Everything on Nothing
Welcome to the podcast where everything is connected and nothing really matters. Hosted by Mickey, Christian, and Jacki
Everything on Nothing
Everything on Dropout TV
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In this Everything On Nothing episode, we tackle the question:
“Is Dropout TV the most ethical streaming service out there?”
We talk:
- Dropout TV, CollegeHumor, and the increasingly unusual idea that a company might actually like the people who work there
- Brennan Lee Mulligan’s “Evil is boring” philosophy and why being good turns out to be considerably more complicated
- Sam Reich, creative control, and what happens when the people making the shows get to keep making the shows
- Profit sharing, loyal crews, and the radical proposition that employees might deserve some of the money they helped make
- Channel 101, ComedySportz, and the strange little comedy incubators that somehow keep producing famous people
- Donald Glover, Derrick Comedy, Community, SNL, and the sprawling Hollywood family tree where apparently everybody knows everybody
- Hollywood consolidation, streaming, and the thrilling prospect of having approximately six companies decide what the entire world gets to watch
- AI-generated entertainment and the bold new future of making things cheaper so nobody has to enjoy making them
- Gary’s filmmaking adventures, WWE NXT, Full Sail, and the glamorous world of running cables while other people get to be on television
- Ryan, vinyl, Dungeons & Dragons, and the suspicious number of hobbies that can become a career if you refuse to get a normal job
- Los Angeles, Channel 101, Harmontown, Santa Monica Pier, BMX, skateboarding, police chases, and other perfectly normal activities
- Why weird little creative communities matter, especially when nobody in them has any idea what they're going to become
- How artists build something together, become successful, and eventually discover they are the system they spent ten years complaining about
- Why treating creative people like human beings might be a surprisingly effective business strategy
- And several other tangents that absolutely did not need to happen but did anyway
So is Dropout really a better way to make entertainment?
I (Jacki) vote yes.
Brennan Lee Mulligan once said, Evil is boring, right? I kind of believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It's easy to understand why people do bad things. It's like, yeah, okay, you're selfish and scared and cruel. I get it. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard. I am your guide, Mickey, and if you ask me a question, I will answer it thoroughly. Joining me is my life partner and producer, Jackie. That's me. And our incredibly gifted and talented uh co-host, Christian.
SPEAKER_04Howdy, y'all.
SPEAKER_07And joining us as a guest today, we have Ryan, uh Jackie's adopted brother. He's known online as vinyl dad85 or the wax father. He is a prominent vinyl record enthusiast, content creator, and CEO of vinyl swaps. He is uh he is most active on his TikTok TikTok account and Instagram profile, where he regularly shares record collections, hosts community vital swaps, and discusses music. He is known for his highly curated music taste and engaging community building. His online presence features several highlights, including uh vinyl swaps and live streams, where he highlights mostly early 2000 music and Gary. That's it.
SPEAKER_01Just the guy. Gary.
SPEAKER_00Just the guy. My recommendation was Karma's puppet, but we'll get into that later.
SPEAKER_07So Gary is a friend of Ryan. Uh, I know I like I said, I know you are involved with uh certain aspects, but I don't know where the line is drawn. Um uh like my son works for Universal Studios, and we can't have him as a guest because he has contracts where he can't talk about stuff in public and he has to maintain a certain persona. So, Ryan, uh, if you know a little bit about Gary, give us a little introduction. Oh boy.
SPEAKER_00I've known Gary since high school, and um we did we did uh two of my podcasts together. Uh when we were doing jerks, I wanted to set out and help him uh develop his his uh film acumen because it slowly became uh knowledge to me that you know maybe he didn't have quite the the the basis that one would have going into like full sale for uh as a as a film student that one might want to have.
SPEAKER_07Um the the the the name the jerks came as a spin-off from uh um us just being jerks one another mostly.
SPEAKER_00But yes, yeah, we based the logo on the clerks on the clerk's logo.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's like a brief little thing right before I went into college, I guess. That's that's a pretty much sums it. That's how Ryan and I kind of grew in our friendship, and we would effectively kind of I would part ways for a little bit because I would move on to the actual film world for a little bit and do work out there for a while, mostly within Florida, but I got to travel out to LA for a little bit and I got to see how the sausage was made, so to speak, you know, nice, and that is that's that's why Ryan suggested you for a guest on this episode in particular. Yeah, I thought I'd stop being coy and just give you guys the the the the good and the good and good before Ryan divulgs all my secrets, you know.
SPEAKER_07And uh I saw somewhere you were involved with NXT in some way. Is that true?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was during yes, briefly the full cell had a program where uh you could, it's like a work study situation where they would allow you to work within like the NXT compound at the time. Uh it was cool, uh, mostly like a PA job kind of a thing where you supported the camera crews as they needed, you know, they were stationary in their in their lockdowns and whatnot. So it was very very mundane, got to run cables for a little bit, you know. I say mundane, but a lot a lot of folks stand right next to some of these stars, and it's kind of impressive when you, you know, when you kind of see the level of fandom that is exuded in these areas, you know.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so uh back in the day, back in that time frame when you guys were doing the jerks, uh Jackie and I had just uh gotten the I started off doing SoMacal many, many years ago. Uh actually I started with uh a show called The New Pooh Review, uh, which was uh a podcast before podcasting was a podcast, and then we that broke up and we bought some equipment. And uh one of one of the members from that show and I put together what was called uh SoMacau, and then Soma Cow uh disintegrated, and uh our producer went on to do tots with Ross, and then I got the equipment, and we uh we had the children at home and three children that were very involved in a lot of things. Uh so we took uh one night a week to spend very concentrated time with him, and we called it uh corrupting the kids. And at that time, uh we invited Ryan and his friends uh in one at a time uh to try to do that, and uh, so we kind of had some synergy and and and kind of supportive uh trying to grow and just kind of introduce everyone to different audiences and new voices and whatever. So uh yeah, uh that's kind of how I enjoy doing things is trying to introduce people I enjoy to other people I enjoy. And uh so hopefully this goes well.
SPEAKER_03No pressure, no pressure.
SPEAKER_07Uh before we do get started, uh let me uh I will say none of the people that I'm about to mention are uh uh advertisers. But if you would like to advertise, contact Jackie at Jackie at valley of o.com. Uh offer your money, and we will talk about your name. Uh, but a huge thank you to Kate and Kyle, uh, the owners of Deer Sandy out in Portland, Oregon. Uh they have created a community uh out of a coffee shop uh by day and a bar by night. Uh so if you're anywhere near Portland, stop in. Find Deer Sandy, stop in. Tell them Jackie sent you. Uh, pretty sure if you told them that Mickey sent you, they'll ask you who you're talking about. Uh also check out Reasonably Afraid. It is uh the horror podcast, uh horror comedy podcast by our boss Zach Bennett and uh Ray Ray, the King of Kings, uh Ray Reyes, the King of Kings, and uh a multitude of different guests who are very talented and very funny. Um, if you check nothing out of theirs, check out their episode on Heart Eyes, which was a movie created by Josh Rubin, who is a member of Dropout TV, which then leads us into our subject of today. And the question is Is Dropout TV the most ethical streaming service available? We kind of like to say that everything is connected, so we're gonna go ahead and rewind the clock a little bit. Uh really quickly, I'll run down and say that uh, you know, uh somewhere in the labs of ATT they created the transistor, then figured out how to make the transistor a little bit smaller, invented computing, and then uh IBM started making out uh business machines, and a little nerd with a turtleneck decided that he wanted to make it available to humans out in the real world. So Steve Jobs invented the Apple IIE, and a little boy started programming on that, and he paired up with someone who then uh created there was a time where they were making um pads with pens, uh, way, way before the Apple Pod uh Apple iPad had pens. And they created huh? The ThinkPad? It was even before that, it was long like early, early.
SPEAKER_04Archaeologists don't know what it was called.
SPEAKER_07They created uh uh software so that you could draw and make cartoons on there, and uh because the that pad failed, they kind of pivoted and made it for uh made it for computers, Macs and uh PCs. And they uh it was called Macromedia, and then they were or they were bought out by Adobe who was making Flash and uh or Macromedia was making um software to make DVD menus, and they needed they were basically saying, Hey, we need better software because our software sucks. So they bought this flashwave company, and then uh a gentleman got the software pirated, probably, and made a cartoon of a frog in a blender, and it was kind of funny. So he put it online and got really popular. So he was like, Hey, I'll put a banner ad at the top. And the banner ad at the top was provided by advertising.com. Very, I mean, if you're in the advertising game, you know, uh you come up with something as creative and and you know, life splitting as advertising.com. And one of the newly hired people at advertising.com looked at Joe Cartoon's uh frog in a blender and how much money he was making. So he called his little brother, who had just entered college, and said, Hey, if you can get people to a website, I know how to make a lot of money doing it. So he gave him the little guidelines, and that little brother uh and his friend created collegehumor.com and they slapped some advertising on there and made lots of money. And then uh, so that's how we got to college humor. College humor was uh it started off as just jokes. Um, I remember back in the day where my father would make Xerox copies of jokes that were on the bulletin board at the still mill that he worked at, and that was how they provided jokes to each other back then. Uh, and then like Reader's Digest had uh you know humor in uniform or uh kid quips or whatever it was. So, you know, humor always finds a way to find a market, and if you can find a market and get people's eyes on it, you make ad sales. Um and then they tried, then they kind of started to pivot and they wanted to make their own content, and they started a video portion of it and hired Sam Reich as their uh director of internal con uh internal video content. Uh so if you have watched Dropout TV and watched the the game changer clips, Sam says I've been here the whole time. He means he's been there the whole time. Uh so that's just a real quick history, how everything is connected from you know the transistor all the way up to Samreich. Uh so we can talk about uh usually that takes us about uh 40 minutes to get through.
SPEAKER_00I really enjoyed the spaceship earth version of uh of the meme.
SPEAKER_07Um so here we are. Uh Dropout TV. Uh I guess this will just be kind of a uh fan uh gushing of how much we all enjoy it and take a road trip down that lane and talk about fan gushing is the only way you can talk about dropout. Yeah. I mean, it is. Um I think before the pandemic, before everything shut down, before uh the world started burning, um we had the opportunity, like we were sitting around, and Jackie was a fan of Dan Harmon's Harmontown podcast. And they made the announcement that the Harmon uh Harmontown podcast would be coming to an end. And we had we had made plans to go uh visit it and see it live in LA, LA. And we decided that you know, eventually once once everything settled down, we would get there. Uh, my son had graduated high school, so you know, we were um empty nesting it a little bit and a little, you know, saving a little bit of money because you know the kid was no longer spending all the money on high school stuff. And uh just when you have a kid in high school, money just leaks everywhere. It just like it's a constant leak of of cash flow just going out the door.
SPEAKER_00So uh even in high school, I can attest.
SPEAKER_07Uh, you know, if it's band, if it's sports, if it's clubs, it's one thing or another. This project, that project. It's just a constant, constant flow of money.
SPEAKER_02And feeding like a teenage boy, also.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. Um, I will give my son a lot of credit. He found a way to manipulate other people into buying a lot of his lunches.
SPEAKER_00Uh on the character sheet, that's just charisma.
SPEAKER_07Oh, yeah. His charisma was uh maxed out, plus, he had a charisma jacket, plus a charisma shoes. Like he he exceeded like he made the most charismatic Dungeons and Dragons character look like a nerd. Uh, he just had it and it annoyed me. And I tried to tell him not to take advantage of it because eventually someone is gonna get tired of his shit and say, no more. But he made it all the way to the end of high school and never paid a lunch, like ended up eating Wendy's every day. Like, there was a it was ridiculous. He had all kinds of receipts in his pocket. I'm like, why aren't you eating lunch? He's like, I did, and like pull out all these receipts for other people buying his stuff.
SPEAKER_04It's like a character in like a John Hughes movie or something. Yeah, and never paid for one lunch.
SPEAKER_07Well yeah, we'll see. Um, never did homework. Like, he had a not to I don't want to embarrass him or anything, but uh whatever. He had a 10 in math. Like going into the Christmas break, he had a 10 in math because he never did his homework, and he somehow convinced the teachers to let me. Honestly, I'm a fan.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say I was terrible at math. I mean, he's not the only one.
SPEAKER_04He was good at it though. No, he was because I know he's probably good at it. He's probably like a fucking whip smart genius if Mickey is any indication. But like, just the dedicated 10, a 10, not even like an F. Not like a like a oh, I'm trying my hardest. Like, I am getting a 10. I'm going out and I'm grabbing a perfect and I'm getting it.
