SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome back and happy Thursday. We're going to do a little bit of news, a little bit of lawn. We have a great show coming up. First off, we cover the announcement that Jason was right. I know. Once again, Bing Search is going to integrate chat GPT, one assumes, although one does not know for sure that Google is likely freaking out. We will also talk about the unionization effort at a gaming studio owned by Microsoft and the ongoing labor issues that are going to define 2023 and beyond. Then Lon Harris joins us to review another movie from AO Scott's top movies of 2022 list. Flux Gourmet. Jason, though, went rogue and watched his own movie. We'll talk about that too. Plus the economics of streaming and why some services are canceling titles. It's going to be

SPEAKER_03: a great show. Stick with us. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Crowdbotics. Great ideas can change the world and Crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scope shopping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com slash twist and Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or

SPEAKER_07: domain. All right, Molly, it is Thursday. We got Lon coming on for streaming, but let's start with

SPEAKER_00: the big news. Yeah. The big news. I can't believe how often I have to say this on the show. One more

SPEAKER_12: time. We're only five days into the new year. One more time. You were right. You were so right on

SPEAKER_00: this one. Say more. There had not been a whisper of whether Microsoft was specifically going to integrate open AI and its technology into Bing, its search engine until Jason on the show said, I mean, to be fair, like it had been thought, I'm sure. But Jason was like, listen up, Microsoft, get this done by Q1 2023. It's going to be part of Bing. It's going to be incredible. You were like, Google, get it done. Because Microsoft is coming for you. And they're going to put integrate chat GPT like features and open AI technology into Bing. And we were like, okay, we'll see. And then not 19 days later, the information publishes a big scoop saying, hey, turns out Microsoft is going to challenge Google by integrating chat GPT with Bing search. And the bells are tolling for Google.

SPEAKER_17: Right now. Potentially. Yeah. So I mean, the question you have to ask is,

David Friedberg: did I have inside information? Or did I follow breadcrumbs? Did I have inside information?

SPEAKER_07: I mean, did you follow the breadcrumbs? The breadcrumbs? It feels like a breadcrumb thing. Okay, sure. That's one interpretation. You could either say J Cal has inside information.

SPEAKER_25: Or, yeah. Or, boop, boop, didn't make a trade. Or I could have followed breadcrumbs. Could be either of those. But the breadcrumbs were there. Open AI. Oh, so let's play the clip. Let's play the clip. We like a victory lap on this show. Yeah, we like that.

SPEAKER_28: Victory lap for Jacob. I want to know the relationship between Microsoft search and open AI. I know this investments. I know all this other stuff. They're using Azure, I understand, as their cloud. But I want to know if they have the exclusive right to search. I'm going to make a J trade right now. I'm going to get out of my Google shares. And if Google doesn't release a competitor in 100 days, I think Microsoft Bing has the exclusive on this for search. If that is the case, and if Google and Sundar do not release something competitive in 100 days, I'm selling my shares in Google and I'm moving them to Microsoft. This could be the Google search killer. This is

David Friedberg: red alert for Google. This should be an existential moment for Google. And I don't perceive them taking

SPEAKER_33: it serious enough.

SPEAKER_35: Look at this.

SPEAKER_41: Anyway, listen. Oh, that's amazing. So obvious, you know, and the branding writes itself. Why search

David Friedberg: when you can get an answer being powered by chat GBT? Why search when you can get an answer? This is going to F with Google for the next 24 months. Why search when you can get an answer?

SPEAKER_17: I mean, please tell me they're going to use that phrase. I've trademarked that phrase. It's a service

SPEAKER_28: mark in use. So if anybody wants it, it's available for $1 million. Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_52: Yeah. I mean, Bing is now all of a sudden living rent free in Google's head in a way that has never

SPEAKER_00: happened before. Let's just like set the context here too. So Google search, I think we have the, the, we have the market share of each. I believe that Bing is basically second. 85, 90% around the world.

SPEAKER_56: And Bing is second at 9% market share. That's probably I remember that. But I think globally

SPEAKER_57: that follows. And that's their largest competitor. Yeah. So like, here comes me. Um, so then the

SPEAKER_12: question becomes, is this going to work? Right? So chat GPT, we know has. So this is a way to get

SPEAKER_00: inside Google's head without question. Yeah, it would potentially, especially if they integrated

Jason Calacanis: it and marketed it in the way that you just said for $1 million to payable to J Cal, um, be an absolute murder bot, if you will, if it works, like we know that chat GPT has confidently given some extremely wrong information. We know that the cost per search is really high. It sounds like you and Keith Raboy had the same conversation recently about the cost per search.

SPEAKER_28: Yes. Uh, if the cost per search, you know, is a fraction of a penny for Google. So as Google, uh, fixed cost of their network of computers, right. Um, you know, stays about the same,

David Friedberg: right. You know, they may have to spend a little bit extra every year. You know, the, if there's a number of searches increases, the cost per search goes down, but people are saying this might be like a nickel or 10 cents. Every time you have chat GPT do something, but of course they're on Azure and Azure is a fixed cost business as well. So I was like, well, we got all these computers set up, but the point is it, it, you have to be able to make more per hundred searches than it costs you per hundred searches. If let's say it's a nickel Molly, 10 searches, 50 cents, a hundred searches, $5, a hundred searches, $5. If you get one click per hundred searches, that means that one click has

SPEAKER_28: to be more than $5 for you to break even. So you can just kind of do the math here, but exponential technology, it'll keep going down. I agree. Obviously. I also think that there's magnitude or

SPEAKER_65: two, like it's gotta go down 10, 10 times. And then 10 times probably gotta go a hundred

SPEAKER_14: X down. Well, and I think we talked about this when you made your prediction too, which is that

SPEAKER_00: Google, Google, Microsoft, it's impossible to even talk about search without saying the G word. Like that's so, it is so crazy to even contemplate this future, but it's, it seems to me that it's worth it

