Felix Gillette & John Koblin (on the Rise, Revolution, and the Future of HBO)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dax Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monica Patton.

[3] Hi.

[4] Hello.

[5] We get to have a juicy conversation today about our favorite.

[6] Are we allowed to say our favorite?

[7] Our favorite network.

[8] Yeah, sure.

[9] Yeah, HBO.

[10] It's a good network.

[11] It's not TV.

[12] That's the title of the book written by our guests today.

[13] Felix Gillette and John Koblin.

[14] Felix is the enterprise editor for Bloomberg News Media, entertainment and telecom team, as well as the feature writer for Bloomberg Business Week.

[15] John Coblin is a media reporter for the New York Times covering the television industry.

[16] And as previously mentioned, they have a really cool book called It's Not TV, The Spectacular Rise Revolution, and the future of HBO.

[17] What's really unexpectedly fun about this interview to me was the trip down memory lane of all the shows over the years.

[18] Yeah.

[19] No, it's a really fun kind of oral history we got of the whole network.

[20] Yeah, it's pretty juicy.

[21] Yeah.

[22] Please enjoy Felix Gillette and John Copeland.

[23] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[24] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[25] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[26] He's an armchair expert.

[27] Did you guys come from far away?

[28] We came from New York.

[29] So yes.

[30] So yes.

[31] Yeah, a little bit of a trip.

[32] Wow.

[33] John Felix.

[34] John Felix.

[35] You got it.

[36] Let me cement this in.

[37] Like the cat.

[38] Think of the cat.

[39] Well, we have a great story.

[40] In fact, as soon as we saw you were coming in, I asked Monica, what did you immediately think of?

[41] So my seven -year -old daughterhood at the time was four or five.

[42] Monica was dropping off at preschool.

[43] She hit her head really hard at some point on the way in and was having an inconsolable breakdown.

[44] Yes.

[45] She was trying to comfort her.

[46] It's okay, Delta.

[47] It's okay.

[48] Felix.

[49] Did you get a new coat?

[50] Like on a dime, like in the middle of a bowl.

[51] She saw a classmate whose name was Felix.

[52] What a cute name to hear Felix did you get a new coat?

[53] You need you to wear a coat to help us out.

[54] I'll do what I can for the little people.

[55] What inspired your parents?

[56] Is this a family name?

[57] It's actually a name from an Anthony Trollope novel that my mom was reading while she was pregnant with me. I share that in common with you.

[58] Not an Anthony Trollope, but a Harold Robbins novel.

[59] Dax was the lead character.

[60] Was Dax a good guy or was he a bad guy?

[61] He was the hero.

[62] He was a letharian.

[63] The weird thing about my mom's situation is that Felix is not like a very nice guy in that novel.

[64] No, he's kind of duplicitous, but apparently very loyal to his mother.

[65] Oh, wow.

[66] Interesting.

[67] So that's great.

[68] That makes sense for her.

[69] My guy was Lethario.

[70] He was cruising around South America, raising arms for a revolution, sleeping with every female that crossed his path.

[71] And I think that's a bizarre thing to name your son.

[72] That's a lot about both of your mom.

[73] Let's say that they both probably just responded to the name and not the character.

[74] And John.

[75] You don't mean a lot of John.

[76] John, and I feel like Monica would share this.

[77] Yeah, totally standard.

[78] You think there's even more to it, though?

[79] You don't have immigrant parents or anything, do you?

[80] I don't.

[81] Well, the only thing I've got, my two brothers, James, Jason, John.

[82] Oh, J .J .J .J. Tradition continued.

[83] My eldest brother then had a Jesse and a Julian.

[84] Oh.

[85] But then the middle brother cut it off of the pass.

[86] It had to end.

[87] He's a rebel.

[88] Yeah.

[89] Also, were you to procreate, have you?

[90] No. Okay, you'd be left with virtually no names.

[91] Like, if you were trying to keep the J -CHA.

[92] Jack, Jasper.

[93] I feel like there's more Felix's running around now than John's.

[94] Like, in the little people?

[95] Like, there's a lot of Felix's.

[96] When I was growing up, no Felixes.

[97] How old are you, Felix?

[98] I'm 45.

[99] Oh, this is lovely.

[100] We're virtually the same age.

[101] Nice.

[102] John.

[103] I'm 38 and I'll be 39 in like 10 days.

[104] Happy birthday.

[105] Thank you.

[106] Yes.

[107] One of the time this air is, it'll probably have been your birthday.

[108] birthday.

[109] So I am 39.

[110] Okay, you're 39.

[111] So closer to Monica than me. Yeah, but I still have a ways to go because I'm a sharp 35.

[112] I'm just saying he's closer in age to you than he is to me. Yes, that's right.

[113] Yes.

[114] Felix and I are way.

[115] We got one foot deeply in the grave.

[116] Did you guys have a friendship before you came together to collaborate on this?

[117] We did.

[118] Felix and I worked together in a newspaper called the New York Observer in 2007.

[119] We were both media reporters.

[120] Felix covered TV.

[121] I I covered print media back when Conday Nast was all the rage.

[122] Still is Vogue.

[123] That's true.

[124] But maybe it's just Vogue and the New Yorker and not a lot else at this point.

[125] I mean, Vanny Fair, of course, as well.

[126] The newspaper is small, had a small circulation, but was really well known in New York political circles, media circles, real estate circles.

[127] And its biggest claim to fame is at the time that we worked there, it was owned by Jared Kushner.

[128] Oh, wonderful.

[129] Uh -huh.

[130] Did he swing by Everett?

[131] He was 15 feet away from us.

[132] most days.

[133] I'm sure there's lots of negative things that could be said about him, but let's for a change here.

[134] Was he a hard worker?

[135] He showed up a lot.

[136] Yeah.

[137] I mean, we had jobs because Jared bought the paper in August 2006.

[138] I was hired in September 2006.

[139] Oh, wow.

[140] And Felix he came, what, just a few months later?

[141] Yeah, shortly after that.

[142] Yeah.

[143] And he sent us on fun trips.

[144] We went to the 2008 conventions together.

[145] The fun thing, though, was like a small paper, so they wouldn't put us up in hotels.

[146] It was like almost like a study abroad situation where like families would like have us and like an internship.

[147] Yeah kind of like that.

[148] Remember the pose like put us up in Denver?

[149] You and I were sleeping in the daughter's bedrooms who were off at college.

[150] The pose.

[151] The pose.

[152] The pose were great.

[153] Who were the pose?

[154] It was a family friend of one of our colleagues.

[155] So our editor in chief was sleeping in the basement.

[156] You're like in a punk band, a struggling punk band where you sleep on the floor of whatever local band is hosting.

[157] Very much our vibe back then.

[158] Yes.

[159] And you guys instantly filmed Love?

[160] Felix is my work husband.

[161] Okay.

[162] I assume the observer is left -leaning?

[163] It was provocative.

[164] For instance, in 1996, the observer never did presidential endorsements, but they were just like, let's do something fun.

[165] We're endorsing Bob Dole for president.

[166] Oh, wow.

[167] Okay.

[168] Not because any Republicans were running the paper.

[169] It was just like, yeah, let's do something weird.

[170] Bob Dole it is.

[171] I see.

[172] Okay, so what is it that you guys found that you were both geeks about?

[173] I imagine that's how a friendship at a news paper starts is like you figure out you're both inordinately interested in something the thing that we both loved was doing stories about storytellers in one form or another that's what we've been doing most of our careers is like why does this particular story resonate where did that story come from who is the storyteller what do you need to know about this person we did that for magazine writers we wrote about tv creators we wrote about directors but it was always creative people and getting inside of what made them tick.

[174] Okay, right.

[175] So now we could have just like a gentle philosophical question about whether that's even good or bad for art. You could make an argument that one should just go to a museum and look at the Picasso paintings on the wall and maybe not taint their impression of those pieces by knowing how many 13 -year -olds he fucked in.

[176] Yes, it kind of ruins the art, yeah.

[177] There's a philosophical thing, which is a little bit like, should we just maybe consume the art and look no further?

[178] Yeah, those days were nice.

[179] when the person was a little bit more hidden.

[180] But I also think stories don't really pop out of a vacuum.

[181] They come from somewhere.

[182] And it's kind of a little bit of a mystery, always trying to figure out why did that story pop off at that time.

[183] And surely you did your fair share of inquiry and you realized there was no there there, and someone just got lucky.

[184] On Stern, he so often interviews musicians, and there'll be these like seminal songs, quintessential songs of the 20th century.

[185] And he'll go, where did you come?

[186] And they'll be like, literally I was stepping into the shower.

[187] By the time the hot water hit me, I had the entire song.

[188] There's really no labor involved.

[189] It just got downloaded into my brain somehow.

[190] So there's that version, no?

[191] Yeah.

[192] I think a lot of them come from, I don't know, what you want to call it, like the creative subconscious.

[193] It's our job as storytellers, telling the stories about storytellers.

[194] Let's say we got that anecdote, right?

[195] I walked in a shower and the whole song came to me at the end.

[196] It would not make for a very interesting story.

[197] You could print it in a fortune cookie.

[198] Exactly.

[199] It then forces us to yank it more threads.

[200] What was happening in your life at that moment?

[201] Let's talk about what was happening before you hit the shower.

[202] What happened afterwards?

[203] Was there a backstory to then how you had this germ of an idea and then you got it on a sheet of music?

[204] I mean, that's that sort of stuff that Felix and I both love doing that.

[205] Fine, you get a compelling story.

[206] So you'll get a little bit more out of it.

[207] You're like, oh, okay.

[208] Well, and there's an appeal to both.

[209] You could take that version of songwriting, or you could take in that great doc.

[210] I don't know if you guys watched.

[211] It was on Jimmy Iveen, Dr. Drey.

[212] Maybe Bruce Springsteen was just a large part of it.

[213] I don't know if it was also about him.

[214] It's incredible.

[215] And there's all this footage of Bruce Springsteen recording, I don't know what album, Nebraska, let's say.

[216] And Jimmy Iveen happened to be working with him early in his career.

[217] And the amount of labor that would go into every Bruce Springsteen song was Herkulean.

[218] So in one way I look at him and I'm like, I'm so impressed by the work ethic.

[219] Like, this man hit the coal mines for these songs.

[220] They didn't come to him.

[221] Yet, I like the idea of some gifted genius, Brad Pitt.

[222] I like the idea that he's never exercised.

[223] I mean, that's not the case, but I'm open to that.

[224] It's just being a divine -inspired specimen on planet Earth.

[225] Both are appealing stories, aren't they?

[226] Yeah.

[227] Completely.

[228] And that's the thing.

[229] If you get the genius version, not a big deal, not that interesting, there is something interesting.

[230] Somewhere else then.

[231] If we're not going to focus on the shower, let's focus on what was happening in person's life at that given moment.

[232] Do you think you want to tell the stories or you're interested in storytellers because you would like to know what the recipe is?

[233] Yes.

[234] And also for the same reason that you're listening to those Howard interviews or Howard is even interviewing them in the first place, everybody is interested.

[235] People want to know more about it.

[236] I mean, for me personally, and I think Felix shares this as well, one of the things I'm obsessed with and maybe too much so is very much the origin.

[237] story, the making of, like how did we get to this point?

[238] We love that too.

[239] That's what we do on here.

[240] I'm a junkie for that.

[241] It's just so much fun because this work of genius that we're all talking about or examining or studying, you want to know more about it because it is genius.

[242] And then they're good stories for cocktail parties too.

[243] And also there's just so much failure involved before that moment.

[244] I think that's a universally appealing thing to hear about the genius that was just failing left and right and just couldn't get anything done and going through those repetitions and keeping at it until one of those things hits.

[245] It's comforting because that's the element we like to think we have control over.

[246] And you're like maybe someday it'll happen for me. Very relatable.

[247] Hearts of Darkness or Apocalypse Now.

[248] Wow.

[249] That feels like it came out of nowhere, but it probably didn't.

[250] Yeah, so Hearts of Darkness is the documentary about.

[251] Oh, I know.

[252] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[253] Because is the doc more interesting than the movie to you guys?

[254] Is the making of that movie more interesting than the movie itself?

[255] Not necessarily.

[256] If we're writing about the Sopranos, I think I'd rather watch the Sopranos and even read something I wrote about the Sopranos.

[257] Yeah, okay.

[258] Primarily, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[259] Okay, Hearts of Darkness, if I got to pick only one film I ever got to see again, it would be Hearts of Darkness over Apocalypse now.

[260] How come?

[261] Because it was real and it was almost.

[262] more harrowing than the story of Kurtz going up to the river.

[263] Like, talk about life imitating the art they were making.

[264] I mean, the fact that our lead actor has a heart attack, you've got a 16 -year -old Lawrence Fishbourne doing drugs unsupervised, you've got a shoot that's wiped out by a hurricane, cut to some extravagant party up at a vineyard.

[265] You're like, who is funding all this?

[266] I mean, it's incredible.

[267] I mean, this is one of the rare circumstances where the backstory is so crazy.

[268] is so over the top.

[269] That's true.

[270] It's also one of the things that brings us together socially is the art connects first, and then afterwards you just want to talk about it.

[271] You know, you want to, like, know more about it.

[272] You want to share it with other people.

[273] You want to know the story behind it.

[274] Debate, discuss, tell those stories.

[275] Last esoteric example I'll give American Movie versus Coven.

[276] Best documentary ever made.

[277] So good.

[278] About a filmmaker Mark Bortchard in Milwaukee making horror movies.

[279] it's the most incredible documentary ever.

[280] And then he makes this movie Coven, which you can then see.

[281] But has anyone seen Coven?

[282] Me. Okay.

[283] So I have one last question that's off the topic of your book.

[284] And it would be for John, you're currently at the New York Times.

[285] Yes.

[286] Did you ever work with David Carr?

[287] Did you get to meet him at all?

[288] I sure did.

[289] Oh, Aaron Lee Carr.

[290] We love Aaron.

[291] I hope you guys are following her illustrious career as a documentary.

[292] I knew David when I was at the New York Observer.

[293] because David was the media columnist, I covered media.

[294] So I knew him as a colleague, and then David is the reason I cover television.

[295] The first year is at the New York Times, they covered fashion, which was a little weird.

[296] Okay, love it.

[297] You know, sometimes the Times is into people who, if you're not an expert, they want to yank you in.

[298] Because it's like, you don't know anybody.

[299] You're not going to do any favors.

[300] This is great.

[301] So I did that for a year.

[302] And then the Times had an opening for their TV reporter position.

[303] And it was Carr who called me. It was like, do you want this?

[304] If you want it, I'll make it happen.

[305] Wow.

[306] And he did.

[307] Carr is amazing.

[308] I think everyone that does what we do has some great David Car store.

[309] I mean, you have a car connection through City Paper.

[310] Yeah, the first job I had in journalism was at the Washington City Paper, where David Carr had been editor.

[311] And he had amassed this, like, incredibly centric roster of writers.

[312] And by the time I got there, he had just left, but this is like an all weekly in D .C. It's just like total, like, craziness.

[313] You go into the bathroom and there'd be all.

[314] this graffiti about David Carr.

[315] And, you know, I remember the first day as an intern at this job.

[316] One of the writers said, all right, I'll give you some advice I learned from David Carr.

[317] The editor starts screaming at you.

[318] Look at the spot right between his eyes, like the piece and nose between the eyes because he'll think you're looking in his eyes, but actually you can focus there and it won't freak you out.

[319] If you look away, he'll just get madder.

[320] But Carr was so generous to all of us.

[321] I mean, when I first moved up to New York to work for the New York Observer, heard I was writing about media.

[322] So he asked me to go to coffee with him.

[323] And when we're done, he's like, have you ever been in the New York Times building?

[324] And I said, no. And he's like, well, if you're going to write about media, we got to get you in the building.

[325] So he was like, I'll just take you for a little tour.

[326] But you know, you're writing about the media.

[327] So let's just use a fake name while we get to the front desk.

[328] And he's like, no one will notice you.

[329] He took me into the newsroom.

[330] This was the old New York Times building and just leaving me in this hall with all these photographs of the editors who had won Pulitzer Prizes.

[331] I was just like, stay here.

[332] Look at these people.

[333] That's inspiring.

[334] Cool.

[335] It was pretty awesome.

[336] And that's a very, very car.

[337] I mean, he was sentimental at the end of the day.

[338] He was a believer.

[339] He was truly a believer.

[340] Yeah.

[341] Either of you read the night of the gun.

[342] Felix and I read it at the same time, just as it came out and we were obsessed.

[343] What a way to blow up how you do a memoir.

[344] Yeah.

[345] I'm just going to report the shit out of me. Exactly.

[346] And I'm going to be tough.

[347] on me. Oh, he was brutal on himself.

[348] It's so admirable.

[349] Yeah.

[350] And his memory is just not trusting anything.

[351] These are false stories in my head.

[352] Like I'm going to actually report them out and figure out what's real and what's not.

[353] Yeah.

[354] Incredible book.

[355] I recommend it to everyone.

[356] Okay.

[357] So you guys are bros. How long ago do you start discussing a book about HBO and why?

[358] Three and a half years ago and we were doing it independently of one another.