SPEAKER_03On a commitment issue, and maybe sticking to his guns a little too tightly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because he hates homework. My dad's dumb dog, I'm not doing anything. I'm playing, I'm going outside, I'm playing video games. I don't know what high school people do anymore. I'm 37.
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, at one point we dumped out his bag, and there were like 50 unfilled, like he barely would put start writing his name on the homework sheet or the quiz that they passed out, or what it's like, L. That rules. Um, so uh yeah, anyway, so yeah, after he leaves the house, uh, we had some money and they made the announcement that Harmontown was uh coming to an end. Uh and at that time we'd also discovered channel 101, which was Dan Harmon and uh Rob Schraub. Um basically the the the concept of their thing was you would put together a five-minute yeah.
SPEAKER_02I can tell you how it started.
SPEAKER_07Okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Channel 101 started because um they had a party at like Dan's house or something, and wanted everybody to make their own sequel to Jaws. And I have Rob Schraub's on my computer somewhere, and it is literally just a video of his penis with a shark fin on it and the Jaws music. It is ridiculous. But uh, and then at the end of it, they voted to see which one was the best. They would have a group of filmmaker friends make five-minute television pilots, and then at the end of they would show like 10 of them a night. At the end of the night, they would vote to see if they would get a second episode or not. And if they got a second episode, five of them got to come back the next week with uh sorry, the next month with five brand new television pilots, five-minute television pilots. So it was like a cool way to like try out new concepts and like make some really weird shit. Like there's some really good channel 101 shows.
SPEAKER_07And that led to uh Rick and Morty.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_07And uh a lot of the people involved in channel 101 went on to have careers in television, and uh Siobhan uh Thompson is one of them is a teletubby, who Aaron from Breadtown.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay, the one who created Bredtown, which was a puppet show made with bread.
SPEAKER_04Uh wanted something on my resume so badly. Former teletubby.
SPEAKER_07But uh uh Siobon Thompson uh of Dropout TV uh ended up being a writer for Rick and Morty for a couple episodes. Um and then also another connection is that uh uh Dan and Rob uh started with comedy sports way back in the day, and uh that's where Jacob Waisaki met several of the people from Dropout TV, uh or his his friend uh that was on the episode. So it's like uh everyone that has a creative idea just to get creative juices flowing and starting. It's not like, hey, I want to walk into this job. It's no you here's a practice field, here's an incubator to get started. Um, but yeah, so we found out uh we went through the schedule and there was a film, uh screening of channel 101 at like the same week as a Harmontown uh uh uh live performance. So it was like, okay, we'll buy tickets and we'll go out to LA and we'll see it and we'll have a have a great time. And uh so we got to do that, and it was absolutely amazing. And then we had uh a John Wick encounter at the pier. Yeah. Like we we walked on the same, or we went to the Santa Monica Pier and walked down it, and we ran into an Asian lady who uh was some sort of like she came out of no, like she literally just appeared out of nowhere. Like we were walking, and then all there was nobody there, and then all of a sudden there was a little Asian lady that was giving us some uh beads and trying to steal our money. Oh and then we walked a little ways and we had a Rastafarian selling us a uh DVD, and then we went around the corner and where we we ended up seeing some Russian mafia guys throwing a guy uh over you know with cement shoes. So you know it was like John Wick moment all throughout the day, and it was amazing. Uh, and then we went to a drink champagne at a really expensive place.
SPEAKER_02The breakers, I believe.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. So um, so yeah, uh LA has a lot of uh a lot to offer in the ways of watching organized crime murders happen in real time.
SPEAKER_00Organized crime murders decided. What was the DVD that Rastafari would think?
SPEAKER_02It wasn't a DVD, it was a CD of rap music.
SPEAKER_07He was giving it to us, but he would sign it for five dollars.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, I was totally ready for like a third mystical item to be tried to like foist it upon you. That's like when the devil is trying to trick somebody and they like didn't uh didn't do the first time, and you turn the corner, ah, now I'm a rastafarian.
SPEAKER_02We also saw like a police show being filmed. Remember that? Because we saw like police chasing somebody, we didn't know what it was, but then then we saw the cameraman.
SPEAKER_07And then we saw a BMX guy take over the skate park.
SPEAKER_02Uh don't do you remember that little kid skater?
SPEAKER_07That's what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_07The yeah, he was he went from his BMX bike to his skateboard and he was trying this amazing trick, and uh like all the skaters in the park just kind of went off to the side and was like, let's see what this kid's got. And like he did a flip off of it, like did a uh end over end flip on his BMX bike, landed on a skateboard, and then uh dropped into the bowl and went around and then did like five or six other tricks. And his mom's just sitting there going, Look how good he is.
SPEAKER_04It'd be so funny if he did that and then completely beefed. The first trick.
SPEAKER_02The moment it completely is and just smashes. Wasn't that the night, too, that we went to Hollywood Forever Cemetery after going to the dispensary where that guy gave us like one dollar one hundred milligram marijuana pills?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that sounds great. Gary, none of your LA stories are this whimsical. All yours is so crushing and make me sad.
SPEAKER_06Well, because you're in the middle of the road. And then they let the air out.
SPEAKER_07We had people warn us how strong the marijuana in LA was, and we showed up to uh like we uh I had extra cash, and uh a lot of our friends from the stand-up comedy scene had transferred over to LA, and so it was like this special deal. Like it I found a place to get cheap tickets to uh the the Hollywood Cemetery has uh an event uh where they play movies. So go ahead, say it again.
SPEAKER_02Cynespia.
SPEAKER_07And I found a way to buy, I think it was like 10 tickets. So we contacted everyone we knew and said, Hey, show up, we've got tickets for you. So um our friend Tara uh who uh is eternally grateful, eternally grateful for her experience during our trip to Cynespia. She's like, We've done this before, here's what we're gonna do. And she packed a little wagon with uh all this food, like basically this great spread of cheeses and wines and and everything else, and blankets and pillows. And um, our friend Joe and Nikki uh had their set up with little little back support chairs that are low to the ground and all that stuff. And then we bought these pills, and everyone has reported back to us that that is the highest they've been since they were in LA. And we were like, I don't know, I I just it is what it is. We you know, weed we were on a we were on a roll with Florida weed, but most of our Florida weed was coming from Michigan, so it was really cheap. So we smoked a lot of it. Yeah, uh, so we kind of had a a little bit of a tolerance, but everyone's like, oh no, LA weed is so much better. We're like, okay, here's you know, here's this big fat joint. Um, it's normal to us, and everyone else is like, whoa, uh you needed something darker.
SPEAKER_03Listen, not that I'm an expert or anything, but Florida, Florida weed can be pretty danky. I think that the the best part about LA weed though is that you actually kind of know what you're getting, whereas like here it's kind of like a 50-50 kind of thing, even if you get it through the most legitimate of ways, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02If I would tell you the prices of Michigan weed, you would fall over. I promise.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god. Well, anywhere that were it's like recreational, you kind of get smacked upside the face with like when we first moved when we first moved here.
SPEAKER_02Uh we were kind of like starstruck by it. And when I got I I still have a medical card because I get a discount, and of course, uh, I just in case things go south, I want it to be on record that this is a medical thing for me.
SPEAKER_03Did it legitimately, yeah. Of course, that's the only way to do it.
SPEAKER_02And um when I got my medical card the first time, they had a partnership with this place called Green Genie here in Michigan, and we went there, and you could buy a bucket of a hundred joints, like full, like full joints, not too many joints, for a hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_04A buck of joint, a buck a joint, and they were on ice, ice, joints like joints on ice.
SPEAKER_02I I regularly get full ounces of weed for $30, and it's not bad at all.
SPEAKER_04It's an ounce.
SPEAKER_02I love it here, an ounce of full ounces.
SPEAKER_04I will drive it to Michigan.
SPEAKER_02And edibles, like candy edibles, like gummy candy, is cheaper than regular candy that you get at the grocery store or the gas station. It is wild here. It is yeah, and they also have weed in like every form you can imagine. I have toothpicks sitting on my desk. Um toothpicks.
SPEAKER_04That's an unrelated statement. I just have them.
SPEAKER_02Like that's crazy. It's it's crazy. And just weed toothpicks? Yeah. Hold on, do what we're saying.
SPEAKER_04Is that like I'm I'm doing it. I love I love me and weed, but I'm also just like, is that like for numbing or something?
SPEAKER_02That'll really fucking high, bro.
SPEAKER_03All right.
SPEAKER_02They're tiny, they're like 10 milligrams, so I don't really feel them anymore.
SPEAKER_04So you don't need like fascinated, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And if just to put a capper on this wild our first wild trip to California, uh, two two more things. While we were waiting for Channel 101, we wandered into the oldest gay bar in Los Angeles, and a lady took us behind a curtain to have special shots of tequila.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And the day after House made tequila.
SPEAKER_02Yes, house made tequila. It was not good. And then the day after we went to Cinespia, we uh had lunch with my favorite author.
SPEAKER_07Oh, yeah. Yeah, uh, we we called him up and said, Hey, we're in LA. Uh we've can we Jackie had conversed with him a couple of times.
SPEAKER_02She I got his phone number weirdly from a Google Plus glitch.
SPEAKER_07Nice. And um she has made people uh the what is the first book?
SPEAKER_02Uh The Average American Male.
SPEAKER_07The Average American Male by Chad Colchin. And uh she had conversed with him a couple of times, and we said, Hey, we're out in LA, we'll we we would love to take you to lunch. And he took us to uh a really nice spot, and he's like, I got this. And uh he basically predicted like this was 2019 or whatever. I'm checking what year Harmontown ended, and he predicted everything that has happened since uh the man's brain, his the man's brain and his uh uh he he walked us through what was going to happen with the the Trump stuff, and he was like, This is gonna happen, they're gonna pack the this that and there's not gonna be any more options and not in a crazy conspiracy way, just as a matter of fact, and just to kind of put it in perspective, uh his uh his significant other and he at the time had watched so much Bachelor that they were able Bachelorette, they were able to predict the winner by the first five minutes of the show. No shit. Like episode one, uh first five minutes, they could say, Okay, based on all the stereotypes and all the all of the casting choices and stuff, this is going to be the winner. And they wrote a boat, they ended up writing a book about it on how to win the bachelorette. So when I say this person is very observant and has everything can justify all of what he is saying, it all came true, and it was like I had my thoughts on how everything is connected and this and and how everything is leading. My problem is I can't predict human behavior because I suck at humans, but listening to him and was like, Oh shit, we're in for a hell of a ride because he is accurate.
SPEAKER_03Do you think it's a it's like a pattern recognition thing that he does kind of a thing?
SPEAKER_07Absolutely, yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. And if you uh and reading his book, it is just pattern recognition of human behavior into novel form.
SPEAKER_03And it's I'm sure if you've learned the edits on the bachelorette or bachelor, like if you know their focus, if you know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, it's it's not even the edits, it's like what predict right after it. It's like uh like what color dress, who gets out of the limo first, um, what color hair, all kinds of crazy like it was such a well-researched book. He's such a good study of human behavior. Uh I want him to write more, but he has not.
SPEAKER_04What was the movie where the guy had this power? Like he could he could see like all of the intricate like uh relationships, and it would like zoom in. It's similar to like the Sherlock thing. That's probably the the closest I can think of that I can.
SPEAKER_02The only thing coming to mind right now is psych, and I know that's not right.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and I didn't see psych, but that that does sound like it.
SPEAKER_07Are you talking about the Bradley Cooper taking a pill?
SPEAKER_04I thought that one too, but uh Limitless, I think, might be it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm thinking of a Nicolas Cage movie. I can't think of the name of.
SPEAKER_04Okay, see, I'm glad you said that because that is I was like, this feels like a Nicolas Cage vessel. I can I can see everything. I don't know it works.
SPEAKER_03That's really cool. I thought he was here for one second.
unknownNick?
SPEAKER_02Um there's a there's a 2007 Nicolas Cage movie called um next, where he played Nicolas Cage plays Chris Johnson, a Las Vegas magician, with the ability to see two minutes into his own future. It's next. It's it's next.
SPEAKER_03I see it. I see yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's based on a Philip K. Dick story, so that feels very Nicolas Cage to me.
SPEAKER_07Oh, and and to top all, you know, one cap or after another, uh, then we ended up playing darts with um um Jeffrey B.
SPEAKER_02Davis.
SPEAKER_07Jeffrey B. Davis from uh Who Blind Is It Anyway, and his girlfriend who was dressed up like a uh wavy, wacky arm inflatable mark inflatable man, pure women.
SPEAKER_04I know him from the super ego. Uh I guess it's a podcast, uh, but that's like a lot of the same guys that like float around Harmontown, like Rob Schraub and uh there's a few Mark Gormley.