Jason Calacanis: for Microsoft to integrate this as a loss leader because they can also license this technology on the

SPEAKER_00: backend. Like this is an interesting case where most likely do we think that Bing is going to make money. Like Google makes money when you click on stuff and they make money with ads being may move to a completely different business model, like a subsidized search business model where you get an answer and then they just there to, and then this, every time you and I use it, it trains the machine so that as they license it for Azure and for enterprise clients and for, you know, the defense department, like it just gets more and more and more valuable. And we actually become like mechanical

SPEAKER_28: Turks. I got a really easy idea for you, Molly. You get 10 chat GPT is a month for free. And then if not, it's six bucks a month or $9 a year, and then people pay for it. And when you pay for it,

SPEAKER_07: you have no privacy track, you have a hundred percent privacy, nothing's tracked. And for 50 bucks a

SPEAKER_79: year, you get an answer as opposed to a bunch of blue links. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you get 10 free

SPEAKER_25: a month. So if you want to hack it and create a new browser window and do incognito change your IP and play games, you can, uh, or maybe in other countries, you know, you're coming from another country, you get it for free, but in the, you know, developed world where people can afford it, you know, the highest cost per, uh, you know, person in America and Europe, you, you charge and then

SPEAKER_79: everywhere else in the world gets it for free for now. And then you just, you know, slowly boil the frog and, you know, raise the prices, whatever, but there is an ad model here. Uh, so I said before,

SPEAKER_25: hey, listen, it's, it's, this is existential for Google because they have the cost per click model. Here's a great model. If you have the free version, every three, um, answers, it plays a video first, a 15 second video with the five seconds, skip ahead, you know, something like that. So between, let's say every second or third query while it's writing the query, which takes a little bit of time, it plays you a 15 second ad. So imagine an app on your phone, full screen, you say, Hey, what are the best ways to do a holiday party? Um, like we did, like, what's the best way to do a Christmas party that also includes Hanukkah and, uh, Festivus, right? I want to do something with all three. Well, it starts giving you the answer, but before it gives you the answer, it plays your target commercial, because it knows, right, based on not what your query was, but the answer it's building. So if the answer it's building, Molly, so it could even do that within the answer. I

SPEAKER_88: remember, like, that was my feedback for chat GPT. I was like, this would be perfect if I had links to

SPEAKER_90: buy all the things you recommended. Sure. But it could be outbound links to be there's an affiliate.

SPEAKER_28: Yeah, there's something about if you the the instead of the Okay, let me let me rephrase this. Imagine if the AI did two results. One was the answer to your question. And the second was the

SPEAKER_91: best custom built ad for you having read that answer. So the AI builds the series of links.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, and then you train an AI serving out like an ad serving AI like that. I mean, the thing we're not thinking about or the thing that I feel like people don't think about very much when they consider the economics of this is that every interaction is also a training exercise. And so every time you roll this out, you make it better. Like you're outsourcing your marginal cost of

Jason Calacanis: improvement of the AI itself. Like, shut up. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_28: And this is where Google has to take the hit, cut 10% of their team, get some 10% in a room and say, you have to get this out by this date, they got to be more hardcore. He already said, Sundar over and

David Friedberg: over again, we're not performing people are not people are phoning it in, you know, the whole Hooli concept from Silicon Valley that show was people F off at Google, and they hang out on the roof. We all know that's true. Rest invest. And anybody who sells their company, Google is like, yeah, I'm going to take four year sabbatical at Google. Yeah, I'm gonna do my laundry. So

SPEAKER_00: Which sounds awesome. But those days are over. They really do. I also understand some of the fears

Jason Calacanis: about doing this, which are that like, you know, there was in that Reddit thread, actually, the reasonable argument that Microsoft did try already rolling out like an AI based chatbot, and it immediately went full racist, sexist, like, there are there are going to be real concerns about algorithmic bias when you roll out something like this at a massive level to everybody, because it is going to start feeding answers that are socially unacceptable based on 100 years of trading, training data in which people have acted in unacceptable ways. Like that's the Apple card. The Apple credit card is the perfect example. If you look at 100 years of data in your computer, you're going to be like, wow, ladies are crappy credit risk, because women weren't allowed to have their own credit until like the 80s. So there's no record, right? So there's all that

SPEAKER_103: stuff is going to be hard to correct for in a mass consumer product, uncomfortable truths and

SPEAKER_79: uncomfortable bias in the existing data set. Both of these things are going to happen. We might find

SPEAKER_25: out, you know, fat Greeks, who are half Irish, their DNA results in them, you know, having lower IQ points of being worse at chess, because you're going to have my chess app. And you have my Greek heritage and my DNA is like, people who are from Greece score 15 points less than people who are

SPEAKER_106: from, you know, England or from Egypt or from China on, you know, chess, like these are the things that

SPEAKER_89: will come out eventually, right? They're flawed conclusions. Yeah, based on will be wrong

SPEAKER_110: conclusions and some might actually be uncomfortable truths, right? And this is just going to make the world lose their minds. I know. I mean, it's a real but it's a that's what I mean. It is a real

Jason Calacanis: brand risk. And I would argue that that is one of the reasons that Google may have slow walk to this and that Microsoft has already been burned once by this, and they're gonna have to be real careful.

David Friedberg: Yeah, I mean, and then all the IP issues, and the lawsuits that are going to come out of this, because if you're giving an answer, and you know, the party planning came from Bon Appetit,

SPEAKER_28: and 17 other magazines and websites that spent 1000s of dollars or hundreds of $1,000 collectively to do party planning stories, and those writers content is now been ingested. And then you came up with that answer. Somebody just say, how did you come up with that answer? Show me. And that's

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SPEAKER_12: minutes on Microsoft's first official union, which is kind of interesting because what we're seeing is the gaming industry starts to fight back. Yeah. Historically, there's been a lot of reports,

SPEAKER_28: right, of people not getting paid overtime, who are hourly people, or just mishuggana and craziness.

