The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss the discuss the Mario taking over the box office, Netflix's show Beef, and Joe Rogan's deepfacked podcast on their weekly AI check in
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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
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The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss the discuss the Mario taking over the box office, Netflix's show Beef, and Joe Rogan's deepfacked podcast on their weekly AI check in
----------
Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
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Mr. Benja: This is show versus business, your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives with your host Theo and Mr. Benja. Come with all the relevant info to get your week started in this crazy world of technology, entertainment, business marketing, making that content. We cover it all here, but this week we'll be covering the Marvels trailer.
It's out. People are talking about it. Some people are hyped, some people are angry. You know how it is, but it's worth talking about. Also, we've got an AI check-in. The deep fake is real. It's, there's a whole entire Joe Rogan podcast that got deep faked. He's calling the alarm. We'll see if it's worth talking about if it's worth continuing on caring about it.
Or is it just Joe Rogan being paranoid. Also, we've got an H B O Max story. Actually, I shouldn't say an H B O Max story. It's just a max story because they're dropping the H B O. It's got people up in arms and they're doing a rebrand. Look for that one also. Super Mario is making money. Not the video game, not the Switch game.
Not your old N 64 game. The movie is making money and they don't even do movies. Also, beef is hot, beef is coming out. It came out, it's on Netflix. It's a series. It's crazy. It's got David Cho in it. We'll be talking a little bit about that and I feel like I missed one, but that looks like it's all, so those are the stories we got.
Theo, how you feeling?
Theo: I'm good man. I am good man. This weekend was busy. Lot of traveling, hanging with the kids basketball, dance, and got a little Mario action in too, so so yeah, so we'll talk about that later. But yeah man, it was one of those juggling weekends, just trying to get a lot of stuff crammed into two days.
Ooh, it's been a lot.
Mr. Benja: Yeah, I saw the I saw the kid basketball video. I, I always love kids playing basketball. Because you could tell the referees are sitting there trying to figure out what they should call and what they shouldn't. You know, it's like, well, I know he traveled, but come on, he's seven you.
Theo: Exactly. Exactly. So that was my weekend also. I'm based here in Tampa. So did you know that Taylor Swift is just. Like taking over cities. So she took over Tampa for three days and basically she's over at the stadium where, you know, the Buccaneers, the football team play Uhhuh. And you know, you walking around, we me and my, my wife went out to dinner for on Friday night downtown.
Saw these young little girls walking around. He like, what is going on? Is this some kind of, you know, girl Scout convention going on? Nah man, they are coming from all around Central Florida, man, just to go to this event. The Swifties, the Swifties are real man. And so, yeah, she sold out three nights at a stadium here in Tampa.
And I heard she's gonna do the same in every city she goes to. She's just gonna plan herself. In one big, in one, you know, rela relatively huge city and just everybody's just gonna come in and, and, and see her. So that's the, hopefully, you know, I don't know if you saw some of the news earlier this year about the, she was announcing a tour and, you know mm-hmm.
Ticket prices went outta control and Ticketmaster even got, you know, the Congress even took tick Ticketmaster to task. It was a whole mess. Yeah. This was the solution to that, to kind of get a lot of these swifties to get tickets to go see her. So it's been crazy. It's
a,
Mr. Benja: it's a thing, man. And speaking of like content, it's like, I think a lot of these, the big acts are figuring it out too.
It's like, Hey, wait a minute, if I got my audience, I sell this much money percentage that I get, versus percentage that the venue and the promoters and et cetera get, it's like, Hey, wait a minute, I can do this myself. And yeah, it's just interesting seeing in fact, I, I hadn't, I saw an ad for Louis CK popped up in one of the news sites I went to.
It's like, Hey, Louis CK is doing this thing, dude. I went back and checked up on him and, Yeah, he's continually been selling out like the Madison Square Garden and all these other places. I don't, people don't know this, but he was like, cancel what you talking about? I, I just don't have to, I just don't have to be in front of the public eye anymore, and I can still sell, sell out venues.
I like the Madison Square Garden. So
Theo: mm-hmm. Going on direct to fans is real, man. And you know, this is the new way. If you an artist, as artist, I mean, it's not unlike influencers. I mean, you know how many influencers have their own kind of conventions or conference. I just went to one. Right. You know, in the real estate space.
So this is, this is the new way, man. You build your audience and then you, you have your, your, your, your events and, and you know, no one's none. The wiser man. They don't know who you, yeah. A lot of people wouldn't know who you were, but you know, in certain venues you're like a celebrity.
Mr. Benja: Yeah. Lemme start prepping for binge ACON three right now.
Hey, y'all ready? Woo. Woo. There we go,
Theo: man. What's up man? So what, what we gonna get into today? I'm excited.
Mr. Benja: All right. So story number one. The Marvels trailer's out and people are talking, and I don't mean the Marvel trailer, like some random Marvel movie. This is The Marvels with Bree Larson following up in her role from Captain Marvel bringing in miss Marvel from the, from the series on Disney Plus.
And we got, wait a minute, captain Marvel, miss Marvel, who, what do we call the
Theo: other Marvel spec? Spectrum, but Spectrum, yeah. Monica Rambo, but you know, yeah, she
Mr. Benja: was the Marvel, miss Captain Marvel from the comics. And then things got changed, and then people were wondering where Mr. Marvel's at and his, there's a whole lot of, there's a whole lot of characters with a Marvel name in it.
So we'll call her Photon. Is that what we're calling her? Spectrum Photon? Yeah.
Theo: Spectrum Photon, yeah.
Mr. Benja: All right. Photon. See? Yeah. It's got all three of 'em in there and the trailer's out. Did you see it?
Theo: I did, I did thought was cute, you know, Hey, you know, got some, you know, cute, funky music. Yeah, it was cute.
Had some funky music and stuff. It was kind of almost confusing a little bit. It was kind of like, you know, are they switching places? It was kind of hard to you know, to kind of understand what was kind of going on. But they k they're trying to go with a fun vibe, which I'm with. Yeah, so we'll see. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic, but so my story around this is that, you know, I think, you know, you've seen some of the, the Twitter conversation out there, you know, the, the fanboy out there into fanboy are, are not, not loving it too much.
Right. And I did a on my own, you know, social medias. I did like a, you know, kind of a post reel or something around Marvels kind of going down a little bit after quantum mania. And so initially it started off innocent enough, right? It's like, oh, yeah. You know, Marvel's not like it used to be. I said, yeah, I agree, man.
It went down some deep paths, man. I mean, the, the, the real one, you know, pseudo viral for me, you know, like about 14,000 views. But it was one of those things where it's like the comments were like, you know, it was like, Marvel sucks because they started having too many women in it, or, you know look how they, how they treat Thor, Thor, you know, in Thor three, he was basically, you know, a fat guy and he was emasculated.
I was like, what is going on?
Mr. Benja: So, I I, I'll tell you, I mean,
Theo: this is, this is real, man. These cats are out here. Like, man, they, they were using the, you know, the woke and, and not good terms, right? You know, hey, you know, this is the, the woke ation of M C U. So, you know, obviously, you know, from a business standpoint, sure, you know, you know any publicities, you know, Good publicity even, you know, is bad and people are, you know, commenting things that look somewhat negative.