SPEAKER_02I I feel like Spencer would be on that too. Spencer Crittenden. I couldn't think of his last name.
SPEAKER_04I that name sounds familiar, but I don't know if that's in conjunction with with super egos.
SPEAKER_02I guess like Harmantown was my first introduction to like Dungeons and Dragons, and it like it was neat. My first bomb was named after one of their Dungeons and Dragon characters, but Dungeons and Dragons didn't hit until we watched Fantasy High. I was like, Oh shit, now I get this. This is this is something.
SPEAKER_07Yep. Um, so yeah, uh so I forgot why we went down that route, but essentially it made sense to you at the time, but I don't I don't know. Yeah, it's the the the the incubator type deal of it all. Uh there has been a lot of uh very talented people not only to come out of channel 101 and that universe, uh, and it does tie into comedy sports, which then ties into Dropout, which then is another incubator where you know two uh head writers from Saturday Night Live came from this universe, um, and both ended up winning Emmys because of Saturday Night Live. Um, I think the second person to do head writing at Saturday Night Live uh created uh uh the Tom Hanks character of uh David's pumpkins.
SPEAKER_02David S. Pumpkins Streeter Slidell is who you're thinking of.
SPEAKER_07Yes, and oh yeah, Streeter. Uh so you know the the impact of the dropout TV universe is is just as big as the channel 101, and it's growing every single day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um I think even back in college humor, like that that incubator mentality was always there because they brought in uh Donald Glover's uh troupe as well for a while. They were doing the Derek comedy bits on college humor.
SPEAKER_03That's right. I remember those actually.
SPEAKER_04This really is like in the Marvel movies when they like mention Steven Strange. Like it's it's it's just like, oh, I know that guy, I know that guy from other stuff later on.
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, ca uh because Daniel Daniel Glover ended up doing uh community and pulling all you know, everyone from that group ended up being on community at one point or another. Uh and then moving on to other things. And you know, people that Sam Reich has a habit of working with people that he likes. You know, if you work with him and he likes you, you're gonna work with him again and again and again, and again, and again, and again, and again. So, you know, uh and I I applaud that. It it is it does not only it shows a loyalty not just to people, but people that have served you uh in a good way, and and you make that strong bond, and you go out of your way to keep that bond, and that is something to applaud, which then goes into yeah, that's one of the ethical sides of dropout is that it does stay loyal to people that have spent time helping build it into what it is.
SPEAKER_03Uh you know what's interesting to me is that like it didn't just like become dropout, there was like a series of events that kind of made the transition of like uh what college humor was sort of much more special and sort of um so sort of like for the the performers and and the creators in that transition because I I I believe college humor was being dissolved and sold, and Sam was a creative director at the time, if I'm not mistaken. Like he had actually bid them for majority stake on it with so long as they stayed as like a minority stakeholder, and I think that actually sold it transferred all control over to Sam, which kind of led into some of the reasons why it is. I mean, in fact, I think your prompt should almost be like, How is Dropout TV one of the most ethical uh production company studios in the LA market, even with the advent of the internet across the world too? So, you know, that transition from like corporate sort of like stooge commercial bit to like Sam taking the performers and like the the cast and the crew and sort of prioritizing them, making them have uh some sort of sustainability within the market that they're in, sort of allowed for this sort of creative energy to sort of flourish within that zone space in a market where like you look at some of the stuff that you're seeing online, it's very homogenized, not even online, but like through the streaming platforms, you know, and in the front of like what's possibly gonna happen sometime in September-ish, based on what I've heard through the grapevine. This merger between Paramount and Warner is only gonna homogenize the content even further. You know, much like United Artists when it was originally founded by like Chaplin and Mary Pickford and a few others, you know, this is sort of like the um the seawall against a flood of like monopolies taking over what you're watching. Your DC content's gonna eventually be in the interest of you know, not to sort of divert this conversation into politics, but like your DC Content, your Superman, your HBO Max, your whatever you watch from Warner Brothers is not gonna be sort of in line with whatever CBS wants, and CBS is gonna be in line with whatever you know the the larger party at hand wants, which uh I'm not in favor of, you know. ABC is one of the last uh standing major production companies that still follows its old corporate sort of like uh sort of um zeitgeist, and so does Universal. Uh CBS is uh currently owned um by the same people, and they're trying to sort of monopolize the market. LA in and of itself is suffering, and they kind of stand as a beacon of hope for the uh for the industry and maybe possibly a new light of production or creation within that market. I hope that was a that was a rant. Sorry, no, that's that's what the show is.
SPEAKER_07Uh we did uh we were doing research for something, and we watched uh might have been U. Oh, yeah, when we we did an episode on USA network, and uh we watched a video on YouTube about how uh all of the the companies merged, split, merged, split, merge, split, came together. And kind of uh going in line with uh United Artists was a bunch of artists that were tired of dealing with the producers, and then they split and they created their own production company only to become what they hated, much like image comics in the early early 90s. They were like, all the artists were like, Hey, this is uh we don't like what you're doing only to turn around and do the you know, they get into the the plan of I I think last week Christian and I talked about this as like, Oh, yeah, if you break down, it's like we'll restart society here, and then all of a sudden you're turning around and you're like, Well, I'll trade you food for this and this and this. But image comics, uh, you know, um McFarland was like, Oh, if you draw for spawn, I get to keep control of what you draw. And if you do this, you know, whoever was in charge of their books were like, Oh, we get to control this, and then all of a sudden the walking dead comes in and the the guy is completely in control of everything, and it's like, okay, now image comics is just another studio, just like DC and Marvel, even though they were rebelling against that.
SPEAKER_03So it's like uh the the pitfall, yeah. I'm sorry, just to kind of add on with what you said about United Artists, like their pitfall essentially was Heaven's Gate, I think, in the 80s, yeah. Where they like they just let the director do whatever he wanted, and that studio, which at that time was sort of like very artist forward, was taken advantage of by a single individual, which would then you know proliferate the merger of MGM with United Artists, which then kind of leads into the sort of zeitgeist of like what's happening, you know. I ironically enough, Amazon also owns MGM now. So, you know, uh do that with what you will. Uh, but you know, the the movie industry is changing. Um, there is a big force behind uh the big movie studios sort of uh moving in a in a really strange and new direction, uh, both with like subscriptions and what those subscriptions content will be and and how that content is generated. Um because yeah, you know, we got we don't even talk about, we haven't even spoken about what AI is and in relation to what dropout is in regards to its own creation, you know what I mean? So, you know, even even in the industry today, with even the sort of union rules in place since the last strike, you still get a lot of content out in sort of like streaming platforms that have been generated by some sort of AI platform and sort of is a copy of a copy of something else. And you know, I think the last movie that kind of like really struck me as sort of like individual within its market was uh Ryan Kugler's film Sinners too, you know.
SPEAKER_02Sinners so good.
SPEAKER_03So good, so good. But like the really interesting outside of the story being interesting in and of itself was his contract deal with Warner Brothers that he got. What makes that even interesting now, so is like the interested party at Warner Brothers having to uphold that contract moving forward if that merger were to occur. But his his contract in and of itself surprised Hollywood so much because he got the right, he has he's getting the rights back to Sinners at some point. He had the rights to the final edit, he had the rights to like first box office income. And at the time, you know, we were like, Oh my god, this is like incredible! I can't believe he did this, da da da. But these are the deals that people like at United Artists were cutting back in the day, or like the individual artists were cutting back in the day with studios. We just moved from that because the market dictated big box office situations that gave the control over to these studios. That's an opinion, but that's what I think. Money always kind of pulls the direction of where content is going, unfortunately, or fortunately, you know. I I I have a very strange relationship with capital, and I think it's just it's disgraceful.
SPEAKER_07Just to throw a quote of ice cube out there, big bank takes little bank, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04And I mean, who who has a good relationship with capital?
SPEAKER_03Right, yeah, well, yeah, you know, yeah, right. I mean, unless you're unless unless you're like swimming in it, you're probably kind of like, and even if you're swimming in it, you're probably kind of biting your nails every day of the week, is my opinion. But because I don't have that kind of cache.
SPEAKER_04I feel like of all things, Bioshock probably put it this where it's like, yeah, the great chain pulls us all. Yeah, that's like boy, do I feel pulled.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You know what's incredibly surprising to me, like with regards to like dropouts, so sort of like to bring it back to a certain degree, like it's interesting to me to see like movies coming out of these studios that sort of like hint at the concept of communities and like building together and being, but like the back end interest. Of that is just being like, Yeah, this is all they just want to eat. And then they get mad when like the people watching these films sort of become inspired by these ideas. What are you doing then? Like, well, no, we didn't mean it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Even if it's like uh the art the vision of one, like uh well, I mean, movies are a huge collaborative effort, even small ones, uh, which I don't think people realize when they when they criticize them or critique them, especially the layman. But like uh the idea that, like, oh, I'm I'm trying to, as like a person in charge of this story, trying to kind of get people to realize what's happening. And then I guess the Hollywood people are like, sounds good, it'll sell. Yeah, people love to feel inspired. Then they get inspired, like, not like that, not like that. You're doing it wrong.
SPEAKER_03Again, speaks to kind of like what I think about dropout and how I think it's ethical. They are both sort of like they lean into other beliefs and it and in the comedic way, sort of put out a message that's kind of like, yeah, this is what we stand for, and then they have like the financials to back a lot of what they say, even in jest, right? Which is like incredibly sort of like uh for me, it's a crazy indicator for like it it being some of one of the most ethical businesses out there. Variety's done uh uh an article on on dropout and how its pay structure is like, and it's like you you can't get that anywhere else, like no, not even in another industry. No, as a lowly PA on a set, you're gonna get your $200 rate for a 15-hour day, maybe 18 because you got to drive back home and to the site earlier than most people, and you're gonna be happy with it. But we're talking about like in their contracts based on profit sharing um models, like they're dishing out uh beyond their like initial day rate. They're they're putting out rates as like I think their first year they were stated as being like 25% of their annual income from dropout was included as a bonus check for some of the first year profit sharing of of the of the company, and they've maintained that model, and these people keep coming back, and now you've got a solid crew that is like now a family to your viewership, and you've created this sort of ethos that's not just about like so giving people to getting people to get your money, but like you've want people to go sit there with Brendan Lee Mulligan and Jacob Wazaki, Wizaki, and um Vic Michaelis, and all these guys, all these guys that come from like like ground, grassroots, improv schools like UCB and some of the other major uh improv uh schools in uh LA, and they're like putting their their content uh super accessible to us, like it's beyond accessible. You can share with your friends. Like, how is it not the most ethical company out there? Somebody pitch a guy, listen, I'll I'll rent for hours if somebody doesn't interject.
SPEAKER_02The people cleaning the building, like yes, the graphic designers, everyone behind the scenes, the cameramen, even the audience members on crowd control get anecdotal evidence, anecdotal evidence.
SPEAKER_03But like my last trip to LA was with the full intent of getting involved with dropout TV to some capacity, it didn't really matter. You know, I was like 10 years into the business at that point, and I was like, I don't, you know, whatever, I don't care. Just for a chance to like show up on set and like put up a table and be like, let me see this magic happen. And um, I went to LA, I spoke with a friend, she's like, Yeah, I've been I've been crewed up on Dropout, they have a solid crew list, they have you know, they're consistent with bringing you back on, they're consistent with bringing in new talent when needed. And if that show does great, you know, I got a bonus check from what I've made on a year from that. And goes, We're not in production right now, otherwise, I'd invite you on set. But I was like, Oh, the timing, the timing. What did you have, Ryan?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I I just wanted to say, uh, Gary, how dare you forget Paul Robellino?
SPEAKER_02Oh, Paul Robin, he's my favorite. I love Paul Robellino.
SPEAKER_07He whenever I oh man, the gall Robellino to forget him.
SPEAKER_01Paul Jabolino.
SPEAKER_03He's such a staple of of the group, even on Game Changer. Whenever I see him, he's just like, there's always like I know what's happening. He's like uh he knows what's happening and he's just playing along for the and everybody knows what's happening, you know. That's kind of like the the language of like the game changer family and stuff like that. You know that you know that you know that you know something else is going to happen, and that's kind of like the zeitgeist that kind of creates the uh the anticipation for the next game, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know I know. Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_07Uh what it comes down to is it is an autistic view of how a company should run. Uh, I grew up like my very first uh experience in managing a business was on the Apple IIE uh in the computer lab where we downloaded a or they gave us a disc with a game uh uh lemonade stand. And it's like you start off with this amount of money, and you buy lemons, you buy water, you get the water, you buy signs, and then you earn money to spend on more lemons, more water, more thing. And they taught us, you know, there's a uh you know, demand, there's a there's a supply, um, and you spend what you have. Uh my I never really ventured into trying to create a business because I couldn't understand how I would finance it, and never really considered oh, you just take out a million-dollar loan, and then whenever it's time to pay that back, you go and you get some other financing, and then you just put more and more it's basically gambling on gambling on gambling and stacking it up, and it becomes a Ponzi scheme, and that's what most of the the media companies are out there doing right now. Is it's most companies are doing that. In fact, that is what happened to college humor is uh they brought in uh what IAC, correct?
