The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Welcome to "The Greenfield Reportwith Henry R. Greenfield," where 50+ years of world travels across 10 countries shape insightful takes on current geopolitical events. Join Robert for eye-opening global reports with practical local solutions, and enjoy guest appearances offering fresh perspectives. Embark on a journey of understanding and lively discussion.
The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Episode 25- From Golden Age to Corporate Formula: The Evolution of Film. With Jett Dunlap
The Hollywood dream machine is breaking down, and Producer, Director, Writer, Actor and longtime LA native Jett Dunlap takes us behind the scenes of an industry in transformation. From growing up surrounded by the magic of filmmaking to witnessing its corporate takeover, Dunlap delivers a masterclass on how American cinema lost its soul—and what might save it.
Remember when movies gave us unforgettable lines and characters that became cultural touchstones? Dunlap explains why today's billion-dollar blockbusters rarely produce memorable moments. The culprit? A fundamental shift from artistic vision to shareholder value, where CEOs rather than directors make creative decisions. Even acclaimed filmmakers rarely receive "final cut" privileges, leaving writers and directors watching helplessly as their work gets transformed by corporate mandates.
Los Angeles itself has suffered as production flees to Georgia, New Mexico, and overseas locations. The traditional pathways for discovering talent have been replaced by algorithm-driven casting and social media influencers with limited acting experience. Meanwhile, aging stars command nine-figure salaries simply because they represent known quantities in an industry terrified of risk.
Yet within this challenging landscape, Dunlap sees hope. The democratization of filmmaking technology means talented creators no longer need Hollywood's permission to reach audiences. "If you have something you want to do and you have a unique location that Hollywood would never go to, go shoot it, go make it," he encourages. "You have the same power as a kid who lives in Hollywood."
Whether you're a film buff curious about industry changes, a creator seeking to understand new opportunities, or simply someone who misses the magic of truly memorable cinema, this conversation offers crucial insights into how storytelling's most powerful medium lost its way—and how it might find its soul again.
Ready to create your own cinematic vision? The barriers have never been lower, and the world has never needed authentic stories more than now.
Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.
Speaker 2:This is Henry R Greenfield with the Greenfield Report, reporting from Los Angeles as we go around America and talk to typical and maybe not so typical Americans about what is going on today in their part of the world. Today we are with Jett Dunlap and and Jet's going to introduce himself. Because it's such a wonderful and complex biography I don't think I could do justice to it. All right well, with that as an introduction, jet Dunlap, welcome to the Greenfield Report.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you, I yeah, as way of my introduction, I am a LA native. My parents are both from Los Angeles. My father's mother immigrated from Mexico. His father was a Scottish lawyer, and not just a Scottish lawyer. He did law. That wasn't just Scottish, but he was Scottish. And my mom comes from a big Sicilian family. She's one of nine out in LA.
Speaker 3:My parents were young when they had me, they were teenagers so I grew up at my grandparents' house. A big Italian Catholic family had a lot of uncles and aunts, which was great. As they got older they moved out and moved around. So when I was a kid I spent a lot of time up in Santa Cruz where my aunt ended up being a teacher, went into the entertainment industry. Well, wanted to do that since I was a kid I mean, I'm a child of you know the 80s and 90s and movies at that time. I mean, if you have things like Rocky and Back to the Future and Star Wars and huge tentpole films, all these movies that just were so significant when I was young, growing up in Los Angeles, I would compare it like someone who grows up on a farm or even near a farm in a farming town. They understand farm culture even if they're not on a farm. And I said that's kind of like growing up on a Los Angeles or a Hollywood.
Speaker 3:My brother went to Notre Dame High School. He went to school with Oscar winners and you know Kirsten Dunst was in his class, so she was interviewed with a vampire and then Rami Malek, oscar winner for Bohemian Rhapsody. He used to hang out with my brother at my parents' house so there was a lot of exposure. Even when I was a kid and you'd see streets closed down, you'd go over there and someone from the set it was really friendly. Back then they'd go like, oh yeah, we're making a movie, and so the funny thing about LA is that when you go on set and you work in film and television, everyone is a transplant.