[359] It was spring of 2019, AT &T had purchased HBO the year before.

[360] And already, many senior executives at HBO were beginning to leave.

[361] So it felt like we were at this inflection point.

[362] So I was like, maybe it's a good time to do an HBO book.

[363] Started down that path.

[364] And then my agent, let me know that there was somebody else.

[365] A competing project.

[366] Working on it.

[367] Meanwhile, I'm on the other side of town.

[368] And I'm working on this thing.

[369] And my agent says, hey, did you know there's a New York Times writer that has the same idea.

[370] And immediately, I was kind of like, it's got to be John.

[371] And it was.

[372] It was like one text message.

[373] We're doing this together?

[374] We're doing it together.

[375] Oh, I love that.

[376] Okay, now a logistical question, how on earth do you decide who physically writes what?

[377] It's pretty intuitive.

[378] We never mapped out, you're going to do this, I'm going to do that.

[379] I mean, I think part of it that made it work really well for us is that we've done creative projects together before and we work sync very well without ever communicating yeah it's just kind of i don't know i don't know that i'd advise that to people it's definitely not what you would think would work it could be difficult to replicate i will say one thing to give a shout out to google docs because working in real time or being able to look the next day like oh felix did stuff in the dock that had just worked really well and felix and i have not worked together in a decade so it was a little bit of of a test.

[380] How's this collab going to be?

[381] We're different people.

[382] We're 10 years older.

[383] And then it's like, we didn't skip a beat.

[384] Is it safe to say you guys are both posting stuff to this shared document?

[385] Some of it in pretty good shape.

[386] Some of it sketchy or whatever it is.

[387] And then now you guys must come together and go through the entire thing and start cleaning it and rewriting it.

[388] And is that done as a team?

[389] Yeah.

[390] It's basically an ongoing conversation between John and I. So one of us is interested and I want to dig into Silicon Valley and I'm going to start watching it and like I want to talk to Mike Judge and connects with all these ideas we're talking about changes in technology and viewing habits.

[391] I'm going to start going down that road and then we'll do some interviews, start writing things up but the ability to have someone to bounce those ideas off of and get feedback immediately that you trust and I know when I've done good work because John will tell me and I also know when I've done really crappy work because John will tell me and he'll say like, that's not good.

[392] And you have such a history that it's not triggering.

[393] John has an incredible creative instinct.

[394] When he says, here's a way to make it better, he's right, that's going to make it better.

[395] And I just can't even imagine how people do it without a creative partner.

[396] I have the experience where I had a script that was going at Warner Brothers.

[397] Generally, I've had many script notes from executives.

[398] I've never really enjoyed those.

[399] got pitched the idea, what if we bring in five other writers you super respect?

[400] We'll pay them some fee to read it and give notes.

[401] That I loved.

[402] It was so weird to sit with somebody where I thought, well, they have zero agenda.

[403] Their agenda is they have a belief in writing and what makes writing good.

[404] And they're starting by saying, oh, I broke a similar thing in a script I wrote.

[405] There's something about peer to peer, which is a lot easier to stomach, isn't it?

[406] I agree completely.

[407] It was great.

[408] I mean, Felix had the best advice at the beginning of this process where he was like, if you stumble upon something while you're researching a show or an executive or a producer, do not sit on it.

[409] Go and write it up immediately.

[410] You do an interview, write it up immediately.

[411] Don't sit on it because I think a lot of writers, especially journalists, you do all the reporting, and then you're like, oh, okay, eventually I'll go write a book.

[412] So we were doing it really simultaneously in this shared Google Doc, and it just made the process more stress -free.

[413] Well, inspiration has a time stamp on it.

[414] you agree?

[415] It's like, you're on fire because you're watching Silicon Valley and you get this idea.

[416] Now you go to the interview.

[417] Eight months later, you've forgotten the visceral, emotional feeling.

[418] A hundred percent.

[419] You've also forgotten 15 other things that happened in Silicon Valley that you want to put in there.

[420] By the way, I called Dibbs on DreamOn immediately.

[421] Tell me. What's Dream On?

[422] For writing about that, right?

[423] It is an obscure HBO show from the early 1990s.

[424] It was one of HBO's sort of better efforts at an original series.

[425] It was really known for nudity.

[426] And as a very young boy in New Jersey, I watched it.

[427] And I thought it was amazing.

[428] I loved it.

[429] And the creators of the show are Marta Kaufman and David Crane, who just a couple short years later would get an overall deal with Warner Brothers and, of course, create.

[430] It was at HBO.

[431] That name, I was like, he knows that name.

[432] This has to do with friends, does it?

[433] It was friends, yes.

[434] Yes, they were at HBO, but they left HBO to go to Warner Brothers, which actually back then was really sad.

[435] Right.

[436] So, but they had them in their stable.

[437] That's nuts.

[438] How cool.

[439] Did anyone call Dibbs on Project Greenlight?

[440] It gets a quick mention.

[441] Okay.

[442] Quick mention.

[443] I mean, I think Project Greenlight was part of this whole tradition at HBO where HBO was such an outsider in Hollywood in the early years.

[444] They were like a New York institution.

[445] They were a distributor.

[446] They were just taking Hollywood movies and re -airing them without commercials.

[447] They launched in 1972.

[448] and throughout the 70s, that was the main attraction, was the movies that you could see in your house.

[449] Which was a huge attraction.

[450] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[451] But, you know, the studios at the beginning were like, they're making money off of our product.

[452] Let's just cut out the middleman.

[453] We'll go right to the consumers.

[454] You know, there's all this tension between them.

[455] I think HBO felt very much like an outsider.

[456] When HBO first started saying, we're going to make original movies, everyone was kind of laughing, like, those are going to be the worst movies.

[457] Like, those are going to be all the rejected ideas that we wouldn't do.

[458] Like, this is a joke.

[459] And it's interesting to me that over the next couple decades, HBO kind of emerged as the place to go to see these insider Hollywood stories, like Project Greenlight, like the comeback.

[460] Curb is very exciting.

[461] Yeah, exactly.

[462] Like, you know, New Yorker in Los Angeles, inside the industry, even to this day, like succession, doing these stories that are set in the media, became kind of like one of the things that HBO did.

[463] Well, I can tell you.

[464] I'll tell you why that show was made, because my dad runs the Sim.

[465] You're in it, too.

[466] And I'm obsessed with Ben and Matt.

[467] Then I was extremely obsessed with Ben and Matt.

[468] So in my wildest dreams, I could have imagined a show where I could see them in the real element.

[469] Yeah, not playing characters.

[470] Exactly.

[471] I mean, I think that's one of the things that drew us to the book.

[472] If you watch HBO, everybody has a, I want to call dibs on X, like a lot of them come out of left field.

[473] I mean, Cherie Maude is coming out of 400 feet deep left field.

[474] There's so many examples of this.

[475] You do grow an emotional attachment to these series.

[476] I think we should back up and first say why HBO is so interesting and peculiar.

[477] I think we could agree in this room that of all the streamers of any cable network, batting percentage success, they're the high watermark of quality.

[478] They've had so much success in so much uncharted water that they're worth doing a book about, as opposed to, I don't know if you'd do one on CBS.

[479] I don't know that you'd want to do one on ABC.

[480] But HBO is a very, very special thing in show business.

[481] Yes.

[482] The other thing that made it so appealing from a book perspective is that, you know, with like a lot of revolutionary or important businesses, like what happened in online retail, you can just point to Jeff Bezos or, you know, the revolution in home computing.

[483] You're like, wow, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs.

[484] With HBO, it's this business that has had this incredible impact on American culture.

[485] on comedy, on documentaries, on drama.

[486] And there's not one person you can point to.

[487] There's no charismatic founder of HBO.

[488] And so that's part of what, from my perspective, was the mystery.

[489] How did it happen?

[490] Like, how did it become this thing?

[491] What is the HBO playbook?

[492] What are those lessons?

[493] Yes, for an organization to continue to keep the quality up and be innovative in the way that they have without a single charismatic leader is curious.

[494] That's like some kind of great business ethos that deserves exploration.

[495] Yeah.

[496] Okay, I think for a lot of young people, they would be listening to this, and they've only grown up in a world with streaming.

[497] They've only grown up in a world where HBO was always a television outlet.

[498] For us, we watch that happen.

[499] All right, so they were distributing movies, basically, before VCRs.

[500] You had to buy the HBO channel.

[501] Yes, and at the time, there was like a box.

[502] It wasn't a part of a cable package.

[503] You would just get an it box or an HBO box or an on TV box, right?

[504] Yeah.

[505] And they were the first nationally distributed cable channel.

[506] So they were the first ones to hop on the satellite and be able to beam their signal to all these little cable distributors all over the country.

[507] For younger people, when I try and explain, I'm also like, well, think about Netflix when Netflix made the jump to streaming.

[508] And suddenly you could watch streaming in your home and just hit the button and it will play.

[509] And that's kind of like what a huge innovation that was for HBO.

[510] That's really what saved HBO and gave HBO its birth.

[511] And then all these other channels basically followed HBO's lead.

[512] What year was that, roughly?

[513] 76.

[514] Okay.

[515] There was like a flock of them that all at once said, oh, we're going to do that same thing.

[516] And that was basically the birth of the cable era.

[517] Yeah.

[518] What's kind of fascinated about it is that they were purely a distributor, but they knew that they couldn't get quite enough.

[519] Hollywood movies to fill up the schedule.

[520] Because it was cost prohibitive or they didn't have access, they were denied.

[521] It was a combination of the things.

[522] First of all, the studios would worry that if they gave all their movies to HBO, people would stop going to the theater.

[523] And so there was some pressure to not give all their product to HBO.

[524] Secondly, it was expensive.

[525] And then also the amount of time to do it seven days a week, pretty early on, the executives were like, we have to come up with other stuff.

[526] And the beginning vision was just, we're called home box office because it's anything that you would go out in the world and buy a ticket for.

[527] A movie, you buy a ticket.

[528] A boxing match.

[529] You buy a ticket.

[530] A concert will buy a ticket.

[531] Even like theater performances in the early days.

[532] Comedy, stand -up comedy.

[533] A lot of it was just kind of like a grab bag of things that were going on and around New York City in the 70s that weren't already on broadcast television.

[534] Because they had to find something.

[535] So was their first piece of original programming sports, boxing?

[536] Yes.

[537] The first thing they started doing was boxing.

[538] And basically like anything that was going on, Madison Square Garden, they had a lot of weird sports in the early days.

[539] There was like a gymnastics meet.

[540] They were like, we'll put the gymnastics.

[541] Yeah, like, why not?

[542] Swim meat, like put it on.

[543] And that evolved over time.

[544] And boxing became their big sport.

[545] And that was largely because in the early 80s, the broadcast net, We're kind of backing away from boxing because boxing was perceived as too violent, too brutal, too bloody.

[546] And it was a hard thing to sell to advertisers.

[547] And because HBO didn't have advertisers looking over their shoulders, they were like, hey, there's an opportunity to do something different than networks.

[548] We can jump in there.

[549] That ended up being like a very big part of HBO programming in the 80s.

[550] I have to imagine very lucrative too because they started promoting their own fights and being a part of pay -per -view packages.

[551] as well, right?

[552] Yeah.

[553] Before there was Tony Soprano, the first really archetypal HBO character was Mike Tyson.

[554] Because they signed him to like a big deal when he was young and they jumped on it.

[555] They arranged a big tournament for him to fight in.

[556] And it's also fun talking to the people that were there in those days because Mike Tyson would just kind of like show up at the offices and stuff.

[557] Then we have an amazing story this one guy told us about smuggling Mike Tyson into the HBO offices and he had Mike Tyson hang out basically in the back pantry during this budget meeting.

[558] Did David Carr take him in?

[559] He might have snuck him in.

[560] You look at these snacks.

[561] And they're all discussing the budget stuff and then the guy gets around talking about the sports budget and just as he's like, well we've got to be a little more careful with how we're spending our dollars on boxing.

[562] They spring Mike Tyson and runs in there and grabs them by the hotels and it's just like, yeah, give him the money.

[563] Spend it all.

[564] Yeah.

[565] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[566] What's up, guys?

[567] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[568] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[569] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[571] And I don't mean just friends.

[572] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

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[576] or wherever you get your podcast.

[577] We've all been there.

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[585] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[586] Okay, as a policy is a rule of thumb.

[587] Don't ever say I don't like people on here.

[588] I'm going to break that rule right now.

[589] Uh -oh.

[590] Larry Merchant.

[591] This guy.

[592] Do you know Larry Merchant?

[593] No, is he dead?

[594] No. Larry Merchant was a color commentator.

[595] He'd interview the boxer's post -fight, and he had a knack for being incredibly condescending.

[596] There's one moment in particular.

[597] Maybe this will help justify for you why I'm saying this, where he's interviewing Mike Tyson about his upcoming one -man show.

[598] And Larry Merchant's sitting next to him.

[599] And he goes, well, Mike, I bet you never thought you'd be called a Thesbian.

[600] Do you know what a Thesbian is?

[601] And Mike Tyson goes, Thethbian is from the island of Thethboth, both in grief.

[602] It comes from, and he fucking masterclasses, Larry Merchant, on where the word Thesbian comes from.

[603] I'm like, fuck yes, Mike Tyson.

[604] This motherfucker's been talking down to everybody for 25 years.

[605] And he said he was going to beat up Money Train, Fighter in Vegas.

[606] We all know him.

[607] He just fought the U .S. Floyd Mayweather.

[608] Yes, Floyd Mayweather.

[609] He's like, if I was a younger man, I'd kick your ass.

[610] And Floyd Mayweather, looking at me like, whoa, you're going to have a fucking machine gun with you?

[611] What are you talking about, merchant?

[612] Did you get any merchant stories?

[613] We did not get a huge amount of merchant stories that we put in the book.

[614] I think we mostly skipped the Lampley merchant corner of HBO.

[615] We're stuck with the Mike Tyson stuff.

[616] Yeah, that was the right call.

[617] There were some, like, critical decisions we had to make.

[618] what we were really going to go in on and what we weren't.

[619] That's understandable.

[620] Okay.

[621] So sports, that kind of starts them down a path.

[622] That's successful for them.

[623] And they must be thinking, okay, well, we need more and more content.

[624] The expenditure of a live event versus scripted television is enormously different, right?

[625] This is quite a big swing.

[626] What is the very first show?

[627] What is the thought process behind it?

[628] I mean, to take one step back, the thing they really invested in were original movies at first, because if HBO was going to be a success, they differentiate themselves from the broadcast networks.

[629] And HBO's leaders at the time are like, well, you turn on the broadcast networks, it's nonstop television shows.

[630] We can't do it better than them.

[631] Let's do an occasional movie.

[632] So they did a lot of original movies.

[633] What are some of those?

[634] I feel like I should know them, but I don't.

[635] One that just comes to mind, because I remember watching it at school, 1989 Exxon Valdez movie.

[636] Oh, never.

[637] Right after to spill.

[638] And that became an HBO tradition, something big happens in the news let's do a movie about it which is something to broadcast networks have a tendency to do too one of the interesting things that came out of those early movies was at the beginning they were like we're going to do all heroes and we're going to do a movie about Nelson Mandela and then pretty quickly they're like yeah we're kind of running out of heroes like we need to start doing bad guys and the bad guys did much better for them I think when they started doing bad guys people were like yeah give me Stalin Robert Duval is Stalin they went to Moscow.

[639] Right when the collapse of the Soviet Union was happening, they were able to shoot in the Kremlin.

[640] Like, if you go back and watch that, it's crazy the footage they got.

[641] We do have a lot of funny stories about the production of Stalin because it was such a weird moment in history and they got in there.

[642] It was like 89 -ish.

[643] 91 when it came out.

[644] But yeah, it would have been filming before that.

[645] And like at the rap party, the first McDonald's in Russia had just opened.

[646] So they came to the rap party with like 400 Big Macs and like everyone was walking out the door with six Big Macs in their jacket like just so happy about that they did all these movies about these big historical figures and for a long time they were kind of shying away like broadcast networks are so dominant we can't compete with them in TV we don't have the money we don't have the skill sets we don't have the talent and the biggest change in HBO history happened in the 90s where they finally started making the transition, where they're like, you know what, we're going to shift from doing these events, these one -off events, that even if they're super popular, even if you have an incredible stand -up comedy performance, even if you have Seinfeld on Broadway, it's a one -time event.

[647] People come in and they're gone.

[648] And they're like, we have to hold on to subscribers.

[649] How are we going to do that?

[650] And they finally were like, we're going to make series.

[651] They did series here and there throughout the 80s.

[652] There was the aforementioned Dream on in the early 1990s, And there were really two series that changed everything.

[653] One is the Larry Sanders show, which premiered in 1992.

[654] And the second is Oz, chronologically speaking.

[655] Okay.

[656] And I would say Oz was more significant than Larry Sanders even in terms of spearheading HBO's efforts into original programming.

[657] Yeah, Larry Sanders, one of HBO's top leaders at the time, he was friendly with Gary Shanling.

[658] He loved Gary Shanling.

[659] So once Gary Shanning was available after his Showtime show had finished, They just snapped them up and said, do whatever you want to do.