SPEAKER_02Is that I believe that's right, IA or IS.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, IAC, I think is what it was.
SPEAKER_07I think so they brought in IAC and they dumped a bunch of money and said, Here, do these things and gambled on that would pay off and bring in uh more money and more advertising right at the time where like the dot-com bubble bursting was literally just a bunch of gamblers losing. Um, like I I were at the time I worked for uh Lucent Technology, and Lucent Technology uh built uh they they hadn't spun off uh their networking side yet. So it was all ATT had spun off Lucent Technology because they had the Lucent was the production side and they built stuff and ATT wanted to they couldn't sell product to their competitors because their competitors were like, No, why would why would I buy from ATT just to put money in your coffers so that you could put us out of business? So ATT spun off Lucent, and Lucent started selling to everyone, and companies would come and say, Hey, we'll we need we need $10 million worth of equipment in order to run this company, and we don't have any money, but we'll give you shares in the company. So on the books, Lucent uh had millions and millions and millions of dollars, and then they got called in for an audit, and they're like, All right, show us where the money is, and they're like, Oh, these stocks and these stocks are worth ten dollars. And the auditors would like, no, that stock's worth 10 cents. So all of these, all of these reports that you're putting out there, downgrade, you know, you're you're falsifying your your numbers and stuff. So even though you on on the NASDAQ right now you're trading at $50, we're gonna downgrade you. And within weeks, they went from uh getting ready to split at $100 all the way down to a dollar a share. And then uh then they were gonna spin off the manufacturing side of things, and it was like, if we can spin off and sell you at twelve dollars a share, that would pay off all the debts that Lucent has accumulated over all these years and start off at every you know, the new company and and uh Lucent would be at zero dollars and then start making profit from there. And because all these reports started coming in, whenever they did the uh initial rollout, the new stocks sold for six dollars. So not only did the new company start millions of dollars in the hole, but it didn't clear any of the debts for for anybody, and they were under traded, and then all of a sudden Lucent is off the map, and the Dutch are buying it, or the the um Norwegians are buying it, and Ericsson uh whoever Ericsson is uh um Sony Ericsson and then Swedes, yeah. Uh so now the Swedes own Bell Labs, which is the creator of the transistor. So all of those patents, and now basically they just took all of the American innovations and sold them off because they didn't have any money to spend, and it was all because someone is gambling, and you know, it crushed us. Um, like for those who are too young to remember, uh, the crypto boys right now are the same cut uh from the same fabric and the same mold as the tech bros of the early 2000s, the dot-com guys, it's the same guy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was gonna say AI's doing it right now, is aren't they?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you didn't even need a guy anymore. You get it's like it's all AI, yeah.
SPEAKER_07But it's leading us, it's gonna nosedive everything and crash everything.
SPEAKER_03I've got the prop the solution to the problem, man. We we just need to print more money, yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, capitalism, baby. Yeah, because if you keep running out of it, clearly the right answer would be to make more, right?
SPEAKER_04I mean, you can just print it. I don't know if people know this, but oh, countries running out of money. Let's get more. Yeah, you have the printer right there.
SPEAKER_03Fun fact or we could regulate the point where mon monopolies can't really exist.
SPEAKER_02Um god, that would be amazing.
SPEAKER_04It really does feel like we're gonna like um it's like we're gonna fail into succeeding, like we're gonna fail, we're gonna fail enough that like it will like we'll go, oh, I guess the money thing. I don't know what to do. I don't know what's next, but we'll have to figure out the next step.
SPEAKER_03Like, confusion does have a saying, you know, it says, uh uh there's uh the success is uh no, I messed it up. There's failure and success, I guess, or something to the effect, but it's supposed to be the reverse of that. My brain just flipped it. There's a joke in there somewhere. You guys gotta flip it.
SPEAKER_07I had a software manager came. Uh I was working in maintenance, and our we were barely keeping things glued together, like it was duct tape and and glue. And the software manager was doing a lot of when he got hired in and he talked to all the software engineers. They were like, Oh, yeah, we're doing a software patch for this, we're doing the patch for this. It's like, we don't need we're wasting all our times creating patches when all they have to do is fix the hardware. And he came to me and he's like, Look, I'm gonna tell my guys to stop helping you. And I was like, I understand that, I get it, because the system has to fully break for the management to realize they need to fund the system to fix it. Like we were uh the maintenance crew was on uh you know a skeleton crew, uh, we were cranking out like massive hours, massive time uh collection of overtime, but they wouldn't hire more guys, and it was like we're we're running, we're gonna crash into a wall pretty soon because no one is paying attention. And as soon as something, as soon as someone woke up, then it's like, oh, oh, I get it now. If we don't take care of this, it's going to be a problem.
SPEAKER_04And yeah, it's like when your dad would say, You better be on fire. There better be someone bleeding for for that's for that screaming to be worth it, like, or like for me to take you to the emergency. Like, this is the level that things need to be at that I will even respond to anymore.
SPEAKER_03Have you guys ever been asked if you wanted to go to the hospital as a threat? You want to go to the hospital?
SPEAKER_04Well, I need to probably go to a hospital, have them check me out, do uh do a uh a diagnostic on the whole system.
SPEAKER_07Oh my um, my mom said that I was uh a bit of a drama queen when I was a child, and like if uh in soccer, uh if you fall down, you kind of roll around and pretend that someone kicked you or tripped you in order to get the the flag. If you're in basketball, you fall down and you make a big thing of it. Uh anytime that I would fall down, I would make a big thing of it. And then my mom was basically like, do not talk to me unless you have to go to the hospital. And so one day my sister and I were racing out of the kitchen, and she shoulder checked me right into the corner of the wall. And I smacked my head, and I covered, I basically grabbed my forehead and was rolling around on the ground. And my mom's like, You had better be bleeding, or you need to get up right now. And I moved my hands and it just gushed everywhere. And she's like, Oh shit. Um, whoops. Uh, another time uh I was playing soccer as the goalie and put my hand in front of the ball right as uh the other kid was kicking it, and the tip of my middle finger hit the middle of my forearm in the back, uh, and it basically snapped the bone and then fused it back together real quick. Uh I was very uh reluctant to to tell my mom that's like evolvering sucked.
SPEAKER_04It just grew back immediately, wrong and bad. But my mom uh really sore.
SPEAKER_07Uh one of the uh one of the uh girls on the team was like, You're super pale. You need to tell the coach to pull you out. And I'm like, I have a shutout so far, I'm not coming out of the game. Screw you. Uh so I made it through the rest of the game, rode home on the best, uh rode home on the bus, uh went cleaned up, went to school the next day, and we were playing softball for uh PE. And ball came to me. I was playing short softball came to me, and I went to throw to first base, and it felt like I could feel my arm separating, and my stomach just flipped inside my stomach, you know, inside my belly. And I was like, I think there's a problem. I think there's a problem.
SPEAKER_04And then all right, now I'm gonna tell somebody.
SPEAKER_07Not 80 and and 88. I was undiagnosed, but had ADHD. So uh as I went cleaned up and went grabbed my book bag, and completely since I walked through a door, I completely forgot anything had happened, reached down to grab my bag and lift it up and felt that separation again. I'm like, uh, went home, and my mom's like, hey, you have baseball practice, gotta get ready. And I was like, I don't feel like going. And those words to my mom were a trigger. She's like, if my son doesn't want to go to baseball practice, something is seriously wrong. So she's you know, started feeling my head, and I'm all clammy and wet, and she's like, What happened? What is wrong with you? And I was like, My arm hurts, and she rushed me to the hospital because she knew uh skipping baseball practice or skipping soccer. Yeah, yeah. I was I was so addicted to uh sports, baseball and soccer that I would never ever miss uh like I could have I had uh thrown my shoulder out when I was a pitcher and I had surgery to reconstruct my shoulder, and I was in a half body cast uh to hold my arm uh in a certain position so it could heal. And I still went to the indoor soccer practice because I would not miss it. Um my mom yelled at my dad for letting me kick the ball around because I had a body cast on and I shouldn't have been kicking a ball, but I was that addicted to playing sports. Um, so she instantly knew something was wrong. So yeah, it was uh yeah, I uh I forgot where where we started from.
SPEAKER_04I wish I was addicted to sports when I was a kid. That would change so many, except for all the bone explosions.
SPEAKER_07That's oh yeah, uh so yeah, uh it has to be there are times where something has to be so incredibly wrong before people try to fix it. And right now, we're on your back. Uh but right now people are you know, they they turn on the TV and they can watch whatever show they want, and you know, I people watched Friends, uh people people watch Suits, which was made in 2015 or whatever, and it was in 2023, it was like the top show because it was available and it was addictive.
SPEAKER_02And we just finished watching it, it was actually I would not watch it again, but I would watch a Lewis Litt spinoff. Um one of the things that annoys me about the oh, so go go ahead.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I was just gonna say that like you know, to the thing of like now, it's like it my grandparents, they don't really know how to do the thing where you just pick what you want to watch, yeah. And like what what is on like uh your major networks in terms of like what replaced what what you would have been watching, friends now what's on. I mean, it's it's so insane to see like I don't know, like there's like a Tim Allen sitcom, three cam sitcom that's just like there's no way these jokes are new. There's no way possible any of this material is like originally written by a new person. To to if anything, it feels like that's your AI stuff there, and they're just like, yep, it's on, uh you know.
SPEAKER_02A lot of a lot of the things that like uh streamers and networks are looking for from writers and showrunners are shows that people can watch in the background, they're not interested in actual quality shows anymore, they're interested in viewership. Yep, mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03I I was going to it's called second screen viewership.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay. Wow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they interest it's already it's it's it's it you that's one of the reasons why I'm having a hard time watching movies nowadays, to be honest with you. I I think um I don't remember which one it was that it happened, but they literally announced everything as it was happening already. So, like you, if you were watching the film, you could surmise a series of events up to a couple scenes ahead, right? But now they're like, no, we are going to do this, and like yeah, okay. Was that disclosure day? I think it was disclosure day.
SPEAKER_02I think I've heard so many bad things about that.
SPEAKER_07Oh my god, and it's I'm reaching into my pocket to get my keys, yeah. Getting my keys and putting it in the door to unlock the door. Now I'm getting in the car right now, and I'm that's almost literally what they're doing.
SPEAKER_03That's almost literally what they're doing, and it's it's it's disappointing because it it it they do it fully expecting you to be washing the dishes or Netflix and chilling, or like you left it on and want to go vote then make it like more dialogue and interesting.
SPEAKER_04That was a bad example, what I just said for sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think what happens is when they make a good show, people build expectation of it. When there's no expectation for it, they don't get bad reviews, or they don't get they don't get whiskey watching reviews. Look at Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones rode a high for a long time, and then that last season took a fucking dive because they just like took off.
SPEAKER_04They like they got senioritis on that one.
SPEAKER_02I don't think the last season of Game of Thrones was any worse than the seasons preceding it. Like we binged it all at once, and I was kind of building myself up for this big last season letdown, but I'm like it fit with everything else that was part of the show. Like, shut the fuck up, things.
SPEAKER_04I think I think two things happened within with the Starbucks cut up thing. It's really weird. And like, whatever. Like that's like dying jeans in the in the Star Wars thing or whatever.
SPEAKER_03Like you know, I'll tell you right now that there have been met we uh on set, you'll only find the smaller bottle waters a bottle because they leave them on set all the time. Set dressers, PAs will put something that'll pick up a box, forget about it, and walk away. And after they've done last looks, they're like, All right, we're ready to roll. And you're like, oh shit, there's a fucking Starbucks cup in the middle of the scene in restaurants.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it's charming, but like it was very memed, and like if people caught on to it, and I think it's be like you said, Ryan, the the expectation is so high. This this show like got people into this world, and then they see a Starbucks cup and they're like, Oh, they don't care anymore. Even if it's a small mistake, if you had seen it in I don't know, the 90s, you'd be like, Oh, you know the Starbucks cup? Did you see that? Like, because it would have been also harder to see because you're watching on a CRT.
SPEAKER_02But like well, and you can't repeat it. Like in the 90s, you just watched it once and it's gone and it's not a good thing. You can't rewind it.