SPEAKER_52: Oh, yeah. The sprint stuff that they do. I mean, the gaming industry is sort of like notoriously abusive to its, its developers, its engineers. Unlike people want the job, right? Like it's

SPEAKER_79: people are having affinity to working video games. They're like, Oh, it's so fun. I totally want this

Jason Calacanis: job. And then it's like, cool. Whenever a game is coming out, you'll work. I mean, EA is notorious for this. Activision has had a lot of like social issues and complaints. They shit when they're on

SPEAKER_28: under 100% on a movie, I guess. Like if you're working on top gun and the movie's got to come out at a certain date, you know, like it's going to become, everybody's got to work a hundred hour a week to

Jason Calacanis: get this out to make it perfect. Right. So I think so Zenimax is what is unionizing. It's not, you know, it's not specifically Microsoft. It is a holding company of game studios that Microsoft bought in 2020 for seven and a half billion dollars. It owns fallout, elder scrolls, doom, um, has about 2300 employees and 300 of the employees who work as quality assurance testers have voted to unionize in Maryland and Texas, which includes, um, doom makers in software arcane and Bethesda, the teams that are

SPEAKER_00: behind red fall and starfield, which are the big 2023, um, Xbox exclusives. This isn't a huge surprise because evidently it was part of Microsoft's deal when the FTC opposed suit to block the Activision

Jason Calacanis: acquisition. Microsoft said, well, okay. One of the concessions we'll make in advance is that we promise not to oppose any unionization efforts at Activision. So presumably these employees saw this

SPEAKER_133: opening and went for it. Okay. Why do people join a union? They feel like they're being mistreated.

SPEAKER_28: When do people not join a union? They feel like there's a hot market for their talent and they're

David Friedberg: better off being a free agent. This is the dynamic Molly when I'm talking about on an individual basis. Mm-hmm. If you are, uh, at, uh, you remember Gimlet had like a whole union thing and the reply, all people were like, we're all stars. We make the best, the number one show here. We do not want

SPEAKER_25: to be part of the union. We want to negotiate for ourselves. And they got semi canceled inside the organization or high pressure. Like, oh, you guys think you're better than everybody. Like, well, we are, we are better. Look, here's our book of awards and here's our ranking. We don't want to be part of a union. We do not want our salaries to exist on a table and a chart somewhere because we're already off the charts. We don't, you know, and so like, and, uh, and, you know, Kara Swisher at the New York, she was never a New York Times employee. She don't want to be part of the New York Times union. She wants to, you know, uh, negotiate directly, right? I suppose. Or anybody who is a high end individual, you want to have control, but if you have no power and you're abused, that's when people go towards this, putting all that aside, that's the dynamic. So if you are making this decision for yourself, that's how you should make the decision. Am I in the top 25%? You don't want to be in the union because you're going to be dragged down to the salary and means of the other

SPEAKER_106: 75%. Yeah. If you're on the bottom 25% F yes, you want to be in the union because you'll get pulled up.

SPEAKER_52: And a lot of times, I mean, listen, I can tell you, and I'm not going to name names here, but

SPEAKER_14: everybody knows where I worked or before. I can tell you that sometimes managers, although it is a huge

SPEAKER_00: headache when a union is formed and unitization happens, because it can lead to lawsuits and it's a

Jason Calacanis: whole long contract thing. And it costs you a lot of money and lawyers. It also makes your

SPEAKER_00: decision, your jobs in some ways, a lot easier as a manager, because if somebody comes and is like, I'm a, I'm a power law performer and I want a 20% raise. Yeah. They can be like, I'm so sorry because we have this table. So unionization can be a fail for both the employees and the, and the managers. And I sort of feel like it, I feel like for companies, it's so easy to head this off. Like it really is because there is a fine line between asking people to come all in and work together on a project and then rewarding them and motivating them for doing that. Cause there are

SPEAKER_147: plenty of people who really like to work really hard on something they care about. Yeah. So then give them a fricking bonus or some equity, right? But like, Hey, if we hit a billion sales units, everybody gets a

SPEAKER_72: week off, everybody gets an extra grand, whatever it is, come up with some incentive and make people

SPEAKER_28: feel like hard work is rewarded. Exactly. We'll do this when they feel like they're, you know, under the thumb and they don't have self, you know, any kind of like self-determination autonomy, right? Right. All of these things start to come into play. There's also another way as a manager to avoid all this, just fire the low performers and then reward the high performers and explain what you're doing to the

David Friedberg: team. These are our highest performers. That's why they have these titles and they have this consideration, these things they can do, these parking spaces, whatever the perks are. Totally. And then this is the rest of the company. And then here's the people we fired and we don't need to like dunk on those people, but they're not here for a reason and no dig to them. They can work at

SPEAKER_28: the post office or some other place target. I don't know some other place where I, I don't know who has

SPEAKER_14: a lower standard than us, or they might be fine at another company. Like, let's not, you know, like, come on, they're not like they have value, but they may use, but yes, bad managers refuse to acknowledge that some employees are better than others and manage accordingly. Good managers reward the

SPEAKER_110: people who work harder and then it sets an example, but you still gotta cut the bottom 10, 20%. That's what I think is missing in some of these cases. Yeah. So that you have this dynamic, this dynamism. But anyway, you're correct, Molly, the ultimate hot take here is, uh, yours, which I will, uh, build on.

SPEAKER_79: Managers love this. Managers love this because it basically, uh, the, all of the, uh, employees who join these unions, they basically are going to a dormitory, putting themselves in a room and

SPEAKER_110: locking themselves in. You have now locked yourself in to the asylum. You are now on

SPEAKER_25: rails. You have a limited, uh, career path. You have to play by the rules. You gotta wait in line. You have to become level one, two, three, three, four, five, et cetera, et cetera. And you gotta climb the ladder. Managers love this. And this is what I heard from all the journalism CEOs, because I'm friends with them. They all tell me, Jake, how this is the greatest starting salary at this company is now 48 K. Yeah. When somebody comes and they want 62 K, we just point them to 48 K. And then all of them are like, well, I guess that's what I have to do. The union says the, but the book says that's the starting salary. And in order for me to get to 62, I gotta put in five years and okay. And now they're like, it's easy. But there's another rub Molly. What they also love about this. And this is to the, uh, movement against stock comp that, uh, Brad Gerser and people have been talking about and remote work systems are dynamic. There are multiple systems converging at once here, like a super storm, right? One of them is remote work. One of them stock compensation, right? I joined a conversation. And what is this unionization? What these unions are going to do is management's going to look.