Speaker 3:The lowest percentage of people who work in film and television are Angelenos, unless it's someone who had a family member. So it's very rare to see people who are actually from LA and that's usually because the warning got to us. So you knew enough. People who are waiters, who are going to break into the industry, still trying to do it when they're 60s. You know, you have this kind of warning system. For me it, just it felt nearby, it felt possible. I was massively ambitious. Even as a kid I used to talk about how I never felt as a religious experience as I did like when I went on the first set. There was this energy I had never felt from anywhere and I just I knew I had to be a part of that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, that was an amazing introduction, thank you. So take that, and I think what listeners would be really interested to hear is again part of this Going Across America series and, remembering that I'm based in Europe and so coming back here, a lot of this is updates and news for me and very fortunate to meet you here. I think would be of real great interest to people if they're listening in France or Australia or in Singapore or other places is how has this changed from this sounding pretty much a joyous experience, even though we all know that there were the, as you said, the waiter stories and people who never made it. But how did this evolve and begin to move away from this to where we are?
Speaker 2:You know, as outsiders never mind things like fires or anything else like that, but we get this apocalyptic kind of feedback of the film industry almost imploding on itself. It went out to other places. Film industry almost imploding on itself. It went out to other places we talked last night about. Detroit had a mini industry for a while as other places were funding that. What happened to LA and the industry here, which totally seemed to control the American film industry, to where it's now in question?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a four-hour conversation on that. And then there's the more condensed one. Narrative is how we understand the world, we as a community, we as a people, we as a species. That goes back to Annie Around Fires, oral tradition, stuff like that. When film came out, it had a unique ability to transcend culture, time and space. But not only that it gave an opportunity to young people and illiterate people a way to share narrative. They couldn't before. So you know, typography was huge and that gave us history and it gave us continued knowledge. Film was able to inject and condense narrative into the most potent form. Narrative into the most potent form.
Speaker 3:So I used to say on my podcast if you in the future, with AI, dna manipulation, if you could go to a real Jurassic Park and you had to wait in line, you're going to be frustrated. Then you have to pay at the front, then someone's going to bump you, then it's going to be too hot. Then, by the time you see a dinosaur, there's some guy with his kid on his shoulders and your view is blocked. In film, john Williams' music comes up and then that penultimate moment, the camera hits Spielberg learning from John Ford. There's this moment and this visceral feeling of unreality, the potential, the possibility for humanity. Film gives you the reality you want, not the reality you live.
Speaker 3:For me, as a kid I had a tough childhood, learning disabilities. My parents were very young, so that had its challenge. My release every week was movies and I used to say when I first started in film and television that I was paying at the altar of film because it gave me so much. I was willing to do whatever I had to. So when I was doing PA work or background work at the beginning, you know a lot of people were like, oh, this sucks, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like no man, this is fine, I just want to be a part of the show.
Speaker 3:And when I got into film and television mostly television, just because television is a hundred times more there's procedurals and all those things, csis, whatever it is that's always shooting, especially when I started in the early 2000s, when you got on set it was this beautiful, organized chaos. So all these people doing their own thing, everything is a mess. Behind the scenes it looks like a construction site, but then in front of the lens there's this brilliance. And I got to work on a set of friends. Everybody Loves Raymond and some of these TV shows, and you'd see the writers, especially on Friends joke wouldn't land with the audience, they'd write it again. I mean that's the kind of like level of if they didn't feel it resonated, the writers that were there were going to write the joke again until it landed and you were explaining that to me yesterday that sometimes they would go late into the night and the audience the studio audience stuck with them while they took take after retake.
Speaker 2:So has that changed?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and it's a good setup for the change. It evolved. It wasn't overnight, but things started to happen. Basically, it comes down to what Spielberg and Lucas did unintentionally they were the first ones to go to film school First generation really come out of film school. You know, george makes this movie about the corruption of big corporations and empires and then he ends up being his victim of his own story, one of the most resonant cultural narratives ever. I mean, he took Joseph Campbell and the Bible and condensed it into this space Jesus and wizards. And it's so significant. They gave birth to the corporate movie, so movies could be a hundred million million. Movies could have Coca-Cola in it. This idea didn't exist before, so you weren't using product placement, so a movie's budget was going to be based on its ticket returns.
Speaker 2:By the way, even Wes Anderson does that now Primary colors. So you know that's Coca-Cola. There's no doubt in any in Scarlett Johansson's hanging onto that Coke bottle until it's been placed.