SPEAKER_04That's true. Yeah, that that yeah. Uh, but then also that last um fuck that last episode, I think. The the what I like to call Brightness Gate, uh, where they filmed it so dark that people thought their TVs didn't work.
SPEAKER_02I need the dark shows.
SPEAKER_04It pushed it pushed people. This is this is not a joke. People bought new televisions because they were that convinced they were like, they it can't be this bad.
SPEAKER_03No, and I'm like, I didn't even know that.
SPEAKER_04It was just like uh well, I and I don't know. I think it was like partially intentional, partially maybe they didn't know how it would play on a TV, which is odd, but I think that especially the dark thing, and a lot of people felt like the ending was a little rushed and they didn't know what they were doing because they were off book at that point, they were ahead of George R. R. Martin's books. Uh so it's like, yeah, they had to make some stuff up, sure. But I think probably if I were to watch it, yeah, I would see the startup now. I would see the the dark episode now, which they may have even remastered at this point for all I fucking know. Uh and enjoy it just fine. But as that was like an event show. So like I think people were just like, oh no, I can see the part where the ride, I can see the part of the ride where the the tram pulls back in to get off, and the next families get on and go on the dinosaur ride or whatever, you know. I've I'm where I know that it's about to be over just because this is the final season, there's a Starbucks cup. All right, okay. Time time to find a new thing.
SPEAKER_03But well, I mean, it got as popular as to get with the the House of Dragons prequels now, too. So I mean it it still left its mark, and I think I think the show's still very popular.
SPEAKER_04I I don't I mean that show has a bunch of seas. I think well, how many seasons does House of the Dragon have now?
SPEAKER_03Like three three or something like that.
SPEAKER_04That's pretty impressive for such for like a spin-off prequel show with very little like connective tissue.
SPEAKER_00What two seasons are they in the third?
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay. But still, that's that's a lot to produce. They could have just like said, uh, fuck off, and we're not doing any more Game of Thrones.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I mean, people like it, people like Matt Smith and that.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07I yeah, but it's also like uh the fan expectations is try the whole concept of it has to get bigger and more engulfing every single time because even Breaking Bad suffered from fan expectation of oh, here's uh uh Geo Gar Gus Frank, Giancarlo, John Carlo Esposito, Esposito, yeah, yes, who was on Dropout uh at one point. Uh he is the baddest bad guy ever, like uh Tulo or the the first bad guy, the crazy uh bald guy.
SPEAKER_02Tuco.
SPEAKER_07Uh huh. Tuco.
SPEAKER_02Tuco?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, uh, you know, he's just this insane off the rails thing, and then you get this intelligent mastermind that has his entire network put together, and then the final bad guy, the final boss in it is white supremacy. And it's like everyone was like, Oh, what do you mean? Just some rednecks and stuff. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You have to realign your thoughts. That really is the final boss bad guy. That look at today, look at where we're at today. The final boss bad guy is white supremacy, it's always been white supremacist in Nazi Germany.
SPEAKER_00In uh the now you sound like Brennan. The final bad guy is always capitalism.
SPEAKER_06Well, honestly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07I I I will say this. This is a complete tangent. I will say this. Capitalism has infested and infected so many people that now everyone does believe it is the final bad boss guy because it is it is tremendously bad. However, if you if you ignore that there are more than one boogeyman out there, then the boogeyman is gonna get you. And there are people that are saying that uh words were shortened and and uh I I was reading um uh what was it on 4th of July? Um uh crap. There was a word where the the British spell it with an extra letter, uh, an extra L in it, and uh Miriam Webster dictionary. I don't know why I follow them, but I do uh was like uh oh we we uh the Americans have one less L because we delivered the L to the British back in 19 in 1776.
SPEAKER_04Fucking go USA.
SPEAKER_07All the comments after that are oh, we shortened that word because telegrams uh people were because capitalism people are trying to save money and stuff. And it's like first of all, they didn't charge by the letter, they charged by the word. So picking one letter out of the word isn't saving anyone any kind of money. They started creating really weird uh coded words.
SPEAKER_02Well, wouldn't it be saving the telegram companies ink?
SPEAKER_04This might be a two olives, one olive situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This may very well be one of those.
SPEAKER_07But it but that wasn't the push for that. They weren't saying the people commenting weren't saying that it was trying to save the telegram companies' money, it was trying to save the customers and the businesses that were using the telegrams money, even though it had nothing to do with that. It was just there it the the word changed 10 years before telegrams came out because somewhat you know they wanted to Americanize and make that separation between the Americans and the British because it was like our own identity kind of thing. It was a whole thing, and it was like you can't blame capitalism for everything.
SPEAKER_04We're gonna use most of the language, but some of these words don't need this other fucking L. I'm tired of looking at it.
SPEAKER_07It's an endeavor, not an endeavour.
SPEAKER_04I'm sorry, oh you pick one, pick one.
SPEAKER_02Let me do that. Did you imagine if we kept the U in color?
SPEAKER_03I mean, I kind of fancy it a little bit.
SPEAKER_04I always in my head, in all every single time I see it, I go, calor.
SPEAKER_03I do too, man. I do too, bro.
SPEAKER_07And I got my new cell phone. I accidentally hit British, and now everything, all my autocorrect tries to make it into British English.
SPEAKER_02I love that, honestly.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna go make that change.
SPEAKER_04I think they're right about a lot of things, but spelling, I think we got right. In fact, I I'll even I'll even listen. I like through T H R U. Really just cut to the bone on the on some of these.
SPEAKER_02How do you feel? How do you feel about the G-H-O-T-I spelling of fish?
SPEAKER_03Wait, what's the thing?
SPEAKER_02G-H-O-T-I spelling of fish.
SPEAKER_03I think that's Welsh.
SPEAKER_02The enough, the F sound from enough gives you the F for fish. Oh, uh, and there's other shit too, but I don't know what to get into. Fiction, uh G I fiction gets you the S H of fish. So G-H-O-T-I spelling of fish.
SPEAKER_04That's someone got kind of buckwild over there with the G's and the H's at some point. I think that we I think there's a guy who's like, All right, sit down and you really hammer out this language. I'm gonna go get lunch.
SPEAKER_02And that's the eyes, the eyes and the e's get me. I fucking hate eyes and e's next to each other. Get out of here.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's like a rhyme, and most of the rhyme is telling you like what where eyes and e's don't go before scenes.
SPEAKER_07I I think a great show would be uh calling it Brain Break. Uh, basically, walk around Boston and have people read the signs to you because they do not match up.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I would love Boston would be improved at least like 25% if you made every sign in the city phonetical, like phonetic to the accent.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_06There'd be a lot more easy to communicate McDonald's.
SPEAKER_07There is a stop. If you if you take, I think it's the red line uh going into Boston, and there's a stop, and it is spelled W H O R C H E S T E R.
SPEAKER_02Whooster.
SPEAKER_07It's pronounced Wooster. Wooster. Wooster.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, about a hundred years ago somebody had problems saying it, so now I say it like that toe.
SPEAKER_07It's like what it is spelled like Worcester sauce, but it is pronounced Wooster. Worcester.
SPEAKER_04There's like seven syllables. That's like I live like Worcestershire.
SPEAKER_02I hate that word.
SPEAKER_04It's a litmus test, I think. How much bullshit you're on the handle?
SPEAKER_07That's just like one example. Like all of all of the stops on the like I had to very be very, very uh trying to ride the the train in Boston. I had to pay very, very close attention to everything because you couldn't. It's like, oh here they they say in my stop, I gotta get off here. Um because you I just they weren't speaking English and they weren't speaking uh any other kind of language, they were just speaking Boston.
SPEAKER_04And uh it's a fascinating microcosm.
SPEAKER_07Uh but I yeah, going back to why you know partly uh how uh dropout TV can sustain what they're doing is because an autistic kid is is in charge, and you know, they're like, I can only spend the money that I have, and the money we earn is the money we spend, and they're not gambling on the big things because then you just uh going back to you know uh IAC gambled on all this stuff, and then they didn't, you know, they're like, hey, he has $10 million. Uh we expect to see three, we expect to see a hundred million dollars by the uh at the other end, and trying to chase that dragon, uh you kind of lose sight of what you're trying to do, and you're trying to, you know, basically just the whole don't feed the trolls on the internet has been the the resounding shout from long ago, but with social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff. Fucking Perez Hilton is like if you say crappy things, you're gonna get 20 people that are angry at you, and then you're gonna get 20 people that are angry at those 20 people, and then you're gonna get more people angry at those, so then you have this cascading effect of everyone just piling on arguing. Outrage is much more viral, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Instead of trying to do it, to be angry than to be nice.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I mean, create a consensus and have not have everyone in lockstep, but have a polite conversation of hey, you know, some of the stuff I say in this show might be a little off, but it's just introducing you to the concept. Go do your research, find out the answers, come back to me, talk to me, but don't shout and say I'm wrong, uh, because I'll just ignore you because I I had a really good uh uh I had a good I had a really good run of you know basically just tearing into trolls and having very colorful language that was very artistic and and got a good lot of good response from people, but then the troll is like nuh-uh, and it's like you are I kind of like after a live league stage to just throw a nu-uh like after really going blow blow for blow with somebody, just throw out a yeah, well you're stupid. Like you know Rocky, a UA uh UA movie, getting the shit kicked out of my Apollo Creed, and Apollo Creed's like I won, and Rocky just going, uh-uh. I was like, no, you lost, dude. It was a you got you got knocked the fuck out, man. So so I stopped I stopped participating and arguing with trolls a little a while ago because it just I didn't I got an adrenaline rush from it that just felt the wrong side of the adrenaline, like the bad kind of adrenaline rush. And I'm like, I don't, I don't want to do I don't want to get worked up over someone that does not care and they're just here to argue. So I'm not gonna give them my attention, and I'm not gonna give them my money, and I'm not gonna give them my time.
SPEAKER_00So piss off. I'm moving on. That's why you put that money and time and attention into things that that are positive, like anything else.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, oh, and now it's almost like uh the the likelihood increases every day that the the entity that you're arguing with or like or like owning epically, you know, uh is literally uh bot, like just literally like an a an AI agent of some sort.
SPEAKER_07Oh yeah, uh yeah, that is that's another uh if you go into it knowing that great, then you know have a night, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Enjoy the punching bag.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. If it's if that's your dojo, then then get in there and and sweat, homie. But like it just know that like you might good or bad, good or bad, you're not changing minds anymore. There was a there is a really small window where it was like we had our friends on Facebook and random people on Facebook, if you were that kind of social butterfly, social media butterfly. And that window has closed. You there's no you gotta get at people a different way, I think. There's just too much noise. Yeah, uh, even if you did want, even if even if you're like, I'm gonna fight the good fight, you know. It's the good fight has moved battlegrounds, I feel.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, if you're if you're on a factory floor and they put up a warning sign and it's bright yellow and and it's got very clear, readable letters and stuff, you're like, Oh, I shouldn't touch this, and then they put up another sign and another sign and another sign, and it's just like the whole wall is nothing but signs. You're no one's looking at any of those signs anymore. Just ignore those. Yeah, and we're at that.
SPEAKER_02They just become noise.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, the wall is nothing but posters and warning signs. So it's you know what it is.
SPEAKER_04It's that it's that wall of posters at every job that like shows you your rights as a worker. The employment cork you've never actively read in your entire life.
SPEAKER_02With the broken arm picture and the cast is always on it.
SPEAKER_04The one picture taken the picture of an x-ray taken in 1956 that we're still.
SPEAKER_03You guys leave Samantha alone.
SPEAKER_04That's that is, by the way. It's funny you mentioned that. I I like the reboots, the everything, right? Everything being recycled. Uh, we're I feel like we're getting to the end of art, and I feel like that's okay. I feel like that's fine. We've we are a lot of the ideas that you can't do. I'm joking. I'm joking. But I am saying that like it there's almost this like, hey, look, we're still using the broken bone picture. I didn't need fucking AI to come out with a new broken bone picture to explain to me the concept of the broken bone. Yeah, that one was good enough. We've been using it literally my entire working life since I was 18, eight, like 19 years ago, or whatever the hell age I am. Uh and like, yeah, do if you're gonna do something, do something new, I guess. Dope uh and and I think dropout is like finding this. They managed college humor was great, and I think it like served its niche for when it was like internet humor for like young people. It wasn't like jokes that you you printed out, it was it was kind of hip, it was with it, it had younger folks on it writing and and performing, um, a lot of whom made the jump to to drop out, uh like it which warms my heart a little bit because it was the it's kind of the people that I thought were like fun to be around, so it was nice that they all those guys stayed together. Um but like pushing the envelope in like we've got this kind of thing coming from uh certain people where like woke is woke is go woke go broke. Uh you know, hey, that's what happens when you when you put identity politics first or whatever. And I'm not saying dropout does that, but I am saying they're pushing, they're clearly pushing for like representation or they're letting it happen.