Mm-hmm. So, you know, that kind of helped the, the, the real do better for views and the algorithm. But, you know, on the other side it's like, oh wow, the M C U fan base is really they're getting almost close to that Star Wars negativity zone, man. So I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Mr. Benja: Makes sense to me.
And what I mean by that is I, I, I know where that's coming from. I think this is like the, the Han so the solo movie problem where it wasn't so much the movie itself, it's just that, okay, you haven't gotten around to really helping us out. We're just gonna start bashing you until you get your, get till you get your mind right.
And that's kind of starting to happen with the Marvels. I mean, I see it and I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, it's, it's fun, it's interesting, cute, whatever. But then you got a lot of people like. Yeah, but no one's asking for all this. No one's, no one's pushing for this. You know, they're out, quote unquote, they're out on the front lines, you know, doing all this, this Marvel praise and hyping it up and trying to keep people interested.
And then Disney's not really giving back like that. I, I, it's, that's just kind of, they're not catering to that market anymore. So they're catering to a, a broader market. Right. And, you know, if you've got the Marvels, if you, if you saw Miss Marvel, you saw Captain Marvel, you saw what happened in Juan Division with Photon, and now you're seeing this Marvels trailer.
That all makes sense. It for, for what they're building. That all makes sense. But is it something a lot of these other people want and should they be toxic about it? I mean, you know, I, I don't know. You probably shouldn't be, but the thing is, They're just looking at it as, Hey, Marvel, you're, you're, you're outta control.
You're letting the Disney reps talk to you a bit too much. You know Thor over here looking like some, you know, early nineties sitcom, dad, you know, just that's not what we, we heard Thor was coming. We're like, okay, we're about to get a badass. And I remember I had problems with Thor. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I'm in, I'm in the, the what's, what are you doing with Thor camp?
Because, you know, what are you doing with the Hulk camp too? I mean, I saw that and I was like, you kidding me?
Theo: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know it is very interesting. I mean, you know, I get where Marvel's doing, Scott had brought his fan base, right? They gotta bring more women in, they gotta bring more diversity into it.
And I get that. I mean, kinda almost like, what, what happened in the comic books, right? Every character's almost got a, a main character, like a Ironman or, mm-hmm. You know, Thor or Captain America, you know, they, they kind of, the comics, this is real, the comic books, they have, you know, for lack of a better term, a you know, a a different candidate, right?
That's from a, you know, different ethnic group or a different mm-hmm. You know you know, gender and, you know, it's just what it is. And so, and I get that because from branding, you know, you can, you can only be broad, you know, broad so much. But now, you know, marketing has fragmented so much that people need to see themselves in the marketing.
I mean, I can't even think of a la a good, a movie recently that did not have, or TV show even that didn't have at least some diverse, you know, Like main characters anymore. I mean I, I very rarely do I see just an all, you know, majority white couple or white, you know group of folks in a storyline.
It's just like very rare now. Almost. Yeah. To the point where I'm like, I notice it, you know? It's like, oh, wow. They don't do that anymore. Now they'll have, they'll have like, you know, like all black crew or all Latin crew or something like that. But I, when's the last time you just saw, I mean, you know, not to get down this, this race, you know, category, but it's just like, when's the last time you saw something like, like a friends, like remember friends?
A 1990 show that was like, you know, all white friends in New York and that's all they hung with. And, you know, we, we thought nothing about it. It was a top show in America for, for, for many years. That would never fly. Now, you know, it is what it is, but it's just, it's true.
Mr. Benja: I mean, yeah, and I, you know, there's still there.
This is so people will understand this is what companies are trying to do. They're trying to figure out all the different pieces, all the different parts, and how they can maximize their returns, their gains, and minimize all the negativity. If it's just a few loud people, then it's like, well, it's just a few loud people, but if it turns into a Star Wars situation, then you gotta like, hold on, hold on.
This is actually starting to affect the bottom line. And they're just trying to balance it out, figure out what they should and what they shouldn't do. Honestly you know, Hollywood in general, I don't think they care too much. It's like, oh no, you know, we, we built this audience for blah, blah, blah, and this is why we're doing it.
If it works, they'll be behind it. If it doesn't work, they're like, well, I. See we, we looked over this and what we want to do is make sure we pivot to this, make sure we're properly addressing these market's concerns. They'll always say something to sound flowery and nice, but it's all about just getting the people.
And if they can get their Disney Princess vibe over to the Marvel characters, that's golden. Because Yeah,
Theo: that's a good
Mr. Benja: point. You will just keep on, like, after Miss Marvel, after Captain Marvel, after Photon, it's like, Hey you know Marvel, you know, two years from now, and everybody's gonna be like, who's Marlina?
It's like, well, she's the newest, you know, character in the Marvels lie. It's like, oh great, I'll go watch her too. And then it's like, Hey, well who's the next person after that? And it could be, you know he, him Marvel. I was trying to think. I was about to say Mr. Marvel, but that wasn't exciting enough, so, no.
You know how it goes.
Theo: No, that's a good point. Disney has, Disney has a track record of creating, you know, storylines, characters for, for young females, right? I mean, the whole princess line, I mean, you know. As the Disney person that goes there pretty regularly. Disney World. Yeah. You, you can't step on a stone and not see a young girl dressed in some kind of princess dress.
Right. And so that's real. So I think, you know, they're trying to take that same kind of understanding of the, of that branding and that marketing motion and, and apply to Marvel. Yeah. Right. You know, but it, you know, and Marvel was kind of resistant, right? Just in Star Wars. Definitely. I mean, you know, they can kind of figure that out too.
I dunno if you saw some of those Tales of the Jedi and they had like the whole story, like, you know, all the different women in, in, in, in Star Wars lore, right. And, and they had little specific, you know, one-off stories for them. They got this Ashoka story coming out Right. That, you know, it's got people hyped up.
So, so I think, you know, oh, and then the next one, what's the one? I'm kind of excited about it, but I don't, I don't, you know, a lot of people are not too excited. But the one with what's it called? The acolyte, right? About the mm-hmm. Beginnings of the sif. Right. And so I'm like, man, but it's, it's led by females, but by women.
So I think it's gonna be interesting to see if if Disney can kinda build out this broader market into the the women fan base. Right. But, you know, it's go, it's gonna be tough, man. A lot of, you know, a lot of fanboys are just, you know, really resistant to any, to any change, man. And you know, we didn't talk about it too much, but, you know, the Mar Mandalorian even, right?
I think there's some, some, some dismay about what's happening over there with the Mandalorian. So Disney and star Wars and Marvel, they got, they gotta work. They got a lot of work to cut out for 'em. And so to figure out how to broaden the brand beyond just, you know, the fanboy.
Mr. Benja: Yeah. And I, you know, I'm not pushing for any fanboy nonsense, you know, but I actually do get.
Where the I is coming from in a lot of cases. Like, I'm like, and obvi, I've even studied this back to, you know, Lego and Lego friends back to, you know, using pastel versus muted colors and, and toy packaging. I worked for a toy company you know, take it way back to, you know, ed Bernay's and his propaganda moves, you know, well, hey, let's get women out there smoking cigarettes cuz everybody can smoke cigarettes.
It's like, yeah, okay, but should you really be pushing cigarettes Anyway, I, I get what you're doing, but is, is this, is this healthy or is it pandering? Where does it lie? How are we being manipulated? You gotta look at that. So there's a lot of angles to it and basically I think these audiences are just being, I don't wanna say riled up, but they're following the energy as much as they can because.