Speaker 3:And that is kind of you know the way they looked at. It was a necessary evil because you were going to compete in the box office world. You had to bring in corporate sponsors and the problem with that was that once you do that, if they say, well, I also want to have this car chase be practical and I want to shut down the LA streets or I want to shut down San Francisco like in Bullet, in that case you're asking for another $25 million and as a director especially the guys who are coming out of film school, the people who came out in the way I did, which was grassroots I got a VHS-C camera when I worked at McDonald's. My boss had one and I said I'll work for two months if you give me that camera. I paid him like 600 bucks as a kid and I just went out and shot skateboard videos and stuff like that really early. That was like John Ford and that was Spielberg to a certain extent. The guys were coming out of school, usc especially. They went in and they're like we're playing with toys over here that we want to have in a bigger budget way and you get the Michael Bays and people who take it to extreme levels of budgets.
Speaker 3:And what happened was is that the filmmakers, who may have even been a little more humble, a little less likely to do those things with Quentin Tarantino as an exception where they felt they had to. And then the studios would say, well, unless someone's writing a variety about how expensive this film is, no one's going to care. That's really when it started to change, when it became. How much is the actor getting paid? How much is the budget? And I wrote an essay about this recently, talking about the art of craft. The beginning of my essay says I was overhearing the conversation with my brother's friends and they were saying well, it had to have been good. It made so much money. This is like Avatar, a movie that made a trillion billion cotillion dollars that no one remembers. A single line from, no one ever quotes, it's not in the news, no one ever says oh, this is like Avatar. It has no ethos. It's not like when you get to the top of a steps in a museum and you put your arms up like Rocky.
Speaker 2:Well, you're going into something that I also spoke with your partner, gina, about, which is, essentially, we no longer have these iconic lines. Right, gina was explaining to me as well as you have. Also, I mean, I hate to say it, when I'm watching reels on Facebook or anything else, everything is from the 40s, 50s, 60s. I cannot remember a single line from anything. She was right. I started recalling that and going, no, I don't remember any lines. Like you know, make my day, or you know you're talking to me, but we've all seen it 10,000 times.
Speaker 2:So where are those lines? Why are we not getting the iconic? Whether there's a budget or not, there are people who are not like the most famous guys. Joe Pesci has had some great lines, you know, but where are those lines? Where are those people?
Speaker 3:You're calling me funny, funny, how, yeah, yeah, I mean Goodfellas, amazing, yeah, the early 90s even. There's an easy answer to that. I have written independently but my friends who've written big films and I have my writing coach and one of my close friends. He had an over $100 million movie. When the budgets became that big, they were getting most of the money from publicly traded corporations publicly traded corporations and when that happens you sign that they can write it however they want. Afterwards they can write over your writing. It doesn't matter what you write, it's theirs. If they decide that the most important part of this film is to catch a moment in time and ethos of the culture, or there's some special interest they want to put focus on, or they want to promote a new IP, that is what it's going to be.
Speaker 3:There are two, maybe three director writers in the industry who have Final Cut. Even Christopher Nolan, who is going out for James Bond, didn't get Final Cut. He wasn't picked. None of them do. If you want to work as a screenwriter I don't know a single screenwriter and I know probably 40 on a first name basis. When you ask them about their project, don't hang their head and go yeah, man, yeah, I did that, but you don't have to watch it, because what they wrote and they'll give me their script compared to what came out is completely different. Here's what happens it goes through the system and they'll give me their script. Compared to what came out is completely different. Here's what happens it goes through the system and then it lands on the desk.
Speaker 3:Even Bob Iger was talking about this. If you read his book, he was writing certain moves in Star Wars. And we're talking about CEOs, right? You don't have a CEO. Look at a painting. Pollock didn't check with a CEO before he turned it in. You know this is ludicrous in any other art form. To think that the corporate, even in music they're still able to do their own thing, even more so now than before. It doesn't make the same kind of money, but if you self-produce or you have something that resonates dude, they can just play and put something out. With film and television, the budgets were so big. If you want to be a writer, especially within the last 10-15 years, you had to write what they wanted. You had to rewrite it the way they wanted. The idea that the IP focused corporate executive officer was going to be someone who had opinions on an art form, on the screenplay, was crazy, and now that is the standard.