[660] And that show, obviously, incredibly impactful in terms of changing television.

[661] It's the Bill Murray of comedy and television.

[662] Completely.

[663] Yeah.

[664] Yeah, you have like the guys from the office saying, well, we learned everything from Larry Sanders.

[665] A hundred percent.

[666] Now, this would interest me greatly because so often you would think, what is the origin of this ethos?

[667] Now, that sounds like an accident.

[668] To me, that sounds like, well, we're friends with him.

[669] Oh, he does this thing.

[670] oh, this is really, really original.

[671] It worked.

[672] That's what we need to do.

[673] As opposed to, we need to counter -program and have something completely original.

[674] It sounds like they got maybe lucky and they had a blueprint now to work off.

[675] They really did get lucky because they let Gary do whatever he wanted to do and they really didn't get involved.

[676] But by the time the mid -1990s came and there was a leadership change at HBO and as Felix mentioned, they're not as in seeing Bet Midler in concert or Madonna in concert or Michael Jackson concert maybe ongoing series is the way to keep people subscribed to the service.

[677] I mean, HBO's obsessions of the mid -1990s are the same obsessions of entertainment executives now, which is churn, cancellations, how do we keep people hooked?

[678] So they took a look at, what do we have, potentially in development, and they said, okay, this prison drama, sure, let's do that.

[679] And it was a dramatic series.

[680] That was what was different.

[681] A lot of those early shows that they did, they kind of at first were like, we're going to focus on things that the broadcast networks wouldn't do.

[682] You know, every time anyone had tried to do a prison drama, they got canceled super quickly.

[683] You can't do it on network TV.

[684] It's going to be soft and corny.

[685] Exactly.

[686] It's not escapist.

[687] Like, you're trapped in prison.

[688] Yeah, yeah.

[689] There's no wish for film out there.

[690] Now, Aos was a conflicting show for me in my youth, and you guys are young as well.

[691] I was there for the violence.

[692] I was a young boy.

[693] I was like, oh, there's going to be these prison fights.

[694] Those are scary I want to see those.

[695] And I was like, man, we're in the shower.

[696] for a long time on this show.

[697] There's the most amount of male nudity that had ever been seen in Oz.

[698] You never saw an episode.

[699] Too young.

[700] But not only too young, I would never.

[701] I would never tune into that.

[702] Additionally, yes.

[703] And even Larry Sanders, like, I would now, as someone who appreciates comedy, but those early years sound like they were very male -driven.

[704] Yes.

[705] Oh, yeah.

[706] A hundred percent.

[707] One of HBO's earliest executive said, a man controls the remote control, and we are going to program.

[708] to him.

[709] And his wife, she'll watch what he watches.

[710] Yeah, she'll just sit there.

[711] Yep, and be very happy to sit there and watch real sex.

[712] Yeah, it is kind of fascinating over the 50 -year history that that idea was very explicit originally, that they were like, yeah, we're going to program for men because it's the man that pays the cable bill at the end of the month.

[713] Women pay all the bills and make all the spending choices.

[714] Also broadcast television because they're advertisements and the advertisements want to reach women.

[715] It's skewed towards women, so we're going to do things differently.

[716] So we are going to program towards men.

[717] All of those early shows, the reason that there's documentaries with nudity on HBO, the reason that there's boxing.

[718] You cover hookers on the point?

[719] That's part of real sex, right?

[720] That was one of the original real sex documentaries.

[721] This is one Nate and I always talk about.

[722] Oh, wow.

[723] And a great narrator, and he'd go, the hookers on the point.

[724] Oh, yeah.

[725] We'll walk in a night.

[726] And it was footage of them working in cars.

[727] It was pretty wild.

[728] So was sex in the city the first?

[729] It couldn't have been the first, right?

[730] Fascinating.

[731] Can we also bring in Chris Albrecht right now?

[732] Because this is a huge part of this whole story.

[733] Yes.

[734] He's not there for Oz and Larry Sanders.

[735] Oh, he was.

[736] Okay.

[737] This will be the most complicated part of this interview, I believe.

[738] We have to say they did have Steve Jobs.

[739] Their Steve Jobs was him, no?

[740] To a certain extent.

[741] I mean, Chris Albrecht joined the network in 1985.

[742] Chris Albrecht had deep roots in comedy, and he was helping, let's get some, good stand -up specials going for HBO, but he was pushing for years, we should get into episodic television.

[743] And it was HBO CEO who kept on saying, no, no, no, and no. So finally, as a concession Albrecht in 1990, they created a thing called HBO Independent Productions, where, go ahead, you can make shows for the other networks.

[744] And out of that came a lot of shows, especially for the Fox Network, Martin, Rock.

[745] These are all, if you watch these shows now, you'll see at the end, the HBO Independent Productions, even though they were.

[746] on Fox.

[747] When the chief executive of HBO, the guy was like, we're not doing that.

[748] When he got pushed out in 1995, Chris Albrecht got to do what he wanted.

[749] And he's the one who put the green light on Oz.

[750] He's a tremendously instrumental person in HBO's history.

[751] Without having researched a book on HBO, I know of him implicitly because in show business, he's a legendary guy.

[752] If you can think about Roger Ailes had this insane amount of control over Fox News because he was generating $2 billion a year.

[753] Similarly, Chris, through these DVD sales, I forget the numbers, but they're in the billions of dollars.

[754] Wow.

[755] Once that whole Soprano, every Christmas get your father, the Sopranos box set, so he was pretty untouchable at Warner Brothers for some long period of time.

[756] I have to read the two allegations.

[757] One's not even an allegation.

[758] Yes.

[759] It'll color this conversation nicely, I think.

[760] So in 2007, Albrecht was arrested for assaulting his then -girlfriend in the valet parking area at the MGM Grand.

[761] Time Warner, the parent company of HBO, requested Albrecht's resignation.

[762] Albrecht complied misaccusations of another domestic dispute from the early 1990s.

[763] The Lawsonist's Times reported that in 1991, HBO paid a settlement of at least $400 ,000 to Sasha Emerson, a subordinate of Albrecht, who had accused him of choking her during a confrontation in her office.

[764] In an email to HBO employees, Albrick blamed his behavior on alcoholism.

[765] Hi, I'm breaking in to update this episode and say we received a kind letter from the legal counsel of Mr. Albrecht, and we want to make it very clear to everybody that Mr. Albreck denies unequivocally about this characterization of what allegedly happened in 1991.

[766] Thank you.

[767] Okay, complicated person, and we're about to talk about his insane track record.

[768] And also, we're going to bring in a lot of the women that were a part of that and probably not singled out and given the appropriate accolades they deserved.

[769] So he says, let's do Oz.

[770] Oz works.

[771] Now what's next?

[772] Well, all right.

[773] So sex in the city.

[774] How did that come to be?

[775] So one of the original movies that HBO made was if these walls could talk.

[776] Demi Moore was at the height of her powers in the mid -1990s.

[777] And like many actors who are at the height of their powers, she wanted to get into producing.

[778] So she wanted to make this movie about abortion.

[779] We're going to take a look at three different eras.

[780] What is abortion like in present day?

[781] What is it like in the 1950s?

[782] And what is it like?

[783] I can't remember was the 60s or 70s.

[784] Demi Moore originally was going to make it for teens.

[785] and T. And then, typical the time, they were like, oof, can we really do an abortion thing?

[786] Never mind.

[787] It's a little controversial.

[788] So HBO swept in.

[789] They were like, we'll take it.

[790] Demi Moore?

[791] Oh, my God.

[792] They cast Sissy Spaceic in it.

[793] Cher was cast in it.

[794] So HBO put it on because Demi Moore is Demi Moore, but they didn't really have huge expectations that this was going to be a ratings play.

[795] After all, it's a movie about abortion.

[796] Are our male viewers going to come watch us in droves?

[797] And the ratings were through the roof.

[798] Through the roof.

[799] And then HBO executives had the realization of like, huh, maybe there's women out there like television.

[800] Also consistent with the pattern.

[801] We want this relationship with her.

[802] We'll do this thing.

[803] Now we learned, not because we knew.

[804] Right.

[805] Within weeks of that premiere where they're like, is there anything good out there?

[806] And there was a show being shot by Darren Starr called Sex and a City.

[807] And we're like, yeah, all right, four women.

[808] We'll take that.

[809] We'll do that.

[810] It was already being shot.

[811] It wasn't being shot yet.

[812] at Candace Bushnell's book, which were her columns in, by the way, The New York Observer.

[813] Oh, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[814] That's where she wrote the Sex and the City column.

[815] She was working with Darren and they're like, oh, that's good.

[816] Yeah, let's do that.

[817] Wow.

[818] Yes.

[819] What's first?

[820] Sopranos or Sex in the City?

[821] Sex and the City's first.

[822] Deadwoods before or both those?

[823] After.

[824] It's after.

[825] Okay, walk us through the chronology.

[826] Sex in the City is their first gigantic hit or is Sopranos?

[827] The Sopranos came out of the gates hotter than Sex and the City.

[828] Oz is first, that's 1997, sex in the city is 98, Sopranos is January 99.

[829] Oh, God, they're on fire.

[830] It's pretty crazy.

[831] It's pretty nuts.

[832] They've only dipped their toe in the water five times, and it's those five shows.

[833] And then six feet under is 2001.

[834] It's like kind of the most incredible hot streak.

[835] Okay, and this is too inside baseball, but we'll do it anyways.

[836] Were they getting that lucky, or were they shooting a lot of pilots that they just decided not to bring the series?

[837] Were they launching a lot of ships and then picking the best?

[838] Or they just were getting lucky.

[839] I think the secret looking back at what happened was that they could not offer show creators the kind of money that the broadcast networks could offer them.

[840] You know, there's not going to be a secondary market.

[841] We're not going to be able to do 25 episodes.

[842] They couldn't offer them that.

[843] And so they were kind of at the time trying to figure out, if we're going to do series, like how are we going to get good people?

[844] What are we giving them?

[845] Right.

[846] And what they gave them, which ended up being hugely important, was they gave them creative freedom.

[847] Yeah.

[848] And they said, we're not going to give you notes.

[849] we're not going to note you to death.

[850] We're not going to make you have all these rules that you've grown up in.

[851] And the other thing that was important was that, like, it was not just that they were giving them freedom.

[852] They were giving freedom to these television writers who had spent decades already working in broadcast television.

[853] So Darren Starr had done Melrose 210.

[854] He was 9 -0 -210.

[855] And Melrose place.

[856] Yeah, both.

[857] I like the combo.

[858] I like it.

[859] He's probably pitching that now.

[860] Yeah.

[861] He'd done those.

[862] And he banged his head up against the standards and practices departments a hundred times.

[863] Yeah.

[864] And David Chase was coming up at Northern Exposure.

[865] Northern Exposure, the Rockford Files.

[866] He also spent a very successful career writing for broadcast television.

[867] Tom Fontana, the creator of Oz, had done homicide for NBC.

[868] Oh, wow.

[869] So they were all people that had kind of mastered the rules and what you could do within the confines of broadcast television.

[870] But we're also all insanely frustrated with broadcast television.

[871] You would say this then.

[872] wouldn't say it now weirdly.

[873] I think the best creators do aim for TV now, which is a total paradigm shift.

[874] But back then, it was almost like the handful of frustrated TV people that really wanted to probably make a movie.

[875] HBO was not the only interested party in Sex and the City.

[876] ABC was really, really, really interested in it.

[877] They were hot back then.

[878] Ellen was on the air, home improvements on the air.

[879] They were fighting for it.

[880] But Darren Starr, who had just come off making a very obscure show called Central Park West, which is on YouTube.

[881] And I highly recommend it.

[882] I like burned through several episodes.

[883] I loved it.

[884] I thought it was fantastic.

[885] Merrill Hemingway is in it.

[886] Darren Starr was like, if I do this with ABC, they're not even going to call it sex in a city at the end of the day.

[887] What would that have been?

[888] They'll call it.

[889] Love American style.

[890] Missionary.

[891] And it was just like, okay, this is stupid.

[892] So he made the deal of HBO.

[893] But he really did it because he was like, I just want to make my indie art house show.

[894] And that's how he perceived sex in a city.

[895] I just finally got the good joke.

[896] It'd be called Foreplay in the Country.

[897] Wow.

[898] We're all in our own head, trying to figure out the next.

[899] David Chase, same thing.

[900] The Sopranos was shopped at all the broadcast networks.

[901] Fox was super into it initially.

[902] And then they were like, you know, actually, we're never going to be able to do this mobster stuff.

[903] Forget it.

[904] Then he goes to CBS.

[905] The then head of CBS, Leslie Moonvez, was like, you know, I love this idea, but does a mobster have to be in therapy and take Prozac?

[906] That really makes him see kind of weak.

[907] And David's like, unfortunately, I think that's kind of the point of the driving force.

[908] And then Les is like, yeah, no, thanks.

[909] And it wasn't until HBO, a couple of years later, it took David Chase a really long time to sell it.

[910] Oh, wow.

[911] Where the HBO executives are like, we love the therapy and angle.

[912] More of that.

[913] That's fantastic.

[914] They just got it.

[915] Wow.

[916] So cool.

[917] That, to me, is my most seminal TV experience as The Sopranos.

[918] I was mildly interested in TV growing up, and then that thing happened, and it was like counting down the hours until Sunday.

[919] Then I got in the Groundlein Sunday company.

[920] I was almost upset I was in the Sunday company because I was going to miss the live broadcast, but I would tape it.

[921] We'd make Italian food with my friends.

[922] Nothing will probably ever hold the weight of that show.

[923] It is crazy.

[924] Now, we're 20 years after its premiere.

[925] I mean, I don't know if it was because of the pandemic or what, but everybody's still kind of talk about the Sopranos.

[926] Yandelfini's performance in that, it's up against any movie performance.

[927] It's unreal.

[928] And what is it, 85 hours of that consistency.

[929] It's mind -blowing.

[930] The ancillary cast, the supporting cast, all of it worked so well.

[931] Monica's still not seen surprise.

[932] You.

[933] I know I have to.

[934] I know.

[935] I know I'll love it.

[936] Just there's so much to watch.

[937] And these other shows, and maybe I'm being misogynistic in saying this, but these other shows were great shows, but I don't think they completely change the paradigm the way Sopranos did.

[938] That is the fucking show that changes the world.

[939] Yeah.

[940] Those were like the stepping stones and then The Sopranos blew it all open.

[941] Is that when they start getting Emmys and attention?

[942] Started to, it really took until 2004 when HBO blew the doors down at the Emmy Awards.

[943] They had Angels in America, sex in the city won a ton.

[944] I believe the Sopranos won a ton that year.

[945] That was the year where it was just like, I, we're here to stay.

[946] This is now our award show.

[947] And it was really by that point because the wire was on the air.

[948] First of all, creating all these shows, one after the next is crazy.

[949] Like, that's a track record that doesn't happen.

[950] But in just six, seven years, they had elevated television into an art form, which it had never really been.

[951] It was crazy how quickly HBO single -handedly began to do that.

[952] Again, people, writers, young writers who generally were serving their time in television to hopefully get to movies.

[953] Now, every young writer coming out of USC is like, if I could be David Chase, the world is mine.

[954] And the irony is, David Chase, all he wanted to do was get away from the gulag.

[955] that was television and into movies.

[956] And in fact, once all the broadcast network started declining The Sopranos, and then HBO was, like, thinking about it, he was like, oh, God, but what if it's a success?

[957] Then I'm going to be stuck in television.

[958] And there we go.

[959] He changed his TV.

[960] I think we all maybe thought, oh, David Chase's next big series being, has they ever pitched one?

[961] Does he care?

[962] He must have also during that DVD bonanza just fucking cashed out.

[963] The arrival of the DVD had such a huge impact on HBO.

[964] because it gave the network an extra revenue stream that allowed them they really shifted the model because in those early days larry sanders dream on they were kind of notorious for these really cheap productions like everything looked really crappy there were no exterior shots and every corner they could cut they would do it and it was really in that same period of sex in the city sopranos ahs six feet under that whole era where they switched and they're like you know what we have have suddenly DVDs, we have another way of making money, let's put it all on the screen, let's spend a huge amount of money on what it looks like.

[965] It's hard to imagine now because by the time you get to Game of Thrones, it was like the biggest production, most expensive production ever and television.

[966] But back then, it's so funny because they were the opposite in the early days.

[967] For sure, there was a long period where HBO was the most profitable sector of Time Warner by a landslide, like what their budget was versus what they're.

[968] they were bringing in.

[969] Was it hard for them to convince the powers that be at Time Warner, or did they operate kind of independently and get to choose to start blowing these budgets up?

[970] They were very independently operated.

[971] Back to the Chris Albreck thing.

[972] Yes.

[973] And they had this concept that we write about in the book, which we kind of come back to again and again, which is the HBO shrug, which was this notion of like, we're going to spend $70 million on Band of Brothers.

[974] It's like, well, it's going to take $100 million.

[975] All right, we'll do it for $100 million.

[976] And they kind of got in this groove where they really were easing up on the spending.

[977] And that was during the area where it really was flourishing.

[978] And I think the ability to have independence within that corporate structure is kind of one of the other amazing things that they went through so many hellacious corporate mergers.