The energy and attention can get turned into dollars.
Theo: Yeah. That's all it's about. Hot take. All of our holidays were created by marketing teams. Yes.
Mr. Benja: Seriously.
Theo: Even Christmas. Yes. Even
Mr. Benja: Christmas. So if you wanted, if you really wanted to know, there you go. There
Theo: it is. All our holidays were created by marketing.
So once you, seriously, I've done the research, literally every holiday I've looked up, it was, it was, it didn't exist. And this day someone said, Hey, why not? And there you go. So anyway, but yeah. I love it, man. Mr. Benja. Let's, let's keep it moving. Keeping
Mr. Benja: it moving. Story number two. All right. We got an AI check-in as we do most every week here.
Listen you, you sent me this one, Theo, so this is gonna be interesting. They they apparently deep faked an entire Joe Rogan podcast. I don't know who they are in this case, but Joe Rogan got excited enough to sound the alarm and say, Hey, hey, this is kind of going too far. You've, you, you've deep faked, you've create, recreated with ai, an entire podcast of mine, like as if it would be me talking.
And maybe you should just explain it a little bit cuz this is kind of wild.
Theo: Yeah, I mean you know, high level. Joe Rogan, biggest podcaster in the whole world, basically. You know, he does his podcasts and, you know, pretty regularly and, you know, three hour podcasts that people love and adore. He did interviews with you know, several famous people, Sam Altman being one of them.
And yeah, there's the deep fakes out there that, you know, been around for a while, but starting to get, you know, momentum now that we have more advanced generative AI tools, people are recreating you know, podcasts, right? Because you have enough data to kind of reimagine that person's voice and even video, right?
To kind of showcase, you know a video podcast. And so, yeah, they recreated that, you know, using his you know, his voice, his likeness, and I think they did a whole interview with him and Sam Altman in AI version as well.
Mr. Benja: Yeah, maybe we, we've been saying recreating, maybe we should call it manufacturing.
Theo: Yeah. That might be a better way. That might be a better way to say it. I mean, I mean, it's still, well, so, I mean, let's get into this real quick. So I've seen someone actually on Instagram they recreated like a fake avatar of Bill Gates, you know, saying in his voice. Mm-hmm. He wrote this story about how AI's gonna change, and he called it, he created like a, he called it the chat bill bot or something.
Right. And it was like a visual representation of him. I don't know if you saw a shout out to I think Mr. Grateful on Instagram, he kind of recreated this, this image of bill Gates, you know, answering, you know, just talking at his, his essay. And I, I thought it was amazing how, how, you know, look, you know, look, So pseudo fake.
But that was kind of interesting. And then there's been stories around like Eminem and Rihanna's music. People are recreating their sound and their, their voices to make new music. Did you one was Rihanna was actually singing a Beyonce song. And and everybody was like, what? I know Rihanna did that.
So this, now people are seeing the dark side of ai kind of rear his head. And Mr. Ben, I'm looking at you as an artist. I read the legal ramification around. This is like one, this is doubly troubling for you guys because number one, they're using real artists. Images and work to train these generative ai.
So that's, you know, almost a travesty without your permission, right? Mm-hmm. Using your art, your, your, your, your, your work to train this, this generative ai first to kinda understand how to re and then as recreating it, and more importantly, is taking, you know, money outta your pocket potentially, because they're kind of emulating your style, right?
Yes. Based on what it learned from you. Mm-hmm. So, you know it, I think there's gonna be some legal, I mean, you know, I think this is kind of starting to hit to the forefront of like, okay, you know, copyright rules are there for a reason, and, and a lot of these artists are starting to realize, wait a minute,
you trying to say, I can't get paid my million bucks, my million dollar fees, you know, for, for, for showing up and doing my, my work. What?
Mr. Benja: Yeah. It's. It's interesting, and we even spoke about this in terms of James Earl Jones, you know, he was Yes. I, I guess pioneering in his, in his age. And he was like, Hey I, I've talked a lot of noise, I've said a lot of stuff, but you know, I'm not worried about it.
Just send me a check whenever you use AI to generate my voice again. It'll be great. And, you know, that's one of the more positive people. But, you know, he's got his bag, he's done his thing. So for somebody coming up, what does that mean for them? You know, you got an artist, a developer, or any type of person, and someone who's not involved or who's not necessarily friendly to your interest will say, Hey, I want what you do.
I just don't want you. Hmm. And I've actually seen this happen in a company before where there was a, an artist, they really liked his art style. You're like, Hey, this is a great art style, like what you're doing, do more of it. The artist just kept generating a lot of it, and at some point they said, okay, the rest of the artist on the team understand your art well enough.
You're fired. So the artist was like, wait, what? I'm, I'm the guy who came up with this. Like, yeah, yeah, we, we got your style down. We pre, we kind of figured it out. We don't want you anymore. Hmm. And so they got rid of the artist and did the art better than that artist did. So it's like, wow. That was just a random project that I came across and I was like, oh, this is actually happening.
And this was before ai. Mm-hmm. Now with ai, you've got this situation where I can just start saying, you know what? I like what this guy has spent his entire life developing and trying to do. Why don't we just feed all his data into this system and. Have it kick out a poem, let's have it kick out some books.
Let's have it kick out you know, some stock predictions. Let's do whatever in this guy's style. Because if this guy's got what it is, then we can all just basically emulate that that's what the people want, and we don't need that actual person. That's where it gets interesting to me, because, you know, art is fundamentally a human expression.
Mm-hmm. An expression of human interest, feelings, emotions, et cetera. So now when you start to manufacture that in this way or recreate this person's artistic expression, then where does that leave us? It's a weird place.
Theo: Yeah, man. It's, I mean, you know what, if there's a, you know, a famous artist, he could be like the next Picasso, but generative AI started to, you know, see his stuff before he kind of, you know, became more well known or her.
And just emulates his style and that style goes viral. And so now we never know who created that. Right. And so you're almost killing these, these, these budding artists in, in the, in the womb now. Right. You know, as opposed to like, you know, you know, Picasso and Leonard Da Vinci, fine copy them, give them that stuff to, you know you know, pre-train.
But any new artist Yeah, man, I think they're gonna have to figure out a way to kind of just like, you know, if I have art, art artistry out there, you know, it cannot be used by Ed gender of AI because Yeah. You know, they're just still learning. They're form and then, and if it does go viral, people know, want to know who artist is, you know, it can't, it, there shouldn't be a way for that to be used for pre-trained data, so that artist will never get the credit date they
Mr. Benja: deserved.
Yeah. And to be honest, it already happens without ai where you've got entire, like the music industry does this all the time. Good point. They'll bring in. 100 artists, and then they'll start listening to everything they do, and then they'll keep two or three of the artists and say, okay, the other 97, 98 of you good luck.
You know, I'll see you at the, the launch party for this other guy we've chosen. You know, and then while you're at the launch party, you're like, Hey, that sounds like my lyrics. And they're like, Hmm. They're like, eh, well, you know, everybody was in the studio. I don't know, we were just talking. Can you prove it?
I don't know.
Theo: Yeah. I think the only way to kind of win against this is you gotta create your own audience. I mean, you know, I think we, I think you and I are kind of believers in that because. You know, if you have your own distribution channels, you can go direct to people. They know who you are, right? And, you know, they said no.