Speaker 2:So, if you go back and think about it, we all have heard of the studio system and all those famous guys that would come in and sometimes, unfortunately, young women would have to get their way onto the screen. But those people made that decision, but people were part of the studio system and were typecast, all right. So then we had this period of your calling kind of like a flowering and fun, and 70s, 80s, maybe into the 90s. It sounds to me like we have another bad version of the studio system, except now we have corporations and maybe focus groups, you know, showing what the final cut's going to be, which may have nothing to do and I don't say nothing but may have significantly altered what the writer did, of course, who's no longer involved very much and I've heard numbers on writers which are they get paid minuscule amounts and even the director you're saying doesn't have control. So who has control in the end about what we're seeing on the screen?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. During the golden age of film film when they had players that were contracted contracted players there was a lot of evil, there was a lot of bad stuff we hear about that but there was also great product, and one of the reasons was the director and the actor had a ton of say. The directors that got in, the writers that got in, they were valued. These guys were kings and queens, and so the studio still focused on successful product. And here's the beauty of that and what changed now. Successful product was ticket sales and film was a meritocracy. You only had a successful film if everyone bought a ticket. So what resonated continued Casablanca, it doesn't matter what you look at, citizen Kane. Those films became what they were Now. Some of them became more iconic later for their. You know, I'm not saying that all of them were box office success. Most of them were. They were successful because the largest amount of people saw it.
Speaker 2:But weren't the I mean they also the number of cinemas, theaters were controlled by certain groups. What I thought and what we're not, I'd really like to get here. I thought things like streaming, in particular, okay, should have been able to provide more broader content with newer actors, and you and I discussed this earlier was that, basically, there's not a lot of young talent that is coming up right now. We get retreads of the Marvel, we get retreads and retreads and retreads. In some cases less, I would have to say, from watching Netflix and other streaming. It's not been a total failure.
Speaker 2:Because, I do see a lot of product. Now. The product seems to me, unfortunately, to be more formulaic. Okay, and then I want to get to the AI question in the future.
Speaker 3:but if you can answer that, so streaming changed everything All of a sudden. Just in a residual standpoint I get buyouts. So instead of what it used to be, was you got per view, I'll get something that says your show went to Germany. Here's a check. You're not getting anything per stream. So that changed the residual aspect of it, which changes a lot of business part of it. One of the reasons you don't see a lot of great young talent, like the fact that Brad Pitt is still Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise is still Tom Cruise. For the most part, there is no movie star. There is no starlet.
Speaker 2:There's no 60s or older.
Speaker 3:Right, the old movie star was. Their name came before the title. It was like this is a Brad Pitt movie, this is a Tom Cruise movie, this is a, you know, natalie Wood, all the way back, right. What happened was and this is within the last believe it or not 15 years the most talented or most beautiful, or whatever it is, are going to social media. They are on Instagram. They are, I hate to say it only fans. They're on YouTube and it's because it pays so much more directly if they're successful that they don't want to leave. When I hosted red carpet events all the way back to even like four or five years ago, I once got to interview Jane Fonda and she was amazing. Just, I met her when she was in her seventies and she just had such a power in chemistry.
Speaker 2:She's also very measured. Regardless of the nonsense they ask her, she will sit and think and give her a valuable answer, but go ahead.
Speaker 3:She was amazing. Then, about three or four people later, my producer brings me over and they say, okay, this person's a huge Instagram influencer. She comes over and she says I don't interview from that side, you need to shoot me from this corner, you need to do this, you need to do that. And then she was shy on camera. So she had demands. Jane Fonda didn't. She told me what she needed and then she was shy. Here's what happened.
Speaker 3:Everyone who is social media famous has never done anything in front of a crew. They've never done anything with a team. They never had to audition 400 times to get a gig. And even Jane, who came from it from a family, she got to see it through her family, right, she understood it. She still had to audition. She had her peaks and valleys in her career. These people who are coming from social media you think it's just in front of a camera or in front of a camera, is in front of a camera. No, they've been doing it by themselves in a room, and so that doesn't translate to film. Why would they stay on social media? Because some of them are making five to $10,000 a month and they know that if they start auditioning, the pool of people is going to be smaller.
Speaker 2:And my understanding on the auditioning, from speaking again to your partner, gina, is that auditions no longer are face to face. It fits with this narrative which essentially is you do in-home videos, you send it out and, as Gina was explaining, they're looking for a certain typecast. So we're going to eliminate all women who look like this. We only want them this or this color, or this, this or this body size, and so then they have a very small pool before they'll actually do anything, maybe not even look at the videos, and I find that to me highly restrictive. So you don't really get any kind of nuance. And again back to your point you don't know if any of these folks are going to be any good in front of a camera and a set and the chaos that you were talking about. So how are we going to get out of that? And secondly, how do we get back to the point where we get a broader range of talent and not just demographics or not just a certain look.