SPEAKER_28: You're gonna say, okay, unions. Great. Okay. These are the new structures. Great. We have an office in India, got an offer. We got some, uh, group in, you know, these Eastern block countries that are doing great. Uh, we got people down in, uh, Brazil. Now, uh, we got the Mexico office. Uh, we got this office in this other, you know, Manila, uh, Singapore. What are their salaries? Oh, and do they get stock? They don't get stock comp. Their salaries are half. Can I see the work output? Okay. It's 67%, but they cost one third. Great. Let's move this entire unit there.

David Friedberg: And that's where these unions, uh, in the media space, they were squeezing, trying to squeeze the last bit of blood out of that rock of like failing media companies like Buzzfeed or vice. And when the unions tried to squeeze Buzzfeed and vice, there's nothing left to give. Those are broken businesses.

SPEAKER_79: Yeah. So then the unions were like, yeah, we'll just lay off those positions or move those to

Jason Calacanis: freelance positions or it's really fascinating. We're at such a really fascinating. Cause it's sort of like the, the conversation about raising the minimum wage. And it's like, well, all these companies will go out of business. All these restaurants will go out of business if you raise the minimum wage. And it's like, well, yeah, maybe they should not to be awful, but they probably

SPEAKER_00: shouldn't exist if they can't afford to pay people, right? Like restaurants should probably cost more.

SPEAKER_97: And if they don't, they will go out of business, right? Or they'll find really, really low price

SPEAKER_07: people to abuse. Oh, the right amount for me to pay to go out to eat is that that person needs to get paid 15 or 20 bucks an hour to be my server. And if I'm not willing to pay, you know, if that person

SPEAKER_25: serves three people an hour and I'm not willing to pay seven bucks additional for my food for that

SPEAKER_09: person, my pro rata share of their salary, then maybe I should eat at home. Yeah. And we're going to be having that conversation about productivity right now too. It's really, it's a weird, it's a,

SPEAKER_97: it's a, such a weird time. We're going to be talking about labor, like 2023 trend. I think we even said this in the prediction show, we are going to be talking about labor constantly. It is like,

SPEAKER_166: versus global story. It's gonna be a big story. And if you have any ideas around it, uh, or you're

SPEAKER_79: having experiences inside your startup email producers at this week in startups.com would love to hear about it. Hey, next up it's Thursday. Let's talk to a lot of Harris. Let's go. Yeah. I'm going to

SPEAKER_181: talk about, I didn't say it during my review here. Uh, but, uh, I might have gotten a little emotional.

SPEAKER_18: Oh, I, well, uh, spoiler alert. When he talked about it, I was like, keep it together. Keep it

SPEAKER_97: together. Keep it together. I'm scared to watch it. Cause it's gonna be an ugly cry. The movie I talk

SPEAKER_79: about just to keep you from, you know, changing the channel. Uh, I did cry, uh, at the end of the

SPEAKER_188: movie. Uh, cause I just thought about my daughters and my relationship with them. And yeah, we're

SPEAKER_89: trying to be a great dad. And I was just like, bink. And I was like, oh no, I'm crying. I'm not supposed to cry. And I was like, oh no, it's okay for me to cry. I'm not a toxic male. And then I had this whole thing in my head, but I'm not supposed to cry. I'm supposed to be samurai J cow, but it's okay

SPEAKER_188: for me to cry about something that matters to me, like my relationship with my daughter. So I was like,

SPEAKER_191: okay, it's okay to cry, but this is what you're manipulating me right now. It is. God is really hard to be you guys. It's hard to be a guy. You know, Molly who's looking out for J cow. He can't

SPEAKER_194: even cry thinking about it. And we're done here. Yeah. So, uh, next up line. So, I mean, really

SPEAKER_197: like you were so close. You were so close. Hey, you know, who's looking out for a lot. Harris.

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SPEAKER_12: Hey everybody. It is the first Thursday of the new year. We have some unfinished business from last year. So we're working our way through some of the movies still. We're going to do two

SPEAKER_205: more, two more. Tantilizing title this week. Yeah. I'm excited. And then exactly. And then we have

SPEAKER_00: some streaming news and not a lot of time with launch. Should we start with gourmet flux? Should we

SPEAKER_209: just open there? I didn't get to watch it. So I have a confession, but I didn't get to watch it. I will let you two go. It's really a shame we didn't know about the one I did see. Okay. We

SPEAKER_52: should have recorded our pre-show. Well, gourmet flex is the first one that I couldn't do. I had to turn it off. I'm sorry. Thank you for me.

SPEAKER_214: Flex gourmet. So this is our AO Scott's list of top 10. Do we remember where it was?

SPEAKER_217: This is number eight on the AO Scott list by a British filmmaker named Peter Strickland.

SPEAKER_218: Uh, he's previously made films called in fabric, barbarian sound studio, uh, sort of a, sort of an,

SPEAKER_217: an off beat, uh, peculiar horror and genre films are his specialty. Uh, this one, even mixing it up even more kind of a dark comedy satire of the art world, but with some horror elements as well, I would

SPEAKER_222: say, and it's a really long, it's a meditation on farts. It is. It's a whole movie is about fart humor.

SPEAKER_217: A lot. I mean, that's basically the plot. It's set at an art collective. They do what's called sonic catering. So every month, a different group of artists come in and does a residency there.