You know, it is like you have a group of folks that are like almost protecting you. And the bigger that becomes, you know, the better chances are you would get credit for what you develop. I mean, you know, you think all the, all the great, you know, all the latest, you know musicians, right? Mm-hmm. They're getting discovered.
Off of YouTube or a SoundCloud or something like Doja Cat, right? She was, you know, I think she was a lot of SoundCloud stuff back in the day. So, yeah. You know, she built an audience over time. Justin Bieber, I know he got discovering YouTube, so it's kind of like, you kind of have to do that, you know, just like people know you, a massive amount of people so that if the bots come for you, no they cannot come for me cuz I'm too powerful.
Right? It is. And it's like being having an audience and, and having a distribution channel makes you way more powerful. Like I was listening to you know, Ryan over at, you know, the, the wealth con guy who does real estate degree, where we talked about last, last podcast. That's why he's like, he's trying to buy businesses now.
He said, look, you know, yeah you got your little education business, right? Or you got your own little real estate business, but guess what, you don't have 2 million followers like I do. So lemme go ahead and buy your company and you know, you'll be making $5 million in like six months because I can just.
You know, push it out to my audience. Yeah. I mean, it's like, he's right because how long would it take? How long is it gonna take for you to build up an audience that big Right. You know, that he's built up and it's like, that's a new gold man. If you have an audience, you know, you're almost like superpower.
That's a superpower. He is like, no one can touch me now,
Mr. Benja: basically. Dang. Yeah. So build your brand folks. That's all I gotta say on that.
Theo: Which I'm su I'm assuming you are doing well. So, awesome. Mr. Mr. Ben, what's next? What you got?
Mr. Benja: All right. Now we have story number three. HBO O Max is dead Done. Finish. WB Discovery doesn't want to hear about it anymore. They're like, listen, we don't want that H B O name. We just want Max say it with me in the, in the meeting room Max.
Is that it? Yes, that's it. It's the
Theo: max. Total rebrand. Yeah. Yeah. Max, like I, I kind of hinted at, in one of our pre-show notes, man, it just sounds like a you know, a early porn name or something like that. Just go to Max, you know, just give everything to the max. It's just like now you just need an extra X at the end, right?
And there you go. Yeah, sure, man. I mean, look, the jury's still out. Like, what, what are they doing with this thing, man? I mean, he's cutting slide, he's slashing things in, know, they announced that they're gonna have all these reboots. We're gonna have another, we're gonna have a whole new Hobbit. We're gonna have you like Harry Potter?
We're gonna bring a Harry Potter back again. But in TV form you want this, I mean, it's like all the hits, right? Mm-hmm. And just getting people excited about this Max. Oh, and by the way, we're gonna do you know, join in Chip Gaines. You know, you love reality. We're going to have this, you know, Dr.
Pimple popper, guess what? That's gonna be a max too. And it's just like, you know, they're just trying to cramp everything in to kind of just, you know, get this incen, you know, there's this, there's a sense in brand management. You create perceived value, right? And so now it's just H B O now, which is valuable in itself, but Max, so now you have more than just H B O and you have all this other stuff.
So now in theory it's more valuable. And why is that important? Because, you know, 2024 potentially H B o, I mean Warner Brothers discovery, you know, they could, you know, sell off. And I think that's the plan. They wanna build up this perceived value of this, this streaming service and all the content they create.
So that is worth way more than what they bought it for. So that's all David Z says All is doing. He's creating you know, hype this around this brand so he can sell it off in 2024. That's my opinion. I don't think this is long. I don't think they, you know, Warner of Brothers is kept, they paid too much, they got too much debt on the books.
I just don't think they, they see a strategy that are gonna keep this long term and that's unfortunate cuz it's got a lot of good content, a lot of good, you know stories. HBO's a great brand, but they're just ruining it because they're trying to create more value around the company as opposed to the H B O brand, if that makes sense.
So I think that's what's happening and so, you know, it is what it is, but that's business one on one man buy selling for more than what you bought it for. And that's all they're trying to do, trying to get that value up and cut as many costs down so they just keep the lights on until they can sell it.
Mr. Benja: Yeah. That sounds about right. I mean, you know, it's, HBO is a, it was, is known as a premium brand where new HBO movie drops. It's like worth sitting down and looking at. It's like worth, you know, stopping checking out and doing some lean in viewing. Right. But with all these other properties, I don't know if you've ever been on H B O and suddenly there's like a, you know, hey Looney Tunes and you're like, eh, what is this?
It's throw thrown off my H B O vibe. Mm-hmm. And that vibe, I think, is so strong that anything else coming onto the service kind of gets thrown off because that H B O brand is so strong. Yeah. You know, you hear that, that static sound with the Aw yeah. And you're just like, you get into it. And I think they've got a weird situation where the brand is almost too good.
Mm. To, to allow other stuff to come in. So you gotta get rid of the good brand and go with something more basic, more generic. I don't know how, what does that sound even feasible? Like I've n
Theo: I'm sure that's happened before. I'm trying to think of an analogy like that. I mean, you know what what crappy brand bought a bigger brand, right.
It made it worse. I'm sure there's some examples out there. I just can't think of the top of my head from A business standpoint. Well,
Mr. Benja: a lot of your, a lot of your clothing brands do that, right? Mm-hmm. Where you've got like a, a really niche brand and all of a sudden it shows up in, in like Massimo, Massimo shows up in in Target.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're, they're brands that have been relegated to Walmart. Now, I think Shaq sold some of his brands to Walmart, so now if I go see that in Champ Sports or something, I'm like, yo, I'm not buying that. That's like a, that's like a Walmart brand now. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know? And. But they don't care.
I mean, you know,
Theo: yeah. You remember back in the day, Macy's tried to do that too, but with personality brands, celebrities, you know, like Diddy had a brand that Macy's Martha Stewart, you know, and they had like a big commercial where all these celebrities are hanging around and they had their own like, distinct, distinct brand or distinct product at Macy's, right?
I mean, it was more, they were just basically buying their influence. Right. To kind of just highlight, you know, how Macy's works with these influencers. Yeah. The celebrity influencers at the time. So somewhat like that, but to your point yeah, I think that's a good point. They're trying to, they spiel brand is powerful.
I mean, I mean, b pretty much they've been on a tear since January, I think every Sunday they, they've owned Sunday nights. We talked about this between last of us the latest the new show, the new show I've been watching succession, the, you know, the people love that. The Lotus you know the White Lotus, and so it's like for the last.
Six months, you know, they've been killing the Sunday nights. And so it's a brand, it's like if you're gonna watch, you wanna know where Quality TV resides and resides on H B O Mac. Right? On HBO O. And so now they're trying to like, well forget HBO o, it's gonna be on Max. And so now you like, oh, my brain hurts.
Mr. Benja: Okay, so we've got a, the, if we got a relaunch of this service, which was formerly known as HBO O Max, just calling it Max, launching May 23rd at 1599 for an ad free version. Now, if you're gonna go premium, you know, you need the numbers behind it to at least make it, you know, a boutique kind of service and usually have smaller numbers and a slightly higher price.
But at 15 point 99 for an ad free, you may need to bring in a lot of other people. And I think this is where they're looking at, well, hey, Netflix can be a. Have an extreme amount of variety, right? Mm-hmm. And Disney Plus on the other hand, is very niche in their good point, their grouping. But where does HBO o Max fit in?