[979] Like their parent company went through Warner AOL Time Warner, AT &T, these are famously messed up corporate mergers and culture clashes.

[980] And yet through that whole time, HBO was able to continue to be hugely successful, culturally, and making a ton of money.

[981] And a lot of it was because they were very successful at just fending off their territory.

[982] When David Chase makes his deal to, due to Sopranos, David Chase said, I'd like to shoot this in New Jersey.

[983] when traditionally, if you have a Hollywood production, you would shoot it in, say, Pasadena.

[984] We have the East Coast style architecture.

[985] It'll be much cheaper.

[986] We'll just keep it in L .A. And we'll be in and out.

[987] And HBO said, sure, shooting in New Jersey is going to be a lot more expensive, but go to town, do it.

[988] And the reason why, Chris Albrecht said, I wanted to prove to the town.

[989] I wanted to prove to the entertainment industry that we were for real.

[990] One of the things that he hated was the movie Moonstruck.

[991] And the reason he said is phony Italians, phony New York.

[992] And I wanted to prove to everybody we were for real.

[993] Wow.

[994] You got a single out Nick Cage in that movie.

[995] They still, I mean like Euphoria's budget.

[996] It's still known for this.

[997] Yeah, we'll give you whatever you need to make the best thing possible and they do.

[998] Well, I was going to say, it does seem like that phase is very comparable to Netflix coming onto the scene in that we're going to overpay.

[999] That's going to be the thing we do because I will say as much as you're right, The money in television, as you make Seinfeld, that show runs almost at neutral when it's on NBC.

[1000] They generate X amount of dollars in advertising every episode.

[1001] They're paying more than that to pay the talent.

[1002] But at the end of 300 episodes, they're going to sell that block to TBS for $1 .2 billion.

[1003] That's where the money's at.

[1004] Syndication.

[1005] There's no syndication market for HBO.

[1006] They are going to have to pay people up front, which virtually is what happened in the Netflix paradigm all over again.

[1007] And famously, I've had many friends that were on HBO shows.

[1008] They pay.

[1009] Year two, you want to renegotiate?

[1010] They're at the table.

[1011] It's not like network television at all.

[1012] They seem to still have that ethos where it's like, yeah, we're going to pay for the best people.

[1013] We're not really going to put up too big of a fight.

[1014] It inspired Netflix.

[1015] I mean, we report in the book, there was a moment where Ted Sarandos, the co -chief executive of Netflix, had a lunch with Chris Albrecht.

[1016] And at that point, HBO had given the green light to the Pacific, which was a World War II miniseries.

[1017] It just cost a fortune.

[1018] $200 million, like a fortune.

[1019] And its predecessor, Band of Brothers, that also cost a fortune, but HBO recouped all the funds through DVD sales.

[1020] By the time the Pacific was going to come out, the DVD market was starting to soften a bit.

[1021] So there's no way they were going to recoup that $200 million.

[1022] And Ted said to Chris, like, why would you make this deal?

[1023] The economics don't make any sense.

[1024] And Chris replied, because we can.

[1025] And that was it.

[1026] And at first, Ted was like, like, this is crazy, and then came around and saw its logic, where it's like, well, wait a minute, if you do spend a ton, all of a sudden you could enter this virtuous cycle where you're working with great talent, and in the case specific, you're working with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, they'll tell their friends, hey, that place is great.

[1027] And then all of a sudden, off we go.

[1028] Yes, it's a great way to lure in these otherwise unachievable roster of talent.

[1029] Yes.

[1030] They go from billions of dollars in DVD sales to that pretty much vanishes entirely.

[1031] any of these people make money.

[1032] I don't understand.

[1033] One thing that's interesting about HBO, which I did not realize before writing this book, is that one of the ways they started making a lot of money as the DVD market was starting to soften was by reselling their shows overseas.

[1034] And of everything that HBO did for 50 years in the United States was about building up the HBO brand.

[1035] You know what the HBO brand is.

[1036] It's premium.

[1037] Overseas, they did the exact opposite.

[1038] They didn't build up any brand.

[1039] They said, overseas, we're going to manage for profit.

[1040] So we're going to take our series that are doing so well in the United States, we're going to license them to whoever will pay top dollar in those markets.

[1041] And so in a lot of places around the world, even places that know HBO shows, they don't know them as HBO shows.

[1042] They're just shows.

[1043] Game of Thrones in most of the world appeared on, you know, Sky or whatever the local distributor was.

[1044] And that was great for making money because it cost nothing.

[1045] You didn't have to have staff overseas.

[1046] You didn't have to have offices.

[1047] You didn't have to run a channel.

[1048] All you had to do was just license that out.

[1049] Give your wiring account information.

[1050] Yeah.

[1051] It was very, very, very successful for them and really helped pad their profits for a long time.

[1052] Now it's interesting because Netflix has done the exact opposite thing.

[1053] They've gone into all these markets around the world.

[1054] And it's all about building up the Netflix brand.

[1055] and it's expensive and it takes time, but they cultivate local audiences, they cultivate local creators, and now they have this world infrastructure that nobody else has.

[1056] And after five years of pouring money into Korea, you start getting Squid Game, you start getting stuff back that circulates around the world.

[1057] And that's really at this point where HBO is kind of behind because even though they existed for 40 years ahead of time, they just never built the thing up outside the United States.

[1058] Yeah, have you had this experience where you're traveling and you have your iPad and you go to use your apps that you have in another country and let's say you don't have a VPN so you're just signing on and then Hulu not available in this country HBO not available in this country you go to Netflix it's available in every country you're going to have different titles but it's all right there and you can see how that exists and is consistent and I can see the benefit there's literally a finite amount of money they can make 300 million people times $9 a month let's say but still that would be $3 billion a month that would be 36 billion a year.

[1059] If they could get every American to subscribe to HBO, that's a hell of a development budget.

[1060] 36 billion.

[1061] And then if you're worldwide, it's more than that.

[1062] But still.

[1063] Okay, let's talk about the ladies that were overlooked in all this.

[1064] I just happen to know one personally, Sheila Nevins, who I absolutely adore, married to David Nevins, a competing brand showtime.

[1065] So what was Sheila's story there?

[1066] Sheila was a huge figure inside of HBO.

[1067] She joined HBO at the really early days, 1979, I think she showed up.

[1068] Oh, wow.

[1069] And she has this amazing story.

[1070] She was working at CBS and she was unhappy and she wanted to escape the CBS job and she saw this listing for director of documentaries at this thing called HBO.

[1071] And she was just like, what is HBO?

[1072] But she was like, eh, you know, get me out of there.

[1073] It's like a temporary job.

[1074] At first she thought she was going to be shooting all the documentaries.

[1075] Pretty quickly realized, I'm actually in charge of figuring out what are HBO documentaries.

[1076] And at the time, they needed more programming and they needed to fill up more hours of the day.

[1077] And they were under a lot of pressure because the studios, again, were not happy with giving their movies away.

[1078] And it was like, how are we going to fill up this airtime?

[1079] Documentaries were pretty cheap.

[1080] Sheila had this incredible run of just freedom and budgets and developing through trial and error what is an HBO documentary.

[1081] And she was really influenced by the Maisel brothers, which she worked with.

[1082] They made salesmen.

[1083] It was like one of Sheila's favorite documentaries, and that was about traveling salesmen, selling Bibles.

[1084] And it was very much, in some ways, the prototype of the HBO documentary, which was people on the fringes of American society and following those people close and treating them as real humans.

[1085] And she used to have this saying, we tell real human stories.

[1086] And this is docutainment.

[1087] And we're going to go to the fringes.

[1088] It's not traveling Bible salesmen.

[1089] We're going to follow circus freaks and we're going to follow serial killers.

[1090] Gang banging and Little Rock.

[1091] Was that HBO?

[1092] Yeah.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] Paradise Lost.

[1095] Is that Her?

[1096] Paradise Lost.

[1097] Which, again, there's a perfect example.

[1098] That started off because she read an article wire service story about these murders in Arkansas.

[1099] And she was like, hmm, there's Satanism involved.

[1100] That sounds kind of fringy.

[1101] And she had this great model, like, I'll have a stable of documentarians that I love that do great work.

[1102] And every time an idea comes up, I'll match them with the person.

[1103] And not every documentary maker can make the same film.

[1104] And she had this incredible knack of finding the right team for the right idea.

[1105] And Paradise Lost, which was Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinovsky, they had just made Brothers Keeper, which is like an incredible documentary.

[1106] And they were looking for the next project.

[1107] And she was like, go down to Arkansas, just look around, figure out what happened, follow the story wherever it takes you.

[1108] They get down there and just this incredible series of events where it turns out that instead of there being Satanism involved it's like a Satanism panic in the small town.

[1109] Oh, it's like footloose?

[1110] They kind of stumble into a dark version of footloose.

[1111] First thing Metallica ever licensed their music.

[1112] Yes.

[1113] Berlinger tells an amazing story about also if you look at that film, now these days every documentary has the drone footage but back then there weren't drones.

[1114] So they went out one day they rented a helicopter to get some of the shots of this Mississippi River town.

[1115] And at some point, they landed the helicopter at a barbecue festival because they all need lunch.

[1116] So they went all and eat barbecue and they're chowing down.

[1117] They're having a good time.

[1118] They're like, all right, we've got to get back and finish these shots.

[1119] They go back up.

[1120] Someone had a little barbecue sauce on their hand that was operating the camera.

[1121] And he's like, you can still see the little barbecue smudge.

[1122] In the corner of the screen.

[1123] But they end up making three documentaries over the course of 20 years following this court case and really uncovering this injustice that was done to these three kids.

[1124] I feel like that's the one that gets then ripped off a million different times and I've liked every version of us.

[1125] That's the Larry Sanders of Doc.

[1126] It started the entire true crime.

[1127] Just true crime in general.

[1128] Podcasts, movies, all of it comes from that.

[1129] She really changed documentaries.

[1130] Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

[1131] dare.

[1132] When Sheel Nebens came to HBO, she looked at the documentary landscape and it was what she describes as really sober, boring stuff on PBS.

[1133] Yeah.

[1134] Like, oh, how do you prevent heart disease?

[1135] And it was just like, let's make it interesting.

[1136] And, you know, she really did change the field.

[1137] Yeah, all those are seminal.

[1138] That's what got me interested in docs.

[1139] Was the offerings on HBO.

[1140] I don't think I would have ever become a docofile without that network.

[1141] And she was at HBO.

[1142] for decades.

[1143] She did not leave until 2019, 2018, 2017.

[1144] He's also a reporter's dream because there's very few people in the world that you can just put the recorder down in front of them and they'll just hit every single thing out of the park.

[1145] She is so funny.

[1146] Incredible quote after incredible quote.

[1147] I do have to ask David Nevins.

[1148] You know David.

[1149] I do know David Evans.

[1150] He's not married to Sheila Nevins.

[1151] Yes.

[1152] Not anymore.

[1153] Or was it never?

[1154] David Nevins from President of Showtime.

[1155] Who just left Showtime.

[1156] Did he leave Showtime?

[1157] Just the other day, but that's not right.

[1158] Let's see.

[1159] David Nevins.

[1160] Sheila Nevins married to Sydney Koch.

[1161] Okay, you know, it's so weird.

[1162] You're going to at least be sympathetic to my confusion because...

[1163] This is why I keep John around.

[1164] We have a fact check also at the end of this.

[1165] Even better.

[1166] So, yeah.

[1167] But I probably wouldn't have even thought to fact check.

[1168] We're going to have to unravel this whole thing.

[1169] His wife is Andrea Nevins who makes docs at HBO.

[1170] There we go.

[1171] That is confusing.

[1172] Fuck, that's confusing.

[1173] Oh, that is confusing.

[1174] Oh, my God.

[1175] That is admittedly confusing.

[1176] But also just the age difference is fairly significant.

[1177] I was getting confused though she had a job there in the 70s, but I was just going to roll with it.

[1178] She's in her 80s.

[1179] David's in his 50s.

[1180] Okay.

[1181] Okay, good job.

[1182] God, dog it.

[1183] Okay.

[1184] Anyways, yes, she's had several on HBO.

[1185] So confusing.

[1186] I always found it curious that he was the president of Showtime yet she's doing docs on HBO.

[1187] Still the case, to some extent.

[1188] Okay, so man, I take all that back.

[1189] Anyways, how embarrassing.

[1190] What a carfuffle.

[1191] Okay, so Sheila, she's still there or she's left?

[1192] She left a few years ago.

[1193] And how did these women that were there fair under Chris's leadership?

[1194] I think it was a difficult place to work as a female executive, not just at HBO, but really at all of time warning.

[1195] It was particularly hard at HBO because of the reasons we talked about before were programming towards men.

[1196] Susie Fitzgerald, who was a very talented development executive, who worked on the comedy specials for HBO in the 80s, and there was a period of time where she was really pushing for, why don't we take some of these incredible female comics that are performing on air, and let's make a show about them.

[1197] That was the era where every stand -up comic was doing their own sitcom.

[1198] And HBO was so well positioned to capitalize on that trend.

[1199] And there was just incredible resistance to that, again, because there just wasn't a belief at that time that there was a female audience that the female point of view would be appealing to HBO subscribers.

[1200] And it was a huge wasted opportunity and also just made it that much more difficult.

[1201] Eventually, Susie left and she ended up working on Larry Sanders show from the production side.

[1202] and then later had an incredible run at AMC.

[1203] There's a lot of stories like that where there were very talented female executives who had a huge impact on HBO.

[1204] Carolyn Strauss, who was Chris Albrecht's deputy for a long time, the number two development executive.

[1205] And when Chris Albrecht was arrested in 2007 and left the network, there was a brief moment where Carolyn was basically overseeing programming.

[1206] And again, like a lot of things at Time Warner, it just felt like there was an end to all of those runs for women.

[1207] The higher you got up in the corporate hierarchy, the less women that were there.

[1208] And Carolyn was gone within a year or two after getting that programming position.

[1209] But fun fact, on Carolyn Strauss, as she was leaving, she said, hey, I want to keep my hand on at least one show, this fantasy show.

[1210] I would like to be a producer on it.

[1211] And they were like, sure.

[1212] And, of course, that was Game of Thrones.

[1213] And then she was the one.

[1214] So this is a person helped bring you to Sopranos.

[1215] This person helped bring you sex in the city, the wire, all the aforementioned shows.

[1216] And she was just like, this thing's going to be a hit.

[1217] And she then went and talked to the then -HBO bosses.

[1218] It was like, I know you're going to see dragons.

[1219] I know you're going to see fantasy.

[1220] And you're going to think automatically not HBO.

[1221] I need you to get in a room with Benny Off and Weiss.

[1222] I need you to hear them talk.

[1223] And I need you to hear this show because it is an HBO show, which they did.

[1224] And then Green Light.

[1225] Wow.

[1226] Did they have a little doldrum section?

[1227] between Sopranos ending and Game of Thrones?

[1228] Is there like a little gap there?

[1229] And is that have anything to do with Chris's departure?

[1230] It doesn't have to do with his departure specifically, but especially after that amazing run.

[1231] There were some misfires, which that's just what happens at networks.

[1232] They're not going to bat a thousand.

[1233] Thing is, they were batting close to a thousand.

[1234] So it was shocking when they were having trouble.

[1235] And the next problem is the fact that lots of other networks were starting to do what they were doing.

[1236] Yes.

[1237] FX was getting into the game.

[1238] Showtime was getting into the game.

[1239] So suddenly there was.

[1240] a lot more competition.

[1241] And then AMC comes up with Madman out of nowhere.

[1242] So they were definitely sweating it in the late aughts or whatever we call that decade.

[1243] They kind of invented the anti -hero and now they're getting fucked about it.

[1244] And everybody was taking that same archetype.

[1245] First it kind of spread through the HBO dramas and then it spread elsewhere and cable.

[1246] And I think that all really reached a crisis in 2007.

[1247] Part of it was Chris Albrecht being arrested throwing the network into chaos.

[1248] That's a little de -state.

[1249] Yes.

[1250] There was also a big writer's strike that year in 2007.

[1251] Also, the Sopranos ended in 2007.

[1252] And there were just all these factors where suddenly this thing that everyone accepted is amazing.

[1253] But then it was like, well, maybe that was just like a lucky run.

[1254] And Showtime started calling the network, HB over.

[1255] Ooh, burn.

[1256] Take you guys with the burn unit after that one.

[1257] Yeah.

[1258] Fierce.

[1259] Wait, when did they come up with the tagline?

[1260] Which is the name of your book again.

[1261] It's not TV.

[1262] When did that go about?

[1263] Because it must have been after the movie phase.

[1264] It was in the mid -90s.

[1265] It was during Larry Sanders, but it was before everything else.

[1266] And Bridget Potter, who was another executive who was hugely influential in HBO's development and now is largely unknown.

[1267] Bridget Potter tells this amazing story about that tagline.

[1268] And what happened is at the time they were looking for kind of a new slogan.

[1269] Their previous slogan, I think, had been simply the best.

[1270] And it was like, we're just...

[1271] Something like that.

[1272] It was just, we're better than everyone.

[1273] Then at some point they're like, we want to do something expressing that we're different than everybody.