SPEAKER_218: And it's always about making interesting soundscapes and music out of food. So chopping food,

SPEAKER_217: cooking food, blending food, anything having to do with food, ASMR for food. It's totally an ASMR movie. Like performance art involving food stuffs basically, but it's all being told from the

SPEAKER_218: perspective of the sort of writer who chronicles, he, he stays there all the time and he chronicles what every group comes in and does their experiments, their take, he's our narrator. And he is suffering

SPEAKER_217: from terrible, uh, stomach problems, indigestion, gastric troubles, including he can't stop farting. And so we're, we're following the film and all these adventures from his perspective, but it's

SPEAKER_00: largely about his digestive. And then one of the members of the collective becomes kind of fascinated by his issues and they start pushing him to start doing these gastric tests. So he's getting

SPEAKER_218: colonoscopies as part of the performance art now. And there's, there's, there's fecal integration

SPEAKER_234: like his stool samples become part of the performance art. Molly looks mortified. I don't know if it's because of the light.

SPEAKER_00: This is the first one that I actually turned off. I was like, you know what? No, I was like, the power's going to go out any second now. And I'm not wasting my last few minutes on the rest of this movie. I know exactly where, as soon as I see her spooning poop into a little jar and wanting to

SPEAKER_12: be more. And, and the whole setup is that she's like wanting to push the envelope more and more

SPEAKER_237: and more. Now we find out later. It's not exactly what you think. I will. Yeah. Spoiler alert.

SPEAKER_217: It's not even in the context of the movie. It's not real. It's performance art. She's using chocolate

SPEAKER_218: to simulate. So we don't know that at first it's the, you get hit by the disgusting. Oh my God, she's smearing poop on herself. And then the next scene we find out it wasn't, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. It's fine. Look, it's fine. I will tell you one thing about this movie and one thing only. Well, okay. Two things. This is the one that should have been Maverick. Sorry. Like I'm now fully on the J train. Like Maverick could have gone at number eight because this is not a movie as Lon and I were discussing before the show. This is not a movie that like everybody, like you could

SPEAKER_12: come to Neptune frost and be like, this is a hurdle to get into it, but okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00: That was interesting. Pay off. Maybe you get that kind of smugness that makes you feel like I went to a museum and I'm proud of myself. I enjoyed some art, right? Like that to frost

SPEAKER_218: makes you feel good to read. Boom. Got this. No, this is a, it's a cult movie for, for cult movie fans. As soon as I saw this, I had seen this movie before AO Scott published his list because I'm a Peter Strickland fan. I like barbarian sound studio, like they're burgundy, some of his other movies. Uh, so I, I checked out this as soon as it popped up on shutter.

SPEAKER_217: Uh, but this is, this is a, this is for movie people and he makes weird, experimental,

SPEAKER_251: odd, thoughtful, RC kind of movies. So take me through the mind of a critic.

SPEAKER_00: One thing though, one thing, the, the actual real one thing, Gwendolyn Christie from Game of Thrones, Brianna of Tarth, is in this and she's so amazing and fantastic and mesmerizing and kooky. And I'm just going to basically go and watch everything that she's in. That's my new list for 2023. What is Gwendolyn Christie in? In real, in real life, she's like

SPEAKER_218: famously, she, she's always dressed. She's got like this crazy wardrobe and she's always dressed in like big showy, exotic. She's very flamboyant dresser and always, always in, in these crazy, uh, gowns and whatever at events. I feel like they purposefully played on that in this. Her character always is in really weird, wild, elaborate costumery. Like if, if, if Oscars were really given for the full breadth of all kinds of movies, this would be one of those things you'd look for.

SPEAKER_261: This would get a costume or an art direction, Oscar, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_263: Those always go to like period films or whatever, but like the costumes in this are wild. Her, her outfits in this are absolutely crazy. Amazing. So there's no reason on planet earth for anybody

SPEAKER_267: to see this movie, except if you're not true at all. It's funny. It's weird. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_268: He's making a lot. He's doing a lot of interesting stuff with sound. I mean, it really is like legit Arnie movie people. It's a very, totally see this. And it's about how like the only way

SPEAKER_272: human, I think here's what I think it's about. It could be about anything. It's very ambiguous,

SPEAKER_218: but I think it's about as humans, we only have sensory, these weird sensory ways of integrating with the world. The only thing we know about the world is what we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. And it always, it's deceptive and it's, it's, it's, it's odd and it's sort of mechanical in this weird way. And I think that's what he's exploring is like how, how different our experiences are of the world, because we're all accessing it through these senses, sensory experiences that are able to be manipulated and are subjective and are, and if you have to, if you have to fart all the time,

SPEAKER_222: you can't pay attention to anything. Right. All right. What did you watch?

SPEAKER_16: Okay. So I watched after sun, uh, because, uh, after this AO Scott, uh, horrific list,

David Friedberg: I thought, you know what, Neptune, whatever kind of felt like, yeah, I kind of felt like that. I want those hours of my life back. Oh, I'm just saying I would, I would reallocate that to another film. Uh, and that other film is the one I saw, uh, which is, uh, a, a very personal film called after sun. Uh, now I'm very glad that I got into tar tar is a film I want to see again. So on my spectrum,

SPEAKER_25: this is how I think movie review should go. And I would like all movie critics hearing my voice, including AO Scott to now adopt a new system, which is, would you watch it again?

SPEAKER_279: Not would you say you watch it again, but would you actually sit through it again? Cause like,

SPEAKER_221: time is precious, right? You gotta, there are definitely movie experiences that are valuable, but that you don't necessarily want to go through it a second time. Like, you know, I mean, I think

SPEAKER_218: like the classic example would be like Schindler's list. I don't think any of us would deny it's a

SPEAKER_284: great movie, but it's not like, Hey, it's Saturday night. I'm going to throw on a film.