It doesn't. So now I think if you can just pull back and become a little more Netflix like and we'll talk about this when we get into the beef story later, you know, if you can get your couple shows that are hit this way, but you still don't alienate everybody who's coming on to watch, you know, Chippendale everybody who's coming on to watching your loony tune shows, I said Chippendale, sorry, loony tune shows then, then you can outperform basically than if you were just that niche brand.
So,
Theo: no, that's a good point. Pricing strategy is really key. So they're trying to anchor in your mind. Netflix, you know, they have a price point, right? I mean, I, I can't remember how much I paid. I don't think it's like 1599 though. But it's, it's up there. It's like, what, 10 99 or something like that? I guess for the HD version, you're the one that drops, drops in and out.
Mr. Benja, what's Netflix going for right now?
Mr. Benja: Oh, I don't know. I mean, I just, the, see, I, I, I jump out whenever I don't want it, so I don't even know anymore. I just, but so
Theo: I do know Netflix is around, you know, You're paying like over 10 bucks. Right. And so, but they're known as just like, they could, you know, they contain multitudes.
They got reality now. They have you know foreign shows, they have, you know, comedies, they have this, they have that. So H B O Max is like, look, if we want to keep this price point this high, yes we have premium, but that, that market is so small. And so, but if we just say, Hey, we can contain everything, you know, then you can price match, oh, this is just like Netflix.
Right. But just a, a different version. Right. A little bit more higher tier version of Netflix. Mm-hmm. So, so I get with that strategy there, but ultimately I think, like I was mentioning, they're just trying to create that perceived val, that brand awareness and get that a little bit higher. So a perceived value of the service so they can value it higher.
So when they do try to sell it, you know, they get. Way more money for it. And so, so, yeah. And also, also, yeah. And you see, I mean, in an announcement they made, I mean, yes, they rebranded, but that's what I was hinting at. They also talked about we're bringing back the hits, baby. Everything you love is coming back.
You know, you like Hobbits, we got 'em. You like, you like Harry, going back to Ho Hogwarts. Wait a minute, you like the whole seven series of movies we did. Guess what? We're gonna run it again. But it's a TV show. I'm like, wow. So it's like they're just like, you know, combing and they, you know, combing through all their IP and just gonna give all the, you know, to kind of make this more valuable.
And at the same time, like we talked about cutting cost, you know, give rid of shows like Westworld and trying to get money from these ad supported streaming services. Also selling off ip, you know, like Batman to Amazon, you know, doing things like that. So it's weird. Yeah, they're, they're like cutting costs, creating value.
It's, it's like, you know, it's, it's almost like they have a little small mom and pop shop. And they're like, man, we gotta sell it to the, to Walmart. So what we need to do to make it seem more valuable. Exactly. And that's, they're doing everything they can. We got too much debt. We got a hundred thousand dollars debt against the house.
Ugh, we gotta cut some costs. I can't pay these loan payments no more for my mortgage. So man, we got some trinkets here. What do we say? These shrinkers came from China, right? And maybe we can get some more people, you know, instead of charging 5 99, we can charge 10 99 for this. And so it's like, that's what, that's what they're doing, man.
It's just like, I mean, yes, billion do billions of dollars, but it's, there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to business. Man. This is just plain old. Let's get this thing ready to go. Wrapped up to
Mr. Benja: sell. Yeah. The premium strategy is difficult on its own. And when you have so many other properties you have to deal with, it's like, it's like if you own a sushi restaurant, if you own one sushi restaurant and.
You own 97 McDonald's restaurants, it's like, Hey, that's sushi restaurant's kind of dragging us down. You know, we can make a lot more money if we sold bad sushi at all these other McDonald's restaurants instead of trying to serve premium sushi at this one. So, I don't know. Things are happening.
Yeah,
Theo: it's a, it's a debate, you know, I mean, you know, there's a debate to say, Hey, well you could be more efficient if you're the best, you know, highest quality, but you know it, you know, like you said, yes when you're starting out. I think that's a strategy, good strategy because then you're, you're the best in the world.
You know, you can, you know, rise to the top and kind of penetrate a little bit faster, but when you. You're that massive billions of dollars, it's gonna take a lot more than just a niche little play here and there to kind of grow your business. Yeah. So yeah, you gotta get,
Mr. Benja: you gotta get good like the L V M H group.
Yes. Good. To the point where good to the point where the French people start protesting you, even though you're like one of the biggest businesses in the world.
Theo: Yeah. We're, we'll cover that on another pod. I'll love to get into that one. So. All right. All right.
Mr. Benja: All right. Now for story number four, the one Theo's been waiting on Super Mario movie is making that money second week in a row.
What's going on? Theo da?
Theo: Man, Mario Brothers man. So. Yeah, it's making money, man. I mean, and I think, I think we talked about this too. We both saw, we all saw the truck, you, me, and but shout out to Chris, Dr. Chris I think we both were kind of hyped by it. All three of us are hyped by it, right? As, as fans of Mario from the early days.
I mean, going back to Donkey Kong, right, to Mario Cart sessions in college. It just seemed like, oh man, this is just like, it just hit that sweet spot of just nostalgia, right? I mean, really more than anything. And so, you know, of course, you know, my kids, you know, are familiar with Mario from Smash Brothers and, you know, stuff like that.
So, so Mario's, you know, seen a renaissance. And so I just, I think we all knew it was gonna be big, but man, this big, I mean, they're projecting this is gonna be a billion dollar hitter, man. And this is crazy. It'll be the biggest video game movie, you know, of all time. Right? And so this is getting some rare fight air.
Mr. Bt, did you see the movie? I have not seen it. So no spoilers here. I would just say light on story, but high, high on nostalgia, man. I mean, you know, if you're talking, I mean, you're talking about the original Easter egg. I mean, they had so many Easter eggs in that thing, man. You just Oh, oh yeah, I remember that.
I remember. I mean, just little things. I mean, you know, and someone who's, you know, I know you would see every, you probably caught everyone even, you know, I call lot too. Just a little small little things man. You know not to get into too many details, but just stuff you would do with Mario cart, right?
With the different things or the hops you would do to kind of get away from, from the, the shells or, you know, how you would, you know, just little things that you played the game, you know? Oh, they put that in for us. And that was, that was the thing that got you hyped. Especi
Mr. Benja: ending. So it felt fun and authentic.
Theo: It felt very fun. I mean, especially as the one who's played it and then kind of sharing it with your kids that, I mean, that's probably why it's making so much money. Cuz the man, the theater I went to was nothing. But, you know, I took my kids and there was nothing but the kids in there. I mean, literally, everybody's going to the bathroom like every two minutes, right?
Because that's just what kids do, which is loud. Excuse me. Excuse me.
Mr. Benja: So,
Theo: Yeah, it was, yeah, yeah. It felt, it felt authentic. Yeah. You know, like I said, it felt
Mr. Benja: well, I mean, it felt like the video game. It felt like you were not like Some Hollywood guys made a video game movie. It felt like a proper Mario movie.
Yeah. It, it
Theo: felt like that. But you know, you could feel like they were kind of trying to create a story around it though. You know, it's kind of like, and it was like, here's some stuff at the beginning, like who Mario is, like what's his motivation? You know, who's his family? What's what's, you know, who's his character, you know?