Speaker 3:So there's nothing bigger than that. How many stories have you heard whether it's Tom Cruise, whether it's George Clooney, whether it's Harrison Ford, whoever it was who said I had a horrible audition, but there was something that connected with me and the casting director, something that connected with me and the director that day that they said this is who I want. There's no chemistry that's going to come across your cell phone in your apartment in Studio City. The people who may be most comfortable on their phone have never been in front of a Panavision camera and a hundred people behind the camera. You have to get this thing done because the sun is setting. They've never done that.
Speaker 3:Myself and my wife coming up in that, we've done that. I've had the whole budget of a project depending on me making sure that I can still be on one knee for 45 minutes because the scene's about to shoot and the camera's been set up and the focus is so thin that you can't move in and out because your nose isn't focused and if you move forward it's not gonna work. All of that pressure they've never experienced. But they may kill on auditions or they may fit a type that algorithmically now is being sorted.
Speaker 2:So if you look at the move this to LA, which I think would be of interest to the entire world, how does this affect the movie industry in LA? If the talent is the video folks or oldies that are getting really long in the tooth, and, as I was again speaking to Gina, you know you get overweight middle-aged women who are, or even older, who are now pretending to be Marvel heroes, so it all becomes unbelievable. And not just to pick on the women, but Robert Downey Jr coming back for his next tens of millions.
Speaker 3:I mean, he's like hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions 70.
Speaker 2:And there's no money being spread around and we're not getting the talent. I mean, are the, are the film festivals, a way to break in, or is that, I understand, also a bit of a game?
Speaker 3:So first off, let's talk about the movie stars, why they're still working with people who are well north of 60. Ip. You have a Robert Downey and he has so much clout at Comic-Con. He has such a following Because the corporations own Marvel and all this stuff. They want the shortest distance between them and profitability. And Robert Downey has 30 years of a resume, whereas you can't get a person who's been in film for two years to have 30 years of a resume. So, because he comes with his own audience, they're always going to do that Same thing with Tom Cruise and not to take anything away from either of them because they're amazing. But that is the focus. No one wants to take a chance on someone new and that makes the product suffer. Because you're, there's no more suspense of disbelief every time you watch anything. You're just like well, I know that person's not going to die.
Speaker 2:I'm waiting now for tom cruise to do his next stunt yeah, yeah or or in the oh, not that one. That stunt was not as amazing as last time. Yeah, exactly, you're comparing stunt versus stunt, which is and I'm not even sure if there's a plot to the movie anymore.
Speaker 3:That's what I heard about the last Mission Impossible. I didn't see it, but I heard that it's also there's no stakes anymore, right? So if you watch the superhero movie or any kind of epic movie, even Star Wars, you didn't know Darth Vader was Luke's father. Not even the cast did. You didn't know if this person could be killed off or not. You were scared. What is Luke going to die? That's gone because Marvel now announces their projects for eight years. So where's the fun in that? If I know that all these characters aren't going to die, if I know there's no stakes, how are you going to be afraid for your favorite hero if you know they're in 10 other movies?
Speaker 2:So how does this and I really want to jump forward here to AI, because you were talking to me about that yesterday and you believe that writers are in deep trouble because of AI. You felt that they had overplayed their hand in some ways by jumping into the formula and not really turning out a great product, which leaves them vulnerable to AI taking more and more of their space. And then LA where is the state of play here for LA? Because we all hear that the industry is in deep trouble.
Speaker 3:Right. So LA and NAI, they're intertwined. Hollywood didn't do what any other industry had to do, which is, they never said, here is where the world is going to be and we're going to go there. Hollywood still thinks that they're 1990, 1950, 1930. The executives are now technologists. So Jeff Bezos and the people who they put in charge are still old school studio heads who think the studio is king, even though over at Warner Brothers they've turned some of their main lots into pickleball courts because they didn't have any use for the studio space anymore. They are thinking that this is a trend. They're thinking that there is a way to get over it.