SPEAKER_02They're letting it drop out is human first, and that's uh what I really love about it. The the first time we watched through Game Changer, one of the things that really struck me was how they just let Allie transition, they didn't make it a thing, they weren't like, oh yeah, exactly from transitioning. That's just who they were from, and you we watched them grow and change, and we've continued to watch Allie grow and change. Um like uh this probably the most non-ethical show that they have on dropout is uh like a I think it's six episodes, and it's called Total Forgiveness, and it's Allie and Grant, yeah, and um they're competing to pay off their student loans, and it's the darkest show on on dropout. It's such a hard watch, honestly. Like, I almost didn't finish it because Allie and Grant get so mean to each other, but in the beginning, um, the idea for this season, this show was actually Zach's idea, but they decided that it wasn't ethical for Zach to give them tasks because Zach is like a rich kid, and it would have been like, oh, this rich kid given giving money to poor kids, and that's not ethical. And they didn't want Sam didn't want to do it either because same thing, he felt like it wasn't an ethical thing to do. So the way that they got around that was having Zach, uh, sorry, um Allie and Grant give each other tasks, and they it just got so dark and so mean. And I think in the end they ended up each spending uh making like $25,000 to pay off their student loans, and it ended up that it's worth watching all the way through. It ended great, but it it got dark, and uh they managed to do it, I think, with their ethics intact, and that's a fucking feat.
SPEAKER_04I think that's uh you the trust you you you kind of I think that like you that because yeah, that is it's funny when you pitch it, and then you say it gets dark, and then but then they pull through it, they they make it kind of like uh worth it in the end to to even be this thing that you watched. Uh and I feel like yeah, that hey, we got you. Like that's that's dropout kind of going like we're not gonna we're not gonna make some kind of fucking stunt uh uh like porn, weird trauma porn type thing.
SPEAKER_07That's not what morning DJ's yeah, the uh the morning DJ abusing the intern kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Or yeah, just like this isn't really about us trying to like we're saying something, but we're not we we got we're gonna take care of these folks. Like, we're gonna take care of these.
SPEAKER_07And I think um from that, like the the ick feeling that that Sam got from that, and some a lot of the viewers expressed they they learned from that. So whenever they did the Who Wants to Be Jacob Waiazaki episode of Game Changer, oh it was he's going to win this. He is going there. The end of the show, he is going to get this. And before we get too far down the road, like five minutes in, he he is going to know that he's going to win. And it's not compete, it's not I I think Sam said it in the in in the behind the scenes where he doesn't want to create that thing where they get uber competitive because that's not what it's about.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_07I mean, um, I think I think one of the best things that uh my eldest son did was go through improv at Sack Comedy Lab where uh he learned that every scene improv teaches you that every scene is a yes and and it's a supportive, try to build up. Uh if someone has an idea, instead of fighting against that idea, you find a way whether you're against it or not, to try to find a support the person and either supportively steer him away from that idea or support them in constructing that. That idea or pulling more out of them to get their point across, but not argue, not fight, and because that room that ends the scene pretty fucking quick if you're arguing. So in that, I think every game of game changer, like Brendan has has put it out bluntly, he's like, I know who I know my role, and my role in this game is to lose. And it's uh, you know, I play the foil, and Vic plays the winner. Like, you know, it it's uh Sam, uh uh Brennan is to uh Sam what Sam is to Vic. Vic always comes out as the winner, where Brennan always comes out as the defeated because that's the role they play, and it comes out as a more satisfying result because of knowing that Brennan is going to lose the game, he can go off the rails in his own style. Knowing Vic is going to win the game lets her go off the rails in or lets them go off the rails in their style.
SPEAKER_04And by the way, Vic Michaelis, when they go, when they go off the rails, you wonder. Actually, I don't know where the rails were. And then they go off those rails, and now no idea where anybody is. She they're like an alien. They're like an alien on the earth, and I love every minute of it. I have I keep on saying she, I'm sorry. They will reinterpret rules in ways that are like Vic is a she they, so that's fine. Oh, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02Um, Vic. Uh, I have five favorite dropout people, and Vic is three of them. Uh there's always like a who are your top three uh Vic, uh Zach Oyama, and I fucking love Paul Robliano. I'm fucking.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do like being a good Zach. I do love me. Obviously, Brennan is uh top tier. I feel like he shouldn't even he should be like above the top three. You know what I'm gonna get? It's almost like Pikachu.
SPEAKER_04You're like, all right, name other Pokemon, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And also shout out Katie Maravich. Oh my god, Katie.
SPEAKER_03Oh Katie's hilarious. Heard her dimension 20 on a bus.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, just remembering on a bus is enough. It's enough for me to go. What an what an insane ride. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02And that's another thing I think that makes that puts drop out in like the ethical categories. They'll try fucking anything, they'll give anything a shot.
SPEAKER_00And I think that whole that whole episode of Game Changer where they were on a bus came from, like I purposefully went back a month later to watch them fill in those those uh those blanks.
SPEAKER_04They all have different um strengths. Uh like and I think like Game Changer is great for this, but also uh if you've ever seen uh one of it's hard to say one of my favorites, they're all one of my favorites once I watch them, but like uh breaking news might be might be the highest art ever achieved by the human race. Uh because you see the people that like some people are great at not breaking. There's that one girl who's like cannot handle being in on this show at all. And I would normally not like that, I think, because I'm like, you're not playing the game, right? You're breaking immediately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's the one that does that. It's like it's this beautiful, this is that Power Ranger in this in the Megazord here. Everybody's got their own specific way of doing breaking news, especially, because it's I and I think maybe what highlights that is that the they all have to be news anchors, which is a very specific goal. So how each of them interprets that and brings what they have to the table, all of that, like I think that that's one of the best displays of like the variety that you're getting with the the people that are part of this network.
SPEAKER_03Can we talk about Emily Axford? By the way, she is also one of my favorite Dimension 20 gals. One of the OG uh college humor. Huh? Yeah, one of the uh original college humor uh folks. I love the way that she and her well, whenever she, Zach, and Brendan are doing their thing on Dimension 20. Um, you know, oh, and Ali obviously.
SPEAKER_02Oh, oh yeah, there's so many people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they just start falling into place, you know, like oh, oh yeah. And then when they start getting, you know, you start forming your own like fantasy football league of like your uh what do you call it? Your uh dropout, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So but it is it what's funny is that you you start like remembering people, you know, you have your obviously maybe your first blush, that's kind of what your favorites are, but then you start going like oh, and Recca.
SPEAKER_06Oh, and yeah, oh yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04And you're and you're and then uh honestly, if you just want to know which ones our favorites are, just get to the end of anything that they're in and just read the cast list, like that's Lou Wilson.
SPEAKER_03That's who we love.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. So uh I do a thing where I write Sam Reich a letter like once every month with just like random thoughts about what's going on on Dropout and stuff, and sometimes I pitch him ideas, and I haven't pitched him this one yet because me and my friend Aubrey are like seriously working on it. We want Dropout to have a late night uh talk show, like in the vein of like David Lennerman or something like that. And we have a name for it, we would call it Drop In Later, and the host would be Lou Wilson, and like I really want this to happen.
SPEAKER_03Like, I that's why I have ironically also the voice of Jimmy Kimmel's, yes, yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_07That's why I was gonna say Jimmy Kimmel could be the the announcer for him.
SPEAKER_04That's why Jimmy Kimmel, that's that's yeah, Brad, and the owner of a Joker car.
SPEAKER_03I mean, you'd get Disney involved to some degree in that way, and I mean it'd be interesting. I don't know that you'd be able to, I don't know. That'd be interesting to see if Disney would want to work with uh with ABC would want to work with uh dropout TV. I couldn't see why not, other than like sort of like the no holds bar comedy that comes out of the dropout corridor, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, isn't ABC the same network that has the rookie which had the dropout crossover this year?
SPEAKER_00Did they?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they did.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think ABC would vibe with with cum not being a curse word.
SPEAKER_04I don't think that might be actually their one weakness on dropout.
SPEAKER_03So dropout appeared on on the rookie, yeah. Yeah, Philly and pop show, is that correct?
SPEAKER_02Yes, okay. Um so I haven't watched it yet, but so many people I I do I I do a thing where if there's something that I love, I try to get as many people to watch it, and that's so I've had people over to watch dropout with me. Um and they all text, they all watch like normal network television, whereas I really don't. Um so they they texted me, they're like, Drop out Brennan Lee Mulligan is on the rookie, and apparently there's like a murder on the game changer set, and that's how they worked him in. I I gotta watch it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_07I I'm interested. Um, Brennan was also on Ted.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that's right.
SPEAKER_07They knew Ted. Yeah, play the dungeon master.
SPEAKER_02Let me just say to anybody listening, if you have not watched Ted because you think it's gonna be dumb, watch it. It's fucking incredible. Alana Yubok, it it's her best role ever, and she's had a lot of things.
SPEAKER_04That's like I don't know, of all the ideas. So I remember like they did the movie, and then the second movie is all right. Well, and that was Ted, and then like I started seeing clips that was still Ted that clearly wasn't those two movies. I'm like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_02The show is like um Seth Squirland's character in high school, and it's just so fucking good. And like it has another Jackie connection, which is Max from Parenthood, which is how I found out I was autistic. So I have a heart feeling for Max, the main the guy who plays the Seth McFarlane character, and he's great, it's just great. Alana Ubach is great, the guy who plays the dad is great. Uh, it's just a good fucking show.
SPEAKER_05It's good.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Seth McFarlane is uh is another person that is very loyal. Uh, because the dad in Ted is actually the voice of Steve from American Dad. Oh, I didn't know he's also on the Orville. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh god, the Orval's so good. And also Seth McFarlane's production company is the one doing the Dungeon Crawler Carl television show.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Yes. I'm getting ready to start that book now. So are you gonna start it? Jack, yes.
SPEAKER_01I started it two days ago. Okay, I'm gonna start this book.
SPEAKER_04My friend also mentioned it to me. I think it's now the third person who said something about Dungeon Crawler Carl.
SPEAKER_00This is this is my this is my hill that I'm gonna die on, is just like getting everybody to read this book series.
SPEAKER_04Uh you know, I think it's really nice when like it people that I seem like like I don't know you very well, obviously. We're doing this podcast together. You seem like you're you you'd be like, here, you seem like you might like this. I'm wearing an Avengers shirt right now. You've clocked me, you know. Uh so it's like, but it's like you, uh, a very good friend of mine, Jackie. Like everybody is like, hey, fucking read this Dungeon Brawler Carl thing. And I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_00I haven't done I haven't done this since like high school when we were sharing Kevin Smith movies on VHS.
SPEAKER_06That's true.
SPEAKER_00And like that trading of physical media is it's really I think something that we're desperately missing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we should get back, we need to go back to tape trading and and all that jazz.
SPEAKER_02I will tell you this about Ryan McDonald. If he recommends something, uh it almost always will jive with my brain. He's the reason we watch community the first time. He told me about dropout before I even uh like two years before my friend Aubrey com convinced me to finally watch it. Um, and now Dungeon Crawler Carl. And I think there was something else in there that I can't think of right now, but like uh uh Brother Ryan recommendation is one that I always take with uh very highly.
SPEAKER_04I just have this giant list of that continually grows where people are like, you need to watch this, and I'm like, Yeah, okay. And then uh the second screen viewership uh brain comes in, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I blame I blame our internalized guilt on second screen viewership, you know. I gotta get these dishes done, I gotta do this.
SPEAKER_04But it's so funny because it's like you you're like, oh, now you're gonna get the dishes done. Right. Yeah, it's like it's almost like you give it, like uh, I think this is the like three-month anniversary of me uh coining the phrase, I should finish watching Twin Peaks. Uh and it's it's like once you're like, okay, I have to sit down and I have to watch this because you're supposed to watch Twin Peaks, right? And I haven't done it yet. But I started, so good, good job. How far? How far? Like three episodes. It's not great.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay. You're baby, your baby twin peaks.
SPEAKER_04Oh god is bad, uh to the point, but it's it's literally because I and I think this is most people, but ADHD have it the worst, I think. Where you go, all right. Remember, when you get home, it's twin peaks time, and then you go, No, your office is still on. You have given me a task, I am not gonna follow that at all. Like, and it's like this is leisure, this is art, but it's because I'm going, sit down and watch this thing, and you do have to watch it. You do have to watch it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You have to pay attention.