Yeah. What's his, what's his one thing he wants to have, you know? Right, right. And then, you know, going through the mixing motion. Then in the middle of that, you know, the Act two is just probably really extended. We were just nothing but fun in games, right. Because it was like, no, made no sense to the, and then it's, oh, we gotta get back to the story.
And was literally, they were in the real world. I mean, you know, not too many sports, but they were in the real world. They went to, you know, the Mario world or whatever, and then they were back in the real world. And that's pretty much the extent of the story. The real world in the end of the real world, at the real world were like the, the bookends of that story.
Right. So you could probably cut out the whole second act and put the first act and third act together. And that was a story. Right, right. So make a long story short though. Yeah, I was hype man. I mean, you know, the kids seem to like it, you know, there's a lot of east to age Keisha hype and you just like, man, they just, they just hit that button, man.
And unlike Sonic, Sonic, you know mm-hmm. We watched all the Sonic ones. I think Sonic was more just kind of it had some of those, but not as many. They just put so many Easter eggs in there. It was just like, unreal. And so I get why it's making so much money. And they said second weekend was only 45% drop from the first weekend, which is unheard of.
That's, that's pretty strong. Yeah. And comparison Avengers Endgame, their second week jock was around 58. Percent. So it can shows you that like this thing has got legs, so it'll definitely make over a billion dollars. And yeah, I think kudos to them, man. I think it's you know, man, the power of video game movies, man.
Between this last of us man video games, man. I guess Mr. Binge man, you might have to go ahead and bringing them back, man. Tell 'em, tell the folks, tell the folks where you from, man.
Mr. Benja: Represent. Call, call Jack Black and see if he's ready to do the outlaws to the end. Oh. Oh. Yeah, that's, that's actually that's the shirt we used to wear.
They gave 'em out at Rockstar Outlaws to the end and Nice. They they disseminated a few of 'em out and people who know or in the know like, okay, outlaws to the end, red Dead Redemption.
Theo: I get it. Mr. Ben, they might give you that Hootie who call man, they might say, come on
Mr. Benja: back. Not likely. Who?
Theo: Warriors. Oh man. Come out and play.
Mr. Benja: Wait, you know, rockstar made a Warriors game, right?
Theo: I did not know that. I just
Mr. Benja: know. Yeah, that was, it was rock stars up and it was actually very good. Oh. Yeah. So it just not what you think a game would be f based on a movie, but it
Theo: really works, man. Mr. Benja, you know, you, you don't have to, you don't have to tell us, man, but if you involved in the movie, man, you know, you can let us know at the end.
I'll let you know. But yeah I, I like that, man. So, you know, what are your thoughts? I mean, you know, just from reading the, the Twitter sphere and all that and stuff like that, what are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Benja: Oh, it was like, you know, Hey, the Maery movie's cool. We're gonna go see it this weekend. It's like, fine.
After it came out, instead of the buzz dying down, like you were saying with the second week, it was like, oh no, it's pretty good. You should go see it. And I heard a lot of that more than I do for a lot of movies. And I guess that reflects in the numbers. I'm totally willing to check it out. I'm not, you know, against video game movies, I just know that they've had a past of putting out some schlock because they haven't figured it out.
So I'm, I'm glad this one's doing this thing, making money. What are we gonna see in the future? I, I suspect Nintendo will come with something else to, to follow up on this success, and you'll start seeing other, other plays. You know, if you got ideas on what you would think could be a good movie let me know.
I, I, I jumped a punch out. All those crazy characters punch out, you know after your, after you get a couple films and you wanna go serious, then you go to Metro, then, you know, you've also got your your extensions of the Mario Universe get, get a Donkey Kong movie in there doing some things. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And then
Theo: somebody else, oh, you, you do know he's in this one documentary. Yeah. I can see his spinoff though. Definitely. But that's the thing, it's like, Is this a good thing that we're gonna open up the Pandora box of all the, I mean, someone had me laughing, I don't know if you saw the the the link I sent, but they kinda highlighted, you know, some of the ways that this can go horribly off the, off the map.
They gave some some bad movie video game you know, translations like Spiro the Dragon, or banjo Kazu, or Ariel the Acrobat, I, I even remember that crappy video game. But,
Mr. Benja: Well, you know, some of these titles, they could actually be good. Even if the game isn't good, it could still be a good movie.
And in fact, the fact that the mo the game isn't good may actually make it more likely. That the movie would be good because they're like, listen man, just do whatever you want. The game was bad. We're just trying to make something good out of this.
Theo: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, to your point, they've, you know, I mean, they've been trying this for a while.
I mean, you know, Hitman series, obviously A Doom did that Crappy Doom movie they did prince of Persia. That was terrible. So, I mean, they finally starting to crack the code on this, right. To make this reality. And then they even did one I don't know if you remember this movie called Gamer. It was crappy, but it was trying to mm-hmm.
You know, what, you know, just, you know, just a perception of, you know, us being in kind of a, a gaming world and stuff like that. So, I don't know, man. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, last of us was really good. You know, Mario, I mean, to your point, I think that, you know, they have to get the creators involved, I think.
The creator of Mario. What, what was his name again? Shamia Moto. Yeah. I think he, he was involved and then of course, Neil Druckman, he was involved in last of us. So I think that helps because then that they, they understand the core of what makes us good. Yeah. And that's
Mr. Benja: why I was, that's where I was hinting out with the authenticity.
You need the certain people around to answer little questions. Because what happens in large scale developments where you're dealing with hundreds of people, someone has a question, they're like, Hey, would, would Mario eat a hamburger? And they was like sure, of course. And somebody would just go off and then somebody else might come up and say, no, no, no.
He doesn't, he wouldn't really eat a hamburger, he'd eat hotdog. It's like, why? It's, there's this whole set of reasoning behind every little decision. And once you have a bad decision or a not so authentic decision that ends up in the movie or in the product, I. That spirals off and makes more decisions like, well, where did you get this hamburger from?
Well, came from a hamburger stand. There are no hamburger stands, Mario, what, what is this about? You know? And suddenly it just keeps on adding and it's an additive problem where it keeps on adding to itself and compounding the inauthenticity.
Theo: No, that's a good point. I mean, it's like a brand guideline for your business.
It's like, there you go. What are you, what are you doing for, you know, you know, why do you make decisions this way? I don't know. Or building a culture. It, it is almost gotta gotta be these kind of like written these rules that people kind of like, okay, this is how we do it, you know? Yeah. Whether, you know it is the right way or wrong way, it's just, that's just how it is.
So, to your point, all the other decisions are easier to make. Right. You know, cuz someone made, made, it made sense to me. There can really be no creativity if there's no structure. So they kind of have to exist in itself. So, you know, if you had no. Structure at all, then there's no point in being creative.
You just, like, you're all over the place. But now if you have that box and you can play, you do whatever you want in that box, man's amazing stuff can come out of that. And so, so having a structure, you know, like you said with, with in business band guidelines or the, the, the develop the creator of the video game, telling you the rules of why, you know, there's no hotdog stands in, in Mario, right?
Then that makes sense because now it's like, okay, you are right. I can't have these hotdog stands here. Right. You know, cuz then it doesn't make sense. And then you're right, then authentic. The, the people who've played the game, they're like, wait, that's weird. Why? Why is a hotdog stand? No, I never seen that.