Speaker 3:The reason I talked about the writer's strike, which affected myself and my wife, and the actor's strike which because remember this came at the end of COVID. So at the end of COVID and again I understand why the writer's strike happened and I understand why the actor's strike happened. I'm saying you don't have four years of nothing and then say and I'm not anti-strike, but you don't say here are demands. If they took 10 seconds to look into AI, which they knew about, it is inevitable. And movie attendance after COVID has not rebounded. La was still charging the same permit prices as they were before. One of the biggest reasons stuff left LA, even before COVID, was that Los Angeles was catering only to the major studios, even A24 and companies like that that were coming up. You couldn't shoot on an LA street. If you in Los Angeles put a tripod down, cops would stop you. If you shot anything that looked like a movie, they would stop you because they wanted the permits. La made so much money from that and the politicians or whatever it was the infrastructure is making so much money of that, they still wanted to.
Speaker 3:So what happened? Went to New Mexico, it went to Georgia, now the UK, hungary. It's gone everywhere that's not here because people can't afford to shoot here. And then the major studios which is the funniest thing in the world they started shooting in those places. So Marvel shot in Georgia, even though the signatory office is in Los Angeles. So LA did it to themselves, the thinner and thinner the production became. You still had people who were union of all kind expecting the same kind of work that they had before.
Speaker 3:Then studios would greenlight projects because they had to have a large budget film, even if it wasn't going to be of any kind of quality. So when they went out to make it, they were trying to hit their market quotas. Once it became about stock price, it was hype, right? So the D23, which is Disney's big slate of where they announce their projects, that became more important than the actual release of the film. What you have coming out. Because what is the stock market? It's perception of the future, right so?
Speaker 3:Bob Iger, probably one of the most successful CEOs in modern history, because he got Lucasfilms, he got Pixar, he got Fox. He was planning on leaving after that and tried to leave because it was acquisition, the bubble was going to burst at some point, but because he had all that intellectual property, disney just keeps going up and as long as that happened, all they had to do was announce projects. Now let's go to Lucasfilms, kathleen Kennedy. They've announced probably 10 or 12 projects that never came out Star Wars, franchise TV shows or films that never came out. So once perception became the market for film and television and not box office, you have a totally different industry okay, you know, I mean that's pretty powerful stuff.
Speaker 2:So where are we, uh, today in la? Is there a way back for la? Absolutely become more, uh, relevant, and I don't want to say the word inclusive in terms of like demographics, but inclusive in terms of more talent.
Speaker 3:Film. The reason I'm in it, the reason people my age and older got into film, was because I'm not talking about people who are nepotism or anything like that, but people who came here from all over the world. These people who came from everywhere to do what they love and would do anything to get in, you know, like myself, hundreds and thousands of hours of just getting people coffee and doing background work for $67 a day in 110 degree weather, wearing a suit, so I could be in the background background of a CSI. Right, that has to be what fuels the industry. It has to be resonant stories that stir a person's soul, make them laugh, make them feel something that in the absence of that project, they wouldn't.
Speaker 2:Can LA do that now?
Speaker 3:So that's the question they would have to go back to that.
Speaker 2:And then that'll happen.
Speaker 3:That'll happen. That'll happen.
Speaker 2:Has the pendulum gone to corporatization?
Speaker 3:Will the studio do it, who knows? Because the studio system if they're still trying, disney stock is doing well right now. Why would they do anything different? Who knows what will happen to the studio system. Will other studios that have resonance, that get eyeballs on YouTube or start to get a following on? You know, maybe Netflix will even pick it up. And these people are doing grassroots, let's say. They do it like a self-published book, like we were going out and showing to people. We've had three premieres here. We've had big screens outside and velvet ropes and all that stuff and tickets.
Speaker 3:Will it be able to be bootstrapping yourself into attention with AI? Will you be able to compete with Marvel? No, but will those movies, the more and more they keep giving people the same thing, lose resonance, lose audience and will people start searching for something new from their phone and then deciding to see it on a big screen? That's happening. Will LA ever be the LA it was? No?
Speaker 3:Gone are the day of 190 people on the outside, 1200 people working for a movie and everyone getting paid. There's not going to be 25 producers whose kid play soccer with the other person's parent who go to one of these fancy schools. That's done. You won't need 25 executive producers. I hate to say it, but even in the practical whether it's camera departments or whatever it is those are going to be shrunk. And the unions which I am a part of and I understand their function and their purpose it is just. It's not tenable. You're going to have the studio that's trying to do their thing and then you're going to have a bunch of grassroots kids. There is a generation of people who have been shooting in 4K their whole lives, who have been making movies on their phone their whole lives.