SPEAKER_07Why does it not be so jealous was you actually have the choice to say no? I walk through the front door, and it's like it just hits the reset button, and I'm like empty brain. Uh I'm like, I was I don't even remember that I was supposed to do something, let alone ignore, let alone have the argument with myself whether I'm gonna do it or not.
SPEAKER_04Oh, the argument isn't active. This all happens behind the scenes. Uh it might as well be it when it presents in a very similar way where I walk through, I flip on YouTube, and it's just like autoplay for whatever until I go to sleep. And I'm like, why are you like this now? We used to be used to love movies and art, and now you're just like video editing.
SPEAKER_00Like I just watched, I just watched um obsession because I kept hearing so many good things about it.
SPEAKER_02Did you like it?
SPEAKER_00Loved it. I don't normally like those types of movies. Loved this.
SPEAKER_02I'm so excited to see.
SPEAKER_04It's funny because that also is like a weird recent trend. Uh, that was done by I can never remember his name, uh, but he is uh the of the guy behind, I think it's called The Worst Idea of All Time, which is a uh sketch show that was primarily like short form on I think like Facebook, YouTube, uh maybe TikTok. Uh, but they are like actually good. They're they like make good skits. Uh and so and uh then Zach Kregger did um weapons and barbarian. Jordan Peel, of course, has established himself as a competent horror director. Uh uh obviously on Key and Peel, the sketch.
SPEAKER_01Josh Rubin.
SPEAKER_04Josh Rubin, yep. All of these, like yeah, we're it's interesting to see this turn. The new thing is comedy guy becomes horror guy.
SPEAKER_02When you think about it, there's a very fine line between comedy and horror because it's both about keeping the tension going until you release it and timing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, timing that mostly I think honestly, that is what it is is comedians and comedy writers, everything is so if you're a beat off, the uh the the joke isn't landing. Um, or it lands harder, like and and knowing how to manipulate that uh that that little span of time is uh is a skill, and it translates, yeah, probably very well to horror, I think.
SPEAKER_07On a long enough timeline, a stand-up comedian is then a will end up winning an Oscar because like take Tom Hanks, for example, started off as in bosom buddies and ends up winning back-to-back Oscars because he ends up, you know, the that timing, yeah, the the vulnerable vulnerability of a comedian, uh, especially stand-up comedians, uh just being you're the out there, you've written it, you've rehearsed it, you've direct you're the writer, director, you're everything, and you're out there alone on the on the stage, and being that vulnerable and going through all of those emotions and earning it, uh puts you in a position to here's the director saying, Hey, I want someone that uh feels like they just lost their mom in a car accident and they're seeing her leg flop down the road. A comedian could may not have experienced that directly, but they can pull enough emotional trauma out to say, Okay, this is a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Okay, here we go. Boom! And nail it and get that Oscar.
SPEAKER_04And also, oh, sorry, if you look at like Jordan P. If you look at some of the Key and Peel stuff, if you look at the camera work and the framing and all that kind of stuff, there actually is a lot of you can see it because a lot, there's a lot of stuff that's like shot horror played for laughs. Because obviously you it's played for laughs because it's a it's a sketch show. But I mean, like that uh the one where like the he's sweating, you know, that became the meme. That's that's a horror shot. That's a that's a cut back to someone like, oh, oh, I'm realizing that the my plan she's gonna find out, you know. Like uh it's it's it's precisely that timing just played in a comedic way.
SPEAKER_03More directly the 90s vampires skit that they do, also, whether it's just like offshot is like 90s vampire, sort of like everything slowly winding down, and then it's just like, yeah, I just killed somebody. What's up?
SPEAKER_06It's like yeah, but I was hungry, you know.
SPEAKER_03And it was all sort of set within that tone of horror, but you know, but then commenting on it, like yeah, break breaking it down.
SPEAKER_04It's so yeah, but it's it's yeah, you look at it and what did you have, Ryan?
SPEAKER_00I just I'm wondering now, listening, is comedy just horror with better with worse lighting?
SPEAKER_03Yes, worse andor better, or worse and or better, yeah. Too good lighting, take on with different lighting, yeah. Yeah, you know, midsomer was done like all I haven't seen it, but from the trailers, you could kind of see it's like bright as fuck 24-7, and that kind of leads into like the horror aesthetic. In that wait, which movie did you say? Midsomar. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's a cultist in Sweden where it's like daytime all the time and people lose their minds.
SPEAKER_01So good.
SPEAKER_03It's not in the dark, it's overly lit.
SPEAKER_04If you hate dark movies, Midsummer, it's they made one for you.
SPEAKER_03Now you can enjoy horror. Just from watching channel, you can kind of see that it's a vastly different horror just in in the sort of visual aesthetics alone. And and they achieved sort of horror dynamics just because of you know can you composition more so than like lighting and stuff like that? Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_07In our time, in our timeline, uh, we were supposed to have an episode about the Dutch. Uh, if are all the uh all the Dutch assholes or or the are the Dutch sons of bitches, uh and the Dutch evil sons of bitches, and we had we had to delay that because of uh we had a terrible storm and we uh here in Michigan didn't have internet, so we'll record that next week or sometime down the road. But Dropout uh started as a comedy troupe. Uh Sam Reich, Josh Rubin, uh Elaine Carroll, who is now Sam Reich's uh wife.
SPEAKER_02Matt Moore's Vic Michaelis's wife.
SPEAKER_07Remember Shuana, it's Vic's wife now. Detroit. I didn't understand what you just said.
SPEAKER_02It's Vic Michaelis's wife now.
SPEAKER_07Elaine Carroll is. Oh, okay. Yes. Uh Matt Moore and Vincent Pion were all uh Sam had started a improv comedy troupe called the Dutch West Internet Company. And he later said that it sounded it it in hindsight, it seems a bit pretentious because uh he chose that because the the Dutch West India Company uh basically reached out and and touched new uh uh avenues of trade and and new markets uh that were far beyond the reach of anyone else.
SPEAKER_04Let's name some of those markets right now.
SPEAKER_07Uh uh and if I did have a pitch for uh Sam Reich, uh I would say uh to call up Mike Carr uh from SAC Comedy Lab back in the day. He uh he came up with a show uh called The Brawl. And uh essentially it was a competition which falls in line with what they're doing on dropout TV. And uh teams would pick a theme and uh and create characters within that theme and then go on stage and do improv comedy games as those characters and stay in character playing those improv games. So uh like uh one of the one of our favorite teams was um uh who's the the Breakfast at Tiffany's or um the drunk ladies or the three Judy's yeah Judy um Garland. Judy Garland. Uh they the team was three Judy's and they were all extremely drunk. One of the one of the players didn't realize that they were pretending to be drunk and got absolutely shit face drunk and went off the rails. Uh but basically if Judy Garland was on stage doing improv as drunk as she was, and how bad that would be times three. Uh another team was called the Orphans, so it was basically two uh two improvers pretending to be two uh young orphans that had been completely abandoned by not only their parents but the entire system and just completely off the rails. Um and just on and on. Uh Dan Francisco was my favorite uh two uh 80s sitcom dads paired up doing improv. So anytime that they did an improv thing, they were doing improv in the character of two sitcom dads. So it was just phenomenal, and and the way it was put together was just amazing and entertaining the entire time, and I think it would fit in perfectly with dropout TV.
SPEAKER_04So and and fun fact of all, those are all the names of the gangs and the warriors as well.
SPEAKER_02So uh I know we're getting close to the end, but there's two more ethical things that I wanted to bring up.
SPEAKER_07Absolutely. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02I wanted to ask everyone: did you pay for the subscription you used the first time you logged into dropout?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03I didn't know right off for it.
SPEAKER_02I didn't either. Um, and one of the things that I love about Dropout is they encourage password sharing, and I think it works out in their favor because I first shared my friend Aubrey's password, and then I think I watched it on her account for like six months, and then I loved it so much I got my own account so I could share it with other people. And then some of the people that I have shared that with have watched it for about six months, and then they've gotten their own account so they can share it with people. So I think the password sharing really, really works in their favor. And um QHO.
SPEAKER_00I um too. I think I had two accounts at one time because I had signed on through one of my Roku TVs, which was one account, and then I had mine that I had set up previously. So I think I was paying for it twice. I don't care.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Like I feel good about giving them money. Right.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, at this point, I would be like, oh well, I guess they're getting two.
SPEAKER_07Oops. Well, they did start the um well, uh, they started the the main tier, and then they uh bumped it up and said, if you want, uh you could pay four dollars extra. I think it's like $6.99, and they're like, if you want, we're not gonna raise the prices for anyone, but if you want, uh and you and you like what you see, you can pay $8.99. And an enormous amount of people sign on for that extra tier with no extra bonuses.
SPEAKER_04That is so rad, actually.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, then they added another tier that said, Hey, uh, if we do a live show, if you're paying $12.99 a month for the service, you'll get you'll get a little bit of a head start in buying getting access to buying the tickets, or you'll get a little bit extra, but it's nothing, it's not like a classist-based uh class-based system where it's like, hey, if you don't if you don't pay $12.99, you're gonna we're gonna throw ads in your face, which now every streaming service is doing. Uh, I know that's one that was with the reason we got rid of Netflix whenever they jumped the prices, and then we dropped Disney because of the um Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel thing. Uh and I I looked, I someone said that Disney was Disney Plus was losing money, so I looked to see. I was like, well, if they're still losing money, I'll go ahead and sign up for another account so I can watch the Marvel movies, but they're now profitable, so I'm not gonna sign up and be a part of that. But um I mean losing money.
SPEAKER_03They've lost profits, they they always make money, but yeah, that's the that's that's kind of like the ethical difference between like a company like ABC, who is publicly traded, you know, who like has shareholders to keep in mind, they'll they'll gut a show. No, I'll give you a perfect example. All right, ABC gets sued by the Trump administration over the edit with Kamala Harris. We remember that? Okay. So as a way to sort of like put that under the rug, they settle for 90 mil, and then they move on into their production year. I uh one of the shows, I don't know if I should say, but whatever, one of the shows was in middle in the middle of production, usually runs for about two months of shoots. Um, midway through the first half of that production, they announced that they're cutting the second half of production, which is a full month's worth of show recordings, and um uh and that they're not uh they're not gonna be bringing anybody else back for the rest of the year, except for like the standards that they need, right? So they middle of the production schedule, they cut the schedule in half, um, and then they've moved the production of that show from LA to Georgia this year. Why? Because it's cheaper to shoot in Georgia, because it's cheaper to spread the loss of 90 mils to your shareholders over the cutting of shows and the cutting of salaries, essentially related to that, than it is to sort of like create the content that people want to see.
SPEAKER_04So the the business of making uh movies and television has become like almost this like financial science in some ways, where it's like that that Batwoman movie met uh a similar fate because of like some tax write-off reasons, right? Or or something, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Mel Brooks predicted this with the producers.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, yeah. It's just now that's like instead of that being a funny like musical, now it's like uh yeah, this is what you do. This is what you do. You make this thing that people get excited for, then you cut it because of like it counts as a loss. And then and then you can write it off for your taxes. Cool, you know art. You're writing stuff off on your taxes, art.
SPEAKER_03What's what's the best way and the cheapest way to shoot something is to undercut the staff, the crew, and the and the and the cast.
SPEAKER_04That's the easiest way to make it a war of the worlds movie that they're gonna be. Right.
SPEAKER_03So we're not we're yeah, we're not producing content, we're producing profits. And if the show is not profitable enough, you're not gonna see another season of it. Or what what what uh what what show is that Shazam show a couple years ago? What they they were shooting it in in the States, and then they Shazam Shazam with uh Jamie Foxx.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So what the studio ended up doing was they killed all their contracts in the states, signed a new contract in like England or in Ireland, I'm not quite sure where exactly. This was a couple years ago, and then they were paying production crews about $200 a person less than what they would normally pay here. It was cheaper to keep their sound stage open over there, and it was just easier to fly an American contestant and Jamie Foxx to the location than to shoot it here in the United States. Well, yeah, that's it's just money, it's just money.