Oh, this movie's trash subconsciously. You may not say it out loud, but you, like, there's something off about this movie. Like, didn't a couple movies do that? Like like, you know, like I think X-Men back in the day, remember they all wore black leather instead their original colors. I mean it was fine at the time, but you know, and they kind of highlighted that.
But in the back of our mind we always thought, I don't know about that. That's crap.
Mr. Benja: Yeah. E exactly. And you'll see that a lot in definitely comic movies. And yeah, you always have to ask that question. It's like, Hey, why, why did they do that? Or when you start questioning too much, like, Hey, why did they do that?
Where'd that come from? Or, that doesn't seem right. The more that happens to a person watching, the more they get taken out of the experience. Absolutely. You know let's take it back to the old Batman and Robin. It's like, look I don't know why they're standing around chuckling. You know, why, why they're laughing and making these stupid jokes.
This is not how these characters would act. And it's like, well, we made that last joke. This joke should be fine too. And just spiraling, spiraling, snowball of
Theo: badness. And I think that's probably what helped the MCU is because no one really knew who Ironman's Char core character was. So, or Thor, or really.
You know, he had some sim semblance of it, but it wasn't like they were like a Spider-man or something like that. So when the M C U released Ironman, he was jokey, jokey, you know, we were like, cool, we'll just take it as, and now that's become the de facto characteristic of what the Ironman's about and de facto characteristic of all the characters are about M C U kind of mm-hmm.
Jokey. Jokey. Right. And so it's interesting how that kind of works, you know, if you, like you said, so it could be a bad video game and it can kind of imprint upon it, you know, better characteristics, better storylines to make it way better than it has any. You know, case of being, right. So, yeah, to your point, Ariel, the Acrobat could do well in the movies.
A billion, I don't know, but it
Mr. Benja: could. Yeah, man, they don't want me in there. I'll I'll tell 'em what's wrong with everything they're doing. Mr.
Theo: Bishop, you get back in these streets, man. The money out there, man, there's money in these, these, these video game streets. Now, brother,
Mr. Benja: I'm gonna go get money, get money from the video game streets, and then I'll spend that money on therapy sessions and trying to get back to reg reality.
Oh, man, I don't know if I need that, man. Love it. I'm done here.
Theo: Oh, man. What, what we got Last but not least, Mr. Bender.
Mr. Benja: Last but not least, we have story number five. It's all about beef. We got beef and it's hot. Beef is the new series, 10 episode Netflix series in com. Is it, wait hard,
Theo: is it as good as Hot D?
Mr. Benja: Oh, that's a good question. I think to a lot of people it is and much better.
Because, you know, this is g o t Hot D by the way. That's house of, you know, game of Thrones, house of Drag, house of the Dragon. That's what we are referencing. But yes, beef is a totally different style of series in conjunction with Netflix and a 24 and several notable Asian American actors. This film, not film, this series came out and see my, in my head, I'm putting it kind of in the film category already.
Mm-hmm. It came out kind of quietly and it's starting to get people's attention. Take 'em by storm. I wasn't going to watch through it, but I was convinced by you, by a couple others, like, yo, you need to check out this beef series. I was like, all right. And I was pleasantly surprised.
Theo: Yeah, man. You know, a 24 man, they can do no wrong man.
Those guys are great. And so they you know, they do all the classic horror films like a hereditary or Midsummer. Wait, are we doing spoilers? No, not well, no, no, not really. We just talked levelers, but a 24, you know, produced this and they've always done some great work and yeah. And so, you know, now they're getting to the TV line and this is one of their first projects and especially for, for Netflix.
Very high quality. Man, I was just blown away. Matter of fact, I didn't really, I remember when I first saw the premise of it, I was like is this even Is this, even Netflix? It's like, oh, it is. Cause it is, it is, it, it, it transverse. It's, it is more complex. It's, it's a comedy, but it's also a thriller.
It's also tragic and it's also, you know, drama. So it's got a lot of little things going on with it. And and also it is created by the the group that created Tuka and Birdie. Have, have you ever watched that cartoon at all? No. Yeah, it was cre it was on originally on Adele Swim. It was about like two, two con, two two birds.
One was played by Ali Wong, hilarious comedian and Tiffany Haddish. And they would just have a good time and and they would just have adventures. And then the guy who created it he and her and then Steven Yun, who we all know from Glen, from the Walking Dead they decided to come up with this.
Premise of like, Hey, this story called beef. And so I was like, wow, this is like way better than has any right of being man. All like you mentioned Asian American cast. I mean, you know, Ali Wong has been, you know, killing it cuz she did the you know her, I mean, you know, she came to fame right as a comedian from you know, the baby Cobra.
Did you ever see her comedy specials? No. No. Hilarious me and I'll check 'em out. I'll check 'em out. Yeah, check them out. I mean, her claim and fame was that basically she was on stage pregnant? The first one? Yeah, second one. She just said she had to do it anyway, cuz you know, that's just her brain. And so when she finally released her third one, she commented on that like, yes, no more babies.
But yeah, so she's funny. You know, she's been around, she rodee for Fresh Off the Boat. Just one of those kind of, you know, working comedians. And then she's now starting to get into drama. And then Steven Young, you know, he's, I mean, he's a good actor, man. I didn't know how good he was. I mean, you know, I saw the Walking Dead.
He was as Glen, he was decent then, but you know, he started to branch out. Yeah. Did you see him any, have you seen him, any of his recent stuff? Like a Nope. Or what was his last name? Yeah, that's right. Nope. Yeah, he was in, Nope. And he was in something else that was weird. It was called man, the Bootsy Collins movie.
But anyway, he's, he's been tearing it up for a while too, so for them to come up with this story, I mean, this TV show was amazing and yeah, man, it was, it was really good. I was really impressed. Yeah.
Mr. Benja: You know, and the reason I actually, your thoughts, oh I, it's not my, it wasn't what I wanted to see at the time, right?
Like, this is not the kind of thing that I wanted to watch at the time. And nevertheless, it still kind of got mee, I mean, that first episode, this is how you get somebody involved. You know, you kind of start off and everything is getting laid out, and you feel kind of the premise and you're like, huh. Okay, how does this go?
And you wanna watch the next episode, you wanna watch the next scene. It's, it's good in getting you in involved, and then you start to, when you start to look at the layers of it or why stuff is happening, what they're trying to say on multiple levels, then you start to appreciate it more for a, for a you know, an actual literary or film type of production.
It's not just your standard Netflix, you know, stuff. Mm-hmm. And so I'm like, okay, I actually have to stop and think to myself, okay, this isn't just my normal Netflix, whatever, I actually have to take a little more time with this. I have to do a H B O deal and then lean in a little bit. So no, I, while it wasn't what I wanted to watch and wasn't what I was looking for, I, I totally respect this.
And yeah, they did their job.
Theo: Man, did they, I mean, you know, it's just, I mean, it was just like one, you just didn't know what to expect with it. And it, and it kind of explored, well, number one, the cast, right? I mean, you know mm-hmm. All the major American, Asian American casts. I mean, you know, so that was definitely unique and different and and folks I've never seen before, right?
Like this, this, this artist, you know, David Cho and some other musicians and, you know, other artists, they were actually, you know, one of the first kind of acting gigs. They all were amazing. And, but then the storyline was interesting too. It wasn't just like a love story or just, you know, meet cute or anything like that.