SPEAKER_25: Okay. So I'm not saying it's like the Godfather where if you stumbled upon it, change or gladiate or a blade runner and you happen to catch minute 15 or minute 150, you're watching it till the end. I'm not talking about rewatchable. That's the ultimate height of a film in my mind, in terms of a great piece of art, but just, would you, after you saw it and your spouse or a friend wanted to see it again, would you actually go through seeing it again? Neptune frost? No way. Uh, absolutely. Okay. You're, you're like part of the elite film circles, right? Okay. Molly would not see Neptune frost again. I'm speaking for Molly here, but she might see target or might not. I might. Yeah. Might. So it's like, but it's more than Neptune frost and you would,

SPEAKER_165: Oh, a hundred percent. I would want to say it again to show somebody else and be like, yeah, it's correct. Stick with it. You know, so with that framing, uh, I saw this film after sun,

David Friedberg: uh, and it is a very personal film. It is a low budget film. It is the story that I think takes place, you know, more like in the nineties. And it's a very slow burn. It's an eight 24 picture, but it's a dad who is clearly suffering, uh, from some mental health issues, maybe depression, anxiety, feelings of self-worth. He's a single parent. He's probably 30 years old or something in that range. They kind of allude to, and he's on vacation with his 11 year old daughter, Sophie, and they go to a Turkish resort and it's a coming of age film for Sophie. You get some sense of like dread or something could go wrong, but that's not really what the film is about, uh, without getting into sort of spoiler territory. It's really about in the film juxtapositions between Sophie being older, uh, and younger. Um, but just on this one trip and it will hit you if you're a father or a daughter, like a ton of bricks, because the relationship between a parent and a child, you know, and perhaps a father or a daughter, a mother and a son, whatever combination it is. Um, you know, if it, if there is some imperfection there and if there is some regret or there is something missing that didn't get completed, our relationships with our parents are very complex.

SPEAKER_25: And this film just hits that cord and it hits it so perfectly. The empathy that the daughter actually has for her father, the father struggles. And yet it there's nothing happens in the film other than being at a Turkish resort, which is kind of like a cheap version of club med and the father's broke and there's poignant moments in it. And I'll just point out one, which for me describing it, you would not get the poignancy. Um, but they're basically snorkeling and the dad has bought a pair of goggles for his daughter and the daughter drops them like, you know, kids do. And it goes sinks down to the bottom of the ocean. The father tries to retrieve it because he's broke,

SPEAKER_79: can't afford it. Uh, and they're in, he's, they're from like London or something. And it's obviously, he's estranged from, you know, his, the, the mother of the child as well. And not clear if they ever were

David Friedberg: married and the daughter feels so bad, not because of the goggles, but because she knows her dad's broke and he paid for the goggles. And by the end of the film, you, it has a final scene, uh, that is slightly ambiguous that maybe you look up on the internet and then you start meditating on it. And like the film tar, this is where I get the chills with the film is if it stays with me. And this

SPEAKER_28: is a film that stayed with me. Whereas Neptune frost next year, I won't remember it. I'm not, I'm not singling out that film or maybe this flux film for you, Molly, just, you know, it doesn't hit the chord, but this is an independent film that hits a chord and the performances are tremendous. And, uh, I highly recommend it to anybody who is maybe a daughter or a parent or,

David Friedberg: you know, if you have a parent or if you're a child, if you're in that category and

SPEAKER_12: kind of get my job, um, I think, I feel like a 24 too is I'm happy that they are, that that studio is like carrying the torch for independent movies. And I am, you know, and I, and I will, before we move on to talking about streaming, like I am happy about something like an AO Scott list insisting, it insists upon itself, insisting though, that we not only watch Marvel movies. Right. And that, that I not only default to Jack Ryan, but like, it's, it's a good, like, it seems like even for you, Jason, it's opened your aperture. Like maybe you wouldn't have watched After Sun if you weren't

SPEAKER_00: sort of in the mood to step outside of Star Wars for a minute. So like, thank you for the provocation,

SPEAKER_217: AO Scott. And this is a first time feature Charlotte Wells. This is her directorial debut feature, directorial debut. She's made some shorts. So like this is exposing a new voice, you know,

SPEAKER_218: I mean, now this is a filmmaker that the next Charlotte Wells film, you'll be like, oh, she made After Sun. I want to see this. Right.

SPEAKER_302: I, I will absolutely. Um, I wish there was a website where I could just track, like, and get a Google

SPEAKER_28: alert that would just send me the next time that person does. You could just somebody, you could send a Google alert for the name Charlotte Wells actually, you know, you're going to get all

SPEAKER_07: kinds of other stuff going on. Here, here's an idea for, uh, IMDB or somebody like Rotten Tomatoes

SPEAKER_28: or Metacritic. Like if you could follow any person in their database, when you hit follow, it sends alerts based on anytime that person's met. There's gotta be a service already.

SPEAKER_12: That must exist, right? You know where, you know where you can do that actually is, you can do that. I think in Roku, I think in the, if you have like a Roku TV, I think with the Roku

SPEAKER_141: interface. Interesting. You know what, Apple TV, like their previous films. So if you put on Apple TV, we'll do it too, I think. Yeah. I want this now for Mike Wendell and Christie.

SPEAKER_218: I just, I bet there's one of these, like, like real good, one of these just watch kind of services would probably let you do something like that. All right. Well, now that I work for her own

SPEAKER_07: Medicare, hold on. Let's move on. One thing to Molly was very generous to A.L. Scott.

David Friedberg: I'm not letting him off the hook. He screwed up. He screwed his own list. If he had put Maverick on there, then the list would have been credible. And then the thing next to Maverick would have looked that

SPEAKER_316: much better. No, we wouldn't have cared. And maybe he shouldn't work for the New York

SPEAKER_14: Times. No, here's the thing. If he hadn't, no, this is where, no, you have to turn lemons into lemonade here. Okay. Because if he had done that list, then we would have been like check and moved on and it never would have created all this content for us. And we would not. So you're saying it's a

SPEAKER_319: grand to be watching these movies. It's a grand troll. Okay, I'll take it. He defeated us.