SPEAKER_07American yeah, American business. Well, any any business across the world, uh in the I guess capitalist system, but any system really, uh, is a it's gambling. And whenever you're gambling, uh the people with the bigger banks start changing the rules to ensure that they have better chances of winning the gamble. So it becomes very lopsided and unethical because the people that are competing shouldn't be writing the rules. Like if I'm throwing a baseball and I I miss the strike zone, I shouldn't be the one to revamp how the how big the strike zone is. If you know if I keep hitting foul balls and I have enough money to pay people to change the rules to widen the lines on the baseball field, uh if if you know if I'm if I'm running the ball down the football field and I get tackled, I shouldn't be able to go up and say, hey, they're not allowed to tackle me. Uh and and that's essentially what big business is doing on a constant and consistent basis, is they're getting and now with all the floodgates opening, it's becoming more and more problematic, and disassembling everything Teddy Roosevelt did and putting everything that fucking uh Woodrow Wilson put in place because that son of a bitch bastard was I mean he was Woodrow Wilson, goddamn Woodrow Wilson was probably Dutch, yeah. Um, but yeah, in the long run, it's like if you're the the the one thing that warms my heart about dropout TV is it's not a gamble, it is a construction, and they're building the lower tiers, and then as soon as they get you know, every time they increase the the the complexity of the set on Game Changer, or uh you know, every time they add a new show to it, it's because they have the money to spend on that show, not because they're gambling to see if they're going to get a return on their investment.
SPEAKER_03If I mean and it and it has again to do with their ethos, is that they're provide they're providing the audience the opportunity to feel a part of their productions to subscriptions, like they have they almost feel like they have ownership of these shows, yeah. And and that ownership translates into fandom, which is what is well received by well, most of us who use somebody else's subscriptions for six months for deciding, hey, maybe it's worthwhile.
SPEAKER_04This this ain't this ain't actually that much money, yeah. Yeah, and also I I think you know, the the ethics of the streaming, also, I mean, we're hitting a thing where um boy do I feel fatigued by streaming, which uh is a magic technology, make no mistake. It's incredible, it's maybe the most incredible delivery mechanism for for art that we've come up with so far. It really is like something special. And there's this that that cable cutting moment where you subscribe to Netflix, you're like, wow, it's just mostly here. Like they've got so much. And what we've witnessed is like this dismantling, the the cost increases, and the value feels less. Even with original shows, it Netflix has this content barn that it can pull from. And now they all have a WB is like, oh, what do we have? Paramount is like, what do we have? Everybody has their thing. So now it's like, what do I want to watch? Oh, Star Trek? I can't watch that. Uh I can't just pull that from the ether at a on a whim, unless I'm subscribed to Paramount Plus or CBS All Access as it was formerly known. Or whatever it's gonna become once it uh merges with WV. Netflix, I I don't know. I was looking for a movie somewhere, it might have been Twin Peaks, and I didn't know where to. It was like you can watch it on Amazon Prime, everything's on Amazon Prime, and so it's like, where does your because I'm not gonna we've managed to back ourselves into a corner where cutting the cable doesn't matter anymore because it's the same fucking price if you want the same breadth of content.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, pretty much it'd be buying it from the same person, too.
SPEAKER_04You just want it on demand, and your $14 an hour piecemeal or $14 a month piecemeal goes to obviously the production of new shows, sure. New shows that Netflix will cancel in a season and a half, uh, even if they're successful at this point. Um but then also I'm sorry, why am I paying who am I paying to watch the X tourist test? Where's that money going? It's is it going to I picked a bad one. I don't even know who's involved with that movie. Is it going to the creators?
SPEAKER_03Uh no, it'd be just going to the person who owns the rights to the film. So whoever owns the distribution rights would get the money for that.
SPEAKER_04Right. Some who I know as some fucking guy who had nothing to do with it. And it's like like they made that agreement.
SPEAKER_03Which I didn't make that agreement, right? That this is why Ryan Kugler's, again, in the sort of ethos of uh speaking on ethic ethicality of things. Is that a word? Yeah, it works for us. Uh you know, right Ryan Kugler took a lot of that ownership from Warner Brothers for that film, you know, under conditions or whatever, and brought it back to the to himself, right? Like essentially bringing back the ownership of these things, kind of like what Sam's doing done with Dropout. Ryan Kugler's uh contribution to this cause has been bringing back the rights of these films um to the individual creator in terms of that sort of scope of things. I also kind of like in hindsight wonder if like the people in charge of Warner Brothers knew that there was something going on with like a future purchase because they had just come off of like the Discovery Warner merger, maybe like two years beforehand. So they've they've already gone through this whole cycle once before. Um, I'm wondering if like in that time period they were like, fuck it, we'll give him whatever he wants, we're not gonna be in charge, anyways, and it'll look good for us as it is. Let's sell it to the uh the big baddies or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, have they been like I don't know what bath have they been taking a bath with their DC stuff? Is that what is that like largely what that is?
SPEAKER_03What do you mean with a DC?
SPEAKER_04Uh like like has their stuff not like uh where they were trying to compete with Marvel but couldn't really get their uh their legs underneath them?
SPEAKER_03Ryan can probably speak a little bit more about this than I can, but James Gunn came on uh within the DC universe. That all happened um, you know, within the sort of a few years after the Warner Discovery, I think, happened. Yeah and so I I wonder if the decisions made for production for Warner Brothers at that time were made under the uh assumption that there would be sort of like a passing of the torch to whomever else. Okay. And and if they're sort of as their sort of like last hurrah in office or whatever the case may be, they were like, fuck it, let's give it to them, and we'll you know, we'll we'll run as the most sort of equitable big business that's out there, you know, facing forward, maybe. Anyways, that's a that's another story. That's another that's another podcast.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we'll pair that up with the uh the we'll pair that up with MTV and and all the crap that yes. There's a dark, dark, dark story behind that.
SPEAKER_04But but but I guess it's like where does your money go? With dropout, it goes to these people now. Oh, yeah, and I think that's like very important.
SPEAKER_02And the the last thing I wanted to say about the ethicality of dropout before we move on is that they pay the people that audition for them. Yes, very rare. They pay any you go to audition for a dropout project, you are going to get paid.
SPEAKER_03Yep, that's amazing. That's that's that that is like that is putting union rules and laws into practice within their your own confines and without having to need somebody to babysit you, you know.
SPEAKER_07That's that's why and getting special approval to keep doing stuff during the strike. Yeah, I was gonna say all the things that they were doing, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because they they were upholding what the union was fighting for, they were already doing it.
SPEAKER_04And can you imagine being so good at like that that the union is on strike and they go, but you're cool, yeah. You can you can you actually this is why we're doing it, this is why we're striking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so other people can do this, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, variety wrote an interesting article on on these guys, and uh Sam Reich was recently on Last Foods. I don't know if you guys do any of that stuff, uh, watch any of that stuff, but it's you you get some insight as to like what was ruminating in Sam Reich's mind when when all this was in the works, you know, and and finally came to fruition. It's unique. Sorry, I can't I'm done. I'm done talking.
SPEAKER_02I can I could literally talk about dropout forever. Uh it's one of my favorite topics. I am in love with it. I think the programming is so original, and the comedy feels human, and just everything feels human. And we just need more human.
SPEAKER_04If you're unsure, please just like uh dip your toe into like game changer or make some noise.
SPEAKER_02It is literally start game changer season one, episode one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. It it once you see Zakoyama inhabit a character fully and completely for the purposes of winning an imaginary point, uh your life will be changed, I promise.
SPEAKER_07And even though we've talked for a very long time about a lot of things, uh, we've only scratched the surface of the depth and and width of what dropout has to offer. Uh, it is a lot of thought-provoking things, it is a lot of uh on the spot thought, but usually improvers have a lot of basically you have to load your guns. Uh you're firing off right there on the spot, but you had to load them up previously. So there's a lot of intellectual thought process behind everything that they do. Um and you know, it is it is something to actually experience because there it's not just a manipulation of how can we get more. I mean, there is manipulation in getting people to watch the YouTube clips and the TikTok clips and all that stuff, but it it is you know a lot of heartfelt emotional uh intellectual material to go through, and it is worth your time, it is worth your money. Uh I appreciate everyone's time here. Uh and uh before we go, I'll I will pitch this. I know Ryan has has worked on different games and stuff as as we go along and we're collecting different topics and stuff, most of those topics somehow veer back and and turn on and connect with uh everything else that we've covered so far. Um I I think as we go along, start uh collecting ideas about creating a card game where uh you know you have a topic, and then if someone plays like someone plays the Roman card, uh if you've got a card in your hand that can connect to the Romans, as long as you can convince everyone else in the room that somehow it connects there, then you can play your card and kind of like an Uno style thing. Uh last person with or the person with the least amount of cards or playing their last card wins. Something like that. Just to just to get it get the juices flowing and getting started. We'll talk much more about we might be able to try.
SPEAKER_02We might be able to try a version of that with the cards against humanity cards we have here and just see how it does.
SPEAKER_00All right. Yeah. That could be a good place to start, honestly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just to see how the like figure out some rules and shit.
SPEAKER_07But yeah, you get a Steve Bashimi card and someone and you know someone plays uh uh outsider music card and you got your Steve Bishimi card, you get to sit there and talk and convince everyone in the room that Steve Steve Bashimi fits.
SPEAKER_05Boom.
SPEAKER_07Uh, but with that saying, thank you very much, Ryan. Thank you very much, Gary. Uh, I do really appreciate your time. And uh, if you have other people that you want to welcome into this uh little universe of ours, uh feel free to reach out and contact Jackie at Jackie O.com. Uh or sorry, Jackie at valley of o.com.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and if you have any questions, yeah. If you have a question and you want to have a long list, I'm happy to add to.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, if you want to explore a topic, we will dive in. If you want to uh pop in and talk to us, uh feel free. Ryan, you're welcome to invite other people. Uh, every time that you have invited someone, they have been worthwhile and worthy of our time. Gary, you are you have proven yourself worthy of our time.
SPEAKER_02So this is the second time Gary's been on one of our podcasts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, two time I think worldwide.
SPEAKER_03There's a time step for my first visit with you guys. I gotta I I still have to go back and read uh to kill a mockingbird again.
SPEAKER_02So we gave you a homework assignment you did not complete.
SPEAKER_03I love the the industry insight, it was very cool. Yeah, it's been a rough ride, but it's been good uh for the most part.
SPEAKER_04You know, that's what I hear from everybody in the industry so far.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And um, before we get out of here, I do have to say that we do know two people who have worked for dropout in the editing department, and they have both had very positive experiences with them. Oh, good.
SPEAKER_07Uh one was uh, are you talking about the one that used to work with uh Big Tim?
SPEAKER_02That's one of them, yes.
SPEAKER_07Okay, so uh we have a friend, uh Big Tim, who went to LA. Uh he is now a bouncer at a country bar that I that uh if I if I am up to date on my current things, uh very much uh in the um I I would put him in the same genre of people as as Jacob Wisaki. Uh yes uh in the overall category, literally in overalls, literally overalls, yeah. And uh he did a podcast uh uh about educating someone on uh um uh radical stuff, huh? Radic, yeah, radicalized, uh basically radicalizing someone into uh a different kind of thought. And she went out to LA and became an editor. And while we were on our LA trip uh visiting channel 101, we ran into Andy, um who was in the Harmontown documentary, and he ended up being the editor on uh Tiny Batman. What was that? Tiny Batman, yeah, Tiny Batman, yeah, and he uh edited Velma and uh a couple other shows.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's and Brittany uh edited for all mankind, which is one of my favorite shows on Apple Channel. I got literally no one is watching.
SPEAKER_03It's uh it's a cool show. I got to see them uh I got to see them in action on set at the Sony lot when they were shooting a couple.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, what season do you know?
SPEAKER_03It was they were shooting last year, so it would be the upcoming season.
SPEAKER_02So March.
SPEAKER_03Whatever the season they're in now. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was a lot of red sand.
SPEAKER_03There was a lot of red sand.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. I want to then talk about that separately another time because I like I have high levels of insurance with that show.
SPEAKER_03I'll I'll be honest with you. There's a couple cool things that I got to see on the Sonya lot when I was on. We can talk about it later, but I didn't really get to interact with all of it. A lot of it tends to be behind like these like yeah, elephant doors that you can't get through. You're kind of like peeking around. Tom Holland and I had a weird experience. It was a good time.
SPEAKER_07All right. Well, uh, what is our next question? I guess our next question is the Dutch question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, were the Dutch evil sons of bitches, and the one after that I'm really excited about.
SPEAKER_07Well, go ahead and give in case we have to skip the Dutch again. What's the next one?
SPEAKER_02Who was Indigo's PR agent?
SPEAKER_03Uh who is Wendigo's PR agent? In Indigo, the the color.
SPEAKER_02Indigo, the color. Like, how did indigo get in the Roy biv?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, how the fuck did that happen? Was this an up-the-cuff thing I said?
SPEAKER_02Yes, it was.
SPEAKER_04I'm like, I feel like I said that.
SPEAKER_02You did.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_07Uh for Ryan and Gary and Christian and Jackie, I am Mickey, and I hope that I have answered your question thoroughly.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_07So goodbye.
SPEAKER_02Bye.
SPEAKER_07No, it was nothing.
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