It was more like, you know, you know what happens when two people, you know, are connected through anger. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you don't, you don't, you don't under, you know, it's like, wow, that's, that's a different way. But, you know, I was thinking about it and that's, you know, one of these things that these, this, this TV show kind of made you think, you know, that anger what hate and love or.
The same size, you know, two different sides of the same coin. Right? Yeah. You know, it's, apathy is the opposite. You, no one cares about you, then it's like, you know, that's what you don't want. But we see that with social media and everything. You know, people, unr, you know, you get engagement and so this, and then they kinda show what does that mean and why are they angry and, you know, how are they connected and do, can they work through that?
And so I thought, I was like, wow, this is
Mr. Benja: Yeah. Way better than it should be. Yeah. It's, it's definitely artistic on a lot of levels. And the, the, one of the reasons I, I, I mentioned the Asian American angle is because this is not a typical type of cultural show mm-hmm. That you would see. And it's not presenting itself as, you know, Hey, I'm this Asian American show.
But after you watch it, you're like, no, this is a different set of sensibilities that, you know, you would be. You would benefit from, you know, taking a, a, a look at or taking a, a deeper kind of consideration of even the name, you know, beef when it comes out when it starts at the show, it's like, you know why they're calling this thing beef.
And then you gotta start considering the ramifications. You know, what is beef? It's this cultural food. It's got, you know, a very high end. It's got a very low end version of it. Mm-hmm. The characters are, you know, well, you know, there's the meat of the story, you know, is this is this anger thing. It's tough, it's, you know, you gotta grill it up where you gotta, it's, mm-hmm.
Is it, is it really healthy for you? You know, there's all these discussions around it. No point. And I'm going to all these different angles because, Once you start watching it, you'll start seeing, oh, okay, this is a more artistic show than I'm used to on Netflix. You start seeing the paintings from David, you know, David Cho showing up at the beginning of every title card where it's got this, you know, it's got this seriousness, but then it's got this, you know, frivolity that's also layered in there.
So how do you, how do you consume this show? How do you even process it? It's, it's just very different. And I'm glad it worked. I'm glad it came out. I'm glad, I glad I sat down and saw it. You know, to be fair, I did try to, you know, 1.5 speed through a lot of it, so I couldn't totally sit down and watch it like I wanted to, but I did want to finish it up and talk about it here a
Theo: little bit.
No, no, that's very well said. I mean, it was one, yeah, it's definitely one of those shows that kind of, you know, made me think a little bit more about just like, you know, what are you presenting? And I, you made a good point. It's not your traditional, like, you know you know, here's some Asian Americans and this is, you know, You know, how they're supposed to act or her, how's they supposed to, you know, react.
It was just like regular people. It reminds me of another show. Did you have you, you heard of this show called Swarm? Have you seen that yet? I haven't watched Swarm yet. Yeah. Very interesting show. Basically talking about a young lady, young black lady and her love for a musician who may or may not be Beyonce.
Let's just say that. And, but they took us some dark places. Right. And just high, you know, I'm not gonna spoil it too much, but she was not a sympathetic character. And you know, so now we're getting to the point. Remember at one time, you know, anytime they showed a minority on a, on a TV show, a movie or something like that, you know, they're always like, you know what they call, I mean, for lack of a better word, the magical negro, right.
You know, the person that would show up and just, Mr. White man, this is how you do everything you're supposed to do and live a good life. Right. You know, just, yeah. Even on, you know, the Asian Latins, you know, everybody that showed up because you know, they want to present positive images right. To society.
But now we're kind of flipping the script and now we're telling like, okay, these are people at the end of the day, no matter what minority group they're coming from. So yes, they have good parts and bad parts, and that's what making these stories more thrilling because now they're real as opposed to, I, you know, I may, you know, I may, you know, yes, they, they come from a different cultural background, but I probably knew somebody that looks like that, you know, that, that.
That acts like those characters in beef, right? Even though Yeah, I'm, and that's, you know, what they said university universality comes from the specific, right? So if you can create something very specific, then people can see themselves in it no matter what, color, race, belief or whatever. And I think that's what makes the stories
Mr. Benja: more powerful.
Oh, definitely. It's it's very well done. It's got a, it's got a Korean front to it, a Korean you know, that's, that's the primary direction. A lot of it's taking influence is, is from Korean American situation. But, you know, there's also a lot of cultural things with you know, Japanese influences a little bit of China in there.
These are interrelationships between, you know, segments of the population that I don't fully understand, but I kind of saw it hinted at and I was like, okay, that's, that's good that I can. That I consist there's something else going on, but it doesn't disturb the story if I know about it or don't know about it.
Either way, it still all flows, right? Mm-hmm. So no, I was, I was just very happy to see, I thought it was portrayed very well. I thought it was very nuanced. Interesting. There are parts of it that I might have to go back and watch again just to see how they played out certain scenes. So good stuff, man.
I love it. I love it. Oh, and you know, Netflix loves it too because I think they're finally starting to figure out, you know, Hey, these Asian Americans, these Koreans, we can, we can, we can work with this. So,
Theo: you know what, yeah, we need to get our buddy on the, on the pod, man, see what his thoughts, you know, just what's happening is Asian renaissance with, you know, everything everywhere, all at once.
When Oscar and this, you know, just kind of what his thoughts as, as running at Chinese Theater. Is he seeing, you know, the excitement, the mo movement, right? What's happening? So I'll be curious to get Chinese pirates take on this. Yes. We'll get 'em back on here. Awesome. Awesome, man. Man, this is great.
I love it. Mr. Benja, this has been a great, great, great podcast, man. What we, what, what's going on for the week for you, man? What, what's the next steps?
Mr. Benja: Hey, man, I am chilling the heck out, man. I am, I'm getting to a new era of, of relaxation and, you know, not having beef with people and you know, just, but not, not, not shying away at all.
Just being really strong in my flow and continuing to go. I'm like the, the river that carves through mountains, baby. I'm just, I just got my flow going on and I'm, I'm working at it every week.
Theo: Oh man. That's awesome, man. That's good. Good, good. Yeah, man, I'm just, you know, same here, man. I got some stuff coming back.
Business partner will be back shortly here soon, so that'd be good. So I can, you know, get back into what I do best, which is marketing, but, you know, really kind of reevaluating the business and been reading a lot of marketing books and stuff like that and trying to you know, the guru space.
Man, it's amazing, man. This guru space is so deep, man. It goes into, it goes deeper and deeper, but you know, you start seeing the threads of hire. Everybody is all working. I said, okay, so I'm starting to understand how this could work for me and my business. So I'm learning a lot there. But yeah, man, I'm just excited about, you know you know, this summer taking some time off here in May, so that'd be good.
All right. Yeah, I need to, it's been a lot, so,
Mr. Benja: Well in, in, in May, you know, h b o Max is, or Max is, is gonna be relaunched. So I want you to sit down and watch it all and come back with
Theo: the report. I, I shall Mr. Bitcher, you know, on the beach. I shall, you know, me, I, I catch up on all my stuff on the, on the, on the breaks.
So, man. Well, this has been great everyone. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe and comment at show versus business on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts, but you wanna check us out on our website, go visit show versus business, Mr.
Benja. Have a great one. Peace.