SPEAKER_320: Lon's position. Lon Harris. He exposed you to our experience.

SPEAKER_324: Moving on, moving on, moving on. Great service.

SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone. It's Molly Wood, co host of this week in startups and managing director here at launch, where our mission is to back builders and help build founders. One of the ways we do that is with our two day intensive founder university workshop. It's free for any founders who have launched their product, but haven't yet raised a series a you'll learn from industry experts on sales, hiring product growth, the true nuts and bolts of starting a company. Previous topics and founder university include how to run a sales team, negotiating a term sheet, raising your round, how to build features that move your metrics, storytelling for investors. I do that one. That's my course. It's tactical, it's intensive, and it's free for founders. To date, we have actually hosted 24 founder university two day classes and had over 2000 founders participate. Apply now at intensive.founder.university and I hope to see you there. We got to keep going. We got to keep going. Maybe now that all these streaming services are facing so much competition, they could consider innovating with cool new features like follow your favorite artists and get notified when they release something new as opposed to their current strategy, which is just kill everything that you like real quick because it's too expensive to keep making stuff. So streamers have been dropping content like crazy

Jason Calacanis: to save money. This is now spread to stars. It includes Netflix, which canceled 1899 after one season, a show that people apparently loved. It's from the, I don't know if you guys ever saw Dark, that very

SPEAKER_218: well-regarded German, it was a German language series that had a real strong sci-fi kind of puzzle box element, time travel, very well received. One of Netflix's first big international hits, like one of the first indications like, oh, they can grab stuff from foreign markets and make it a worldwide sensation. I think this was even before Money Heist, um, definitely before Squid Game. So the creators of that show, this is their new one. So of course, everybody who was into Dark jumped on board and it had a same kind of puzzle box, JJ Abrams, bad robot loss kind of hook. They were planning on a three season arc. So season one ends on this huge cliffhanger. Oh, and then Netflix just, and then they killed it. See, this reminds me of like,

SPEAKER_12: my brother and I have this long years long joke. That's not a joke, which is like, never get into a Fox show. Cause I feel like Fox was legendary for this. They would always like, you would get into something that was kind of like almost human is the example that always comes to mind for me. And then they would just be like, it's out. So, but this is also becoming more and more common, like not just killing stuff when it's, you know, still the baby in the crib, but also removing content, presumably to save money. So stars hold three titles, dangerous liaisons becoming Elizabeth

Jason Calacanis: and step up from its streaming service. It's not clear why they pulled those. Of course, HBO max pulled season 16 through 31 of looney tunes and 78 episodes of the Flintstones and Westworld and all of that. So like talk about how the economics are becoming a lot more ruthless in streaming, whether it's killing stuff because it just didn't get what a big enough audience.

SPEAKER_52: I thought we didn't have to care about audience in this new world of streaming.

SPEAKER_218: Yeah. I mean, obviously Netflix was looking at 1899 number six season one cost about 60 million. So that's a big expenditure for them. That's a costly show. So they were looking at, look, if we, if we go in for another season of this, that's 60 million more we're throwing at this show.

SPEAKER_240: And I have to figure that the season one viewer numbers were disappointing or at least well below what they expected post dark. So that's gotta be the explanation there.

SPEAKER_218: The looney tunes thing, uh, we found that it was, there was like a deal between HBO max and Warner brothers, like HBO max was paying a certain lump sum every year to Warner brothers for these rights.

SPEAKER_240: And they just didn't want to do that internally anymore. So they pulled all of that content.

SPEAKER_07: So that was a personal deal. Like, I don't want to spend money with you because you're a competitor,

SPEAKER_261: yada, yada, yada. Well, it was intra company Warner brothers, his own HBO max. They're both owned by

SPEAKER_218: Warner brother discovery. So it was just this intra company deal that they stopped doing. Possibly because they're going to start licensing looney, these looney tunes episodes somewhere else. Right. They're going to move. Flintstone somewhere else this year.

SPEAKER_28: Because they're not explaining, uh, the economics of why this is happening. Sometimes it leaks right in the, in the trade press, like you're explaining a lot. But what the, one of the problems here is expectations. People sign up for a service, Molly expect that they get everything. Cause that's what you said.

SPEAKER_25: Okay. It's paramount. Plus you get everything on paramount ever did. Plus some new stuff. Hey, it's HBO max. You get everything HBO has ever done. Plus max, right? CNN plus you're going to get all the CNN plus some other garbage that you would never watch. That was the promise. And so managing expectations is the issue here. And then they don't explain any of this because explaining it would seem kind of marauding. It's like, well, we'd have to pay 17 million residuals for this. We need to cut 175 million. And this is 10% of the cuts we have to make. And so it was an easy cut to make. I heard people on another podcast or, and they were kind of going crazy. There was another Netflix,

David Friedberg: um, series that people were like, oh, they're canceling the series. And it's another example of canceling a series that includes, you know, this identity politics type, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_352: I bet it was warrior. None is the other big reason we're very mad about.

SPEAKER_07: They're very mad about this. And they're saying, Hey, this has something to do with identity politics. I like that word better than woke, because we'll just honestly don't use either

SPEAKER_106: representation. There's the claim was this is being taken off air because of who the person is.