[1274] We're different than broadcast TV.

[1275] They hired, I think, BBDO was working on different taglines.

[1276] And at some point, Bridget Potter was like, none of these are working.

[1277] You're not really getting what we're going for.

[1278] So she had the team put together this sizzle reel that was like all the craziest moments, like the Sheila Evans' documentaries.

[1279] Every shower scene from...

[1280] from the eyes.

[1281] Exactly.

[1282] That kind of stuff.

[1283] Stand -up jokes that you couldn't tell on television.

[1284] And splaced all those together and like a little sizzle reel and took this into a meeting.

[1285] And they all sat down the meeting.

[1286] They put it up on the screen.

[1287] They sit there.

[1288] They're eating their little cookies.

[1289] They watch this like five minutes of just graphic, crazy stuff.

[1290] And then it ends.

[1291] And everyone's kind of silent.

[1292] And the way Ritchett tells it, then one guy just kind of chimes in like, I don't know what that was.

[1293] But it's not television.

[1294] And she's just like, boom.

[1295] that's what we want.

[1296] Like, it's not television.

[1297] It's not TV.

[1298] Oh, wow.

[1299] And that guy has subsequently filed many a many a lawsuits.

[1300] So now about it.

[1301] Okay, so my next question is they've had all these different bosses.

[1302] It kind of reminds me of I was a huge Letterman fan.

[1303] And when General Electrics had bought CBS or whatever network he was on, he hated them.

[1304] Every night he would roast Gene.

[1305] There was even a moment where he had installed, you know, when you put coins in something, you push the little truce.

[1306] train in from like a vending machine in the 80s.

[1307] He had the cameras retrofitted to have those coins and a camera shot would go out and then Dave would walk from his desk over and have to put more quarters in it and he'd push it in so the camera would work to show them how cheap it was.

[1308] He was just relentless on them.

[1309] So what has been the worst stewardship of HBO?

[1310] What was the merger that didn't do well for them?

[1311] And then what's this discovery merger now look like?

[1312] I think you have to go back to the AOL Time Warner merger.

[1313] dozens and dozens of books have been written about what a disaster that was, but we were kind of curious, what did that mean inside of HBO?

[1314] And we heard one story where HBO was a wholesaler throughout its entire existence.

[1315] It didn't deal directly with cable customers.

[1316] The customers for HBO were the cable operators themselves, right?

[1317] And so, you know, the cable operators had the names of the customers and their credit cards and all of that.

[1318] So that's how it's always been at HBO, very basic to the business model.

[1319] And merger goes through, biggest merger in the history of American business at that point.

[1320] They show up for their first meeting.

[1321] They fly in these jets and get down with the sales team.

[1322] Sit down with these executives from HBO and say, okay, here's what we want.

[1323] We want to start marketing AOL directly to your customers.

[1324] So the first thing we're going to need is all your customer data.

[1325] And they're all looking around like you just spent a hundred billion dollars on this business and you don't know that we don't have any customer data.

[1326] Like that's not what we do.

[1327] And there was A lot of moments like that.

[1328] Another funny thing was they all had to switch over to AOL email.

[1329] And people realized pretty quickly that they couldn't send video of any size through the email.

[1330] And so it was like they're basically huge departments that just ground to a halt because we can't actually work.

[1331] We're very video -intensive company here.

[1332] But what was interesting also in the long run is that Jeff Bukas, who was the CEO of HBO at that point, from the very beginning, was very, very.

[1333] resistant to the idea that these kind of cyber visionaries from suburban Virginia were going to come in and revolutionize the entertainment industry.

[1334] That was not the prevailing wisdom at the time.

[1335] The prevailing wisdom was these guys, everything they touch is gold, they know what the future is.

[1336] Because Buccas was very skeptical from the beginning, he really fought off a lot of the dumber ideas that were coming down the pipeline from corporate.

[1337] And this turned out to be a great thing.

[1338] And when eventually AOL kind of collapsed and their stock price just cratered and everyone realized at once, oh, they don't actually know what they're doing.

[1339] Dial -up internet is really not the future.

[1340] These futures were wrong.

[1341] Yeah.

[1342] Then suddenly the wisdom was like, oh, you know what?

[1343] You were right.

[1344] Resisting these internet gurus was a smart move.

[1345] And Jeff Buchas got a promotion.

[1346] He eventually became head of all -time Warner.

[1347] But what was interesting about that is that left to HBO and a lot of the HBO people so embittered about the internet and the notion that somehow the internet was going to save them.

[1348] So there was so much internal resentment about that that then in the next 10 years where things started shifting towards streaming.

[1349] And we call internet PTSD.

[1350] It just left them so hardened to those ideas that I think in some ways it really set back HBO.

[1351] People would come in and we have seen in the book where these executives come into HBO and they're working in the West Coast and they're like, you know, it would be a great idea in 2006.

[1352] Like, let's buy Netflix.

[1353] And Netflix was still pretty small and manageable.

[1354] And so they put together this nice little 30 -page proposal and they take it to their bosses back in New York and they're like, this would be a great synergy between these two companies.

[1355] They control the market for DVDs online.

[1356] We control the secondary market and cable combined.

[1357] We'd have so much leverage.

[1358] And they were just like, no, it's not going to go anywhere.

[1359] Did they not immediately see the economic advantage of being their own platform in that up until there's now streaming service, I'm assuming I don't know what the percentage is, but they're giving a significant percentage of the subscriptions to the cable providers now.

[1360] What percentage do we know?

[1361] Basically a 50 -50 split.

[1362] Right.

[1363] Like a movie distribution deal.

[1364] So now on their app, that's 100 % them, correct?

[1365] So like they're going to double their revenue with this.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] And there are people that we're saying, like, it's time.

[1368] You know, like, we can go direct to consumer with this new technology.

[1369] The problem is that HBO was very much trapped by its own success.

[1370] It was making so much money from the cable ecosystem.

[1371] And those cable distributors did not want people going right to consumer.

[1372] Like, that would ruin their business.

[1373] They were always worried if Comcast gets upset, they can suddenly just stop promoting HBO to their customers.

[1374] Yeah, they have a lot of leverage.

[1375] That's their whole pie at that point without DVD sales.

[1376] Yeah.

[1377] And again, one of these classic innovators dilemma, which you see again and again in business where some companies, the incumbent, and they're so good at the current technology.

[1378] And then the new technology comes along.

[1379] And it's like, we see that thing, but it's small and we can't really shift.

[1380] I remember eight, nine years ago, I was forced to take all these meetings.

[1381] No one's going to watch normal TV in 10 years.

[1382] Everyone's going to watch everything VR.

[1383] And anyone who had a tiniest grasp on what it meant to film.

[1384] in VR, all of a sudden, had access to every top executive in town and talent.

[1385] And, yeah, which one's VR?

[1386] It's hard to know.

[1387] But also, these companies do so well because they have such an identity.

[1388] And then with an identity comes a stubbornness.

[1389] I mean, I think that about this show sometimes.

[1390] People will be like, would you ever do video?

[1391] No, we don't do that.

[1392] We don't do video.

[1393] And we have, like, reasons.

[1394] Yeah, yeah.

[1395] I believe in them today.

[1396] I do too today.

[1397] It's a listening experience.

[1398] So that's a part of our.

[1399] identity and it's very hard for anyone to come into a company that's like, no, we're doing really well and we're doing well because of all these things we've decided and don't tell us to change it.

[1400] It scares people, I think.

[1401] So is it fair to say that initially Netflix was just kicking the shit out of HBO?

[1402] Certainly from a technological standpoint, absolutely.

[1403] I mean, it took Netflix a minute to figure out the programming stuff, but from a technological standpoint, when HBO finally decide to go into streaming.

[1404] There are a couple examples that we write about in the book.

[1405] Both Netflix and HBO were going to launch services at the same time in Scandinavia.

[1406] Did not go well for HBO Scandinavia and it went just fine for Netflix in Scandinavia.

[1407] Because of technological issues, they just couldn't get the thing to work, right?

[1408] Yeah, it didn't work.

[1409] I want to say I even knew Showtime was way ahead of them in their streaming platform as well.

[1410] They were pretty late, no?

[1411] Considering their library and what a powerhouse they were in every other way.

[1412] Yeah, they were late, and they were so tepid about it.

[1413] The first streaming product was HBO Go.

[1414] There was so little HBO programming on there, again, because they didn't want to upset the cable distributors.

[1415] And then finally, by the time they decided, okay, we're going to open this thing up.

[1416] You don't have to have a cable subscription to get us online.

[1417] We're going to offer it to everybody.

[1418] It's HBO Now.

[1419] That was like a decade had passed where Netflix had just been eating up customers.

[1420] When HBO Go, HBO Now, What about Macs?

[1421] Then HBO Max.

[1422] Right.

[1423] I had all of them.

[1424] I was along for every piece of that here.

[1425] I mean, the name is going to change again.

[1426] Again.

[1427] Yes.

[1428] So Discovery, which, you know, purchased HBO earlier this year.

[1429] There's a good chance once Discovery Plus and HBO Max merge, there will be yet another new name.

[1430] But why are they doing that?

[1431] Why are they merging if they're now on their own?

[1432] All of these services want to have not just the most subscribers, but the most amount of time.

[1433] And I think part of what was missing from HBO's repertoire was they don't have a lot of cheap reality programming.

[1434] Or family programming.

[1435] Disney and Netflix, I think, are way ahead of you're going to watch something with your kids.

[1436] And so the Discovery thing, I think in part makes sense because they have a lot of reality television.

[1437] I think they've benefited from having more than just HBO content on HBO Max.

[1438] Discovery Plus is global, right?

[1439] So they're what Netflix has that HBO doesn't have.

[1440] So then you fold all that in together.

[1441] and you think, well, now we have a must -have subscription.

[1442] You have to have this, right?

[1443] Like, you have to have Netflix.

[1444] You have kids.

[1445] You have to have Disney.

[1446] And this would, in theory, be the one you'd have to have.

[1447] In theory, I mean, we skipped over AT &T's stewardship of HBO, which on the one hand was fine for HBO because AT &T executives were so terrified of being known as the guys who mess with HBO.

[1448] You killed the golden goose.

[1449] Yeah, they were just like, on the other hand, they were.

[1450] went about annoying so many senior HBO leaders.

[1451] There was a lot of talent that walked out the door during AT &T's very brief tenure in owning the place before they had a huge debt load and had to offload it.

[1452] So Discovery comes in, Discovery makers of cheap unscripted television.

[1453] Felix did I write in the book just a couple of years ago.

[1454] If Discovery had purchased HBO, there would have been shrieks of horror throughout Hollywood where it's like the reality show people.

[1455] Knives with wives?

[1456] Wives with knives?

[1457] Ice truckers.

[1458] Dr. Pimple Popper.

[1459] But in the wake of AT &T stewardship, it's like no problem at all.

[1460] It is a weird acquisition from the outside.

[1461] Discoveries, they're leveraged to the gills to do this.

[1462] You would think at least that Time Warner would be bigger than Discovery.

[1463] It is bigger.

[1464] It was technically a merger.

[1465] So Time Warner, Warner Media, they had 29 ,000 employees.

[1466] Discovery had 11, 12 ,000 employees.

[1467] So it's definitely much bigger.

[1468] But the problem is, and this is something that HBO has had.

[1469] had to survive throughout decades of its history is Discovery is coming in with a debt load of more than $50 billion, and that has to start getting paid off immediately.

[1470] So through all these corporate takeovers, the HBO programming team, they've been able to keep everything in place, like, hey, don't mess with us, we've got a winning game going.

[1471] If Discovery comes and says, hey, you know that programming budget, it's just a little bit too high, it's actually a lot bit too high, which they have not done yet, and they're not going do in the short term, but that is one of the risks.

[1472] And it's fascinating now because it's also at this moment where in streaming it's kind of almost this blockbuster era.

[1473] You look at this summer, you had the Rings of Power, the Lord of Ring series on Amazon, which I think is the most expensive show ever made.

[1474] You have the House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones sequel on HBO, you have Sandman on Netflix, you have She Hulk on Disney Plus, like these really big, expensive shows.

[1475] And at the same time, they're all losing so much money on these services.

[1476] Yeah, what's going to give?

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] None of them are profitable?

[1479] Isn't Disney Plus they've done a good job?

[1480] They're still taking money from the legacy cable brands, cutting, cutting, and just plowing those profits into streaming to pay for all of these crazy expensive series.

[1481] Amazon, they make their money through retail and advertising.

[1482] They made money on the six time got me today, and I've worked all day.

[1483] Exactly.

[1484] I've got some time to buy that.

[1485] We can make a billion -dollar show.

[1486] Every time next takes a P, Amazon makes like, that's $12.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] Yeah, that was like a billion -dollar budget or something crazy.

[1489] They paid like $250 million just for the rights, and then I think four or five seasons, it's going to be over a billion.

[1490] At some point, it seems unsustainable.

[1491] Also, it's kind of interesting to me that that same trend that we've been all watching happening in movie theaters, where it's like everything is moved towards Marvel and everything has moved towards blockbusters.

[1492] and these hugely expensive movies and the indies and the lower budget things have kind of fallen away.

[1493] You wonder if these shows dominate, is that kind of like the future?

[1494] I'm a casualty of this.

[1495] So the cable market is so useful in so many ways as a revenue stream.

[1496] And if that's gone, you're back to three networks in a weird way.

[1497] You're back to like, what are you going to buy?

[1498] So it's like undemocratizing in that sense, which is a little alarming.

[1499] I have Top Gear America on Mototrend.

[1500] No one's going to subscribe to Motetrend.

[1501] They don't have enough other stuff.

[1502] And it's like they made the best version of the show they've made in America.

[1503] It's in a vacuum now until hopefully it gets folded into some other entity.

[1504] But it is a precarious time right now.

[1505] And you're right.

[1506] If all these big streamers have to have these enormous temples to get you in.

[1507] But let's talk about Euphoria real quick because that's got to be a bit of an anomaly in all this.

[1508] It is.

[1509] I mean, I think of UFO.

[1510] euphoria also coming on the heels of girls because in some way that was the stepping stone in my mind because for a long time also HBO really resisted making shows geared towards young people and about young people and it was the same economic argument you don't have the money to pay the extra 15 bucks for your cable bill who has that money well dad and mom but not the kid they found out they all eat off a coat of toast you know I guess they do spend money however the fuck they want or that parents spoil their kids like get them what they want yeah and so I mean girls didn't draw a big audience for HBO, but it showed that they could make quality noise, as they like to call it, and get a lot of critical attention for a show that was based on post -collegiate life.

[1511] And I think Euphoria is just another evolution of that.

[1512] And I also think with Euphoria, the other trend that's been fascinating to watch in programming at HBO is we talked about the anti -heroes.

[1513] We talked about the difficult men, Tony Sopranos.

[1514] In the last couple of years, we started thinking about it, there's been a big shift to like a new archetype and the new archetype is much more flawed female protagonist and those shows have done incredibly well sharp objects for HBO I may destroy you oh what a fucking show you guys like that loved it and once you start thinking about it it's just like wow that's really almost across the board and those shows resonate a lot more in part because i think people got kind of like another you know angry dude yeah another guy for me like getting mad about that show me a crazy bitch.

[1515] I'm sick of the angry assholes.

[1516] Where's the crazy bitches?

[1517] Well, no, it's also because I think women have been represented one way on screen for so long.

[1518] And so it is super refreshing to see other parts.

[1519] Laboriously so.

[1520] In the era of the flawed protagonist male, now the woman's role can only be the ethical center of it.

[1521] So she's relegated to the other side of Tony's coin, which is like a good woman trying to keep her family.

[1522] Yeah, it's like boring.

[1523] But Euphoria, am I right?

[1524] This last season, they hit like 20 million viewers or something insane?

[1525] Like, it's one of their biggest shows of all time, right?

[1526] Yeah, it's Game of Thrones One and Euphoria 2, basically.

[1527] That is so awesome.

[1528] I fucking love that because I'm going to be elitist now.

[1529] There's been some runaway teenage hits on other streamers.

[1530] This one is so substantive.

[1531] Can't really say that word.

[1532] We had a whole episode on me trying to say substantive.

[1533] Still can't do it.

[1534] Substances.

[1535] Nope.

[1536] There's a lot of syllables.

[1537] It's the most beautifully shot show I've ever seen on television.

[1538] Those oneers through parties and everyone's lit elegantly.

[1539] The quality of that fucking show is so unrivaled.

[1540] And it shouldn't be a hit.

[1541] I love that it's a hit.

[1542] Yeah.

[1543] There's no goddamn dragons.

[1544] We don't get any dragons.

[1545] It's the story about addiction and sadness.

[1546] And it's done everything for HBO.

[1547] It's winning.

[1548] Emmy Awards.

[1549] It is obviously drawing in lots of viewers.

[1550] It's critical praise.

[1551] It's getting in a new audience for HBO.

[1552] People are subscribing to HBO Max who probably have not been traditional HBO Max subscribers.

[1553] Yeah.

[1554] And it carries on the good parts of the HBO tradition.

[1555] It's something you're not going to see on broadcast television.

[1556] That's just not something they could do.