Speaker 2:We don't know what that kind of film looks like so it seems to me that we always talk about disruption oh, absolutely silicon valley talks about that a lot, but is this industry, uh, ripe for disruption? I mean, you're kind of talking a disruption scenario here, but money is a big part of that.
Speaker 3:Hollywood never count them out Again. The studios, paramount's having their issue right now with the merger. You know they're getting rid of the Late Show, the big bloated projects they had that were never made money. So you know, in the case of Stephen Colbert, it's like this show was losing money and it was costing hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a TV show still the entertainment industry. If someone who is independent is able to start getting their own grassroots following, that's what it's going to be. It's going to be a brand director.
Speaker 2:Do you believe that? Take a Colbert, nevermind the politics, but take a Colbert and the money. And I've been on the Colbert show and I even had a chat with him.
Speaker 3:You know that's awesome thing. We had a discussion, but it's it was pretty obvious that it costs a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Okay, he gets $50 million, yeah, exactly. But he's talking a big game, talking kind of left side politics.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:Yet he's collecting a lot and he's paying out a lot of people. Can that be shrunk to more of? A'm going to give you an old dave garroway, you know kind of uh. Back to the desk where there was the important. Guest comes in, but we don't have such elaborate costs, or not?
Speaker 3:dick cabot right. His interviews are. He was a disruptor. I can't imagine his show cost anything because it's just him sitting on a chair. The most successful interview style shows are on YouTube and they hand Stephen Colbert his lunch. No politics here. You can't alienate half the country and still expect to have the audience in the key demo. You're just going to lose audience. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3:And also, to be honest, a lot of his interviews are insipid makes sense and also be honest, a lot of his interviews are insipid. Oh my god. I was a huge David Letterman fan and I was a huge Conan O'Brien fan because I was a kid when Conan O'Brien was coming up and his stuff was so wacky when he was a writer on the Simpsons it was the best Simpsons episode. And then, dave, no matter what it was, if you were some big movie star, he was going to take you down a peg and I loved that. I was never a big Jay guy but I understood Jay's purpose. I met Jay Nice guy. They were not pandering.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't about them. Colbert, in particular, it's always about him. It's always got to be some aspect of Second City, chicago and other things that Colbert has done and I feel like, look, I'm a fan of most of his politics, but the reality to me is he has a 12 to 15 minute monologue of let's bash the right OK, with a couple of funny bits in there. Then he's got these kind of really boring interviews, yeah, and then we close with maybe. You know, the best one is if he gets Paul Simon, but most of the time they're not that kind of kind of level. Kimmel is better, because I think he has a, a talent pool and Kimmel seems to connect. Fallon seems to be the guy that's just kind of missing entertaining.
Speaker 3:He was trying so hard and you could tell that was a problem with him is that Fallon was just like I'll dance, I'll sing, I'll do whatever.
Speaker 2:I'll do whatever I am and whatever you say is brilliant. It seems to me like we're. I guess the point here is while I don't agree with dump the franchise on late night because we're in divorce, what are we going to do? Sell costume jewelry all the time after 11 o'clock at night, or go to streaming, or whatever we're doing? We are at an inflection point. Absolutely Can you speak to that just for a moment.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely so. The reason Stephen Colbert is worth bringing up on the same side as a Marvel movie is it's the same problem. Will anyone ever be worth Downey? I think Downey got like just south of $200 million to come back.
Speaker 2:Not bad for a reformed drug addict. Yeah, I know he's sober.
Speaker 3:I respect that. I'm sober too, but it's not possible. It's not possible. Stephen Colbert's show and all those shows I've worked on these sets, the possible Stephen Colbert's show and all those shows I've worked on these sets. But same thing with CSI or any of those procedurals. It's like, oh my God, everyone's eating so well. They show up when they want, they end when they want. It's like they're kings and queens and that is over. The marketplace won't tolerate it.
Speaker 3:Remember late night? Just like Marvel, different world, late night was the only talk show when were going to get talk. When you were done with your day or you came home from a party and you want to watch something, you're going to turn on the tv. It's david letterman or jay leno, that's what it was used to be johnny carson. It's like that's what's going to be there. You have no choice. What are you going to watch static? Back in johnny carson's day, it was going to be a test pattern or him. And then back in my day in the 90s, 2000s, it was going to be Conan, dave or, you know, jay, and that was it. So they had this trapped audience and I never watched any of the late night shows for the last 10 years anywhere except for YouTube or on their streaming platform.