SPEAKER_218: It's a, it's a, uh, right. And I mean, there's, listen, this is a, we don't know if that's happening that this is a, this is a large scale trend that's happening to all kinds of shows. But I think the point would be, yes, worry or not, it's got a diverse cast. It's a show that's good for expanding Netflix's representation. And so when you cancel shows, you're narrowing the field

SPEAKER_362: once more, but is there something to Netflix cancels? Cause this was the trend. We have no

David Friedberg: idea, right? Well, they're not gonna say that. Does Netflix, is Netflix canceling more of these

SPEAKER_218: shows than the average? I don't, I would have to, you have to look at numbers. Like I don't, I don't, that's another thing that, that David Zaslav has been accused of many times with HBO. Like, you know, they're cutting stuff like legendary, which is that ballroom drag culture reality show and a lot of stuff like that, that then these groups are coming and saying, well, this is

SPEAKER_281: narrowing the representation that's available on HBO. And there was a canceled Netflix trend,

SPEAKER_368: but whether or not it's intentional is almost whether or not it's intentional happening.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I mean, I would say that the answer to whether shows with greater diverse and more diverse cast and high and greater representation are being canceled at a higher rate is almost certainly yes. And here's why, because of audience, right? Like what, what the, one of the promises, one of the expectations of streaming was what I just said, which is that we would be freed from the expectation that everything had to be a huge watercolor hit because that's not how streaming was

Jason Calacanis: supposed to water cooler hit. Thank you that there would be the opportunity for lots of different

SPEAKER_00: flowers to bloom long tail with potentially smaller audiences. And so if you make an audience, if you make a show that primarily appeals to let's say young Asian women, yep. I'm not saying nobody else

SPEAKER_12: is ever going to watch that show. I watched a few episodes of warrior nine. I thought it was fun as

SPEAKER_00: hell. But what I'm saying is if you make a show that primarily appeals to that audience, it is likely that it will have a smaller audience, right? And if you were that, and if you achieve that, and then all of a sudden your economics get way more ruthless and they hadn't had to be for a long time because there wasn't any competition, you were Netflix, you just could keep out pumping, you know, pumping out content, then yeah, that is the first place you're going to start. Yeah, economically. And then socially,

SPEAKER_12: that sucks. Yeah, and is going to look bad. But it ultimately comes down to the real thing that we've been saying about content. I mean, I must have said this on this show a million times and ever and always before is that it's a freaking sinkhole for money. Yeah. Making content is expensive.

SPEAKER_17: So this is where so I think you'd be a great point. This is where lawn, I think communication and

David Friedberg: transparency, because what people were saying is, you know, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Zob's love, they all make these decisions willy nilly. They're there, there's some metric, they're not, you know, they got to their own internal bull metric, sorry, BS metric that they go by in a vacuum. This is my

SPEAKER_28: message to General Zod's love and to HBO and everybody else is, you know, canceling stuff. It's reasonable in a down market, you got to cancel stuff, we understand, right? Cut budgets, you have to explain yourself. And you have to be kind to that piece of IP. So what does it mean?

David Friedberg: Well, you should say, listen, we have four tiers of shows. These are our blockbuster shows. These are above average, these are average. And these are the ones that are more niche, you don't have to call it underperforming. You say these are more niche colony. You could say this fold into our boutique

SPEAKER_25: budget, and our boutique budget has been cut. And that's it, just a little bit of explanation, you don't have to give the raw viewership, although I think Netflix should. But I think they don't want to tip their cards to competitors as to what's working. They don't even give lawn correct the your viewership to Adam Sandler or anybody I've heard like Adam Sandler, other people Chris rock talk about when they do a show now on streaming, they don't know how many views it got. They literally don't give it to them. So the unions, and this is what Ben Affleck is doing with Matt Damon is they're coming up with their new studio. I think they should say, hey, if we're going to

SPEAKER_390: give you content, you've got to give us the metrics. So no more hiding metrics. We may be on

SPEAKER_218: the verge of this trend reversing or changing anyway, because of advertising, it's sponsors and specifics. They don't want, oh, 40 million hours of this were watched in the first three days, like all the Netflix's little games that they like to play. Yes. Hershey minutes watched. Yeah. Anheuser-Busch, like they're not playing impressions, doesn't play those games. They're like, how many people

SPEAKER_261: are this, is this being shown to, you know, just give it to me. Because we're seeing the ruthlessness,

SPEAKER_00: but not the transparency, like a hundred percent. Right. So there's a lot of hearing for that. Now

SPEAKER_218: that Netflix and all of these platforms, Disney, they're starting to integrate ads. They're going to have no choice, but to have more transparency around viewership on at least some of these shows.

SPEAKER_396: Yep. All right. On that note, we got to go. We got to go with Lon. We got to go. We'll be back next week. Lon, tell us what to watch this weekend.

SPEAKER_218: Yeah, do it. Oh my God. It's a rainy weekend. There's Kaleidoscope on Netflix, which is their new heist show with Giancarlo Esposito. You can watch it in any order. Oh, I heard about this one. Kind of an interesting narrative experiment. Colors. Yes. Every episode is named after a color, but except for the finale, which you have to watch last. So Kaleidoscope, you can watch it in any order.

SPEAKER_367: You can watch it in any order. Orders that people are saying are the right order. Should we? Well, it'll change your perception of what's happening based on who you, what you see.

SPEAKER_07: What should we do? If we watch it this weekend, should you pick, should you go on the internet and say what's the proper, what's the best Kaleidoscope order or not?

SPEAKER_406: I think you, I, I would just let it go. Like let Netflix pick and go, go random.

SPEAKER_263: Yeah. Like that's, that's the idea. That's, that's, that's what I would, that's what I would do if it were me. You haven't seen it yet.

SPEAKER_218: All right. No, I haven't watched it yet. I have checked out on Peacock. There's also Paul T. Goldman, which is from Borat 2 director, Jason Walliner, uh, a random, every man sent him a copy of his book, which he says is about this real crazy experience that he had. And together they're turning it into a TV show. So you're getting both this guy's story presented in a scripted TV drama format, but you're also getting behind the scenes interviews with him and discussion with him about making this show about his life.

SPEAKER_414: Uh, another meta, like the rehearsal kind of. A bit like the rehearsal, a bit like a Borat kind

SPEAKER_261: of thing. Yes. A meta contextual sort of comedy series. I watched the first two. It's very interesting and fun so far. So there's your tips for the week. Fabulous.

SPEAKER_418: Thanks a lot. We'll see you next time. See you next week.

SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. We will see you back here tomorrow with 2023's first edition of okay. Boomer plus news from the week and whatever breaks overnight. See you then. Bye-bye.