[1557] I mean, I guess the other thing that's happening in streaming just to back up to the previous conversation because I think it relates, which is that now those cable channels that are paying for everything are kind of fading away.

[1558] So what's going to happen next?

[1559] Netflix, they've been getting hammered, losing subscribers or stock prices way down.

[1560] So now they're going to do advertising and they're going to introduce advertising on the service.

[1561] How does that going to impact the programming?

[1562] I think it will eventually have the same effect that it had in broadcast television, which is now you're going to have sponsors.

[1563] They're going to be looking over your shoulder.

[1564] They get nervous.

[1565] The euphoria is not a show that works that well if you have advertisers being like.

[1566] If you're selling anything to parents, which is most.

[1567] products, you probably don't want to be on a euphoria.

[1568] And right now, it should be said, HBO Max, there is an ad option, or is an ad tier option where you can watch HBO Max with commercials.

[1569] HBO proper shows do not have commercials.

[1570] No commercials.

[1571] So even now, it's like, no, no, no, no, we're HBO.

[1572] The HBO stuff will not have commercials.

[1573] I guess I thought they were still profitable.

[1574] At nine bucks a month or 12 bucks a month, whatever the fuck it is, they do have 100 million subscribers?

[1575] Do they have something around?

[1576] Netflix?

[1577] HBO.

[1578] HBO, it's close to 70 -some -odd million subscribers, but the cost of the technology, it's really expensive.

[1579] It's really cost prohibitive.

[1580] You've put a lot into it.

[1581] So David Sazliff, the new chief executive of Warner Brothers Discovery, who was previously the Discovery chief executive, he has said, we are not here to win the spending wars.

[1582] We are here to compete in the streaming wars.

[1583] And that has become very popular.

[1584] Even Netflix is like, yeah, we're going to slow our spend now.

[1585] And Netflix had been adding billions each.

[1586] each year to its programming budget.

[1587] They're like, yeah, we're good at the level we're at right now.

[1588] And we've seen what happened to Netflix this year.

[1589] They've lost subscribers.

[1590] Its share price has gone into a tailspend.

[1591] That keeps being a headline.

[1592] How many subscribers did they lose?

[1593] Like what percentage did they?

[1594] Out of how many?

[1595] 220?

[1596] But they were growing at such a crazy pace that all of a sudden, and especially here in the United States, it's over.

[1597] Whoever has got Netflix?

[1598] That's what I was saying.

[1599] This is what I don't understand.

[1600] Once you have it, you have it.

[1601] the people they don't have, they're just not interested.

[1602] They're not going to get it.

[1603] Which is one of the reasons why Netflix is, by the end of the year, are introducing that ad tier where it's like, okay, I guess you don't want to spend $15 .50 a month.

[1604] How about $7 or $8 a month to watch some commercials?

[1605] And there are viewers out there who are fine with the old -fashioned way of watching TV.

[1606] Is that working for Hulu?

[1607] Yes.

[1608] Disney Plus, they're introducing ads also.

[1609] The HBO cable universe still makes a lot of money.

[1610] It's unprofitable if you just separate out the streaming HBO Max stuff.

[1611] Okay, but I got to go back.

[1612] If Netflix had, let's call it, 250 million subscribers.

[1613] 220.

[1614] 220.

[1615] And let's say it's $10 a month.

[1616] It's $15 some odd dollars a month here in the U .S., but then those prices are different elsewhere.

[1617] Sure.

[1618] Like internationally, it's not 15, 50 months.

[1619] So right now it's become very popular within the entertainment industry.

[1620] Instead of looking at the raw count of subscribers, it's like how much revenue are we making per subscriber?

[1621] The suits are starting to enter the room to try to make this into a business because we all had the experience of paying the $140 cable bill where there were 9 ,000 channels we never watched.

[1622] My drag TV bill was almost $200.

[1623] I was like, what the fuck is happening?

[1624] Insane.

[1625] It was insane.

[1626] All of a sudden, oh, my God, we're in a streaming universe.

[1627] I'll just subscribe to this service of that service.

[1628] It's a la carte.

[1629] It's cheaper.

[1630] It's great.

[1631] You alluded to it earlier at the end of the day.

[1632] Within a few years, there aren't going to be that streaming services.

[1633] There's going to be more consolidation.

[1634] And we're also going to be spending a lot more money on each of these services.

[1635] Disney's already indicated.

[1636] We really got to check up the price here.

[1637] This is too cheap.

[1638] This coincides with a neat article I read the other day.

[1639] I was talking about how the millennial subsidy is ending.

[1640] And the millennial subsidy is all these companies, Amazon being one of them, Uber, Postmates, all the food deliveries, all the car services.

[1641] All of those companies for the last six years have been running intentionally at a loss with the sole goal of getting as many subscribers as possible.

[1642] Now they have the subscribers.

[1643] Everyone is addicted to Uber.

[1644] They're stuck on Postmates.

[1645] They're stuck on all these different services.

[1646] Now it's time to be profitable.

[1647] So it's all in, like every service that these millennials use is about to go up dramatically and it's already begun.

[1648] And this is what Netflix did.

[1649] And this is why Netflix was rewarded by Wall Street.

[1650] They didn't have to clear much of a profit.

[1651] They could just spend, spend, spend.

[1652] HBO has that deep history in stand -up comedy where, you know, George Carlin's doing the Seven Dirty Words on HBO.

[1653] They've been doing that for decades.

[1654] Netflix single -handedly took HBO out of the stand -up comedy business where they bought every stand -up comedian.

[1655] They're like, we'll give you $20 million for those three, I think.

[1656] There's no economic sense except to drive out the competitive.

[1657] Wall Street was loving it then.

[1658] Then when Netflix started losing subscribers, Wall Street did it a total about face.

[1659] They're like, wait a minute.

[1660] The whole paradigm of tech investing for the last 20 years has been just...

[1661] Who gives a fun?

[1662] Just undercut.

[1663] Just give things away.

[1664] It's such a ridiculously low price that nobody else can compete.

[1665] And once you have a monopoly or duopoly, then you can raise a price.

[1666] All right.

[1667] I know I'm belaboring this point, but can I just ask you, what are the Netflix domestic numbers?

[1668] 60 some odd million subscribers.

[1669] at 15 bucks 1550 I think That's a recent price change Earlier this year But yeah that's general ballpark Okay so that's almost a billion dollars a month It's shocking to me They can't run Netflix for $12 billion a year I know they pay a lot And they've signed a lot of overall deals But they can't get it in under $12 billion If that's ruling out all the other subscribers internationally That we don't know what they're making But studios for the last however many years Fox doesn't spend $12 billion Warner Brothers and spend $12.

[1670] These aren't companies that are spending $12 billion to create all these movies and television shows.

[1671] I mean, Netflix is spending $17 billion a year on programming alone.

[1672] Are they?

[1673] Yes, and that's not counting real estate.

[1674] I mean, when Felix and I were driving here, it's like, there's a Netflix office, there's a Netflix skyscraper, and all these offices that are overseas.

[1675] You know, someone in your house, what they got paid to do a movie that was a not huge movie.

[1676] Like, it was just a random movie out of a so many.

[1677] they make.

[1678] That's true.

[1679] And you read like Ryan Murphy's deal.

[1680] You're right, ma 'am.

[1681] They're on the line for...

[1682] I want it to work.

[1683] I want it to work.

[1684] I think it will eventually.

[1685] Yeah, it will eventually work.

[1686] That's what's weird about this, because it's been rah -bara times in entertainment where a lot of people have been cashing in for the last few years because the money's been crazy, peak TV, more TV shows than ever.

[1687] And things are, to use one of their bad catchphrases, it's time to right -size things.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] But I do think that this is going to be a viable business.

[1690] within a few years.

[1691] We have to go through sort of the gnarly stuff to make it a viable business.

[1692] Or they figure it out.

[1693] Oh, my God.

[1694] Well, Felix, John, this is so fascinating.

[1695] It's Not TV, the spectacular rise revolution and future of HBO.

[1696] Again, it's the only network I could imagine reading a book about.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] I'm sure in like 15 years I'll do the Netflix book.

[1699] That'll be really fascinating as well.

[1700] In fact, you guys maybe should start shipping away.

[1701] Open up the Google Doc.

[1702] Yeah.

[1703] Please get this book.

[1704] Read it.

[1705] They've just scratched.

[1706] the surface.

[1707] It's dense.

[1708] It's wonderful.

[1709] You guys, thanks so much for coming in and entertaining us today.

[1710] That's been awesome.

[1711] Oh, good.

[1712] All right.

[1713] Take care.

[1714] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1715] Beats are very controversial.

[1716] Tell me how.

[1717] Well, really quick.

[1718] We're all going to order a salad for lunch.

[1719] Let's bring everyone up to speed.

[1720] Some people are electing to get rid of the beats.

[1721] I don't like the beats, but I think I deserve the beats.

[1722] Me too.

[1723] It's like we're paying for our sins.

[1724] Penns.

[1725] Yeah.

[1726] It's like going to confession by eating beads.

[1727] It cleanses your sins.

[1728] Confession by beads.

[1729] I'm getting no beads.

[1730] Right.

[1731] So you either have no sins, which is possible.

[1732] I'm going to get the seated crackers instead.

[1733] That doesn't.

[1734] That's not.

[1735] No, Rob.

[1736] You're trading a superfood for a snack.

[1737] Also, you love those seeded crackers.

[1738] The whole point of paying for your sins is something you don't like.

[1739] to do.

[1740] That's right.

[1741] So do you guys want seeded crackers?

[1742] Yes, I absolve my sins by eating the beets and the seeded crackers.

[1743] Can we get like a bunch of seeded crackers to have here?

[1744] That's a good call.

[1745] Okay, add on.

[1746] Anyways, beats, you're saying they're controversial.

[1747] Is it because they taste like dirt?

[1748] Yeah.

[1749] They taste like you're eating soil.

[1750] But then some part of me again that thinks that you must suffer for anything good, which is kind of true.

[1751] I mean, beats I think are really healthy.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] That's what I've heard.

[1754] So...

[1755] They couldn't taste that bad and not be really healthy.

[1756] That's how I feel.

[1757] Mm -hmm.

[1758] That's how I feel.

[1759] All right.

[1760] I added the beads back to mine.

[1761] There we go.

[1762] We got them back.

[1763] Okay, so your car is getting service today.

[1764] Mm -hmm.

[1765] And then I said, oh, did they pick it up?

[1766] Because I'm like, you didn't drop it off.

[1767] I did not drop it off.

[1768] Right.

[1769] It's on the other side of town.

[1770] Like, you would have been up at whatever.

[1771] Did you get alerted, like, time for service?

[1772] Yes.

[1773] Also, the tire pressure's a little off.

[1774] Well, that's going to happen.

[1775] Yeah.

[1776] And really dirty.

[1777] Okay.

[1778] So you're hoping they're going to wash. shit.

[1779] They always do, right?

[1780] I asked.

[1781] Oh, you specifically asked.

[1782] I asked my friend.

[1783] No, you asked your friend.

[1784] Okay, that's it.

[1785] Yeah, so it's you wanted a service and a wash. So I said, it's okay.

[1786] It's absolutely great.

[1787] That's why we're talking about it.

[1788] You always want to out me from being spoiled.

[1789] Well, it's good content.

[1790] Because look, you're kind of embarrassed by it, but also you're honest.

[1791] It's a nice, nice recipe.

[1792] I'm only embarrassed.

[1793] Why am I embarrassed?

[1794] I am embarrassed?

[1795] Because it's boogie, right?

[1796] And boogies generally frowned upon.

[1797] Yeah.

[1798] People are critical.

[1799] Yeah.

[1800] I have envy because I'm like, I have as much money as you.

[1801] I don't know how to use it to make my life easier.

[1802] Yes, you do.

[1803] To some degree, but like having my car service would be something I'd fret about like, okay, I got to go drop it off and I'm going to Uber back.

[1804] No, Carly does it.

[1805] Carly and I shuttle her half the time.

[1806] It's usually a combined effort.

[1807] Yeah.

[1808] So, yeah.

[1809] Carly definitely takes care of a lot of stuff, my sister.

[1810] Yeah.

[1811] Sometimes I would go with her.

[1812] That's how I know.

[1813] Sure, sure, sure.

[1814] It's a drop off.

[1815] Yeah.

[1816] Should I ever fly to Texas to pick up my bus?

[1817] That's the errand I have to do.

[1818] So this is like your car servicing.

[1819] Like my bus is getting serviced in Texas and I got to go get it.

[1820] Well, I'm dying to go get it actually.

[1821] That's the difference, right?

[1822] Well, yes and no. I mean, I'm dying to have my bus back.

[1823] But you're not dying to drive it back.

[1824] It's not the greatest drive.

[1825] Like I wish it were either on the East Coast to drive or in the north.

[1826] north, but cruising across 800 miles of Texas in New Mexico and Arizona, and there's no pretty bodies of water for me to stop at and do my hip camp thing.

[1827] Yeah, I can't get in touch with the river, the currents.

[1828] So it's about a 1 ,400 mile drive through pretty much nothing.

[1829] Okay.

[1830] Why don't you have it shipped?

[1831] Can't do that.

[1832] It's too big.

[1833] What would ship it?

[1834] Can you imagine something big enough?

[1835] Yeah.

[1836] A humpback whale.

[1837] Well, well, not as big as a humpback.

[1838] A blue whale is a hundred feet long.

[1839] Right.

[1840] So it could.

[1841] I'm thinking a blue.

[1842] I wish we could hire blue whales to bring us stuff.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] I mean, they don't do well on land.

[1845] Anywho.

[1846] No, no. Then you have someone pick it up from the blue whale station, the water station.

[1847] The coast.

[1848] Well, actually, what you're suggesting does make sense, nautically speaking, because they could leave out of Corpus Christi, the blue whale.

[1849] Uh -huh.

[1850] They'd go down the Gulf of Mexico.

[1851] Uh -huh.

[1852] They'd go through the Panama Canal.

[1853] Oh, they'd have so much fun.

[1854] Yes, and then they would go up and they could bring it right into the port of Los Angeles.

[1855] Yeah, we're on the coast.

[1856] And then that would only be like a, I don't know, 38 -mile drive from San Pedro or Long Beach to get at home.

[1857] An hour.

[1858] Yeah.

[1859] That'd be great.

[1860] Yeah.

[1861] Anywho, your car was picked up by somebody.

[1862] By my, by a friend of a, you had a previous helper.

[1863] Car time assistant.

[1864] part -time assistant.

[1865] Let's call it what it is.

[1866] That got full -time employment.

[1867] You couldn't compete with that offering.

[1868] Of course I should.

[1869] Right.

[1870] You wished her well.

[1871] And the thing is, when I say part -time assistant, and this is the reason why I can't hold anyone, right?

[1872] Like, part -time assistant means, hey, this week can you do like three out, five things?

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] And then in like five months, I'm like, hey, can you do three things again?

[1875] That's what I'm envious of.

[1876] I wish I had somebody.

[1877] Well, let me back up.

[1878] You totally could.

[1879] I did have somebody.

[1880] My stuff's hard.

[1881] The stuff I need done is hard to find.

[1882] Okay.

[1883] It's generally mechanical.

[1884] I have all my like hobbies and the shit that's nagging at me as I try to fall asleep is like nine different mechanical things.

[1885] Whether it is my trailer right now that has the razor on it that needs to be taken off so I can go put hay on it to do the hay ride.

[1886] Oh, I'm so excited.

[1887] Or I got to install the trailer hitch on Eric's Tesla so I can pull the trailer.

[1888] You know, whatever.

[1889] I've got like nine little things.

[1890] Now Jay, my buddy Jay, he was a car detail.

[1891] killer and so once every couple weeks he'd come do that and then he's mechanical so i could ask him to put together a bicycle that i got that's a sit in the thing or a leg press machine these are things that i accumulate he thank god is now in the union doing film work so he's now rocking he's busy so that's gone but to go for it's a recruiter but nana wow sick and do do wow what if i could is it just Is it my eyes or my mouth?

[1892] It's my mouth, I feel like.

[1893] No, it's not.

[1894] It's nothing.

[1895] It's just, it's just, it's, it's, no, no, I already told you what it is.

[1896] It's that it won't stop.

[1897] Right.

[1898] I was, you know what, I was, I have a resentment against you.

[1899] Oh, no. I've decided I have a resentment against you.

[1900] Oh, great a grievance.

[1901] Aaron and I were talking about how funny it is when Howard talks like his mother or his father.

[1902] Okay.

[1903] Howard Stern.

[1904] He does these impressions of them.

[1905] And it's so funny.

[1906] And they go on for like 45 minutes.

[1907] And Aaron was saying, you know, just recently, he's been really in a. good because his father died this summer so he's been talking a lot about dealing with his mother and his father and stuff so he said there's been a lot of him just doing those voices i love and i said you know i think i'd have more of those but it makes monica feel grossed out oh so i have a resentment i'm in air i mean maybe it makes the show better maybe it makes it worse i don't know i love when howard does it okay you're allowed to do different voices i just it's that is that like i think when it's over it should be over and then you don't.

[1908] You want to do more and more and more and more and more and then I get uncomfortable.

[1909] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1910] This is fine that that's your opinion.

