabbit holes.
And going nobody's giving me this step. Yeah, here's what comes up.
If I go to my homepage, fail army, because I like watching people screw up.
I do.
I'm a curamesis so I have a lot of how to make potteries.
I have Judge Judy.
Clips, I have Broadway based content, I have all kinds of bloopers, America's Got Talent, highlights behind the scenes of movie making, UFO and Supernatural investigations, stand up Comedians and are Stupid?
Podcast it comes up on my mind? Has mine has David Gilmour doing his Barn Music's plant Let's see here NFL Sunday Ticket. I don't know why. Joe Rogan talks to Hawk Cogan, who was about as firing from the w w F. Martin Short says that Tony O'Brien conin Bryn looks like Freeze Dride Prince Harry wam Fredkin talks about why he doesn't know how he really feels about Alpuccino, which is a good one.
I actually want to.
So I was surprised to see the Variety online and I got to tell you, but there was nothing there that I went there's nothing.
You don't get rabbit holes. I mean that's you don't really get rabbit holed anymore. To be fair to YouTube, they fixed the recommended algorithm several years ago. It's really difficult to go on there.
I was really I scrolled for a while and I went, yeah, there is nothing here that looks overtly political to me or agenda.
Yeah, I don't. I don't get that that kind of content.
I never do, but have to be.
You have to be looking for that kind of stuff.
I think you have to open you to open the box you do. Yeah, I do have how to cover a hickey, and I don't understand. I don't understand that one. Yeah.
Like you like dad rock and Broadway musical, Yeah, I love that.
You love all the musical stuf.
It's amazing.
Like you said, I can watch any performance of any artist that ever recorded. Yeah, and my kid can learn every solo ye that any guitarist ever played.
It's just and every terrible TV commercial I was in when I was nine years old, And I mean it's all. I mean, the stuff we did on Broadway is there that no one recorded any What.
Changed the world for me and I.
Had it existed when I was a kid, I don't think we'd been talking right now because I would have a very different career and doubt you would never have heard of it. But I wanted to be a magician, and as a kid, The only way you could learn a trick was the other A guy shows you how to do it. But mostly it was out of books and when it was sleight of hand stuff, even the best written book, you're going, I don't know what the hell he's talking about. There are more tutorials on how to do complex To.
That point, I still can't do a freaking trick that has the thread, that invisible thread to make the card rise and stuff, well, I can't even pull the thread apart to get thank you for that? Did you do magic? Two weeks?
Did to hang out?
I went to I went to magic camp.
Oh did you That's actually where I realized this is exactly because I saw what kids were.
Doing that was imagine. I went, yeah, else, by the way the curve, everybody became famous he went to magic.
I couldn't tell you. I wasn't there long enough. If you did the whole thing, it was two weeks. I was there for four days, and I went, oh, I suck.
Yes, yeah magic. Did you have a puppet? Two? Did you do Ventrilo? Question?
No?
I was really into magic, the close up magic card and coin stuff, and I lived out of the out of the magic shop on.
Let's go. Thank you for coming in. And by the way, I'm not just saying it really good documentary so much. It's smart. We're on there all the time. If we want to see the YouTube effect, where is it currently? Everywhere?
Now it's you know, it's Amazon Apple YouTube.
Which is kind of can you do you mind? Are you? Are you working on something currently?
Well, I'm the Strike is you know, I'm very busy with strike stuff, with raising money for crew and we're doing all kinds of stuff coalitions and things in your head to go, Yes, I'm I'm developing a couple of other big documentary and a feature. And I did some acting that I'm not allowed to talk about this coming out next So I'm doing a lot more. I'm sort of pushing back towards acting again, and I'm looking to do theater again, which I to hear.
Both of that, because aside from everything else, you're really love Yeah, thank you the actor, and you always were.
I mean you you there was a reason your career took off.
Thank you.
Can you sing anything for us? Just I wanted to ask? My trainer would be so mad. I've known you for a while, I've watched your stuff, but I can't. I can't imagine. It's like Jason when we do live shows. When I Jason comes down and sings, the audience is shocked that he can do what he shouldn't be. He's like a broad because most don't know that. Peter is shocked. Okay, Peter.
The audience came going, we're gonna go see Jason Alexander.
I think when they come to see a show where there's not music, it was guitar ars.
I played bass for years, but I don't anymore. Yeah, yeah, I am trying.
To teach myself. We're facing me. Let's go to google him for for or what did we do? Long segment? What do we do? Right? Yes, David, Well you guys did it. I did a heck of a job. You did a heck of a job. So happened? Finish your thought?
I got I got two potential things for I wanted to see what you're more interested in. Are you more interested in the top fifty videos that YouTube recommends, not necessarily the biggest videos, but the ones that are most often recommended, Or are you interested in the all time watched videos?
Oh?
I would vote for the ladder just because I think the former's less is kind of algorithmic. The ladder kind of tells you what people are genuinely.
The lad the all time that.
Let's see, I'm not going to give you too many of it. I'll give you a Pope Mari here, a lot of music videos, a lot of the let's say, we've got the Pokemon theme music. I guess people are music lovers.
We also have a lot of these here. Well, I'll jump right.
To the number one, because I think it's adicative of of of people's mentality.
It's it's it's the baby Shark dance. That's right, yeah, Baby shark number one for a long time.
Baby Shark dance.
Now, guess how many guess how many views?
Five hundred million. You're not even in the ballpark, man.
No, it's in the billions. It would be in the villions.
Go ahead, thirteen billion views, baby baby sharp.
Time.
So like a fortune fortune? Okay, oh my god? Who put up the baby shark man?
Somebody you know who's very happy?
Now? Was it a parent? Was it a company?
I would have been a company, surely it would have been.
Whoever, why are we wasting our time? As a guess we have when when they leave you go like this is like this is toxic.
Like the guy I didn't want to emulate was the nude comic.
Other than that, everybody else got it better than what's the number two video?
It's called Dspatio, a Latin theme raph. It sort of a lot of fusion of different elements. It's a music video.
Yeah, it shows you how global their their audience is. This is not just American people watching. There's not just people watching Western You.
Got a couple more? I just throw a couple more at you.
The big hits, the wheels on the bus by cocoa melon.
Yes, you know.
Contributed to that one melon is is hot for people that that five point four to two billion for them. Sure you also have you know, folks like Maroon five, Katie Perry and.
A lot of Hey d Just for giggles.
How many subscribers is there Really No Really podcast?
Not enough? Not enough? YouTube? Can smile help us with that algorithm? Didn't I drive say now? Really?
Really?
Now?
Really?
Well? Do you have another episode of really?
No?
Really?
Comes to a close?
Oh and in case you were wondering, the oldest cat video on YouTube features two cats boxing, and it was filmed by Thomas Edison in eighteen ninety four Nope Really A hearty Really No Really. Thank you goes out to Alex Winter for joining us. His Instagram is at Alex Winter, his Facebook at Alex winter page, and at the YouTube effect.
Six eight two three on YouTube.
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