Speaker 2:That's when I pick them up, to be honest. Yeah, so so they no longer pick up the monologues and I can avoid everything else.
Speaker 3:So they're trying to pay these guys like they're one of four choices and they're one of 6 million choices. Youtube doesn't have any more interest in them than anything else. So you know, whether it's any commentaries from any of the shows now Gina and I watched that are late night style, but they're someone in a chair on a YouTube show. We're watching it because they're able to say the things that these guys used to say.
Speaker 2:To wrap this up.
Speaker 3:Lee is LA back now, in the sense of the troops are off the street. Are we back to normal here? Well, yeah, I mean, that's a whole nother show, Bass and Gavin Newsom. Los Angeles is a bare knuckle brawler at the city. When I was a kid in the 90s it was the worst gang violence ever and they still did great stuff. Los Angeles, their industry, people want to be here. You're not going to find a place on earth that has better weather in Santa Monica. Yeah, I mean, it's still beautiful people, beautiful places. It's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:Is the film and television industry going to have to change when now it is going to be run by tech billionaires? Is there going to be a grassroots uprising of people who can use AI to create backgrounds that four years ago, industrial light and magic would have charged $60 million to use? That you can now do with a prompt? Is that going to change? Obviously, Do we know what it looks like? Yes, Hollywood, just like with Stephen Colbert, the $100 million thing is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. That only makes sense if you have people in a movie theater, like you did pre-pandemic. The studios will be rental spaces. They will be rental spaces to anyone. Uh if, if they don't understand that, they don't see what's coming, the anyone who has money in technology can give that to anyone who has a great idea.
Speaker 3:Are you going to be able to pitch your screenplay in front of 20 executives and a skyscraper in you know a century city and and have someone hand you a hundred million dollars for your first film? That's gone. It's done. Are there going to be stars that are getting $20 million because this studio wants them and this studio wants them? That's done. There's just that kind of money was a trapped audience, Never going to happen again. There was a confluence of events that hit. It was going to happen anyway, but COVID just changed everything. And then AI has changed everything.
Speaker 3:So you this COVID and AI and yeah and the strike, but those two things were going. It changed the culture of film. People are probably maybe 20 years, I don't know, but right now, 15 years. It seems like people are going to go to movies a hell of a lot less. Just how it is. People have bigger TVs and they're just not as social as they used to be, and movies also came out with bad material for a long time, so they're not interested. That's going to have to change. And the industry, if they don't have that and it's just streaming, there's too many choices, so the idea of the giant projects is gone.
Speaker 3:So here's the good news To your audience or anyone who's listening, who has a dream, who has a project, who has a calling, who's like I need to make movies, I need to make music, whatever it is.
Speaker 3:In this case, I'm an expert in film. Even if you want to host a show on the internet, there is more of a chance for you than ever. So there is more of a need for you than ever, and the studio system will figure out soon that that's who they're going to have to go after People who are not just good on screen and by themselves, but also have some kind of talent, who are ready to go in front of some kind of production. But that's where they're going to have to start going to the studios. They're going to have to find it's not young. I hate the idea of young because some of these people are brilliant and they're 60. Some of them were brilliant and they're 70. And you don't need to come into this idea that it's like a college student that wasn't found. No, anyone has a story that resonates with an audience, has access that they never would have.
Speaker 2:But where is the future here in your opinion?
Speaker 3:The best news for your list, especially an audience you'd have, is that if you're someone in, you know some small country or some small town or someplace that you think doesn't matter and doesn't resonate, you're wrong. You can put it on YouTube and you have the same power as a kid who lives in Hollywood and and that's beautiful. So if you have something you want to do and you have a unique location that Hollywood never go to, go shoot it, go make it and then put it up there and see how people feel about it and you have a chance with their picking those people, because they don't, they don't, it's not we talked about at the beginning. It's not auditions in sunset, it's not auditions in Hollywood, it's not. You don't even audition in Netflix. It's all online, so people from everywhere can put their hat in here and say, okay, this is, this is what I want to do, this is my dream, and they don't have to live in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2:We've been speaking to Jet Dunlop, who is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, an expert in this and has lived this throughout his entire life as a native Angeleno. It's been a tremendous pleasure, jet, and we hope to be able to speak to you again. This is Henry R Greenfield signing off from Los Angeles, california, again with Jet Dunlop. Thank you, jet.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever-shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in-depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.