[1911] There's no problem there.

[1912] That's just your honest opinion.

[1913] I like Howard into the 9 and 10 minute of it.

[1914] I think if you let me get going on ZipRecruiter like six minutes from now God knows where we're at.

[1915] Oh my God, but don't you think that's like so indulgent?

[1916] Well, the whole show's indulgent.

[1917] Whether I make a voice or we talk about your car, it's all indulgent.

[1918] I don't know how he'd prioritize what's more or less indulgent.

[1919] It's just you're trying to provide entertainment.

[1920] I'm trying to provide entertainment.

[1921] Some versions this, some's talking about that.

[1922] I don't think there's a hierarchy.

[1923] Maybe because you're not involved, it's indulgent.

[1924] I would love for you to join me. Like if you started ripping ZipRecruiter right now, nothing could make me happen.

[1925] Right.

[1926] Yeah, I'm not going to.

[1927] Right.

[1928] That's not my thing.

[1929] Maybe if you did a lot of voices.

[1930] That's not my thing.

[1931] I know it's not your thing.

[1932] Yeah.

[1933] I'm suggesting that if you did them, Maybe you'd want to banter back and forth and do voices and do silly songs.

[1934] Maybe.

[1935] Maybe.

[1936] Yeah.

[1937] But I don't.

[1938] Right.

[1939] So then it is 10 minutes of you doing your own voice maneuvering.

[1940] Uh -huh.

[1941] And while I'm staring at your face.

[1942] While I cover my mouth with my box of water.

[1943] Exactly.

[1944] If you'd like to try it, I'm happy to leave in a 10 -minute rant.

[1945] A big rant.

[1946] Mm -hmm.

[1947] A big rip.

[1948] Yeah.

[1949] Happy to give you that.

[1950] Just let me know so I can step out, you know.

[1951] Okay.

[1952] Maybe you could have like a little, they call it Rat Nirvana, right?

[1953] Where it's like their perfect environment.

[1954] Oh.

[1955] Do you know about this?

[1956] They build a cage with everything a rat wants, all the fun stuff it wants.

[1957] And then they find that if the rat isn't rat Nirvana, it doesn't actually choose the cocaine over the food.

[1958] Right.

[1959] The Johan Hari thing.

[1960] You need a little mask, like a little bubble that you put over.

[1961] It just sit right on your nightstand next to the T -Rex skull.

[1962] Maybe you could even build it inside the D -Rourke's stuff.

[1963] Yeah, that'd be fun.

[1964] Yeah, and then inside it's like flashing images of purses and row clothes and all this stuff.

[1965] I'd love that.

[1966] And you just go to this little happy place while I'm going, do -de -de -doo, snoopy -duty, you know?

[1967] Yeah.

[1968] See what words and sounds come out.

[1969] Okay.

[1970] And then I'd have a little buzzer to you, and I'd buzz your hand when it was over.

[1971] You could take your little helmet off.

[1972] No, it would need to be like a hair play to wake me up out of it because that's what I love.

[1973] ease you back into it yeah well the the mask would play with your hair while this oh my god i'd want you to be in that little zone for 17 hours nirvana nirvana uh -huh speaking of the row apparently there was a sample sale in new york oh wow people waited five hours oh not me it's that big i wouldn't have my friends stand in line i'd stand in line right so that's where i cross a line yeah yeah that's Back to you being in line for that sale at...

[1974] Rob and I, our Maru limited edition merch.

[1975] Yeah.

[1976] Have you used any of it recently?

[1977] I don't even know where it is.

[1978] In your trunk.

[1979] Exactly.

[1980] You're like to make between $100 and $200 million a year.

[1981] The row does in sales.

[1982] Fuck yeah.

[1983] Good for them.

[1984] Good for them.

[1985] I hope they have a big, fat, profit margin.

[1986] They must.

[1987] This stuff's outrageously expensive, right?

[1988] It is.

[1989] It costs a lot to make.

[1990] I did look into this because...

[1991] Oh, because of your own burgeoning.

[1992] Yeah, perhaps.

[1993] Yeah.

[1994] They use, like, very specific atiliés in Italy and France, and it's all, like, really nice.

[1995] What's attiliate?

[1996] This is not the fourth time I've heard that word.

[1997] We had a couple of guests and that came up, and now I feel like this is artisanal.

[1998] What's a tillier?

[1999] Oh, it's not artisanal.

[2000] Well, I mean, I think it's like a year before it's artisanal.

[2001] Because I've heard it now three times.

[2002] I've heard it my life, and now I heard it three times.

[2003] Well, that's because you've been exposed to more fashion now.

[2004] Okay.

[2005] It's like the place they make the clothes.

[2006] Like the manufacturing facility for the clothes?

[2007] But it's not manufacturing necessarily.

[2008] The people who make the patterns and do the thing and then...

[2009] Okay.

[2010] It's called a tillier?

[2011] Yeah.

[2012] Rob, do you want to get the actual definition?

[2013] Well, I'm just getting Italy back.

[2014] How do you spell that?

[2015] Oh, A -T -E -R, I think.

[2016] Atelier.

[2017] Yeah, it's popping up everywhere.

[2018] where Atelier.

[2019] There's a weird pronunciation.

[2020] I guarantee Subway's going to be selling an Attilié BMT soon.

[2021] It's a workshop or studio, especially one used by an artist or designer.

[2022] Yeah, that's what I said.

[2023] By the way, that's what artisanal was, too.

[2024] It's something made by an artist that was co -opted to describe the sandwich manufacturing at Subway sandwiches.

[2025] It really was.

[2026] They had an artisanal sub.

[2027] They did.

[2028] I know.

[2029] So what would prevent them from claiming that Subway itself?

[2030] The franchise is an Attili.

[2031] It's a workshop of artistic expression.

[2032] They could.

[2033] Yeah.

[2034] Come into your neighborhood subway attelier and have an artisan craft you.

[2035] I hate them if they do that.

[2036] It's coming.

[2037] This is my prediction.

[2038] You're right about a lot of predictions.

[2039] Oh, thank you.

[2040] You are.

[2041] You are so much.

[2042] Look, you were right about, I thought about this the other day.

[2043] You were right about the billiology guy.

[2044] Oh.

[2045] It feels good.

[2046] Oh, right about that.

[2047] It feels good for when you say that.

[2048] I really appreciate it.

[2049] Atelier.

[2050] What was I going to say?

[2051] What were we talking about?

[2052] Well, I was only just, I was trying to predict in my head.

[2053] I just pray since McDonald's is a sponsor that they don't ever go down the Attelier route.

[2054] They won't.

[2055] They could come into your neighborhood, McDonald's Atelier.

[2056] That's not on brand for them.

[2057] Okay, good.

[2058] I don't want them to do that.

[2059] They've never done artisanal.

[2060] That's true.

[2061] And by the way, they're as artisanal as subway, especially if you ask for exercise.

[2062] then someone's getting creative they're outside of the protocol it's time for them to show their colors but you you made that up not McDonald's right I know I'm I made it up right I made up that order yeah yeah but what I'm saying is you empower when you ask for extra sauce extra cheese you're empowering the creative side oh wow you're that sandwich builder so it's like it's a safe space to become an artist yourself because they've stepped out of the protocol.

[2063] The protocol is 1 .6 squirts of sauce.

[2064] I don't know what it is.

[2065] But let's just say there's got to be a diagram in there.

[2066] It's like, you know, it's all measured.

[2067] Everything's perfect.

[2068] Well, ideally.

[2069] What I'm saying is I'm sure there's a recommendation that the patty's this big.

[2070] You know what I'm saying.

[2071] Sure.

[2072] For shreds of lettuce to make it.

[2073] Consistent, that's what they're selling you.

[2074] And when you get a Big Mac here in Los Angeles and you go to Tulsa, Oklahoma, go to Beijing, China.

[2075] You're going to get the same Big Mac.

[2076] There's a protocol for that When you encourage the person To add extra Extra is ambiguous What is extra?

[2077] Is extra cheese four slices?

[2078] Oh, I see what you're saying You're empowering the sandwich maker To go crazy if they want to do what they will With your direction What they interpret this very broad term extra to mean It could be like I could open up the thing it could be a soup.

[2079] It could be a thousand island soup.

[2080] Yes, I mean, I would hope they'd put a fork and knife in there as well.

[2081] Oh, we love that.

[2082] But you know what I'm saying?

[2083] I've empowered them.

[2084] It's up to them to decide what extra it is.

[2085] That's right.

[2086] That's true.

[2087] All right.

[2088] Did you get any nice items from Nicole's sale yesterday?

[2089] Yeah, I got this.

[2090] Oh, that's from there.

[2091] I got this kind of pajama -like outfit.

[2092] Summer jamas.

[2093] But it's a real outfit.

[2094] It looks like pajamas.

[2095] So we had had a conversation about Kanye.

[2096] This happens to us once in a blue moon.

[2097] And it's funny how subjective conversations really are.

[2098] So we had the conversation in an innocuous phase of the headlines between having that.

[2099] Well, it's never innocuous.

[2100] Well, let's say it took a quantum leap forward yesterday.

[2101] Yes, it did.

[2102] Where now straight up Nazis have come to support Kanye West and they had huge banners in L .A. and there's Zeigheiling on bridges and we agree with Kanye.

[2103] This is crazy.

[2104] So that's nuts.

[2105] Yeah.

[2106] And also really leaned towards the point of view you and Rob both shared, which is like these people empower people.

[2107] The whole conversation now can't avoid but to be viewed under a different lens.

[2108] Like, well, we got Nazis in the street, you know, worshiping Kanye.

[2109] Even if I had had the conversation today, it'd be slightly different.

[2110] Yeah, yeah.

[2111] You know, a lot of people were making a really good and scary point, which is Jewish people were doing great before the Holocaust.

[2112] It just takes some rhetoric to get exploded that can cause insane damage.

[2113] So you can't say that shit.

[2114] You can't say it.

[2115] But anyway, yeah, I got some stuff.

[2116] So Nicole, celebrity stylist, Nicole, Kristen's stylist.

[2117] Nicole Chavez.

[2118] Rachel Bilsen, Stylist of the Stars.

[2119] Um, she sometimes has cause a clean -outs.

[2120] Right.

[2121] And I was explained by Molly yesterday what's happening.

[2122] And it sounds incredible.

[2123] Yeah.

[2124] It's like the best clothes imaginable.

[2125] And the most expensive piece is 40 bucks.

[2126] And some of these dresses are thousands of dollars.

[2127] And you can grab them for 40 bucks.

[2128] Yes.

[2129] Yes.

[2130] That's incredible.

[2131] It is.

[2132] If I could go to a car sale.

[2133] Yeah.

[2134] And everything was slashed by 97%.

[2135] I could pick up like a perfect Fox Body 86 Mustang 4I for $390.

[2136] Oh.

[2137] It's really fun.

[2138] It's a really nice service she provides.

[2139] Yeah, yeah.

[2140] Fun for everyone.

[2141] Very.

[2142] Okay.

[2143] We have an update.

[2144] We have a fact from last fact check.

[2145] Oh.

[2146] Bollywood versus Hollywood.

[2147] Oh, sure.

[2148] The thing is, Bollywood's ticket sales are more.

[2149] But they make way more movies.

[2150] Right.

[2151] So that's why.

[2152] Okay.

[2153] It's not that.

[2154] How do they do globally compared to American movies?

[2155] That's our old.

[2156] That's, here we are.

[2157] No, but domestic versus global.

[2158] Right.

[2159] In the same year, Hollywood sold 1 .36 billion tickets compared to Bollywood's 2 .6 billion.

[2160] Okay.

[2161] That's simple.

[2162] But then it says Indian films can't match Hollywood and box office revenue.

[2163] That's what I'm getting at.

[2164] Okay.

[2165] But that's because.

[2166] of the amount, right?

[2167] What that tells me is that most of those tickets are being sold in India.

[2168] They're beating us domestically.

[2169] Uh -huh.

[2170] And that ours are, that's generated here domestically, but then a lot globally.

[2171] Because ours is like a $12 billion all in.

[2172] This is, the U .S. might have, has the biggest box office sales, but India sells the most tickets.

[2173] So I guess that means worldwide Hollywood is bigger.

[2174] Yeah, I'm seeing worldwide audience.

[2175] of Bollywood is 3 billion and Hollywood's is 2 .6 billion.

[2176] But they're producing twice as many movies.

[2177] Right, that's what I'm just Well, I'd also say a billion as well, a billion of those customers are domestic because they have a billion people.

[2178] Well, exactly, but that's if we're looking globally, we do have to consider that, right?

[2179] Yeah.

[2180] What we were really talking about is bankability and star power.

[2181] So my argument was if you put the rock in a movie, it's going to do well in China, it's going to do well in Germany, it's going to do well all around the world versus you put the guy that he loves from India who's more talented than rock in a movie does it generate the same amount of money that's that's what the essence of the conversation was yeah well he's saying no like he's agreeing well he said no he said baliwood's huge in china yes but he's saying here this person who's a big star there would not get seen here right isn't that what well i was saying that they weren't making a qualitative argument between Ryan Gosling and the other guy.

[2182] They were making a box office argument.

[2183] And he said, no, it's bigger.

[2184] He was saying, no, economically it's still also better.

[2185] That it's huge in China.

[2186] Right.

[2187] That it's so he was saying, no, it's both things.

[2188] It's talent and it's commercial viability.

[2189] I guess we'd have to look up in China specifically.

[2190] Because if we're just looking worldwide, it is tricky because they do have a lot of people.

[2191] You're about revenue from the film industry.

[2192] Revenue.

[2193] I want to know revenue.

[2194] Hollywood's 50 .0.

[2195] billion.

[2196] China is 12 .8 billion and Bollywood is 2 .83 billion.

[2197] Okay.

[2198] Those aren't the numbers I would have guessed.

[2199] But that was my assumption is that it was more than 10x Hollywood movies globally.

[2200] But then how is it 50 billion Hollywood if Bollywood is selling an extra billion amount of tickets?

[2201] Maybe a ticket's a dollar in India.

[2202] Yeah, maybe tickets are cheaper.

[2203] Oh, I mean, yeah, that could be true.

[2204] It's not the same currency.

[2205] Right.

[2206] And I'm sure a price to see a movie in India is dramatically less than it is Manhattan.

[2207] Right.

[2208] Yeah, probably.

[2209] Yeah.

[2210] That could also be, you know, probably factoring in the, so let's take Top Gun and made whatever, $1 .6 billion alone, just one movie.

[2211] And then it's going to generate another $1 .6 billion in secondary sales to networks around the world to air the movie.

[2212] So it's generating $3 .2 billion.

[2213] That's just one movie.

[2214] Yeah.

[2215] And so you add all that up the primary and secondary and tertiary revenue streams.

[2216] And it is all in generating $50 billion a year.

[2217] $50 billion is coming into Hollywood coffers.

[2218] Right.

[2219] Through their products.

[2220] And so since it isn't a ticket sales contest, it's a revenue contest.

[2221] These are businesses trying to make maximum amount of money.

[2222] Yeah.

[2223] If they think there can make $1 .6 billion for Top Gun if Tom Cruise is, in it versus the biggest Bollywood star in the world is the star of Top Gun.

[2224] Right.

[2225] They're not evaluating who's a better actor.

[2226] They're evaluating who can generate $1 .6 billion.

[2227] Mm -hmm.

[2228] Yeah.

[2229] So Felix said that he thinks that Felix is more popular named than John now.

[2230] And that's wrong.

[2231] John is not as popular as it used to be, obviously.

[2232] But John is 52 on the list.

[2233] of popular baby names of 2022.

[2234] Okay.

[2235] I didn't look for it.

[2236] Felix didn't even chart.

[2237] Felix is probably on here, but I'm not going to like go to 200 or something.

[2238] Okay.

[2239] It's just John.

[2240] You saw it John first.

[2241] You went until you found either John or Felix and you...

[2242] That's right.

[2243] Yeah.

[2244] And you got your verdict.

[2245] Noah's number one.

[2246] Oh my gosh.

[2247] Yeah.

[2248] And Olivia is number one also for girls.

[2249] Oh, wow.

[2250] Yeah.

[2251] Oh my God.

[2252] Number two's Emma.

[2253] Yay, Emma.

[2254] We have an Emma.

[2255] We love our Emma.

[2256] But is it a yay or is it like, ugh.

[2257] Sorry, Emma.

[2258] I think it would be more an issue if it were people in your generation.

[2259] Yeah.

[2260] Like if a bunch of kids are named Dax, not my problem.

[2261] You don't care.

[2262] No. I mean, I'm still probably going to be the only Dax in all my friends' phone book.

[2263] Right.

[2264] Do you have any friends that have other friends named Monica and you ever get a wrong text?

[2265] You accidentally text Monica Potter.

[2266] Yeah.

[2267] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2268] Yeah, I have a couple of monicas.

[2269] You have two monicas.

[2270] And it's really confusing because it's also P. Yeah.

[2271] So when I type in Monica, brings up two monicas as the auto suggests.

[2272] Yeah.

[2273] And they're both P. That's scary.

[2274] You should change my name in your phone to something cooler.

[2275] Okay.

[2276] Noah?

[2277] Yeah, call me Noah.

[2278] Noah Padman.

[2279] Your name isn't Dax in my phone, but I don't want to say what it is.

[2280] Oh.

[2281] Because the reason I...

[2282] In case someone finds your phone.

[2283] That's really considerative of you.

[2284] I think I told you this.

[2285] My friend Tim Lovstead, who I just loved Tim Lovstead.

[2286] You've met Tim Lovstead.

[2287] We played Settlers at Catam.

[2288] Yes, we did.

[2289] He was nice enough to give his niece at one point his phone.

[2290] He got a new phone.

[2291] He gave his niece.

[2292] Oh, his old phone?

[2293] His old phone.

[2294] Okay.

[2295] And, of course, he didn't think, like, oh, I better go through and whatever.

[2296] And so all of a sudden I started getting blasted by, like, many kids from a junior high.

[2297] because my number was in the phone he gave niece.

[2298] Oh, so it has happened.

[2299] Yeah, yeah.

[2300] He didn't clear out his phone.

[2301] It didn't occur to him.

[2302] Why would it?

[2303] I mean, I feel like it almost needs to happen before you be like, oh, my God, that's right.

[2304] Someone might go through all the thing.

[2305] They might be interested in whose number I have, blah, blah, blah.

[2306] You'd have to have a famous friend for that even to be a thought.

[2307] No, absolutely not.

[2308] I would never want anyone to have access to any of people's phone numbers.

[2309] I guess what I'm saying is if you gave your niece your phone Yeah The last thing you would be thinking is That the niece is going to be interested in calling numbers in there Unless you have like Tom Cruise's number in there I guess No kids are fucking rascals like no you clear and they'll like look through your pit They'll do weird stuff Well you got to get rid of everything Got it might not have been super easy by the way this was a decade ago Okay, it was also like at the height of like without a paddle.

[2310] So I think back when you had a flip, when you had a Motorola.

[2311] Yeah, it was harder.

[2312] It wasn't like you go there and clear this whole device.

[2313] You're right.

[2314] You're probably to like take parts out of it or something.

[2315] Well, he should, yeah, SIM card.

[2316] He should have taken the whole thing apart, cleaned it with alcohol.

[2317] Obviously.

[2318] Okay, pick a number one through 100.

[2319] 64.

[2320] Okay, 64.

[2321] Iris Santiago.

[2322] Oh, wow.

[2323] that's okay iris and santiago not one name iris santiago no but that sounds cool very cool hi i'm iris santiago but if i name my kid are iris santiago i would be able to say it i wouldn't be to pronounce it be people would think it would be appropriation yeah i'm trying to play her off as latina lincoln or delta iris santiago shepherd yeah yeah but that is kind of interesting because Santiago that probably speaks to our large Latin population.

[2324] Yeah, it does.

[2325] I like that.

[2326] We can get him one more number.

[2327] Okay.

[2328] Or two more.

[2329] Rob, why do you get one?

[2330] 73.

[2331] Oh, terrible number, Rob.

[2332] It's not divisible by anything.

[2333] Wow.

[2334] Rob, you picked an interesting one.

[2335] What a freak.

[2336] I know that's what I picked it.

[2337] Oh.

[2338] It is.

[2339] I don't even know how to pronounce this.

[2340] Oh, are you rascaling?

[2341] Are you looking at the same?

[2342] No, I'm not looking at this.

[2343] Oh.

[2344] I would be saw 73.

[2345] I know.

[2346] Pudy Pooderstein.

[2347] 26.

[2348] No, no, 73.

[2349] 73, the girl name is Neva?

[2350] I think it's spelled N -E -V -A -E -H.

[2351] Is it Neveh?

[2352] Neve.

[2353] You never heard that name.

[2354] Me either, but it's 73 most pop.

[2355] If you're in preschool right now, you've damn well, sure heard that name.

[2356] Exactly.

[2357] And for Boys Easton.

[2358] Guys, this is, I don't think it's xenophobia or racism.

[2359] I think it's being dyslexic.

[2360] Oh, okay.

[2361] And born in 75, but I can't understand a fucking single name of my kids' playmates.

[2362] When they're coming home from school and they're telling me about what's happening with someone that's like, XVR and Varvidia and C -U -O -Tonka and Vuez -A -W -A -W.

[2363] Okay.

[2364] Everything is like, what, Z's, X's, there's numbers in these names?

[2365] No. No. What?

[2366] Calvins is like that, too.

[2367] Is it?

[2368] Yeah, no, white kids.

[2369] It's not a, yeah.

[2370] I mean, sure, it's an ethnically diverse school.

[2371] Right, exactly.

[2372] But there's honkies with fucked up names that I can't pronounce.

[2373] It's not fucked up just because you can't pronounce it.

[2374] Well, they're fucked up because I can't pronounce them, yeah.

[2375] Right.

[2376] There's two wolves at Calvin School.

[2377] Wolf.

[2378] I hate to say it, I like it.

[2379] I mean, I like it too.

[2380] Not a traditional name.

[2381] Yeah, wolf.

[2382] Not a traditional name.

[2383] Okay, well, I like looking at names.

[2384] Yeah, me too.

[2385] You didn't pick a number.

[2386] Pick one.

[2387] Okay.

[2388] 14, my favorite number.

[2389] Oh, Aurora.

[2390] Aurora and Ethan.

[2391] Ethan.

[2392] We like Ethan.

[2393] Yeah, Ethan's cool.

[2394] Aurora Borealis.

[2395] Is Oriola one on the list?

[2396] No. I could see it being on the list.

[2397] No. Ariel La Shepherd.

[2398] Lincoln is 40, but for a boy.

[2399] Yeah.

[2400] I'm surprised it's not on you for a girl.

[2401] It's becoming more common.

[2402] It is?

[2403] Yeah.

[2404] It's down.

[2405] on there?

[2406] No, not on top 100.

[2407] Either is Monica in, oh, let's see if Rob's on here.

[2408] Of course it is.

[2409] Robert, I'm sure it is.

[2410] How about Wobbywob?

[2411] I bet that's 32.

[2412] Wow, Rob is not on this list.

[2413] Whoa, goodbye to Rob.

[2414] Sianara suckass.

[2415] That one's not coming back.

[2416] You think it's gone for good?

[2417] Yeah, I do.

[2418] This party's dead anyhow.

[2419] Like, because some of the old school names are on here like John Andrew Ethan's yes but it's not at Joshua Caleb like Adam like there's like Caleb yeah that's a biblical and and Adam is too and Matthew that's on here so I guess a lot of but Rob is gone bye bye there's no Roberts in the Bible are there I don't think so we're gonna call up Reza okay so you brought up Mike Tyson oh you brought up Mike Tyson oh you brought up Mike Tyson Okay.

[2420] Because you were saying that he, like, schooled someone about the word Thespian.

[2421] But when you said it, I'm sure he said it right.

[2422] But when you said it, you said that it comes from the Greek island Thesbos.

[2423] Yeah, I don't know the fucking history of Thesbians.

[2424] But he just hit some Greek shit.

[2425] Yeah.

[2426] So it is named after Thespis, a Greek playwright and performer.

[2427] It is Greek around 535 BC.

[2428] Thespis added a new dimension to drama by stepping out of the Greek chorus during a performance.

[2429] and reciting portions of the text alone becoming the first actor, technically.

[2430] It'd be great if that was on here, on YouTube, so we could hear him fucking school.

[2431] Mike Tyson, Larry Merchant, maybe I'll take that.

[2432] I wonder if Larry Merchant is going to come for me after my...

[2433] I told you, I don't ever talk poorly about people.

[2434] Or I shouldn't say that.

[2435] I really make a point to not talk poorly.

[2436] Make an effort.

[2437] Yeah.

[2438] But I really feel fine about this one.

[2439] breaking this okay okay calling them out as being a bully yeah that's fine go condescending bully I don't mind we can call out condescending bullies yeah we can we can yeah yeah yeah it's not on there it's not on there I apologize I like a clip yeah clips are really fun maybe that's an history maybe I'll locate it at next actor yeah if you're calling about cats that is last week's episode so just this week's episode is about camping.

[2440] Okay.

[2441] This was interesting.

[2442] The old slogan for HBO.

[2443] So they've had a lot.

[2444] Oh, okay.

[2445] Okay.

[2446] I'm going to read them all.

[2447] Oh, my gosh.

[2448] Okay.

[2449] November 72 to August 75 was, this is HBO, the home box office, premium subscription television from time life.

[2450] Too long.

[2451] Exactly.

[2452] Okay.

[2453] August 75 to June 76, different and first.

[2454] Okay.

[2455] June 76.

[2456] to May 78.

[2457] The Great Entertainment Alternative.

[2458] Too self -conscious.

[2459] May 78 to October 79.

[2460] The home box office.

[2461] All right.

[2462] I like it.

[2463] Nope, I messed it up.

[2464] The home box.

[2465] Ew, no. Mine was better.

[2466] The home box.

[2467] Okay.

[2468] That's living, live -in ass.

[2469] Well, isn't that when there was a box?

[2470] Yeah.

[2471] So that's probably why.

[2472] And if you had live -in.

[2473] What?

[2474] Never mind.

[2475] God.

[2476] Okay, I don't know what that is, but I'm scared to ask.

[2477] Okay.

[2478] October, you mean shut in?

[2479] No. Is that when you're stuck in your body?

[2480] No, no, that's terrible.

[2481] Well, that's Parkinson's illness.

[2482] That's Shuddin syndrome.

[2483] Live in is like you've got ass at home.

[2484] You got a girlfriend that lives at home where you're married.

[2485] You got Livin.

[2486] Like you don't need to go find sex.

[2487] You got living.

[2488] That's a term.

[2489] What?

[2490] Living's romantic and monogamous.

[2491] Why you're peaking about that?

[2492] It's the opposite.

[2493] of one night's day it's the man has a property at home no i don't need to go out to bars i've got living okay i think it's romantic all right october 79 to february 82 HBO people don't miss out oh christ well they're bragging okay February 82 to March 84 start the atelial network no start with us on HBO slash America's leading premium television network slash all the day premium television HBO that was a rough time Yeah they had a CEO that had multiple personality disorder Okay March 84 If you have NDP don't fucking comment me Oh my No it's a joke I don't I'm not saying you're the CEO MPD Yeah March 84 to June 85.

[2494] There's no place like HBO.

[2495] Okay, I like that.

[2496] Okay, June 85 to July 88.

[2497] They were changing their slogans of underwear back then.

[2498] That's what I'm saying.

[2499] Yeah.

[2500] Let's all get together.

[2501] July 88 to February 89, watch us here on HBO.

[2502] I'm already doing that.

[2503] February 89 to July 90, nobody brings it home like HBO.

[2504] Another sexual innuendo.

[2505] Used alternatively between 88 and.

[2506] October 89 to November 90 Simply the best This is the one that they referenced Simply the best Yeah Better than all the rest It does say use song By Tina Turner Tina Yeah they use that song I'm your private dancer I'm dancer for money I do what you want me to do Wow One more Breathy We don't need another here We don't need I almost threw up with you You almost I almost have to throw up to get to her Hold on No No, look at We're there Okay, okay No Don't do that Don't do that Don't do that We don't need a We can't.

[2507] We can't have a gagging sound on.

[2508] We can't do this here.

[2509] We can't do this here.

[2510] If they ever, hey, HBO, if you guys ever want to reboot that and you need me to step in as TT, I'm available.

[2511] Okay.

[2512] All right.

[2513] November 90 to 92, the best time on TV slash the best movies.

[2514] November 92 to 93, we're HBO.

[2515] This seems fake.

[2516] Sounds like an S &L.

[2517] It does.

[2518] October 93 to September 95.

[2519] out of town today.

[2520] Wait, what?

[2521] Maybe, is this real?

[2522] I'm scared it's not real.

[2523] Um, no, September 95 to October 96, something specials on.

[2524] Okay.

[2525] October 96 to April 2009, that's the longest stretch.

[2526] It's not TV.

[2527] It's HBO.

[2528] That's not still it?

[2529] No. What is it now?

[2530] 2006 to 2009, get more.

[2531] But that's the slogan for the HBO website.

[2532] Okay.

[2533] April.

[2534] April 2009 to the present, it's more than you imagined.

[2535] It's HBO.

[2536] Okay.

[2537] Also, right now, there's, this is HBO and it's HBO.

[2538] I think those are used, like, around.

[2539] Anyway.

[2540] It's HBO.

[2541] It's showtime.

[2542] Not showtime, but the time the show show starts.

[2543] Yeah, I do.

[2544] Okay.

[2545] I would have been good.

[2546] That would have been really good.

[2547] Oh, my God.

[2548] Okay.

[2549] What if they're really one more?

[2550] I'm so scared.

[2551] Okay, HBO, must see, it's not TV.

[2552] Yeah, that's good.

[2553] Must see it's not TV.

[2554] Yeah, I like that.

[2555] Do you want to do one more?

[2556] No, that was, I'm all out.

[2557] Okay.

[2558] I mean, I'd do another Tina song, but no, okay.

[2559] Did David Chase do anything after the Sopranos?

[2560] He did.

[2561] Well, he did the movie, The Saints of Newark.

[2562] Many Saints of Newark.

[2563] But he also did not fade away also a film.

[2564] Oh, you're talking TV.

[2565] David Chase, do a fucking show.

[2566] Well, he had previously developed a ribbon of dreams, a mini -series for HBO.

[2567] Uh -oh.

[2568] The series pilot would begin in 1913 and followed two men, one a college educated mechanical engineer, the other a cowboy with a violent past.

[2569] Oh, my God.

[2570] Who form an unlikely producing partnership and together become pioneers and then powers for a time in motion pictures.

[2571] Specifically, the two men would begin as employees of D .W. Griffith and then cross -care paths with John Ford, John Wayne, Raul Walsh Walsh Walsh Betty Davis Betty Davis Billy Wilder and others who gave shape to Hollywood as it grew from the age of silent western to the golden era of talkies and the studio system to the Atoeur Atelier movement to television and finally to the present day in 2021 Chase revealed that HBO agreed to proceed with the production of the minis series but with a quote cheesy budget to which Chase refused to agree.

[2572] Therefore, Chase and HBO part of ways on the project and Ribbon of Dreams fell through.

[2573] Um, another pitch for HBO.

[2574] HBO in Atelier.

[2575] They are an it.

[2576] They are in Atelier, actually.

[2577] They would be okay in doing it.

[2578] Yeah.

[2579] Wait, hold on.

[2580] Oh, yeah.

[2581] Yeah.

[2582] It was, Supranas was the last TV.

[2583] Okay, yeah, most, uh, most expensive TV show ever made.

[2584] Yes, currently Amazon Prime's Lord of the Rings Rings of Power 58 million per episode Oh my God Whoa that's crazy surpass the combined 281 million budget of the Lord of the Rings film series Oh wow I think they can afford it Because I think my tiny kitchen cookoff is on Amazon Prime So I think it's like bringing in a lot of peeps The tiny kitchen is cookoff Yeah, and so they're able to then siphon some of that money towards Lord of the Rings.

[2585] Relegate it, yeah, to some development of Lord of the Rings property.

[2586] That's right.

[2587] Okay.

[2588] Okay, Chappelle made $20 million each for those three.

[2589] So $60 million.

[2590] Correct, Fassment.

[2591] Okay.

[2592] Do you know the best selling DVD?

[2593] I mean, look, I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole trying to find top TV DVD box sets.

[2594] Uh -huh.

[2595] And I was really having trouble.

[2596] Yeah, I bet.

[2597] But the top best -selling DVD is Frozen.

[2598] I believe that, because that's what parents buy it so their kid can watch it three million times.

[2599] Yeah.

[2600] Yeah.

[2601] Okay, that's all.

[2602] I enjoyed that episode.

[2603] Me too.

[2604] I'm very interested in HBO, though.

[2605] I love their programming.

[2606] Last night I watched the House of the Dragons.

[2607] House of the Dragons season finale.

[2608] Did you watch it, Rob?

[2609] Not yet.

[2610] Were you happy with it or no?

[2611] I enjoyed the episode.

[2612] When it went black, I was like, okay, they're taking a pause, and then we're about to get into it.

[2613] No, end of the season.

[2614] So I was a little coytus interruptus for me. Okay.

[2615] I was a little wanting much more.

[2616] Are they shooting it already, the second season?

[2617] I don't know.

[2618] They showed a trailer for succession.

[2619] Well, first fun thing, this Sunday, White Lotus returns.

[2620] So that's exciting.

[2621] It's not TV, it's HBO.

[2622] Simply the best.

[2623] Artilial.

[2624] It's HBO.

[2625] Then they showed a teaser for a succession and I was like, oh, great, that's back already.

[2626] Spring 2023.

[2627] I was like, no, HBO.

[2628] That's too early.

[2629] But they're wetting your past.

[2630] See, now you're angry and they did exactly what they wanted to do.

[2631] We'll piss you off.

[2632] They have not even started shooting season two yet, starting, 2023, out in 2024, like I guess I have time to catch up.

[2633] Okay.

[2634] Well, that was enjoyable.

[2635] Love you.

[2636] I love you, dearly.

[2637] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[2638] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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